When War Came To Town

When she rode into town on the demon horse, nobody knew it would happen. Sure, old Marley had just been ripped from his slumber in the room over the pub, dragged into the streets and flayed to within a half inch of death, but those kinds of things happened sometimes. All it took was a downturn in the economy, a few farms going sour, whispers in the wind of a witch, of black magic… No. That was sad, ludicrous even, to think that people really thought Marley was clever enough for magic, but it wasn’t It.

The bodies lining the street to see her, that was unexpected, the way they thrashed and elbowed and tromped, all try to catch a brush of finger over plate mail, or the sharp, crackling hair of the deep-black horse. Unexpected, but not It. If people had thought hard enough, they might have known she’d draw them to her, and it wouldn’t have been so unexpected. No. Not It.

The body, more meat now than human, with strips that hung from its limbs and a torso that still, days later, shuddered torturously in a parody of breath as it lay in a cage that hung over the town square – that was a pity. Not a tragedy, because Virani had deserved, more or less, what he got – you don’t steal from the Mayor’s own treasury and deflower his teenage daughter without flirting with death as well. The flogging was perhaps a trifle unnecessary, as least to that degree. But: not It.

Because, see, the thing is, all these things are terrible. And if anyone had bothered to stop and look into the eye of the demon horse as it pranced into town on Tuesday at dusk, they would have known immediately by the flicker of fire deep within that bad things were going to happen. And if they’d taken a moment to stare past the woman’s utter beauty with her porcelain skin and hair of flames, they would have seen not the same flicker in her eye, but something worse. Much worse.

And so really, all the violence? While it surely wasn’t expected, it also wasn’t surprising. Not when she could start an argument just by walking into a room, a fist-fight by the lift of one perfectly-sculpted eyebrow. Heaven forbid she flutter her lashes.

No, really: Heaven’s forbidden it. It would cause a nuclear meltdown.

So what, then, was It? That one surprising thing that nobody knew would happen, than nobody could have predicted, that one thing that reminded everybody who they were and what really mattered? It all started with Tikva.

Tikva was only seven when War came to town, and like the others, she’d joined to press and throng in the main street as the glorious woman on the coal black horse had paraded past, a bigger fancy that the town had seen in decades. Like the others, she’d stretched out to catch a glimpse of finger against hair, and because of her small stature and resourcefulness in hiding behind an upturned crate that had forced the horse to weave in its path, Tikva had succeeded where most others had not: she’d touched the demon horse. Her fingers had crackled against the deep black fetlock as though electricity bridged the gap between them, and Tikva was left cradling fingers slightly burned with heat and a memory singed with hatred: it was she who’d first warned her mother that the horse was a devil, and because her mother was the town’s wisest Elder, the rest of the town had listened.

It hadn’t lessened their fascination with the woman, of course, or the horse. But at least afterwards Tikva could stand in the town square with her arms folded over her flat, seven-year-old chest and proclaim with all the sass and certainty of one who has lived nearly a decade that she’d told them so.

It was as she’d crouched behind the upturned crate, nursing injured fingers and blinking away horrors that she couldn’t quite grasp, though, that she first had an inkling of her own future: one day she too would ride into town on a horse, and all the world would come to see her pass. She shook her head, shoved aside memories and burned fingers, and got up. The crowds were closing in around her now that the woman on the horse had passed, and she brushed the dirt from her undyed woollen tunic, she pursed her lips. Mother, who’d been far too sensible to stray from home this morning, needed to know.

That spark of connection when Tikva touched the demon horse was astounding, and by all rights and accounts should never have happened – changing the course of history because it did – but still: not It. It is sometimes possible, after all, for strange coincidences to occur, and in much later times the populations of that world would grow to such enormity that million-to-one chances occurred every hour. So. Not It.

Perhaps it is best to skip the intervening hours wherein Tikva hurried home and consulted with her mother, wherein her mother frowned as though she’d heard Tikva’s father was back in town and left the room abruptly to dig out her best shearing knife from the shed, oiling it with lavender and valerian before returning to sheathe it in the kitchen block, wherein a steady troop of neighbours began and, in fact, continued until the moment Virani was condemned to be flogged in the square, wherein Tikva’s night-time repose was plagued by feverish dreams in which she was torn from herself over and over and over again to be thrown into the heat of battle, and wherein she stood, a calm epicentre in the midst of terror, and let the desire to fight wash over her, and move instead to the moment wherein Tikva next saw the woman.

It was some days since that first meeting when Tikva was sent down to the shop on behalf of her mother, who had run out of the carrier oil for her famous lavender-valerian-lemon balm tonic, so popular was the tonic this week. Tikva eased her way down a street full of scowl-faced people, all ready to bite at each other at the least sideways glance, and climbed the steps to the shopfront with much relief.

Midway along, something nipped at her skirts. Tikva turned to see the demon horse tethered to the hitching post and being given an extra wide berth by patrons and street traffic alike. Tikva craned her neck to and fro, but there was no sign of the red-haired woman who’d brought trouble upon the town – so her mother said, and so Tikva knew to be true.

Lip consideringly between her teeth, Tikva stared at the great black stallion. The electric spark she’d felt last time – had it been a coincidence? And if so, did it still matter? And if not, then… what? Breath held in her too-tight throat, Tivka reached for the horse.

His nostrils flared and his eyes rolled. Great, square teeth the colour of blood-stained bone nipped at her. Tikva sniffed and rapped the stallion’s nose. “No.”

He stilled, snorting and shivering, ears flickering as he waited for her touch.

Tikva gave a satisfied nod and rubbed her thumb over the soft, delicate velvet of his nose. “Much better.”

Footsteps sounded on the wooden steps and Tikva leapt away from the horse. She whirled and entered the shop before she could see who approached, hustling towards the oils with great concentration. It was only when she reached the counter, carefully clutching two large bottles of oil, that she realised the owner of the footsteps had been Mistress Spector, a great, bosomy woman who now leaned over the counter conferring with Mister Avery.

As Tikva neared, Mister Avery lifted his green striped apron from the vast expanse of his belly and wiped his face. “Well,” he said gravely. “That is a concern.”

“What’s a concern?” Tikva asked in the tone of someone ten years older and with as much expectation of being answered. Being her mother’s daughter had its benefits.

“Virani was found with Miss Allum,” Mistress Spector said, bosom heaving as she rearranged it on the counter. “And a rather large suitcase of the Mayor’s own funds. The court has ruled for immediate flogging to be follow by imprisonment in the cage until death.”

Tikva felt the blood drain from her face. This, this was the thing she’d been waiting for all week without ever knowing it; this was the culmination of all the whispered mutterings, the fights, the tiffs, the quarrels; this was the powder keg now lit, and someone had to stop it.

The bottles of oil clunked to the floor and rolled away under a shelf, unheeded.

As Tikva approached the square, she knew she was too late; the shouts of the whip master mingled with the agonised cries of Mister Virani, both a counterpoint to the bass harmony of the crowd’s jeers.

Tikva jostled her way through until she could see the flogging post. For a brief instant, her stomach churned, but then she reminded herself that she’d seen worse out back of the butchers, and almost as bad on her mother’s healing bench, where often she’d assisted. He shouldn’t have tried to run away with Miss Allum; not this week, at any rate. Stupid, stupid man.

The whip master raised his hand to strike again at a thing already more flesh and bone than man. “No. Enough.” Barely anyone heard Tikva, and they never understood the truth of her words until much, much later, but at Tikva’s command, the whip master froze. Beneath him, Virani shuddered and moaned, and for a moment there was a hush.

Then the crowd began to shout. “Why did you stop? Keep going! He’s not had even two hundred yet, come on! Is your arm getting tired? Come on! Flog him some more!”

Tikva closed her eyes against tears that threatened to drown her fury, and reached out to the anger that filled the crowd. Softly, she began to sing.

Peace, my child, now will rest

Upon your head while bluebirds sleep

Close your eyes and be you blessed

For peace abides here river-deep.

The words of the song unfurled through the crowd like blossoms, and slowly, one by one, people began to sing with Tikva.

It was only when the whole crowd lifted their voices together and Tivka could feel the harmony emanating from them that she released the whip master. He collapsed to the ground, shuddering, tears gushing from his guilt.

The demon horse pranced into the middle of the square, and the red-haired woman stared imperiously down from its back. “Who dares halt justice?”

Tikva tossed her head and marched forward, halting in front of the horse she had no fear of and folding her arms. “I am the one you seek.”

The woman on the horse started visible as she stared down at the tiny creature in front of her, thin and small boned. She laughed, a sound that set the men in the crowd on their toes ap-=nd the women on the arms of their men. “You are not the one.”

Tikva tossed her head again for good measure. “Look me in the eye,” she told the woman, “and tell me I am not.”

Still laughing, the woman dismounted and strode forward, reins looped casually in one hand, hair rippling like flames in the breeze. She knelt down in front of Tikva, eyes dancing, and looked deep into Tikva’s eyes.

Tivka knew the moment when the woman recognised her for what she was: her eyes tightened, the fire dampened, and her whole body went stiff. “No,” the woman whispered. “You cannot be she.”

Tivka smiled, and it was the smile of the crocodiles in the swamp when they cornered their unwary prey. “Oh yes,” she whispered. “I am she.”

The woman stumbled in getting to her feet and stepped back a few paces before bowing curtly. “My Sister.”

Tivka nodded in return, for even though her power was newly arrived, it bore with it all the knowledge of the centuries; she could feel all the others before her who had worn the mantle of Peace, and she knew the truth of War’s greeting: they were sisters now indeed. “Sister.” She send a trickle of her power outwards, probing at the edges of War’s defence, and although they were locked as ever in a battle between two equals, she knew that right now, at this time, in this place, the battle was hers to win.

The woman knew it too, and stepped back once again. “What would you have done?” she asked, not deferential, but without the earlier command.

“You will go,” said Tikva, a fact stated as simply as the colour of the sky, not a request, not an order. “And you will not return.”

The woman nodded. “And him?” She gestured to the tattered lump of flesh that once might have been called Virani.

“He will hang in the cage, as the law decided,” Tikva replied.

Around her, people muttered, and the woman called War raised her eyebrows. “From you, Sister? That is not what I would have expected.”

“Peace too has a price,” Tikva said in a voice that could sharpen diamonds, gaze never leaving the red flame eyes of War. “And this is my town.”

War stared back thoughtfully for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ll see you again one day,” she said before swinging up onto her demon stallion.

“When you do,” said Peace, “I will have a horse too. And I’ll know how to fight.”

War chuckled, a sound for their ears alone, and reached out to ruffle Peace’s hair. “I’m sure you will,” she said, not unkindly. “I look forward to it. Until next time, then,” she added as she straightened in the saddle.

Peace nodded, jaw clenched tightly. “Until next time.”

War’s demon stallion reared his farewell, then galloped off into the gathering gloom.

Peace looked around the square at her town, and told them sternly: “Go home, and stop being ridiculous. I’ll deal with you all in the morning.”

The town, bowing to the wishes of a seven-year-old girl, recognising the authority of a millennia-old Power, did, and in the morning Tikva told them off, and that, of course, was It.

Shallow Grave

Another vignette from the Miami Witch universe. Darius Kendall, scion of the powerful Kendall family, is being targeted for assassination. To make matters worse his ex-girlfriend wants to talk. 

Other stories in this universe:
WISHFUL THINKING  (high school Ember)
DANGEROUS AND BRIGHT (graduation night with Ember and Darius)

***

Darius slammed his phone down and stared out the window at the palm fronds gently swaying in the ocean breeze. It was a great night: full moon, white sand beaches, the surf’s gentle song, the local PD was cooperating with the operation, and no one had tried to kill him in nearly a week. That had to be it. Everything was too perfect. So the universe tried to throw a wrench at his head and conspired to give his ex-girlfriend his phone number.

“Someone hates me.”

“Obviously,” came the dry reply from across the room. Ember Li was the Miami police department’s liaison with Miami Society – a magic users who lived in around the South Florida city – and when the death threats came in he’d been given the choice of working with her or her boss. Since Miss Li answered to a dragon he’d gone with the one option that didn’t risk getting his head literally chewed off.

Which meant working in close confines with a woman he’d known since they were pimply teenagers.  She’d been easier to deal with then, tall and gangly and prickly as a cactus. If there was such a thing as a time travel spell he would have gone back and warned himself that the quiet ones were always the deadliest.

She leaned over the map spread out on the table, trying to pin down a time line of the assassination attempts, and her white shorts molded to her perky rear end. Darius pulled his eyes away, only for his gaze to snag on the gold ankle bracelet glittering over her bare foot. Long, milk chocolate legs sculpted to perfection, curves, black hair with hints of cinnamon, a creamy white shirt that left one shoulder bare... A groan escaped his lips.

Ember shot him a quizzical look over her shoulder. “What?”

“I’m hungry.” That had to be it. Low blood sugar was the only reason he was thinking about licking her like an ice cream cone.

“Fridge is over there.” She pointed off to the left in case he’d forgotten in the last ten seconds. They were in a private resort suite used by Miami PD on the very rare occasions they needed a safe house no one had heard of. Or so Ember said. He strongly suspected her draconic boss owned the property and was letting him hide here because there were magic wards strong enough to make even a fae high lord think twice about invading.

Darius rummaged around and found a salad left over from lunch. Popping the lid off the container he decided to dump his problems on his unwilling companion. “That was my ex on the phone.”

“Does she want you dead?” Ember asked as she made another mark on the map.

“She wants me to get back with her.”

“So, this is a pointless conversation and you’ll stop yammering now?”

He stabbed at his salad. “I guess. I... do your exes pop back up from time to time?”

“Nope. I don’t dig shallow graves.”

The clock ticked in the following silence. Darius stood frozen, fork full of lettuce half way to his lips. “Um...”

Ember froze, then slowly thawed, her back arching with sensual grace as she stood up. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh. Awkward.” She turned with a little half-smile. “I was joking. I hardly ever kill my boyfriends.”

“Hardly ever isn’t the same as never.”

She pressed her lips together and batted her big, black eyes. “Nobody missed him?”

He took a bite of his salad. “Did I know this guy?”

“No! He was a college boyfriend, not someone from Society.”

“You don’t date anyone in Society.” He’d checked. Regularly. Ever since their paths had crossed one night in Atlanta he’d felt a desire to keep tabs on her social life. Once she moved back to Miami he’d taken their working relationship as an excuse to ask around. For security reasons.
Ember wasn’t ranked as a sorcerer and so in Society she was seen as a minor player. Having seen what she could do with Earth magic, Darius privately ranked her as one of the top ten deadliest people in Miami.

He waited for her to explain. “You’re not trying to kill me, are you? This isn’t some elaborate ruse?”

“Are you dead?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not after you.”

He finished his salad in silence and when she still hadn’t divulged any more information he went and sat on the table. “Spill.”

“What? You’re my confessor now?”

“I’m the enforcer for Miami Society. Eventually, I’ll find out. Why not explain why you’re ex is six feet under now and save us both time?”

She frowned at him, a delicate look filled with disapproval and mild disgust. “He’s not buried. He was cremated.”

“By you?”

“By the state of Louisiana.” She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You aren’t going to give up, are you?”

“Nope.”

Ember pulled a chair over and sat back. “So, my sophomore year at Tulane there was a serial killer in the area. He drugged his victims, raped them, and then gave them an overdose of one of the more popular party drugs. Everyone thought it was bad parties until one of the girls found dead was a known anti-drug activist and lesbian with a long-term girlfriend. Since she clearly would be having sloppy sex with boys during a drug rage people started asking questions.”

His stomach twisted. “You didn’t tell anyone at home about this?”

“His targets were all white girls. I thought I was safe. And I’d just met this really nice guy. We had biochem together. We studied together a few times. Ate dinner out once. And then he asked me to go see the local theater production of Guys and Dolls. I thought it would be fun, and it was.”

“But?”

Ember shrugged. “During the intermission he brought me back a water he’d already opened. I didn’t think anything about it, but it tasted a little bit off. Almost stale, like it’d been sitting in a hot car all day. I drank a little, but not much. On the way home he kept nagging me to drink more water. Telling me I’d get dehydrated or whatever. So I drank it.”

Darius’s fists balled up. “What’d he do to you?”

“He walked me into my apartment and started groping me. I told him to knock it off and threw a hex at him. A little one. Used a little bit of alder powder. It should have made him run off. It killed him.” Her lips twisted in a studious frown. “The drugs he slipped in my water upped my natural powers.”

“Fear does that too,” Darius said quietly.

“So I’ve heard.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I called my friends, we drug him to the car, drove across town, and dumped him in a bad part of town. The police found the body in the morning, wrote it off as an overdose, and when the DNA test came back matching him to the rape victims no one mourned his passing. I’m a little more careful now.”

“A little?” Darius smirked. “Have you dated anyone since then?”

“Nope.” She turned back to her map. “Can’t seem to find anyone who interests me.”

He walked around the table to peek over her shoulder. “Liar,” he whispered in her ear.

The look she tossed over her shoulder was heated, seductive, and promising. “You wish.”

Darius reached out and caressed the thin gold chain hanging around her neck until he caught the pendant, a small gold seahorse. It had been a graduation present, an apology for the four years of hell he’d put her through. She’d worn it that night in Atlanta when he finally stole a kiss. And she’d worn almost every day he’d seen her since her return to Miami. “Sometimes, I think you like me more than you’ll admit.”

“Sometimes, I think you’re right.” She pulled a picture from the suspect pile. “But right now, I’m going to worry about arresting your would-be killer. Guess who?”

In The Evening, Where The Deserts End

In the evening, when my heart

is full as the sky is of stars,

then I will go out to the dunes of

sand that stretch endlessly to the sea, and

there I will wait.

In the sparkling

starlight of the night, I will wait

for you,

and when you come we will leap

hand in hand

down slopes that fall away under our feet until

we can fly,

and together we will soar

through the night like fruitbats,

great, leathery wings of belief

pinning us in the sky.

We will dip and twist and glide and turn, and

when we have flown high enough, your hand clenched

tightly in mine like we are locked together forever,

we will reach the stars.

The sand will stretch below like a sea,

waves of sand frozen in place only

by time and perspective, and

we will see that the boundaries of our desert

are finite;

that the barrenness of our minds comes to

an end;

and that outside it all is fertile.

Together

we will swoop back to the ground and remember

what we have seen from our vantage

point of the stars: we will walk onwards

with steps that achingly climb, only to slip

back halfway to where they came from, and

our muscles will burn

as we scale the heights of our

disappointments

– but we will not forget.

We have been to the stars,

and they have shown us:

the desert too will

end.

One day, we will find the fence, and scale it.

Your Scratched-Out Nails Are Beautiful

Truly, your bitten-nail fingers, covered

with scratched-out polish and messy cuticles and

love and

stress and

worry

are the most beautiful thing about you.

When I look at them, I see

you know

you feel

you care.

Beneath the ragged crust of keratin

designed to protect your nerves from harm

are the parts of you that feel most deeply,

need most keenly,

share most openly

And these,

your ragged nails, your scratched-out attempts

at conforming to society’s expectations –

they are just a cover.

These nails, they show

you for what you truly are

and you are

beautiful.

The Making of An Overlord

He sits in the shuddering darkness with his arms clasped around the neck and shoulders of his hound. The dog tolerates the confinement for just long enough to show he cares, then wriggles free and abuses his master’s tear-stained face with kisses.

The boy laughs, then wraps one hand firmly over his own mouth, fingers sealing emotions in tight. His father cannot hear. He pushes the hound, still only a double handful of months old, away from his face and into the straw.

The dog is good-natured about the rejection, upending himself to present his belly and waving his paws invitingly.

The boy obliges with a belly rub.

The magic comes questing, prickling like ice, smooth as seeping oil and just as falsely pretty: a slick of shimmer overcoating magic that’s meant to smother and choke and claim.

The boy’s heart flutters like the pulse of a dying bird, and he snatches at the dog. He doesn’t let himself whisper no, because it’s possible his father hasn’t found him yet, is just checking in here to be thorough—but he isn’t hopeful. Dread weighs him down like a bad meal, a meal he has been ingesting every day of his life through all the pores of his skin. His body knows this feeling all too well, and leaps to familiar patterns: his mouth is dry, his fingers tremble, his throat too tight to swallow. The tremoring staccato of his heart marks a rhythm his nerves are all-too-keen to follow, and adrenalin and cortisol play two-part harmonies through his torso.

It is the fear his father senses, like a predator drawn to prey, like an overlord drawn to weakness, like an abusive parent drawn to the only shape they recognise their child in. The magic enfolds him, and his skin prickles.

Overlords will not waste their time on frivolous interactions, Father reminds him sternly in his head. I’ve told your mother a thousand times that dog was a bad idea. But she coddles you. Always has.

The magic winds tighter until it hurts to move. The hound pup quits straining against the boy’s grasp and begins to whine.

The boy can just twitch his fingers to mimic rubbing the dog’s ear, and the dog quiets.

You will be an overlord, Deviran. It’s what you were born to be, and you of all should know that destinies must be fulfilled. Overlords cannot afford emotional attachment; it is unseemly. You want to do well, don’t you? You want to make me proud? His father sounds confused, and Deviran hears the words he doesn’t speak: How could I have fathered this son? Why does he never seem grateful for what I offer?

Tears that have no light to shine in fill Deviran’s eyes. “Yes, Daddy,” he whispers through lips brittle as autumn leaves. I want you to be proud. He wants it so much that his chest hurts, and even if the magic wasn’t drawing tighter still, he’d find it hard to breathe. “I want you to be proud.”

The magic shifts, so subtlely that for a moment he doesn’t understand what’s changed. But then the dog yelps, convulses, and Deviran can’t even move to draw him close, can’t break against the bonds of his father’s restraint to show the only creature who’s loved him in all the world that he’s here, that he cares, that it hurts…

The dog convulses again, grunting and frothing interspersed with whines that shred against Deviran’s chest. Soft fur becomes an instrument of torture, silky ears files that scour away his skin. A paw shoots out in the darkness and claws rake against Deviran’s face. He doesn’t even feel the pain.

The tears that magic bids stay begin to fall.

Now, says Father, now you will be the overlord you were born to become. Say thank you.

Deviran cannot speak, cannot think, cannot move against the weight of the warm slip of happiness lying broken on his legs.

The magic grips him, arching him backwards until his spine protests in pain so hot it could be fire. I said, say thank you!

“Thank you!” Deviran gasps, the words tearing from him like a limb. “Thank you!”

The magic releases him and he falls to the ground on his back. He lies still for a moment, then, when he realises he can move again, twists sideways, curling his body around the hound who is still so warm and soft his dying doesn’t seem real. The shuddering darkness closes in once more as the magic fades away, and Deviran mumbles oaths into the young dog’s ruff.

I will avenge you.

I will never be my father.

I will never be an overlord.

Midsummer Queen

I never understood the ones who said they feared the night. Light was the harbinger of evil in my world. The first rays of dawn meant the yelling started. It wasn’t until sunset that they would pass out again, falling asleep as the sun set. The night gave me strength to live. Under the moonlight I had no bruises.

Midsummer was the worst. Long days shortened the hours of my freedom. I despised the spring blossoms, hated that they meant the night was quickening away. Sometimes I prayed for an early winter. Deep frost, snow, hunger, starvation... none of those mattered if I could wrap myself in a blanket of darkness.

It is noon by the sundial and the garden is in full bloom. Lanterns are being hung throughout the town as people embrace the summer solstice. From the caverns of the kitchen I can hear the bickering of two old woman. Years of jealousy spill between them, a vile acid that’s etched itself into the stone.

From the balcony above I hear the snide mocking of another pair who feed on that acid hatred and give it life in their bosoms. Daylight makes a solemn mockery of all I love.

Quietly, I pull my sleeve down to hide the hand prints that blacken my flesh. Others think I do it out of some kind of vanity, that I hide my moon-pale skin from the sun because I do not embrace the summer’s golden glow. It is not true. Had I no horror to hide, I too would embrace the sun. But how can I when the cold and distant sun is nothing more to me than the witch’s pyre?

“Iulia!” a maid calls my name and I am stolen from the gardens to the goblin’s den. Beautiful as the first true spring morning is the woman I have called Mother all my life. She is radiant and fair to behold. Praised by men, idolized by artists, all who see her bow in awe. They should tremble in fear, for that fair face hides a cruelty that no other creature can possess. Not even a cat tormenting a mouse matches her for cold-hearted pain.

Yet I bow before her, fearing the lash of both her whip and her tongue.

“You are an ugly child.” She has said so all my life.

“Forgive me. I know no other way to be.”

Her gold slippers glitter in the sunlight as she stalks around me, a lioness looking for a weakness. “When I was your age there were men that avowed they would die if they could not dance with me. Kings went to war to win my hand. Maidens took their own lives because they saw me and knew they could never compare.”

“M’lady is the greatest wonder of the modern world,” I said. “Not even the sun is more radiant than she.” This is the prayer I learned in childhood. My scripture is a paean of praise to the woman I hate most.

“Who would see my beauty slip away?”

“No one, my queen. The world would die for want of you.”

“True.” A leather crop caresses my cheek. It is her form of endearment. “Once I hoped you would reign beside me, the Little Queen. The moon to my sun. But it cannot be.”

The cold leather dug into my cheek and I feel hot blood well up where the rough edge cuts me. “M’lady has other daughters, both radiant and fair.” All were dead. The gravestones bordered the garden like a white marble fence. No beauty that competed with her was allowed to live. Yet she birthed daughters like a queen bee, always searching for her destruction. It made her feel alive.

“Tonight we will have visitors to help us celebrate the solstice. Won’t that be nice?”

Victims for the altar. Suitors from abroad. “They are lucky indeed that the most beautiful of all women allows them to walk in her presence.” No matter what my heart feels I must keep to the well-worn script.

The leather crop strikes across my back, a brief riff of pain between my shoulder blades. “Go. Make yourself presentable. Our guests will be on the altar before the sun sets.”

So it is every year. Her sacrifice to the elder gods. Her assurance of power and beauty.

I flee the room and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Pale skin, white as a winter moon, with hot red blood crusting on my cheek. My pale green dress is marked by the same blood on my back. My hair, crimson as my blood, is matted and filthy. Still, I lift my chin as I walk. The moon is rising, a pale assassin in the sky, and I can feel the strength it gives me.

No one marks my appearance. The servants never rush to help me. They know all too well that the queen only meets out the punishment deserved. Why else would she beat her only living child?

In the cool darkness of my room near the dungeons I bathe. The water sluices over me, washing away and the pain and fear. Resolution strengthens my bones. Tonight the moon rises early. 

Tonight, I too will ascend, either to flee this golden kingdom or to stand upon the altar as a sacrifice myself; I do not care. All I wish to do is escape the woman who gave me life. The woman who makes my every nightmare come true.

The bells ring in the square. The visitors are here. For them I shed no tear. Greed led them here, or lust perhaps. The wealthy widow queen whose beauty is beyond compare. They come to claim her, to take what is not theirs. In return she takes their lives to lengthen her own.

“Iulia.” Her voice crawls through the darkness like a spider.

“Mother.” I step out in my pale gray dress. My crimson hair is bound up under a dark gold veil. Tonight I am no more than a statue in my mother’s menagerie.

Her cold fingers grasp my chin through the veil. “Do you not love me child? Have I not given you everything? Have I not laid aside my own desires to see you well? When you were ill, was it not I who sacrificed everything to win the favor of the elder gods and see you healed? Your father would have let you die, but what did I do?”

“You saved me.”

“Yes, I saved you. I gave up everything I held precious so I could see you live.”

How generous were the elder gods to give her endless life when all she asked for was a child’s health... but this I do not say. I did once, and I learned how long it takes for bones to mend. “You are more generous than I can say,” I whisper.

“Come, child. Walk with me. Our visitors must see how much I love my child.”

The stone walls feel like a tomb, although I know my life will end in fire. One day my mother will tire of me. One day she will cease to toy with me and will slit my throat. Drink my blood. One day, she will offer me to the elder gods to capture another season in the sun.

Our footfalls lead to the garden, then down to the gate, and finally to the long white path to the square. The setting sun heats our backs. To the people waiting we are two figures – one glowing and golden, one dark and severe – walking out of the light. They wait, hearts racing in their chests. The queen’s magic stretches out, ensnaring them, entangling them in their own wanton wishes.

I look up at the high and pale moon. The sun is falling. The moon reigns.

Almost unbidden, the silver knife appears in my hand, hidden by the fall of my sleeve.

Beside me, my mother pauses. Sunlight dances along the knife edge and the whole world holds still. Which heart calls to this blade? Whose blood will drip from its curving silver tip?  

“Iulia?” My mother looks so confused. “Whatever have I done to you, child, to make you hate me?”

The blade leaps for her throat and I whisper, “Everything.” 

Purity

The parking lot is covered in a foot of storm water, and the wind whips up waves like it’s a sea. I’ve no idea how we’re going to get to the service station—or what we’re going to find once we’re inside.

Beside me, Reg shifts, his lined face twitching and flickering like it has a life of its own. “Think we should do it?” he mutters.

I jerk my head in a nod that feels precariously like falling. “Of course we should do it.”

He rearranges the shotgun under his trench coat, and we set out.

The dark concrete of the parking lot turns the water inky grey, and oil slicks float on the surface. It seeps into my boots, icy cold fingers that set me shivering even through the garbage bags I’m wearing under my trousers as waterproof knee-high socks. The wind cuts through my thin coat—it doesn’t help that one sleeve has nearly been torn off and the buttons are all missing—and all that, combined with the hunger gnawing in my stomach, is almost enough to make me wish we hadn’t set out on this foolhardy adventure in the first place. Sadly, when you’re hunting a unicorn, there’s no stopping till it’s dead—or you are.

Reg trudges resignedly on, heavy steps sloshing and splashing the foul water, and I follow. All over town is like this now: half submerged, water leeching oil and tar and carbon monoxide and other cloying chemicals from the buildings. It’s only been a week, but already the southlands are crumbling; their concrete was cheap, sand-filled stuff, the bricks half-backed clay, and none of it is strong enough to withstand the onslaught.

One of Reg’s splashes catch me on the cheek, and I reel for a moment as the water zaps me like electricity. I wipe it off with the back of my sleeve, knowing that where it’s gone, my skin will be left glowing and fresh. I can totally understand why the first victims fell willingly, bathing themselves in water that seemed to create perfection. Thank heavens I have goggles.

The wind brings steel-coloured clouds that boil overhead, and I prod Reg in the back. “Storm’s coming,” I say.

He glances up, exhales through his nostrils, and carries on.

A downpour will be the end of us if we don’t find shelter—but we’re close now, touchingly close, and we couldn’t break away even if we tried.

The service station looms ahead, casting a shadow even in this dim, directionless light. It’s a toad hulking in the corner of its pond, waiting for a fly to mistake it for a boulder, ready to dart out its tongue and consume the unwary. Light radiates from windows that are crystal clear, dripping sludge marks below their panes the only remnants of their former dirt-and-oil coatings. Somewhere in there, working to purify the whole damn world, is the unicorn.

We duck under the shelter of the awning right as the rains begin. As usual, they’re torrential, a flash downpour that blocks the senses: everything is grey, rushing water, the smell of wet concrete and oil.

I cock my head; underneath the roar of the water, something else is groaning. I glance up. “Look out!” I tackle Reg to the ground and roll, and the collapsing roof misses us by inches. We’re stuck between the wreckage and the building now, and all I can see is the pitted, metal girders that have twisted and torn.

“You right?” I ask Reg, offering him a hand.

Muttering under his breath, he ignores me and shoves himself to his feet. He resets his bucket hat on his greying head, adjusts the shotgun, and tightens the sash on his trench coat.

Once I’m sure he’s okay, I pull my own coat tighter around me and fold my arms to stop it flapping. The comforting weight of the frabah powder weighs down my pocket.

Our eyes meet. It’s time to go in. With a deep inhale, I place my palms against the sparkling glass door of the service centre.

Reg stands shoulder to shoulder with me. “Go on, then, lass.”

I push. Sweet, fresh air wafts out to meet us; the unicorn must have been here a while.

We ease ourselves through the door and stand staring at the aisles. Water covers the floor here too, though not as deeply, and instead of deathly grey it’s brilliant: rainbow hued, swirled like a Paddle Pop of old—though in a strange way that twists the mind, ‘of old’ is only last week.

On the shelf next to the door, just to our right, a chip packet has survived unscathed. Halfway down the aisle in front of us, a packet of Tim Tams seems intact. I wade over to the ice cream freezer and peer in. It’s a riot of colour from the plastic and the ice creams, and chocolate sludge coats the inside. The glass that covers it, though, is pristine.

I push my goggles up and wipe my hands up my face then back down over my eyes. I’m tired. This has to end. Maybe if we’d been out bush this wouldn’t have mattered so much; if we hadn’t lived in a jungle of concrete and steel, artificial chemicals and preservatives that pervade all the food we have, maybe the unicorn wouldn’t have mattered.

But we don’t. If we’re purified, we’ll die.

A noise sounds behind the counter. Reg and I whip around in the same instant, and light, blinding, glorious, perfect light, streams out from the unicorn and burns my eyes. I throw up my arms to shield them against it and the shotgun barks beside me, once, twice, and again.

That’s my cue. I dart my eyes open for an instant to check that the way is clear, and then running blind I sprint towards the counter—towards the unicorn that is our death. I wrap my hand about the pure hemp bag holding the organic herbs that, crushed together, make frabah powder. I can feel the unicorn’s power burning me; my tatty, filthy clothes fall away, first the coat, then my shirt and pants, the garbage bags, and finally my elastane-blended sports bra. Thank heavens I went for cotton undies. But I’ve no time to be embarrassed (and I’ve nothing that’ll bounce anyway), because the light is burning my skin now—though at least if I come out of this alive I’ll be unicorn-bathed, my skin flawless and glowing.

But I’m at the counter, and I launched myself over it, scrabbling on the little shelves that once held chocolate bars. I’m kneeling on it and the unicorn, blindingly white, pure bliss, perfection incarnate, stands before me, eyeing me with one glorious golden eye before swinging its deadly point towards me. I reach into hemp bag, grab a handful of powder, and as the unicorn stabs I toss. The powder sticks to the unicorn like glue.

It freezes, death-point half an inch from goring my stomach. My heart’s pounding in my ears so loud I can’t even hear the rain any more. The unicorn’s glow turns gold. All over it, hairline cracks run likes spiders, faster and faster and faster until—

The unicorn shatters like crystal. The chime of it sounds through the air and I cringe, hands over my ears. A sharp pain pops in my left air and my hand comes away wet with blood. Crystal shards rain down, slicing into my skin.

Something sweeps over me and I struggle wildly, but it’s Reg, covering me with the coat he’s stripped out of, and the noise I can here in my good ear is just the alarm system of the building as he helps me down off the counter.

I stand beside him, shivering. The ceiling drips, rainbow water swirls around our feet, and outside the rain has stopped. Something golden burst through the window and my heart stops for a second because it looks like the last light of the unicorn—but it’s just sunshine, and already the window it shines through is grimier, and the water in the parking lot’s clearing.

Reg grunts and hands me that last chip packet. “Okay, lass?”

I nod, accepting it. “Okay.”