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I’m not crying, you’re crying.  I’ve only been to one MFF last year and I miss it so much this weekend.

Lets hope next year gets better.  In the meantime you can visit this hotel in VR:

https://vrchat.com/i/lexi-likemazen-43bdd

 

MFF: I miss you all (2020)

A cute bug themed thesis film from Cynthia Dávila-Chase.

A ladybug crosses a street. A short film I completed shortly after finishing my thesis at the Laguna College of Art and Design in roughly two weeks.

Punch Buggy

Heya! Anyone know of a good Usenet/AFF archive, other than Google Groups? Internet Archive https://archive.org/download/usenet-alt/alt.fan.furry.mbox.zip/alt.fan.furry.mbox only goes back till 2000. btw im doing this for a little project.

We stumbled across this announcement from Deadline: Back To The Outback, a new animated feature due from Netflix in 2021. “In the movie, tired of being locked in a reptile house where humans gawk at them like they’re monsters, a ragtag group of Australia’s deadliest creatures plot a daring escape from their zoo to the Outback, a place where they’ll fit in without being judged for their scales and fangs. Leading the group is Maddie (Isla Fisher), a poisonous snake with a heart of gold, who bands together with a self-assured Thorny Devil lizard Zoe (Miranda Tapsell), a lovelorn hairy spider Frank (Guy Pearce), and a sensitive scorpion Nigel (Angus Imrie). But when their nemesis — Pretty Boy (Tim Minchin), a cute but obnoxious koala — unexpectedly joins their escape, Maddie and the gang have no choice but to take him with them.” Hmm… sounds a bit like an Australian version of Disney’s The Wild — remember that one? Anyway, we’ll know more when Reel FX brings us the film next fall. (Can’t help wondering if some of this is about making up to Tim Minchin for his aborted film Larrikins.)

image c. 2020 Netflix

Ok, this honestly made me laugh out loud.

Godzilla vs Kong is a full CGI best animated shortfilm – parody of classic action movies and their stereotypes. We love Kaiju monstes and Kvg is a tribute to the monsterverse ( with some humor ). This is an independent short-film made without a budget, brought to you buy HUPE!animation. If you liked KVG, this is the another monster shortfilm, from the same director.

Godzilla vs Kong 2020

Hello there FWG members, it’s time for another monthly newsletter! Let’s get right down to business, shall we?

Usually, I save the part where I directly talk to you all until the end but we’re switching things up this month. I don’t want to talk about money, but I’ve got to bring it up. It isn’t free to keep the guild running. We are moving to becoming a 501©(3) and between running a convention and the Cóyotl Awards costs add up. Plus we have web hosting and a new logo… You get the picture.

The guild has never made mandatory dues and does not have plans to do so in the future. However, the guild keeps going thanks to donations from our members. A lot of you enjoyed Oxfurred Comma and the guild having more activity this year, and hope you will consider showing some support if able (2020 has been a hard year, we all know it).

If you can, please consider donating to the guild. We accept donations on paypal.

That’s all from me folks, we’ll show off the open markets and such as usual but until next time, stay safe, stay well, and I’ll see you next month. 

– FWG President Linnea Capps

Pre-Orders This Month:

• Dude, Where’s My Pack? from FurPlanet

Remember to submit to our Promotion Tip Line to have your books included in this section.

You can find all of the open markets for furry writing in our Furry Writers’ Market! Currently, these markets are open:

• The Howling Dead (Deadline: December 15th, 2020)
• Can You See Us Now? (Deadline: January 1st, 2020)
• Difursity 2 (Deadline: January 1st, 2020)
• iPawd – A Furry Music Anthology (Deadline January 10th, 2021)
• Beast Volume 1 (Deadline: March 1st 2021)
• Fur-Miliar Spaces (Deadline: March 15th)
• The Fox Spirit Book Of… Love (Deadline Unlisted)
• #ohmurr (Deadlines Ongoing)

From the graphic novel by Cornelia Funke (Inkheart,Ghosthunters) comes a movie that is nothing like How to Train Your Dragon…. I’m sure.

….Please ignore the title font.

Firedrake, the young silver dragon, has had enough of constantly having to hide in a wooded valley. He wants to show the older generation that he is a real dragon. When humans are about to destroy his family’s very last refuge, Firedrake secretly sets off on an adventurous journey with forest brownie Sorrel. He wants to find the “Rim of Heaven”, the dragons’ mysterious haven. On their quest Firedrake and Sorrel encounter Ben, an orphan and stray, who claims to be a dragon rider. While Ben and Firedrake make friends quickly, Sorrel becomes increasingly distrustful and tries to get rid of the orphan at every opportunity. But the unlikely trio have to learn to pull together, because they are being hunted by Nettlebrand. The evil, dragon-eating monster was created by an alchemist with the aim of tracking down and destroying every dragon on Earth…

Trailer: Dragon Rider

I had my suspicions from the title that this book was going to be kinky--and it was--but I knew after reading the first chapter that there was going to be so much more to it. This isn’t to say writing kinky stuff is a bad thing. In fact, I quite enjoyed the interactions between Will the dalmatian and Anne, his mistress. They were fun, mysterious, and daringly beautiful. Being with Anne served as a striking contrast to his stressful job as a fireman, where every call may be the last, especially in a city that’s losing its sanity.

“Fire Branded Leather” by F. Gibbs is about Will, a dalmatian who works as a fireman in V-town, one of the last cities remaining after the Cataclysm. With his best friend Davies, a cougar, he stands as second-in-command beneath a verbally abusive bull by the name of Masterson. After a day of getting yelled at for not following the government’s new orders, Will goes home and responds to a personal ad from a lady in her mid-thirties. One date leads to another and the two figure out together just how nice it can be to devote yourself to another. This newfound self-confidence gives Will the power he never knew he needed, but is it enough to stand up to Masterson and keep V-town from burning to ashes?

I really enjoyed this story! It was well-written, balanced, and pretty solid. I enjoyed the characters, especially Will and Davies. Will had good character development; Davies was funny. The tone shifted smoothly from depressing to empowering and nothing felt too jarring or out of place. Moments of action felt exhilarating and moments of vulnerability felt a little uncomfortable and awkward, like they should. It was entertaining from beginning to end, but there were some slightly confusing things.

First, Anne. Don’t get me wrong, she’s supposed to be a mysterious character who lives by her own rules, but there are a few points in the story where she does “things” to Will that make him “better.” These “things” are never explicitly stated, which leads to my confusion. Normally I’d cast them aside as just side effects of devoting yourself to someone else, but these were things that changed Will physically. One example of this is his endurance. Before meeting Anne he has limits: he can’t run that fast for too long, and he can’t breathe in too much smokey air before becoming fatigued. After Anne does something to him, he suddenly can? These weird things didn’t distract from the story all that much, but they did linger in my mind for quite some time. I simply chalked it up to the newfound self-confidence he got from Anne, which works because (spoilers) it also gives him the inner strength to stand up to Masterson. I would have just liked them to be a little more clear.

Second, the world confuses me a little bit. The Cataclysm is mentioned a few times and serves as an anchoring point in the city’s history, but I never fully understand its effects. A story doesn’t need to dive into every aspect of worldbuilding, but I was confused on why there wasn’t more about the history because it seemed like the anti-human riots that were going on were an indirect result of whatever the Cataclysm was. This left a bit of a hole in my understanding of the world, especially because a big part of Will’s motives in the story came from his mother being human. What little information I have about the Cataclysm makes me think that humans had something to do with it. Additionally, Anne mentions time and time again that this world isn’t ready for something. It’s a good thing to say if you’re trying to be ominous, but it just seemed like there was more that could have been said. With all that being said, it didn’t distract from the story too much.

Though there were some things about the story that were ominous or confusing, it was really easy to take in the world as it is. Not only that, but the way F. Gibbs uses the strengths and weaknesses of certain animal species is really fun to read about. I love the imagery of a fireman cat scaling a wall, or horses pulling the fire carriages. Had no idea what the fox character was doing there, but maybe I’m just supposed to come up with my own interpretation…?

This book would appeal to adults who are curious or open to the idea of anthropomorphic animals and/or sexual kinks. This book isn’t overly explicit or detailed about these moments, but they are in there. More importantly, the effects of these intimate moments are shown throughout the book. So keep an open mind and happy reading.

Fire Branded Leather by F. Gibbs

TigerTails Radio Season 12 Episode 50 Join the Discord Chat: https://discord.gg/SQ5QuRf For a full preview of events and for previous episodes, please visit http://www.tigertailsradio.co.uk. See website for full breakdown of song credits, which is usually updated shortly after the show. Some music provided by https://audiograb.com/u/XimerTracks Some music provided by http://spoti.fi/NCS Backing music by Sanxion7.

Welcome to Issue 9 of Zooscape!

Creativity… expression… transformation…  These are ways to be true to yourself.  Through creativity and expression, discover who you are in the first place, and once you know, hold tight to the truth of yourself, or transform yourself into the the person you’re really meant to be.

All of the stories in this issue are about characters discovering who they are, holding firm to their principles, or finding ways to become who they’re meant to be.

Maybe by reading them, you’ll find a part of yourself.

* * *

The Good Smell by Tim Susman

The White Deer by Ian Madison Keller

Shadowbox on the Tundra by Gretchen Tessmer

Hope, Unrequested and Freely Given by Brent Baldwin

Song of the Raven and Crow by Avra Margariti

The Sleep of Reason by Michael H. Payne

The Dragon Maker by Amy Clare Fontaine

Self-Expression by R. C. Capasso

Travelling Along the River Bend by Lena Ng

* * *

As always, if you want to support Zooscape, we have a Patreon.  And we continue to be open for submissions!

by Lena Ng

“Such an afternoon is perfect for writing.  The warm air, the relaxing breeze, the sunlight itself puts me in a creative mood.”

The sun bathed the river with its glow.  The water glinted back in merriment, flirting and winking to all that it encountered.  Time slowed and breathed, it meditated and did not hurry the hours away, but flowed onward as the river itself.  The reeds bent in the lilting breeze, murmuring sweet conversations and delicious secrets to their companions.  The larks sang intricate melodies, their joyous hearts shaping the lyrics.  The lavender air refreshed the spirit and was moderate in its mood.

The brown ferret, a furry poet, lay back on the dory and dragged his paw in the clear, reflecting water.  He had been writing since he had learned how to write and had formulated some ideas on how the process worked, how to bridge the immense gulf between thought and communication, and how to avoid falling into an abyss.  His sharp face held inquisitive, good-natured eyes, a pointed, wet nose, and a mouth turned upwards at its corners. Small dimples dotted the plumpness of his cheeks whenever he smiled, which was often.

“Inspiration,” he said, “it is here all around us.”  He licked the end of his pencil stub and drew spiralling doodles on his notepad.  His stubby tail curled slowly from one side to the other.

His fat companion, the marmot, more dreamer than writer, nodded in agreement.

Ferret continued.  “Have you ever seen such a pleasant afternoon?  Such an afternoon is perfect for writing.  The warm air, the relaxing breeze, the sunlight itself puts me in a creative mood.”

Ferret’s doodles took the shape of a cupcake with a cloud of icing and a cherry at its peak, one that he looked forward to having at his tea.  He twirled his whiskers and batted away a curious dragonfly, its iridescent wings shining green and gold.

The marmot again nodded, though more from nodding off in the afternoon sun than in agreement.  His chin rested on his ample belly and his breathing whistled a little between his teeth.

“I say, Marmot,” said Ferret.  “Are you listening to anything I’ve just said?  This is important if you want to become a writer.”

“What, what?” said Marmot, sputtering a little, startled but trying not look like he had been caught off-guard.  His ears perked upwards and he struggled to focus his eyes, although they were naturally a little crossed.

“I said,” said Ferret, a little bit louder.  “Oh, never mind.”

Marmot blinked twice then yawned, stretching his arms out.  His stomach gurgled.  “Can we talk about this after we’ve had our tea?  I can’t concentrate on an empty stomach.”  He straightened his waistcoat which, judging from its tightness, could not have guessed that his stomach was ever empty, and patted the carved wooden buttons.

“Well,” Ferret began, a reluctant note in his voice.  “I wanted to start on the outline of a story.  The one I was telling you about earlier about the tulips and nightingale and—–”

Marmot’s gurgling stomach interrupted him.  His eyes glazed and drifted, as though he were thinking of steak pies on parade.

“Alright,” conceded Ferret.  “Though after tea, I really must put some work in.”

“Of course,” said Marmot, now fully awake and ready to agree to anything.  He seized the oars and steered the dory towards the river bank.  He docked the boat and with a surprising nimbleness for one his size, jumped from the boat onto the land.   The boat rocked dangerously.  Ferret gripped the sides of the dory and shifted his weight to avoid tipping over.

“Hold on there,” said Ferret.  “Watch what you are doing!”

Marmot was oblivious to anything but his stomach.  “Do you think that I’ve brought enough food?  I would hate for us to be hungry.”  He leaned over into the boat, gripped the handles of the picnic basket and, using the strength of his legs to push his weight backwards, hauled the basket onto the shore.  The picnic basket, a large brown wicker almost the size of Marmot himself, was packed full.

“Oh!” said Marmot, landing on his rump.  He rubbed his hands together and his eyes twinkled.  With reverence and heightened anticipation, Marmot opened the lid.  He took a moment to feast his eyes on the delicacies held within while a dreamy smile alit his face.  He pulled out a red and white checked tablecloth and unfolded it.  He settled himself onto its middle.  He stuck his head into the basket.

“Shall we start with the savouries or the sweets?” said Marmot, nose so deep in the basket it were as if the basket had grown two legs and a tail.  “For savouries, we have bread with lots of butter, small steak and kidney pies, pickles, smoked salmon, sharp cheddar, and stuffed olives.  For sweets, there are apricot, blueberry, and strawberry preserves, cherry cupcakes, melon cubes, rose-water infused macaroons, orange scones with heavy cream and petit fours.”

Marmot took out each of the dishes from the basket.  Ferret stepped out of the boat and sat on the edge of the blanket since after the food was laid out, there was not much room remaining.  Out came the ivory bone china, the crystal flutes with twisting, delicate stems, the silver-plated utensils with vine scrolls on the handles, along with the beverages, the sparkling rose wine, the fresh peach juice and pink lemonade.

“So many delicious things, I don’t know where to start,” said Ferret, eyes overlooking the meal.  A robin tilted its head at him and hopped a few steps, as if to help him to decide.

“Hmmm,” said Marmot, mouth already full of jam and bread.  They tucked in, each having a little bit of everything, then repeating in case that they had missed anything.  They ate in companionable silence.  They could not have wanted anything more in life but the good food in front of them, in the company of a good friend, and the simple pleasure of a sunny afternoon.

After they had finished eating, Marmot poured sweetened tea from a large, battered thermos into the delicate china.  Ferret sighed and stretched out onto the blanket.

“I must get some work done. Let me go over my notes.”  Ferret ruffled though the leaves of his notepad, dismayed upon finding doodles of cherry-topped cupcakes, strawberries, purple-stemmed Symphyotrichum puniceum, and a crooked-looking weather vane.  He yawned.

Marmot looked up from his tea and sniffed the air.  “Rain’s coming.  Tomorrow smells like it will bring a thunderstorm.”

“Good,” said Ferret, decisively.  “Rainy weather is perfect for writing.  No other distractions.”

With that, he put down his notepad, turned over onto his stomach, and closed his eyes for a nap.

 

* * *

Originally published in ARTPOST Magazine.

About the Author

Lena Ng dwells in Toronto, Ontario. She tiptoes at night so no one knows she’s awake. She has short stories in four dozen publications including Amazing Stories, from Australia, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. “Under an Autumn Moon” is her short story collection. She is currently seeking a publisher for her novel, Darkness Beckons, a Gothic romance.

by R. C. Capasso

“Oh yes, everyone would see it.”

Arnold stood back, his chest heaving. “There. That’s it. Finished.” The rising sun cast soft light over his night’s work.

His mother tried to be supportive.  “The individual pieces are beautifully constructed.”

“And?”

His expectancy made her throat constrict. “It’s just… ”

“Say it.”

Her voice was low. “They don’t connect. The gaps… ”

He nodded. “Exactly!”

She took a breath. Without meaning to, she dug all four paws into the leaf-strewn bank. “The water runs right through.”

His beautiful large teeth gleamed as he smiled. “Completely. The flow is perfect. Unimpeded. The viewer sees it at once.”

Oh yes, everyone would see it. Birds flying overhead. Fish under the surface, slipping around the odd shadows where there should have been one large solid block and a lovely pond. Their fellow beavers… She would have to avoid her friends for a bit, but what were friends compared to her son?

His breath came fast. “You get it. Don’t you? The commentary on the meaning of our lives? We think we build solidly. We think we’re in control. But actually Life and The Truth slide past our feeble piles of sticks.”

Her eyes moved from one small mound to another. Five little disconnected damlets, none of them doing their job. “I suppose the committee… ”

Arnold rose on his back paws, swaying a moment, the sleek fur on his belly glistening from his last plunge into the stream. “It’s what I promised them, and more. Two clusters more than I’d sketched in my proposal. This will be the making of me. More grants, maybe a fellowship.”

He squinted against the sun and turned to face the stream, his tail thudding lightly on the ground. “Unless the meaning is too obvious…”

She smiled, her heart warming despite herself. Did it truly matter if she understood? Her son was an artist, and this installation meant so much to him.

Did the stream really need just another ordinary dam?

 

* * *

About the Author

R. C. Capasso has been composing stories since learning to read. R.C. loves animals but has a special affinity for cats and dogs, many of which have shared her life. After a career in education, R.C. devotes time to cooking, writing, travel, and learning languages. Previous stories have appeared in Literally Stories, Bewildering Stories, Long Story Short, and Fiction on the Web.

by Amy Clare Fontaine

“Sometimes her dragons slithered, wingless, into the room, curled up in her lap, and hummed the song of rain on rooftops.”

Griselda made dragons out of words. No one knew how. One moment she’d be hunched over her desk, scribbling furiously, only stopping occasionally to dip her quill or suck on it thoughtfully, her chin lifted and her eyes somewhere else. And the next moment, a blizzard would blast the door and windows open. A beast with icicle wings and a snowdrift tail and eyes like wistful memories of summer would roar into the room, gnashing teeth like sickle blades and thrashing through the walls.

Griselda’s husband Antonio looked on in awe from the door, tendrils of frost in what was not quite a beard, willfully locking his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. Antonio learned quickly to shut his mouth and simply watch. If he so much as breathed too loudly, Griselda would gasp and startle, and all at once the winterbeast, the storm, and any damage to the walls, floor, and ceiling would vanish like a dream. So her husband kept silent while she wove her dragons, as silent as he could in the presence of such majesty.

Sometimes her dragons set the room aflame, trailing whirls of desert dust and a seductive, unquenchable thirst. These dragons conjured dunes to be climbed, camel hooves baking on hot sand. Sometimes her dragons slithered, wingless, into the room, curled up in her lap, and hummed the song of rain on rooftops. Sometimes her dragons looked like wolves, all fur and sleek angles and muscle, and their shrill cries were the equal opposite of thunder. They made his ears bleed in the best way.

Always, her dragons were beautiful.

One night, as they sat down to their childless supper, to the scarred oaken table, to half-spoiled chicken and hard bread and ale as thin as water, he asked her the question that marked the beginning of the end.

“Why do you show no one your dragons?”

She covered her mouth in shock. “You saw?” she whispered. Her voice rose to a shout, and she glared at him. “You saw?!”

He did not shrink from her.

“You have a gift, Griselda. I think it should be shared with the world.”

She picked up her fork and waved it threateningly in his direction.

“They are my dragons,” she hissed, steam trickling out from between her teeth. “No one else’s.”

Helplessly, he held up his hands. “All right! If you say so.” She simmered down. “But if you ever wanted to share them,” he continued quietly, “I would support you. Completely.”

She sank back into her seat, her brow furrowed and new shadows under her eyes. “I hope you will support me regardless.”

The remainder of their meal passed in silence.

Griselda started locking the door to her study in the evenings when she went upstairs to work. But now and then, when Antonio passed the door, he heard rumblings, claws clacking on wood. Wisps of steam leaked out from the crack beneath the door. It killed him, until one night he could stand it no longer. Using a simple cantrip he had learned from the old wizard in the marketplace, he picked the lock and flung open the door.

“Griselda!”

He saw nothing unusual. Just his wife, sitting at her desk.

“Hello, Antonio, my love.”

Tears filled her eyes like a looming dragon-storm. When he glanced at the parchment before her, he saw that it was blank.

Antonio sighed. “Griselda, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have intruded.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing to forgive.” Rising, she looked into his eyes. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should share my dragons.”

Slowly, he crossed the room, taking her hand in his own.

“Are you sure? I hope you aren’t saying this for my sake.”

She smiled, her eyes like wistful memories of summer, and squeezed his hand.

“Not just yours. Ours.”

The next day, she started selling dragons at the market. Antonio made her a stall of cheap wood and a wobbly table on which to write. She sat at the makeshift desk as he roved the market, loudly calling to passersby.

“Ho! You there! For a mere two coppers, my wife will make you a dragon! Any kind of dragon you’d like!”

At first, he was met with narrowed eyes and scornful laughs. But then the first customer, a little girl who had lost her parents, requested a dragon. A teal dragon of forest and sea.

And Griselda began to write.

A teal dragon spiraled down from the sky, smelling of salt and fish and pine trees. It crashed into the girl like a wave and licked her face with its catlike tongue.

The crowd gasped and the girl giggled. People flocked to Griselda’s stall. And the old wizard selling simple cantrips was put out of business forever.

Griselda wrote people dragons. Noble dragons. Cute dragons. Deadly dragons. Wise dragons. Dragons of granite and dragons of gold. Dragons of water whose droplets shivered as they moved. Singing dragons and braying dragons. Dragons as large as houses or as small as kittens. A rainbow, a menagerie, an army of dragons. Each disappeared when Griselda put down her quill, leaving her customers begging for more. They quickly ran out of parchment at their little stall, but the stationer down the street gladly gave them reams more in exchange for a dragon of his own.

By the end of the day, Griselda and Antonio had more money than they had ever seen in their lives. More than enough to buy dinner at a fancy restaurant. Antonio laughed merrily over his mead.

“Dear Griselda! You blew them away!”

Griselda smiled wanly in her brand-new satin dress, gazing toward the bard strumming in the corner.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m glad.”

Antonio’s face fell. “What’s wrong, my love?”

She growled and shook her head, not meeting his eyes.  “Nothing!” she snapped, slamming her fist on the table.

Time stopped for a moment. Then the ambient chatter and music resumed.

“Griselda, please tell me.”

She gazed into his eyes. Her eyes were like barren winter boughs.  “They are not my dragons,” she said, so quietly that she could barely hear herself.

Antonio did not hear. “Come again?”

“They are not my dragons.” She stared into her glass of dark wine. “They are not alive.”

Antonio frowned. “What do you mean, love? They seem more than alive to me!”

She sipped her wine broodingly.  “I give the people what they want. But these dragons are chained. They do not see it. You do not see it. But I do.” Her eyes shone wetly in the candlelight. “My dragons are wild. They appear for me whenever and however they choose. I do not try to control them. If I did, they would abandon me.”

Picking up her fork, she impassively prodded her charbroiled steak.  “Those creatures I made in the market came on command. They are crass and inelegant. Simpering shadows.” She stabbed the meat violently. “They are not dragons. They are whipped nags.”

Antonio watched her lift the forkful of steak, then put it back down on her plate, untouched.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. We don’t have to do it again. We’ll go home tomorrow.”

But that night he sighed contentedly in their palatial hotel room after they made love in a bed fit for royalty. And he turned under the silken sheets and closed his eyes with a happier smile on his face than she had ever seen there. Long after he fell asleep, Griselda stared wide-eyed at the expensive unicorn tapestries on the walls, replaying memories of the day in her mind. His enjoyment of the mead, the meal, the luxurious bedroom, the fine new clothes. She decided then and there to keep chasing shadows.

The next morning, the crowd preceded them to their stall. Griselda continued to write her dragons on demand. Minor flaws in their patterns started to emerge: a torn wing, a missing claw, half a face dissolved into thin air. But the delighted customers hardly noticed. Nor did Antonio.

But then trumpets sounded, and hooves rang across the cobbles, and the crowd parted to let the king himself through the square, with much marching and banner-waving and bugling, pipes and whinnies and drums. Four of the king’s servants set his palanquin down in front of Griselda’s stall, bowed, and stepped back.

The king rose and stood before Griselda. Not a person breathed in the square.

“Griselda Feathersbane,” the king proclaimed.

Griselda slowly bowed, as did Antonio beside her.

“Rise,” the king commanded.

They did.

“Mrs. Feathersbane, every soul in the kingdom has been gossiping about your power.” The king examined Griselda’s rickety stall. “Naturally, I had to come see it for myself.”

Griselda nodded, willing her legs to stop trembling. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

The king’s face was serious, his tone formal.  “I order you to make me a dragon encrusted with rubies, sapphires, and emeralds that glint as brightly as the sun, blinding all those unworthy to look upon him. A proud symbol of the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”

Griselda nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“I’m not finished.” The king narrowed his eyes. His entourage of servants, soldiers, and performers quivered behind him. “The dragon will be taller than the spires of my castle. His teeth will be as long and as sharp as my sword. He will melt armies with his breath, and he will not disappear. And he will answer to me and me alone.”

The king studied Griselda. “Can you do this?”

Griselda looked into the king’s eyes for a long time, afraid of his gaze but more afraid to look away.  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

The crowd murmured. Antonio patted her arm. “You can do this,” he whispered in her ear. He stepped back as she sat down before her parchment. The square fell silent.

Taking a deep breath, she began to write.

At first, no sound emerged but the scritch of her quill on the parchment. No monster spiraled out of the sky.

But then there was a faint, wheezing cough. Then a thousand shrieks and frightened, stumbling footsteps. Griselda stopped writing and looked up. She stared.

An inky, vaguely dragon-shaped creature staggered through the screaming, fleeing crowd toward the king, coughing raspingly. Its legs were stumps. There were just indents where its eyes should have been. Phlegm dribbled from its mouth. Its ribs poked through its sides. It was the size of a dog, and it could not fly.

The king cried out and backed away from the creature, which kept shuffling towards him like a desperate, dying thing. Rasping, coughing, keening.

At last, in a flash of darkness, it was gone.

Everyone stared at the king. At the empty space before the king. At Griselda.

Rising from her chair, Griselda tore her parchment in two and walked away.

* * *

No one knew where Griselda went. After a futile attempt to pacify king and crowd, Antonio raced back to the hotel to find her gone. No note, no information from the man at the front desk. But the earnings from the market were missing. And so was Griselda’s rumpled old dress.

Folks said that Griselda, fearing the wrath of the king, had used her profits to purchase the fastest horse money could buy, a steed with a splash of unicorn blood in its veins. They said she fled to the country, where she changed her name and eked out an existence on some crumbling farm. They said she never spoke another word, too frightened of the monsters that might crawl from her mouth.

Only Griselda knows the truth. That she rented a room of her own in a rundown inn on a dead-end street. That she went upstairs to that room, locked the door, sat down at the dusty desk with a stick of charcoal and a scrap of paper.

And then, alone, she flew.

 

* * *

About the Author

Amy Clare Fontaine is a wildlife biologist who’s chased wolves in Yellowstone, hyenas in Kenya, and fishers in the northern Sierras. She is the author of anthropomorphic hyena novelette Beyond Acacia Ridge and young adult fantasy novel Mist, as well as numerous short stories and poems. Her interactive novel Fox Spirit: A Two-Tailed Adventure has just been released by Choice of Games. You can find her published works and WordPress blog at www.amyclarefontaine.com and follow her on Twitter at @fontainepen.

by Michael H. Payne

“I mean, look at it from her point of view: a talking crow that can change into a variety of shapes as long as they’re somewhat crow-related?”

Staring at the computer screen, I blink, but the picture there doesn’t change.  I give it a few more blinks just to be sure, then I shift my gaze over to Meredith, sitting on the edge of the bed and tying her shiny black shoes.  “Mare!  This doesn’t make any sense!”

“It’s the internet,” she says, her nimble fingers not slowing in their lace knotting.  “It’s not supposed to make sense.”

“But look!”  My feathers rustle as I wave a wing.  “The contest this week on the WriteEm website is supposed to be for original fiction instead of fanfic, but all the artists in the group submitted prompt images with characters from the My Little Mythos cartoon series in them!”

That gets her to look up, a few creases wrinkling her usually immaculate forehead.  “All the artists?”

“OK, three of the eleven.”  I’m trying to cut down on my exaggerating.  Which is to say that Meredith is trying to get me to cut down on my exaggerating…

Still, I jump and flap and poke the screen with a claw.  “This one, though!  It’s a parody of Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, that painting of a pipe with the words ‘This is not a pipe’ written below it in French?  But the artist’s got Ploomy, the odd little pegasus from My Little Mythos, standing on a cloud, and along the bottom, it says ‘Ceci n’est pas une ploom’!”

Meredith’s on her feet, taking the couple of steps to her dresser.  “Ploomy the pegasus?”

My wings nearly freeze and drop me to the floor.  “Do you look at none of the YouTube links I send you?”

“Sammy?”  She’s combing her hair now, short and brown and draping straight down to almost touch her shoulders, so her attention’s on the mirror.  “Are you screeching?”

I am, of course.  I’m also hopping up and down on the back of her desk chair, something else she doesn’t like and something else I usually avoid because I love Meredith and would do anything for her.

Anything within reason, I mean.  But right now, reason seems about as distant as the freaking Outer Hebrides.

Still, I’m not screeching — not screeching at all! — when I go on.  “It’s such a great image, funny and clever and well-done and everything!  But this isn’t a My Little Mythos fanfiction round, so how can I possibly write a story based on it, huh?  How?”

The arched eyebrow she turns toward me makes me realize not just that I’m screeching and not just that I’m hopping up and down on the back of her chair, but at this point I’ve started whining as well.  So I take a breath, gently undo my claws from the fabric, settle my wings, and hardly even croak when I say, “I simply can’t be expected to work under these conditions.  That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.”  She brushes her sleeves — it’s one of her white, billowy blouses with the little ruffles at the wrists that make her look like a pirate and usually make me pretend I’m a parrot.  I don’t this time because she’s going on: “Unfortunately, some of us have actual work to do, so I’ll see you later.”

“What?”  I leap into a hover above her desk like a real crow could never do.  “You’re leaving me here?  Alone?  With this horrible conundrum?”

The tiniest of smiles pulls at her lips.  “Sammy, I go to Montaine’s at this same time every afternoon Wednesday through Sunday.  Or haven’t you noticed that in the three months we’ve been together?”

“No!”  I quickly transform myself into a little crow-shaped brooch.  “Here!  You can pin me to your lapel and take me with you!”  Another pop and puff, and I’m nothing but a single downy black feather.  “Or here!  You can tuck me into your bra!  No one’ll know, and I can snuggle all night against your beautiful, beautiful—”

“Sammy!”  She screeches it, but I don’t point out this little factoid when I notice the unhappy blush enflaming her pale cheeks.

Swirling back to my regular corvine form, I collapse to the top of the desk and wish I could blush, too.

“There’s a time,”  she says after a long, long minute, her voice tight and her eyes clenched, “and a place for that sort of stuff between us.  This isn’t it.”

“I know, Meredith.”  I can barely form the words.  “I’m sorry, Meredith.”

She pulls in a deep breath, then blows it out.  “It’s a good thing you’re just a figment of my imagination.”  With another breath, she grabs her purse, unlocks the apartment door, steps out into the hall, and closes the door behind herself.

* * *

Of course, I’m not a figment of her imagination.  Or at least I’m not just a figment of her imagination.  After all, could a figment of someone’s imagination be typing this story and entering it in the WriteEm contest?

But I can understand why she thinks I am.  I mean, look at it from her point of view: a talking crow that can change into a variety of shapes as long as they’re somewhat crow-related?  I’d think it was a figment of my imagination, too, if a big black bird swooped down onto my shoulder late one night as I was walking home from my mind-numbing job as hostess at what Meredith tells me is actually a fairly nice little bistro just on the other side of the park from our apartment here.

She didn’t scream, I remember, her hand coming up to stroke one of my wings while she pressed her cheek into the feathers of the other.  When we got back to her apartment, she curled up into bed and started cuddling me like a teddy bear, too.  I’ve even taken my most humanoid form a few times when she’s asked, and we’ve done more than cuddle…

Except that this isn’t that kind of story, so forget about any details.  The only important thing is that she’s beautiful and I love her and I never, ever, ever want to be without her the way I was, floating and shapeless and lost for so many long, excruciating centuries.

I lift my forlorn birdie head at the click-n-latch of the door lock.  She’ll forgive me for being an idiot.  She always does.  That doesn’t stop me from feeling as torn up and stinky as carrion, though.

However, ‘carry on’ is one of my mottos — what a segue!  I shake myself, hop back to the computer, and sigh at the image of Ploomy as the pipe from Magritte’s painting.  “What was the artist thinking?” I mutter.

On the screen, Ploomy’s eyes swing toward me.  “Just a darn mystery, all right,” she says.

And yes, OK, maybe it’s stupid for a thing like me — whatever that is — to be surprised by a thing like this — whatever this is.  But I’m pretty sure I’ve demonstrated my stupidity well enough in the first thousand words of this little opus.  So I stare back at her, my tongue flicking around inside my beak like half a worm for a good second or two before I manage to ask, “Are you talking to me?”

“Yep!”  She leaps from the screen, her little gray wings flitting her around my head like a fair-sized moth.  “Us figments of the imagination gotta stick together, y’know!”

“But…”  It takes me another few seconds to assemble some words.  “Can a figment of the imagination have a figment of the imagination?”

“Well, sure!”  Settling on the top edge of the monitor, she gives a grin that seems almost bigger than she is.  “Who better, right?”

“Ummm,” I reply, and while it’s not clever, it is heartfelt.

Ploomy giggles.  “That must be why I’m here: to teach you how to be a better figment!”  She leaps from her perch and resumes her fluttering.  “First thing, then!  You shouldn’t be cooped up inside some apartment!  You should be out on the town, spreading your wings, making dreams come true for yourself, for your lady friend, and for anyone else who’s lucky enough to run across you!  Imagination: that’s the key word!”

“But—”

“Look at me!”  She rears back and spreads her front hooves.  “I’ve got no business being part of the prompt image for an original fiction contest!  No business at all!  And yet?  Here I am!”  One front hoof curls down to rest on her hip while the other jabs the air between us in time with her next words.  “And here you ought to be, too!”

Glancing from side to side just to be sure, I say, “I am here.”

“Exactly!”  The air whooshes as she swoops past me.  “So c’mon!  We’ll go be here somewhere else!”

I swivel my neck and watch her slam face first into the apartment door with the sort of sound I imagine a sock full of toothpaste would make: not a squish and not a splash but something distinctly related to both.

She just bounces back, though, shakes her head, and turns a lop-sided grin toward me.  “The thing is, you’ve gotta come with me since you’re the one imagining me.”

Again, parts of me start to stammer.  But then a selection of her words from a few seconds ago actually seeps into the mulch I call my brain, finds a little seed there, and sets it to sprouting.

Making dreams come true for my lady friend, she said.  Because, yes, I’ve been doing everything I can think of to make Meredith’s life better — or at least more interesting — ever since she summoned me or I appeared or whatever it was that happened.  And if a little imaginary Ploomy the pegasus wants to show me more ways to help Meredith?

Then never mind who’s imaginary and who isn’t.  “Let’s do this,” I say, and I flap toward the door.

Why I can pass through when Ploomy couldn’t, I don’t know.  For that matter, I don’t know why I’m still aware of the world without Meredith’s presence.  All I know is: thinking about it would be a bad idea.

So I don’t think about it.  I bank right, zoom down the hallway, and dive through the closed window at the end as easily as someone might dive through a waterfall.

* * *

“Whoo-hoo!”  Ploomy crows beside me, and I, being the closest thing available to an actual crow, do some cawing of my own.  It echoes from the buildings behind us and goes shooting off into the late afternoon sky, traffic flowing on Woodward Avenue below, humans strolling along the winding little walkways in the park ahead.  I angle my wings to slice through the spring air and do some more cawing just to let the world know that I’m enjoying everything it has to offer.

The tingling from the tips of my pinions to their bases!  The exhilaration of the open air!  Have I actually not been out of Meredith’s apartment in the past three months?

“See?”  Her wings buzzing like a hummingbird’s, Ploomy somehow manages to get out in front of me and fly backwards.  “You need to keep fresh, to keep alert, to keep—”

The canopy of the tree we’re skimming over rises up in the breeze and swallows her with barely a rustle.  I luff my wings, land on an upper branch, and watch her wriggle back onto her hooves among the leaves.  “OK!” she announces.  “D’you wanna start with something small, or d’you wanna blow yourself up to the size of City Hall and stomp through the streets demanding couscous?”

“Not that second one!” I say as decisively as I know how.

“Small it is!”  When she nods her head, I swear I can hear metal clattering, but her gaze seems to catch on something in the park under and around us.  “There!”  She points off to my left.

I look down through the branches, but all I see in the growing shadows cast by the descending sun is grass and leaves.  Except—

Something of a not-quite-natural color and shape is lying half buried by a pile of cut branches at the base of the next tree.  I lean forward, and the something resolves into a little doll of some sort.

“C’mon!” Ploomy calls, and she darts away toward the doll.  I follow.

When we alight next to it, I see that it’s a rag doll not even as big as a human hand, yellow and creased with age but smiling from its round cloth face.  “OK,” Ploomy says more softly than just about anything she’s said so far.  “Now all you hafta do is find the little girl who belongs to this doll and reunite them.”  With one tiny hoof, she smooths down the doll’s threadbare yarn hair.

“Uh-huh.”  Another look around shows me no humans of the proper age nearby.  “How do I do that?”

She shrugs, still patting the doll.

This rankles me a bit.  And because I’m a natural-born malcontent, I can’t leave my next thought unexpressed.  “And this is gonna help Meredith somehow?”

Ploomy cranes her head around and blinks at me.  “It is?  Wow!  What a coincidence!”

“No, I mean—”  If I had fingers and the bridge of a nose, I’d be employing one to pinch the other.  As it is, though, I settle for spreading my wings and flapping a little.  “You said you’d teach me how to be a better figment of Meredith’s imagination, didn’t you?”

“Hmmm…”  She taps her chin.  “Yep, that sounds like something I’d say, all right.”  Then she goes back to petting the doll.

I wait for her to continue, but it becomes clear pretty quickly that she’s done.  So I consider my options.

Storming off in a huff, of course, sits right at the top of the list.  But Meredith doesn’t like it when I get all grouchy that way…

More than that, though, well, I’ve got an imaginary pegasus spirit guide, don’t I?  And if I’ve learned anything from the internet — and boy howdy, have I! — it’s that spirit guides are supposed to exasperate, are supposed to drive those who pick them up toward questioning their assumptions, delving through their psyches, discovering insights into who knows what all, and stuff like that.

So sure, I can’t imagine how finding this doll’s owner is going to help me help Meredith.  But that doesn’t mean it won’t.

Which pretty much decides it.  I jump forward, grab the doll in my talons, and flap up into the getting-on-toward-twilight sky.

* * *

Several hours later, full night has fallen, and I’ve gone from one end of the park to the other more than once without meeting any weeping children, any distraught parents, anybody who could be searching for a missing doll.  Fortunately, the thing’s light and soft and easily gripped, or I would’ve dropped it in the lake by now.

Ploomy’s kept with me the whole time, though I’ve found her calls of cheerful encouragement — “Great going, Sammy!” is a frequent one, followed closely by “Almost there, I’ll bet!” and “That’s the way!” — to be less encouraging and more frustrating the later it’s gotten.  I’ve actually been spending more time perched than flying recently, and I’ve ended up in a tree on the other side of the park from our apartment building, the doll draped over the branch beside me and Ploomy cuddled up to it.

“I dunno, Ploomy,” I finally say.  Looking at her, I can’t tell if she’s asleep or not.  “Whoever lost this doll’s probably not even in the park anymore.”

“Can’t give up,” she mumbles without opening her eyes.  “Do it for your lady friend.”

“Do what for her?”  I’ve been trying to hold down my growing annoyance, but it’s just overtopped its banks.  “Fly around like an idiot all night?  She’ll probably be getting off work soon!”  I’ll admit that Meredith’s very true comment earlier about me not knowing her schedule even after all these months has been nettling me just a bit.  “And I’ve done nothing, learned nothing, made exactly no amount of different to anyone or anything!”

She’s blinking up at me now.  “And why do you think that is?”

“Because I’m nothing!” I shout, waving my wings.  “Because I’m just a figment of her imagination, and not even a very good figment at that!  I screech when she doesn’t want me to screech, claw up the back of her desk chair, spend all my time doing useless things on the internet, and just generally upset her all the freaking time!  I’m the worst thing that could’ve happened to her!  The absolute worst!”  My screeches rattle off into the darkness above the lights lining the park’s pathways, but even if the sounds I made were real, they’d likely be drowned out by the rattle and whoosh of the cars along Glennis Avenue.

Ploomy just keeps blinking.  “No,” she says.  “Not that.  I meant, why do you think you spent all this time flying around like an idiot?”

Now it’s my turn to do some blinking.  “Uhh, because you told me to?  Because you said I needed to find this stupid doll’s stupid owner if I was gonna learn how to better help Meredith?”

“And why’s that important?”

“Why?”  The air slices in and out of my nostrils as sharp as razor blades.  “Because she’s beautiful and perfect and I love her and she deserves everything to be wonderful in her life even if I can’t ever do that for her!”  My wings droop from my sides like Spanish moss.  “I have to keep trying, though, because she believes in me.  And I mean that literally: I’m a figment of her imagination, right?”

“I don’t know.”  Ploomy cocks her head.  “Sounds to me more like you’re a figment of your own imagination than hers.  ‘Cause if you were really as awful as you just said, I can’t imagine Meredith would keep you around.”  The corners of her mouth turn up.  “Hey!  Now I’m imagining stuff, too!  It’s some kinda epizootic!”

I’m staring at her so hard, I couldn’t blink if I wanted to.  I’ve never let myself even think the question, I guess, never let myself wonder the simple, basic ‘why’ of it all.

Why does Meredith keep me around?

And the instant that thought starts settling its roots into my cranial mulch, that’s when the screaming starts.

“Thieves!” someone high-pitched and creaky is shouting.  “Villains!  I’ll sue you all to oblivion!  Just see if I won’t!”

It’s coming from across Glennis Avenue, from a nice little bistro with tables out front nestled among the tall buildings.  There’s an old lady standing in the bistro’s doorway, her long black coat trimmed with some sort of silvery fur, and she’s shouting at—

She’s shouting at Meredith.  My eyes go wide and my heart freezes.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jameson,” Meredith is saying from behind a little lectern just to the left of the door, “but Luis didn’t find anything at your table when he—”

“That’s because you’re all thieves!”  Folks sitting at the outside tables are looking at the old lady now and wrinkling their brows at Meredith — at my Meredith!

A chubby, balding man wearing a three-piece suit and a concerned expression comes out of the restaurant.  “If you could just tell us what you’ve lost, Mrs. Jameson, we could—”

“I didn’t lose anything!”  Mrs. Jameson jabs a finger at the man.  “Snookums has been with me for seventy years, Mr. Montaine, since before your grandparents opened this establishment!  The only way she’d be parted from me is by force, and I’ll have your entire staff arrested, searched, and deported if she’s not back in my arms within the next three minutes!”

The man smiles a smile that hasn’t a gram of humor in it and rushes back inside leaving Meredith alone with the crazy lady and an uneasiness that I can smell over four lanes of traffic and two sidewalks.

It’s not just her uneasiness, I realize then.  Mrs. Jameson’s giving it off, too, like she’s really lost something precious, like a child or a friend or a pet or—

“No,” I say out loud, turning to Ploomy and the doll.  “You don’t think…?”

“I try not to.”  Ploomy gives a little shrug.  “It usually doesn’t turn out well.”

With a snort, I leap up, grab the doll in my talons, and swoop across the street.

Meredith’s voice comes clear to me, and it’s like everything slows down except for her, the cars creeping along Glennis Avenue, their grinding and growling muffled and distant, the air thick and cold as ice cream, my swoop becoming a leisurely glide.  “I know what it’s like, Mrs. Jameson,”  Meredith is saying.  “I’ve never been good at making friends, but I have one now, someone precious and very secret.  It’s the best feeling in the world sometimes, and sometimes it’s the worst, cradling so much sweetness in your arms when no one can see it but you.  I can’t imagine how terrible it would be if I ever lost my friend, though, so please believe me when I say we’ll do everything we can to get yours back.”

Mrs. Jameson’s head turns slowly, a rusty weather vane finally noticing a shift in the wind, and her eyes go wide like she’s noticing Meredith for the first time.  Meredith gives her a little smile and a little nod—

* * *

And the world crashes to full speed and volume, my flight carrying me to the sidewalk a few paces from Meredith and Mrs. Jameson.  Not sure what to do — I haven’t really thought this out, have I? — I wave my wings to catch Meredith’s attention and give as gentle a regular crow croak as I can.

Unadulterated alarm floods Meredith’s face.  “Sammy?” she asks, her voice cracking.

I croak again, bend down, and take the little doll in my beak.

Mrs. Jameson has turned now, and delight is the only word for what floods her face.  “Snookums!” she cries.

With the silent giggling of the universe tickling my brain, I flap my way to Meredith’s shoulder, lean forward, and drop Snookums into Mrs. Jameson’s outstretched hands.  For an instant, I swear I can see the child she must’ve been at some point in the previous century; then Snookums is swaddled away into the giant handbag hanging from her arm, and her eyes are narrowing in a completely different way than they were earlier.  “Young lady,” she says, “you know it’s illegal to keep a crow as a pet, I assume?”

“Pet?”  The word pops from Meredith’s mouth like a cough.  “Oh, no, ma’am!  We’re just good friends!”

The smile that creaks across Mrs. Jameson’s lips has nuances in it that I’m not sure I want to understand, and then the man in the suit is pushing out the door, his smile even unhappier than before.  “Please, Mrs. Jameson,” he says, “won’t you come into my office so we can—”

“All is well, Mr. Montaine.”  She’s pulling on a pair of white, lacey gloves.  “Your young hostess and her friend reminded me that I’d been enjoying an afternoon in the park before wending my way to your enchanting bistro for a bit of sustenance.  Snookums at that time evidently decided to take a stroll without informing me, but all has again been set right.”

I want to take another look at Snookums, see if he shows any more liveliness now that he’s with Mrs. Jameson than he did in the hours I was carrying him around.  I maybe see some shifting and bulging in her purse, but I can’t really take too close a look…

Mrs. Jameson strokes the purse like she might a kitten and nods to Mr. Montaine.  “I apologize for my histrionics, sir, and please convey my apology to your excellent staff.  I shall be adding an extra twenty percent to my tips for the rest of the year in the hope of making some sort of amends for my actions this evening, and I shall see you all tomorrow night.”  That same knowing look tugs her face when her gaze grazes mine; then she’s marching away up the street.

“Meredith?”  It’s the man’s voice behind us; when Meredith turns, I find myself looking up into Mr. Montaine’s confused face.  “Is that… a crow?”

“He’s, umm…”  Meredith’s shoulder tightens beneath me.  “He’s one of the flock that lives in the park, sir; I’ve kind of gotten to know them since I moved to town.”

For an instant, I’m sure that I’ve done the stupidest thing ever, that I’m about to get Meredith fired, that she’ll hate me forever and will disperse me back into whatever aether I congealed out of.  But—

“Huh.”  Mr. Montaine’s smile becomes real for the first time that I know about.  “Well, it’s good to see you making some friends.  Just remember:  we’re all one big, happy family here at Montaine’s.”  He lowers his voice.  “And you’ve just done an exemplary job dealing with one of our craziest aunts.”

Meredith shuffles her shoes against the matt under the lectern, and her blush this time is a happier sort than the one I saw in the apartment earlier.

“But now…”  Mr. Montaine straightens his tie.  “Perhaps you can promise your friend that you’ll give him an acorn or whatever as thanks on your way home tonight and then tell him toodle-oo?”  He waggles a finger toward Glennis Avenue.  “Before someone texts the city’s health inspectors?”

“Yes, sir.”  The scent of Meredith’s relief is like fresh water flowing over rocks.  “Thank you, sir.”

Mr. Montaine is already moving away to the patio tables.  “Our apologies for the excitement, folks, but, well, that’s the spice of city life, isn’t it?”

Chuckles rise from the diners, but my attention is immediately focused on Meredith’s finger stroking my back.  “Sammy,” she murmurs, “you are an angel.  And you know what I was saying about there being a time and a place for us?”  Her stroke becomes a caress.  “I’ll see you when I get home tonight.”

The joy bursting through me makes me want to whoop, but I know that’ll just make things uncomfortable for everyone.  So I touch my head to hers, click quietly deep in my throat, and take off into the night.  Ploomy comes spinning up beside me as I pass over the tree, and her “Whoo-hoo!” is plenty loud enough for both of us.

Or…  Wait.  That’s more than one voice, ‘whoo-hoo’s ringing out all around.  Figures flash against the night sky like afterimages of the ceiling lamp when Meredith gets home from work after midnight and wakes me blinking at her turning the lights on.

What am I seeing?  Are they—?

“Yep!”  Ploomy’s dancing with them, whirling away when one phantom partner vanishes to take up with another.  “So many figments have been pulling for you, Sammy, and they’re all real happy now that you’ve made the Big Step!”  The way she pronounces those last two words, I definitely hear the capital letters.  “Having people see you when you’re somebody else’s figment?  That’s huge!”

Swallowing, I glide through the shadowy smiling shapes appearing and disappearing on the thermals over Woodward Avenue.  “Then I was… one of these… before?”

Ploomy nods, more serious than I’ve ever seen her.  “It’s hard to remember once you start down the road to the Big Step.  Me, since I got onto the cartoon show, I’m kind of a halfway case.  So I help other figments when they need it.”  She points a hoof at me.  “You could help out, too, you and Meredith.  You could start with Mrs. Jameson and Snookums!”

I have no idea what to say.  Which usually doesn’t stop me, but this time, I’ve got too much tangling and growing in my head.  Fortunately, I’m able to pass through the apartment window without leaving glass and feathers everywhere — I guess I’m not quite as real as that — and I land on the back of Meredith’s desk chair with my mind made up.  “Okay,” I tell Ploomy.  “If Meredith’s okay with it, I mean.”

She’s only just touched down on the top edge of the computer monitor, but at this, she leaps into the air again.  “Hooray!  You guys’ll be great!”

“But what exactly are we supposed to do?” I ask, but she’s already diving through the screen and freezing into place on the Magritte parody artwork still displayed there.

Things get a little loud after that for a while what with me flapping and yelling, trying to get an answer to my last question.  But eventually I settle down and start typing this story.  I need to finish before Meredith gets home so we can have a talk about figments of the imagination.

Or considering what she said at the restaurant, maybe the discussion can wait till tomorrow…

Still, I’ll run a spell check and post this, an entirely true story, I swear!  I mean, it’s on the internet!  How could it be anything but true?

 

* * *

About the Author

Michael H. Payne’s stories have appeared in places like Asimov’s Science Fiction, a half dozen collections from FurPlanet, and 10 of the last 11 annual Sword & Sorceress anthologies, a run that includes the Ursa Major Award winning “Familiars.”  His novels have been published by Tor Books and Sofawolf Press, and he’s only posting 4 pages of webcomics a week these days instead of the 11 pages he did for over 15 years. Check hyniof.com for further particulars.

by Avra Margariti

There once was an evil witch—

No, a ragdoll raven—

No, a family of crows unlike any other.

Yes. Better. This is, after all, a love story.

* * *

“But the fact remained that although Rosanna now knew love, she had been born knowing hate.”

A figure perched on the Eye of the Needle, staring at the rosy sunset swirls across the sky. If only she could grasp the correct thread of storytelling, of memory. Down below, her sharp eyesight clearly made out the human settlement despite the sheer distance separating their realms. The thatched roofs of cottages and huts peeked out through the gossamer mist. Trees and grass, valleys and woods. Scythe-bearing workers bent over cornfields as they wrapped up the day’s work; children ran around in capricious patterns; and adults rode donkeys through winding dirt roads.

She called her cloud perch the Eye of the Needle because when she sat there and looked, the world below sharpened into focus while everything else faded away.

“Rosanna, it’s time for dinner,” Mama crowed from somewhere behind.

The figure twisted around toward the voice. A small, pensive sigh escaped her beak as she flapped her wings back to her flock.

“There you are!” Rosanna’s siblings sang, fluttering in anticipation against their cloud-nests. “You know we can’t go hunting without you.”

Rosanna’s body wasn’t capable of eating, but she could still hunt. A sick feeling overcame her whenever she killed insects or picked up carrion to bring to the nest. However, the feeling passed when she fed her siblings and watched them grow strong and lively every day.

Another feeling remained even as she rejoiced at racing her siblings through cumulus clouds, feeling their coolness on her skin; even after her family of crows had settled inside their nests, huddling together for warmth and companionship. It wasn’t a feeling of emptiness, at least not anymore. A little while ago, Rosanna used to feel hollow all the time, a dead husk. She knew she wasn’t made of flesh and bone like the rest of her family, but of sackcloth, crude stitches, and moldy cotton unevenly stuffed inside her belly and wings. Her adopted family gave her their own down feathers to fill the empty places inside her. They gave her a home in the clouds.

But the fact remained that although Rosanna now knew love, she had been born knowing hate. At night especially, when the world was quiet save for her family’s breathing lungs and beating hearts, this became difficult to ignore.

Rosanna quietly lifted herself out of her nest to sit on the farthest cloud and watch  the human world from her secret spot. Most nights, she felt a terrifying pull, like thread through a needle, drawing her to a place she couldn’t see despite her unique vantage point.

“Can’t sleep, my love?”

Rosanna flinched, then felt herself relax again as the familiar, hoarse voice soothed over her ruffled not-feathers.

“Mama.”

Mother Crow, the leader of their clan of avian deities and former witch familiars, hooked her talons onto the edge of the cloud, close enough that Rosanna could lean against her hollow-boned, yet reassuringly sturdy, frame if she so wished.

Mama always knew how to put Rosanna together again whenever she was feeling ripped raw and open.

“What troubles you, child?” she asked.

When Rosanna remained quiet and only watched the humans’ night lights flicker below like weak starshine, Mama spoke again. “Is the dream back?”

Rosanna sighed. “Yes, Mama. I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Weave a story out of image and sound fragments that will help me understand. But I can’t.”

Mama hummed. Her plumage was so dark, she was indistinguishable from the darkness around them save for the flashes of pink and green between feathers. This didn’t frighten Rosanna, but rather brought her even more comfort. She had learned to love the dark. It was the light that still scared her, making her feel hollowed out and spread open, pinned and probed on some wooden examination board.

“Perhaps you could tell me about it again. We might be able to make sense of it together.”

Rosanna took a deep breath and began recounting the by now familiar nightmare.

“I am myself but also not me…”

She is disjointed, spare parts: shabby beige cloth, a length of dirty string, two black buttons through which one day she sees nothing, and the next she sees everything. She remembers hands: big, knobbly, and disembodied appendages coming down from the ether to stuff and sew her together.

Wake up, a voice commands, and she hops upright on a long workbench, wobbling as she becomes accustomed to rag wings and metal claws for the very first time.

You know what to do, the Voice says again, and she does know. She knows everything the Voice, the Hands want her to.

Although she may be a newborn in every sense of the word, she is no fledgling. She flies out of the cottage’s open window with a fleet-winged menace, whipping through the dark forest, twigs snapping against her body. Her sharp eyes see the plumes of gray smoke before the brick hut and its chimney come into focus. Two children work outside, where the forest’s vegetation bleeds into their packed-dirt yard. The girl is drawing water from a stone well. The boy rakes leaves into a cushion of autumn gold.

She caws, her vision a pure, all-encompassing crimson as she locks gazes with the girl by the well. The child’s form is slight and malnourished, her eyes, one blue, the other brown, glowing white with fear. The Voice of her creator cackles with glee at the sight of this wide, blue eye. And what her creator wants, her creator gets.

The girl by the well screams as the ragdoll raven swoops down on her. The raven’s body is thrice as big as the girl’s head. Her claws, although covered by black felt, are needle-sharp, and so is her beak. The girl’s hands come up to shield her bloodied face from the onslaught. Talons sink into the bare arms below, shredding them to ribbons. The ragdoll raven feels sick to her cotton-stuffed stomach and wire bones, but she can’t make herself stop. Not unless she procures her creator’s shiny prize.

When the girl’s brother slams the toothed crossbar of his rake against the raven’s body with all the strength of his skinny arms, it’s almost a relief. She can finally stop. The Voice in her head falls silent. The terrible redness is purged from her vision.

Soon, there’s only white-hot pain as her broken body lies limp on the dirt, and the human siblings rush back inside their hut to barricade their door. She has been alive for less than an hour and now she is dying, abandoned by her creator. As, perhaps, she deserves.

“Do you remember?” Rosanna asked Mama Crow, remnants of pain evident in her voice as she finished recounting her too-vivid dream.

Mama never lied. “I remember finding you, afterward.”

“If what I see is true… if my dream is also a memory, I had crawled to the nearest bush to die. My creator was furious. I had failed her, and I didn’t deserve her mercy.” Rosanna turned to gaze at her adopted mother. “But you saved me.”

“I did.” Mama Crow smiled, her lethal beak impossibly gentle.

“Even though you knew I was different.”

“You’re a raven; we are crows,” Mama Crow said. “Both Corvus. Both family.”

Oh, how Rosanna loved her.

“You know that’s not what I meant. Not all that I am.” A handmade horror, she thought, a reluctant omen of doom. That’s what I am.

With a nipping kiss to Rosanna’s head, Mama headed back toward the cloud nests. “Get some sleep, daughter of the rosy dawn. Dream or memory, that’s not who you are anymore. There’s no use torturing yourself over the past.”

But there is, Rosanna thought. Because what if the past has its claws hooked into the present?

She was alone again in the Eye of the Needle. The humans below were asleep, the light of their essences gleaming dream-hazy. However, there was someone awake still. A darker light, like the red-tinted moon during an eclipse. Rosanna felt that pull again deep in her chest; a force wanting to propel her forward, through the Eye of the Needle, and down. It was like a steel thread tied around the river stone of her heart, incessant, demanding.

Rosanna was tired. More than that, she was angry. And for once, she stopped resisting the pull. She let go, waiting to see where the thread would take her.

The witch’s cottage was wrapped in shadows, only a candle burning on a scarred, familiar workbench. Rosanna shuddered as she landed, only managing to keep her balance by spreading her wings at the last second. The witch loomed over her, age-ravaged face unreadable.

So this was her maker in the flesh, rather than in disembodied dreams and visions. The one who hurt her. Who abandoned her.

“I won’t thank you for bringing me to life,” Rosanna said, drawing herself tall even as her wings wanted to mantle and protect her body. She channeled her family members, particularly the way they liked to screech at larger avian creatures with wing-flapping bravado.

The witch smiled with a sickening twist of her worm-like lips. “I don’t seek your gratitude. I want to make a deal with you. And it’s in your best interest to listen closely.”

Defeated, Rosanna caved in on herself and prepared to listen.

“Your family doesn’t truly love you. They found you, strange and broken, and brought you to their nest. Crows like ugly things, don’t they? To them, you’re nothing but a curious trinket.”

“No,” Rosanna said, stumbling back. The pores of her sackcloth skin felt chilled. “They care about me.”

The witch continued as if Rosanna had never spoken. “I know what you want, child of mine. To fit in. To be real. I can give you the things you crave. But first you must complete the mission you failed.”

Rosanna remembered the girl by the well. It felt like a static shock, the image much stronger than the one in her dreams. The girl’s screams of pain, her sticky blood, the rake connecting mercilessly with Rosanna’s body.

“No,” she stammered.

“Yes.” The witch smiled, her watery, almost colorless eyes sparking with malicious glee. “The last and rarest ingredient for my spell. A pair of heterochromatic eyes, stolen by a connoisseur of shiny things. With that peasant girl’s eyes, I will be able to control the crow clan you call family. They will become my familiars and do my bidding without question.”

Rosanna inhaled a sharp breath through her metal beak.

“And then I will have no use for you,” the witch concluded. “You will be free.”

And Rosanna tried to say “no” again, but the word wouldn’t come. She was yearning, deep in the moldy stuffing of her chest. Her stone heart, still though it was, echoed a phantom rhythm. Real real real. Free free free.

The witch’s smile widened. “I knew you’d come around. Now go. When we meet again, we will both have what we want most.”

* * *

Back home in the clouds, Rosanna couldn’t answer her family’s questions about where she’d been. She felt heavy, sluggish, a stranger in her body. Her brothers and sisters flocked around her, trying to comfort her mysterious aches in their own way. They brought her insects and berries she wasn’t capable of ingesting, tried to preen her wings but only ended up loosening the seams that held her together. They rubbed their heads against her in apology, and she felt like crying until her tears rained down from the swollen clouds.

She didn’t deserve her family. She could never be what they were, experience what they experienced. If she accepted the witch’s offer, she would become a real, flesh-and-feather raven, not this poor ragdoll imitation. But then her family would no longer fly free in their realm, but become enslaved to the witch’s whims forevermore.

“Rosanna,” Mama Crow spoke, and the rest of the family made way for her as always. “Tell me what troubles you.”

“I can’t,” Rosanna lamented. “You wouldn’t understand, and you’d hate me if you did.”

Mama Crow tucked Rosanna’s shaking body under her wing. Her voice, so regal and commanding, was now impossibly soft. “Well, my sweet dawn. Why don’t you try me?”

* * *

The witch waited, no doubt in her mind that she would soon own everything she had ever wished for. After all, she had peered into the soul fragment of her creation that called itself Rosanna and found her biggest weakness. The ragdoll raven trembled and ached with the desire to be real. And for that, the witch was sure, she would do anything.

The sound of wings heralded Rosanna’s arrival. The witch began to smile. However, it metamorphosed into a frown when the sound amplified, wings flapping and feathers rustling over and around her cottage. The windows darkened with black birds, a murder of crows dashing inside the cottage. The witch dropped to the floor, her hands moving up to protect her face.

“What is the meaning of this?” the witch screamed at her creation who, beige and shabby, stood out among the flock.

“We had a family meeting and decided we won’t be taking you up on your offer,” Rosanna said. “Not now, not ever.”

Let’s not forget that this is a love story. Corvids protect their family from intruders with ferocity, and value community. Yes, Rosanna was made of rags and stitched together with magic, but she was still, above all else, a raven.

“No,” the witch screeched, “I won’t let you back down now.”

The crows of the clan were magnificent creatures: intelligent, magical, powerful, even as they threatened her. The witch had come so close to taming them. Rosanna had been nothing but a poor substitute for them, a way to obtain the peasant girl’s eyes according to the spellbook’s cryptic instructions.

“You don’t have a choice,” Rosanna said calmly from somewhere above the witch’s supine body. “I won’t let you hurt or trap my family. They took me in and raised me as their own after you left me for dead. Their love makes me real every day. You need me, but I don’t need you.”

“Dreadful creature,” the witch hissed.

“Actually, my name is Rosanna, Daughter of the Rosy Dawn, as baptized by Mama, Matriarch of the Crow Clan in the Clouds.”

Rosanna’s voice was fear-tinged, but defiantly steady. Enraged, the witch drew her hand back, prepared to cast a spell and rain destruction down on her wayward creation. The biggest crow, the murder-eyed matriarch, hopped onto the witch’s chest, scratching her with razor-tipped talons.

The threat was clear. If you hurt my daughter or anyone else ever again, I will peck out your own two eyes.

The crows flew out of the cottage in twos and threes. The matriarch left last with one final scrape of her talons against the witch’s heaving chest. Once everyone was gone, the witch crawled and stumbled her way to the window. The flock traveled as one back to their sky realm. From a distance, the witch couldn’t tell apart raven from crow, nor could she distinguish her former creation from the rest of the flock.

 

* * *

About the Author

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Lackington’s, and other venues. Avra won the 2019 Bacopa Literary Review prize for fiction. You can find her on twitter @avramargariti.

by Brent Baldwin

“The bird squawked with something like pain, and the squawk turned into a cry. The shape of a woman emerged.”

An unnatural flash of lightning cast Baroch’s silhouette across the prairie dirt. He waited, power trembling within him until the disc of the sun touched the horizon.

His power unfurled, racing over rows of green corn and taking the wind with it.

The weight of his years bent his shoulders into a slump. Was a time he could have cast a dozen summoning spells and hoed a field after, but those were distant memories.

A storm gathered in the distance, the clouds beneath it dancing and curling, pulled one direction by a cold front and another by an old sorcerer’s seeking spell.

A fleck moved between the clouds and the plains. Dark and distant, he couldn’t quite track it through a rain squall, but when the shape resolved into flapping wings, Baroch sighed with relief. She had still been able to hear him.

The bird came in fast, wings beating as if it were running from something. Baroch stood up straighter, sucked in his gut a little. A great golden eagle, big as a man, landed before him.

“Valerie?” Baroch asked.

The bird cocked its head.

“It’s alright,” Baroch said. “It’s time to come out.”

It scratched at the dirt, acting more chicken than eagle, and for a moment Baroch feared she didn’t recognize him.

But then the feathers twisted and receded. The bird squawked with something like pain, and the squawk turned into a cry. The shape of a woman emerged. Frail and naked, her skin as wrinkled and aged as his own. She looked at him, confused. Then she collapsed.

Baroch rushed to catch her, but he wasn’t as spry as he used to be, and they ended up in a pile of limbs splayed upon the ground.

“Oh, Baroch, it hurts,” Valerie said. The pain, he knew, was not from the tumble. The disease took more out of her every year, even slowed as it was when she was transformed.

“I’m sorry. You didn’t have to come.” He clambered to his feet and offered her first a hand up, then her favorite dress.

“I felt the pull, but I didn’t know why. Not until I saw you.” She threw her arms around him, the dress smashed between them.

She weighed nothing, as if she were more memory than person. The smell of her, though. Oh, that lilac and lavender, the same as the day they met. How it survived the transformations, he didn’t know, but he loved it.

“I’ve missed you,” he said.

She squeezed him tighter.

Behind him stood a cabin as worn by age as he was. A rickety porch circled it, and two rocking chairs sat beneath the awning. Baroch helped her to one of the rockers—dusted that morning—and settled a blanket over her legs. He poured her a glass of sweet tea from a condensation-covered pitcher.

The ice cubes rattled as she drank.

An hour a year, they had reckoned. Enough time to remember who she was, but not enough for the sickness to finish its work. Neither of them had counted on the natural effects of aging, of declining memories. Losing her while still having her scared him more than anything.

“I have found a spell,” he said. “From Sorcerer Ogdee. Looks to me like it’d slow things down and let you keep your form. Give us a few more years together, as we are.”

She sat in the rocker. Silence stretched between them. Used to be a time he could practically read her mind. They had taken turns finishing each other’s sentences. These days he could barely keep his own thoughts in order, never mind predicting anyone else’s.

She looked up at him. He might have expected hope in her gaze, but all he found was a bone-deep exhaustion. “It won’t work,” she said.

“It might.” He poured himself a glass and settled onto the rocker next to her. “We could try it. I’ve been practicing.”

She took his hand, kissed it. Her lips were like dry paper. “Maybe next year. Give you more time to practice.”

If there is a next year, she didn’t need to say. Each time she came back, there was less of her. Less of him, too.

“I worry,” she said. “Not that you’d fail, but that you would succeed. This body hurts something fierce, and I’m not sure how long I could bear it.”

He took her hand again and held it. Felt the beat of her pulse in her fingertips. Felt the rattle of her breaths. He couldn’t feel the cells warring within her, but they surely were.

The minutes slipped past like trout in a spring stream.

“It’s almost time,” she said.

He helped her up from the rocker, took her in his arms a final time. She clung to him, and with each beat of her heart seemed to shrink into herself. He helped her out of the dress, but he couldn’t bear to watch as her hair turned to feathers. He looked away, eyes screwed shut, until the flapping of wings receded into the distance.

* * *

Summer again, and the air was as fetid as a scum-covered pond. Baroch stood on the edge of a summoning circle, arms raised and sweat plastering his coveralls to his back. The wind whipped up something furious around him.

“Well, go on then,” he said, and let the spell fly.

It whistled away, taking the wind with it. There weren’t no thunderstorm this year, just a blue sky turning red in the west.

Baroch wiped the sweat off his brow with a damp handkerchief. The only thing moving on the horizon was the sun.

The waiting came natural, after all these years.

After a good fifteen, twenty minutes, she appeared on the horizon. She wandered a bit, tacking left and right, as if she weren’t sure of her course.

She landed, scratched at the dirt. Then she stood there. Blinking, head cocked.

“Valerie, it’s me.”

Another blink, slow and confused.

“I can’t change you back. You have to do it yourself, hon.”

Still nothing.

He kicked at the circle in the dirt, breaking what little power was left in the summoning spell. His heart like to broke with it.

Valerie—he knew that was her in there—flapped her wings, but she didn’t lift up off the ground. The wings moved up and down. The feathers faded. Pale, liver-spotted arms emerged. The rest of her took shape, and she stumbled forward.

He caught her, but she pulled away.

“Easy there,” Baroch said. “It’s just me. Your Baroch.”

She shuffled back.

He offered her dress to her. She had always taken it before, but not this time.

“Well, I’ll just leave it here and go on up to the porch.” He set the dress on the grass and shuffled back up to the house.

When he settled into his rocker, she had put on the dress, but it was backwards.

“There’s sweet tea up here. Lemon wedges, too.”

She approached slowly and stopped at the stairs. It wasn’t fear in her face. More like uncertainty. Confusion.

“If you don’t want to sit up here, that’s okay.” He dragged her rocking chair down from the porch and positioned it in the yard in the shade.

He could try the transformation spell. All the components were ready. String and charcoal and cloves. He had practiced the words a hundred times. Knew them backwards and forwards, rising and falling.

And if he succeeded, then what? She’d live with the pain all the time and not just for an hour per year? They would have how long together? A few months?

She sat on the porch, sipping her tea, and for an instant the years fell away. He saw the girl he had kissed as a teenager and the woman she had become. Saw the sadness when they received the diagnosis, the resolution when the plan for holding it at bay had formed. Her plan, not his. She was always the real wizard in the family. And he was losing her, one missing year at a time.

A new plan formed, giving him a measure of hope. In the old days, she would have never approved, but now? Better to do it and get it over with.

He shuffled out into the yard and drew a wide circle with a stick. Valerie watched from the shade. He laid out the string and the charcoal, but he left the cloves in his pocket. He added a golden feather and a single gray hair.

He said the words with conviction and with practiced ease. As he chanted, Valerie transformed. The pain fled her eyes as the feathers re-covered her head. She flew up from the steps, banking in the thermals radiating from the roof.

Baroch let the spell sweep over him and through him. It wasn’t as complex as he had planned, but it didn’t need to be, not for a one-way trip.

His arms shrank, turned thin as bird’s wings. He flapped and rose, awkward at first.

She was already distant, but he could see her with new clarity. Such power, such grace. He flew forward, following the golden hue of her feathers, following the smudge of light left by the setting sun, following the scent of lilac and lavender.

 

* * *

About the Author

Originally from the tree-swept hills of the Missouri Ozarks, Brent lives in London with his wife, two daughters, and terrifying guard cat. He is a firm believer in airplanes, air conditioning, and good food with good friends. If you find him without his hands on a keyboard or his nose in a book, it will probably be in the kitchen. His short fiction has previously appeared in Fireside Fiction, Flash Fiction Online, and Flame Tree Press, among others.

You can find him online at https://www.dbbaldwin.com and on Twitter as @dbrentbaldwin

by Gretchen Tessmer

“We’d cross the tundra with claws, talons and teeth that weren’t our own.”

The ground was frozen. Permafrost settled deep in its bones, where the veiny sinew of tundra grass roots pushed through frosted earth. And snow. Snow dusted the landscape from horizon to horizon. White flakes of snow fell from the sky and swirled in the air.

There was nothing but snow. And a fox on his way home.

Crossing the icy ridge above Grave’s Bay, Shadowbox was just a speck of white fur against a white background. Only his black nose and his pink tongue, like a single rosebud floating in a milk bath, gave him up for a fox.

“Wait! Please, stranger?” came a crystalline voice on the cold ridge. Shadowbox had been keeping a steady pace. He was headed home. His burrow, soft and warm and hidden and safe, called out to him.

But so did the voice. He hesitated on the ridge, hazel eyes alert. It was a human voice—a woman—who approached him, climbing up the ridge from the bay below. She moved carefully, likely afraid that she would spook him. She raised her hands up, showing she had no weapon. No metal, no gunpowder, no snare. She pulled back her hood, revealing her face.

Shadowbox had never been good at guessing human ages. The younger ones were faster and laughed as they grabbed at his hind legs, trying to catch him in the snow. The older ones were wiser and better at setting traps.

This one was somewhere in between. Her long, black braids were streaked throughout with white strands.

“Do you know me, fox?” she asked, slowing her steps. She looked at Shadowbox with haunted eyes.

He looked at her. He smelled her. He could smell smoke, cinder, salt and fish. She must live down in the village in Grave’s Bay. Though it wasn’t really a village anymore, was it? All the cottages were cold, empty and falling into ruin. No one had lived there in a long time.

Except this one. Why would she be here?

She was shaking her head, sadly. The flecks in her brown eyes sparkled like snowflakes in the frost-bit air around them, but she didn’t let herself cry. Shadowbox thought this was wise. Tears froze fast in the tundra.

“You don’t know me,” she answered for him. She sank to her knees, visibly defeated. Her gaze moved over the tundra, distantly, as she mused, perhaps to Shadowbox, perhaps to herself. “I thought…my little brother was always such a chatterbox, always asking me questions. Annika, why’s the sky blue? Annika, why’s the snow white? Mama used to say he wore her out, but she wasn’t the one answering his questions. And I never minded. When the plague came to the Bay, it cut our parents down with the rest. Caleb and I had to go south, they said…”

She pulled one glove from her hand before reaching down and digging into the crusty snow. Soon, her fingers turned red, raw and cold.

She continued, “The priestess said we’d never make it. Not two children wandering in the snow drifts alone. And none of the adults could go with us—too many were sick. So she gave me wings, and she gave Caleb soft fur. We’d cross the tundra with claws, talons and teeth that weren’t our own. She told us that we would turn back into ourselves as soon as our feet touched summer soil. Then she wished us luck and hurried back to the village, to help soothe the groans of the dying. I flew into the air and Caleb followed below, padding along, but I…I lost my brother in a blizzard.”

Shadowbox sat on his haunches, listening, staring at the sad woman. She stared back, balanced on her knees. Every black strand of the woman’s hair was now covered white with snow. If Shadowbox could speak, he would be tempted to ask: Why’re you telling me this, Annika?

“I thought he might have been you…” she muttered, clenching a fistful of snow in her hand until it melted. Her icy fingers were shaking as she laid the hand back in her lap. She bowed her head and said no more. She was weary, broken and sad. Shadowbox could tell—she hadn’t returned to a warm, safe burrow in a long, long time.

He felt sorry for her. Do foxes have feelings, Annika? He didn’t know. But it felt like he might. Impulsively, he crossed the distance between them. With his wet, warm tongue, he licked the ice off her bare hand.

He heard her breath catch. And when she looked down at him, he watched her smile through frosty tears.

 

* * *

About the Author

Gretchen Tessmer is a writer based in the U.S./Canadian borderlands. She writes both short fiction and poetry, with work appearing in Nature, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and F&SF, among other venues. She lives in the woods, with two energetic dogs, some chickens, a couple ducks and a tortoiseshell cat who won’t leave the blue jays alone. Plus about a thousand raccoons. Seriously, she’s overrun. Like Parks & Rec style.

by Ian Madison Keller

“My father thought it was nonsense, but my mother believed in the curse.”

Fairies can kiss my white-tailed ass. I never liked fairytales, even before I found out that fairies were the ones responsible for my “condition.” As soon as I was old enough to talk, I peppered my parents with questions about why I couldn’t go play outside like the other children. At first my mom placated me with vague platitudes of “when you’re older” but eventually the truth came out.

I’ve been cursed by a fairy. No really. There was even a video of the fateful event. My mom let me watch it after finally letting it slip one day. I think it was after watching one of those Disney movies where the fairies were helpful and kind.

The video was taken at my first birthday party. My parents had invited anyone and everyone who was anyone. All the famous celebrities had vied to attend. My dad’s a successful movie star. Well, my mom too. They both had been made famous in the same debut, playing the Prince and Princess on a mega-famous TV show. It had been the talk of the tabloids when they ended up getting married for real. When I came along the media dubbed me Princess. The nickname stuck.

Anyways, my parents turned my first party into quite the event of the season. Everybody brought gifts. You can see them, piled in the corner of the video. Jewelry, perfume, statues, stuffed animals, and more. Lots of stuff inappropriate for a baby, if you ask me.

At first, the video focuses on me. The view pans around to the room as a woman sweeps in all dramatic like. She’s older, in a layered red dress with poofy skirts that fall all the way to the floor. A mask shaped like a crab covers her face except for her eyes. Still, you can tell her age by the tight-highness of her voice, the wrinkles and age spots on her hands, and the slate-gray of her hair that’s pulled into an intricate bun on the top of her head.

She rants about not being invited to her own god-daughter’s birthday party. The overhead lights begin flickering on and off as the woman storms across the room. You could tell the person behind the camera is terrified, the way it bounces all over. You can even hear his muttered cursing in the background. Still, my parents hired a professional. He keeps filming.

The woman gets to me where I’m sitting up in a high chair, birthday cake smeared all over my face and hands. My mother throws herself between me and the woman. “I’m sorry I forgot to invite you. I made a terrible mistake. Please don’t take it out on my baby.”

Then come the fateful lines. “Very well.” Her back is to the camera now, but you can hear the sneer in her voice. “I’ll let the child live. After all, my magic worked so hard to help you create her. Still, there must be a price to be paid. If she sees sunlight before she is married, a terrible fate will befall her.”

My mother falls to her knees, crying, as the woman in red laughs. In the flickering lights, it’s hard to tell, but it looks like her form withers and shrinks until she vanishes altogether. If you play the video frame-by-frame, there was a brief point, a single frame long, where I’d swear she was a crab. But my mother disagrees.

That was the end of the video. Or at least the part my mom showed me. But I could hear the way, before my mom turned it off, that the guests started to laugh as the lights come back on. They probably thought it was a prank. But my mom knew better.

This next part, the why, I didn’t get till a few years later. We were in the kitchen of our underground house – no sunlight remember –cooking dinner. Well, mostly I was cooking under my mom’s instruction, as she slowly finished off a bottle of wine. My mom got drunk, and admitted that after trying and failing to have a child, they tried fertility treatments. They’d sunk millions in that, with no success. At least until they tried some “alternative” treatments involving a mushroom fairy ring and a summoning spell. She confessed that they’d both been very high and not a little drunk. Apparently it had been uproariously funny when they dreamed that a self-proclaimed fairy had actually answered their summons. Quite the hallucination! Especially the way her form wavered from crab to woman and back again inside the circle of mushrooms.

She thought it a coincidence when nine months later I was born. But then, at the party, it all came back to her and she knew it hadn’t been a dream. My father thought it was nonsense, but my mother believed in the curse.

At least I had the Internet. I took all my classes online, and my tutors Skyped in if they couldn’t come in person. It did get a little lonely. When I watched TV shows where the classrooms are filled with kids my age, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous. It wasn’t like I never saw anyone in person. Mom and Dad continued to do movies, and I got to go to quite a few of the release parties, since they usually didn’t start until after dark anyway. And sometimes my parents would throw parties at our house, in the regular, upstairs part. The underground part was our little secret, since no one else believed my mom about the curse.

In my spare time, I read every bit of lore, legend, and tale about fairies I could find, looking for a way out.

I had lots of friends online, and I debated with them about what to do. I needed to get married to break the curse, but, ugh, marriage. Once I hit sixteen, Dad started bringing home some of his teenage costars. Frankly, I really did not see what all the fuss was about. I never really had much in common with them, and they were almost never as cute in person as they were on the TV screen.

My Internet friends would always gasp and wail when I’d tell them this after the parties. “How can you say that about Joshua?” Or “Freddie?” Or whoever the hot new guy was that week.

“I’m just not that into them,” I’d frequently say with a shrug. “Anyway, if I had my wish it would be to meet any of you in person.”

This particular day I was video chatting with Zach. Zach was my best friend, and the one that I really longed to meet in person. She hated her birth name, so she was trying out the name Zach right now.

I lay on my stomach on my bed, head in my hands, laptop set in front of me. Zach was at her computer desk, movie posters plastered the wall behind her head. She leaned back in her chair and put her hands behind her head as she listened to me telling her about last night’s party, and the boy my parents had shoved at me. A boy who’s smiling face stared at me mockingly from one of the posters behind Zach.

“Honestly, Princess,” Zach shoved her keyboard away so she could put her elbows on the desk and her head in her hands, mimicking my pose. “Just pick one and marry him. You can always get divorced after the curse is broken.”

I don’t think Zach believed me about the curse. She played along, but the flippant way she talked about it told me she wasn’t taking me seriously. I groaned and flopped face first onto the covers. “That feels like a copout. Besides, I’m seventeen. Too young to get married. And especially not to movie star. It’s like you’ve never read a tabloid before.”

“You know,” Zach sounded thoughtful. “My school is doing a trip to San Francisco next week to attend the high school national shooting competition. Maybe we can meet up in person while I’m there.”

I glanced up to see the screen, expecting Zach to stick out her tongue at me or something, so I’d know she’s joking. Instead, to my surprise, she looked serious. I blinked at her image on my laptop screen for a few minutes. “You realize LA is in Southern California right? Not anywhere near San Francisco.”

“It can’t be that far.”

I sat up and shifted to sit cross legged in front of my laptop. “This isn’t like your tiny Eastern states.” Not like I’d ever been, but we liked to tease each other. “That’s like an all day drive up there with traffic.” Not that I’d ever been. But my parents had and were always complaining about the traffic. Zach pouted at me and I sighed. She was right though. This was probably our best chance. “All right, all right. I’ll talk to my mom.”

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, I was eating cereal at the island in the underground kitchen when my mom came in. Now or never. “Hey Mom.”

“Yes, Princess?” She opened the fridge and began rummaging through. “I’m listening.”

“One of my Internet friends is coming on a trip to San Francisco next week.” I could practically hear my mom’s frown, even with her back turned me so I rushed through the rest of my proposal. “I want to go up there to meet them.”

My mom emerged from the fridge with her arms full of supplies to make breakfast, and shut the door with the kick of her leg. She dumped everything on the counter next to the stove and got out a pan before answering. “You know that’s not possible. Why not have your friend come to you?”

“It’s a school trip. They can’t leave the group.”

My mom shook her head and cracked an egg into the pan. “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous until you get married and break the curse. And you’ve shot down every guy we introduced you to.”

“But I’m so excited to meet Zach in person —”

My mom dropped the spatula—startling me so I stopped talking—and turned to stare at me. “Zach? Are you showing interest in a boy?”

I knew it was wrong, but I saw my opening. I bit my lip and blushed. It wasn’t entirely an act. “I am very interested in Zach, yes.”

My mom’s eyes blazed and she clapped her hands. “Wonderful! I’ll call ahead and set up reservations at a restaurant on the waterfront. Alioto’s will stay open late if I ask.”

“Aren’t we both a bit young for marriage? We’re both still high schoolers, after all.” I don’t know what my mom was thinking. I knew I already had her hook line and sinker, but it’d look suspicious if I didn’t put up a token protest.

My mom waved this way with an airy wave of her hand. “Not at all. You meet, and if you like each other I’m sure we can arrange an emergency ceremony that very night.”

My eyes went wide. The train was already getting out of control. “But Zach’s parents—”

“If you do decide to go through with it I’ll fly them out. I’m sure they’ll understand if I talk to them on the phone.” My mom rushed out of the room, in her excitement leaving the egg to burn in the pan on the stove.

“I’m sure they’ll be so star struck at finding out who you are that you’ll be able to get away with it, yes,” I muttered to the empty kitchen as I went over and turned off the burner.

* * *

Zach was so excited when I told her that night. “I can’t believe I get to meet you!”

“My mom’s even getting us reservations at Alioto’s for that night.” I told her, still in amazement that my mom had agreed to this. “One hitch though. She thinks you’re a guy.”

Zach doubled over laughing and pulled her shoulder-length hair back behind her head with one hand. “How you doing?” she said with an exaggerated deep voice and pointed at the laptop camera. Then she winked at me. I laughed.

“But seriously,” I said, wiping the tears of mirth from my eyes with my sleeve. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll think of something.” She grinned at me, bouncing up and down on her chair in excitement. “There’s been something I’ve been aching to try, and this is the perfect excuse.”

* * *

“I wish I could go with you, dear,” my mom said, kissing me on each cheek. The sun had not yet risen, and the chilled morning air made me shiver in my thin shirt. My mom and dad both had movie shoots today, so I was being driven alone to San Francisco by a hired driver. My mom had gotten a special window tinting treatment done on one of her cars so that I could ride in the backseat without seeing sunlight.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I assured her. “I’ll call you from the restaurant once I get there.”

“Please do that.” My mom said and then turned to my driver, Madeleine. “You keep my little girl safe, you hear me?”

Madeleine nodded, looking serious. She was attending dinner with Zach and I as a chaperone. I told Zach last night by phone, and she had assured me again that she had it all taken care of.

“I will, ma’am.”

My mother gave Madeleine a sharp nod and headed for the car idling at the curb that would take her to her movie shoot. We both waved as she pulled away and then Madeleine ushered me towards my specially outfitted car that was sitting in the driveway. I climbed in the back seat, and Madeleine in the front. She put the key in the ignition and pressed a button. The divide between the front and back seats whirred slowly closed, encasing me in darkness. I quickly turned on the overhead light. I shivered as I felt the car rock as Madeleine backed down the driveway and out onto the street.

* * *

The rocking motion of the car on asphalt combined with the inability to look at the windows left me motion sick. Occasionally I used the intercom to message Madeleine and get updates on where we were, since I couldn’t see the street signs. After what felt like an eternity, Madeleine told me, “About forty more minutes. We just passed through San Jose, and are currently driving through the hills outside San Francisco.”

“Is it dark yet? I really need to get out and stretch my legs.” And use the bathroom, but I didn’t need to tell her that.

“Sorry, Princess. In fact, at this rate we’ll get to San Francisco before dark.”

I took my hand off the intercom button, and sat back with a sigh, going back to watching a movie on my iPad. Unexpectedly, I felt the car slow.

The intercom crackled on, and Madeleine’s voice came through. “Got off at a rest stop. Your question made me realize I need a break, and since we’re ahead of schedule I know you won’t mind.”

I huffed. Madeleine had a point. But I felt petty enough that I didn’t reply. A moment later the car rocked as Madeleine’s door opened and she got out. I was jealous as I imagined her walking through the sunshine. I’d seen it so many times in the movies that I could visualize what it looked like.

However, Zach had described to me about the warmth of the sun and how it felt tingly on your skin after a long day indoors. Movies couldn’t simulate that. Maybe Zach was right that I should just get married to the next guy my parents pushed at me. Not like I hadn’t thought about it before. Quick marriage. Quicker divorce. But ever since I found out I was cursed, I’d done a lot of reading about fairies. Everything I read suggested that they were quite literal, and if the curse meant I had to be married for the curse to be broken, if I got divorced it might come back since then I would no longer be married.

I shook my head. All this was speculation anyway. The intercom crackled to life, and I jumped in surprise. I hadn’t heard the driver’s door open, or felt the car shift like Madeleine had returned.

A voice came through the intercom, along with deep breathing. There was a lot of static too, and I leaned closer to hear better. I could almost make out words, as if a heavy breather was sub vocalizing or whispering them. Then to my horror, I heard the whir of a window going down to my left. I scrambled away, huddling down in the footwell, but I couldn’t avoid the piercing rays of light in the small backseat of the car. After a moment there was another whir as the passenger side window and the partition with the front seat both began lowering. There was nowhere I could go.

I cringed as the first light hit my face. Where the light hit fur began sprouting up, and I screamed at the sensation of it prickling out through my skin. I thrashed and writhed, hitting the door with my back. It opened, or rather someone opened it, and I spilled out onto the asphalt, landing on my back. Looking down at me was Madeleine’s shocked face. I cried and begged for help, but my words came out garbled as my mouth transformed like the rest of me. I held out my hands to her for help, only to see my fingers fuse together and turn brown and hard.

I could feel my legs shifting as well and heard a thump as my shoes fell off. I rolled over onto my stomach and stood up to all fours, balancing on long slender legs and arms now tipped with hooves. I raised my head, flicking my now large ears that stuck out from my head, and then turned my head to look down the length of myself.

I was now a deer, with snow white fur poking out from beneath my jeans and T-shirt. My legs felt constricted in the rough fabric of my jeans. They were already half fallen off, so I pranced about with a little kick of my back legs that threw off the jeans, stumbling as I got used to the way my new legs worked.

Experimentally I flipped my puff of a tail, and it bobbed about on command.

Nothing hurt, and satisfied that all my pieces were there and accounted for, I looked about myself. We were at a rest stop off the highway. There were a few other cars parked in the lot, and a growing crowd of people wandering my way, pulling out cameras to point at me. All I could see, besides the rest stop and the highway, were brown hills full of dry grass and trees.

I felt a sudden urge to get away from the large press of people. Hooves clattering on asphalt, I stumbled away into the brush. Walking with all four legs was complicated, and at first I had to walk in a stiff-legged gait as I concentrated on getting all four of my limbs to move in concert. A while longer and I was bounding along like I’d been born a deer. Now that I had figured out walking, I was able to properly stop and appreciate the sunlight beating down on me. Zach had been right about how warm it was.

Zach. I vaguely remembered her face, but the longer I was a deer, the more I felt like a deer. I caught myself grazing on the dry leaves as I walked more than once. I began to wonder about the cloth around my neck and front half and why it was there. It kept catching on the sun-dried twigs of the trees I moved through. I tried to keep moving north, despite not being able to remember why. The farther north I went, the more houses I spotted. I was drawn to them, but my deer nature was skittish of the humans that moved around those dwellings, and so I avoided them.

As twilight fell, my limbs began to tingle. I found a large evergreen with low branches and crawled underneath, laying down and tucking my long hooved legs underneath me. The reverse of the transformation was slower, but just as painful. Once I was fully human again I lay on the bed of soft pine needles and hugged myself, shivering. I was naked except for the torn remains of my T-shirt.

This was not good. Given my “condition” I’d never been camping or spent really any time at all in the outdoors. I didn’t even have my phone or any way to call for help, since that had been in the pocket of my jeans, which my deer-self had kicked off in a panic. At least I wasn’t hungry. As a deer I’d been grazing on the foliage all day as I walked.

As I lay there trying to think of what to do, I heard a scuttling on pine needles, and sat up in alarm. The sky was the deep purple of twilight, and the light had not yet faded entirely. I squinted my eyes against the gloom, trying to see what was disturbing the dried pine needles. I blinked as a crab crawled into view, the dull brown of its carapace blending in with the dark pine needles. The crab crawled closer, clacking its pincers at me. I scrambled backwards.

The edges of the crab began sparkling and soon the crab’s entire body was engulfed in a blue light. The light brightened and expanded, and when it faded, a woman in a red dress stood there, hunched over, under the bows of the tree. The woman from the videos. The crab mask was pushed high on her head so I could see her face.

“Well, girl,” the woman—the fairy—said, looking down her nose at me. “Your parents thought they could escape the consequences of their actions, but I knew if I was patient that eventually I would see justice done. So lucky that the electrical system of the car shorted out like it did.” She winked at me.

“Justice?” I sputtered, angrily getting to my feet. I kept my hands clasped across my chest in a vague attempt to keep my tattered shirt from showing everything. “How is this justice?” I stomped my foot. “I’ve done nothing to wrong you.”

The fairy shrugged, and twirled, I could see that her feet under her red dress as it lifted were not human feet but crab legs. “Wrong me? No. But your parents never came through on their end of the bargain, and so your life is mine to do with as I wish. Come serve me in my castle for seven years, and in return I’ll see the curse lifted.”

Seven years? That felt like an eternity. And what would happen to Zach, and my parents, while I was gone? I glared at the fairy in defiance. Not to mention knowing what I knew about fairies, I knew there had to be a catch. “No.”

The fairy clacked angrily, and I looked at her hands to see that they had turned back into claws which were rapidly clacking open and closed. “Fine then. Another week as a deer should soften you up.” And with that she disappeared in a sparkling twinkle of light.

Shivering, I lay back down and cried myself to sleep.

A crack of gunfire shattering the morning brought me fully awake. The sun had already risen and I’d changed back into a deer as I slept. Gunfire meant people, and people meant help. Shooting also reminded me of Zach and her competition. The deer part of me wanted to run from the sound, but today I was able to hold onto myself more, overcome my instincts, and force myself towards the sound.

I bounded quickly through the forest on my four legs, following the narrow game trails other deer had carved through the forest. The sounds of gunfire grew louder as I crested the hill. Below me was a shooting range set into the base of the hill. I moved out onto a rise so I could look down at the humans below me. My tail flicked up as I stared down at the group with my sensitive ears pinned to my head in a futile attempt to lessen the crack of the gunfire.

I felt drawn to the little people milling below, though I couldn’t say why. I backed off the rise and wound my way down the hill, pushing through the brush. Not surprisingly, none of the game trails came close to the shooting range.

A tall fence encircled the property. I could maybe have jumped over it, but I was still not entirely used to my four-legged form. Besides, I didn’t want to accidentally get shot. I pushed out of the brush and came into a parking lot. Several buses were in the lot, each one had the banner of a different school on it. As I looked towards the door, a group of teenagers spilled out. They were led by none other than Zach. I recognized her immediately, even with her hair cut short and her chest bound flat.

The teenagers all piled to a stop, gasping and pointing at me. The sun beat down on me from high in the sky, and my deer nature screamed at me to run. But Zach’s staring face drew me to her. Walking slowly, each step was a slow fight against my deer instincts.

Zach was so handsome. Better looking in person even than she had been over video chat. I walked up until we were nose to nose.

Zach stared into my eyes, her eyes wide, her breathing fast and hard. “Princess?” she whispered.

I bobbed my head. Zach reached up to touch me when a door slammed, startling me. I jumped sideways and back, and my deer instincts took over, driving me out of the parking lot and away from the humans.

“Wait!” I heard Zach call out behind me, but it was too late; I couldn’t stop myself from bolting.

A rifle barked and a piercing pain shot up my flank and down one of my back legs. I stumbled, but was able to keep going despite the pain. I staggered, limping my way back into the dry woods outside the shooting range.

“Don’t shoot her!” Zach yelled.

I heard a human stumbling through the woods behind me, which only heightened my terror. I kept going; the sharp copper tang of my blood filled my nose, leaving a trail behind me that the more rational part of myself knew would draw predators to me.

Eventually I collapsed, folding my hooves under me, unable to go any farther. My injured back leg, where I’d been shot, I stuck out to the side. I closed my eyes and panted.

The sun was low when Zach came stumbling up behind me, filthy and sweating in the summer California heat and carrying a compact plastic first aid kit in one hand. She fell to the ground next to me and opened up the kit.

I looked at her dully, the pain making it hard to think. Zach held out a hand towards me, and I craned my neck out to sniff it.

“Princess—” Zach smiled, and I allowed her to pet my nose. “Can I bandage you up?”

I flicked my tail and one ear in amusement and bobbed my head at her. I looked back at her while she worked on my injured leg. My white fur was stained with blood in a trail all the way down to my hoof.

“You’re probably wondering about my outfit,” she said as she worked. I appreciated the distraction of conversation, wincing as she rubbed an alcohol wipe along where the bullet had grazed my left flank. She glanced up at me and smiled, making my heart skip a beat. I flicked my ears and nuzzled her side with my muzzle. She giggled and rubbed me between the ears with her free hand. Then she tugged at her shirt and touched her short hair by her ears. “I dressed as a guy so we could fool your mom. I gotta say though, I really love it!” She giggled and went back to dressing my wound. “I’m using he pronouns now. And I think I want to transition.”

As Zach was taping on the last of the dressing, the sun went down the rest of the way. Zach gasped and fell back as my fur began to shimmer and I transformed. A moment later I lay there as a human again, flexing my fingers to get used to the feel of them after having hooves all day.

“Princess, it really is you!” Zach pulled me into a hug. I hugged her, or him now, back.

“It is.” As much as I would have loved to hug Zach forever, I pushed him back so I could look at him. “How did you know?”

Zach smiled and touched my check. “I’d know those lovely eyes anywhere.” Zach let his hand trail lower, to the last scraps of the shirt that hung off my shoulders. “Plus, I recognized your shirt. I’ve mentioned it being my favorite one of yours. And when I called your phone after you didn’t show up for dinner the other night, your driver told me a wild tale about you turning into a snow white deer.”

I bit my lip and nodded, unable to stop the tears that sprung up. “It’s the curse, Zach.” I told him about my visit from the fairy and her offer of servitude to take away the curse.

He took off his shirt while I talked and offered it to me. Underneath he wore a second shirt that looked stretchy and flattened his chest. I took the shirt gratefully, tearing off the last of my rags before pulling it over my head.

“What am I going to do, Zach?” I asked, rubbing my injured thigh. The bandage itched on my skin.

“I know seven years seems like forever, but you’d only be twenty-three or twenty-four by the time you serve out your sentence. I could wait for you.” He took my hand and kissed it.

I shook my head. “I don’t trust the fairies. Haven’t you ever read any of the old tales?”

Zach shook his head.

“In almost all the stories, time in fairyland passes differently than in the real world. Seven years there could be seventy, or seven-hundred years back here.”

Zach’s eyes widened. “Oh.” He frowned. “So, you turn into a deer only during the day.”

I nodded my head and touched the bandage on my leg. “That guy tried to shoot me. Why?”

He tapped the breast of the shirt I now wore and scowled. I pulled it out so I could see the logo. It was hard as it was getting darker, but I made out a pair of crossed rifles. “He shouldn’t have done that. It’s not hunting season. I was in a hurry to get the first aid kit and go after you or I would have yelled at him. At least I heard the teacher reaming him out as I was leaving.”

“What are we going to do now?” I shivered and hugged Zach closer. “I’m going to turn into a deer again tomorrow. What if there are other hunters around?”

“Come back to the hotel with me.” Zach cuddled me protectively. “You can stay there during the day, at least for the next few days.”

I shook my head. “I can’t stay locked in a hotel room all day. When I’m a deer, I feel like a deer. I don’t know if I could keep from destroying the room in a panic to get out.”

“Shit.” Zach sighed. “Well, can you meet me here tomorrow at dusk? I’ll bring you clothes and try to come up with a better plan.”

I bit my lip. “What if hunters shoot at me again?”

“They shouldn’t. It’s not hunting season. But…” Zach trailed off as I stiffened and touched my leg. “Your white color does stand out.” He mused. He let me go and scooted back from me to take a handkerchief from the front pocket of his jeans. He carefully folded it up into a triangle and took both ends. “Here.” He got on his knees and leaned towards me, wrapping the cloth around my neck and knotting it at the base of my throat. “The cloth collar should give people pause, at least. I’ll bring a proper collar for you tomorrow. We can say you’re my pet when you are in deer form.”

It was dark enough now I couldn’t quite see the gift properly, but I smiled and reached up to touch the cloth. Zach leaned over me and brought his lips to mine gently for a moment, then sat back.

“You be okay alone until tomorrow night?” he asked softly.

I smiled, although I knew he probably couldn’t see me in the dark. “I will be now.”

* * *

I found a safe spot to sleep under a tree and managed to wake up before the sun rose the next morning, in time to take off my shirt before transforming into a deer, but I left on the crude collar. My leg hurt, but not bad. I spent the day bounding about the hills outside San Francisco, munching on the leaves and grass.

As we planned I returned back to the area near the shooting range as it began to get dark. I found Zach pacing nervously near the spot where I met him yesterday. He wore an outfit similar to the day before, and a bulging backpack sat at his feet.

His eyes went wide as I pranced towards him in my deer form. He hardly dared breathe as I came up to him and nuzzled his shoulder with my muzzle. I was still a bit skittish as he petted me, but as a deer I was more comfortable around him than the day before. He stood with me until the sun went down and I fell to the dirt, my hooves splitting into fingers and my fur withdrawing back into my skin.

He helped me sit up, and retrieved a bottle of water from his backpack which he helped me sip from for a moment before offering me a pile of clean, folded clothes.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked him breathlessly as I got dressed. I pulled the shirt on first, then sat down and put on the pants. Before I stood up he offered me a pair of flip-flops.

“I didn’t know your shoe size and I forgot to ask yesterday, sorry,” he said as I stood and slipped my feet through the flip-flop straps. They were a little big, but serviceable. “Come with me,” he said, taking my hand. We began to move down the trail, down the hill towards the shooting range. “I’ve been thinking about the curse and how to break it.”

“We can’t,” I said. “I’d have to get married to break the curse.”

It was light enough I could still see the smile on his face. “I know, that’s the idea.” He wouldn’t say anymore, no matter how much I pressed him as we hiked down the hill. We came to the blacktop and turned, following the curve of the road down into the parking lot of the shooting range. There was only one bus remaining in the parking lot, with a gaggle of bored teenagers hanging around outside it. They looked up at our approach, as if expecting us.

One of them stepped out of the group and approached us, a dark-haired girl with glasses. I had seen her pictures before on Zach’s Facebook page. His friend Emily.

“Everything’s ready inside,” she said to Zach before turning to me and thrusting her hand out. “Hi, you must be Princess. I’m Emily.”

Zach paused long enough for me to shake her hand. “Nice to meet you. What, exactly, is going on?”

“Inside, you’ll see!” she said with a big smile, dashing ahead of us to open the door to the shooting range’s shack.

Inside had been decorated with white streamers and balloons. A grocery store cake decorated with white frosting sat on a glass counter filled with guns and ammunition. Two adults, a man and a woman, wearing an outfit almost identical to Zach’s stood inside, along with a portly man who wore a green polo shirt with the shooting range’s logo on it.

They all introduced themselves to me, but I was so overwhelmed that I blanked on all their names. The woman flourished an official looking piece of paper at us.

“I am now officially licensed to perform weddings in the state of California!” she announced proudly. All pieces fell into place. I squealed and whirled around to hug Zach. He hugged me back tightly. Then he let go and dropped to one knee in front of me, pulling a little ring box out of his pocket and presenting it to me.

“I know it’s sudden, and we’re young, but will you marry me, Bright Heart?” he blurted out, his voice shaking. I winced at his use of my official name. There were many reasons I preferred the nickname Princess, the main one being my official name was stupid. That’s what you get with movie star parents who did a lot of drugs when you were younger. That, and evil fairy godmothers. All in all, I could’ve done without either one.

I wiped the tears from my eyes, and fell to my knees in front of him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. “Yes,” I whispered into his ear around the lump that formed in my throat.

Crying, he hugged me back, the ring box digging into my back. The ceremony was short but sweet. The teacher led the ceremony, and we both said our “I do’s” before Zach slipped the cheap plastic ring on my finger, and then we kissed while everyone clapped. Pieces of the grocery store cake were passed out on paper plates. Then we all trooped out to the bus. I didn’t let go of Zach’s hand the whole time.

Zach and I sat next to each other on the bus, I rested my head on Zach’s shoulder and admired the ring on my finger in the light of the passing cars. It was ugly, but it was mine and I loved it. “Don’t we need our parent’s permission to get married?” I said softly, hoping the ceremony had been enough to break the fairy’s curse.

“Nope,” Zach laughed softly. “Not at seventeen.”

The bus dropped us off in front of a hotel, and we all retired to our rooms for the night. I called my mom from Zach’s room, and told her where I was. Of course she’d believed Madeleine when she’d been told about my transformation, and had had searchers out looking for me near the rest stop. But they hadn’t realized I’d gone so far north. My mom wanted to drive over right then, but I was so tired. We told her we’d see her in the morning, and then we both went to bed. Zach spooned me and it felt right. I never wanted anyone or anything else.

I guess I figured that’d be the end of it. But no. I woke up the next morning in the throes of transformation. Suddenly, Zach had to deal with sharing a bed with a very large and very confused white doe. There was a lot of shouting, mostly from Zach, and bleats of terror, mostly from me.

I sprinted around the room that was suddenly far too small for my long, gangly legs. Zach managed to herd me into the bathroom, cornering me, and grabbed my head, petting me between the ears and whispering soothing words until I settled down and stopped kicking.

I rolled my eyes at him, still terrified. I hadn’t been prepared for the transformation, and my deer instincts had taken over completely. But the smell of him combined with his soft talking eventually calmed me down.

I lay with my head resting in his lap. He slumped exhausted over the side of the bathtub. He looked at me, his hair rumpled from sleep and his eyes filled with tears. “It didn’t work…”

A clacking sound in the bathtub caught both our attention. A crab crawled up the side of the bathtub to perch on the edge. A human voice came from crab’s mouth as it scuttled back and forth by Zach’s head.

“Of course it didn’t work, deary,” the crab said in the fairy’s high-pitched voice. The crab cackled and clicked its claws. “You had to have been married before seeing sunlight the first time.”

Being a deer I couldn’t talk, but Zach asked her the question I was thinking. “So she’ll be like this for the rest of her life? Only human at night?”

The crab scuttled close to Zach’s face and snapped a claw at his nose. He flinched back and hugged my head closer. “Impertinent girl.”

“Boy!” Zach snapped back.

“Unless she takes up my offer, yes.” The crab scuttled back down the side of the bathtub. “I’ll come back tonight for your answer.” The tap of crab leg on porcelain faded away, as quickly as it’d come.

Zach let go of my head and stood up to peer down into the bathtub. I did too, my hooves sliding on the slick bathroom tile. The bathtub was empty again. The fairy had gone.

There was a knock on the door leading to the hall. “Zach, everything all right?” It was the female teacher, the one whose name I couldn’t remember.

Zach turned to me and put a finger to his lips. “Wait here,” he said in a whisper. He left and shut the bathroom door behind him. His voice came through the door, muffled, but still understandable. “Fine, Mrs. Derman.”

The teacher responded, but I couldn’t hear her. Then Zachary’s voice came again, clearer. “Princess and I are going to stay here until her mom gets here. I’m going to withdraw from the competition.”

Shouting for a bit, then murmurs. Then I heard the door shut, and the door to the bathroom opened again. “We’ll stay here until your mom gets here. Hopefully she knows what to do.”

She did not. Neither did any of the oracles, soothsayers, or other spiritual and magical advisors that my mom had made the acquaintance of over the years that she called for advice. The three of us huddled in that hotel room, the two of them tried to keep me calm until dark.

Finally the sun went down, and I transformed back to human. My mom hugged me, crying. “Take the service honey. You can’t live like this.”

“No, I already explained this to Zach. I can’t risk losing you. Besides,” I admitted, sitting on the bed between them and taking both her hands. “I actually quite like being a deer. You’ve never felt it. Bounding through the woods, nature all around you. No human worries weighing you down. It’s amazing. I don’t want to give that up.”

* * *

So, I didn’t. When the fairy came back, I told her where to shove it. And she couldn’t do anything about it. It’s in all the old tales if you know where to look. Fairy magic can’t affect you if you don’t make a deal with it. She scuttled about, turning herself into a giant crab and clacking her claws at us, yelling threats. But it was all bluff and bluster. Eventually, she got tired and left, and I went home with my mom and Zach.

My mom bought us a hundred acre property out in the California desert. During the day, I bound around my own private nature reserve with a pretty gold collar around my neck. A few times Zach put a leash on me and walked me around the downtown of the little town nearest our property. Word got around pretty fast that the pretty white doe was his pet and not to be messed with. At night I turn back to human, and get to spend the night with my adorable husband.

Zach still does shooting competition sometimes. I watch them on TV at home, wishing I could be there with him. It’s the only time now I regret my curse. He’s gotten pretty good. Made it to nationals a few times. Brought in enough money from sponsorships that we don’t have to rely on my parents anymore.

I love my life now and wouldn’t change anything. But still, fairies can kiss my white-tailed ass. And if I never see another one, it will be too soon.

 

* * *

About the Author

Ian Madison Keller is a fantasy writer currently living in Oregon. Originally from Utah, he moved up to the Pacific Northwest on a whim a decade ago and never plans on leaving. Ian has been writing since 2013 with eight novels and more than a dozen published short stories out so far. Ian has also written under the name Madison Keller before transitioning in 2019 to Ian.

His novels include the Flower’s Fang trilogy and the four book award-winning Dragonsbane Saga self-published under Rainbow Dog Press, as well as an urban fantasy series with Fanged Fiction. His work has won a Cóyotl Award and two Leo Literary awards. He is also the new editor of ROAR starting in 2020 with ROAR 11.  More information can be found on his website, http://madisonkeller.net.  He can also be found on Twitter: @maddiekellerr

by Tim Susman

“They did not make the familiar barks of humans, none of the words Shadow knew, but instead made noises like a dying animal that never died.”

The food smell led Shadow a way he hadn’t gone before, so he placed his paws carefully among the jagged pieces of brick and concrete. He stayed to the shadows where he could, letting the darkness hide his black-furred form, and he kept his ears perked high for any noises other than the skittering of little rodents and the buzzing of insects. An 80-pound German Shepherd could handle most things he encountered these days, but not all, and even if he won a fight, he might sustain an injury more serious than those mapped in scars around his body.

Wind swirled and the smell floated around his head. He stopped and lifted his nose, turning one way and then another until the breeze died down and the trail picked up again. Raccoon and blood: fresh, less than a day old. Though he had to find his way around a car that smelled of old fire, over a pile of rubble that clawed at his sensitive paws, and through a gap in a metal gate bent and buckled from the outside (yet still somehow standing), he didn’t mind the obstacles because his nose told him the struggle was worth it.

It was worth passing up the half-rotted possum carcass for this; it was worth abandoning the faint smell behind the cold scentless steel that he knew could open but had never figured out how. This was the kind of thing that sometimes took him most of a day to find, and some days he didn’t find it at all.

The houses around him, some whole, some damaged, remained mostly quiet. The bad smell lingered faintly around some of them, but not so much that his hackles raised. This area had not been easy to get into, but once he made his way through the gate, he felt the difference in the world, an easing of tension. The bad smell was the worst thing he would have to watch out for, worse than other dogs or sharp stones or groups of people with death-bangs, so he walked down the middle of the street along the smooth asphalt, moving to the cooler sidewalk when he could.

He found the source of the food smell soon after: a house that looked not too different from the others. The smell might be inside, he thought until he came to one side of the house where a large tree leaned against it and more of the sharp-clawed rubble lay around the base. The smell of dust was fresh here, as were the smells of other raccoons, cats, and other dogs.

One dog smell in particular came strongly to him, and now his hackles did go up. His ears went straight up and he stood still and quiet, sniffing and listening.

After a moment, he heard it: slow steps and snuffling, the other dog. It was coming around the corner of the house behind him. As quietly as he could, he turned and stood facing that corner, waiting, and when the dog came around the corner, Shadow sized it up in half a second—half his size, scrawny, only a minor threat—and then leapt forward while the black-and-white dog was still surprised. He barked as loudly as he could: back off, get out!

The dog yelped and stumbled backwards and then took off at a run. Shadow watched, because sometimes they stopped at a distance to size up the situation, but this dog kept going until he was out of sight behind a house across the street.

After that, it was an easy matter—more or less—to make his way up the trunk of the tree to where the raccoon lay crushed between a branch and the claws of the broken roof of the house. Shadow had to tear the body to get it free, so he fed himself from the smaller pieces until he felt stronger, enough to take the edge off his hunger. This would be a good time to rest, up on the roof, if only he didn’t need to bring this prize back.

So he hefted the furred body in his jaws, shifting it until he got a good grip, and then made his way down the trunk. The other dog, if it were still around, kept its distance, and Shadow remained undisturbed as he returned down the quiet street to the gate.

At the metal bars, he had to push the raccoon through and drop it before squeezing himself through. He bent to pick it up and then hesitated. His nose was full of raccoon and blood, but a sound came to him, several creatures moving together heedless of noise. He stepped away from the raccoon and lifted his nose and there it was, faint but fresh on the air. His hackles rose.

He grabbed the raccoon, but it slipped, loose skin and thick coat too much for his teeth to find purchase. The noises grew, definitely coming toward him. He found a grip and pulled, dragging the body along the ground, but at least he was moving.

When he got to the sharp-clawed rubble, he had to slow down even more, and that’s where they caught him.

The bad smell came off them in waves, like the dead raccoon but more wrong, and these creatures were like humans but they moved unnaturally, swinging their limbs like dead weight, their heads listing at an angle. They did not make the familiar barks of humans, none of the words Shadow knew, but instead made noises like a dying animal that never died. The sound of their steps was something like the sound of his raccoon being dragged across rocks.

They did not move fast; unencumbered, he could outrun them. But to do so would mean leaving his prize behind for them to tear at and eat. It might take him days to find anything else as good.

He’d fought one of these things once, months ago. They were not good fighters but they kept going and they used their paws and teeth when they got in close. One could be dispatched with quick, savvy lunges, staying out of reach of the clublike limbs. But how could he stay out of the way of many? There were more than he could keep track of easily, and though they weren’t fast, they remained close together so that in leaping out of reach of one, he might put himself in danger from another.

On top of all that, he had to guard his raccoon. He started with sharp barks, but they did not run. Humans only understood his barks about half the time anyway, and he knew these things were not human, but the barks bubbled up inside of him and had to be voiced. When they kept advancing, he leapt at the nearest one, tearing away pieces of the leg, hoping to at least cripple it.

For the first few minutes, he thought he might be able to keep them away. One went down to its knees, struggling to pull itself across the rubble. He took aim at another, but then saw that one had reached his raccoon and he ran back over the rocks that clawed at him to throw his weight at it, knocking it over. The bad smell filled his mouth but he tore at the neck, at the arms, at the legs, and the thing did not even cry out or howl, but gurgled and sputtered and flailed.

A weight landed on him, driving him down into the rubble. Stone teeth stabbed his side and leg and his foreleg twisted awkwardly. He yelped once, struggled, and then barked again. Dead flesh clawed at his sides and teeth grazed his leg. He kicked out and felt his claws sink into softness, ripping it, but still the thing did not stop.

His feet found purchase and he sprang free, but as he regained his balance, another of the creatures loomed over him. He seized the raccoon and lurched away, but rocks rolled out from under him and he tumbled backwards.

Now panic rose despite his instincts. They were all around him now, and all that saved him was that they seemed more interested in the raccoon than him. He would have to let it go if he wanted to live. He would have to. He—

A loud crash shattered the air. Shadow folded his ears back as one of the things fell across him again. But it didn’t claw or bite, just lay there.

The noise of the death-bang still echoed when the next one came, and another, and another. The bad smell filled his nose, overwhelming even the smell of his raccoon. His ears rang.

When the bangs stopped, he couldn’t hear what was going on around him, but he knew he had to get free. His hind legs pushed at the ground, scattering rocks and seeking purchase to shift the weight from over him.

A shape came into his vision: a human. Startled, he barked, and the human put a hand out. “Good boy,” it said, and then some other barks in a calm tone.

Shadow stilled, watching it. It looked up above him and tapped the side of its head. “Good <bark>,” it said. and then, “<bark bark bark bark> dog.”

The weight on him shifted. He struggled again and a voice behind him said, “Shh, good boy, wait.”

He stopped, making sure he had a good grip on his raccoon. Now the ringing in his ears faded and he heard noises around him again, several humans, barking in low voices to each other, dragging the bodies of the creatures into a pile together.

The weight came off him. He got to his feet, shook himself, and then picked up his raccoon, looking warily around at the humans. The one in front of him remained crouched. “Good boy,” it barked again, its tone remaining calm.

It didn’t reach for the raccoon, so Shadow stepped carefully to one side, waiting to see if the human would stop him or follow. He caught its scent now through the thick smell of raccoon and the receding bad smell: she was female.

She watched him pick his way over the clawed stones and to the edge of the rubble. He waited there for a moment and then kept going along his path.

They followed him, crashing and stomping their way behind him, which was a good thing in general. The noise would likely scare away anything Shadow couldn’t handle on his own. He did not want to lead them all the way back, but he couldn’t move faster than them, not burdened as he was.

So they came to his street finally and to the house with the car where the door should be and the old rubble around it. Shadow ignored the humans until they arrived at the house, and there he did not want to show them the way in, so as much as he wanted to go inside, he set down the raccoon and lay beside it, staring at them.

They barked among themselves a little, but didn’t go away. He appreciated that loyalty in them, and an instinct in him tugged gently toward that group. They had followed him and he could follow them; they had the good smell and they were good hunters. But stronger instinct and loyalty kept him lying where he was.

Scuffling movement came from the house behind him. His ears swiveled back, and then one of the people in front of him barked in alarm and pointed at the window. Another raised her death-bang as their alarmed barks grew louder.

Shadow sprang to his feet and barked: go away, get out! When they didn’t move, he ran to the window and stood in front of it facing them, and barked again.

The one with the death-bang raised it. Shadow came forward and barked again, his voice higher with panic. He couldn’t fight a death-bang but he couldn’t let them use it, either.

The human who’d crouched in front of him put her hand on the death-bang, and the other human lowered it. They all watched him, and then the human said, “Good boy,” and barked some more in a calm voice.

Shadow stayed alert, and barked again: get out!

This time, they understood. “Come on,” the first human said, but to the other humans, not to Shadow. “<bark bark> go.”

He watched as they retreated to the end of the street and turned the corner out of sight. Their smell lingered in the air. Maybe they were waiting for him. It would be good to hunt with a pack again, if they could let him bring food into the house. When he set out again, he would remember their scent.

With some difficulty, he got the raccoon up onto the car, and from there onto the small porch roof. He pushed the raccoon through the narrowly open window and then squeezed through himself.

The bed he landed on let out a puff of dust and familiar scent. He whined softly and nosed the sheet, but the scent was cold and faint.

Raccoon in his mouth, he walked down the hall to the stairs and from there down to the large room on the first floor. His hackles rose instinctively, but he went forward and dropped the raccoon on the carpet where he’d eaten so many meals in the past.

They lurched out of the shadows as he retreated to the stairs, the sound and smell of meat drawing them forward. These creatures were not as decayed as the ones that had attacked him earlier. Their clothes bore tatters and stains, but their flesh remained mostly intact.

He stayed on the landing, looking down as the figures tore into the raccoon, eating noisily, shredding it with clumsy fingers and dull teeth. Shadow’s stomach growled, but he kept still, resting his head on his front paws.

When they were done, they might be ravenous for more, but he’d fed them yesterday too, so he hoped they would be quiet. And if they were quiet, then he would go down among them and hope that they would rest their hands on him and rest beside him. When they did that, he felt their love like a flicker trapped under rubble, and he knew that the good smell would return to them one day, if only he remained on the right path.

 

* * *

About the Author

Tim Susman started a novel in college and didn’t finish one until almost twenty years later. In that time, he earned a degree in Zoology, worked with Jane Goodall, co-founded Sofawolf Press, and moved to California. Since publishing “Common and Precious,” he has attended Clarion in 2011 (arooo Narwolves!), published short stories in Apex, Lightspeed, and ROAR, among others, and recently completed his multiple award-winning Revolutionary War-era fantasy series “The Calatians.” He’s won a Coyotl Award and three Leo Literary Awards, and under the name Kyell Gold, he has published multiple novels and won several more awards for his furry fiction. You can find out more about his stories at timsusman.wordpress.com and www.kyellgold.com, and follow him on Twitter at @WriterFox. He currently lives in California with his two partners and their dog, who as far as they know has not fought any zombies, but is always ready just in case.

Now and then you’re just going to stumble across a title that grabs your attention… something like Unicorns Aren’t Horny, a new black & white manga series by Semi Ikuta. “A hilarious inter-species comedy about a modern virgin and her roommate: A virgin-loving unicorn. Emuko is a twenty-something virgin – in fact, she’s never even had a boyfriend. Her roommate, a unicorn named Uni, adores her purity, but sometimes Emuko yearns for the romance she’s been missing. And does Uni love Emuko a little too much?” Okay, color us intrigued… Look for it now from Seven Seas Entertainment.

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