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by Christopher Zerby

“I stood above him, wings unfurled, but what I saw in his face made me lower them. He was terrified.”

We had a fire going on the roof of the Museum, same as most nights, and I noticed him sitting on the edge of it, across from me. I’d never seen him before. He hunkered down in a big, black coat, holding out his pale, skeletal hands to grab a bit of warmth, laughing a little behind the rest, like he didn’t quite get the jokes. I figured someone must have brought him, but no one was talking with him.

Bang was there of course. So was Chittle, and Peapod, and maybe a dozen others, the usual crew. We had some juice someone snatched, and I felt drunk, maybe straddling the edge of wild. He was the skinniest thing. I mean, we were all skinny. We were made that way to begin with, and we were starving most of the time, subsisting on whatever could be snatched from the Apes or picked out of the garbage. You can’t be too proud. Besides, you can’t fly with too much meat on your bones.

I prodded Bang. “Who’s that? I didn’t see him fly in.”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. But I could eat him up.”

I thought I could too. He had massive brown eyes peeking out under long, dark bangs, and in the firelight his pale skin looked almost translucent. Gorgeous. The more I stared at him the more violent my desire grew. I felt a tickle in my gut, and the warm flush that always started down there.

I picked up my can of juice and got to my feet. I wanted to get over to him before Bang or one of the others made a move. I stretched as tall as I could get, jutting out my bare chest and spreading my wings wide. They all stared. Of course they did. My wings are beautiful, blue-black and huge, the biggest on the rooftop, maybe, except for Bang’s. Peapod gave an audible gasp. I’d been with him before, but I could have him anytime. The show wasn’t for him.

I pumped my wings sending trash and debris clattering across the rooftop, suffusing the air with my scent.

“Knock it off, Senna.” Bang shielded her eyes and shook her wings, a few feathers dancing free in the air, letting me know I was pissing her off. But it was a warning, not a challenge. Everyone else was entranced.

Except the new guy.

Oh, he was staring at me, alright, but he cowered beneath his coat. I tipped back my can and drank, felt the bitter juice burn my throat as a bit of excess ran down my chin, and strutted around the fire to where he sat.

I stood above him, wings unfurled, but what I saw in his face made me lower them. He was terrified. Not my intention at all. Maybe a little awe, a bit of lust would have been appropriate. He was tensed and ready to bolt. Although I didn’t see how he was going anywhere with his wings crammed under his coat.

I wanted him to stay. I held out my can.

“Juice?”

He didn’t move. The others had gone back to laughing and teasing each other when I dropped my wings, but it wouldn’t do to be rejected in front of a crowd. The moment seemed to stretch on way too long. Right before my annoyance tipped over into anger he took the can and drank. His bony hand trembled, from fear, cold, maybe both. It’s ok, I thought. The juice will warm you up and make you brave.

I pushed in next to him. I caught a nice whiff of his scent, felt the desire in my gut and wondered if he saw the flush spreading across my chest, but I stayed composed. I didn’t want to scare him off.

“I’m Senna.” I smiled. Not my best expression, but it worked. He smiled back.

“I’m Eamon.”

He wasn’t as small as he’d seemed hunched down across the fire, but he was emaciated. I could see the sinews in his neck, and his skin stretched taut across his face. I had the urge to fold my wings around him and hold him close in the dark and warmth. If I’d had anything to eat I would have offered it.

We passed the juice back and forth and gradually he relaxed.

“I haven’t seen you before.” I kept one eye on him and one eye on Peapod who was grappling now with another youngling I recognized but couldn’t name. They were playing. For now.

“It’s my first time. On the roof, anyway. I’ve snuck into the Museum before. At night.”

“The Museum? Why?” I didn’t even know what was inside the building. Once, somebody had vandalized the big sign hanging in front, scrawling an “UN” in red paint above the “Natural History.”

Eamon shrugged. I thought he might be pretty drunk already, a skinny thing like him.

“Where do you usually stay?”

He bit his lip, staring into the fire. “In Old City. I had to get out of there.”

I squirmed a little, forcing myself to relax, still trying not to be too aggressive. I sensed it would turn bad if I did, but I could smell him. Sweet and grassy. Fresh and new.

“Old City. Huh.” Old City was full of low buildings and Apes. Not a lot of safe spots. Nobody I knew stayed over there. “Why’d you have to leave?”

He took a long swallow of juice, not meeting my eye.

Peapod screeched and took off running, his bare feet slapping against the cold rooftop. Wings spread wide, he leapt into the air, gathering height with a couple of pumps, circling above the fire. Several other younglings launched themselves into the air, following him.

“Don’t come back without food!” Bang shook her wings and sat back, stretching her legs out so her feet were practically in the fire. Her predatory eyes glinted in my direction, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at Eamon.

He noticed too and I felt him shiver despite the fire and the juice. His big brown eyes glistened as they met mine. He seemed so helpless. He raised his head, pushing against me, finding my lips with his. He trembled as I wrapped my arms around him.

Mine, Bang, mine.

* * *

No way Eamon would have followed me to the spot at the back of the roof behind the big steel vents if he was sober, but we finished the can of juice, I grabbed another off a youngling, and we drank that too. We didn’t talk much. I’m better with actions than words, so I kept sticking my tongue down his throat, and when I pulled him away from the fire, he didn’t fight.

There was a tangle of blankets and old clothes to climb into and the vents blocked some of the wind, so it wasn’t too cold. I was burning up anyway. He stood with his back to the lights of the city as I kissed him and slid my hand along his chest, my fingers tracing his jutting bones, and though he parried my every move, I knew he was warming by the telltale flush on his chest. The air was dense with our mingled scents.

He keened as I worked my way down his neck. It sounded more like pain than pleasure, but when he pushed against me I felt how much he wanted me. I nipped at his ear and he shuddered.

“Take off your jacket,” I whispered. “Let me see them.”

He broke away, taking a step back. Caught up in my own desire I lunged for him.

“No!”

He fought me off and stumbled in the pile of blankets, falling to his knees. He crouched, protecting his face with his bony arms and I stopped, suddenly aware of how I loomed over him, wings wide like I was ready to strike. I folded them back.

“Okay, Eamon. Okay.” I knelt, but didn’t touch him though my body screamed for it. It’s so hard to control. He panted, soft and desperate.

We stayed there for a long time until I grew cold. I settled into the pile, tucked in my wings and draped a blanket over them. After a time, Eamon moved closer and we nestled together. I still wanted him, still felt a little loopy from his scent, but it receded to a dull, lingering ache. There were occasional bursts of laughter from the other side of the roof, and once or twice in the distance I saw the dark silhouettes of flyers riding the air currents above the city as they searched for opportunity, perhaps an Ape out alone on a dark street.

Eamon saw them too. I kissed his neck, just below his ear. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “We could hunt.” I could tell something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t stop myself from touching him.

His huge brown eyes, so close, got hard all of a sudden, distant. He looked at me from a million miles away.

He stood and unzipped his coat. My pulse quickened. He dropped it to the rooftop and opened his wings. I cocked my head, trying to understand what I saw.

They were skeletal things. A few feathers clung here and there like the last few leaves on a dying tree. I stood and moved close. Ropes of lumpy scars crisscrossed the leathery skin, which was puckered and red. There were sores, gently weeping, and although he could move them a little, it was obvious he would never fly.

“What happened?” I felt a little sick, all the juice I’d drank roiling in my stomach. “How did you get up here?”

“I climbed.” His voice was raw and I caught the sour smell of fear and desperation. “I couldn’t stand to be down there any longer.”

I pictured him pulling himself up the side of the building, clinging to the bricks like an insect in the dark. Sneaking over the edge onto the rooftop hoping none of us would notice as he took his place at the fire. He looked so frail standing there with his ruined wings, so insubstantial, like he might blow away in the wind, but his eyes stayed hard, and he thrust out his bony chest in challenge.

“I’ll go,” he said.

Wings beat overhead in the darkness, maybe Peapod and his playmates returning. I hoped they didn’t see Eamon, his wings, his deformity. It would make them aggressive, agitated, that weakness.

I felt a little of it myself, but I shook it off and pulled him to the blankets. I started at his mouth and kissed my way down his body, taking my time, the sharp edge of my desire softened now with something new. I wanted to protect him. Now he was kissing me, hungrily. He lay back and I straddled him, wings spread, slipping him inside me as he began to keen once more.

* * *

I woke, still tangled in the pile, to Eamon pulling on his coat. I reached for him, sleepy, eager for him again, but he pulled away, his long bangs hiding his eyes.

“I have to go,” he said. “Before the others wake.”

I struggled to sit up, my head still muddled, half in dreams. “You can’t go now. It’s practically light out. It’s not safe.” Apes would be all over the city soon, going about their business. They weren’t always hostile to us, but we certainly weren’t loved, and they were strong. A full-grown Ape could shred wings, could shatter our hollow bones.

I’d seen it. A few weeks earlier, a youngling, Crescent or Crystal, something like that, got caught snatching a purse. The Ape grabbed her in midair by the wrist, squeezed and crushed it to powder. She got away, but I saw her that night curled up on the Museum roof, hand dangling useless as she clutched it to her chest. I don’t know if she survived. She stopped showing up.

“I can manage.” Eamon had the hard look in his eyes. “I manage every day.”

“But you can’t…” Fly. I stopped myself as he glared. “Don’t leave. I’ll go out in a while and steal us food. We can stay here.” I gestured at the blankets and gave what I hoped was an alluring smile. “Until dark. Then I’ll see you home.”

Eamon shook his head. “If I stay, you’ll have to fight her.” His voice was low and tremulous.

He was right. I’d seen how Bang looked at him. Things between me and her were coming to a head in any case. She was in charge, but I was on my way up and she knew it. I’d seen her fight a dozen times; she was fast, vicious. I wasn’t sure if I could beat her.

“I’ll beat her.”

He stood, hunched under his coat. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t want to be the cause, either way.”

I followed him over to the edge of the roof, fighting the urge to grab him and pull him back. I couldn’t help some of it. We’re made that way. But I also wanted him to want to stay with me, and I’d never felt that before.

“I’ll come back another night,” he said, slipping over the side. “I promise.”

I leaned over the edge, watching him painstakingly crawl down the side of the building. I was worried at first, but he never faltered, never seemed like he might slip. Despite his disfigurement there was something so strong underneath. When he made it to the street and strode off, coat wrapped around him, I knew I wouldn’t risk never seeing him again. I would follow him.

* * *

I soared high above the city, drafting on the currents, feeling the wind’s icy tongue lick my bare chest, my gut roiling with excitement the way it always did. Flying. It was everything.

I kept an eye on Eamon as he wound his way toward the Old City and even though I stayed distant so there’d be no chance he’d notice me, I never feared losing him. His scent filled my nose still, clung to me, mingled with my own. The flying and the thought of the way he moved inside of me during the night had me inflamed, and I darted and rolled, diving toward the rooftops and spinning away again. I saw others in the sky but they avoided me. They could tell I was aroused and might knock them to the earth in that state, and my wings were spread wide, wider than any of them. They were right to be afraid of me.

It took Eamon an hour to get to Old City, and there I had to be more careful. The buildings were low, Apes were everywhere, and none of our kind were nearby. Eamon seemed confident, however, moving with purpose. He hung to the edges of the street, avoiding the slow gridlocked cars and throngs of pedestrians, and no one bothered him. He was at home, part of the environment.

He turned on to a shabby side street and slowed his pace as I drafted above him. On one side a row of brown tenements squatted close together, separated by narrow alleys. On the other there were tiny houses, shacks really, dilapidated and ugly. Eamon stopped in front of one for a second as if catching his breath, and went inside.

I settled onto the roof of the tenement opposite and tried to get a look inside the squalid little structure that must have been his home, but the curtains were drawn. It didn’t matter. I knew where he lived and I’d approach him when it got dark and convince him to return to the Museum. Meanwhile, I would hunt and sleep.

Hunting was poor in Old City. There were no wealthy Apes with fat purses strolling about, and no tall buildings hugging the streets to be used as cover for a quick snatch and grab. I had to settle for a meal scavenged from the trash, but I didn’t care. I’d eaten worse lots of times, or gone without eating altogether. I made it back to my stakeout spot in the early afternoon, found a tarp on the tenement roof to hide from the bright sun, and curled up to sleep.

* * *

I woke as the sun was disappearing below the tall buildings in the distance. I shrugged off the tarp and sat on the edge of the roof, peering at the little house. A pale light glowed behind the thin, tattered curtains. I relaxed and waited.

At full dark I hopped into the air and landed on the sidewalk in front of Eamon’s house. The street was quiet, no Apes around. It was a moonless night and I felt comfortable I wouldn’t be spotted as I crept to the window. I peered inside through a hole in one of the curtains.

Eamon sat on a low bench, coatless, his back to me. His decrepit wings were open, but hung listlessly, and I felt a warm blush of shame to be spying on him. With his guard down he had none of the defiant hardness he’d shown in flashes on the Museum roof, nor the confidence with which he navigated the Ape filled streets. The sag of his shoulders reminded me instead of the way he’d huddled by the fire and cringed when I’d tried to force myself on him. My shame deepened. I would leave him alone, I decided, and come find him another night. As I turned, I caught a flicker of movement at the far end of the room. Eamon wasn’t alone.

A small, hunched, old man appeared. His smiling face was wrinkled and saggy, and a slack belly hung over the belt holding up his drab grey pants. What was Eamon doing with this tiny Ape?

When he passed from the dim shadows deeper in the room, I gasped. He was one of us. An elder. I thought I might be sick.

He had no wings, just two shriveled, black stumps and his back was covered with the same ropy scars Eamon had, the same puckered red skin. But no sores. His disfigurement had happened long ago.

A disease. The elder disappeared from sight again. Was this Eamon’s sire? Did it pass from generation to generation? Was that why they lived apart from the rest of us in this little hovel among the Apes, hidden away in Old City?

Cold terror gripped me. Was it contagious? I strained to touch my wings, to feel for sores. Was I infected?

The elder returned and set a tray on a small table. Eamon’s shoulders and wings shook, and through the thin glass I heard his muffled sobs. He shook harder as the elder gently rubbed his arm and whispered in his ear. When Eamon finally calmed the elder turned to the tray. He put on gloves, the brown leather stained and rotting, and busied himself mixing a paste in a bowl. He muttered as he worked, adding a few drops of liquid from a glass decanter. He mixed some more and approached Eamon with the bowl and a tiny brush. Medicine.

Eamon began crying again. I watched the elder’s profile as he bent to examine the tattered wings. Help him. Please help him. Despite the fear for myself, I wanted that, more than anything.

The elder squinted with concentration, mouth slightly open. He brought the glistening brush up, flicking his pink tongue to lick his lips. He smiled.

Eamon keened as the elder delicately brushed the base of his wing. The keening grew shrill. The elder’s look made me go cold. I knew it well, a mix of predatory zeal and consuming pleasure. The glistening patch on Eamon’s wing he’d painted blackened and puckered, and the elder’s chest and neck flushed an obscene pink.

My heart pounded as I rushed the door, yanking it open, wings spread wide, forcing my way through the narrow space with a shower of feathers. The elder dropped his bowl and it shattered, splattering his concoction as I leapt on him.

I pinned him to the floor, wrapping my hands around his flabby neck and squeezed until his pink tongue lolled from his mouth as he wheezed and struggled. He reeked of greasy, sour fear, and something else, something rotten below the surface, making me gag as I choked him. He turned purple.

“Stop! Stop it!”

Eamon flailed at my arms and my head but I hardly felt the blows. I tightened my grip. In my rage I beat my wings, knocking Eamon backwards into the table, upending the tray and tools, and he tumbled to the floor, despoiled wings in the air, tattered and vulnerable.

I released the elder who sagged, unconscious, and crawled toward Eamon, ignoring the debris crunching beneath my hands and knees. I pulled his thin body to me and wrapped my arms around him, rocking him back and forth, whispering apologies. He let me for a moment, but pushed me away.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.” He turned his back. “I don’t want you here.”

My body screamed to hold him, protect him, but I forced myself not to touch him. “I don’t understand, Eamon. Why was he doing that? Why would you let him hurt you?”

Outside, somewhere far down the street, I heard an Ape’s cackling laughter. I felt sick to my stomach.

Eamon stared at the floor. “He lets me live here. He looked after me when I was young. Now, I look after him.”

“No. Let him rot. He’s a monster. You don’t owe him anything.”

“It’s none of your business. I can’t just fly up to the rooftops where it’s safe, like you.” He bared his teeth and spread his poor, tattered wings as if he’d strike out, but he dropped them. “I look after him. He looked after me. I look after him.”

The words were mechanical, like he’d repeated them to himself night after night.

“I’ll look after you,” I whispered.

He shivered, his wings quivering. The elder groaned.

Eamon rushed to him and cradled his head. He turned to me: “Help me.”

We carried the limp elder to a dirty pallet in a gloomy corner, and laid him down with a pillow to pad the blackened stumps where his wings had been. He groaned some more. Eamon sat with him, whispering until he sunk into a deep, rasping sleep, then fetched a glass of water and set it beside the pallet. He sat beside me on the bench.

“You shouldn’t have followed me.” This time when he said it his voice cracked, his long bangs hiding his eyes.

“Come with me. Leave this.” I gestured around the small room, cluttered with dusty things, and the broken debris from the brief struggle. “I’ll protect you. I’ll feed you. Come with me.”

“I can’t,” he whispered.

“You can.” A fierce desire rose inside me at his vulnerability, even as it shamed me. I couldn’t help it. I was made that way. “I won’t leave you here with that thing.”

The close air was rich with my scent. It suffused us as we sat on the bench, legs almost touching. He cringed, nostrils flaring. I fought to keep my wings down, to not grab him.

“They won’t accept me.”

“I’ll make them.”

He didn’t meet my eye. “She’ll challenge you. For me.”

Bang. He was still right. She would. “Let her. I’m not afraid.”

Eamon crossed to the elder and stood over him, jaw clenched, the sinews of his neck taut and visible as he stared. Through the haze of my own aggressive desire I caught a whiff of a strange scent, complex, confusing. It held floral notes, a sad longing, even love, but something darker underneath made me scowl. A pungent loathing. The reek of death.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, and there was a terrible grimace on his face, the look I’d seen on so many younglings as they launched forward into a fight.

When he reached out I thought he might wrap his hands around the old man’s scrawny neck and finish the job I’d started, but he just pulled the blankets up a little higher. Now his face was unreadable, a placid mask. One perfected over time.

* * *

We had to trek through Old City because as slight as Eamon was, I didn’t think I could fly him. The Apes let us be; Eamon moved through the city almost as if he was invisible. It seemed to rub off on me as well.

We arrived at the Museum close to midnight. I knew the others were on the rooftop, and Bang would be there. I felt a twinge of fear even as a part of me embraced the thought of her challenge and my wings flexed in anticipation. But when I looked at Eamon, head craning on his thin neck at the building towering before us, I softened. He was exhausted, cowering under his coat, his eyes framed by dark circles. And he had to climb.

“I’ll climb with you.”

He shook his head. “You don’t have to. I’ll see you up there.”

I took him in my arms. “I want to.”

We climbed. It was hard, much harder than I’d imagined. Eamon was agile and practiced, clinging to the porous bricks like a lizard, pulling himself over the jutting ledges. I sweated and grunted, struggling to keep pace. Eamon noticed and slowed. We settled into a rhythm, side by side, and the rooftop grew closer.

We were almost at the top when Eamon paused on a ledge to let me rest. I panted and tried to stay calm. I was wearing myself out with the climb. A whoop and some laughter drifted from the darkness. I had to force my wings to stay down. Bang was up there. Soon I’d have to face her.

“You asked me why I sneak into the museum at night,” Eamon said. “When we met.”

I wiped sweat from my eyes. “I did.”

“I look at the exhibits.”

I shook my head. “What’s an exhibit?”

His broken wings shuddered a little, with surprise or laughter I wasn’t sure. “You know. Stuffed animals. They’ve got dogs, foxes, giant cats. One of them has fangs, maybe five, six inches long.” I could smell his excitement. “There are things with hooves, things with horns. There’s an elephant in there, Senna, in the middle of a big room. It has its trunk raised high in the air, and it glares at you. Its eyes follow you everywhere you go.”

I’d heard of elephants somewhere. Big. Massive even. Grey. I nodded.

“But they also have Apes. Stuffed Apes. Some of them are normal.” His voice was disembodied, insubstantial as the wind whistled past. “But some of them, in the back, have tails. Fur. Scales. Long, pointed skulls, giant owl eyes.”

He moved close and I breathed in his wonderful scent. But it was tinged with something sour, something pungent.

“And some have wings,” he whispered.

I felt myself flush and I was glad for the dark so he might not notice. I couldn’t help it, but I was still ashamed. He was trying to tell me something. Something important. My mind was a muddled stew of desire.

“We’re experiments. They made us to be special, to be great, but we’re not. We are grotesques. Mistakes. Fucking mistakes.”

“No.” I shook my head.

“My sire.” He shook his head. “I mean the elder I live with. He told me. He helped me understand.”

I saw the elder, his smile, the flush on his chest. I imagined him plucking Eamon off the street when he was just a youngling, taking him in, making him feel safe, filling his head with these ideas. How could the Apes have “made” us?

“I’m not a mistake.” I spread my beautiful wings, beat them, once, twice, wafting my scent into the air. Let Bang smell it. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fly back to Old City, back to the decrepit little house and rip out the elder’s throat.

Instead, I pulled Eamon to me, wrapping him in my arms. “You’re not a mistake.” I caressed his damaged wings, hidden beneath his coat. “He did this to you. He’s the one who’s grotesque.” It was difficult to push him away, but I did. We had to a little farther still to go.

* * *

I went over the edge of the roof first, a bit clumsy, Eamon slipping over like a whisper to stand beside me. They were all there around the fire, staring.

Bang stood, eyes glittering, and raised her wings. They were large and crimson, a dark, bloody red. The others moved away from her. I took a deep breath and raised my own wings as high and wide as I could. I caught a whiff of her scent, an acrid spice I’d tasted before when she’d attacked others, and fought the urge to cower. I couldn’t show fear.

“You’re back, Senna.” Her eyes flicked to Eamon and she let her gaze linger, showing me disrespect, like I wasn’t a threat. Her chest flushed. “Give him to me.”

I took a step forward, clenching my fists. “No.”

Bang laughed still leering at Eamon. “You want to fight me over him? Why? There’s something wrong with him, isn’t there?” She took a step, pumped her wings. “Why doesn’t he fly?”

I smelled Eamon’s shame like a thick coating of oil in the air. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Liar.” Peapod crouched behind Bang, wings up, eyes glinting. “I saw him last night. I saw it all.”

I wanted to rip his conniving, jealous head off. They all knew.

“Give him to me.” Bang took another step forward shoving a cowering youngling out of her way and kicked at the fire, sending a scatter of sparks into the night. “Or I’m going to take him from you.”

Eamon tried to come forward but I pushed him back. She would rush me, I’d seen her do it so often, and I didn’t want him getting caught between us. My guts roiled. Every cell in my body urged me to attack before she came at me, and I struggled to wait, not to lash out in fear and panic. She was grinning, showing her teeth, like she knew I couldn’t beat her. The others knew it too. I could smell their excitement in a confusing riot of jagged scent.

Bang leapt across the fire, a billow of black smoke rolling with her as she beat her wings and pummeled my face and head. I dropped to one knee as her sharp nails raked across my cheek and a hot wash of blood splattered in my eyes. She was strong. She drove me down onto the other knee but I managed to grab her wrists and we twisted back and forth trying to throw each other over. She spat and cursed. She reeked of musk, which drove my rage into a wild fury. Younglings screeched and danced above us in the air.

She glared, her eyes black and huge, spit flying from her open mouth. I let go of one wrist, and as her nails slashed my face again, I reared back and punched her, hard, in the jaw. Her grip loosened and I threw her down. I grabbed one crimson wing with both hands as I straddled her back and screamed.

“Senna! Don’t.”

I snarled. Eamon crouched before me, huge brown eyes pleading. The air was sickly sweet now, the younglings around us anticipating what was about to happen. Bang groaned. I could feel the delicate bones of her wing.

“Don’t,” Eamon said. “Please.” I stared at him. He was reeling me in, again, asking me to go against my nature. I tightened my grip on the wing, seeing the elder’s face as I’d squeezed his neck. It felt so good.

I slammed Bang’s head onto the rooftop, feeling her go slack beneath me. I ripped some feathers out and threw them into the air with another scream. It was part triumph, part frustration. I wanted to break her, take her place, but Eamon didn’t want me to.

He took my arm, stroking my heaving, blood covered chest.

He led me to the edge of the roof. The younglings followed, gathering around us, wings up and alert. They were confused, not understanding why I hadn’t crippled Bang, ending the fight properly, and they were aroused, dangerous. They wanted resolution.

Eamon ducked past me, unzipping his coat, slipping it off.

“No!” I reached for him but it was too late.

There was silence. I smelled fear. Some of it was Eamon’s, maybe some was mine, but it also drifted across the rooftop from the others. He turned slowly back and forth, spreading his wings, scars visible in the yellow moon light, and a gust of wind ruffled the few feathers he had left, lifting one off into the darkness. I tried to meet his gaze but he looked right through me. He was wearing his mask again. He posed for the younglings, for me too, body rigid and so still, he looked unnatural, unreal.

Peapod stared, lips puckered like he’d swallowed rotten meat, and most of the other younglings looked away, tucking and folding their wings.

I took Eamon’s hand, caressed it, felt his warmth. The mask fell. He looked at me, brown eyes wet, and his shoulders slumped.

I pulled him close, wrapping him in a protective embrace, and pushed off the edge of the roof. For a moment, we dropped. He was so heavy, despite his slight frame. Then I caught an updraft. Pumping my wings, struggling, I gained equilibrium and we rose. Eamon’s lips were against my neck, and his sweet, grassy scent, suffused me. Below us, the city was filled with lights. Somewhere out there, we’d find a place to land.

 

* * *

About the Author

Christopher Zerby is a Los Angeles based speculative fiction writer and a leading expert on imaginary robots. His stories have appeared in The Colored Lens, Five on the Fifth, and Murder Park After Dark. In a previous life he mixed records and drove around the U.S. and Canada in a van playing music. He regrets nothing. You can find him on twitter: @chriszerby or visit his website: https://www.christopherzerby.com/

by Kara Hartz

“How seriously would her report be taken if one of the first alien creatures she described was a perfect textbook fairy tale unicorn? She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do it.”

Katelyn’s hands shook, making the image through her scope jump and blur. She gave up trying to look. It couldn’t be what it looked like. Well, maybe it could be. This planet hadn’t had a full astrobiology research team here before. She was the first human to set eyes on these animals. But still… no, it couldn’t be.

She’d been so determined not to harbor any preconceived notions about what alien life should look like. She’s wanted to be open to the most bizarre, the most alien beings possible, so she didn’t miss anything, that she’d been taken completely off guard by the so familiar, yet so impossible sight.

Before her lay a green field with a stream running off to the eastern edge, the alien had been standing with its back to her. It looked an awful lot like the hind end of a horse except for the silvery, sparkly tail that shimmered so brightly it almost hurt to look at. Then the creature had lifted its head, with its matching shiny mane, and… the horn. The single golden horn. How seriously would her report be taken if one of the first alien creatures she described was a perfect textbook fairy tale unicorn? She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to do it.

She laid her scope aside and pulled her camera out of its case. It had a tripod, so she wouldn’t need to worry about her shaking hands. She looked up to make sure the alien was still there. It had its head back down, returned to its grazing, but was still there.

“Report in, Number Four,” her radio buzzed. She snatched it up before Jose could ask again.

“Number Four. Subject under observation. Request minimal radio noise until all clear,” she whispered, and then held a hand over the speaker to muffle Jose’s response when it came.

“Understood.”

The unicorn was still eating peacefully, apparently undisturbed by the noise. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

She snapped photos and made notes, creeping ever closer. The creature began moving away over a gentle hill in the lush pasture, and she followed. On the other side, the alien met up with a half dozen more just like it. The small herd greeted the newcomer, rearing up, and vocalizing with a sound like tinkling bells. They were so beautiful. Despite the cloudless sunny day, a rainbow formed in the sky behind them. This was totally insane. How was she possibly going to explain this to anyone? Katelyn wasn’t sure how long she stood there, tears welling up in her eyes, but she was proud of herself to at last remember to lift her camera and get some pictures before the rainbow faded.

As she took her photos, one of the aliens, she thought it was the original one she’d followed, turned to look at her. She realized then that she was standing out in the open, at the top of a hill no less. She squatted down, but knew it was too little, too late. But the creature didn’t flee. It approached. As it started back up the slope directly toward her, she stood back up. It paused, tilting its head to look at her with one eye, the sun glinting off its radiant horn. What could it be made of to shine like that? It didn’t look like bone, and it was so sharp!

She found herself walking slowly down the hillside until she and the unicorn were face to face. It gave a small tinkling whinny to her. She let out a laugh, her tears now flowing freely. It was like a dream.

“All stations report immediately. Alert! Alert!”

The alien cocked it head at the radio hanging from Katelyn’s belt. The other members of the herd had taken notice of her now, and were coming to join them.

“Number Four report. Something’s happened to Josh and Amy. Report in now.”

Her most ambitions daydreams about what she might discover doing astrobiology fieldwork didn’t involve anything as breathtaking as these unicorns. She was totally consumed with the magnificent creature in front of her. She held out a tentative hand.

“Katelyn, please respond. Please!”

An alien behind her nuzzled at the radio, knocking it from her belt and onto the grass, and silenced it with a hoof as it stepped around her. Katelyn didn’t notice. She thought the unicorn in front of her was going to put its nose against her hand, but instead, as its head neared, it gave her a gentle lick with its warm pink tongue. It was the happiest moment of her life.

* * *

“We found their equipment,” Jose said to the stern faced, grey haired woman on the small monitor in front of him.

“And…?” She shared his red eyes and tired voice. The whole project team was in mourning.

“All the same story. What they recorded in their notes and what they recorded on film are completely different. They all seem to have been attacked by the same type of small, pack hunting aliens. Really vulgar, vicious things. But their logs all describe other things: mermaids, unicorns, hobbits, and one – a miniature giraffe.”

“Hallucinations.”

“That’s what we think. We aren’t yet sure what caused it though. We scavenged a few… remains.” He looked involuntarily toward the ship’s deep freeze where biological specimens were stored. “Hopefully they’ll give you more information when they can be examined.”

“That doesn’t sound too hopeful. What sorts of remains?”

“Bones mostly. Some bits we aren’t too sure about. But Katelyn’s –” his voice faded, and he had to clear his throat to continue, “skull was found intact.”

“Oh. Umm, good, then.” The woman looked away. “Well, after you set the warning beacons and get on your way, I’ll look forward to seeing you home again. Be safe.”

 

* * *

Originally published in Cover of Darkness

About the Author

Kara has worked with animals all her adult life, from wild animal training at a theme park to volunteering with wildlife rehabs, farm animal sanctuaries, and the local SPCA. She currently works as a Registered Veterinary Technician in Northern California.

Like many writers, it was her love of reading that gave her the impulse to start to write. Science-fiction and fantasy were always the most fun for both.

During the pandemic, she is attempting to grow a garden and learning to play D&D with her family. Both are coming along with mixed results.

She blogs on many subjects at https://karahartz.com/ and can be found on Twitter @karabu74.

by Jason Kocemba

“She was lit not by moon or sun but by light from another world.”

It was late in the afternoon when I stepped out of the loamy dimness beneath the trees and into the brightness of the low afternoon sun. It would soon be hidden behind the cliffs of the valley, creating a premature twilight.

A large animal called out from the trees. I looked back into the gloom but could see nothing. What kind of wildlife lived in this valley, anyway?

I considered going back to Carrie and Billy at the campsite, but it didn’t really matter if I went back now or later: it would still be dark when I got there. Perhaps if I returned later the noisy animal would be gone.

That decided it.

I continued on, hearing the falls as a distant hissing rumble. And then I rounded an outcrop of bare stone and there they were, the Magus Falls: a five-meter-wide sheet of water that fell sixty meters down the cliff. There was the roar as thousands of tonnes of water fell to smash apart into a boiling torrent at the bottom. Tiny droplets of water billowed out as a thick mist, blown away by the water displaced air. A small loch had formed beneath the cliffs which emptied into a river that flowed away to my left. The rocks that were hammered by the deluge were bare, wet and dark. The farther from the water the greener the rocks became: carpets of lichens and mosses covered the tops of boulders and the face of the cliff, thriving in the constant misty damp.

I stood on the path by the shore of the loch and watched the water fall.

On the right, the path curved behind the curtain of water. It was dark under there. Was that a cave behind the falls? If so, I wanted to explore it, but: one, I had no waterproofs; two, no change of clothes; and three, it was already late. Maybe I could convince Carrie and Billy to come back tomorrow with swimsuits and towels?

The mist coated everything with tiny droplets of water, including me. My jacket, jeans and hair were spotted with thousands of them. I licked my lips and they tasted salty and tangy with dissolved minerals.

Then the whole world began to sparkle with golden light.

I looked behind me and saw the sun had lowered enough to touch the rim of the valley, and the last rays of the day shone on the millions of water droplets.

It was like magic.

As the sun sank behind the cliffs, the golden sparkles winked out as the shadow crept across the valley floor and soon the light was gone and I was left in shadow.

I looked up, and there, rising above the undulating surface of the river at the top of Magus Falls was the full moon. It was the largest moon I’d ever seen, it almost seemed too big for the sky. It rose higher and grew brighter as the sun set. The roar of the falls and the misty droplets covered me like a blanket.

I blinked. Long and slow.

My hands felt numb with cold when I wiped moisture from my face. I tore my eyes free of the moon.

The sky was dark. How long had I stood there watching the moon rise?

I glanced at Magus falls and the breath caught in my throat. The moonlight shone through the mist and produced an ethereal bow of silvery light. The edges of the bow faded through the colors of the spectrum to darkness. The curve of the bow reached half-way up the falls and then fell down beyond the dark ribbon of the path.

Not a rainbow but a moonbow. Its light there and not there at the same time. I didn’t want to blink in case it went away.

On the path, under the arch of the moonbow, a shadowy shape appeared from beneath the water curtain. It was shaped like a horse as it walked along the path and away from the crashing noise of the waterfall. When it reached the light of the moonbow, it walked in front of the glow. After a few more strides the shadow-horse stopped. It lifted its head and looked behind it, towards the water tumbling off the cliff. It stood motionless for several seconds. But now, with no change that I could see, the shadow-horse looked tense, as if ready to bolt.

<Danger/death/fear,> came a voice in my head. <Flee/away/run.>

The head of the shadow-horse began to glow silver like the moonbow. Between one blink and the next, the shadow shape disappeared, as if it were never there.

My heart pumped hard in my chest, thumping, thumping as I tried to understand what had just happened. What had been that voice in my head? Was I still in a trance under the spell of the moon?

The moonbow darkened. No longer silver, but redder.

My hands curled into fists. I pressed my teeth together. It felt like someone was tickling the back of my neck as the hairs stood up.

Another shadow appeared under the moonbow and flowed along the path. Its shape changed as it moved. Not once did it look like a horse.

The shadow stopped and I saw its eyes glow like the altered moonbow: a dark muddy red.

A deep growl vibrated in my mind. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. And then I remembered that the other voice in my head, the one that spoke, had told me I should run.

So I ran.

The path back towards the trees and away from the falls was moonlit and easy to follow.

The growl turned into a howl. It was more than a terrifying sound because it was in my head and I could feel what it felt: I felt hunger, I felt excitement, I felt joy and I felt hate. Waves of emotions washed my brain as it began to hunt me.

I ran along the path and into the trees. The path beneath the trees glowed even without the moonlight. I sprinted through the darkness.

Through the mind-link, I felt the shadow-beast reach the place where I had stood near the loch. I could smell my own scent in its nostrils. I felt the saliva fill its maw.

I began to find it hard to breathe. I was running too hard. I had to slow down, I had to, I couldn’t keep going at this pace. I’d exhaust myself and the beast would have me for dinner. I would need my strength to fight if it caught up to me.

<Courage/bravery/grit,> said the voice in my head. <Look/right-ways/observe.>

I looked and saw a silvery light deep among the trees. The same silvery light of the moonbow.

<Come/beacon/follow.>

In the stories, you’re told to never leave the path, but the glow was in the trees and I couldn’t see a path. I slowed to a jog (oh, how I wanted to run and run, faster and faster, not slower) and when I rounded a Rowan tree there was a narrow trail, edged by bushes, leading into the forest towards the light.

The hunger and menace and joy of the shadow-beast pressed into my thoughts.

I would be caught if I stayed on the path, and I didn’t want to be caught. Leaving the path was my only choice, my only hope. I ran onto the narrow trail where branches slapped me, grabbed at me, tried to trip me. A branch whipped the back of my hand. It stung. The bushes were thorny and hemmed me in on both sides. They offered no escape, no place to hide, only ensnarement and scratches. I followed the trail as it meandered through the trees. Sometimes I’d be running towards the light, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right. Sometimes I couldn’t see the light at all until I made a turn and caught another glimpse of the glow. I had no idea in which direction I was running.

The shadow-beast loomed in my mind as it gained on me.

The trail turned and straightened. A bright light shone through a tangle of thorny branches ahead. I did not slow down, instead, I ran faster. At the last moment, I lifted my arms to cover my face and leapt. Thorns scratched and pierced my arms and legs and belly, my legs got tugged away from under me and then I was falling.

I landed on my arms and belly on soft springy turf. I lay there and gasped for breath.

I could smell blood, as if from the beast’s nostrils, my blood, and from the dark trees there came a howl of manic glee. I scrambled to my feet.

I stood in a circular clearing in the trees. In the middle of the clearing stood a horse. The horse’s shoulders were taller than my head. She was the source of the silvery light. It glowed around her head and flowed in rivulets down her neck and spread across her whole body. She was lit not by moon or sun but by light from another world. The edges of her outline did not seem to stay still, they moved and pulsed as if she could barely keep her shape. She turned her head to look at me and that’s when I saw the horn growing out of her forehead. It was the source of the light, the source of her majesty and power, the source of everything. She was more real, more there, than the grass and the trees. She stood super-imposed on top of reality.

She was Unicorn.

My eyes would not look away from her horn. The light on it pulsed, like breathing. It soothed me. Everything else but the light went away: my heavy breathing, the trees, my aching muscles, the moon, my pain, the shadow-beast that hunted me.

She knelt, one knee after the other, like bowing, and positioned her head to look at me with one eye.

<Mount/live/escape,> she said. An image of muddy red eyes appeared in my mind.

She turned her head so that I could no longer see the horn. I blinked. My breathing stayed calm and easy as I approached her.

The muscles under her pearly iridescent coat twitched. The light played over her curves and shifted like crashing waves. Her mane was white. Jagged streaks of blue light ran down each coarse strand of hair.

I grabbed two handfuls of mane and it crackled. All the hair on my body began to rise as I was filled with electricity.

The hunger of the shadow-beast forced its way into my mind again and pushed aside my newfound calm. I turned and saw, through the tangled bushes, the shadow-beast attempt to enter the clearing. It followed no path but ran straight towards me. It crashed through the undergrowth, snapping some branches, but many, more supple vines wrapped around it so that it became entangled. It heaved itself forward inch by straining inch.

I tightened my grip on her mane and threw my leg over her back. She began to rise, which threw my weight forward, and I thought I was going to fall over the top of her head. The ground already looked a long way down.

Then she surged forward and my body jerked back, my arms whipped straight, my fists filled with her electric mane. I pulled myself forward to lie on her back. As my chest and belly touched her I felt pulled down, attracted to her by an invisible force.

In two strides her hooves drummed out a dum-dumdum canter on the turf.

The shadow-beast roared. The sound echoed in my mind and then a moment later in my ears. I screamed my fear and defiance back at it. Below me, her body vibrated against mine as I heard and felt her answering neigh: loud and strident like a trumpet.

She heaved below me and then I was weightless, I felt like I was falling, but I stayed stuck to her back. I looked down through a gap between my arm and her neck and I saw a tangle of branches below us. And then we were down, and trees, lit by her glowing horn, flashed past in a strobed silvery blur.

Through her mane, I saw another wall of branches ahead. She didn’t slow and she heaved below me and we were airborne again, flying for a long second, and then her hooves struck the turf and we burst out of the forest and into the moonlight. We thud-thud-thudded through the long grass and then we were back on the path.

I saw the moon before us, bright and high in the sky. We were heading back toward the falls.

“No!” I shouted. “The valley, the falls! It’s a dead-end!”

<Straight/winding/turning,> she said. <Past/future/now.>

I could do nothing, stuck as I was to her back. I was not going to fall off. I couldn’t. So I found the rhythm of her gallop and willed my hands to relax their grip on her mane.

<Scent/smell/hunt,> she said with a mind-picture of me. <Forever/chase/kill.> A mind-picture of the shadow straining to escape the branches.

The crashing sound of Magus Falls grew like someone had turned up the volume. The path was a blur beneath us. We ran towards clouds of water mist lit by moonlight.

And in those clouds, I saw the moonbow. It was dim, barely there at all, as it arced across the falls. She headed straight for the center of the arch and galloped faster. Her hooves thudded on the packed earth and then all I could hear was the plashing of hooves on water. Spray soaked me as she ran over the surface of the loch.

The glow around her head brightened and the moonbow responded. It shone stark and bright, as real, as there, as my impossible mount. Rainbow colors projected out from the edges of the bow and painted the billowing mist in reds and oranges and yellows and greens and blues and indigos and violets.

The moonbow and the multi-colored mist shifted color again. No longer silver, but bluer.

The shadow-beast howled. Through the mind-link, I felt anger and disappointment. It didn’t want to lose the prey. All I wanted was for the howl to stop and for my mind to be my own again.

I felt her muscles tighten and bunch under me. They released their power and we leapt under the moonbow’s arch.

The mind-link with the beast cut off in mid-howl, one second there, the next, silent.

There was a moment of spinning, a moment of dizziness, a moment of confusion, a moment of nausea.

Then it was just bright, so bright I had to close my eyes and bury my head against her neck.

We struck ground (not water) and slowed to a walk: clip-clop clip-clop.

I opened my eyes. We were in the bright, late afternoon sunshine. The sun was warm on my skin. I held handfuls of her mane in my fists. There were no sparks. My thighs slipped and I realized I was no longer stuck to her coat.

She walked towards the trees and the roar of the falls diminished behind us.

“Wait, stop. The monster-,” I said.

<Un-truth/shadow-beast/behind,> she said. <Shadow-beast/future/ahead.>

“I don’t understand,” I said.

<Truth/girl-child/wisdom,> she said. <Come/hide/await.> A mind-image of me again. <Wait/clearing/pass.>

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

She said nothing.

It was cooler under the shadow of the trees. We walked on the path for a while and then diverted onto a side trail (a different one, I think, there was no Rowan this time). The bushes and branches and thorns did not touch her as we passed. She followed the winding trail back to a clearing. She walked to the center and then knelt without warning and I slipped forward, my arms and legs wrapped around her neck. I held on, fearful of falling over her head and touching the horn. Or being impaled on it.

Had this been her plan all along? Maybe it wasn’t the shadow-beast that hunted me, maybe it was her.

<Instinct/truth/perception,> she said <Moonbow/protection/fortune.> She tossed her head and I slipped further. <Live/girl-child/safe.>

I relaxed my legs and fell off the side of her neck and onto the short grass. It was good to be standing on the ground again; to be able to decide, on my own, where to go and what to do.

“Will you-”

She neighed, her message to be quiet was clear, even without mind-speak.

I recognized that neigh: it was the same sound I had heard earlier that afternoon when I had left the trees.

<Observe/girl-child/see,> she said. <Silent/hidden/mouse-like.> She nudged me with her soft muzzle towards the edge of the clearing. I shied away from the horn. I couldn’t look at it. I didn’t want to.

Around a tree at the edge of the clearing, I could see, by some luck or magic, a clear view all the way to the edge of the forest.

And on the path, right there, I saw myself. I was wearing the same red cap, the same blue jeans, the same walking boots, the same orange windbreaker.

It was me. A then-me.

Then-me stood on the path and looked into the trees. Was she wondering, as I had, what kind of animals lived in this valley? Then-me turned away and continued walking, having made her decision to go on to the falls. I lost sight of her as she became obscured by trees.

When I turned, the horn was right in front of me, a meter away and pointed at my chest. It was not glowing and it’s point looked infinitely sharp.

<Go/friends/return,> she said. <Silence/secrecy/ever-more.> The iridescent curving waves moved across her coat flared to brightness. She disappeared right in front of me.

<Girl-child/moonbow/life-gift,> she said and was no longer a presence in my mind.

I stood in the clearing and waited for something else to happen.

The trees around me were evenly spaced and large and old, and there were twelve of them. Between each trunk was the start of a trail, eleven in total. None had branches barring the way. Hadn’t all the trails been blocked by thorns and undergrowth last night? No, not last night, the night still to come. Maybe I wasn’t even in the same clearing.

I chose the trail closest to me and it led me back to the forest path where an earlier version of me had just walked. What would happen if I ran after her, to warn her?

I didn’t do that because that didn’t happen. I had no memory of meeting myself on the path. And if I didn’t remember then it didn’t happen. Right?

I hiked back down the valley to the campsite and my friends. I hurried and so made it back before it got too dark.

“How was it?” Carrie asked from beside the tent. Then she looked closer. “What happened, Jessie? You’re a mess!”

I looked down at the dirt and the grass stains and the bloody scratches. “Yeah.” I laughed, dragged my fingers through my hair. “I left the path and got lost. When I found it, it was too late so I came back. I never even got close enough to hear the falls.”

“Lost in the woods,” Billy said. He walked into camp with his arms full of firewood. “Well, I’m glad you un-lost yourself. Saved us the trouble of coming to rescue you!” Billy motioned at the firewood with his head. “Make yourself useful and grab a log.”

I took several large branches from the top of the pile in his arms.

“Let’s get up early and go see the falls tomorrow,” Carrie said.

“Okay,” I said, thinking of the shadow-beast. “Early is good. It’ll be better if we go together anyway.”

“Deal, as long as you don’t get lost again,” Billy said with a grin. “Now move it, we’ve got marshmallows to burn.”

 

* * *

About the Author

Jason Kocemba lives and writes in Kirkwall, Orkney and is the only male in a household of females (of which 2 are people, 2 are cats, and 1 a dog). He loves stories and is a lifelong consumer and creator of them. He is an optimist and has hope that he will learn from his mistakes (the Court of Self-delusion is still in session and the jury has yet to return with a verdict). If you like, you can find more on jasonkocemba.com.

by Garick Cooke

“For a thousand years the dragon’s children had ruled unchallenged, but a new people had risen in the north, and they brought war to the draks.”

At six months, he ate his sister while they were both still inside their mother.

On the eve of his birth, then, he emerged fat and one-eyed, with the scars of his first fight still on his hide. For the sun-loving draks, a night birth was ill-omened. They were a cruel people, but even among them, infant cannibalism was a thing of the dark past. Thus, doubly ill-omened, he was named Moon-Eye, and he became untouchable.

* * *

In deep time, the skies dimmed and the world cooled. The draks, creatures of light and heat, weakened and dwindled. For a thousand years the dragon’s children had ruled unchallenged, but a new people had risen in the north, and they brought war to the draks.  For many years, the draks fought a long rearguard action, always retreating to the south. But, clannish and no longer fecund, they were defeated piecemeal, until only Moon-Eye remained.

He was then a drak of something over six hundred years, a lean and battle-hardened veteran. In his youth, he fought many duels over his name, and in the long war against the moles, he had been its most savage proponent. His scaly hide, once bright silver, was now scarred and gray. He haunted the hills, preying on any mole who ventured out alone. He carried a saber crafted in the olden times, when the draks still knew how to forge unbreakable alloys. His name became a fearful legend among the moles. But they were many and increasing, and he was alone.

He went south, seeking legends. The fine mansions of the draks had been pulled down, but here and there he found an isolated tower, or a house hidden in the hills, and he took what he could find. Some of the old books still contained the knowledge he needed. The way led ever farther south, farther than any drak had traveled in his lifetime. But, at last, he found what he sought.

* * *

The dragon slept under a mountain.

Time had worn his refuge down like an old tooth, and its approaches were choked with rubble and scrubby trees. Moon-Eye spent three days excavating the entrance. Within, he found a tunnel of dressed stone. He spent another day gathering deadwood to make torches and set off into the interior. In the heart of the earth, far beneath the dead peak, he entered a vast chamber whose extent he could not guess in the blackness. Here the dragon lay prone on a bed of rock, his scaly length seeming endless. Moon-Eye walked all the way around him and then sat down to rest. Then he burned certain herbs he had gathered on the mountainside and said certain words he had read in the old books, and he waited.

It began later, much later, with a creak and a shudder that pulled him out of a dreamless sleep. The ground shivered, and he got to his feet and lit a torch. More time passed. His torch had burned away almost to nothing when the voice came out of the darkness: a huge, ancient thing, as if the mountain itself were speaking.

“What’s this? A starved lizard?”

He raised the torch over his head. Far above, he saw a face looking down. The dragon’s eyes gleamed like liquid fire.

Moon-Eye drew himself up to his full eight feet. “I am Moon-Eye.”

The dragon blew out a contemptuous breath, and Moon-Eye was buffeted by a sooty wind.

“In my day, children were taller. Why have you wakened me? I was dreaming good dreams of fire and brimstone…”

“Your Bat-Winged Eminence, there is trouble.”

And Moon-Eye told the dragon of the centuries that had passed, of the dimming of the skies and the decline of the draks. And he told him of the moles.

“Hmmm,” said the dragon, and fell silent. He had lowered his head to rest on his great forepaws and closed his eyes. Again, Moon-Eye waited. After a time, the golden eyes reopened and fixed on him.

“I have searched far in my mind,” said the dragon. “You do not lie. My brothers and sisters are silent, my children are no more, and there is mischief afoot in the world. You did well to waken me, little one. Now bow your head.” The dragon touched him on the brow with a black talon like a scimitar. “See now, as I do! With the all-seeing gaze of your mind, and not your feeble senses. You are half-blind from birth, but now when your eye falls on the enemy, it will be as if you strike him with your sword…”

The death gaze, thought Moon-Eye. He had heard stories of such things existing in the distant past. He had thought them all lies.

“Go back to the surface and await me there,” said the dragon.

* * *

The following day the ground shook and there was a great crash, as of huge stones shifting, and the dragon emerged from his rocky lair to perch on the mountainside. When he spread his wings, there came a vast creaking sound, like the wind in a forest of great trees.

“It is well,” he said, flexing his pinions. “They will still carry me. Now, I will see about these moles. I will turn over their cities like anthills and dig them out of the ground. Then I will burn everything to a cinder. This world belonged to me, once. The moles will learn to fear me.” He laughed, a sound that caused Moon-Eye’s head to ache. “Now, it is beneath my dignity to crawl over the earth like a snake, but follow me as best you can, little one, and you shall have your vengeance.”

The wind from those great wings knocked Moon-Eye down and flattened him against the stony ground. When he was able to look up, the dragon was a dot in the sky, arrowing away to the north.

He climbed to his feet and began walking.

 

* * *

About the Author

Garick Cooke is a California native but a longtime resident of Houston, Texas, where he attended the University of Houston on a full scholarship, studying Biology and History. He has worked construction estimator for over 20 years. He has four dogs and enjoys writing science-fiction and fantasy in his spare time. He has previously self-published an anthology entitled Similia, but “Moon-Eye” is his first professional sale.

by Gloria Carnevale

“Mama’s stomach was transparent as cellophane, and one could see directly into her. This is where the creature resided.”

Mama couldn’t afford to be careless this time. She needed to move them, and quickly. She had found the ultimate setting. There were small cabins scattered throughout the property, most hidden by tall pines. A building alongside of the creek was perfect for meetings and meals. But it was the abandoned infirmary, complete with an operating theatre, which convinced her. It was a pity that Monkey and Pug wouldn’t be joining them, for they had begun to show signs of maturing, and Mama couldn’t have that. Besides, she was certain that there would be some who had been left behind here, and Mama could give them life.

Yes, it was perfect. She’d move them here today.

* * *

Pug shifted under Monkey’s weight.  Monkey had been sleeping with her mouth open and Pug had slipped out during the night. They had been sleeping in an abandoned pool every evening since they had been left behind.

Monkey had cried uncontrollably when Mama left. Having known no other “mother,” she relied on Mama for everything.

Mama had tried to fix Monkey’s defect, to no avail. She didn’t have the right tools, the right anesthesia, nor the right knowledge. She had seen these birth defects before, and was hard-pressed to figure out what to do.

Mama herself had been abandoned, although that had been so many years ago that she vaguely remembered it. Her “adopted” father had been a physician of sorts; his life’s work was hidden from the outside world, which he found to be best under the circumstances.

He took Mama in and began a series of experiments on her that were meant to heal her affliction. He succeeded to an extent — on the outside she looked as normal as the next person. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth, arms, legs, torso… what else did one need? Mama’s hair was sparse around her head, and in some places it stood up in tufts. All in all, he felt that he had done a fine job making her presentable on the outside.

There was that one difficulty with getting the child inside of her to cooperate. Try as he would, he couldn’t figure out how to destroy it without destroying Mama.

* * *

Mama’s stomach was transparent as cellophane, and one could see directly into her. This is where the creature resided.

The creature required nothing more than to be left alone. It didn’t seem to need food, and it never grew. Yet it was there, silent, eyes watching all of the time, looking back and forth at the doctor’s every move.

Mama seemed nonplussed by it all, and went about her life as the doctor’s assistant as if the creature wasn’t there. But it was, and once Mama reached puberty, there were no more “experiments” to be done. The thin wails of the creature were too much for either Mama or the doctor to bear, so he decided to just let it alone. Oh, he had tried, and he had the scars to prove it. At one time he had tried going through Mama’s delicate parts to reach the creature and had his hand bitten with such force that he lost a finger. He had had to talk Mama through sewing it back on for him.

No, he wouldn’t be trying that again any time soon. If Mama was okay with it, then so was he. Besides, he had many defective beings with which he could practice and operate on. And he so loved his work. He gave new life to those who were afflicted and discarded, and allowed them to live with him on the property, far away from curious eyes.

Monkey was one such creature for whom the doctor had taken a liking.

She was diminutive — everything about her was perfectly formed in miniature. Her only affliction was Pug, that demonic snake that resided in monkey’s mouth.

The doctor couldn’t get within an inch of Monkey’s face without that god-awful snake slithering out and trying to bite him. Once he had grabbed it by the neck and tried to pull it out of her, but it somehow twisted itself around and bit him in the face. It took fifty-nine stitches to close the gaping wound that it left, not to mention the fact that he had to drink its antidotal venom to survive. He shuddered remembering.

As she got older, Mama became his assistant in all manner of surgeries because after all, these creatures needed constant attention as they had many medical issues that went along with their problems.

Mama enjoyed her work with the doctor, and trying out new techniques as they discovered them, always by trial and error.

She had an idea about operating on Monkey to rid her once and for all of the snake, but first she would need to run it by her mentor. If her hunch was correct, then it would only be a matter of time before every one’s afflictions would be resolved, even her own, although she didn’t mind that which lived within her. Quite the contrary, it was some comfort to know that she was never alone.

* * *

Mama surveyed the property on this fine morning of discovery. The doctor had told her stories of the great virus and how they had come to live in the rural outskirts of the city.

It had begun on the other side of the world, making its way across Europe and the oceans until it came to America, leaving death, destruction, and financial ruin. When the government decided to place everyone on house arrest within the next twenty-four hours, Mama’s grandparents had packed up their belongings and moved their family north to their summer camp, where they lived off the land far away from the deadly virus.

All went well for a time. As summer neared, her grandfather fished the streams with his sons, planted vegetables, and shot what they could for winter meat.

As far as her grandmother was concerned, it was an idyllic life-temporarily. The only oddity were the amount of woodland creatures who would seek shelter in and around their cabin. What with her grandfather and the boys using rifles daily, one would have thought that they would stay far away, but no, it appeared that they actually seemed to enjoy the company of humans, and it was not uncommon to find a woodchuck or a snake curled up alongside of you come morning.

And there were others, too. Some families who had their camps along the creek came seeking shelter form the cities and the virulent situation.

As the years passed there became a new problem to cope with. Several  women were giving birth to children with fantastic afflictions of quite an unordinary sort.

Mama’s grandmother was the midwife for the small community which had begun to grow. When her own daughter gave birth, she was there to attend, but was horror-stricken to find that the birthed infant had an infant-looking creature inside of her, inside of her stomach.

At first, her grandmother thought that it was twins, which can sometimes happen, and looked for a way to puncture the skin to release the creature, to no avail. Her daughter cried out to see her child, but her mother whisked it away, mumbling something about it not breathing.

Her grandmother wasted no time in bringing them both to the “doctor” to see what could be done.

“It’s the devil’s doing, for sure. Kill them both, and I’ll say that the baby died before it was born.”

The doctor had a bit of the macabre in him with a healthy dose of crazy, so he promised to do what was asked of him, and promptly took the child and her internal creature to his lab.

Mama thrived under the doctor’s care, and so did her creature. By now, many of the women who had fled as youngsters with their families were of adult age and giving birth to all sorts of anomalies.

Take, for example, the woman who had given birth to a little boy, who had arms similar to the front legs of a frog, with an enlarged throat and bulging eyes. His back was covered in a green-slimy patina, while his belly was bloated and white. He couldn’t speak, but made sounds that were not unlike a frog’s ribbit.

All of the infants born had afflictions, most of them were appendages of insects, amphibians, mammals, and birds which resided in the woods.

Mama had been the first child born with an affliction, and the doctor passed it off as a defect, but as other women gave birth, there was not one who birthed a single child without something attached to it, either externally or internally.

Generally speaking, the women were traumatized at these revelations, and more than happy to hand them over to Mama, as she became the new midwife for the colony.

Mama wasted no time in bringing them to the doctor’s “lab” for experiments and treatments. What the doctor was discovering as more afflicted were brought to him, was that their “afflictions” were rapidly growing tenacious – more than ever before.

The end result of their tenacity was the demise of the doctor.

One cool evening, Mama was summoned to assist in the birth of a young girl of fifteen, who had become pregnant by the toad boy. Although Mama had tried to hand out birth control to all of the girls, this one getting pregnant only solidified Mama’s beliefs that human birth control didn’t work on… non-humans. So there she was, this young girl, writhing around on the bed with her eyes glazed over, screaming for mercy, for unconsciousness, anything, to take away her agony.

Mama didn’t want to put her hand inside of the girl for fear of disturbing whatever was in there, so she called for the doctor, who, due to his lust for the bizarre and grotesque, was only too happy to comply.

There was no time for him to don a glove, so he put his hand up into her, and felt around.

She ceased her screams, and went limp.

The doctor continued to feel around and probe, forcing his hand further up until he was in to his elbow.

Perplexed, he asked Mama if she was really pregnant, because he didn’t feel anything at all in there.

“Of course she is, keep feeling around. The girl was swollen with something.”

He continued his exploring, and then took his arm and hand out of her.

“Nothing. I’m not sure what is going on.”

In that moment, both of them looked at his arm, which was covered with spiders, all biting him instantaneously. They were recluse spiders, the deadliest of all.

The doctor fell hard upon the floor, as the spiders scattered.

Mama wasted no time in getting her charges moved. She had long suspected that the animals were the ones doing the impregnating, but she never had discussed it with the doctor. Too late now.

She sighed as she left Pug and Monkey. She had wanted to run her thoughts about them past the doctor as well, but never mind. If they were as strong as she was suspecting the creatures were becoming, then they’d be fine on their own.

She patted her stomach, and her creature moved. Mama had never really acknowledged her affliction as she was always busy with the doctor and his work.

She felt a wetness and looked down.

Her skin was leaking fluid as immediate pains shot up to her chest. The fluid became a flood, and within seconds a whoosh of water gushed from her and her creature slipped out.

Mama dropped to her knees, and then rolled into the grass. It was over.

* * *

Some people in town believed the house was haunted.

It had been a vacation spot for city folk, much like a B&B of today, but its last stint as a boarding house had taken its toll. It stood up on a hill, the shingles on the octagonal roof green with moss and sliding downward like a sinking vessel.

In the front yard, vestiges of large ceramic planters and a lily pond remained. At one time the facades of the planters had angels and cherubs in raised relief, but wings and eyes had broken off giving them an eerie, lost look, as if they were waiting for something to take them to their final resting place.

There was a lone concrete bench made for two strategically placed facing west, so one could see the sun set over Illinois Mountain.

Towards the back of the house there remained an Olympic-size pool, void of water, leaves swirling along the bottom to the beat of the wind, as if they were trying to escape down the pool’s drain. Several lounges and chairs were scattered around the edge of the pool, the canvas straps of the seat webbing blowing against the metal frames. To the left of the pool stood a concession stand, the ghost of an old coca-cola cooler and a built-in can opener standing still. To the right of the pool were ancient bath houses, and as the wind whispered through them, one could imagine hearing shower water and wet towels.

During snow-covered winter afternoons, neighborhood children would ride toboggans down the hill, laughing and making snowballs to throw into the pool. But now, October, the only sound one could hear on an afternoon when the shadows drew long was the wind blowing through the empty house shell.

Parents warned their children not to go there at this time of year. “Hunters,” they’d say, “it’s not safe now. Wait until the season is over.” But the children knew better. Stories travel and linger in a small town, and most of them remain.

They had heard about Lilly, the proprietress of the boarding house. That kind of story is the type that does linger and becomes larger than life, or death.

Lilly had inherited the house from her parents who had kept it as a summer sojourn. Since Lilly was single and had no intention of partnering up, she kept the nine guest rooms neat and well-appointed by periodically rearranging the furniture and accessories according to her moods.

It was on one such mission that she discovered the dumbwaiter inside of one of the closets. Curious, she pulled the ropes down and what came up was to haunt her rest of her life.

He, or she, Lilly had never reconciled the gender, sat on the base of the dumbwaiter, its face shining and cherubic, eyes glistening violet, and smiling widely. Its straight hair was growing in tufts of black. Its age was indefinable and it bore no marks of abuse or malnourishment. Lilly’s eyes locked with his. Her fascination grew as their eyes continued to explore one another, yet remain immobile. Suddenly, its round arms began to move away from its sides, and upward towards Lilly. As it put its outstretched arms towards her in a gesture that said “pick me up,” Lilly took two steps back. The dumbwaiter fell towards the basement from whence it had come.

Every day of her life thereafter, Lilly was to second guess what would have happened if only she had reached out to it. She knew one thing for certain: nothing would ever be the same.

 

* * *

About the Author

Gloria Carnvevale’s writing has been a massage for her soul since she was a teenager. She supposes that the Hudson River has a lot to do with her craft, as she walks the river trails to form ideas and characters in her fictional works. She is the author of The Pork Chop in the Window (The Round House Press, 2014), “Epiphany of Maturity” (Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Vol.3, Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2014), and has had both non-fiction and fiction included in WvW Anthology, (Soul Garden Press, 2015), In Celebration of Sisters (Trisha Faye, 2017), In Celebration of Mothers (Trisha Faye, 2016), Mothers of Angels (2019), Chicken Soup for the Soul: Believe in Miracles (2020), What But the Music Anthology (Gelles-Cole, 2020).

Her page on FB is The Pork Chop in the Window where she periodically posts a Vlog. She is an active member of the Wallkill Valley Writers (WvW) in New Paltz, NY, an affiliation of the Amherst Writers and Artists.

“Mama’s Nursery” is a departure from the genres in which she writes. She credits the COVID Pandemic for enhancing her nightmares.

by Emmie Christie

“Usually the squirrels found one or two space acorns a day. The next day, they found seven.”

Catherine didn’t much care for her job.

It wasn’t that the squirrels gave her any lip. They had dental plans, 401Ks, and the whole caboodle after all. The Sound, though, that gave her the shudders.

The animals dug in the fenced-off area of the forest. A sign warned off any journalists or teenagers of biohazards. Not that any would come by. The government had everyone and their aunt training for evacuation. Catherine chewed a big wad of mint gum to keep herself focused.

One squirrel – she herded 112 of them, she couldn’t keep track of their names – chittered and skittered in a circle, then held up a space acorn as if it held up Shakespeare’s skull. The nut had the extraterrestrial shade, the color of space without stars, a black so dark it seemed to swallow the paw that held it.

The other squirrels all stopped and wrinkled their noses in jealousy. The squirrel turned the space acorn over in its paws, puzzling over it, running its claws over the surface.

The squirrel pushed, then rotated the top of it like a Rubik’s cube. It spun and the animal tapped a swift, complicated pattern over it. This went on for a minute or so, and Catherine steeled herself.

The space acorn opened with The Sound. Or more, the absence of sound, that silence so complete it roared in the ears. The Sound stole some of the green from the trees, some of the mint from her tongue. Catherine unwrapped another piece with shaking hands and stuffed it in her mouth.

The squirrel looked over at her. “Another one for the colonists, eh?”

The Sound continued, sipping in bits of Earth. Bits of the squirrel holding the acorn. Catherine looked away. After a few moments, The Sound stopped, and the squirrel disappeared altogether.

Catherine shuddered. She stalked over to the space acorn, now opened and empty. It showed a bit of New Earth as if through a peephole. She picked it up, making sure her long gloves covered the skin on her wrists, and trudged over to the wall that used to be the inside of a barn.

Behind her, the squirrels resumed digging.

Catherine gritted her teeth. The wall had 49 space acorns taped there, and together they had sucked in all the red of the barn and the solidity of its structure, the green of the nearby forest, sunlight, and even the earthy scent of soil. She hadn’t realized that dirt smelled like anything until its absence. Nothing except the Sound existed there – that inhalation, that isolation – and the space acorns that fit together into a mosaic showing a growing vision, no, a growing portal, to New Earth.

Her heavy shoes and the weights on her arms and legs stopped her from getting sucked in. She found the spot where the space acorn fitted. It matched what the others showed, a section of blue sky and a tree branch. She duct taped the nut in place and the Sound increased, a roaring in her ears, and the trees behind her creaked and groaned. It pulled at her and she crouched low to keep her balance – she’d never had to do that before – and tried not to think about the fact that fifty seemed an auspicious number.

She stepped away, going back to her herd. They dug with a new sense of purpose. Perhaps another would find their space acorn today. The strange element had been discovered by the first squirrel just two years ago, nestled in the Earth’s subcutaneous layer, giving every squirrel speech, and urgency, and desperation.

“Hey,” she called. One or two looked up. “Why do you want to find them, anyway?”

She asked them once a day. Just to see if they’d ever give her an answer. As their squirrelherd she thought she should try. A herder protected the herd; that was the job. And every day they told her the same thing.

“To build the gate.”

The government had made them full citizens, let them apply for any jobs they wanted. All they wanted was to dig.

Catherine could understand the concept of burying herself in a job. She’d worked three part-times through college along with a full-time boyfriend. It had helped her avoid the nights of empty space, when there was just the couch and the flickering lamp beside her, and the inevitable feeling of detaching like a leaf and falling, falling, falling.

At the end of the day, Catherine led the squirrels along the path, back towards their little ten-foot houses with their tiny stoves and fridges. She’d thought the newspaper ad had meant this, guiding them back to their pens like they were still animals without thoughts or feelings. But that wasn’t it, not really. The squirrels traveled to and from the digging area whether she escorted them or not.

She should’ve known. Job descriptions were never accurate. There were always extra side roles that no one else wanted to bother with, the gritty, thankless tasks that, when done right, most never knew about.

* * *

Usually the squirrels found one or two space acorns a day. The next day, they found seven.

The wall took in more of the forest, more of the barn’s structure. A blanket of ivy withered on a tree in ten seconds into a gray, shrunken thing. When she went to place the acorns on the barn wall, she had to crouch for several seconds to keep from being pulled in. Tingles ran down her spine when she looked too quickly at it, as if something had just moved outside the frame.

“Frickin people,” she said. “Who wants this to happen, anyway?”

She’d seen the news, of course. Watched the simulations. Their town received the transmissions like all the others. The asteroid was coming in thirty years and nothing they threw at it would stop its course. But did that mean everyone had to give up and throw all of their eggs into one new planet? Just throw in the towel, throw up their hands, and throw away any power of possibility that maybe, just maybe, someone could catch a glimmer of genius and figure out how to stop it?

But keeping her head down meant that she had a house on 4th St, and a steady job, and a way to support herself without having to live with someone that thought her body more of a drive-thru than a temple.

Catherine gritted her teeth. The squirrels dug with more urgency, as if their lives depended on it.

* * *

She missed theatre.

She used to herd goats, back before the world lost its collective head. A solitary position, and she had loved when theatre troupes passed through their small town. She missed breathing in the same air as fifty other people in the town square. Something electric zipped through such a crowd, the anticipation of something shared, of a powerful mutual feeling.

Theatre couldn’t happen, of course, when all the actors and jugglers and contortionists now trained with the rest of Earth to live on another world. So, Catherine talked with the squirrels to distract herself.

“Romeo thought Juliet was dead,” she told them. “And drank the poison. And died. And she woke up and saw he was dead and killed herself. Isn’t that sad?”

“Seems unnecessary,” said one squirrel with a red zigzag pattern along his back. She’d begun to recognize them as their numbers dwindled faster and faster. Now there were 70. Zigzag talked more than the rest.

“Well, that’s Shakespeare in a nutshell. Want some?” She offered a piece of gum. He took it.

“This is good,” he said. “The mint. Really strong. But good.”

Catherine fiddled with the empty wrapper. “Don’t you think that maybe all this is unnecessary?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well. What if someone figured out a way to stop the asteroid? Would you stop digging?”

Zigzag was quiet for a moment. The other squirrels continued to dig. They were a little farther away and maybe couldn’t hear the conversation.

“We build the gate,” he said.

“But – why should you have to? You have feelings, too, you’re a person. Not human, but a person.” She tore her wrapper up in strips, then into tiny bits, and let them flutter to the ground. “I know it kills you when you open those acorns. I know it, don’t lie to me.”

The portal seemed to suck more in each day. The leaves hadn’t even had a chance to fall before New Earth appropriated them, a parasite squirming in its guts, draining its lifeblood. The sky had grayed, like someone’s eyes shading when their mood shifted, like when they said they didn’t love you anymore after a few shots of vodka, or like when they traced your scars and asked, “Why didn’t you finish the job,” after a few more.

“Isn’t it better than feeling all of this?” Zigzag jerked his furry head at one of the few green trees left around them. “Isn’t it too much, all the time?” He took out the gum from his mouth. “Like this. Humans must be used to the taste, but it’s so strong.”

Catherine sat up. The saliva in her mouth had pooled; she’d forgotten to swallow while he talked. He’d said so much more than she’d expected. “You mean – you’d rather die? Even if it was for no reason at all, not even opening the portal, but just because?”

Zigzag dug some more. His voice floated to her after a few agonizing minutes. “We woke up like Juliet, and found we had emotions,” he said. “It was too much.”

He refused to say anything more.

* * *

The space acorns didn’t register on any scientific equipment, almost like they didn’t exist until the squirrels found them. And only the squirrels could open them, as if thousands of years of cracking Earth acorns and walnuts had trained them for this moment in history.

Had the space acorns always been there, or had they just appeared? No one knew. They did know that each opened a small vacuum, a tiny wormhole, sending power and life to another planet. Scientists had triangulated the planet’s position and monitored its levels and had found that the more “fuel” – the more color, scent, taste and texture – sent to the new planet via the portals, the more habitable the new planet became. The more like Earth. Like a copy and paste.

And so, the grand mission to build the gate. Awakened squirrels built twelve other gates around the world sending power and life to the new planet, to New Earth, they called it.

Just eleven squirrels left in her herd.

Catherine slogged back and forth from the old barn wall, bracing against the pulling wind, against the roaring silence of the Sound. The portal displayed a clear blue sky, a yellow sun, and green forest. She could jump right into it. Maybe she should. That would finish the job. It wasn’t habitable yet, not yet, scientists said.

Why did she fight this? It wasn’t like she had a Ph.D. in science or astronomy. She wasn’t the sharpest cheddar in the dairy section. Instead of going to college in the city, she’d been a goddamn goatherd, and look what she did now. She held the next space acorn up to tape it in position.

Something caught her eye. Something on the edge of the gate. She stopped herself just in time and didn’t react, just waited to see if it would show itself. The Sound increased.

A mouth. A maw. The trees had teeth. The sky lashed back and forth. The sun was an eye.

She dropped the space acorn and ran.

* * *

She shivered in her house on 4th St. The gray skies and soundless air had spread through the whole forest, pulsing at the edge of town. She didn’t want to go back.

What good would she do, anyway? What business did she have trying to do anything at all? A herder protected the herd, but did any of it matter when they would all die one way or another, when her job was making sure they died? She was the kind of person who followed orders, who kept her head down, whose only rebellion in life had been leaving him –

The curtain rose in her mind. She breathed in, imagining that collective inhale of anticipation, of sharing something bigger than herself and her fears.

There was strength, in that unity. There was protection in it. Protection from oneself, and the fear of entropy, of the curse of curling in on yourself like a hot iron and imploding.

She shot up from her couch and ran out the door. Towards work. Towards the portal and The Sound and that thing.

* * *

She hadn’t herded the squirrels that morning, but the last loyal nine had of course showed up, as they had every day. She searched for Zigzag, found him, and breathed in relief.

The Sound echoed through the empty clearing, through the withering trees surrounding them.

“Hey!” she said, to Zigzag, to the rest of them. “We never got used to it, you know!”

They all poked their heads up. “What?” One of them asked, a little one who called herself Becky.

“Us humans,” she said. “Emotions. We’ve never gotten used to them.”

Their heads swiveled, looking at each other. She strode past, towards that gorgeous New Earth, the almost complete portal, and crouched down in her heavyweight boots to keep from being sucked in.

“I know you’re there,” she said.

It surfaced like an impression through a mold. A cosmic mouth and teeth. A monster of a planet sucking at the life of another. A parasite.

“I know you.”

It grinned, and The Sound swept through the forest, reaching further, draining the sound of her boots on the gray earth, the last hint of mint on her tongue, the tackiness of sweat from her palms.

“You’re the same as staring at laundry and trying to get up, but never being able to. You’re the same as feeling a knife cut and wanting it, because it’s a feeling, isn’t it? But it’s not; it’s the same old shit of just wanting to feel, and at the same time you can’t because it’s too strong, too much, too loud!”

It pulled her closer. She stumbled, knocked down to her elbows, but spread her palms on the ground for grip.

“You’re the same as when he said I’m not enough.” She crawled forward on her hands and knees. “The same as when he said I was too much.”

The Sound translated into words. It said, “The asteroid is coming. You can’t avoid it. Isn’t it better to give in now? Avoid all that hurt and suffering? I really just want to help.”

Catherine flipped it the bird. “If it’s all so bad, then you wouldn’t be trying to take it for yourself, you greedy son of a bitch.”

Its eye flicked to the side.

Behind her, in the clearing, Zigzag had found a space acorn. He trembled, holding it, almost dragged towards the portal hundreds of feet away.

“No!” Catherine shouted. “Fight it!”

He rotated it, pressed the complicated patterns, but then his movements slowed. He stopped, hesitating.

“I gave you sentience!” The Sound said. “I show you where to dig! I gave you purpose, where you had none before!”

Zigzag looked at his fellow squirrels. They huddled around him. Some held their paws over their ears. He threw the space acorn on the ground and smashed it with his foot paw.

The Sound shuddered, and screamed, and writhed.

“It’s big enough!” It said and its maw crawled forward on centipede legs towards the portal. “My seeds have grown quite enough for me to come through and consume this world!”

Catherine closed her eyes and thought of theatre.

Every play had a moment where the enthrallment was complete. The actors ceased being strangers and the story held all the gasps of the audience. A moment of too-muchness so that it hurt to feel, but the heart loved it all the more because that’s what it was made for.

She stood up, braced against the pull, unmoving, and the roaring of silence tried to reach through to her, to drain her away, to detach her like a leaf and float her to the ground.

But she stood, protecting the herd behind her. There was strength in numbers, in not being alone. There was strength in the herd.

The Sound – the maw on legs, the intergalactic parasite, the Thing that had wormed its way to Earth – retreated back into the portal. “I’ll come through eventually,” It said in a whine. “Many of my portals sprouted on your planet. My seeds are all grown up, and they lead me to you. I’m your chance of dying early, of avoiding the dread of waiting! Don’t you want it to end?”

Catherine swept her gaze over the squirrels behind her. They glared at the thing, at the Sound. It retreated further and decreased to a low static.

Zigzag said, “Don’t drink the poison, Catherine.”

She smiled. “He’s right. You don’t get to talk to us like that.” She took a step forward. “Not anymore.”

Zigzag came up. The other squirrels followed. The Sound wheezed, and wheedled, but stayed far away from the portal as if terrified of their mutual inspiration, of their collective breaths, of their unity. Catherine and the squirrels tore the portal down.

 

* * *

About the Author

Emmie Christie graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop, class of 2013. Her work tends to hover around the topics of feminism, mental health, cats, and the speculative such as unicorns and affordable healthcare. In her spare time, she likes to play D&D and go out line dancing.

Welcome to the August edition of Digging Up Positivity! Slowly we are sliding into convention season and of course this comes with plenty of the traditional charitable goals. Speaking of which, this months featurette has a big role with that in South Africa. We have some animation news, and we see where badgers teach traffic […]

TigerTails Radio Season 13 Episode 27 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.

Prolific author and Ursa Major Award winner Mary E. Lowd has a new non-fiction project out, with the help of Ian Madison Keller. The title pretty much speaks for itself: Furry Fiction Is Everywhere — A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Anthropomorphic Characters. “Have you ever read a book or novel and wondered why they even bothered to make certain character(s) in the book something other than human? Want to avoid that in your own work? There are some simple steps you can take to make your anthropomorphic (or furry) characters stand out on the page. This guide will walk you through step-by-step how to build a believable furry species, world, and characters.” It includes worksheets for helping to create your own characters and story situations. And it’s available in September from Rainbow Dog Books.

image c. 2021 Rainbow Dog Books

When Avatar the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra were all the rage in TV animation circles, furry fans of course zeroed in on all of the interesting and strange wildlife to be found in that fantasy universe. Well soon Dark Horse Comics will be publishing a new compendium of creatures called Beasts of the Four Nations. “Part of what everyone loves about the Four Nations is all the strange and wonderful (and sometimes scary!) creatures that inhabit them! From the Air Nomads’ flying bison, to Kyoshi Island’s elephant koi, to the Earth Kingdom’s singing groundhogs and the little purple pentapus, look to this hardcover collection for images and information on Avatar and Korra’s creatures large and small, including many from the spirit world!” Different sources give different release dates for it, from this coming December to next February.

image c. 2021 Dark Horse Comics

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Bearly and Taebyn welcome Manick Nux as our guest. We put Rayne and Lux on trial, visit the Transfurmation lab, tell a lot of really bad jokes, and what is a Twinkle Dart? What are two facts about Taebyn? Lux Operon gives us a report about Frolic. We hear the exciting conclusion to the Snow White Story and like always there are so many questions left unanswered! So Tune In and Bark along! Moobarkfluff!

Support the show

Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Bearly Furcasting S2E18 - Manick Nux, PC Story Conclusion, Transfurmation Station, Really Bad Jokes

One of the most popular series of animated shorts in the world is Masha and The Bear, created by Animaccord in Russia. Now word has come down from Animation World Network that the company is looking to expand the property even more. “In addition to production of the core show’s new seasons, development is in the works on a feature film, as well as podcasts, tech-driven content, and custom-made content for social media platforms.” Here’s a did-you-know: Masha and The Bear “… holds the Guinness World Record as the most watched animated video on YouTube for the episode ‘Recipe for Disaster’, which has recorded almost 4.5 billion views.” The feature film is scheduled for release in 2025.

image c. 2021 Animaccord

Remember quite a while ago when we talked about a new graphic novel (at the time in production) called Under The Cottonwood Tree? Turns out it’s available now from North Fourth Publications! Here’s what we said then: “One day, brothers Amadeo and Carlos Lucero walked into the deep, dark woods near their home in Algodones, New Mexico… and encountered a deep, dark magic. Attempting to flee, suddenly Carlos finds himself transformed into a black and white calf! That’s the set up for Under the Cottonwood Tree (El Susto de la Curandera), a new full-color ‘Latino fairy tale graphic novel’ by Paul Meyer, Carlos Meyer, and Margaret Hardy. Watch as our heroes encounter dangerous owls, talking rats, and magical spirits as they seek to un-bovine young Carlos.”

image c. 2021 North Fourth Publications

On this episode, we have Tonya Song, singer, song writer and First Citizens' activist. We talk about her music, the struggle for language preservation and the plight of the native people in the US. Find her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tonya_song And on Bandcamp: https://tonyasong.bandcamp.com/ Find us on Twitter: @South-Afrifur, https://twitter.com/southafrifur, on Tumblr, http://south-afrifur.tumblr.com/, and on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/southafrifur Also, for more local news, check out the Zafur forums! http://forum.zafur.co.za/

TigerTails Radio Season 13 Episode 26 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.

Okay this is different! “Cinnamon is just your perfectly ordinary, average house cat. At least until we glimpse the world through her wild eyes! Countertops become skyscrapers, cat toys become biker gangs, and perilous giant robots rampage on the daily! Get drop kicked onto the action packed streets of Big Kitchen City, as she fights the dark forces that dare to keep her from her favorite treat… Catnip!” Cinnamon is a one-shot written and illustrated by Victoria Douglas, out now from Behemoth Comics. Comic Crush has a preview.

image c. 2021 Behemoth Comics

This week- OnlyFans goes Tumblr, gardening is fun, hyenas have a bone bank, and a happy birthday to Jonathan Frakes.

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Southpawscast

LINKS
"How Sex Got Screwed Up" - https://vernonpress.com/book/417
Bone bank - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-extensive-pile-animal-and-human-bones-saudi-arabia-cave-180978375/
TAMU Texas Fall Gardening Guide - https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/browse/featured-solutions/gardening-landscaping/fall-vegetable-gardening-guide-for-texas/
Self Sufficient Me - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJZTjBlrnDHYmf0F-eYXA3Q
Epic Gardening - https://www.youtube.com/c/EpicGardening

Telegram Fan Chat - https://t.me/joinchat/P2iJg8tyj-KNGaci

Episode 497 - OnlyFlans - This week- OnlyFans goes Tumblr, gardening is fun, hyenas have a bone bank, and a happy birthday to Jonathan Frakes.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SouthpawscastLINKS"How Sex Got Screwed Up" - https://vernonpress.com/book/417Bon

MOOBARKFLUFF! Click here to send us a comment or message about the show!

Bearly and Taebyn welcome Proto Toby as our guest. We play This or That, Taebyn starts the PC version of Snow White. Bad Jokes throughout, and a little bit of trivia! So Tune In and Bark along! Moobarkfluff!

Support the show

Thanks to all our listeners and to our staff: Bearly Normal, Rayne Raccoon, Taebyn, Cheetaro, TickTock, and Ziggy the Meme Weasel.

You can send us a message on Telegram at BFFT Chat, or via email at: bearlyfurcasting@gmail.com

Bearly Furcasting S2E17 - Proto Toby, PC Story, This or That, Trivia

David Petersen returns to his award-winning Mouse Guard comic with The Owlhen Caregiver, a new series of collected short tails (ha ha). “Which of life’s biggest lessons can be learned from the smallest amongst us? A young mouse learns that compassion and kindness are the great virtues in ‘The Owlhen Caregiver’. ‘Piper the Listener’ finds a brave mouse venturing into wild country to learn the tongues of other beasts. And a grizzled oldfur shares the lesson of putting a whisker out too far in ‘The Wild Wolf’. ” Find it now from Boom! Studios.

image c. 2021 Boom! Studios

What is the Malaysian Furry Scene Like? Feat. Jhelisa, Fox and Burger Podcast Episode 14. ---- In this episode of the Fox and Burger Podcast, we're taking *you* to Malaysia! On this tour is Jhelisa, a hyena from Malayisa. Jhelisa has been a furry since 2010 and started making fursuits in 2015. Her studio, Jhelistic Hybrids, has seen many creations ranging from foxes, hyenas, to birds. Join us as we talk about her experiences as a fursuiter in Malaysia and how the furry scene is like. ---- Timestamps: 00:00 Section 1: Introduction 00:00 Podcast intro 01:26 Guest introduction 03:12 Section 2: Guest Spotlight: Fursuit Making 03:17 What gave you the spark to be a fursuit maker? 04:35 Who are your fursuit maker senpais? 06:25 What fursuit styles do Malaysian furs prefer? 08:10 What are some popular species that you have been commissioned to make? 08:46 What species have you made fursuits for? 11:05 Is there a species that you want to make that you haven’t made before? (Animagus) 12:34 What are the difficulties and challenges that you face as a fursuit maker in Malaysia? 19:45 What are shipping costs like to Malaysia in regards to buying fur? (Ray Ting) 19:52 What’s the most challenging part about making a fursuit (Nori) 20:14 Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years? Collaborations? A new kind of suit? 22:55 What’s piece of advice that you can give an aspiring fursuit maker? 23:59 Section 3: Comparing and Contrasting Fandoms: How are furries perceived in Malaysia? 24:13 How does the general public view furries in Malaysia? 25:15 How easy is it to fursuit in the public in Malaysia? 29:54 How do you explain what furry/furusuiting is? 31:11 How did you family react to you being a fursuit maker? 33:28 What was your fondest memory at FURUM? 36:10 Social media shoutout 37:22 Podcast outro ---- Social Media: Our official Twitter: https://twitter.com/foxandburger Fox: https://twitter.com/foxnakh https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK9xoFQrxFTNPMjmXfUg2cg Burger: https://twitter.com/L1ghtningRunner http://www.youtube.com/c/LightningRunner Jhelisa: https://www.facebook.com/Jhelistichybrids/ https://twitter.com/JhelisticHybrid https://www.instagram.com/jhelistichybrids/ --- Footage Credit: https://www.gamesradar.com/gaming-mascots-real-life/ https://www.deviantart.com/dreamvisioncreations/art/k9-Ready-Resin-Blank-325205009 https://tigerbeat.com/2017/03/disney-movie-animals-character-names-quiz/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/474285404483421310/ https://twitter.com/JhelisticHybrid/status/1388885860246982658?s=20 https://www.weasyl.com/~felisrandomis/submissions/1606876/scream-soulzsergal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO98yOK5utM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4VrN3Ukgs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4fJ67adcM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uh3aEOgBpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Zwh1D3djY https://twitter.com/LazyMordi/status/1415966558673772544 https://twitter.com/JhelisticHybrid/status/1425716573826797570 https://twitter.com/LazyMordi/status/1414175372585803788 https://twitter.com/JhelisticHybrid/status/1412431947041677313 https://twitter.com/JhelisticHybrid/status/1393925558606598146 https://www.facebook.com/stevie.choo26/videos/1922765034405907/ https://twitter.com/sattou0/ https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/FURUM_2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTz04WPVL1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VULqRSR2EUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiYqhRb_veg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5Zwh1D3djY Other pictures and video provided by Jhelisa, Pixabay, and hosts' personal footage. Intro/Outro Music: Aioli by Andrew Langdon.