Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (25 page)

From the top of the hill, it almost seemed
that way. Tu Shr didn’t control all of the graveyard and ghosts
from his high point, but she could pretend.

Finally, Lin Han brought the two stick
figures together on the mound of dirt. She didn’t know the words
the priests would say, so she sang a hymn to Xi Wang Hu, asking her
for blessings on the couple: May they never grow hungry, may they
have many children, and may they always be honored.

Lin Han placed the acorn cap next to Dao
Ming, telling her, “Drink up! Drink your wedding cup!”

Then she placed it next to Tu Shr, telling
him, “This is your bridal cup. Drink and be together forever.”

Lin Han stepped back, bowed her head and
closed her eyes to give the happy couple a moment of privacy.

Exhaustion slammed down on her and she
swayed. The wind played with her hair, stronger now. Maybe a storm
was blowing up.

When she opened her eyes, Tu Shr had slid
down on the dirt mound so his head was now close to Dao Ming’s.

Lin Han clapped her hands. Tu Shr had surely
accepted Dao Ming as a bride! Her sister had a husband, someone who
would look after her and treat her with respect.

Lin Han bowed low to the happy couple.

Normally, what followed would be the wedding
feast. But there wasn’t anyone else to celebrate.

“I will eat for both of you later,” Lin Han
promised as she picked up the figures, holding them together in the
palms of her hands.

“The goddess will look out for you and bless
you always,” she promised as she opened her hands over the edge of
the grave and let the figures tumble onto the paper coffin
below.

They landed on a bit of clean paper, not
where every member of the family had dropped a handful of dirt.

Lin Han gave them the acorn cup, and the
ghost money as well.

She didn’t know what to do with the vase. It
didn’t belong in the grave. She couldn’t take it home: it was just
one more thing of her sister’s that her family would deny.

Instead, she planted it firmly at the head of
the grave. Maybe when the younger son came back to get the dirt for
the ancestors’ altar, he’d see the vase and use it instead. That
way, both Dao Ming and Tu Shr would be venerated.

After one last low bow, Lin Han turned away
from the grave and started down the hill. She was too tired to skip
or dance, though she knew she should—she was still part of a
wedding procession.

But her feet dragged on the earth and her
tears started again. No one else would ever know what she’d done,
how she’d taken care of her sister.

Still. She’d finally managed to find her
peace.

Introduction to “The Witch’s House”

In 2013, multiple World Fantasy Award
winner Richard Bowes will publish two short story collections. A
new novel,
Dust Devil on a Quiet Street
, will also appear,
along with a reissue of his Lambda Award winning novel,
Minions
of the Moon
.

As he assembled the collection
The
Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others
, he received the invitation
for
Unnatural Worlds. The Queen, the Cambion, and Seven Others
collects his modern Fairytales. He had finished a story for the
Datlow/Windling dystopian anthology
After
. He writes, “When
Kris Rusch invited me to contribute a story to Fiction River,
combining these two themes seemed perfectly logical to me.”

The result is a memorable story impossible
to characterize.

The Witch’s House

Richard Bowes

First Month

All I know is I’m in a forest, staring past
trees at this dirt road. I know I’m here forever waiting for
travelers on the road to Avalon. They come by and I challenge them,
ask for a password and when they don’t give it I go in their brains
and kill them: simple as that. I can’t move, can’t think except
about this and I’ve been here for fucking ever.

Someone comes down the road and I recognize a
kid called Nice from my old crew back in the city. The AK47 he
carries won’t do any good against me. I go into his mind, look
through his eyes and see him seeing me. I’m massive and metal, like
a robot or a giant warrior in armor. I ask for a password, one we
both know from back there.

Nice and me were like brother and sister but
now he doesn’t recognize me, is too scared to think. Twenty seconds
ticks away without a response so I reach in and crush his
heartbeat, rip the breath out of his lungs and watch him fall dead
with blood running out of his mouth and nose.

Before I can realize I’m a fifteen-year-old
girl, a Mortal here in Fairyland, not a metal monster, another mind
goes into my head like I went inside Nice’s in the dream.

‘
The Soldier’s Malady,’
I get told
mind to mind by the Witch of Avalon. Then I understand I had a
nightmare, past horrors working their way into my dreams, making my
brain run scams on me.

The Witch being in my skull scares me. It
means I let my guard down and that it’s possible she could have
killed me just like I killed Nice in my dream. I remember how Nice
actually died; have a heart crushing memory of him cut in two on
the bank of the Hudson. It happened months ago in the wrecked city
where I spent all my life until last month. I guess I still feel I
should have been able to save him.

But before I can even open my eyes, the Witch
tells me
‘Rest easy. Sleep will follow.’
She rules here in
the Forest of Avalon and I’m asleep before I know it.

When I do wake up and open my eyes it’s dark,
with dawn light just starting. My mattress is on a hardwood floor.
Looking around, I make out the bark that’s one whole side of the
room. The Oak of Ware is part of the Witch’s house. Or the house is
part of the Oak.

Almost a month ago Kailen and Evalyn, two Fey
officers escorted me here through worlds full of wrecked war
machinery and down forest paths guarded by things like a giant with
eight eyes so he could see in all four directions. The giant stood
with a club and asked who went there. When I asked the Fey how far
I was from New York, I got told,
‘Many spells and more miles
than you can imagine.’

In the predawn I find myself automatically
inhaling and exhaling in a rhythm the Witch taught me. The six
senses: smell, touch, taste, hearing, sight, telepathy each get
exercised. With every breath I feel the shield I’ve built around my
mind. Anyone trying to bust into my head sees an image: a brick
wall like the ones in my wrecked city and they bounce off it.

In the same way, crazy stuff inside my head
like the Soldier’s Malady should stay inside. Last night,
obviously, all this broke down. The Witch entered my mind without
my even knowing she was going to do it. And before that the horrors
my mind produced got out.

Here in the forest, there’s no one but the
Witch to notice. Back in the city it would have spread terror in
friend and enemy, adult and child. Back in the city I was the only
telepath. Fairyland, though, is full of us.

All I can hope is that keeping my shield in
place pleases the Witch, makes up a little for my guard coming down
last night. Making her happy is my only ticket back to New York as
far as I know. I’m here for three months training. What happens if
she’s not pleased I don’t want to think about.

Minerva the owl flies in one window and out
the other. The Witch’s familiar is going to roost. At the same
moment I sense the Witch of Avalon reaching out and catch her
question on my shield,
‘Are you awake, my dear Real?’
And I
tell her I am.

The owl needs to sleep, I need to sleep but
the Witch never seems to. Getting up, I catch the smell of tea down
in the kitchen. I wash myself and put on this long T-shirt they
call a shift. That’s pretty much all I get to wear these days. My
clothes and everything else got taken away the night I arrived.
They gave me sandals but they’re out on the porch.

On the sideboard in the kitchen, there’s a
slab of bread and jam and a pot of the Witch’s tea. No sign of her.
The Witch of Avalon is everywhere and nowhere and makes sure I
never forget it.

When they brought me here almost four weeks
ago I was in bad shape. The only thing I knew how to do with my
telepathy was to kill people. Back then I didn’t know how to block
an enemy from my mind or communicate mentally with anyone else
except by force. The Witch told me I was a danger to myself and
others, though she smiled as she did.

Now I’ve developed this mental shield that
mostly keeps others out and keeps what I don’t want anyone to know
I’m thinking inside. Before she taught me all that, the Witch found
out every last thing I had inside me. Maybe some of that makes her
kind of distant and unsure about me now. Or maybe that’s just how
she is.

But she controls my fate and I make sure she
doesn’t catch just how much I hate the touch of her mind first
thing in the morning like this. Because maybe that would mean I
don’t get back to my city, bad as it is, to my girlfriend Dare and
to my life.

The Fey who found me, crazed and exhausted,
fighting to save my crew, my people, said they’d take care of
things while I was gone. But they told me I had to get fixed up.
There was no choice involved.

So I eat the bread, swallow the tea which I
always want to drink and walk barefoot onto the big wooden porch
with its roof and tables and chairs. Birds sing and dart through
the air. A rabbit runs across the grass. I look around for Phil,
this baby faun the Witch has as a pet. I wanted to kill him at
first. Now I kind of miss him when he’s not around.

Tall trees surround the house. A breeze makes
their leaves shimmer and catch the light. And suddenly there’s this
mutilated body on the grass. A woman, caught and butchered, her
breasts cut off, her crotch slashed open. She was someone I was
supposed to protect back in my city.

Automatically I reach out to find the one who
did it, wanting to get in his head, grab his heart and brain and
tear them apart. Birds screech in the trees, fly away. Small
animals run in the bushes.

When I look at the grass again, there’s no
body. It’s the Soldier’s Malady, a twisted memory of home. I want
to scream but I take some deep breaths and don’t. This time the
dream stayed inside my head.

I go over to the table on the porch where
there’s a viaculum. It’s this device they have in the Fairy Kingdom
where you control a story with your thoughts. This is how the Fey
teach their children. And some of them feel I must be a long lost
relative.

Nothing can distract me while I’m using the
viaculum. The first couple of weeks I took part in stories about
Fairy princes, and princesses and witches. I was supposed to learn
some moral but the real point was learning how to use all six
senses.

I got frustrated, lost my temper all the
time, tried to tear the heads off characters I hated, kept having
to stop and start over when I lost track of what I was doing. Now
the stories are more adult, more complicated but I’ve learned
stuff.

So I stand as tall as I get, which isn’t
very, on the porch. I’m aware of the growing morning light, the
noise of the birds, the smell of the woods, the tea I can still
taste and the feel of the floorboards on my feet.

It’s taken many hours of patience and
practice to get all my senses working like this. But that’s how you
make the game go forward. When the usual five senses are engaged, I
let my mind scan around me; touch the flitter brains of birds, the
deep throb of old trees, the way a hive of bees is kind of like one
brain. I don’t encounter the Witch. But I think she’s got ways of
concealing herself from me.

I say the spell I was taught and move my
hands like I should. It seems stupid but if I don’t do it just
right nothing happens. This morning I do the ritual and a voice in
my head says,
‘Lady Enigma in Dragon Country.’

That’s the game and I’m Lady Enigma, an
advisor/ operative sent by the Queen beneath the Hill to
investigate goings on in Claysmoran, a province way-gone in the
backwoods of Fairyland. For the first week or so, I had trouble
operating this story, keeping all my senses alert, watching for
clues from the characters. And I’d had trouble controlling my
temper.

The story picks up where I left off. The
nobility of the province are celebrating our hunt for the Giant
White Wolf and her pups. Back home in my lawless, wrecked America I
saw lots of people die and some of them were kids closer to me than
brothers or sisters could ever have been. I myself have killed
quite a few individuals and all of them deserved it as far as I
know.

All that and having the viaculum repeatedly
close down as I lost touch with various senses made me impatient
and anxious to finish things off.

We finally cornered the huge fiendish beast,
whose mind was hard to get hold of, after I’d seen her snap our
dogs’ spines and cripple horses. And I tore into her as she ran at
me, whipped her head back and broke her neck. She was defending her
pups, which would have grown to be red-eyed monsters but were still
big innocent beasts who whimpered in terror as we snuffed the life
out of them. I figured I needed to show I can handle stuff like
this if I’m going to get out of here and back home

The celebration takes place in the High
Sheriff’s castle. I taste the wine, feel the warmth of the fire,
smell the perfume, listen to the stupid conversation around me and
catch sight of myself in a mirror. Lady Enigma, emissary of the
Queen, is tall, fair, maybe twenty-five, instead of small, dark and
turning sixteen this fall the way I actually am. She flickers
because of all the Glamour she uses.