Clean Black Shoes – Part 2

Read the first part here.

When Tristan pushed himself up sometime later a cool breeze was swaying the tall heather. He looked back the way he’d come to orient himself only to frown. The peaked roof was not where he expected against the dimming sky, nor when he turned every way looking for the massive dark house. Surely, he hadn’t walked that far? But it was gone, replaced by gentle waves of heather and bilberry.

Tristan felt the cold wind bite harder now as he searched the horizon for his uncle’s house. Now shivering, he regretted splashing in the puddles and streams before and the mud weighing down the legs of his trousers. Without the house at his back Tristan did not know his direction or how to continue his trek, which he was no longer sure he wanted to do. Now the fire back in his room and the comforting novel he’d hidden in his trunk to read several times over seemed adventure enough.

While nervous about the missing house and the darkening sky, Tristan did not let himself dwell on his predicament. As his tutors and governess reminded him—Tristan was now eight and expected to conduct himself as a young and respectable gentleman in all situations. This required bravery, thought Tristan, and he firmed his jaw accordingly and decisively chose a direction.

Tristan walked for a long time, though he could only guess how long from the setting sun and softening dusk sky.  At the top of each small hill he stood upon his toes and hoped to see the black silhouette of the imposing house. But each rise disappointed and Tristan began to wonder if he had stumbled into a world that entirely consisted of wicked brambles and overgrown heather.

In the dark it became hard to see. More thorns tore at his clothes and tripped him until his hands were scratched and bleeding from catching himself against the ground. At one point when sliding down a rise he skidded into an unseen creek. He cried out in shock at the cold splash that soaked him up to his shirt. Tristan picked himself up and promptly began to tremble from the icy wind against his wet clothes.

He did not know how long he walked, only that the heavy feeling in his stomach grew as the sky became a deep fathomless color and the wind got colder. Tristan realized he may not be able to find the house even if it was there—its walls could be just over the next hill but in the dark he would never see it. Tristan heard a whimper escape his throat and was grateful that no one else was around to hear it, until the implications of that settled in and Tristan wondered if he might be lost for good.

He might have sat down then, given into dread or maybe tried to find some sort of shelter against the night, but a light winked to life against the black backdrop of moor and sky. Tristan jumped to his feet, staring as if it might shudder out if he blinked. For a moment he thought it might be a distant window of the house, but it bobbed in the dark and Tristan could see the pale, almost white, illumination shine off the leaves and stalks of the moor.

“Hullo?” Tristan called, already sliding down and then up the bank towards the strange light. As he approached, it withdrew. Tristan scrambled faster, unwilling to let the beacon fade and leave him alone. “No, please – hullo, do you know where the manor is?”

There was no answer.

It matched his pace, drawing him in its direction but not letting him get close. Tristan thought for a moment of the stories he’d heard of will o’ wisps that led travelers into bogs and other terrible fates.

The crisp light began to drift away and Tristan stumbled after in a panic, wherever it was leading him it couldn’t be worse than being caught in this inky sea of moorland. Tristan pushed himself, intent on staying out of the dark. Throat burning in the cold air he crashed through brambles and vaulted a rotting log. Tristan spun around a wall of heather to blink at the now bright light. He’d caught up.

The light was a lantern. It was held by a man. Tristan almost stumbled back, but the lantern-holder was already moving again. “Wait!” Tristan lunged after the man but the stranger’s shined leather shoes had no problem navigating the thorns and brush even as Tristan, mud-soaked and exhausted, had to clamor up and struggle for every step.

“Wait, please I just—” Tristan’s foot caught on a root and he fell to his hands with a hiss. Ahead the lantern bobbled on its way, its crisp light shining off the clean black shoes.

Tristan pushed himself up again only to see the lantern was a speck up on the next rise, its light creating a seam between the earth and the sky. Then it was gone and the world was just stretching blackness again.

Dread settled over Tristan as the silence of the expanse did.

A voice interrupted the quiet. “Tristan!”, it called hoarsely. From beyond and farther, more voices were calling his name. A steady glow began to rise from the curve of the hill. Tristan realized he was just staring and forced his tired legs to move.

“Here!” He called out to them, but they were already coming over the rise. Two men with torches, one of which Tristan recognized as the bearded Mr. Morris in the firelight. The stable keeper pushed his torch at the other man hustled down the slope, sliding to meet Tristan. His boots were caked with mud like Tristan’s were.

Mr. Morris knelt and took Tristan’s shoulder with a rough hand, his eyes searching for wounds or something else. “Yer alright?” he asked, his normally ruddy face slack.

Tristan could only nod, shaken and surprised by the sudden rescue. The moors were just as dark as before outside their trembling circle of torches. Mr. Morris shook his head, “consarn it, lets get you home.” He watched Tristan take two shaky steps and blew out a breath. Mr. Morris picked the boy up before Tristan could fall.  

As the stable keeper carried him up the slope, Tristan twisted to look back at the moors. He didn’t see the lantern or its strange keeper, but he remembered the clean black shoes in that crisp white light. Tristan shivered and could not stop until they reached the manor where he was hustled inside with a great fuss.

Clean Black Shoes- Part 1

Today, Tristan decided to be a pirate. He pulled down a red scarf in the front hall to fashion as a kerchief and went in search of a suitable weapon with which to raid and pillage. He reasoned that this ancient house, and the mysterious Uncle Edwin who kept it, would have dozens of sabers, daggers, and battle-hammers laying about. And with his uncle in the library, where Tristan was not allowed to even approach, he assumed he’d have no opposition as he searched.

However, after tugging on many locked doors up and down the manor’s halls, nothing had opened for him and his hands were smarting from pulling against the strangely cold handles. Tristan warmed his tingling fingers in his pockets and trudged back to the ground floor.

Figuring that most pirates probably faced worse hardships for their trade, Tristan decided to be creative and snuck into the kitchen to take a sizable cleaver from Cook’s collection. He sighed at the heavy domestic blade at its lack of jewels or skull motifs, but decided that it would do. Once outfitted appropriately, Tristan slunk back through the servery taking care to avoid the staff and especially the dour housekeeper, Mrs. Morris, and then pushed out into the warm sunlight of the kitchen court.

The court was empty except for a few scrawny chickens picking about, stacks of fresh cut wood, the goat, and a dozen mudpuddles shining still like mirrors from last night’s summer rain. Tristan took advantage of the latter with running leaps and splashing that scattered the timid chickens. Now that his fine linen trousers were soaked up to his thighs in mud, Tristan thought he looked the part better anyway.

Tristan paused at the edge of the kitchen court and peered out around the stone corner. In the distance Tristan could see someone, Mr. Morris probably, coaxing a horse down from the road. But the stable keeper’s back was to him and Tristan took the opportunity to dart the opposite way and around the back of the house. He didn’t fear capture, being a brave and vicious pirate, but after a month of being told off for exploring he was not willing to risk this day of fun.

He wondered, walking beneath the long shadow of the great house, why his uncle had invited him out to Westerland for the summer at all. They certainly didn’t seem to want him here.  Tristan wasn’t allowed in the library, where his uncle spent all his time, and he was not permitted in most of the house, locked up and covered in sheets as it was. He’d been cautioned against the woods to the south and the bogs to the west. Mrs. Morris had even snapped at him to get inside as he navigated the gardens one darkening evening. He barely saw his Lord Uncle Edwin. There were the dinners where the bent-baked man read and scribbled notes beside his soup. Tristan had become brave enough on the third time they supped together to ask, “what are you reading Uncle?”

Instead of being shushed and told that good children are seen and not heard, his Uncle had sniffed, peered at him from down the long table, and said, “let’s not be in a hurry to know, nephew.” And then the man had resumed scrawling on his notebooks and slurping his soup.

Tristan stopped at the edge of house’s long shadow, staring over the gentle rise of bracken and heather that would lead him to the East into the moors. The fog that sat on them each morning had burned off in the afternoon and Tristan reasoned he’d be able to find his way to something there.

It was not easy to be a pirate in Westerland County, he thought as he began up the first rise. There was not a proper ocean on which to sail, and he didn’t think there were any large rivers running nearby. Supposedly there was a lake somewhere, but locked from the library and the study, he had no map to find it. Tristan had devised his own map in his composition notebook instead. It seemed like something a pirate ought to have and he’d filled it with the required amount of smuggler’s caves, buried gold, and haunted hollows.

If Ari were here, and he so often wished his twin sister was, she would insist upon a real map. And probably better shoes, thought Tristan as a bramble nearly tripped him. But Ari was not here, and Tristan had to do without her sensible advice as he trudged into through the tall heather.  

The hills were not steep at first and Tristan easily found a narrow trail that spared his legs the worst of the brambles. As he continued up the deceptively gentle climb, the sun began to lie heavy on his back. It wasn’t long before he was red faced and forced to use his pirate’s kerchief as a real one to wipe the sweat from his brow. Still, he pressed on. Tristan refused to believe that this ancient house on ancient lands which he would inherit had nothing for him. When he jumped over the first little creek that trickled beneath the heather Tristan became more optimistic. The streams had to come from somewhere, perhaps even the lake or some other body of water suitable for pirating.

Confident he’d chosen well, Tristan let himself meander so he would have the best details to report to Ari later in a letter. He swung the cleaver back and forth to part the grass as if it were a proper saber. At least until he became distracted by a red beetle navigating a spring of bilberry and forgot to pick the weapon back up, leaving it behind when he left to follow a birdsong. And when he found a narrow tunnel of branches Tristan plunged inside as far as he could go on his hands and knees. At one point he even found a patch of cotton grass atop a rise and flopped down to watch the clouds.

The swaying scents of the wildflowers and golden afternoon’s warmth weighed down his mind. Tristan stretched and closed his eyes, letting the whisper of the wind over the moors draw his mind away and into a light sleep.

This is part 1 of 2. I will post the rest tomorrow.

See You Soon

On the first of the month, two weeks into the city’s occupation by foreign soldiers and their foreign god, the residents of a particular art district street in Mendassey awoke to festival chimes. At first this sparked confusion, as the invading force had not wasted a moment before tearing down the strung bits of colored glass and beaten copper that hung outside neighborhood shrines. This confusion gave way quickly to curiosity. Mendassians never overlooked an opportunity to stick their noses into someone else’s business—information was akin to gold in the eastern desert trade hub. Despite the danger of being caught near those tinkling sounds people slunk down the street following the chimes.

Dots of emerald, sapphire, amber, and ruby light spotted the street as the fierce morning sun shone through the dangling glass. Chimes marked every awning and arch, heralding the residents and still confused foreign soldiers up the art district promenade in an array of discordant light and sweet notes. Their destination became apparent as the chimes gave way to flowers.

Garlands of Cemetery Iris, Blood lily, and Yellow Jasmine hung from the hexagon walls of the Crossed Star Theatre. The fragrance of a desert bloom wafted from the once favorite venue of Mendassey’s first house and its doors were wide and welcoming again.

The foreign soldiers remembered themselves, shouting in the muffled round language to the residents who understood their unsheathed weapons if not their words. The citizens eased back and let the soldiers go first, but stayed on their heels. Just as the chimes had led to flowers, the blooms brought them to the open-air tiered seats and a wide view of the main stage.

The Crossed Star was impressive in itself. Outfitted by patronage of the first lord’s household, the theatre had grown with arched balconies, additional stages, and staff to support increasingly breathtaking stage productions that never lost the organic artistry the venue had grown from.

During the occupation the theatre had been appropriated for morality plays and sterile testaments to the new singular god of invaders. This morning, as the soldiers and citizens flooded through the aisles, they realized the theatre had once again been turned to new purpose.

Atop the wide main stage three shrines— as elaborate as those in the main square before they’d been torn down – loomed up towards the cat walks. The first stood strong and solid, a warm male face peering out of the gold and alder woodwork of its top. The second graced center stage, crafted from red lyptus wood. Its sharp jagged lines depicted the bowed likeness of a vicious-eyed woman with outreached wrinkled hands ready for offering. The third had no face, just subtle swirls of ebony wood that twisted up from the shrine’s edges. Waspwax candles dribbled on each and illuminated the spirits likenesses. Davish, protector of family and bloodlines. Zaynep, ever hungry for revenge. The Skulk, gifter of ill-gotten gains.  

Those from Mendassey shifted with small gasps and then with whispers. There was some business better left un-meddled with and all who’d lived here long enough knew a message when they saw it.  The soldiers drew their hand over head and heart, paling not only at the shrines but what lay before each.

The Skulk’s shrine rose dark and difficult to distinguish in the stage’s shade, but its offering glinted in the candle light. Before the low shrine dozens of crossed metal pieces lay haphazard over ebony and stage floorboard alike. Crafted with beautiful detail and in startling likeness to the symbols the foreign soldiers brandished – they lay dumped as petty offerings to a minor spirit. One soldier rushed towards the stage to rescue the items only to reel back at the bloody pile beneath the center altar.

Three corpses lay draped against the side of Zaynep’s shrine. With pale sunburnt skin and the close-cropped hair of priests, there was no doubt to which side they had belonged to. Dried blood covered their mouth and chin and stained the drab morality play costumes they’d been shoved into. As the soldiers still in the audience began to shove citizens away and out of the theatre, the bold climbed the stage and gingerly inspected their desecrated priests.

The stiffness of death had left the corpses mouths gapping and those brave enough to look could see the priests’ tongues had been slit down the center. The soldiers recoiled and started demanding explanation. A few helpful citizens exchanged information for the chance to stay, telling the soldiers that a forked tongue was given to frauds and con-artists who lied poorly enough to get caught.

Focused on the dead holy men and the fallen symbols of their god, the soldiers did not bother with the simple offering at Davish’s altar until the public had been banished and the bodies were covered. Only when the theatre fell silent did one of the junior officers check the third shrine.

Beneath the carved face of Davish, lord of family and blood, was another. The soldier bent and picked up the mask, immediately noticing its weight and smooth wooden features set in repose. Carved of the Amaranth trees that grew in the Eastern Basin, the likeness of the handsome youth rested with sensitive eyes and a melancholy set to his wide mouth. The mask’s strong bold lines and the graceful detail work spoke of a master carver, though it lacked the ornamentation of jewels and gilt that so many Mendassian death masks bore.

The soldier held the mask up to her senior officer and in so doing saw the note, carved into the interior with rough gouges. See you soon. -L

The foreign troops gathered up their dead and their treasure, closed up the theatre, and hurried from the looming shrines. Their leaders, those with their tongues still un-forked, would know what to do.

Heartless

People see what makes sense to them, reality notwithstanding. The doorman noted Aiden’s worn sneakers and assumed he was a busboy late for a shift. A pair of yuppies in the mirrored elevator returned his bored rich-kid smile with one of their own.  None but a child looked at him twice. The little girl frowned at him from under thick bangs as she trailed behind a distracted nanny. Aiden grinned at her with pointed teeth and winked a yellow eye. She stumbled on ballet-slippered feet and her impatient minder snapped at her charge for staring. The two vanished around the corner.

When Aiden found the right door with the right sequence of bright brass numbers on it, he went right for the door knob and hissed when pain slapped his palm. Aiden jerked back as the door opened inwards. A small woman cocked a smile at him. “Knock next time and I’ll take down the wards.”

“How unfriendly,” Aiden’s cradled his wounded hand close to his chest with slightly bared teeth. His glare sharpened with further affront when she rolled her wrist dismissively.

“Its because we’re not friends.” She tucked a piece of her curly black hair behind her ear. “Come in, I offer my hospitality.”

Aiden followed her into expansive suite, the narrow hallway opening into a wide floorplan filled with antique furniture. The mismatched pieces came from different centuries and continents but all were in pristine and polished condition. Wide panoramic windows stretched the room’s length and Aiden could see the edge of the bedroom’s balcony outside suspended over the impossible height. “When did you all start building…. up?” Aiden went to stand against the window. He looked down, enjoying the vertigo.

“Instead of out? Industrialization, the rise of cities, capitalism, don’t make me try and explain linear time. You don’t care,” she said.  His answering grin was all points.

Aiden quickly lost interest and forgot what he’d asked, distracted to the various interesting and breakable looking things stacked on her shelves in artless piles. Rolls of papyrus, an uncut emerald, a box of ugly black metal made uglier by the scraggly script weaving over its top. She watched his hands twitch.

“There’s consequences for breaking hospitality with theft, to say nothing of the curse attached to that,” she said when Aiden’s fingers hovered close to a silver mirror that didn’t reflect his face. He stilled and turned to look over his shoulder. A chill seeped through the windows.

“Do not—” his words seeping cold like the first frost of winter, “– lecture me on ancient rules, little mage.”

She met his stare with a raised chin, but not before she had leaned back. The chill melted away when Aiden laughed at the show of defiance. He turned away from the shelf and towards her. “Or curses for that matter. How is yours going, the prince will want to know. Can you still feel something is missing? Or have you forgotten entirely what it’s like to have a heart?”

Her chin ticked upwards again. “The prince can ask me himself if he’s interested.”

Aiden grinned, “oh that’s foolish of you. I’m friendlier. And you’re not useful to him.” He advised her, attention already sliding away. He meandered towards the low table messily set with books and picked up a thick volume. Aiden flopped down on the couch and stretched out before opening the book. The mage cleared her throat.

Aiden started, dropping his head back against the carved arm of the couch to look at her upside down. “Oh, I am here for the vials and the little cakes.” He went back to reading and added. “Except make them taste better.”

“They taste how they taste. I don’t cook.” When he didn’t respond to that she sighed and left the room. She returned with a wrapped parcel under her arm a short minute later but didn’t hand it over.

“That was fast… you knew I was coming?” Aiden frowned, closing the book on a finger. He spun around to sit cross legged and facing her. “How?”

“Your kind are old and powerful, but you don’t change. It makes you really predictable.” It was her turn again to look smug. When his frown chilled the air, she raised an eyebrow and set the parcel on the coffee table. “I speak no lies.”

Aiden rose in one fluid motion, tossing the book down and removing a leather pouch from a jacket pocket. “Silver wolf fur and seedlings from the Perished Glade. Apparently I’m not the only predictable creature here.” He tossed the pouch to her, forcing the mage to catch it awkwardly to her chest.  

Aiden picked up the parcel and left her in her apartment to try and figure out what he meant by that.    

Bloody Perfect

Riza paused before her sister’s tent, listening and second guessing herself. The noonday camp was sleepy, soldiers and priests alike taking shelter from the heavy sun. If they’d been at home, or if Riza had still been working inside the distant and besieged city, neither her or her sister would be up yet. But Riza had been caught and Sara had sons. Riza could hear the children’s’ burble, Sara’s swearing, and the clatter of life inside the large family tent. She tapped lightly on the heavy tent frame before drawing back the canvas of the door.

“Mothersblood,” the young woman swore and whirled, hand grasping for a something on the table she didn’t find.

“Sara, its me.” Riza didn’t flinch back. “I knocked.”

“You barged in, walking all quiet like you do. Stone and burn me.” Sara let out a heavy breath and then realized her oldest was staring. She pointed back to the little slate and chalk he was using and the young boy dutifully went back to writing wobbly alphabet letters. Sara wiped her hands on her skirts, checked on the sleeping infant in his nest of calico, and crossed the tent to hug her sister with a whisper, “two attacks in two weeks, I’m bloody jumpy.”

Riza squeezed her little sister back. Two attacks, and before that a raid that took Sara’s husband. Sara had always been hard-headed and resilient — you couldn’t grow up in the colonies and not be– but she was now alone as anyone could be. In the middle of cursed continent, surrounded by sand, demons, and soldiers, and now solely responsible for two young children– there was little Sara could do but follow the siege camp until it successfully took the enemy city and the generals found a way to send her home.

There was one long moment where Sara leaned heavily into her arms and then Sara was squirming back and running her fingers through sun bleached hair. “Said I was jumpy, not that I was gonna cry about it. Morgan you still on the alphabet?” Sara was back and leaning over her son. She smacked a kiss on the top of golden haired head. “So smart, one more time — try these words now.” She tapped his next assignment and went back to the dough she’d been working. “They sending you back into that place?”

“The city? No. I’d be useless there. The demons know my face.”

“So they going to send you somewhere else?” Sara dug her hands into the dough, rolling and pressing. “I don’t know.” “They have you spying on people here?” Sara asked dryly. “No, I didn’t come here to talk about me. Or work.” Riza was good enough not to shift, not to let her annoyance so much twitch on her face. “No, you never bloody do.” The muscles of Sara’s forearms worked as she abused the dough. Riza did twitch her lips at the profanity. She glanced at her nephew hard at work on the floor with his slate. “Sara, Morgan is –young. Can you–” “Squeeze some people out of your body and you’ll see a few ungodly words are fucking called for,” Sara interrupted brandishing a handful of bread dough in Riza’s direction. “Sara.” “Riza.” Sara mimicked her older sister’s stern admonishment. When Riza sighed, Sara went back to the dough with a ferocity like it was the thing lecturing her.  “Come on Riza, what are you still doing here? You don’t stay. You don’t ‘not work’. Not with a holy mission to complete or some bollocks like that.” “Sara, langua–” “Riza!” Sara admonished back, rolled her eyes, and turned her back half on her sister. “I’m helping you Sara.” Riza snapped to force Sara’s attention. Morgan blinked up at Riza and the baby began to fuss. Riza sucked in a breath and crossed to her newest nephew, she picked the infant up and began to sooth the child, pretending to know what she was doing. “You’re here, I’m here too and sticking around. At least until they get Scott back. I am going to help you.” Sara’s nostrils flared, still half turned away. The moment passed and her shoulders sloped. “Do you ever get tired of being so bloody perfect?” She groused. Sara set the dough to rise under a cloth and turned to her sister with crossed arms, brows raised in challenge. Riza waited the appropriate beat, and put on the smug smile only older siblings could perfect. “No, never.” Sara snorted, then sighed and shrugged. “Fine.” Riza kept smiling as her nephew quieted in her arms.

The Consultation

“What, were you expecting a cauldron?” Vera waved her guest towards the small living room while she started water boiling in the kitchenette. “Dustin, right?”

Dustin hovered his heavyset frame between the threadbare couch and papasan, and blinked at Vera when she said his name. “Yes, sorry. That’s me. And no, I didn’t know what to expect.” The dreary light through the apartment’s windows drained the colors from the room. His eyes followed her hands as she removed jars of dried herbs from the peeling shelf liner.

“Just tea,” she assured him. “Green, black, chamomile?”

“Whichever. Can you read them? The leaves? My grandmother said she could.”

Vera nodded without comment. She chose two mismatched mugs and a bag of cookies from the other cabinets and arranged them as the kettle began to whistle. With the tea steeping, Vera gathered everything on a tray and walked smoothly to the low coffee table.

“So, how to did you become a— how did you get—” Dustin realized he would have to choose a word and maybe a seat. He floundered at the choice and Vera saved him with a smile.

“How did I become a witch?” She gestured at the couch and took the papasan, arranging her thick reddish braids over a shoulder. “Its a family business. Or at least my parents taught my brother an I to read the signs, bundle the right bits of this and that, and generally aid those who came to us. Like you. Now, how can I help? Your email had some details but…”

“Its my family.” Dustin bowed his head, showing a small bald spot and Vera nudged his mug across the coffee table. He hesitated at the offered tea, still bowed, but picked up the mug with an apologetic frown. “I wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t tried everything else. Its started with my business. I ended things with my partner at our law firm and it was messy. There was—is bad blood. Then things started happening. Truly terrible luck over the past month: my son was in a car crash he barely survived. My wife was fired from her job over a freak discrepancy and my office burned down. A meteorite smashed through our home’s roof last week!”

Steaming mug held beneath her nose, Vera listened. “And you suspect this is connected to your partner?”  She asked without skepticism.

Dustin’s expression cloaked itself. “It sounds insane.”

“I’m a professional remember?” Vera urged him on with a smile.

“He said, he did something strange. When we forced his resignation, the board and I, he stood up and said these…. things. I think they were words but I can barely remember. It was like air shuddered and I couldn’t think through what he was saying—it was insane. Ralph nearly clawed off his own ears, Debra attacked the intern.” He swung a hasty glance back up at Vera, but she was at ease waiting for him to continue. “And then he looked at me like he had won something.”

Dustin leaned back an inch when he saw Vera’s hand shake as she placed the mug on its stone coaster. “Oh,” she said.   

“Is that bad– those words weren’t any language I know. They felt wrong, they made me feel wrong.” Dustin’s round jaw was firm now. “Whatever it is, things are getting worse by the minute for my family. Can you help me?”

Vera didn’t speak at, her eyes heavy and staring past her tea. “I can try,” she said finally.

This is a late response to my own prompt on MindLoveMisery’s Menagerie, and a failed attempt at this wordle from a few weeks ago. But hey, getting some writing in at least.

Troubles

“Don’t mind her nastiness,” Percy told me as he took back the plate through the kitchen window. He dumped the half-eaten burger and we slid our eyes to the corner booth of the diner. There the customer in question slapped her child’s hand away from another’s meal. Percy continued in a low voice just I could hear, “a little bit of discomfort feels like persecution when you’ve never had real troubles.”   

 I crossed my arms over my apron. Percy hummed to himself sure about his interpretation. “Bet the hardest she’s ever worked was pushing those kids out,” he said and was rewarded with a snort of laughter from me.  

My laugh swiveled the customer’s head like a bird call to a hunting hound. The woman’s diamond earrings glinted in the afternoon light from the windows. They were real- my second job at an antique store gives me a good eye for these things—and they were out of place against the cracked red vinyl of the seat. She leaned towards me over her son, forcing him to bend in on himself in the way only kids can do. “Excuse me, how much longer is it going to be? You’re not busy,” the woman called in a voice pitched high. She gestured at diner’s rows of empty booths. 

Percy ducked from the kitchen window abandoning me. When I could get my lips stretched just tight enough to pass for a smile, I turned to her. “It’ll just be a minute ma’am, the kitchen’s working on it.” The smooth simper always felt oily, but when you worked mostly for tips you learned it. The woman stared at me, from my apron, to my nose and frizzy hair – and turned back around to smack another kid’s hand as it reached for her phone.

Percy chuckled and slapped a fresh patty on the grill behind me like his point had been proven. I started refilling the sugar dispensers. My hands knew how long to pour without looking. “I don’t buy it, some people just like being shitty,” I said as I leaned over the counter so he could hear me.

The cook shook his head, nudged the burger, and started caramelizing onions.

The sound of finger snapping echoed in the empty diner and the top of the dispenser spun out of my hands in a spray of sugar. Another snap behind me set my teeth hard against each other. In the window, Percy mimed taking a deep breath.   

I set the dispenser down with a hard crunch of spilled sugar.  Percy sighed, knowing we were about to lose the only customer we had as I stalked over to introduce this woman to some troubles.   

Palm and Razorgrass

The heat of the day lingered in the sand and in her throat. They’d ridden all day and she could feel the sway and jerk of the horse like she was still atop the beast. Behind her, the growing camp defied the desolation of the dunes with the homey smells of roasting meat carried on the evening wind. Senika did not try and slip away unseen. Many noted the warlord’s new wife leave and climb the dunes, her ochre-brown skin and red linen dress in sharp contrast to the golden sand.

After the constant jangle of bridle and traveling chatter as they road, and now the bragging of the men around fires, canvas snapping, and woman gossiping back at the camp, Senika wanted the quiet of her own mind. The nights here were nothing like the gentle peace of the dark oasis, silent save for the lapping of the water and the delicate melodies of the priests’ prayers. No hints of palm or razorgrass drifted on the air.

Now not so far from the camp that she couldn’t see the cooking fires, the brash noises didn’t carry into the emptiness of the desert.

Up one dune, down another, she sunk into the sand as she climbed and slid, unused to the shifting landscape. The oasis had been her home, it was no longer, and Senika had made a peace with that. But the sands of her new husband’s domain still set something ticking in her throat. It was thirst.

The air was dead, she thought. No cool breeze off deceptively placid waters that stirred with deeper ancient currents. She swallowed and felt the inescapable sand scrape her throat. Her next step cascaded the careful edge of the dune. The sand took her with it and deposited her in the cradle of two dunes. On knees and hands, Senika barred her teeth at the ground and refused to let the itch in her throat spread to her eyes.

She almost raised herself, ready to continue her climb, or return quietly like a hunting cat slinking back to its den after a failed hunt. Senika lifted her hand but wet sand covered her palm. Her handprint in the sand remained filling slowly with water.  

Senika stared at the handprint. Slowly she sat back, kneeling like a supplicant. She cupped her hands to the water, pressing her fingers into the sand. At her urging the water surged from the ground to fill her palm. The water was cold and clear and when she brought it to her lips, Senika could taste hints of palm and razorgrass.

The oasis kept its promises, she would keep hers. Under the darkening sky Senika rose to return to her husband’s camp.

Stargazers

“I’ll get your money, I’m asking for an extension today at work,” Vera said, eyes as wide and honest as she could make them. Her landlord pursed his lips into a line and tried to trudge into his apartment. “I will!” Vera called after him, and then frowned when he only glared and shut the door, leaving her alone on the dingy hall carpet of her apartment building.

An hour later Vera shouldered the door of Stargazers open, three frozen coffees balanced in her hands, the little bells, braids, charms slapping the dingy glass of the store entrance in a discordant chorus.

Ten minutes after that, Vera shouldered the door open again and stalked onto the sidewalk. Aurora followed, quieting the doors agitated ornaments on her way out. She approached Vera, who was standing arms crossed, tight-faced and staring at the hazy summer sky.

“Heeey, I am so sorry,” Aurora reached a hand and rubbed Vera’s upper arm. “You’ll be okay, everyone loves you.”

“Yeah? They do? We’ll that’s f-”  Vera swallowed the swear and the rest of the words as Aurora’s soft features flinched. She swallowed the edge in her throat left by her firing before she could speak. “Sorry, I’ve already been promising my landlord rent for weeks and I needed this job.” Without the anger to keep her going, she sniffed and made sure to look up at the sky, staving off the tears.

Aurora nodded sympathetically, “it didn’t work out. You’ll find something else.”

Vera nodded at the airy words, willing to take the comfort they offered even if they both knew no one found jobs like they were lying around lost or misplaced. “You think?”

“Yeah, just you know, listen to your boss the next time. Be a little practical.”

Vera looked at the young woman’s fly-aware pastel hair, the unfocused glaze to her eyes, and the crystal necklaces heaped on her chest. Practical. “This is about the customer last week?” Vera felt the furnace in her chest roar back to life, burning away her tears. “She was about to spend her – she was wasting money, money she didn’t have on junk that doesn’t work. I’m being fired for not selling useless crystals?”

“Well… yeah. We’re a new age store, that’s what we sell. Its not just that customer though, it happened a lot and we have to stay in business, look I’m sorry Vera, maybe this just isn’t for you.” Aurora stepped back, unsticking herself from the brewing storm of dark emotions on the sidewalk outside her store. “See you around.”

Another chorus of bells and glass and Vera was left alone on the sidewalk wondering what about a job just wasn’t for her and if that was even possible.

An hour’s bus ride later Vera passed her landlord in the stairwell, and he lifted his eyebrows at her in the question he’d been asking since the first of last month. Vera sidled around the look, skipping the next step in her haste to get out from under his smug gaze. The sound of his grunted laugh followed her up to her door where her key no longer fit in the lock.

Limited posting is still in effect (so much dissertation writing), but this music challenge comes from Poor Judd.    

Another Set of Hooks

Reid scuffed his boot at the rotten dock kicking the splinters into the choppy water. Down the long water-logged planks and tiny against the horizon’s backdrop, Kirra bartered with the captain of a dhow at the end of the dock. Reid sniffed at the vessel and its yellow-brown sails and rust crusted hull.

This far down Port Gamble’s main wharf and its forest of furled sails and masts, and even farther from the watchful city carved into the rising seacliffs, they were unlikely to be bothered by Kirra’s many enemies. Still, she had told him to keep a watchful eye and his employer had a way of knowing when his mind wandered.

So, Reid kept a weather eye. He watched money change hands and wondered if he should tell the mage she’d gotten cheated. The dhow didn’t look like it could make it to the smooth portals dotting the mouth of the bay, much less an ocean a world away. The sun levitated over the waves, backlighting the already smooth onyx rings, half visible as arches rising from the peaked grey water. All rose tall enough into the sky to permit the mast of a galleon, and their lower depths would allow the hollow bellies of steamers to pass well beneath the waves.

Like everyone whose mind was not twisted unnaturally to read the magic inherent in the shaped behemoths, Reid could not look at the graceful sweep of stone for too long. He wondered how the captains managed, threading their ships between the stone into the shimmer of air and the unknown oceans beyond, without letting madness take hold. His father had once done it, to bring them here. Reid had been a boy, staring at the arched columns until someone had dragged him away from the rail.  

Kirra finished her business with the dhow’s previous owner and walked down the dock towards Reid. He didn’t say anything until he’d fallen into step behind her. “Interesting choice.”

She twisted her head and raised her eyebrows, inviting him to speak.

“The dhow? That’s the ship,” he asked incredulous despite having watched the exchange happen.

Kirra nodded. Her boots were not fit for the rocky beach and Reid helped her over a difficult patch. Once on the paved path into Port Gamble proper Reid sighed, knowing he couldn’t keep silent for the rest of their walk back to the city. “You could’ve asked, I know ships, even if I haven’t been on one in a decade. That dhow’s a carcass, hells, it probably won’t float as well as an actual carcass.”

 “Poor thing for a captain to say about his ship.” Kirra replied.

Reid did stop, staring at the small woman still walking ahead of him under the shadow of the city. “Captain—is that my ship?” He started walking again, hurrying after her. “Kirra, is that my ship?”

He got ahead of her, searching for mockery or bait in her smooth expression. She refused to stop, her pace never changing. She laughed at him, “I promised, didn’t I?”

Reid looked back at the dhow. From this distance, under the shadow of the towered and tiered city, the little vessel was a muddled shape against black water. His muddled shape though.

They cut through Port Gamble, turning from its main thoroughfare and its way towards the watchful city, instead leaving towards the cliffs. There uneven steps wound into the sandstone. Reid lagged behind as his boss climbed, watchful for anyone who might follow deep into the coast carved ravines.

“You’ll need the dhow seaworthy in two months,” Kirra said, pausing to lean against the sandstone with a glance back the way they’d come.

“A job already?”

Between slightly winded breaths, Kirra wheezed a laugh. “I did just pay you.”

Reid clamped his teeth shut until Kirra turned and started walking again. Only once they were deep in the shadows of the cave and she was beginning to mutter magic did Reid let his expression war with itself, caught between a breathless grin and sullen glare. His first ship, and another set of hooks.