Read Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy Online
Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Short Stories & Anthologies, #Anthologies, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Paranormal & Urban, #Anthologies & Literature Collections, #Contemporary Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Anthologies & Short Stories
And then it was all over. Mariyam turned her face away, and the warriors continued on their heroes’ walk. Time resumed its regular rhythms. When she looked back he had gone.
•
Flecks of sunlight shimmered on the water as the boats positioned themselves to begin. High on the cliff above spectators sat, nestled comfortably into wooden chairs, or sprawled on coloured rugs.
The empty chair beside her made Jahira nervous. “Are you sure Mariyam didn’t say where she was going? Why travel all the way from Makasa if not to watch the main jousting event?
Haptet shrugged. “She never even mentioned the festival before I brought it up. It’s very strange, but I have the strongest feeling it was never the reason for her coming here.”
Jahira craned her neck to search the crowd. “Maybe she has gotten lost. You know her best, Haptet. Is she one who might lose her way in a crowd?”
Haptet shrugged. “I have known her only minutes longer than you have. I can only guess at the sort of person she may be.”
Jahira stared at him. “Really? You are not old friends? You seemed so familiar!” She glanced across at the others, all of whom shrugged as well.
Haptet shook his head. “I met her for the first time in the Starfish. You were there. She was curious about your eye. Remember?”
“Yes — but I presumed — ”
“No,” he said. “I did not know her before that day at all — only that she said she was a friend of Behameed’s. I’m beginning to wonder if we haven’t all presumed too much.”
“She came here to find Orias,” said Jahira, pulling her cotton wrap tightly across her shoulders, even though it was not cold. “Now that I think about it, I’m certain. Last night at the festival. Didn’t you see what happened when they met?”
“Look!”
A gasp rippled suddenly through the crowd, causing all heads to turn at once to the cliffs behind the beach. A lone figure stood atop Glass Rock, her skin shimmering in its sheath of glittering oil. Clearly a she, despite the distance;
the curve of her hips well-defined against the impenetrable shadow of the rock’s obsidian surface. And equally clear was her intention. The woman was preparing to dive the Sammarynda Deep. She stood poised as still as the rock itself, eyes cast downwards, waiting for the perfect moment. Waiting for the crowd to quiet itself.
“Haptet,” whispered Jahira, “I think that Mariyam is she — the inspiration for Orias’s honour. Mariyam is the woman from the war.”
Haptet’s eyes widened. “But that’s astonishing. Where is he now? Out on the water already? Did he board the boats with the others?”
Jahira didn’t answer, nor did she turn to discuss the alarming development with her friends. She understood perfectly. She’d observed the dark current pass between Mariyam and Orias last night, a subtle jolt of anguish that inflamed the very air around them. She understood they were not strangers. Neither were they friends. Something powerful bound them together, trapped them in each other’s vortex, unable to escape. Mariyam had come to Sammarynda to slash those bonds forever. It was she who’d paid the price for his honour. All she wanted now was freedom. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand,” Jahira whispered. “
I would have chosen the very same way.
”
One of the long boats pulled away from the others and headed for the shore. Orias’s blue, Jahira noted. Was Mariyam aware of it, so high up there on Glass Rock? If so, she gave no sign.
The murmuring of the crowd intensified as people began to notice the boat, and the single figure in full jousting regalia who leapt from its prow out into the shallows, kicking up clouds of foaming white water as he waded to the sand. Once on land, he raced for the rocks, stripping off jewelled leather as he ran, his pace slowing but not his determination.
Atop Glass Rock, the diver stepped forward to the edge. Was she staring into the abyss below with terror and trepidation? Or was she calmly appraising the future she had chosen for herself? Her stillness did not betray her thoughts. No one would ever know her truth.
The twittering of the crowd intensified as Orias clambered up the rock face, small stones and chunks of earth raining from each foothold. The brown rocks gave way to the cold solidity of Glass Rock’s extraordinary mineral composition. Orias kept climbing.
The crowd gasped in unison as the diver raised her arms above her head.
No. Wait for him, you must wait. He has almost reached the top.
She did not wait. She crouched, then pushed her body upwards and outwards, cutting a graceful swathe through the air, then falling like a spear. She broke the surface of the water cleanly, a blade plunging home with a killing thrust. Barely a ripple marked her passage.
As the water’s surface smoothed, all heads turned upwards to the rock face. The climber clung to Glass Rock like a spider, inching forwards and upwards, somehow finding handholds where there were none. A tide of sympathy washed over the crowd. He was too late. Too late to stop her, but he didn’t know it. He could not see that she had dived already.
Finally he hurled himself the last few feet, tumbling in a heap onto the rocky dive platform. He rushed to the edge, peered over to stare at the dark crevasse below the water. He hung his head in despair.
The crowd hushed. No one dared whisper now. Every one of them felt his sorrow and his tragedy, whatever the story behind the strange drama they were seeing.
Orias turned his back on the ocean. He walked away, then suddenly stopped, spun around and ran towards the edge, flinging himself into the air, assuming the diving position as he fell to the accompaniment of ten thousand screaming onlookers. He did not break the surface cleanly, but the ocean took him, just as it had taken her.
•
The night was still as porcelain, the ocean flat and calm, as if laying in wait for something great to happen — something that would change the world forever. For Jahira, things had already changed. Things that could never be made right again.
While Sammarynda grieved for its drowned prince, Jahira waited for a sign that the legends of their land were true and not just fancy tales for tourists. Every evening, she climbed the cliff directly opposite Glass Rock, sat cross-legged at its edge and gazed downwards at the dark patch of water, darker than the night sky itself. Not even Neme and Kryl cast their reflections upon its shadowy smudge.
One the third night of the third week, as she watched and waited, the surface of the water broke. Something emerged, coughing and spluttering, flailing its limbs in panic. Jahira leapt to her feet and ran down to the beach, grateful for the starlight that prevented her from stumbling on loose rocks. Above, Kashah the Dog-Headed Warrior watched as she stripped off her clothes and plunged into the ocean to swim to the struggling form, which had begun to shriek in panic. Jahira was a strong swimmer. She managed to haul the struggling one to safety.
As the two of them lay panting on the sand, Jahira realised she had rescued a child. A girl of no more than twelve or thirteen, pale as alabaster, thin as a reed. She wrapped the coughing girl in her coat. She had to get her home quickly. Away from the beach before anyone saw what the Sammarynda Deep had cast out in exchange for the city’s most beloved prince and the stranger who had enticed him to his death.
As they stumbled across the sand, their feet crunched down hard on small shells and fragile bones of twisted sea creatures tossed onto the sand by the dark Sammarynda tide.
The girl could not speak. She uttered terrified guttural sounds from the back of her throat. Not a language, as such, but Jahira understood it, just as she was not surprised by the thin webbing of skin stretched between the child’s fingers and toes.
Jahira responded in as soothing a tone as she could manage, murmuring that she would protect the child and keep her safe from harm. But the child would not be safe, Jahira knew. The child would never be safe. The citizens of Sammarynda port would hunt her down and kill her without question, just as they would kill the old women at the market who had sold Mariyam fragments of Glass Rock, if they hadn’t done so already. It did not take much to draw superstition to the surface. It would not take much more to return the land to the violence and terror of centuries past.
By the light of Kashah, Jahira understood that her missing eye had never been her honour at all. It was merely a cosmetic thing, an act of vanity, performed to draw attention to herself. Her true honour would lie in protecting this child of the Deep; the unholy fusion of Mariyam and Prince Orias, whatever the cost, even if the price to be paid was her own life.
•
Steve Berman
Gail hates being outside when it rains vinegar. She doubts the hags’ assurances that it clears the skin and removes warts; as a child, she put chicken bones in vinegar to discover days later they would be all rubbery. She wipes the wet hair from her face, grimacing at the sour trickle that slips past her lips. Her hands move to the pocket of her jeans, checking again for the plastic bottle of aspirin from the shelter.
She stumbles down the block, her sneakers sodden and her feet cold as she steps in puddles. The weak light coming from the sky with its brown clouds makes the street look unfamiliar, and for a moment, before hearing the recorded saxophone, she thinks she might be lost.
Then she spots the faded awning up ahead and the white stonework. The doors to the dilapidated hotel are left open until nightfall.
Bulbs sputter in the old crystal chandeliers in the lobby. A quiet line of people stands waiting to reach the front desk. Each holds something they think has value. Layers of wet clothing drip and saturate the frayed Persian rug. From hidden speakers comes more wailing brass.
She feels feverish inside the stifling-warm lobby. Gail’s soaked sweater hangs about her like a lead vest. Through the line of people, she catches sight of Brennan. The little girl sits atop the front desk, her small legs hanging over the side. The hags have dressed her in the lemon-yellow sundress with lace trim, her blonde hair held back with a white scrunchie. One of the Grace sisters stands beside her, and, as Gail watches, the old woman grins and pinches Brennan’s cheeks with both hands. Not fondly, but hard enough to turn the little girl’s face red and the hag’s knuckles bone-white. Brennan begins crying, and the Grace sister strokes her chin. “There, there, well done, dear,” she coos, before lifting a porcelain teacup to catch the tears. “That will do nicely.”
The hags wear brightly colored flannel nightgowns with slippers. Their weak, watery eyes resemble a hound dog’s.
Next to the first Grace is her twin, holding aloft a vintage hypodermic, the sort that Gail has seen in black-and-white movies, all glass and shiny chrome. The hag’s lips form a small “o” as she focused on refilling the needle from the teacup.
Gail tries not to stare as the needle slips into the next in line. The smell of those waiting makes her want to retch. Being a tearfreak is no excuse for poor hygiene. Once she is back working for the hags, she’ll draw the addicts baths. She can scrounge for salts and scented soaps. Everyone will appreciate her.
She climbs up the grand staircase, trying not to catch her feet on the ripped runner. A middle-aged man in denim overalls plods up the steps. One hand trails along the wallpaper; he has not rolled down his sleeve after receiving the injection.
The tearfreaks don’t always reach their rooms, and some collapse on the landing or a hallway. The hags hate when that happens and have told Gail how slovenly it leaves the hotel. They order her to put the addicts to bed.
Gail will come back later to see if the man needs help; she wants one last conversation with Alexander. He needs the aspirin.
All the rooms on the hotel’s third floor (the stairs skipped the second floor, and no matter how many times she tried, Gail couldn’t find her way there) were numbered 83. The hags forbid her from venturing onto the fourth or fifth floors. The elevators don’t work, haven’t since reality fell away last year, and the only way to reach the upper levels is by gloomy passages along the servant’s stairwell. Ever since she began working for the hags months ago, Gail began to think of herself as a servant girl and explored the hotel whenever possible.
That was how she came upon Alexander on the fourth floor in room 450. Or maybe the fifth floor, room 540. Sometimes numbers changed when she wasn’t looking.
She had been scooping out deviled ham from a jar with her fingers and roaming the dim hallway of doors when she overheard a Grace sister speaking.
“There once was an old woman who lived in a vinegar bottle? Not a very believable beginning to my story.”
Gail peered around the door. The hag sat on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs found in many of the rooms. She leaned over a young man lying on top of the sheets, one of her gnarled hands lifting up the front of his bathrobe. Underneath, he was naked, though someone had written in red ink all over his skin. Even the soles of his feet had words:
I shall be so happy living here
up the left foot and down the right.
“I think you could at least come up with a better ending for me,” said the hag. “Ungrateful.”
The young man grunted. Maybe groaned.
When the hag stood, Gail slipped away into the next room’s welcome darkness. She licked her fingers clean, slipping the empty jar into her pocket. She heard the creak of the floorboards as the Grace sister passed by. They always creaked, and Gail wondered if their footfalls aged the hotel step by step.
She counted to a hundred before entering the young man’s room. Under the white terrycloth robe, his chest rose and fell. The writing had vanished from his skin, which looked pale and drawn to the bone. He might have been handsome if someone hadn’t shaved off all his hair—not just scalped him but plucked clean his eyebrows and lashes as well.
He opened his eyes.
Who is there
? bled onto his forehead.