GlitterShip

All That Fairy Tale Crap

by Rachel Swirsky

I was supposed to go to the ball, but I spent the night licking out my stepsister instead.

Bethesda moaned and rustled mulberry silk high up her thighs. “There, there, no, faster, come on, faster, please…”

The friendly mice put out their eyes and ran out in trios to join a different fairy tale.

Never marry a prince when you can eat a pussy.

Never ride a pumpkin when you can steal cab fare.

Never wear a ball gown when you can slink in snakeskin pants.

Never listen to a fairy godmother.

Full transcript appears after the cut.

[Intro music plays.]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 14 for September 8th, 2015. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story today is "All That Fairy Tale Crap" by Rachel Swirsky.

Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, the World Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award, and twice won the Nebula Award. She's always been obsessed with fairy tales, from Shelley Duval's Fairy Tale Theatre through Datlow and Windling's anthologies of retellings.

All That Fairy Tale Crap

by Rachel Swirsky

Sugar

by Cat Rambo

They line up before Laurana, forty baked-clay heads atop forty bodies built of metal cylinders.  Every year she casts and fires new heads to replace those lost to weather, the wild, or simple erosion.  She rarely replaces the metal bodies.  They are scuffed and battered, over a century old.

Every morning, the island sun beating down on her pale scalp, she stands on the maison's porch with the golems before her.  Motionless.  Expressionless.

She chants.  The music and the words fly into the clay heads and keep them thinking.  The golems are faster just after they have been charged.  They move more lightly, with more precision.  With more joy.  Without the daily chant they could go perhaps three days at most, depending on the heaviness of their labors.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 13 for September 1st, 2015. This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

We're back from our unfortunate hiatus, which was caused because it turns out that moving more than 3,000 miles away across the entire continent is a bit of an upheaval. But, I'm settling in over here in New York, now, and I'm a little more than a week into the first year of my five-in-theory-year program.

Our story today is "Sugar" by Cat Rambo. Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. A prolific storywriter and Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee, her publications include stories in Asimov's, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her most recent book is Beasts of Tabat, Book 1 of the Tabat Quartet. She is the current President of SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America). For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see http://www.kittywumpus.net

Sugar

by Cat Rambo

They line up before Laurana, forty baked-clay heads atop forty bodies built of metal cylinders.  Every year she casts and fires new heads to replace those lost to weather, the wild, or simple erosion.  She rarely replaces the metal bodies.  They are scuffed and battered, over a century old.

Every morning, the island sun beating down on her pale scalp, she stands on the maison's porch with the golems before her.  Motionless.  Expressionless.

She chants.  The music and the words fly into the clay heads and keep them thinking.  The golems are faster just after they have been charged.  They move more lightly, with more precision.  With more joy.  Without the daily chant they could go perhaps three days at most, depending on the heaviness of their labors.

This month is cane-planting season.  She delegates the squads of laborers and sets some to carrying buckets from the spring to water the new cane shoots while others dig furrows.  The roof needs reshingling, but it can wait until planting season is past.  As the golems shuffle off, she pauses to water the flowering bushes along the front of the house.  Placing her fingertips together, she conjures a tiny rain cloud, wringing moisture from the air.  Warm drops collect on the leaves, rolling down to darken pink and gray bark to red and black.

Inside the house is quiet.  The three servants are in the kitchen, cooking breakfast and gossiping.  She comes up to the doorway like a ghost, half fearing what she will hear.  Nothing but small, inconsequential things.  Jeanette says when she takes her freedom payment, she will ask for a barrel of rum, and go sell it in the street, three silver pieces a cup, over at Sant Tigres, the pirate city.  She has a year to go in the sorceress' service. 

Daniel has been here a year and has four more to go.  He is still getting used to the golems, still eyes them warily when he thinks no one can see him.  He is thin and wiry, and his face is pockmarked and scarred by the Flame Plague.  He was lucky to escape the Old Continent with his life.  Lucky to live here now, and he knows it.

Tante Isabelle has been with her since the woman was thirteen.  Now she's eighty-five, frail as one of the butterflies that move through the bougainvillea.  A black beak's snap, and the butterfly will be gone.  She sits peeling cubes of ginger, which she will boil with sugar and lime juice to make sweet syrup that can flavor tea or conjured ice.

"If you sell rum, everyone will think you are selling what lies between your thighs as well!" she says, eying Jeanette.

Jeanette shrugs and tosses her head. "Maybe I'd make even more that way!" she says, ignoring Daniel's blush.

Tante Isabelle looks up to see Laurana standing there.  The old woman's smile is sweet as sunshine, sweet as sugar.  The sorceress stands in the doorway, and the three servants smile at her, as they always do, at their beautiful mistress.  No thought ever crosses their minds of betraying or displeasing her.  It never occurs to them to wonder why.

Christina is a pirate.  She wears bright calicos stolen from Indian traders and works on a ship that travels in lazy shark-like loops around the Lesser and Greater Southern Isles, looking for strays from the treasure fleet and Duchy merchants.  The merchants, based in the southernmost New Continent port of Tabat, prey on the more impoverished colonies, taking their entire crops in return for food and tools.  The treasure fleet is part of a vast corrupt network, fed by springs of gold.  This is what Christina tells Laurana, how she justifies her profession of blood and watery death.

When Christina comes to Sant Tigres, she goes to the inn and sends one of the pigeons the innkeeper keeps on the roof.  It flies to Laurana's window.  She leaves her maison and sails to the port in a small skiff, standing all the way from one island to the other, sea winds whipping around her.  She focuses her will and asks the air sylphs, who she normally does not converse with, to bear her to her lover's scarlet and orange clad arms.

Tiny golden hoops, each set with a charm created by Laurana, are set in Christina's right ear.  One is a tiny glass fish, protection against drowning, and the other is a silver lightning bolt to ward off storms. 

Christina likes to order large meals when she comes ashore.  Her crew hunts the unsettled islands and catches the wild cattle and hogs so abundant there to eke out their income.  They sell the excess fat and hides to the smugglers that fill these islands.  So she is not meat-starved now, but wants sugary treats, confections of butter and sweet, washed down with raw swallows of rum, here in harbor, where she can be safely drunk.

"Pretty farmer," she says now.  She touches the sorceress's hair, which was black as Christina's once, but which has gone silver with age, despite her unlined skin and her clear, brilliant blue eyes.

"Pretty pirate," Laurana replies.  She spends the evening buying drinks for Christina and her crew.  The pirates count on her deep pockets, rich with gold from selling sugar.  Sometimes they try to sell her things plundered on their travels, ritual components, scrolls or trinkets laden with spells.  The only present Christina ever brought her was a waxed and knotted cord strung with knobby, pearly shells.  It hangs on her bedchamber wall where the full moon's light can polish it each month.

Laurana brings Christina presents: fresh strawberries and fuzzy nectarines from her greenhouse.  In Sant Tigres, she trades sugar for bushels of chocolate beans and packets of spices.  Someday, when circumstances have changed, she would like Christina to spend a day or two at the plantation.  Jeannette would outdo herself with the meals, flakey pastries and flowers of spun sugar. 

It is time to send for a new cook, she thinks.  It will take a few months to post the message and then for the new arrival to appear, and even more time for Jeannette to train her in the ways of the kitchen and how to tell the golems to fetch and carry.

Someone leans forward to ask her a question.  It is a new member of Christina's crew, curious about the rumors of her plantation.

"Human slaves are doomed to failure," she says. "Look what happened on Banbur – discontented servants burned the fields and overtook the town there, turning their masters and mistresses out into the underbrush or setting them to labor.

"And," she added. "Whites do badly in this climate.  I can take care of myself and my household, but it is easier to not worry about my automatons growing ill or dying."

Although they did die, after a fashion.  They wore away, their features blurred with erosion.  They cracked and crumbled – first the noses, then the lips and brows, their eyes becoming pitted shadows, their molded hair a mottling of cracks.

Time to redecorate soon, she thought.  She did it every few decades.  She would send a letter and eventually a company representative would show up, consult with her, and then vanish back to Tabat, soon replaced by rolls of new wallpaper and carpets, crates of china and porcelain wash basins.  She looks at Christina and pictures her against blue silk sheets, olive skin gleaming in candle glow.

Later they fall into bed together and she stays there for two hours before she rises, despite her lover's muffled, sleepy protests, and takes her skiff back to her own island.  Overhead the sky is a black bowl set with glittering layers of stars, grainy as sandstone and striated with light.  Moonlight dapples the waves, so dark and impenetrable that they look like polished jet.

At home, she goes upstairs.  A passage cuts across the house, running north to south to take advantage of the trade wind, and open squares at the top of each room partition let the wind through.  Britomart's is the northernmost room.

The air smells of dawn and sugar.   Sugar, sweet and translucent as Britomart's skin, the color of snow drifts, laid on cool white linen.  The other woman's ivory hair, which matches Laurana's, is spread out across the pillow.

Tonight her face is unmasked.  Laurana does not flinch away from the pitted eyes, the face more eroded than any golem's.  Outside in the courtyard, the black and white deathbirds hop up and down in the branches, making the crimson flowers shake in the early morning light.

"Pleasant trip?" Britomart says.

Laurana's answer is noncommittal.  Sometimes her old lover is kind, but she is prone to lashing out in sudden anger.  Laurana does not blame her for that.  Her death is proving neither painless nor particularly short, but it is coming, nonetheless.  A month?  A year?  Longer?  Laurana isn't sure.  How long have they been locked in this conversation?  It has been less than six months so far, she knows, but it seems like forever.

She goes to her room.  The bed is turned down and a hot brick has been slipped between the sheets to warm them.  A bouquet of ginger sits on the table near the lamp, sending out its bold perfume.

She lies in bed and fails to sleep.  Britomart's face floats before her in the darkness.  She is unsure if she is dreaming or really seeing it.  She wonders if she remembers it as worse than it really is.  But she doesn't.

Two weeks later, the pigeon at her window.

Christina has a bandage around her upper arm, nothing much, she says, carelessness in a battle.  She pushes Laurana away, though apologetically.  Rather than sleep together, they stay awake and talk.  It is their first conversation of any length.  Two hours after their first meeting, in the Sant Tigres market, they had fallen into bed together, four months ago.

"So she's sick, your friend?" Christina says.

"You were raised here in the islands," Laurana answers.  "You don't know what it was like in the Old Country.  In the space of three years, sorcerers destroyed two continents.  Everyone decided to make their power play at once.  They called dragons up out of the earth and set them killing.  The Flame Plague moved from town to town.  Entire villages went up like candles.  Millions died, and the earth itself was charred and burned, magic stripped from it.  Some fought with elementals, and others with summoned winds and fogs, but others with poisoned magic."

She pours herself more wine.  Christina's skin is paler than usual, but the lantern light in the room gleams on it as though it were flower petals.

"And you were here…" Christina prompts.

"I was here in the islands, preparing to go.  I heard that Britomart had blundered into someone else's trap and was dying of it.  I brought her down.  The magic is clean here, and there are serendipities and artifacts.  I hoped to heal her."

"But that hasn't happened."

The wine is mulled with cinnamon and clove and sugar that has not completely dissolved, a gritty sweet residue at the cup's bottom.

"No," she says. "That hasn't happened."

Christina smuggles Laurana onto her ship while it's at harbor.  She and three other sailors are supposed to be watching it.  Laurana sits with them drinking shots of rum until the yellow moon swings itself up over the prow, its face broad and grinning as a baby's.  It reminds her of Britomart and her tears well up.  She savors the moment, for magic removes almost all capacity to weep.

She nudges Christina and points to the distant reef.  Out on the rocks, mermaids cluster, fishy eyes shining in the moonlight, fleshy gills pulsing like tidepool creatures shuttered close by the light.  She kisses Christina as they watch.

Eventually, the two climb into Christina's bunk for frantic, slippery, drunken lovemaking, careful of the still healing arm.

She leaves in the small hours, past the stares of the mermaids.  It is still planting season and the golems work and night.

When she first came to the island she tried yellow-flowered sea-island cotton.  Then indigo and ginger.  With the arrival from the Wizard's College of Tabat of schematics for three-roller mills and copper furnace pots, sugar cane has become the crop of choice.  Her workers perform the labor that must be undertaken day and night when the cane is ready to harvested and transmuted into sugar and molasses.  She makes rum too, and ships barrels of it along with the molasses casks and thick cones of molded muscovado sugar to Sant Tigres, which consumes or trades all she can supply.

Most sorcerers are not strong enough to animate so many golems.  She has the largest plantation in this area.  Others, though, have followed her lead, although on a smaller scale.  It took decades for them to realize how steadily she was making money, despite the depredations of the Dutch merchants or the pirates they paid to disrupt the Aztec shipping trade.

She had been to the Old Continent before all the trouble, two years learning science at a school, where she had met Britomart, who was an actual princess as well as a sorceress.  She had been centuries old when she met Britomart but she had dared to hope that here was her soul mate, the person who would stay by her side over all the centuries to come. 

But in the end, she wanted to return to her island, full of new techniques and machineries that she thought would improve the yield.  Rotating fields and planting those lying fallow with clover, to be plowed into the soil to enrich it for planting.  Plans for a windmill to be built to the southeast, facing into the wind channeled through the mountains, with sails made of wooden frames tied with canvas.  Lenses placed together that allowed one to observe the phases of heaven and the moons that surrounded other planets, and the accompanying elegant Copernican theories to explain their movements. 

She swore to Britomart that she would return by the next rainy season and she kept her promise.

But by then, the trap had been sprung and Britomart had begun to rot away, victim of a magic left by a man who had died two weeks previously.

"You're ready to be rid of me," Britomart says.

"Of course not."

"It's true, you are!"

She goes about the room, conjuring breezes and positioning them to blow across the bed's expanse.

"You are," Britomart whispers. "I would be."

Two breezes collide at the center of the bed.  Britomart wants it cold, ever colder.  It slows the decay, perhaps.  Laurana isn't sure of that either.

Outside she sees that the golems are nearly done with the south-east field.  One more to go after that.  She glances over the building, tallying up the things to be done.  Roof.  Trimming back the bushes.  Exercising the horse she had thought Britomart would ride.

Half a mile away is the beach shore.  Her skiff is pulled up there, tied to a rock.  Standing beside it, she can see the smudge of Sant Tigres on the horizon.

She is so tired that she aches to her bones.  Somewhere deep inside her, she is aware, there is an endless well of sorrow, but she is simply too weary to pay it any mind.  It is one of the peculiarities of mages that they can compartmentalize themselves, and put away emotions to never be touched again.

She does this now, rousing herself, and prepares to go on.  She has a pact with the universe, which told her long ago when she became a sorceress: nothing will be asked that cannot be endured.  So she soldiers on like her workers, marching through the days.

She is still tired a week later.

"Go to her," Britomart says.  "I don't care.  You don't have much time with her."

"I have even less with you," Laurana says, but Britomart still turns away.

It is harvesting season’s end.  Outside in the evening, some of the golems are in the boiling house, where three boilers sit over the furnace, cooking the sugar cane sap.  The syrup passes from boiler to boiler until in the last it begins to crystallize into muscovado.  Two golems pack it into clay sugar molds and set the molds in the distillery so the molasses will drain away.

In the distillery, more golems walk across the mortar and cobble floor in which copper cauldrons are set for molasses collection, undulating channels feeding them the liquid. 

They mix cane juice into the brew before casking it.  In a few months, it will be distilled into fiery, raw rum and sold to the taverns in the pirate city.

She goes and fetches her notebook and sits in the room with Britomart, her pen scratching away to record the day's labors, the number of rows harvested, and making out a list of necessities for her next trip to Sant Tigres.  She estimates two thousand pounds of sugar this year, three hundred casks of molasses, and another two hundred of rum.  Recently she received word that the sorcerer Carnuba, whose plantation is three days south, renovated his sugar mill to process lime juice.  Lime juice is an excellent scurvy preventative, and much in demand – she wonders how long it would take a newly planted grove to fruit.  Her pen dances across the page, calculating raw material costs and the best forms of transportation.

"Is she pretty?" Britomart asks.  Her face is still turned away.

Laurana considers. "Yes," she says.

"As pretty as I was?" 

The anguish in the whisper forces Laurana put down her pen.  She takes Britomart's hands in hers.  They are untouched by the disease, the nails sleek and shiny and well-groomed.  Hands like the necks of swans, or white doves arcing over the gleam of water.

"Never that pretty," she says.

The next morning Laurana goes through the room, touching each charm to stillness until the lace curtains no longer flutter.  Until there is no sound in the room except her own breathing and the warbling calls of the deathbirds clustering among the blossoms of the bougainvillea tree outside.

She hears a fluttering from her room, a pigeon that has joined the dozen others on the windowsill, but she ignores it, as she ignored the earlier arrivals.  She sits beside the bed, listening, listening.  But the figure on the bed does not take another breath, no matter how long she listens.

All through that day, the golems labor boiling sugar.  Jeanette brings her lemonade and the new girl, Madeleine, has made biscuits.  She drinks the sweet liquid and looks at the dusty wallpaper.  The thought of changing it stuns her with the energy it would require.  She will sit here, she thinks, until she dies, and dust will collect on her and the wallpaper alike.

Still, when dinner-time comes she goes downstairs and under Tante Isabelle's watchful eye, she pushes some food around on her plate.

Daniel cannot help but be a little thankful that Britomart is dead, she thinks.  He was the one who emptied her chamber pot and endured her abuse when she set him to fetching and carrying.  The thought makes her speak sharply to him as he serves the chowder the new girl has made.  He looks bewildered by her tone and slinks away.  She regrets the moment as soon as it is passed but has no reason for calling him back.

Upstairs the ranks of the pigeons have swollen by two or three more.  She lies on her bed, fully clothed, and stares at the ceiling.

The next morning she takes two golems from their labors to carry Britomart's body for her.  They dig the grave on a high slope of the mountain, overlooking the bay.  It is a fine view, she thinks.  One Britomart would have liked. 

When they have finished, she stands with her palms turned upwards to the sky, calling clouds to come seething on the wind.  They collect, darkening like burning sugar.  When they are at the perfect, furious boil, she brings lightning down from them to smash the stone that stands over the grave.  She does it over and over again, carving Britomart's name in deep and angry, blackened letters.

At home she goes to lie in bed again.

One by one, the golems grind to a stop at their labors, and the sap boils over in thick black smoke.  They stand wherever their energy gave out, but all manage in their last moments to bring their limbs in towards their torsos, standing like stalks of stillness.

It may be the smoke that draws Christina.  She arrives, knocks on the door, and comes inside, brushing past the servants.  Without knowing the house, she manages to come upstairs and to Laurana's bedroom.

Laurana does not move, does not look over at the door.

Christina comes to the bed and lies down beside the sorceress.  She looks around at the bedroom, at the string of shells hanging on the wall, but says nothing.  She strokes Laurana's ivory hair with a soft hand until the tears begin.

Outside the golems grind to life again as the rain starts.  They collect the burned vats and trundle them away.  They cask the most recent rum and set the casks on wooden racks to ferment.  They put the plantation into order, and finish the last of their labors.  Then as the light of day fades, muffled by the steady rain, they arrange themselves again, closing themselves away, readying for tomorrow.

END

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I'll have another story for you on September 8th.

[Music plays out]

Sugar

by Cat Rambo

They line up before Laurana, forty baked-clay heads atop forty bodies built of metal cylinders.  Every year she casts and fires new heads to replace those lost to weather, the wild, or simple erosion.  She rarely replaces the metal bodies.  They are scuffed and battered, over a century old.

Every morning, the island sun beating down on her pale scalp, she stands on the maison's porch with the golems before her.  Motionless.  Expressionless.

She chants.  The music and the words fly into the clay heads and keep them thinking.  The golems are faster just after they have been charged.  They move more lightly, with more precision.  With more joy.  Without the daily chant they could go perhaps three days at most, depending on the heaviness of their labors.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 13 for September 1st, 2015. This is your host Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

We're back from our unfortunate hiatus, which was caused because it turns out that moving more than 3,000 miles away across the entire continent is a bit of an upheaval. But, I'm settling in over here in New York, now, and I'm a little more than a week into the first year of my five-in-theory-year program.

Our story today is "Sugar" by Cat Rambo. Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in the Pacific Northwest. A prolific storywriter and Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee, her publications include stories in Asimov's, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her most recent book is Beasts of Tabat, Book 1 of the Tabat Quartet. She is the current President of SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America). For more about her, as well as links to her fiction, see http://www.kittywumpus.net

Sugar

by Cat Rambo

Swan-Brother

by Gabriel Murray

The—woman—took snuff.  "Good morning, Captain," she said, Capitaine in her accent.  "This is a colder day than I imagined."  She looked out over the swells, her mannish periwig bobbing as she tilted her head up to regard the horizon.  "Do you know, I hardly expected to see it."

Gregory Everett clasped his hands behind his back.  "Your Captain did the correct thing," he said.

He had.  Galatea's American captain had struck colours almost as soon as the Indefatigable beat to quarters.  If he hadn't Gregory would have sent him to the bottom of the sea.  Gregory had no way of knowing that the privateer Galatea carried but one petty sorceress, not one of Bonaparte's magi that could kill him and his men with an incantation and a splinter of Indefatigable's hull.  He'd have sunk her.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 12 for July 9th, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story for today is "Swan-Brother" by Gabriel Murray.

Gabriel Murray lives in New York City with two cats and a pianist.  His reviews and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, We See A Different Frontier: An Anthology of Postcolonial Speculative Fiction, Ideomancer, and Daily Science Fiction.  He can be found at http://orestesdrunk.wordpress.com and @orestesdrinking. He is currently working on his first novel, which is a Regency fantasy about families and bad decisions.

Our reader this week is Alasdair Stuart, the host of Pseudopod. He also writes reviews and blogs at http://alasdairstuart.com and can be found on Twitter at @AlasdairStuart.

Swan-Brother

by Gabriel Murray

The—woman—took snuff.  "Good morning, Captain," she said, Capitaine in her accent.  "This is a colder day than I imagined."  She looked out over the swells, her mannish periwig bobbing as she tilted her head up to regard the horizon.  "Do you know, I hardly expected to see it."

Gregory Everett clasped his hands behind his back.  "Your Captain did the correct thing," he said.

He had.  Galatea's American captain had struck colours almost as soon as the Indefatigable beat to quarters.  If he hadn't Gregory would have sent him to the bottom of the sea.  Gregory had no way of knowing that the privateer Galatea carried but one petty sorceress, not one of Bonaparte's magi that could kill him and his men with an incantation and a splinter of Indefatigable's hull.  He'd have sunk her.

Wisely, Galatea had struck her colours.  The sorceress tucked her snuffbox back into her pocket and went about the fastidious business of dusting off her fingers.

"Well, I'm happy that he did," she said.  "As here I am.  And here you are.  Thank you for your hospitality, Captain."

He inclined his head without looking at her and went back to studying the water's hue.

"Does a Navyman really face a court-martial for every time he strikes his colours?" the Québécoise mused with a dusty little sniff.  "What a curious custom."

"It deters cowardice," said Gregory, of no mood to humour her.

"Have you ever struck your colours, Captain Everett?"

In truth, at eight-and-twenty he'd not seen enough action for that.  Even happening on Galatea had been by accident.  "I've not been in that position," he said.  "I beg your pardon, have you been to breakfast?"

"Oh, yes.  I've no fortitude when it comes to eggs."  She smiled at her own charmless joke.  "Captain, I'm afraid I haven't come up to make small-talk.  I have a proposition."

He glanced up at the grey-cast sky.  "Have you, then?"

"It's very fortunate that you've picked me up, after a certain fashion," she went on.  "You see, I do have an appointment in London."

"How interesting."  Gregory looked down at her again.  "You are my prisoner.  You're welcome to go wherever you please after the Admiralty sorts you out in Spain."

"My hearing could take place in England," she pointed out.

"It could."

The sorceress sighed, found a cherry-wood pipe in another pocket.  "You strike me as the sort of man who dislikes a bribe," she said.  "All the same.  Is there nothing I might offer you as a gentlewoman magician?"

He was ready to set her down sharply.  When he turned to do so, however, she was looking at him slant.  "You're a soldier.  Is there nothing you want back," she said, "that you've lost?"

Something about the wig brought him over.  It was out of style.  He was given to trusting people of little personal charm.  His first lieutenant, Masters, was charmless; he was charmless himself, of course, no natural leader of men; but Masters was shrewder than Shylock, and Gregory Everett had a level head that had managed to remain on his shoulders.  The French war sat in the hands of men in unfashionable periwigs.

Gregory tilted his tricorne down and lowered his voice in confidence to say: "Speak to me when we land.  If you'll excuse me, madam."

When Gregory played soldiers as a boy, he'd pretend they were dolls.  He wanted a baby.  He wasn't supposed to, he was aware.  He wasn't supposed to not want them.  He was supposed to want victory, a ship-of-the-line, and to see the edges of the Earth, like Father.  He wanted those too, of course, but mostly he wanted a baby.

Gregory Everett still wanted a baby.  His fiancée, his cousin Clare, was back in Dover; he wrote her daily, which his first captain had praised, and sometimes he pictured her pretty freckled face in a bonnet.  But then he would picture his own face and then imagine how their son would look.  Soon when the war was done and he'd go back home to Dover and start his family, finally, finally.

He wanted a child like his brother.  Young Richard, nine or so, was perfect: tall and strapping already, but also sweet-faced and pretty like Mama, and unlike other boys his age he loved to learn his letters.  He sang his French alphabet back to his governess in his boy soprano and made all the women clap their hands in delight.  In his head at night Gregory preserved that Richard alive.  That Richard came in for supper.  That Richard always ran to show Gregory his watercolours first.  That Richard begged to go all the way to Portsmouth with Gregory when he left for his first commission, at fourteen, and sobbed into Gregory's blue coat.

"You're going to die," he cried with horrible ten-year-old candour while Father looked on in embarrassment; "you're going to die and I won't have a brother anymore."

"You're being silly," had said Gregory, mortified and on the verge of tears himself.  He put his chin on the top of Richard's sandy head and gave his shoulder a rough squeeze.  "Hush.  I'm not going to die.  You're making a scene."

To his surprise, the Québécoise sorceress took a drink with him at the officers' pub when they put in.  She daubed at the edges of her mouth with her handkerchief.  "The Spanish do not understand beer," she said with diffidence.  "Let's walk, Captain."

The idea of offering his arm to someone in a waistcoat struck Gregory as too peculiar.  Instead, he offered her his coat as they ducked out of the smoke and into the dusk.

She shrugged it on over her square shoulders.  "Oh, do bring a rifle," she said, lighting her pipe.  "And bayonet."

Gregory's eyebrows nearly met his hairline, but he agreed to go back for one.

They must have made a curious sight, the two of them.  It put him at a discomfort even after they strolled to the river, far from curious eyes.  Gregory knew how he looked at men who walked out onto the shore with women after dark.  On his back he could feel the weight of his own contemptuous stare.

He shouldered his rifle into a more comfortable position on his back.  "I want you," he said, low, in French, "to bring my brother Richard back to me."

The sorceress's eyelashes twitched as she glanced at him sideways.  Her pipe glowed; he could smell the bitterness of her tobacco.

"He's my brother," he said.  "I want him back.  Deliver him to me and I will take you to England."

"I'm afraid it's not going to occur in that order," she said with a chuckle.  Her Québécoise accent was even thicker in French.

He gave her a look that indicated what he thought of her levity.  She waved her hand.  "All right.  Come.  Walk further with me," she said, extending an arm he couldn't refuse.

She led him to a bend in the river where birds paddled sedately, three swans and an array of ducks that huddled together at their approach.  The white shapes of the swans were still.  Asleep, surely.  Swans were headstrong and irascible animals.  He looked to her for direction.

"Take one," she said in English again.  "You've got to do this part yourself, I'm afraid."

"You can't be serious."

"I am serious, Captain," she said.  "Returning what's been lost is a bloody affair, and not easy, I'm afraid.  And—frowned upon.  Nevertheless, I’ve an appointment in London.  I'll do it.  But you'll be needing one of those birds."

Gregory hesitated, then unslung his rifle and loaded it up without a word.  He shouldered the stock and closed an eye.  He was English.  There was something crude to him in killing a swan.

"Alive," she added.

"Alive?"  He frowned.  "Is wounding it acceptable?"

"Provided it'll live a few minutes at least," she allowed.

He squinted through the sight again.  "It'll be loud," he muttered, already thinking of his advantage there.  He trained the barrel up to the sky and pulled the trigger.  At the shot's crack, the sorceress flinched and the birds took wing in a startled flurry.

This bit was facile.  All gentlemen learned to hunt.  Gregory eyed the greatest white shape as he re-loaded and aimed above the breast, at an outstretched wing, and fired again.

Blood was stark on a swan.  The downed animal thrashed about calling on the ground, splintering its wing further, no doubt.  He turned up his nose and set off towards it while the Québécoise sorceress followed behind, rummaging in her bag for a few odd objects: a flint, a candle, a crumpled-up paper.  "Do hold it in place," she was saying; he held his nose and seized the wretch by the neck.

Even weakened it struggled, like Proteus.  He glanced up at her.  She was fussing with the paper.  "Muzzle the damned thing, if you'd be so kind," he snapped and glared at her until she undid her belt and bound it gingerly around the bird’s beak.  It was little effort to hold it down after that.  Sweat still beaded on his forehead and rolled through his hair.

Her wig was askew.  She straightened it before crouching down next to him and the hissing bird.  "Right, then," she said.  "You'll be needing to skin it."

"Skin it," he repeated at the bottom of his voice.

"Alive," she said again, screwing up her nose at the necessary distastefulness of a magician's work.  She also found what she was looking for in her bag: a tanner's knife.  "It's not squeamishness stops me doing it, in this case."  He must've looked doubtful, for she huffed and went on, "You're not asking me for a parlour-trick, Captain Everett.  This is exceptionally personal.  Do you want Lieutenant Everett returned to you or don't you?"

It was the damned animal that was biting his temper down to the quick, having to hold the damned animal down. He said what he shouldn't have.  "More than anything," he ground out.  "More than anyone.  If you trick me—"

She sniffed, not deigning to his insult, and handed him the knife.  He shifted his grip on the wounded swan, which was thrashing less and less, and tried to recall what he knew of skinning.

It died not long into the process, but not as shortly as he might have liked.  When he was finished he had a useless, gory coat of feathers, a steaming carcass, and a soiled uniform.  He grimaced.  "Do your spell," he said.  "It's growing late."

"I already have," replied the sorceress, and when he looked up at her, she indeed had her items packed away into her bag again, all but the sticky knife.  She looked the same, if a bit blanched, with soot around her fingers.

She brushed that off; she'd burnt the paper, he remembered, and said words.  "Keep the skin.  Keep the skin and don't destroy it.  Those are the only conditions."  She coughed and reached for something in her pocket—snuff.  Of course.  "Pardon me.  The number who can't manage that much, well, you'd be surprised."

Gregory Everett held up the malodorous pelt with the tips of his fingers like a house-proud woman with a mangled mouse.  "I'll have it tanned," he said under his breath, "Dear God."

"No."  The force in her voice came from some wellspring he hadn't seen in her before; he looked up at the flinty black eyes of a magician.  "That wouldn't work.  Only like that.  You'll keep it in its original form, or you won't keep him."

He glared, but buried his fingernails in the swan’s pelt.  Satisfied that he understood, she took her snuff.  "You've nothing to worry about," she said with that same fussy self-assurance that'd convinced him in the first place.  "Hold a man's skin and your claim is first, Captain, over God's, Death's, and his own.  It's done.  I am a sorceress in the employ of Emperor Napoleon the First," she said with another chuckle.  "My soul is spoken for.  God help yours."

Gregory ignored everything that she said.  His tired mind had drifted to something else.  "Where did you learn my brother's rank?" he asked after a moment's silence.

"You have his cameo in your great cabin," was her affable response.  She snapped her snuffbox shut.  "At least I presume that's him.  He looks like you."

He came home for the winter holidays.  So did Richard.  The crusted swanskin was bundled up in their father's cellar, gathering flies and putrefying.  Gregory was sitting by the fire hand in hand with Clare when Richard strolled through the sitting-room door with his rifleman's coat all buttoned up and dropped into an armchair.  "Of course you've already taken the warm seats," he complained with a theatrical slouch, kicking out his long legs.  "Et tu, sister?  A woman's heart is a cold and cruel thing, you know.  Cold and cruel."

Richard held this dramatic expression for a moment or two longer before he looked sidelong at Gregory and Clare and grinned.  Clare, for her part, still had her mouth hanging open.  So did Gregory.

She remembered herself first.  "Happy Michaelmas, Richard," she said with a pretty smile, smoothing her pinafore.  "I hadn't thought that—"  She caught herself, always polite, looked at Gregory, was reassured by his nod and his grip on her hand.  Clare smiled again and went on, "I hadn't thought that Lord Wellington could spare you."

"Nor I.  Good tidings all around this Advent," Richard said, yawning.  His voice was as lively and clear as it had ever been, though his soprano days were long finished.  He looked tidy and tired.  His cheeks were rosy like a Botticelli.  "You too, Greg."

"You're late again," was all Gregory could think to say.

Richard sighed with a whoof.  "You're always on about that," he said.  "Dear Father: I saw Greg today after four years' time.  'You're late again,' he said."

Gregory smiled in spite of himself as an unnerved shiver scuttled up his spine and down each of his arms.  He felt Clare's soft hand still resting on his, relying on his strength.  "Well," he said, "you're not as late as usual."

It was true: Richard wasn't.  Clare giggled.

Richard laughed and kicked him in the foot.  His hair was a little unruly, even tied back; little bits and pieces of Richard were always escaping any efforts at civilisation, no matter how one tried.  He was always sunny, even when he was unhappy in truth, but hadn't been this cheerful since he was ten, not that Greg could recall.  Not to Greg.  "You horrible man," he said.  "You're always the same.  You make General Soult look like our Granny."

Mother cried when she saw Richard.  She'd always loved him best.  Losing him had snapped her heart like an icicle into ten irreparable parts, and now she just cried into his shoulder.  Gregory didn't begrudge her feelings, watching them from the doorway with his hand on the frame: who wouldn't love Richard best?  He was a clever, charming, beautiful boy.  Girls fell all over that rakish half-smile—Clare was practically the only one who hadn't, and thank God for that.  Gregory wasn't jealous of Mother's sentiment: if anything he envied her easier way with Richard, the way she could just wrap her arms around him and he'd accept her embrace.  Trying to hold Richard was like holding a changing naiad in your arms; how did she do it, even for a moment?

He supposed he'd never tried.  He put his arm around Richard when they were walking away down the hall and said stiffly, "I'm glad that you're well."

He waited for his brother to raise an eyebrow and say something ironical, or laugh and shrug him off, but Richard just put his head on Gregory's shoulder for a moment.  Richard was taller, now, and lanky.  Richard had been right about one thing, Gregory had to admit.  He really would have been eternally hitting his head on things in the Navy.

"I'm glad that I'm in Dover," Richard said.  The same peace-making smile that had carried him through Father's absences and Mother's sadnesses was on his face, but his voice was a little doleful.  By paternal or maternal instinct, Gregory pulled him aside in the hallway and into a hug, putting both his arms around his shoulders like Richard had skinned his knee.  This was awkwarder now that Richard had inches of height on him.  Gregory didn't care.  He held Richard tightly, as painfully tight as he'd squeezed him that day in Portsmouth.

"I'm sorry, Greg," Richard was saying into the air next to his head.  "I really am sorry."  He sounded like he was apologising for being late to supper on Michaelmas.

"It's all right," Gregory said into Richard's hair.  "Mother's happy to have you back.  She doesn't care anymore."  They didn't speak of Father; Father was away.

Richard bought Clare pink ribbons on the boardwalk while Gregory sat with his mother.  Clare blushed in a rare moment of delight at her future brother-in-law—they hadn't got on, usually, she was a demure young woman—and even laughed high when he bound one up in her hair.  She was only twenty-one, after all.  Standing together they were a pretty sight.  Gregory admired it like a landowner.  His wife-to-be with his brother, the future godfather of his child.  Next spring he'd be wed to Clare, too, God willing, and he would have that child for Richard to christen, and he'd have everything.  And surely Father would understand by then.

The skin on the back of his arm itched.  He scratched it behind his back, through his Navy coat, and took his mother for a turn about the cobbled square.

When he had a minute alone with Richard he chanced to bring up what he'd been intending.  Gregory hesitated even so, even in Richard's good humour and gratitude at being with his family this holiday, even then.  He remembered Richard's first reactions to the subject.  Lord, they'd been upsetting.  Gregory nearly reddened recalling that supper with his parents and Richard even now.  It was dreadful.  Everything was spoilt.  Richard had spoilt everything.  Sometimes he was still that boy, that horrible wilful boy.

But: he was older now.  Gregory would chance it.  "Irene," he said.  "I'm sure that she'd still have you if you'd still have her.  She does care for you."

Richard frowned and put his head on one side.  Irene was their cousin too, once more removed than Clare.  She was perfect for Richard, Gregory was certain of it, so spirited and bookish.  He'd always been utterly certain of it.  Gregory was happy with the match.  He could've chosen it himself.  Everything would be perfect if Richard married Irene.  They'd have the loveliest children.

Even so, Gregory braced himself for what he might say, even if he said it gently.  But he did not say that, not even gently: Richard said, "Do you think so?"

Gregory crossed his arms behind his back and smiled uneasily.

Among Father's pinot grigiers and his chardonnays, in the cellar no one touched when Father was away, Gregory rummaged in one of the casks on his hands and knees.  This was absurd.  He felt like he was playing sardines.

The skin was easy to find, at any rate.  It smelled slightly less than before, but it looked disgusting when he dragged it out, like a half-rotten creature washed up on some Spanish beach.  He suppressed a retch just over that.  It'd curled up around the edges.  It barely suggested a bird at all, least of all a swan.  The resemblance was gone everywhere but the neck, which he'd slit the skin from almost tenderly with the tip of the tanning knife.

He grasped the brittle stained feathers in his fingers, disgusted and fond all at the same time; it repulsed him and, the Devil take it, he was growing attached.  Maybe the sorceress had done something to him too.  He dismissed the notion as the shadow-boxing it was.

All the same, he sat with his legs crossed on the cold cellar floor and the swanskin in his lap.  He found it comforting to have it there.  It was comforting to know where it was, of course, given all the sorceress had cautioned, but—there was something comforting about it, too.  God, it was perverse.  He was embarrassed at his own attachment to it, just as he was embarrassed by how he looked sitting there with a rotting feather pelt falling apart in his lap.

Burying his fingers in the pinions made his breath come slower and calmer.  There was something logical about it.  It was being degraded the way that matter degraded over time and in a cool place, sealed away from rats.

"Greg," he heard Richard's voice above, walking over the hatch to the wine-cellar again without noticing.  "Greg?  Where's Greg gotten off to?  Ah, never mind!  Clare, we'll go without him; he'll be sorry when he comes back."  His harmonious laugh travelled off with him out the door.  Gregory closed his eyes.

Seated in the drawing-room's northernmost bay window, Gregory had taught Richard his sums.  The governess was always better with the letters, and so was Richard, quickly enough, but Gregory's head had always been superior for numbers.  He took pleasure in it, placing hand over spindly little hand to render the curves of the numeral 3.  Back then Richard had even attended to what he was saying, even though it wasn't very interesting, even when Gregory wasn't any good at making it interesting.  He never was.  Clare would teach the children, he'd decided.

Seated in the drawing-room's northernmost bay window, Gregory sat his brother down with him now, as men, and chose to broach once more the matter of Irene.  There was so much bubbling in his mind now that he was dying to say: have you written to Father?  What of your post with Wellington, are you considering your career now too?  What is he like?  Does he need an aide-de-camp?  Shall someone write to him?  But he schooled himself, restrained himself, and settled on little cousin Irene.  A tidy, consistent topic.  He'd ascertain if Richard's mind had truly changed.  All in order.

Always, always Richard was faster than him: he leaned on his elbow with his chin in his long, spidery hand.  "Is this about Irene again?" he prompted.  "Or should I be calling her Miss Tracy now?  I suppose she's not a child any more.  Lud, though, 'Miss Tracy.'  I've known Irene since she was born.  We've known Clare too.  It's so silly.  It's all silly."

Normally Gregory viewed formality as the only buoy in a vast black sea, and stood upon it accordingly, but in the case of Clare Everett and Irene Tracy, he had to agree with Richard.  He supposed this was incidental.  He and Richard had never agreed upon much, as men, except by accident.  "She's Irene," he agreed.  "She'd be hurt to hear otherwise, and that settles it, I believe.  What of her?" he asked, and couldn't resist, sardonic, "Have your second thoughts come back for Michaelmas too, then?"

Richard toyed with a strand of his hair.  He was an insufferable peacock, Gregory's brother, and he could never make up his mind whether he liked the colour of his ash-blond hair or despaired that it wasn't brighter.  That was Richard.  Mourning for golden hair, of all things.  "Do you know, I don't know," he said with a frown.  "I was opposed to it, I won't deny that."

"You were."  Gregory gave the ceiling a look.

"I was opposed to it.  Irene is—"

"Well, do you love her?" Gregory prompted with poor hopes, but hopes nevertheless.  Four years ago he wouldn't even have asked that question.  Maybe, though, maybe Richard had—reconsidered his, his feelings, in some way.  It was worth hoping for.

Richard frowned.  "I don't know," he said.  "Maybe.  I care a bit for her, you know, I've just—known her for such a time, is all."

That unnerved Gregory, for some reason.  That of all things unnerved him.  He must've shown it in his face, as Richard tilted his head at him.  "Is something the matter?"

"You aren't going to ingratiate yourself to me by lying about Irene," said Gregory, before he could stop himself.  "I've run out of favours to give you."

Richard's eyes widened.  He had big eyes, which still rendered him childlike at his age and height.  When he looked stung, openly, like this, it was impossible to not feel guilty.  "I'm not lying," he said.  "I'm really not.  I just don't know the contents of my heart."

When Richard was born Gregory climbed up to his crib and stood on the edge to look at him when he burbled and cried.  He'd never loved a kitten.  He didn't even like kittens; they were fast and had sharp little claws and they didn't care for him at all.  He'd never loved a thing, not really, before Richard.  Richard was his brother, no one else's.  He'd never had a thing that was just his before, either.

He taught him sums at the bay window.  He patched up all his scrapes from trees and kittens, which Richard always loved better than he did.  He picked out things for him to wear, until he was a midshipman and couldn't see Richard any more.  He wrote him every day, even when Richard forgot to write back.  He never, ever forgot about him, not when Father forgot about them both, not when they were young men; he held fast, and he—he meant well, he knew better—and he feared anyway the day when Richard wouldn't want him anymore.

Only one vase, ever: there was just one fragile thing Richard ever broke.  He wasn't a breaking sort of boy.  He was five, he shattered mother's china, and ran away in alarm.  Gregory caught him in the hall.  "It's all right," he hissed with a hold on Richard's sleeves. "Oh, for God's sake, do you think I'm going to hurt you?  I'm not.  Pull yourself together."

Gregory interlaced their fingers and fisted Richard's hand in his in a deathly grip.  He was always holding him that way.  This Richard let him.

The Admiralty helped him in Portsmouth.  He was Captain Everett, after all, set to become a Commodore, and if he looked a bit more drawn than usual when he asked questions at the offices, they likely assumed he was busy.  The Everetts were busy often: the father and the elder son, anyway.  Not the younger.  No one spoke of the younger.

He found the address and pounded on the double mahogany doors with one fist, then the other, then two until the sorceress called Marceline Despourrins finally admitted him.  She looked quite taken aback.  She was in her housecoat, which was terribly improper, but he'd taken to thinking of her as an irritating, elderly gentleman with a very particular set of skills and wasn't interested in changing his conclusion.  She looked less scandalised than just surprised by the hour, though, and admitted him to her study while she brewed tea.

"You've travelled a ways," Mlle Despourrins observed.  "Oh, dear.  Please have a seat."

"That—is not my brother," Gregory said in a rattle.

Mlle Despourrins furrowed her brow.  "Oh, dear," she said again, not much upset, and went back to the tea.

Later she gestured to a chair for the fifth time and he ignored her and leaned on her desk with both hands, staring into the knots in the lacquered wood.  "I don't pass judgement, Captain.  I'm a mere practitioner.  It would have been one thing if he were simply dead," she said softly behind him, between his back and the snapping fire.  "Death is a place far away.  Estrangement is another thing entirely."

Gregory scrutinised his hands.  "Estrangement is not the word I would have chosen," he said.

"Well."  She sniffed.  "That's even worse, then, isn't it?"

He was quiet for a while, knuckles clenching and unclenching over the hard edge.  She came around to her chair and left him be, stirring herself a cup of orangeish tea and tutting over the heat.

"My brother is half a Republican," Gregory burst out like he had a thrashing beast in his arms again.  "He's sick of the war already; he dislikes anything with too much blood," he said with a snort, "or too much early rising.  He hates Wellington.  He calls him Lord Arthur.  He wants a captaincy like he wants a plague of boils.  He wants a career like he wants the bloody clap."

Mlle Despourrins stirred her tea and looked down and away.

Gregory heaved a horrible, deep breath.  His voice had risen without his realising.  He loathed his shouting voice.  It was so shrill.  "My brother is a God-damned sodomite," he hissed between his teeth.  "And he flaunts it.   He'll never marry Irene.  Not in a thousand years.  Father turned his back on him in shame."  So had he.

The sorceress was listening.  Gregory had the impression that she'd tolerated more than one tirade from a client in her time, and had learnt to listen, lest she be asked to repeat anything back.  She yawned and, when she seemed sure he was finished—the word "sodomite" gave her no more trouble than "Republican"—she gave a nod.  "I doubt this will reassure you," she said, "but I do know of the second Everett son and his—escapades.  Word does, er, travel."

He was tempted to throttle her for the way she said escapades.  He shook his head instead.  "My brother is his own man," said Gregory Everett with love and contempt.  "He'll have everyone know it.  My brother."  It caught in the back of his throat like a bone.  "My brother hates me."

Marceline Despourrins took snuff and looked at him with pity through her bent pince-nez.  "Then what on Earth," said she, "could I have possibly done for you?"

What was left of the swan burned slow in the hearth, filling the drawing-room with acrid-smelling smoke.  Gregory tossed it in when the clock struck one and sat in the chair there until it struck two and he was sure it was all burnt away.  He had a day's growth of stubble.  He didn't know when he fell asleep there, exactly, his head at an uncomfortable cramping angle.

He didn't know what time it was when his brother found him, either, but he woke to the sound of his footsteps. He knew the sound.  He would never be able to sleep through those footsteps.

Gregory straightened up to the best of his ability as Richard regarded him with curiosity, then shrugged and took a seat in the bay window, kicking his feet up.  The oil in the Dover house lamps was expensive and did not burn out quickly.  No one had put out the lights in this room, so Richard's face was lit well as he closed his eyes and nested himself in the cushions.  His boots were still on, resting heel-down on Mother's embroidered upholstery.

Gregory looked at him a little longer than was polite.  Richard smiled back, not kindly.  It was that pretty, armoured smile he put on whenever someone found him wanting.  This was Richard, after all, to the fey tips of his fingers.  He wasn't grown-up after all.  He was young.  He'd been in the Peninsula four years and he was so young.  He'd stopped writing to Father in the first, when Father never wrote him back.  He'd never written to Gregory at all.

He tipped his head back on the cushions but Gregory could see the tension in the arch of his back, the way he looked at his older brother like a distrustful animal.  It made Gregory sick.  It was the very last thing he wanted in the world.

"Well, should I say something?" Richard interrupted his thoughts.  His voice was low and feline and had new gravel in it.  "I mean, this is dreadfully awkward.  What should we talk about?  The weather?"

Gregory closed his eyes.

"Your wedding?" Richard went on idly.  He really was self-possessed.  With the casual way he went on anyone else might've believed he didn't fear God or his brother.  "That's in May, isn't it?  May, that's a good month for wedding.  For being wed.  You should move it up to April: decreases your odds of being sunk in the meantime by a fifth."

"Shut up, Richard," said Gregory for the hundred thousandth time.

Richard coughed.  It took Gregory a second to realise it was a laugh.  "I love you too, Greg.  Did you miss me at all?"

When he closed his eyes he didn't know what he'd do to his brother.  When he opened them again he'd taken command of his nerves again.  He looked steadily at the fire.  That was what people, Father, Indefatigable relied upon him for: steadiness and a firm hand over his own baser nature, and theirs.  The world's axis spun on charmless men.  He opened his mouth to answer Richard's question.  The truth was coiled somewhere in his stomach, treacherous and waiting to strike; he knew it, God knew it, in his lowest days he feared Richard knew it too.  He wouldn't let it master him.

"You have to be gone before Father sees you," he said instead.  "You can't very well put him in that position."

"I know.  Don't fret so much," said Richard.  "I won't make a scene."

END

"Swan-Brother" was originally published by Ideomancer in March, 2013.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on July 16th.

[Music plays out]

Swan-Brother

by Gabriel Murray

The—woman—took snuff.  "Good morning, Captain," she said, Capitaine in her accent.  "This is a colder day than I imagined."  She looked out over the swells, her mannish periwig bobbing as she tilted her head up to regard the horizon.  "Do you know, I hardly expected to see it."

Gregory Everett clasped his hands behind his back.  "Your Captain did the correct thing," he said.

He had.  Galatea's American captain had struck colours almost as soon as the Indefatigable beat to quarters.  If he hadn't Gregory would have sent him to the bottom of the sea.  Gregory had no way of knowing that the privateer Galatea carried but one petty sorceress, not one of Bonaparte's magi that could kill him and his men with an incantation and a splinter of Indefatigable's hull.  He'd have sunk her.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 12 for July 9th, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Our story for today is "Swan-Brother" by Gabriel Murray.

Gabriel Murray lives in New York City with two cats and a pianist.  His reviews and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, We See A Different Frontier: An Anthology of Postcolonial Speculative Fiction, Ideomancer, and Daily Science Fiction.  He can be found at http://orestesdrunk.wordpress.com and @orestesdrinking. He is currently working on his first novel, which is a Regency fantasy about families and bad decisions.

Our reader this week is Alasdair Stuart, the host of Pseudopod. He also writes reviews and blogs at http://alasdairstuart.com and can be found on Twitter at @AlasdairStuart.

Swan-Brother

Bonzaiships of Venus

by Kate Heartfield

 The work of aesthetics is the aesthetics of work.

     —Principles of Graphene Cultivation, by Johanne St-Pierre, Vol. II

Makoto adjusted the angle of his scalpel’s electron beam, exhaled and made the cut. A fingernail-sized section of the airship’s graphene skin peeled away to join the miniature airship attached to its exterior like a soap bubble.

This was neither Makoto’s only bonsaiship nor his first. But it was and would always be the most precious to him. He had made the first cut nearly a year before, on the day of his husband’s death. It was a tribute to Reuven, nearly perfect, nearly complete.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 11 for July 2nd, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Today's episode is pretty short, but don't worry! I've got a few long stories queued up for the future.

Our story for today is "Bonzaiships of Venus" by Kate Heartfield.

Kate Heartfield is a journalist and fiction writer in Ottawa, Canada.Her stories have appeared recently in Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Podcastle, and Daily Science Fiction, among other places. Her website is heartfieldfiction.com and she is on Twitter as @kateheartfield.

This story was originally published at Lackington's, and if you visit their archives, you can see the picture that originally accompanied this story.

Bonzaiships of Venus

by Kate Heartfield

 The work of aesthetics is the aesthetics of work.

     —Principles of Graphene Cultivation, by Johanne St-Pierre, Vol. II

Makoto adjusted the angle of his scalpel’s electron beam, exhaled and made the cut. A fingernail-sized section of the airship’s graphene skin peeled away to join the miniature airship attached to its exterior like a soap bubble.

This was neither Makoto’s only bonsaiship nor his first. But it was and would always be the most precious to him. He had made the first cut nearly a year before, on the day of his husband’s death. It was a tribute to Reuven, nearly perfect, nearly complete.

And what then?

He waited a few breaths, pulling his mind into awareness of his pulse and the dull hum of the ship and the cramp in his right leg. He crouched in an access-bay that was just big enough to admit one person: a technician, a spacewalker, a ship’s artist.

Makoto left the tear open just long enough to let the big ship’s atmosphere into its little doppelganger. Enough to maintain the bonsaiship’s pressure. It didn’t take much; the little ship was so small he could have held it in his arms. In Venus’s thick atmosphere, floating was as easy as dying.

Graphene heals its scars. There is no maker’s mark on a bonsaiship, no graffito or epigraph. The evidence of the artist is purely in the shape of the art.

—A Guide to Shipcraft, by Abdul Ahmed

The catalyst coating on the airship’s skin kept the ship and its inhabitants alive. It also fed and constrained Makoto’s art.

He could never cease making his cuts, because the catalyst would never cease drawing carbon out of Venus’s atmosphere to grow it into layers of atom-thin honeycomb. The airship’s protective skin must renew itself; not even graphene could stand up to Venus forever. It was Makoto’s task, as ship’s artist, to draw small amounts of graphene off over the course of years, to create tears on the airship where new carbon atoms could find their places.

Reuven, his husband, had been his alternate, and Makoto had been his. In case something were to happen to one of the ship’s two artists.

And something had happened: a cardiac arrest, only a few months after their arrival on Venus. Reuven had come to the death planet carrying death within him.

Reuven had just retired when Makoto met him. He had written two books. He had not wanted to go back to Venus for a second tour. But Makoto was still learning the craft and Reuven loved Makoto. So they had come to Venus so Makoto could know what it was to be a necessary artist.

Soon, perhaps after the next cut, Makoto would free this bonsaiship. Over time its skin would weaken. It would drift downward to destruction in the inferno of Venus’s lower atmosphere.

He sealed with catalyst the tear between the giant airship and the bonsaiship that clung to it.

In every proportion, a bonsaiship must be an homage to its stockship. The smaller the object, the greater the challenge of capturing imperfection in all its details.

—A Grey Garden, by Donna Aude

On the last day of Reuven’s life, Makoto had been in a sour mood. He and Reuven had recently arrived, and the lack of real sunlight and real air had made him irritable.

It had been easier for Reuven, who had done all this before and was a philosopher besides. Makoto had, from the moment they came on board, heard time whirring past his ears. The ship and its scientists depended for their lives on his and Reuven’s art, an art he had practised only in simulations and simulacra back on Earth. He had feared failure and he had wanted to get on with things. To let the failure come and have done with it.

Reuven had tried to help, placidly, infuriatingly.

It’s easier for you, Makoto had said. You have your philosophy. You have your books. I’m just a glorified mechanic.

Well, you can always borrow a book.

He had suspected, always, that Reuven saw Makoto the way Makoto saw himself: an amateur, a dabbler, a fake. Reuven would never give him the satisfaction of denying it, of answering the question Makoto lacked the courage to ask.

Makoto tried to pull himself back to the moment, to himself, alone with his work. He cocked his head and looked out. The small window’s graphene coating darkened the view, like the windows of the Greyhound bus that had taken him overnight to New York seven years before, to hear Reuven Stern lecture on the principles of graphene art.

The night that had set both their hearts ticking.

His nearly transparent bonsaiship was a monochrome darkness against the fiery clouds.

The bonsaiship was too symmetrical.

The long oval was perfect, like the cinched part where he had used robotic clamps to guide the graphene’s course. But the back fins lacked, on one side, the slight angle downward that the bigger airship possessed. It was too perfect.

One more pruning could add weight to that side, and complete the bonsaiship. He was allowed two cuts per day; any more would weaken the airship’s skin.

Reuven’s last kiss seemed to linger on the back of his neck. Makoto could still feel the wetness of it; still feel his skin shuddering, his body shaking Reuven off as if a kiss were a mosquito.

Atoms nestle/ wait for disturbance

—Dimension Weight: Poems of Pruning, by Anna Harris

The electron scalpel chafed his palm. Makoto ached to crawl out of the cramped skinbay. But if he went back to his quarters now, he would spend the night rehearsing the cut he had not yet made.

Makoto sliced the graphene.

As it curled and morphed and joined the little ship’s skin, Makoto’s breath seized, just for a moment, for as long as it took to see that he had cut too much, and to understand that he had made a serious error.

The bonsaiship’s right fin dipped too far. The little ship was complete and wrong.

He wanted to race back in time, to fix it. Or to destroy it. To ball it up and throw it into the skies to burn.

Instead he closed his eyes, and focused on the little bubble of pain and guilt that seemed to stop his throat. He forced himself to let the stale air fill his lungs, and pass out again. Mistakes happened. Mistakes were the time to apply his training.

What was right? What was best? To rework the entire ship, using robotic arms and clamps to adjust the proportions throughout, to add graphene in the right places? The work of weeks, months perhaps. The graphene skin renewed itself slowly.

Or to let the bonsaiship go, an imperfect replica of imperfection?

He wanted to get on with things. The moment felt right. But he distrusted that instinct. It seemed indistinguishable from laziness. The coward’s way out of this work of a year, this work of grieving.

He closed the hatch that allowed him to access the airship’s skin from the inside. He forced himself to crawl out of the access-bay, to walk, to think. Reuven, he thought, I miss you. I miss your counsel and your kisses.

He walked back to his quarters after all and made a cup of good tea. He took Reuven’s reader out of a drawer, wiped the screen with a cloth and turned it on. The screen flickered to life.

I have never seen a perfect object but I have seen perfect art. What is permanent?

—Koans and Aphorisms, by Reuven Stern

The scientists onboard appreciated Makoto’s art; it renewed them. And they were kind to him—because of Reuven, he thought. They gathered when they could, to witness the unmoorings. There were only a dozen this evening. Makoto had not given them much notice; he had not planned on today being the day for Reuven’s bonsaiship. But it was the day. It was time.

If the scientists noticed that this bonsaiship was not precisely like its airship, they did not say so.

Makoto was content with his choice. If this was to honour Reuven, let it be a flawed message in a flawed bottle, like every beautiful moment of their marriage. This was his art, his alone, his aloneness manifest.

He would begin a new ship tomorrow. He had no choice. Art kept the ship alive, kept it forever changing to survive.

Makoto took a moment to silently dedicate his flawed ship, made with a year of daily cuts, of healing and cutting again, of raw juddering fits of memory and long cold stretches of forgetting.

His scalpel sent a beam of light precisely at the seam between the airship and the bonsaiship. The graphene responded to the signal and uncoupled. The bonsaiship drifted into the deadly skies of Venus, as a dozen scientists clapped.

END

“Bonzaiships of Venus” was originally published by Lackington's in December of 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on July 9th.

[Music plays out]

Bonzaiships of Venus

by Kate Heartfield

 The work of aesthetics is the aesthetics of work.

     —Principles of Graphene Cultivation, by Johanne St-Pierre, Vol. II

Makoto adjusted the angle of his scalpel’s electron beam, exhaled and made the cut. A fingernail-sized section of the airship’s graphene skin peeled away to join the miniature airship attached to its exterior like a soap bubble.

This was neither Makoto’s only bonsaiship nor his first. But it was and would always be the most precious to him. He had made the first cut nearly a year before, on the day of his husband’s death. It was a tribute to Reuven, nearly perfect, nearly complete.

Full transcript appears under the cut.

[Music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 11 for July 2nd, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

Today's episode is pretty short, but don't worry! I've got a few long stories queued up for the future.

Our story for today is "Bonzaiships of Venus" by Kate Heartfield.

Kate Heartfield is a journalist and fiction writer in Ottawa, Canada.Her stories have appeared recently in Strange Horizons, Crossed Genres, Podcastle, and Daily Science Fiction, among other places. Her website is heartfieldfiction.com and she is on Twitter as @kateheartfield.

This story was originally published at Lackington's, and if you visit their archives, you can see the picture that originally accompanied this story.

Bonzaiships of Venus

King Tide

by Alison Wilgus

Some particular trick of the moon, the weather, and the Earth's closeness to the sun had pulled the tide all the way to 5th Avenue, a good half-block further uphill than usual. The city had put out an alert, so Jordyn knew to clear out the basement ahead of time. Their landlord was smart enough to have the foundation sealed years ago—that would be fine—but there wasn't much to be done for cardboard boxes and old futons. Those had to be kept above the tide line, or they were garbage.

Full Transcript appears under the cut:

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 10 for June 11, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

It's only been a few days since I uploaded last week's episode, but I'm back. One of the other things that happened last weekend is that the Nebula Awards were given out. If you're not up on a lot of the science fiction awards, these are given out by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and are voted on by the professional writers who are members of that organization.

I'll provide a link to the complete short list in the transcript, (Nebula Awards) but I'd also like to congratulate the winners on the show.

So!

The winner of Best Novel was Jeff VanderMeer for Annihilation.

The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult SF&F went to Alaya Dawn Johnson for Love Is the Drug.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Our story this week is "King Tide" by Alison Wilgus.

Alison Wilgus is a writer of comics and prose, and currently working on nonfiction graphic novels for First Second Books. She also draws her own comics about space, cats, monster hunting, and very occasionally herself. She lives in Brooklyn.

She is also one of the co-editors at The Sockdolager, which is a semiprozine at sockdolager.net. You may also remember the comics anthology called Beyond, which is an all-ages queer science fiction and fantasy comics anthology edited by Sfé R. Monster and Taneka Stotts. Alison wrote one of the comics for that anthology, which was illustrated by Anissa Espinoza. You can find more information about Beyond at beyondanthology.com

King Tide

by Alison Wilgus

Some particular trick of the moon, the weather, and the Earth's closeness to the sun had pulled the tide all the way to 5th Avenue, a good half-block further uphill than usual. The city had put out an alert, so Jordyn knew to clear out the basement ahead of time. Their landlord was smart enough to have the foundation sealed years ago—that would be fine—but there wasn't much to be done for cardboard boxes and old futons. Those had to be kept above the tide line, or they were garbage.

Her girlfriend, Mia, had paused on the first floor landing to breathe, a disintegrating tomb of Jordyn's family albums clutched in her hands. Its weight eased for a moment as she rested an edge on the railing. "We should toss these," Mia had said. "You digitized them years ago."

"Oh, but it's not the same," Jordyn had said, and it wasn't.

Now she sat cross-legged on their bed while Mia showered, a stack of albums on the duvet beside her and another open in her lap. She peered at the careful handwriting under each photograph, names and dates and in-jokes, most of them incomprehensible. The photos had been taken with cell phones and carefully printed out, an anachronism even then. Her grandmother had pressed hard when she wrote, and as Jordyn ran her fingertips over the pages she could feel indentations beneath the ink. The album smelled of dust and old glue and a worrying hint of mildew.

Jordyn had copied one—taken a photo of a photo, found a place up in Bushwick that still did small print jobs, bought a silver frame secondhand at the Brooklyn Bazaar—and set it on the wooden dresser beside their bed. Her grandmother had taken it decades ago, when her mother was a little girl and the Gowanus canal only rarely ventured out onto the streets.

In the photo, a small, smiling version of Jordyn's mother sat on the stoop of her grandparents' house. She was an almost-copy of herself: curly black hair, brown skin, freckles on her cheeks and bare shoulders. The house was yellow brick, with white-washed iron bars over the windows and a little flower garden tucked between the concrete stoop and the stairs down to the cellar. Her grandparents had bought it in the 1970s for very little money, and, at the time the photograph was taken, were rightly smug about their foresight. Back then they could have sold it for a million dollars to developers who'd have cheerfully replaced it with a narrow stack of condos.

They'd stopped using the cellar after Hurricane Oscar. Hurricane Andrea had ruined the curtains and the carpets on the first floor, and they’d been forced to sell the house for little more than it cost to buy a new car.

Jordyn lived just up the hill, now. The yellow house in her picture wasn't large—two stories and a basement—but on most days, its top story rose out of the lagoon. She liked to look at it from her roof in the late afternoon, when the warm golden sunshine made it look buttery and romantic. Like it had sounded in her mother's stories, back when she was still alive to tell them.

The pipes thumped as Mia turned off the water. She walked out the bathroom in a cloud of steam, her stout brown body naked and dripping as she toweled off her hair. "Moon's out," she said.

Jordyn closed the album in her lap and set it on top of the others. The bed creaked as she slid to the edge, tucked her feet into her slippers, stood up; she stretched her arms above her head and her muscles resettled. "It's a King Tide," she said. "Highest this year. By a lot."

Mia pulled her head through a cotton tee shirt. "We should drink a couple beers on the roof."

"Hah! In winter?"

Mia shrugged.

Jordyn opened the door to their apartment, then turned the lock so that the deadbolt would catch on the frame and keep the door ajar. Theirs was the top floor; they climbed one flight of steep marble stairway to the roof. Two bottles clinked together in Mia's hand, held by their necks between her fingers.

The winter had been mild, but little mounds of rotten snow hid in the shadows, and Jordyn rubbed her arms through her sweatshirt as she walked across the tarpaper. Through the steam of her breath, she looked out over a city of brick and stone and water. Behind her swelled the high-rent higher ground of Park Slope, dry townhouses climbing up the hill to Prospect Park, Flatbush, Windsor Terrace, Crown Heights. Neighborhoods that emptied this time of year, when everyone escaped to their condos in Georgia.

Before her, an archipelago.

Real estate agents had started calling it "Gowanus Beach," which Jordyn thought was pretty misleading, even by real estate standards. At least when people said Red Hook was "The Venice of Kings County" that evoked a useful image: water-stained townhouses and floating wooden walkways, plastic kayaks tied up in front of corner bodegas, tanned women in sundresses puttering around in little zodiacs with outboard motors, the East River lapping at second story windowsills. "Gowanus Beach" implied sand, maybe sea-smooth stones, even the muddy shore of a lake. Nothing about "beach" said crumbling asphalt, or concrete gnawed away by the tides, or exposed rebar skeletons crumbling into rust, or the bloated carcasses of cheap student furniture bobbing up from drowned garden apartments.

The wind was wet and heavy. Jordyn shivered and looked down at the rippling gray water. The tide had swallowed her grandparents' house entirely.

Mia popped their bottles open on the low brick wall of the facade. They stood in the cold and looked at the city, at the full moon in the blue evening sky, at the waves. A trash barge puttered along the street below, pausing every half-block for building supers to add to its load. Jordyn could hear the siren of a fire boat, but couldn’t see the boat itself, nor the smoke.

Jordyn took a sip from her beer, which was warm and tasted of hops and cardamom. "The tide's supposed to drop all the way down past Fourth Ave," she said. "I thought I might go for a walk."

Mia pursed her lips. "It'll be dark."

"It hasn't gone out this far in years."

"Still." Mia nursed her beer in silence for a while, time measured out in the swish-pop of her sips. "When was your last tetanus shot?"

"Couple years ago. Remember? I fell off Madison's dock."

Mia sighed. "Wear your reef shoes, all right?"

The sirens faded. Jordyn stepped into the warm space beside Mia's body and slid an arm around her thick waist, tucking her hand into the far pocket of Mia's coat. "I'll be fine," she said.

Anticipation kept Jordyn from sleeping soundly, and she woke before her alarm. She had dreamed about riding the old subway system her mother had told her about. She dressed by the amber light of the street lamps, pulled a coat on over her wetsuit, slipped her feet into her reef shoes. Kissed Mia on the forehead and closed their bedroom door.

Mia had set the big flashlight to charge before they'd gone to bed. Jordyn took it, and her set of keys, locked up the apartment, descended the stairway in rubber-soled silence, and stepped out onto the empty sidewalk. The water was gone, but the tree wells were frozen with mud.

As Jordyn walked downhill toward Fourth Avenue, below the usual tideline, she had to pick her away around soggy timber, hunks of old insulation, rusted soda cans, tangled knots of plastic shopping bags—the usual trail of city detritus left behind by high tide. She passed under the elevated boardwalk running along the east side of the avenue, a tourist attraction some mayor had built when she was a little girl. The wreckage of a gull had caught on one of the pilings.

Beyond the boardwalk, crumbling asphalt dissolved into a sort of coarse black gravel, bits of the roadbed mixed in with the sand and soil and stones that had once supported it. In places, the steel tubes and concrete cylinders of the old infrastructure were exposed—gas lines, water mains, sewers, electricity. Round black holes gaped open, liquid noises echoing up from underground. Most of the old manhole covers had been stolen by trophy hunters years ago. Jordyn chose her steps carefully, eyes on the ground.

Once she reached the buildings on the far side of the avenue, she paused to look behind her. Only the foolish or the desperate would eat anything fished out of the Gowanus lagoon, but the boardwalk was crowded with seafood restaurants hoping to capitalize on the maritime atmosphere. Their neon signs still winked at her from above shuttered doors and windows, criss-crossed by the black silhouettes of utility lines.

The canals of the lagoon were lit, but not well, and the low tide made the landscape unsettling and strange. Buildings were taller than she remembered; boats moored in shallow water now rested on the ground.

The lagoon had retreated to a few yards below the avenue. Jordyn switched on the flashlight and waded in one cautious step at a time, careful not to shift her weight forward until she was sure of her footing.

The water was cold. Her toes were numb within half a block, but that was fine. The soles of her shoes were tough enough for nails and glass, and she didn't have far to go.

In the LED glow of her flashlight, the yellow brick house looked almost white. For a disoriented moment, she wondered if she'd gone down the wrong street, or misremembered which side of it the building was on. Someone—a thief, an interim owner, the tide—had taken the bars from the lower-story windows. And the brick was striped with stains, each line a marker of the lagoon's creeping progress uphill.

But the black iron numbers hanging above the door were the same. This was thehouse, reclaimed from the tide, if only for tonight. From this stoop, her mother had watched the water come.

Jordyn was up to her waist in the lagoon. Her feet still had some feeling left, and she poked around with them under the night-black water, looking for the first step. Finding it, she climbed the uneven stairs, water running down the legs of her wetsuit and dripping from the saturated hem of her coat, to finally sit on the stoop, her back against the font door. Her feet were still in the water, and it tickled as it lapped around her ankles.

She dried her hands off on her hair, then tugged her phone out of a waterproof pouch in her jacket. She held it up in front of her, looked into its little black eye, and smiled.

END

"King Tide" was originally published by Terraform in December of 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on June 18th.

[Music plays out]

King Tide

by Alison Wilgus

Some particular trick of the moon, the weather, and the Earth's closeness to the sun had pulled the tide all the way to 5th Avenue, a good half-block further uphill than usual. The city had put out an alert, so Jordyn knew to clear out the basement ahead of time. Their landlord was smart enough to have the foundation sealed years ago—that would be fine—but there wasn't much to be done for cardboard boxes and old futons. Those had to be kept above the tide line, or they were garbage.

Full Transcript appears under the cut:

[Intro music plays]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 10 for June 11, 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

It's only been a few days since I uploaded last week's episode, but I'm back. One of the other things that happened last weekend is that the Nebula Awards were given out. If you're not up on a lot of the science fiction awards, these are given out by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and are voted on by the professional writers who are members of that organization.

I'll provide a link to the complete short list in the transcript, (Nebula Awards) but I'd also like to congratulate the winners on the show.

So!

The winner of Best Novel was Jeff VanderMeer for Annihilation.
Novella - which is like a really short book - went to Nancy Kress for Yesterday's Kin.
Novelette - which is like a really long short story - went to Alaya Dawn Johnson for "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i"
And short story went to Ursula Vernon for "Jackalope Wives."

The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult SF&F went to Alaya Dawn Johnson for Love Is the Drug.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Our story this week is "King Tide" by Alison Wilgus.

Alison Wilgus is a writer of comics and prose, and currently working on nonfiction graphic novels for First Second Books. She also draws her own comics about space, cats, monster hunting, and very occasionally herself. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sooner Than Gold

I tug on clean underwear in case I get arrested, paint my makeup perfectly because there's nothing sadder than a grown man in badly applied eyeliner, and climb out my apartment window, onto the fire escape.

I can't be late to this assignment, and if I go through the lobby, there's a strong chance the night doorman will have a thing or two to say about the video footage of our card game last night. I forgot there was a camera pointed at the lobby desk.

The asphalt below reeks of garbage and piss; about half of the latter is probably mine. Don't judge. If I'm drunk enough, there's not even any point in aiming for the toilet.

My boots land softly as I hit the ground, but the ladder clangs as my weight slides off. I look back up at the enchantment, where it strings out from my leg to the trunk in my apartment.

[Music plays]

Hello, Welcome to GlitterShip episode nine for June 4... ish... 2015. I'm your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.

I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but in Seattle it's gone from kinda-warm-May to high summer death heat— which probably doesn't really count as that hot for pretty much anyone else but ugh. I mean, we're talking like 85 degress Fahrenheit. So I know that yes, that does mean I'm a wimp, but that's really hot for me. And I'm probably doomed as I move over to New York at the end of August. So hopefully I don't just end up melting into a horrible puddle.

Anyway. Since our last episode a couple things have happened, at the beginning of the month, the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed Magazine is out. You can read the first two stories for free now, or buy the issue to read the whole thing right away. I think some of the content is going to remain ebook only but more of the stories will be made available for free as the month goes on.

The 27th annual Lambda Literary Awards have also been announced. The winner for LGBT science fiction / fantasy / horror is Chaz Brenchley for his short fiction collection Bitter Waters. The other nominees included Daryl Gregory for Afterparty, Lee Thomas for Butcher's Road, A. M. Dellamonica for Child of a Hidden Sea, Max Gladstone for Full Fathom Five, Lea Daley for FutureDyke and Craig Laurance Gidney for Skin Deep Magic. Congrats to everyone for making it to the shortlist, or winning if you're Chaz. The full list of winners and nominees is available on lambdaliterary.org, and I'll include a link in the transcript so you can check out the other categories.

Our story for this week is "Sooner than Gold" by Cory Skerry.

Cory Skerry lives in a converted garage that belongs to a pair of valkyries. If he's not peddling (or meddling with) art supplies, he's writing, reading submissions, or off exploring with his sweet, goofy pit bulls. When his current meatshell begins to fall apart, he'd like science to put his brain into a giant killer octopus body, with which he'll be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. He promises. For more stories, visit coryskerry.net

Sooner Than Gold

I tug on clean underwear in case I get arrested, paint my makeup perfectly because there's nothing sadder than a grown man in badly applied eyeliner, and climb out my apartment window, onto the fire escape.

I can't be late to this assignment, and if I go through the lobby, there's a strong chance the night doorman will have a thing or two to say about the video footage of our card game last night. I forgot there was a camera pointed at the lobby desk.

The asphalt below reeks of garbage and piss; about half of the latter is probably mine. Don't judge. If I'm drunk enough, there's not even any point in aiming for the toilet.

My boots land softly as I hit the ground, but the ladder clangs as my weight slides off. I look back up at the enchantment, where it strings out from my leg to the trunk in my apartment.

It's a violet chain so thin it looks like I could break it with my fingers, glossy and iridescent like niobium. It burns where it enters my skin, a pain so bright and cruel it took me a week to learn to sleep again.

Sometimes I think about finding some woo-woo psychic to tell me what it is or try to remove it, but I'm afraid the person at the other end of the chain will find out.

Desert heat radiates from the ground, warming the soles of my boots, and I worry about pit-stains and failing hair gel. I shouldn't have worn my jacket, but I cut a better figure with something to embellish my shoulders. And I need to look sharp. I can't use my charm at a drag queen convention if I look like a microwaved cat turd.

I give in and hail a cab, where I endure five minutes of crackly radio commercials and a Celine Dion song. My reward is AC while I sip from my flask and neurotically check the book for new directives.

The book is old, like grandpa-times-three old. The worn leather cover is flexible and shiny from years of use, but the gilt edges of the pages haven't rubbed away. Sometimes I flip through all the paragraphs of nonsense, written in languages I don't recognize, but I usually just open to the page with the ribbon bookmark, the one page that's in English.

The book says the same thing it said when I woke up this afternoon:

GlitzCon Ball. Saturday night, 8:00 p.m. Pluck the thorns of the black lily. Do not touch her with your bare flesh.

This cryptic bullshit is sometimes worse, sometimes better, but it nearly always works out in the end. I tuck the book back in my pocket as the cab rolls up to the convention. The side mirror shows me still-flawless makeup before the cab pulls away.

Inside the hotel, I follow signs to the ballroom entrance, where the bass from the party is rattling the doors. An employee holds up a warning hand. She has enough cakey makeup and sparkly rings to be a GlitzCon attendee, and she's old enough to be my mother.

This isn't the only entrance for me, but I want to see if I look as good as I think I do, so I'll try it.

"Where's your con badge?" the Sparkly Cougar asks.

"I don't have one," I say.

"Then—"

I step back, cock a hip, and hold out my hands in the universal gesture for "I'm unarmed." It works even when you're not talking to cops. "But that room is full of horny, middle-aged queens, and you know what they like even more than bitching about how painful their shoes are?"

I use both thumbs to peel back the fitted black cloth of my coat, exposing my all-black rockstar outfit: lace shirt, pierced nipples, edges of a mystery tattoo creeping up above the low-slung waistline of my skinny jeans. I'm going for "slutty Japanese pop star" tonight.

"This."

Sparkly Cougar reluctantly chuckles.

I grin. "I know, right? Come on, honey, you know no one is going to complain."

She rolls her eyes, but she laughs and opens the door for the best thief she'll ever meet.

I stroll into pandemonium. The stench of perfume, sweat, fuzzy teeth, and wine is almost too heavy to breathe;  the requisite flock of disco balls spin stars across the crowd; and the electronic music booms and whirs beside the cacophony of hundreds of gaudy floral costumes. One queen is wearing a ball gown that looks like a giant upside-down rose; another has a bouffant wig with real miniature pansies planted in it. Daffodils, lupines, orchids... None of the elaborate, garish costumes is a black lily.

I don't see any black anything—I stand out like a goth skidmark.

I had this coat tailored just for me, a slim-waisted frock style with buttons made of real antique coins: pieces-of-eight from a treasure chest I never should have stolen and definitely never should have opened. Still, without the chest I wouldn't have had the cash to pay the seamstress, and now I have over thirty hidden pockets to stuff with jewelry. Even though I'm here for the thorns of the black lily, nothing says I can't nab some extra rock candy to pay bills like rent and booze.

I wend my way through the garden of glitter, searching for others in male clothing. Dudes or not, their jewelry is more likely to be real.

I pretend that I've tripped on a drag queen's train,  stumble into a fat fellow whose tie tack looks like it might be real diamonds, and walk off wishing I dared snatch the matching cuff links. But even though I did put on clean underwear, I don't want to risk getting caught.

The author of the book is not pleased when I'm delayed by jail.

I try not to think about that, instead searching for a black flower costume. There must be a thousand attendees in this cavernous geode of a ballroom, plus at least fifteen hotel staff, ten live parrots hanging in gilded cages by the garden-themed photo set in the back, and two service dogs for one old lady. After forty-five minutes of charming my way through the crowd, winking when someone slaps my ass and leaning over to kiss fingers while I tease off rings—that shit works, I'm telling you—I'm still the single smudge of goth couture in this florist shop LARP.

It's been almost two years since I failed to steal what the book directed.

I am not going to fail again.

Even the AC can't stop me from sweating now, and I pat at my hairline with my handkerchief. My mascara is waterproof, but that only goes so far.

The fucking book can't be specific, can it? No, it just gives me riddles. Maybe I'm looking for a small enamel lily pin on someone's lapel. Maybe the book means black as in African-American, wearing a lily costume of any possible goddamned color.

Around the room again, and again. Checking lapels, checking skin colors against costumes, panicking every time I see people trickle out the doors. 

I head for the nearest door—it's actually the one I came in—and place my hand on the knob. Options blur through my mind: the elevator, the emergency stairs, a utility closet. I choose the last, and when I open the door, that's where it leads.

I shut the door quickly behind me, because I don't want anyone following. Now if they try to open the same door, it will lead into the hall, where it actually goes. Relieved, I take a deep breath of the closet's comparatively fresh air. Just a faint odor of pine, bleach, and the musty suggestion of a mop put away while wet.

Two doors' distance is all I get. Don't ask me how it works, or why I can do it, but if I lay my hand on a knob or a handle, I can choose if the door opens into the following room, or any of the rooms that annex that same room. Sometimes it's a dead end, like this closet, because there's no other door to open. I've chosen the wrong door and gotten arrested before—it's a bit like trying to solve a maze with a pen instead of a pencil. You just screw up sometimes.

Like sometime, you might go into a room no other human could have found. Maybe you take a chest that wasn't meant for a human to have. You smugly carry it back to your apartment, but the moment you open the lid, a chain snakes into your leg. The pain is phenomenal. You dig through the chest, looking for something to cut yourself free, but there's nothing but gold coins and one crappy old book in a language you can't read.

The intangible chain stretches all the way to the hardware store, where they think you're a psycho case when you start hacking at the linoleum floor by your feet with garden shears, and then an axe, and then a sledgehammer. The cops mace your crazy ass, but you barely even feel it because your leg is getting worse. You say you were angry and drunk, and you agree to pay the damages, and you go home in defeat.

You can't even tell the truth to friends or your now-ex-boyfriend, because they can't see the enchantment.

There is no sleep. Not for days. You consider amputation, start looking up methods on the Internet. Turns out there are fetishists for everything, and their utter batshitness might be your gain. But before you pack your leg in ice to induce a frostbite so severe the doctors will be forced to surgically remove your curse, you wonder about the book.

You open it again, hoping there's something in there, something to explain, even if it's just a picture. It's gibberish until one page, the page that says:

Nautical exhibit at museum at midnight. Brass spyglass from a 1728 wreck. Place it in chest.

You know which museum has the nautical exhibit. What do you have to lose? It doesn't hurt any more to walk than it does to stay in place. And you miss stealing, since you've been hiding in your apartment biting a pillow and swallowing a plethora of Vicodin tablets that do absolutely nothing.

The moment you place the spyglass in the chest, it slides through the wooden bottom, like it's sinking through water.

The pain in your leg becomes bearable. It doesn't disappear—it never fucking disappears, never—but you can pass out now. You sleep, and you don't wake up from a dream about being savaged by a shark or stepping in a bear trap or being allergic to only one of your socks.

So you steal what the book tells you, and you put it in the chest. Gold coins ooze up from the other side, breaching like whales, until there's a stack to replace your offering.

The burning subsides for a time, but the book always makes more demands.

Now that I have the privacy of the closet, I pull the book out and look again. It says what it said before, plus one more word.

NOW.

I jam it back into my pocket, take a deep breath, and step back into the bouquet of B.O. and carcinogenic perfumes. I arrange a smile on my face with all the care that a florist takes with a wreath for a state funeral.

Maybe I'm not looking for a person. Maybe the "her" was a statue, or a painting. I close my eyes almost all the way, so I just see a blur of light and color through my lashes, and scan the room. When a dark patch appears, it's just one of the service dogs I spotted earlier, a saggy-bellied lab standing guard by her owner's feet. Before I can dismiss her entirely, however, I spot a glint of silver on her service coat.

Hundred bucks says I know that dog's name.

They're leaving right now. The door shuts behind them.

I duck around huge hats and ponyfalls, poofy skirts and trailing scarves. When I exit the ballroom, they're nearly to the elevator.

No, no, no. I break my practiced saunter and jog down the hall toward the woman and her dogs. I hate drawing attention, but I don't have a choice.

I slow as I approach, creeping up behind Lily's wagging tail. The pin comes off of her embroidered "Service Animal" coat easily, though the sharp edges puncture the pads of my fingers.

Lily's tail brushes across my cheek as I get to my feet.

She spins and snarls. Her elderly owner hauls at the leash, her face calm as her four-legged companion tries to get close enough to chew my nuts. I don't have to pretend to be terrified.

I clench the pin in my hand, trying to pretend it's not cold as a polar bear's butthole. It's not the first object I've been told to steal that has strange properties, but it's the first that numbs my fingers until I can't even tell if they're still gripping it.

"Holy shit, your dog is psycho!" I yell, backing away.

"You probably deserve it," the woman snaps. Her other dog growls low in its throat, but it doesn't struggle to reach me the way Lily does.

I flee, my heart beating faster than the electronic music in the next room.

Good. Now I'll go home and throw this pin in the chest and waste Glenlivet by drinking it fast until I pass out. I open the book—still the same message—and tuck the bloody pin under the cover. When I get frisked, they never seem to be able to find the book, so it'll be safest there.

I no sooner finish tucking it into my breast pocket than someone with a beautiful Spanish accent says, "You're not supposed to pet service dogs."

I glance over my shoulder, just to be sure it isn't security.

It's a queen, maybe. I can't tell; she's lanky, with a Roman nose and overpainted lips. She could be female with strong features, or male with delicate ones. She has blood-red extensions, high-quality toyokalon bound into a messy ponytail to show off her impossibly thin hoop earrings and her black leather choker.

She's the only other person wearing black, a simple velvet dress powdered with glitter. I didn't see her in the ball room, when I was looking for black costumes. 

I realize I'm staring, and shrug. "Service dogs don't bite. Pretty sure that lady bought the coat on E-bay so she could smuggle her fleabag into tea parties," I say. "It's like a fad with old bitches. Give it a few centuries; we'll be doing it, too."

She narrows her eyes but doesn't speak, as if she can't decide if she's offended or not.

"Nice being lectured by you," I say, and head for the stairwell.

I hate elevators, because I can't open the doors with my hands, so if I'm trapped in an elevator, there's nothing I can do. Luckily, I'm my own elevator. I haul back the stairwell's heavy fire door and it opens straight to the parking garage.

My footsteps echo alone for long seconds before I hear the elevator door open behind me. Heels click on the pavement, and I glance back to find the goody-two-shoes with red plastic hair. 

"You're leaving already? Not enjoying the convention, then?" she asks. She trots closer, inviting herself to walk along with me.

"Drag isn't my scene. I'm way too pretty to pretend to be a woman," I reply. The chain is hurting more. I'm taking too long, and the book's author is angry. I look for doors to get outside faster, but most of them are on cars, which won't do the trick.

For a moment, I imagine going back into the convention with her and having a drink. She has style, and it's been a long time since I hung out with anyone I wasn't stealing from. But the book doesn't leave room for socializing in the schedule.

"What's your name?" she asks, toying with the silver disk hanging from her choker.

"Could you piss off? I'm not interested in anything with tits, even if they're fake."

"My name's Lily," she says.

I'm too slow. I turn to look at her, my mouth opening to ask a stupid question, when she reaches down on the ground and grabs the violet chain.

She pulls, hard, and I thump onto my back.

Even though I think I'm still awake, everything is black and sparkly. It's like her dress, like the sky, and then I keep blinking until my vision focuses again on the ceiling, with its emergency sprinkler system nozzles and sleeping moths. My head hurts and my leg hurts and I think I forgot how to breathe.

I don't understand how she can touch the chain when I can't, but I also don't understand how she was a dog. The collar is the same, though. I remember now.

The pavement scrapes by beneath me as she hauls me by the chain, toward the elevator. Some people getting into their cars glance over, then studiously pretend not to notice so they don't have to get involved. To people who can't see the chain, this looks like a psychotic tantrum, like I'm scooting myself toward Lily.

"Stop," I plead. It's barely audible, just a croak.

"I'll stop when you give me back my pin, you insufferable bag of dicks. If you were scared of me biting you, just wait until you see what I can do with this tether."

"I can't—" I start, but I lose my breath again when she whips the chain around a few times, like a jump rope. I curl forward, retching. She lets go, and I lie gasping like a landed fish as her fingers poke through my pockets. She flings jewelry on the ground as she finds it, and finally, gives up.

"What did you do with it?" she asks.

"I gave it to someone," I say. The pin is cold against my heart, reaching through the book and the coat.

I know my mascara is smeared now, waterproof or not. I have to remind myself that as bad as this is, it will be worse if I don't put the desired item in the chest. I just need to get to a door.

"I need the silver thorns to do my job. That 'old bitch' is down one body guard until I can change back into a dog. I've killed for her before, and I'll do it again."

"Please, it's too late."

"You're a wretched liar." She swings the chain around, lifting me off the ground, and slams me into the back of a lime green Escalade. The crunch is either a rear window or all of my bones.

This time the flashing lights are colors. Blue, red. There's glass in my hair and everything tastes like blood.

There are cameras, I remember, in the parking garage.

I force my eyes open, past the prodding cops, and see them escorting Lily away. She glares over her shoulder, yells about theft.

I'm not sure if I'm coughing or laughing.

 They frisk me, looking for her pin, but it's in the book where they can't find it. They do find the other jewelry I stole—well, what Lily didn't already throw on the ground—and they handcuff me.

Fine. If I have to pick from: getting murdered, not putting the pin in the chest, or getting arrested, this is my best option.

They don't care enough about me to call an ambulance, and after a few minutes, I have to admit I probably don't need one. The injuries they can measure are just a mild concussion, a split lip, and some bruising.

The book is still in my jacket, and they make me wear ghastly jail jammies, so I spend all night wondering what the page says now.

The first time I failed the author, the book gave me a countdown for fixing my mistake, and when I gave up, because I didn't understand how bad it would get, the book told me to go into my kitchen, pull out everything with a skull-and-crossbones sticker on it, and pour myself a cocktail.

I had no intentions of doing it, but that's when I found out the chain reached deeper inside than just my leg, than even my flesh and bone.

My hands mixed every cleaning product I had into the glass I usually use for scotch. My mouth opened, and I poured it down my own throat. The slop burned as it passed through me, for days, from my lips to my asshole. It crept through my veins and flavored my breath, blurred and stung my vision.

When I couldn't take any more and tried to slit my wrists, I did bleed, but it smelled like Pine Sol and trickled out like rust-colored syrup. It didn't change my condition. When I tried to leave my apartment, or use the phone, my hands refused.

I was so alone that Death refused to visit, and even my own body was on someone else's side.

I keep my lawyer's business card laminated in my wallet, and I call him with my usual lies. He gets me out late on Monday morning, and I'm in too much of a hurry to sit through his warnings and advice. In the cab on the way home, I open the book.

Place thorns in chest. Fifty-four minutes until punishment.

I pull out the pen I stole from the front desk at the police station. I don't know if this will work, but I'm desperate. Bracing the book against my knee, I write:

black lily touched my skin, tried to kill me for the thorns. got away but can't steal for you if dead. what now?

My words disappear, but I don't know if that means they've been read. I stare at the page until the cab pulls up outside my apartment building. I am too sore to go up the fire escape.

The doorman I cheated holds up a hand, like I'm traffic he's directing, and says, "Hey, you owe me forty bucks, or—"

"I'll get it for you tonight, when your mom pays me," I say, eyes still on the blank page. I open the stairwell door and step straight into the fifth floor hallway, where he can't follow fast enough to kick my ass.

As I walk toward my apartment, text appears on the page, showing up in strokes as someone writes each letter.

Place thorns in chest. Thirty-three minutes until punishment. Stab her with iron knife.

I stole an iron knife with a silk-wrapped handle months ago and put it in the chest. My teeth creak against each other. I don't know where to get another. Who would even want a knife that rusts?

I shut the book and fumble with my keys. I don't know if I could even use the knife—I can't imagine stabbing Lily, stabbing anyone. I'm a thief, not a murderer.

I can't wait to put the pin in the chest so I don't have to worry about it anymore. My leg feels like one solid cramp. I'm so distracted that I don't smell the perfume until I close the door behind me.

I look up in time to see Lily grab the violet chain and flip me onto my back again. At least it's carpet, I think.

"You left your filthy face grease on my tail, so I had your scent," she says. She's dressed much as she was Saturday night, in a short black dress and pumps.

I'm not playing this game again. "I'll give it to you," I say. I thrust out my palms, my favorite no-weapons signal.

She crosses her arms.

"Let me get it." My sore muscles tear like wet paper as I struggle to my feet.

"You sure made a shitty deal," she sneers.

I pause on my way to the chest. It looks like a normal steamer trunk, against the wall under an expensive-ass painting that I also stole, next to an even expensiver-ass plasma screen, which I actually bought because for once it was easier than stealing.

"Deal?"

"This isn't a deal?" she asks, quirking an eyebrow. She dangles the chain meaningfully.

"No. I just... I stole that chest," I say, pointing. I explain about the chain and the book.

I open the chest, because I want to show her the gold—prove I'm not lying—and see the same iron knife I stole months ago, with the chartreuse silk tied around the handle. The author must be loaning it to me.

Lily flops down on my couch, setting her shoes up on my glass coffee table.

"You foolish mortal. Do you know what you could have gotten, if you'd asked instead of stolen?"

"What?"

"A contract with a clause stipulating when your service ends. We make fair deals, you know. We always have."

"What are you?" I whisper. I've watched TV; I've seen movies; sometimes if no one is looking I even read comics. I don't want to say any of the silly words out loud, like demon or faery.

She snorts and shakes her head.

"Me? I'm someone who can actually kill you. I'll just wait for you to start chugging Drano-on-the-rocks again, and then offer a quick death in exchange for my pin...unless you want to take me back to the hotel and show me where you hid it. I smelled you in that utility closet—is that it?"

Lily pours herself a couple fingers of scotch and sips it, watching me. I reach into the chest and slide the knife into my sleeve. It's cold under my fingers; I imagine sinking it into the soft hollow at the base of her long throat.

I'm suddenly so nauseated I almost fill the chest with half-digested jail food.

"How do I get this chain off?" I whisper. "That's all I want."

"Good luck, bitch. Pretty sure you have to kill the bastard writing in the book."

I pull out the book, flip it open again, stare at the words.

Four minutes until punishment. Place thorns in chest. Stab her with an iron knife.

My only idea is desperate, and stupid, but what do I have to lose?

I hold the book over the trunk and shake it. The pin falls out. The bottom of the trunk swallows every silver thorn before Lily has even gotten to her feet.

Her face crumples with rage, and even if she can't turn into a dog now, her bared teeth could have fooled me.

"Help me kill him and I'll get your pin back," I say quickly, half of a second before she yanks the chain toward her. If I can't make my plan clear she might kill me, so I force myself to explain even though every word is a scream.

"I can... control doors," I gasp. "I can get there."

She scowls. "That could take forever."

"It won't."

I'm more scared of this plan than I am of Lily. The last place I want to go is the place where the pain comes from.

After an interminable moment, Lily drops the chain.

I'm too shaky to stand again. I kneel at the coffee table and reach for my only glass, which has her lipstick prints on the rim and a finger of scotch left in the bottom.

She slides it out of reach. "Start talking."

"Okay." I gather my thoughts, trying to ignore the glass. "I can get there and steal the pin back. I just need you to protect me the way you protect the old lady."

She shakes her head. "The book's author has a dog, I'm sure, and she'll still have her pin, because some slutty mortal crybaby didn't snatch it."

"I am not slutty!"

"Could've fooled me, Captain Nippleparty," Lily says, pointing at my torn shirt. She stretches, rolls her head to pop her neck, and gets to her feet. "Okay. If you can get the pin back fast enough for me to use it, I'll keep the dog from eating your face. But you're on your own with the book's author."

She grabs my hand, and I feel a thrill at the touch of her strong fingers, until she casually kicks the violet chain on her way toward the front door.

I pull her back.

With my other hand, I close the chest's lid and grip the cold brass handle. I feel through the possibilities: the tiny wooden room it usually opens to, or the bigger room beyond.

"Maybe you're not as stupid as you smell," she says.

I open the lid/door, step in, and we both fall through, linked by our hands.

We land on a desk carved of glittering white stone.

I don't have time to look around: in a chair in front of the desk, so close I can smell his graveyard breath, there's an old man with butter-yellow eyes and Count Dracula hair. His waxy, colorless skin reminds me of a maggot.

For just a moment, he looks like he got fisted with an ice cube—and then his eyes drop to see the violet chain coiled on the desk's smooth surface. He smiles and lays one palm over it.

Pain. I'm on my belly instantly, swimming across the desk. My hands claw at the stone, at Lily, at the still-wet pages of the book he'd been writing in, as if somewhere I might find the switch to turn it off. My boots encounter momentary resistance, followed by the music of hundreds of coins clinking, rolling, and spinning on a marble floor.

I crane my neck at Lily, just in time to see him strike her face with the side of his fist. The quill with which he'd been writing stabs into her cheek, dribbling black ink down her jaw.

In one smooth motion, she slides off the desk and lands in a defensive crouch.

As she backs away, the clicking of her heels multiplies. It's a dog trotting up behind her. Woolly and beige, like an old couch, it seems harmless until it bares its teeth. The rumble in its throat sounds like a power tool.

This was stupid, so stupid. I should go back through the chest. My left elbow bumps against it, so I know it's still here on the desktop. Just shut the lid, then open it once, tumble through into my apartment. No doubt I'd be punished, but at least I'd be far away, where I belonged.

The plume hanging out of Lily's cheek quivers as she stands between the book's author and his canine mercenary. Then the dog jumps on her, its paws on her chest, tearing into her arm when she swings at its face.

It's hard to focus, but I force my right arm flat on the desk so I can reach into my sleeve.

The book's author watches Lily go down to her knees, his face expressionless. I draw the iron knife, and before I can change my mind, before I can get sick again, I slam the blade into the side of his neck.

The blood that dribbles out is iridescent like a parking lot puddle. He paws at the knife with both hands, but a moment later he goes limp and molds to the contours of his chair like wet laundry.

The pain fades, but it doesn't go away. I don't have time to worry about that, or the fact that I just went from thief to murderer.

It's my fault Lily's here.

I dig through everything I knocked off of the desk, coins and the inkwell and a bunch of jewelry, but I don't see Lily's pin. I have to get it to her—a dog against a dog is a better chance than she has now.

I can't find it. The dog snarls louder behind me and Lily curses. I glance back to see her holding it at arm's length by its collar, its teeth gnashing the flesh of her arm as if it means to chew it off.

No time to keep digging. I scan the room. It seems carved from a single block of opalescent white stone, even the desk. Sourceless frost-tinted light shows me shelves and shelves of familiar items. I spot a broken pocketwatch that worked back when I stole it, a hat pin I remember sneaking off of a mannequin in a porn store window, and finally, the brass spyglass I stole from the nautical exhibit.

That's the one I grab.

Lily's blood is slick under my shoes as I dash over. I swing the spyglass at the dog. I don't want to hit it, but its mouth is foaming with Lily's blood, blood she never should have had to spill. When the brass strikes the top of the dog's skull, it yelps, falls to the side, and is too dizzy to get up. I know how it feels. If I tried to pull the knife out of a dead man I would have passed right the eff out—I'm barely hanging on as it is. I swallow the gush of about-to-puke saliva and breathe through my nose.

Lily stands, her lacerated arm dripping more blood. "Where is my pin?" she asks.

"I don't know. Why am I still chained?"

"I don't know."

We stare at each other, she without her pin, me still attached to the chest by the violet chain.

"Let's load the chest with all the coins and jewelry," I say. "When we get back, we'll sort through it all."

I take off my coat and rip out the lining to bandage Lily's  arm. When it's wrapped tight, she helps me pile handfuls of treasure onto my coat, all of it stained with ink and blood. We lift it together and dump the contents into the chest, over and over until there's not a coin left. 

"I can take you back through," I say, "so you can go to a hospital."

"You'd trust me in your apartment with all that cash?" she asks. She starts to grin, winces, and yanks the quill from her cheek. "How come you're not going back that way?"

"I have to own both chests until I get the chain off," I say. "I can't bring it through itself—I don't know what'll happen—so I have to go back the long way."

Maybe I don't hide my dread well enough. Her eyes are sharp and dark as she looks at the chest, already empty, and then back at me.

"No, thanks," she says. "I think I want to see what's through door number two." I fight the urge to hug her—I'm covered in enough blood as it is.

I grab one end of the chest, and she grabs the other, and we walk toward the door. I caress the cool handle, considering the possibilities. None of them will take us home, but you don't get through a maze without hitting a few dead-ends.

I choose a hallway, and then another door, and another.

END

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on June 11th.

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