Fantasy Magazine. Issue 10, January Table of Contents

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2 Fantasy Magazine Issue 10, January 2008 Table of Contents Bones by Leslie Claire Walker (fiction) Pahwakhe by Gord Sellar (fiction) Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake by Kelly Barnhill (fiction) Painting Walls in the Town of N by Stephanie Campisi (fiction) Author Spotlight: Gord Sellar Author Spotlight: Stephanie Campisi About the Editor 2008 Fantasy Magazine

3 Bones Leslie Claire Walker The crows dove from the pregnant summer sky, sleek and hungry. Ballard hadn t fed them in a week. I know I used to be his apprentice. His birds dug their claws into the limestone and glass of Rite Company Shackles, 899 Louisiana Street, Houston, Texas 77002, which this morning became a subsidiary of HOLY WELL PRISON UNIFORMS AND ACCESSORIES, EVERYTHING FOR THE PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, IF YOU NEED IT WE VE GOT IT. As the last one out of the building, I took my life into my own hands by standing a few feet from the revolving door. The crows wouldn t care whether the gods made me from flesh and bone or from stone and sand and fire. They d eat me, too, if they could. It was their nature. Johnson circled around to my left, grabbed me by the wrist hard enough to leave bruises, and dragged me down the wide steps to the curb, where secretaries in shirtsleeves and sneakers and businessmen in their casual Friday attire craned their heads to watch the last hostility of the takeover. Johnson had hired me one week ago to

4 the minute to stop this after his own magicians proved unable to. How the hell had this happened? How could I have miscalculated so badly again? Johnson kept hold of me, his blue eyes wild with fright and his dark hair plastered back from his forehead. Perspiration beaded on his upper lip. The sign on the bank building down the street called the temperature at ninety-two degrees and the heat index made it feel like one hundred. But that wasn t it, of course. I d fire you, he said, if I had anywhere to fire you from. I d deserve it. No excuses. No platitudes. I thinned my lips. I got half my hundred thousand dollar fee via wire-transfer up-front, the rest payable only after I d shown Ballard the door. I d screwed up, but I d be all right with money except for the sting to my pride. Mr. Johnson s life, however, had radically changed forever. Why did I hire you? he asked, seemingly more of himself than of me. Because I m the best shot you had. Johnson shook his head. He went after us just so we would hire you. This never had anything to do with my company. He wanted to go head-to-head with you,

5 Smoke. Just you. If I d have held on longer, I could ve kept the place I ve spent twenty years of my life on. You re wrong, I said. Not about the first part. He wanted me on this job. But the rest he d have taken you apart in a heartbeat. For what gain? he asked. Maybe Johnson felt better pretending not to know. I ve never been one to allow anyone their illusions; I had none myself. Business was business. For the carrion, I said. Ballard was a scavenger. That was all he knew how to be. What did you do to him to make him hate you like this, Smoke? I had the nerve never to have had a family of my own and to want his. I had asked his god-daughter, whom he d raised from infancy, to marry me, and he d made me an offer I couldn t refuse. Prove to him that I could take over the family business, that I had the magical wherewithal to take care of it and Laurel, and he would give me the business and his blessing. I watched Ballard s crows pick apart Rite Company Shackles one square of stone, one steel beam, one scrap of carpet at a time. I bore witness long after the rest of the gawkers wandered away, while the sun set in a gold stain

6 behind the clouds and thunder sounded in the west. The first fat drops fell as the birds reduced the desks to toothpicks. The last one flew away in the rain with a doubleframed picture of someone s tow-headed children in its fat beak. *** I saw the message light blinking on the entry table as soon as I stepped into my apartment. I listened to the recording first, before I so much as turned on a light. Ballard had taken up smoking again, judging by the sandpaper of his voice. Maybe I made him nervous. Or maybe not. Sucker! You think you can outsmart me? Every time you put someone else between me and you, they go down. Every time. We ll keep on playing this game until I m tired of it. Then you ll be carrion, my friend. I d never give up. Never. I slipped off my shoes and socks, popped the cap on a beer, and opened the sliding glass door onto my private, wood-fenced patio. Over the tips of the boards, I saw no one and nothing but the live oak and the miniature rose

7 bushes in crimson bloom. The concrete felt cool on the soles of my feet. I sat in the metal glider beside the scarecrow I d stuffed and placed there, sipping and thinking while the stars appeared and the moon rose and the wind shifted southeasterly, carrying a salty tang off the Gulf. I thought of Laurel. Twenty-two, hot off my B.A. with honors from the University of Texas, I took the job with Ballard. I wanted more than bit experience so I could hop to another firm after a few years. I did it for more than money. I did it for her. She had violet eyes; that happened after so many years of heavy magic use. Yep, violet eyes and long brown hair that she wore in a French braid that flowed half-way down her back. She wore sleeveless dresses that showed off her freckled shoulders. She smelled of sunlight. Warm. I saw her for the first time at the card game. A friendly game of hold-em in a brewery bar with a good Irish stout and too many televisions mounted high on the walls. She smiled at me and looked away. Something in her magic sparked mine. I knew right then I d do anything to get her to marry me. Even sign away my life.

8 Laurel had a hefty talent for money magic. The kind that brought her four offshore accounts full of untraceable cash by the time she reached my age. She worked for Ballard. I went to work for Ballard. Simple, right? Ballard held the power of death. He could think you dead, and you d follow suit. His crows would come and pick you apart until nothing remained. The only thing that held him in check? The Almighty Contract Law. One false move, and he d be gone. Whisked away to the kind of prison built to deal with someone like him. So he put his expertise to work taking apart corporations instead of people. The old man kept a tight leash on me. A hard first contract a set-up which I broke and he reported me for. Not to the proper authorities, who might ve put me in jail but to everyone else that mattered. Anyone who might hire me. Then he threw me out of his nest as an adult bird would a fledgling. The bastard ruined me. People gave me jobs. After all, I could predict the future. Ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy. The other point one? The big problem or so it seemed, though I d been working on it like mad. That thing they say about practice and perfect. Ballard wasn t perfect. Although his decimal place

9 stretched out further than mine, he should only have been able to beat me on my small margin of foresight blindness once in a blue moon. Not every time. How did he do it? Why couldn t I see it? I looked up a full thirty-seconds before the beat of wings disturbed the air. A crow blotted out the moonlight. It dropped something silver and heavy at me. I reached out and caught it before it hit ground, and sliced my thumb on broken glass for my trouble, just like I knew I would. The picture carried off from the company this afternoon. The blond kids. One boy, one girl in the shade of cypress trees on a river bank, water smooth and shot with sun and leaf-shadow behind them. The crow wheeled once and cawed three times before it flew north and west, back to the home office. I knew a challenge when I heard one. I saw a flash of the future in that moment: the sky clotted with black birds on the corpse of another company. Barberry Uniforms. The old man would buy to fifty-one percent, first thing in the morning. I could expect the call from the owner before noon. ***

10 Barberry s small office occupied part of the third floor of the building catty-corner to the decimated Rite lot. All the blinds on that side of the building hung closed and to the floor, I assumed to blot out the eyesore. And the reminder that they would be next. The company had one secretary, one bookkeeper, five salespeople. It shouldn t be worth Ballard s time of day. Yet he d gone after them before. Gone after them and backed off at the last minute. I remembered the deal, though when it went down I was already on the outs with Ballard. I d heard rumors of a war chest too big for the old man to take on. Rumors always held a grain of truth. I met with the sole owner and magician, Ms. Glenn Wentwhite, in the only conference room, a maple credenza-and-table number that seated eight. Coffee service and a small tray of croissants and strawberries rounded out the hospitality. Ms. Wentwhite wore a rich silver suit to match her pearls and her very prematurely silver hair. She couldn t have been more than thirty-five. Her navy pumps were scuffed at the heels. She looked overwhelmed. And beautiful. She shook my hand and spoke with an East Texas accent so deep I could smell the piney woods. I hope you ll tell me what you re doing here today, Mr. Smoke.

11 Just Smoke, I said. She motioned for me to sit and took the chair beside me. I mean, I don t know. Why you re here, that is. I d never heard that before. You called me. She nodded like it all made sense. I studied her eyes. The pupils showed a little too much. Are you spelled? She set her elbow on the tabletop and wrestled with more than worried at her pearls. She didn t answer right away. Ms. Wentwhite? When she didn t answer me then, I took her nonresponse for a yes. People generally couldn t tell others they d been ensorcelled. Took all the fun and purpose out of it if everyone else knew the lowdown. Most of the time, though, magicians were better at camouflaging their work. Ms. Wentwhite gave it away so easy it felt ridiculous. It felt like an insult. What s really going on here? I asked. It s a trap, she said. No, I wanted to say. A trap was a foresight dream that your fiancé ran into a building about to be scavenged because she thought you were inside. She went in after you only to find no one at the computer terminal outside room 3702, where she thought you d be. Not a human

12 being as far as the eye could see. Only handsome blonde wood desks made from some nearly-extinct South American tree. Flat screens showing various stages of documents or personal or screensavers. Fichus trees losing their leaves by the windows. The flicker and buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead as the electricity stuttered. As the crows descended. You, the love of her life, supposed to be there, but somehow disappeared like smoke. Laurel died alone, in the dream. A trap was not knowing whether this death would really happen. Whether it emerged from my own gift or came from my for-all-intents-and-purposes father-in-law. I wouldn t put it past the bastard. He d send me something like that as a test. To see if I could be scared off. To make things more interesting. Had he done anything like that to Glenn Wentwhite? I doubted it. She smiled. The expression not only didn t reach her eyes, it didn t reach her mouth. I d like you to stay and talk with me a while, she said. When we re done, I d like you to get up and shake my hand warmly, like we ve agreed to work together. The hell you say. She kept on as if I hadn t said a word. She reached

13 over and patted my hand, for gods sake. Then I want you to step out into the foyer and tell my secretary you ll be right back. Walk out the front door and down the hall to the men s room. I ll meet you there. I didn t even pretend to understand. I reached out with the good sense the gods gave me to see what might happen in the men s room. I couldn t get any inkling. Except that this did not, of all things, stink of Ballard. For that, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Twenty minutes worth. All the time I felt I could spare on anything or anyone besides beating the old man. The men s room in no way resembled a bathroom. No facilities to speak of. Not even a sink. Only one inch squares of brown-flecked cream tile. It smelled of cold platinum shielding, like metal on the tip of the tongue. Anti-magic shield. A room to block eavesdropping or x- ray vision or hindsight or even my own power. Ms. Wentwhite leaned against the far wall, hands braced behind her. I had no idea how she d got here ahead of me. In the tic of her muscles and the shudder in her neck, I could see her work her way through whatever spell she was under. She swallowed hard twice before she said anything. The piney woods had fled. She took it so slowly, she sounded like English was her second

14 language. I spell was. Spelled. You were right. I waited. I don t handle stress well, she said. Or secrets. If I hadn t done this to myself, I d have given the game away the second I saw you. Ballard s spies would ve seen me somehow. She was paranoid. And worse, she was soft. You said this was a trap. Yes, but not for you. For him. What kind of game are you running? She looked me in the eye. Ballard killed my husband. I saw how it was now. She thought I d be sympathetic. You ve heard about my fiancé. She had the grace to stare at her shoes when she replied. Yes. How you ll never see her again. It sounded rude. I could tell she hadn t meant it that way. Everyone watches Ballard. Everyone thinks they can out-maneuver him. To survive. Survival doesn t mean squat, I said. Not if you have to live in fear every day for the rest of your life. Who cares about fear? Her voice shook with barely contained violence. It only matters that you stand up.

15 Like she and her husband had stood up to Ballard before? How did your husband die? Emil. His name. Had a heart attack. After Ballard tried to scavenge us. I felt her words like a punch to the chest. I let it show a little. What I feared for myself and Laurel had actually happened to her and Emil. Why did he back off? He got wind of our arsenal. The rumored war chest. How much? A hundred million dollars in bonds and gold. I whistled at the depth of those assets. This company wasn t anywhere near carrion. You had resources Ballard couldn t mess with. You would have used it all fighting him off. By the time he got what he wanted, the return on investment would never be worth it. That s why he let you get away. She nodded. We bought Ballard back down to thirtyfive percent. It hurt. But we did it. He s left us alone, but he never let us go. And we ve had our problems since Emil died. Some ups. Mostly downs. You re ripe for the picking again. He s bought up enough shares. Yes, she said. It ll be a hard fight again. Harder, without Emil. I don t know if my heart can take it. If she had to wonder, surely she was right. That s

16 where I come in. I have a plan, Smoke. You re going to become a permanent asset of Barberry Uniforms. A permanent asset of the company. That meant if Ballard won here, if he bought out Wentwhite and scavenged her company, Ballard would scavenge me, too. Why on earth would I do that? It s all in the compensation clause of your contract, she said. I haven t signed one yet. You will, she said, filling her words with almost enough conviction to convince me. The deeper Barberry Uniforms goes into debt the more trouble we re into the more you re worth. And they would go into debt. On every non-liquid asset they owned. Brilliant. I d be worth more than my weight in cash and gold. If Ballard wants to buy the company, he ll have to buy you, Smoke. I looked at her. The stress of standing up to Ballard cost Emil his life and Ms. Wentwhite her husband. Most people would ve folded. People didn t stand up to Ballard the way they had. Do you want revenge? he asked. Keeping my company whole is the best revenge.

17 Indeed. Her proposal made this more than a contract. More than a job. I would have to put myself on the line in a way I hadn t done with Johnson or those other corporations Ballard had scavenged out from under me. Then, it had been all about beating Ballard. About proving myself to him. Screw him. Ballard acted according to his nature. I acted according to mine. I accepted Ms. Wentwhite s offer. I drew my line in the sand. All or nothing. This was it. This would be the last battle. I d finish things, one way or another, for all I was worth. *** Ms. Wentwhite and I took the limousine to see the old man. As we drove, the sun went down in a ball of molten orange, fingers of flame stretched across the sky. Ballard s live oaks didn t just stand stately, they held court. The house had the biggest set of French doors I d ever seen. And a bird barn out back that I could hear even before Ms. Wentwhite s driver muscled me out of the car.

18 I couldn t hear myself think over the caws and the rustle of wings. Ballard had always kept thirteen murders of crows. The house had no guards but those. He waited for us alone in his office, ensconced in the comfortable brown leather chair closest to the dark fireplace. The old man hadn t changed much in the past few years. His black hair, turning white only at the temples, fell in a wave of feathers down to his waist. His hooked nose resembled a beak, his hands talons. The eyes were the thing. Coal black, full of sly wit. Too much intelligence for his own good. He held a brandy, motioned with it toward the decanter and empty glasses on the oak mantle. He spoke with the same sandpaper edge as the message he d left. Would you like? Ms. Wentwhite thinned her lips. I never mix alcohol and business. Your loss, he said. It s good stuff. Celebratory. Isn t it, Smoke? I nodded. Ballard. I stood. Ms. Wentwhite sat on the red velveteen loveseat across from him. You know what we re here for, she said. I won t make a deal with you, Ballard said. This

19 time I m seeing it through. I ll take Barberry apart, just like all the others. You can count on it. You won t, I said. I ve signed on with Wentwhite. Ballard left off sipping his brandy and narrowed his eyes. I m in it until the end, I said. You may think the company is weak, but below the surface it s still strong enough to take anything you can dish out for a good, long time. We can still spend you into the ground. You can try to swallow Barberry, but I promise you ll choke on it. The corners of Ms. Wentwhite s mouth curved. She didn t look like she could help it. I turned to her. It won t be him, but eventually someone will take us apart. You know that s true. You have too much heart and not enough grit. It s got me this far, she said. This far and no further. You re at an impasse. She stared at me. What are you saying? You want to scavenge the company, Ballard. To make it yours. Ms. Wentwhite, you want to keep the company whole. We can battle this out, or we can try something different. Ballard watched me. He downed the last of his drink. Spit it out.

20 We sell Barberry to you. Barberry remains autonomous a subsidiary. I run Barberry, along with Ms. Wentwhite here. Ballard s eyes grew wide. You want to build the business. I nodded. I mean to. I would never have thought of that. Of course not. He was a scavenger. But I never have been. He mulled it over. After a minute, he gave a grudging answer. We ll talk. Ms. Wentwhite folded her arms across her chest. But she didn t get up to leave. I had crafted a proposition that thrilled neither of them. Then again, the best business deals never make everyone happy. Ballard set down his glass on the mantle. Good job, son. I raised a brow. I never cared whether you beat me, he said. After everything he d done, how could he say that? You could ve fooled me. Ballard rose and crossed to where I stood. Winning wasn t the point. He d thrown me out. Ruined me. Destroyed how

21 many lives? All because I was supposed to prove myself to him. Shit. I couldn t believe I hadn t seen it before. I never had to prove my worth to you. I had to prove it to myself. Ballard put his arm around my shoulders. You re a little slow, son. But you ll do. I wholeheartedly agreed, but I didn t tell him that. I realized suddenly, too, that I couldn t see how this whole thing would end up. My magic wouldn t tell me. I d opened a door to a lot of possibilities. Ballard leaned in. You know, son, just because I gave you a pass on this deal doesn t mean I won t take you apart on the next. You ll try. He laughed. Welcome to the family, Smoke. Do you want to see Laurel? She s upstairs. *** He took me to her, into a part of the house where I d never been, with champagne walls covered in so much tapestry you could hardly see them. Our footfalls echoed on the dusty hardwood floor. We must have been close to

22 the birds. The rustle of feathers had never been so loud. In the second room on the right of the hall, Laurel waited. Violet eyes. Strong arms. She smelled of the sun, still. When we turned to look at him, Ballard had gone. In his wake a set of human footprints, and after a short distance, a set of talon marks. Where d he go? I asked. Out with the crows, she said. He does his best thinking when he flies, and you ve given him something to think about. Any second now, the birds would take to the air. A black clot on the sky. Do you hate them? she asked. I thought of everything they d torn apart. How many bones they d picked clean. Corporations. Lives. It hadn t been their fault. They d only done what they were born to do. Like Ballard. Like me. No. She met my gaze. Good. Because you re marrying into the family. Outside, the rustle became a thunder of beating wings. Leslie Claire Walker hails from the lush bayous and concrete-and-steel

23 canyons of the Texas Gulf Coast. She lives in Houston with assorted animal and plant companions, and two harps. Her short fiction has appeared in many wonderful magazines and anthologies, including Fantasy Magazine. She can be found on the web at

24 Pahwakhe Gord Sellar It s almost dark. My daughter is sitting outside, the bundle still and silent in her arms. The singing voices out on the water are moving, sad fiddles calling out like broken birds. They re coming here. I never imagined them returning. They re drifting through the dark and fog, toward the shore. She s waiting for them. *** Not long ago, I was a happy man, and not just rich like I am now. Each of my daughters was more beautiful than all the girls in all the nearby villages, but the oldest and the most beautiful one s name was Pahwakhe. She was quiet, and tall, and strong. Any man would happily have taken her as his wife. The chiefs of the other villages came to my longhouse one by one, bearing gifts for her hand. They wanted me to marry her to one of their sons. But I kept her for myself.

25 You know how a father enjoys his girls when they bring him food, and talk to him, and listen to him tell the old stories. So I said no to every man, no to every father, no to every son in the villages. My wife chided me that I would never have a grandson, and after a while, I began to hear people cursing my name when they thought I couldn t hear. They laughed at me. They said terrible things, prayed for terrible misfortunes to befall me. They said I was a bad man for keeping her to myself. I understood why they said these things, why they couldn t understand me, but still I kept her in my longhouse. As for Pahwakhe, she said nothing to me about it, but endured this waiting cheerfully. She smiled as I told stories, tried to give me my joy, but I could see something within her, slowly changing, growing heavier and more weary of me as the nights grew cooler and the days, one by one, carried whispers of winter s approach. *** One chilly night, there were voices out on the water. Singing, accompanied by eerie music that reminded me of

26 the sound of a broken, widowed bird. One of the old women heard them first, that s always how it goes. She came to me and she told me there was something singing out in the fog, coming up to the beach. We went down to the water to meet them, but their canoes had already been pulled up onto the stony shore. They stood together in a small group, six or seven men, each pale, ghost-thin, and hairy-faced, wearing wide, bright sashes and skin boots, their brown and yellow hair hanging loose around their faces. A couple of them held strange wooden things under their arms, which they called fiddles. The rest of them carried bulging leather bags. Stories about them echoed in my memory, things that other chiefs had whispered about to me. It was nothing more than rumors, things they d heard from canoe-traders and wanderers. Nobody knew how they crossed over from their world to ours, or why they were so pale. That they could kill a man with a yell, that they could kill the soil in a place so nothing would grow there, that they sometimes stole away girls and women in the night because they had none of their own. The smoke in my longhouse swirled thick, thicker still around their strange faces. They sat all around me on brightly-colored mats and frowned, wrinkled their big

27 noses as they tried to speak our language. I offered them bone spoons and cedar plates loaded with salmon and seal oil and nuts and blackberries. We ve brought many gifts, they said, our words heavy like stones on their tongues. They opened the bags, and set down handfuls of colorful round beads, hard axes, pouches bursting with long-traveled pemmican, braided sweetgrass, and tobacco. They set these things down before me, and then one of them their chief stared across the fire at my eldest daughter. They gave me so much that I couldn t refuse their unsaid request. Pahwakhe wept and shivered when I offered her to them. Her sisters and mother beat their breastbones and cried, but what could I do? They could have stolen her away, or stolen all of them, if they wanted. I had no choice. So we married her to their young chief. Our women sang mourning songs as young men danced, feathers swirling in firelight as drums pounded in darkness. After that, our guests made their weeping fiddles sing broken birdsongs until just before dawn. It was still very dark, though, when their canoes cut out across the water, carrying Pahwakhe out into the fog that separated their world from ours. She did not look back to the shore as the canoe she was in drifted into the twilight.

28 As they drifted slowly away, we heard their fiddles and the song they played was solemn, a funeral song. *** A year later, an old woman hobbled out of one morning s fog into our village, and came to my longhouse. She told me that she lived between the worlds, in a halfway place to the land of the ghost-people, and that my daughter s husband was a ghost. She told me their bodies were just bones and dust in the daytime, but at night they came to life, sang and danced and made love. Maybe the old woman had once married one of them too, I don t know. I did not ask her these things. I could tell she was not lying to me. She told me that my daughter had given a son to her ghost husband, but the child was not wholly ghost, and living with ghosts was too difficult for it. The villagers there thought the child ought to live with us, the living, with its mother s people. The old woman sat down on a mat on the ground outside my longhouse, and waited. Half a day passed before my oldest daughter stumbled out of the fog. She was cradling a bundle in front of her,

29 and I guessed it was a baby. Pahwakhe! I was so happy to see her. She was still beautiful, but there was something very tired about her. The skin under her eyes was darker, her face wearier. Father. Is this your baby? Her eyes were wild, haunted. I m tired. She squeezed the bundle to herself, out of my reach. The old woman watched us with heavy eyes. I set my curiosity aside and brought Pahwakhe into my longhouse. Then I set out a cattail mat on the floor for her, and let the cedar smoke hush her to sleep. *** I was finally a grandfather. I had not thought of it, had not wanted it, but now that it was true, I felt greedy. I wanted to look at him, to find my face in his own. But I never saw my grandson s face. Pahwakhe said he was only halfway one of us, and still halfway one of them. She told me he had to be wrapped for twelve days straight, to stop being a ghost and become a living baby. I tried to wait, and tried to wait, but my woman, she got me curious. She kept fanning the embers of my

30 curiosity, asking me if I believed her, telling me how pretty she was sure the baby was. Finally, when I could not wait any longer, I was too curious. I heard the baby cry a little late one night, glimpsed my daughter giving it suckle. Once daylight came, my daughter slept and the baby made no sound. I wanted to see, so badly; I could feel the want growing inside me, bigger and bigger, as the day went on. Nothing eased it, not smoking, not lunch, not a walk in the bush. Nothing. So that afternoon, I unwrapped the bundle. I didn t know what those things were at first, those little white shapes lit by the sun. There was dust all over them. But when I looked closely, for a few moments, I realized what they were. Bones. The baby s tiny skull almost fell from the bundle, almost fell to the ground. Pahwakhe woke up, screamed, and wrapped up the bones, but I could tell from the look on her face that there was nothing to do. It was too late to take back what I d done. *** The living and the dead are not very different. They both want to see everything in the world, to taste it, again and again. They want to own everything they ve ever

31 touched. So they re coming back, for her and the baby. I think she might have called out to them somehow. Asked them to come for her. She looks at the bundle, speaks to it. She holds it close. I sit beside her in the darkness, waiting. I want to speak to her, but I cannot find any words. They re heavy on my tongue, too, now. Their voices are getting louder, the mourning fiddles drifting closer. Canoes scrape against the shore s cold stones. Gord Sellar was born in Malawi, grew up in various parts of Canada, and is currently living in South Korea. He used to play saxophone in various jazz and rock groups, but now he just dreams of finding himself some Korean free-jazz geeks to jam with. He attended the Clarion West workshop in His fiction has appeared in Nature, and he has work forthcoming in Machine of Death, and Postcards from Hell. The paint on his face is Korean and it says Jazzpunk.

32 Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake Kelly Barnhill 1. The last sound she heard was water. It bubbled and flowed from the masses of decaying snow piles, slicked the path and fanned into the spongy turf and sleeping grass. Bits of puddle splashed up on her white socks and white and red legs a spangle of gray salt drips curving up to the knee. She did not mind, but continued to run across the park, gaining speed as she went. She ran with ease, with a surety of motion and grace. She did not worry about growing tired, or hurting herself. She ran without fear. The path and park were empty which surprised her because the day was warm at last after an endless winter of endless cold. She wore shorts and a t-shirt that said Big Mama s Bar, which she was pretty sure she had been to once. The westerly breeze nipped at her upper arms and thighs, and while it was warm enough to melt the snow, she probably should have worn leggings or a wind

33 breaker. Should have. In all honesty, however, it didn t really matter either way. In about ten minutes, Ronia Drake s life will end. She will not see death coming, nor will she see it scuttling away, its large mouth damp, drooping and satiated. She will only know a sharp knock, a flurry of feathers and fur, a whisper of her name, and a sharp, curved finger at her throat. Or perhaps it will be a burst of light. Or perhaps it will be nothing at all. 2. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who wanted to be a princess. She wanted a pretty ring that glimmered on a pink-tipped finger, a small foot slipped neatly into a smart beaded shoe. She wanted a crown of curls framing a delicate face. But she was large-footed and ungainly. Her face was broad and fleshy and unbalanced. There was nothing that twinkled. Nothing. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who came into a little bit of magic. Well, perhaps came into is the wrong phrase. Perhaps stole would suffice. Either way,

34 the girl felt, it was nothing more than semantics. When people inherit money they say came into, and since the previous owner was as dead as could be, came into was a good a description as any. Magic, stolen, inherited or otherwise, is an unwieldy tool, but like any other useful thing, can be mastered by anyone who bothers to learn it. There once was a little girl who wanted to be a princess, and learned magic to make it happen. After several attempts on unsuspecting proxies, the girl turned her magic on herself. She marveled at her tiny feet fit snug in lovely beaded shoes with heels that clicked over a blue tile floor. She marveled at her face, milky soft and delicately boned. A princess s face. She looked longingly at her hands, her long-fingered hands, as pale as pearls. There should, she felt, be a diamond. And a prince to go with it. Once upon a time, there was a princess who stole a prince. No, she thought, not stole. Came into. And so what if she used her little bit of magic. Her little inheritance. So what if he needed some encouragement to turn his head. No one cared, anyway. If she could have her way, and she often did, she would tell a new story the right story and she would write it like this: Once upon a time there was a princess. A very pretty princess. Prettier than you. Once upon a time, a very

35 handsome prince stole the very pretty princess. No, not stole. Came into. And he would not get out. 3. The moment Ronia Drake died, her daughters turned to their stepmother and pointed. Girls, the stepmother said, don t point. You, the girls said, their small fingers pointing to the stepmother s pale gold curls, cropped prettily under her ears. You, the girls said, pointing at the stepmother s swollen belly, which had enlarged upon itself, doubling, then tripling its size until people joked that it must be a medicine ball shoved under her skin. Or a go-kart. Or a truck. Girls, she said again, but she stopped. She never called them by their names. She only called them girls when she was feeling petulant and ladies when she was feeling fine. Now with the pointing and the accusations, she was feeling petulant. But when she reached for the first one, the one with the scar over her eye (and if only she could remember which one had the scar over her eye) she caught sight of her hand and drew it back with a sharp cry. The stepmother always had lovely hands the

36 color of pearls. Or, at least it seemed like always. She told people that when women let themselves go, the first place it shows is in their hands. No man wants to make love to a woman with red knuckles and cuticles jutting out like spikes. No man wants a woman with quick bitten fingernails, or fingernails rimmed with dirt, or spots or wrinkles or cracks. Ronia Drake had dreadful hands. It was no wonder her husband left her. The stepmother said this as though it were true. No one noticed the way a smile slicked across her milk-pale skin. No one noticed the strange glitter of her terrible beauty. Or, at least, they pretended not to notice. Instead they nodded to her comment about hands. So true, they said. So very, very true. But now. Now as the stepmother reached for the accusatory point of one of the girls she saw a hand covered in blood. A hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. And what was worse, it wasn t her hand at all. It was Ronia Drake s hand. 4. As Ronia Drake ran along the path, the wind seemed to curve around her, twisting around like yarn. She didn t notice the wind, or at least she mostly did not notice.

37 What she did notice is that her hair wouldn t stay tied back and instead wisped free, tickling her eyes and ears and nose. The left side of the path was a strip of grass that soon would be green but was currently brown, and though it looked prickly, she knew that if she removed her running shoes, the ground would be spongy and cold and soaking. Beyond the grass the ground fell away in a tangle of leafless branches and trunks and thorns that wove against each other in their tumble towards the river below. Ronia Drake always warned her daughters to stay out of those woods. You never know who might be living in those woods. As Ronia Drake ran, she did not notice the eyes in the woods. She did not notice the way the ravens gathered and re-gathered, only just behind her as she ran. She did not notice the pale reflection that glimmered on the edges of the oil-slicked sheen of the dark puddles. Pale curls danced on the rippling water. And a delicate mouth slashed open in a grin. Every once in a while there was a bench made of river rocks held together by gravelly mortar with a few splintery planks set across for sitting on. Additionally, there were the occasional ancient barbeques and fire pits with chimneys that pointed effortlessly towards the sky. These, too were made of river rocks. Once, when she had

38 taken her daughters here for a picnic, Anna, or perhaps it was Alice, shimmied to the top of the chimney, her long bare arms and legs moving with the chaotic grace of an insect. Now that she thought about it, it was both Alice and Anna, but it was Anna who fell, slicing the tender skin between her eye and brow on a particularly sharp piece of granite. Alice remained on top, crying, and Ronia never knew if she cried because her sister fell, or if she was frightened, or if she simply did not like to be separated from the girl who shared her face. A man called nine one one on his cell, and the fire truck came to bandage Anna and pluck Alice from the sky. The girls, reunited, wrapped their long, pale arms around each other, whispering soundlessly in each other s ears. That night, Ronia had a dream that the girls lived in a nest at the top of the chimney. Their hands gripped the edges of the rocks like talons and they peered down at the people on the path. When Ronia walked along the path looking for her children, the girls threw bits of twig and feathers and dry grass at their mother, but it did not reach her. It blew up in a twisting wind and vanished over the edge of the empty trees. She called to the girls to come down, but they were not girls any longer. They stared down at her with their large, complicated eyes, their gentle antennae clasping and unclasping with the other,

39 their long, thin, green legs, folded under their bodies, ready to spring. Ready to fly away. And they did fly. Over her head, her girls, or her grasshoppers, or her grasshoppers who once were her girls, vaulted across the sky in a buzz of leg and song and endless green. When she woke, she did not remember the dream, although she told everyone she knew about the strange dream that had haunted her the night before. I had the strangest dream, she told people. What was it? the people asked. No idea, she said, and assumed that it would be enough. 5. The police were called, more than once, although no one could tell them why they called. People dialed the emergency number and found themselves staring at the place where Ronia Drake once lived and breathed, but now did not. One man vomited on his phone, ruining it forever. A fourteen year old girl tried to explain what she saw, but she fell to her knees and began speaking in tongues instead. An older woman began to have heart palpitations, and asked the dispatcher a kind woman named Eunice to send out an extra ambulance while she

40 was at it. When the ambulance arrived, they found the old woman seated under a tree, her legs stretched out in front of her, her body pressed to the trunk of the tree as though pinned. She had faced herself away from the remains of Ronia Drake, which seemed sensible enough, but had died anyway, pressing one hand against her eyes and one on her heart. The fourteen year old girl remained in the center of the path, kneeling, her hands and face pointing to the sky. Her voice had gone hoarse by the time the ambulance came, and the second ambulance, and the fire truck and police car. But her lips continued to move. The paramedic knelt by some of the remains of Ronia Drake. A hand, a severed ponytail, a bit of tee-shirt that said Mama. The others would begin looking for any kind of identification, though they would find none. They did find a shoe, ten toes (in ten places), a shoulder, a blue eye. Each part was sliced cleanly, as though with a scalpel. There was little blood. The paramedic picked up the ponytail and brought it to his nose. He smelled bread and long limbed children and cut grass and a curved pink lip exposing white teeth that had been sharpened to points. He smelled bright green grasshoppers tenderly washing their faces. He smelled a slim, long-legged deer, bending sweetly to feed upon the damp grass. A deer with two grasshoppers balanced on her delicately boned head. A

41 deer with a blue eye. Ronia Drake, he said to the others. Her name was Ronia Drake. He did not explain how he knew this, and no one asked. And this, he said, picking up the two hands that had been clasped together as though praying. One hand was red-knuckled and quick bitten. The other was pink tipped and pale as pearls, with a diamond that would have gleamed were it not for the drop of blood that had landed on the stone and no where else. This, he said, is not her hand. Above their heads a tribe of ravens gathered and dispersed and gathered again. They landed on empty branches, on signs declaring which path was for biking and which for walking, and on the wet ground. They opened their black beaks and called to another, and back, and back again. The paramedic looked into the glinting eye of the biggest, shiniest of them all. Although he knew it was crazy, he could have sworn the ravens were calling Ronia, Ronia, Ronia. The stepmother locked herself into the bathroom. You, the girls said on the other side of the door. They did not knock or bang. 6.

42 Shut up, the stepmother whispered, her voice like glass in her ears. You, the girls sang. No screeched. No, sang. Sang like birds, like bugs, like gathering ravens. They sang with the voice of something small. Something scuttling. Something with a damp, satiated mouth. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, they sang, their voices reverberating on the tile and porcelain, shaking the walls, vibrating the stepmother s perfect house. The stepmother covered her ears, felt the coagulating blood gum up on the side of her cheek. Her left hand was bloody still, and still not her own. Ronia Drake s hand. Ronia Drake s hand missing a pinkie and a thumb. With the hand that was her own, she gripped at her belly, swollen so taut and tight that threatened to split down the middle. The child inside did not move. It had not moved all day. When Ronia Drake was pregnant, her husband said that her belly twisted and rumbled from morning to night. He said that the girls were a constant tumble of arms and legs and wings. He said that if you placed your ear on Ronia Drake s belly, you could hear the girls singing. What did they sing, the stepmother asked, not because she was interested, but because she felt it would be polite.

43 Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz, he sang on the tips of his white teeth, the teeth she insisted that he bleach. That s not a song, she said. Oh, but it is, he said, and he sang it again. Tzzz, tzzz, tzzz. He sang it gorgeously, lovingly, magnanimously. He sang it with a smile curving across those white white teeth. He never sang that way for her. As her belly grew, swelled, puffed, she bought a stethoscope, and listened for the sounds of her own child singing. It was silent. And the stepmother hated the girls. Not the ladies. The girls. And the stepmother hated Ronia Drake. 7. As Ronia Drake ran, she did not miss her daughters. She knew she should feel guilty for this but she did not. When she was young, she was afraid of being alone and filled the empty spaces of her life with boyfriends and best friends and intimate acquaintances. But now. Now, it was different. Ever since her husband learned how to bleach his teeth, how to tousle his hair with pomade, and how to love the woman that would be her daughters stepmother,

44 Ronia had her children on Wednesdays through Saturdays, and her husband had them on Sundays through Tuesdays. This was an arrangement that worked for a long time while the stepmother did not conceive. But the stepmother wanted a baby. Of course she did. Pretty girl like that would want to pass it on. Ronia Drake, when she was young and slick with love, wanted a baby as well. She got two, and her body showed it. Then her husband left. So it goes, she told people. Finally, the waist of the stepmother swelled prettily. She bloomed, blossomed, was ripe and happy. At first. But after a while the growing was more rapid and uncontained. She doubled, tripled and quadrupled. She grew out of her maternity clothes and hired a nice woman named Lupe to sew new shirts to cover her enormous middle. You re fine, the doctors said, you have a healthy boy and just one, so don t worry. But the stepmother worried and Ronia Drake could tell. For two weeks, the stepmother had avoided allowing the girls into her home. I m so tired, she said. My back hurts, my ass hurts, my belly hurts, my legs hurt, she said.

45 You understand, of course you do, she said. Ronia Drake held her tongue. Lazy, she thought but smiled kindly instead. Ronia Drake loved her daughters. Loved them. She loved the mown grass scent of their matching scalps. She loved their reedy arms and matching pale lips, and how, no matter what color they wore, the mind s eye dressed them in green. She loved they way they pressed their fingertips on her cheekbone when she pretended to sleep. They were her girls, and she loved them. But when her husband no, ex-husband and sometimes her husband s new wife, came to pick up the girls in the brand new Audi, Ronia Drake kissed their mown grass heads, and straightened their pink shirts and brown pants (though in her memory, they would only be wearing green), and told them to be good girls as she caressed their delicate faces, pressing her fingertips gently along their cheekbones. She stood on the curb and waved to them. They watched her through the window, their faces drawn and solemn. They waved back, the car rumbled then glided away, and her children disappeared. Then, Ronia Drake did not miss her children. She painted. She worked. She ran long runs along the river, or the creek, or from one end of the city to the other. Sometimes, she ran for hours without tiring. She felt

46 unfettered, faceless and unnamed. Lost, yes, but there is a freedom in being lost. There is a freedom in abandonment too, if you thought about it right. She painted the walls in large, complicated murals that changed when she felt it was time for them to change. In the girl s room, she painted a collage of important women, to inspire them, but when the girls found them boring, she covered up the severe suffragettes and painted bugs instead delicate arachnids, luscious butterflies as they pleasured trembling flowers, and surefooted spiders pulling filament upon filament from their bellies. She painted figures that looked like girls if you looked at them in one way, and bugs if you looked at them in another. In the living room, she painted a girl sitting on a park bench with an old woman. The girl was unattractive, unpleasantly so. The old woman was so old, the folds of her skin so complicated and fragile as to render her shockingly beautiful. People asked her: Does she glow in the dark? How did you get the old woman to shine like that? I don t know, Ronia said truthfully. People asked her, Is it just me, or is that the ugliest looking ugly girl you ve ever seen? They saw the way the ugly girl has just moistened her lips with her cracked

47 tongue, the way the tip lingered under her sharp teeth. They noticed the way her knuckles were bent, ready, itching to strike. And look, the people said. The branches look like eyes. And look, the people said. The grass looks like a mouth. A grassy mouth with hungry teeth and a large damp tongue. Oh, Ronia said. I hadn t noticed. 8. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who sat next to a witch as the sun set over the park. The witch was old and kind, with fragile skin that folded and creased upon itself like a complicated map. When people walked by, the witch would smile, and though they did not notice, they began to relax, soften, become unaccountably happy. You see, the witch said to the girl. It is neither good nor bad. It is Itself, but can extend our goodness or badness, our foolishness or our intelligence. It s difficult to use. It has consequences. It is not a toy for children. She said this kindly, gently, attempting to put her off without being off-putting. She inquired after the girl s studies, after her friends, but there was little to say in that

48 department. Besides, the girl was busy rewriting the story: Once upon a time, there was a princess under a spell. A wicked spell. Cast by a wicked witch. The witch had magic that should not have been hers, while the princess was denied the honor of beauty. In order to break the spell, the witch s magic needed to be stolen away. The princess broke the spell. She reached into the complicated folds of the witch s throat and squeezed. The girl felt the old woman s magic (neither good nor bad. But unwieldy. With consequences.) surge into her open, astonished mouth. 9. The police arrived and summarily scratched their heads, wondering where to begin. The paramedic told them what he knew, though he did not say how he came into that knowledge. Better to be vague, he thought. They began to mark the places where the body lay scattered in the damp, brown grass. The paramedic was worried about the ravens that gathered in greater numbers on every branch, on every park bench, on every sign. But they did not make for the meat. In fact, they had stopped calling all together. They watched silently: a gathering, black-