Hummingbird, part three

My tears dried, salty riverbeds traced on my cheeks. I listened for the fall of footsteps, but only the calls of a thousand birds reached my ears. I stood and moved toward the sound. I stepped softly, hoping no one could hear me over the cacophony of the birds. At the end of the hall, I tried a massive door. It was locked. I knelt and whispered to the lock, and it slid out of place. I opened the door, pulling with both arms against its weight.

Inside, the moonlight poured though the leaded glass windows like melted silver. It illuminated hundreds of birdcages. The birds fell silent as I entered the room. As one, they turned on their perches and watched me with inscrutable black eyes.

My predecessors.

Baba had told me I was to become a hummingbird if the prince didn’t take me. Looking around, I saw everything but hummingbirds. Great horned owls with twitching feathery tufts, speckled brown sparrows, proud blue jays, slender white cranes, tiny goldfinches with little black hats, all of them stood perfectly still and watched me.

Perhaps I could free these women from their enchantments. I opened my arms wide and spoke some sacred words. Nothing happened. All the birds gave a great squawk of disappointment.

For the next hour, I opened every cage and freed the birds. They walked or flew in a cloud around my head, making no noise. When the last birdcage was open, I pushed the door wide and went into the hallway. A blackbird flew ahead and paused, hovering in midair, looking at me. I followed.

Through the castle I followed the blackbird, down and out, treading on bunched carpet and cold tile. When we reached the main door, I pushed it. No one had locked this door, and it swung wide. The blackbird flew outside to freedom… and transformed. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair, tangled and disheveled. She looked at her long white hands and smiled.

“Come!” she cried, and her voice was the raucous call of a blackbird.

The cloud of birds flew through the doorway, each transforming in the moonlight to the woman she had once been.

When every last bird was through the door, I followed. We left the door standing wide and started to run together, running for freedom.

It was time to go see Baba.

Hummingbird, part two

The prince shoved me into the carriage and followed me inside. Baba trailed behind him, calling for payment. He slammed the door in her face and called for the driver to whip up the horses. The carriage lurched into motion, and I clung to my seat to avoid being rocked onto the prince. With Baba gone, I relaxed a little. I didn’t know what the prince was capable of, not yet, but I knew only Baba could turn people into birds.

We both remained silent for the carriage ride up to the castle. When we halted, the prince grabbed my arm again and yanked me outside. I ran to keep up with my dragged arm, stumbling twice. The prince led me through the castle gate, flanked by liveried servants, and into the building. The high ceiling dwarfed me, and I felt myself shrinking at the shoulders.

He led me down hallways, up spiral staircases, through grand rooms, and up more stairs. Left, right, left, right, right, up, over, left, through... I became completely lost. As my breath began to come more raggedly, he finally halted before a large wooden door and opened it. “Your quarters, wife,” he said.

An icy chill ran down my spine at the word, but I gave a half-bow and entered the room he indicated. As I was staring at the furnishings and trying to take in my new surroundings, the door shut behind me. I heard the sliver of a steel lock slide into place outside the door.

I waited for hours. I paced the room, treading on the thin rug and cold tile floor without noticing their grandeur. Someone sent up food when the light in the window grew orange. I gobbled down the warm stew hungrily and waited for full dark to descend outside the window that overlooked the steep forest below.

When darkness fell, no one came to light my fire. I took that as a sign that no one would be wandering the corridors. I knelt by the door and pressed my lips to the keyhole. I had learned a few tricks from being Baba’s slave. I whispered the sacred words, and I heard the lock slide away. I turned the handle. The door opened without resistance. I crept into the hallway and shut the door behind me, panting softly. I had to escape.

I went down the hallway and took my first left turn, then the last hall on the right, then through a dark dining room, and down some stairs. I walked to the third door on the right and opened it. A cupboard. I felt my panic rising. I was lost and I couldn’t get out even if I didn’t get caught.

I wandered the halls for hours, growing increasingly frustrated as I tried and failed to get out of the castle. On my eighteenth failure, I sank to my knees and wept softly.

It was then I heard it. The call of a thousand birds.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Hummingbird, part one

I stared at the white expanse outside my window. The glass was smudged, fogged... but it didn’t matter because there was nothing to see out there but snow. This was the first carriage I had ever been in that had a glass window. I wasn’t thrilled about it; it let in the cold. Suddenly the horses stopped; I threw out my arms to prevent myself from toppling to the floor.

“It’s time,” said Baba.

She reached out; I flinched away from her. She slapped my arm with one hooked hand; the sting was sharp and immediate. She pinched my cheeks. “Nice and rosy,” she said. Her voice turned dark. “You know what will happen if the prince doesn’t fancy you.”

“Yes, madam,” I said meekly. I felt my options slipping out from beneath me; soon I would be as a castaway, clutching an ice floe and treading frigid water. Baba had sworn to turn me into a hummingbird if the prince didn’t select me. I believed her.

I pulled up my hood to cover my red hair and opened the carriage door. The driver was standing outside; he held out his arm to help me down. I caught his eye and begged him silently, with my gaze, to help me. If he understood, he ignored me.

I straightened my dress and looked up. My breath caught. The castle was perched on the mountain straight ahead. It looked straight out of a fairy tale. But it looked desolate, unreachable, cold and drafty. I shivered.

A man hurried up to me. He stood only as high as my waist and had bluish skin, as if he were made of ice. He pressed a cup into my hands. I sipped tentatively and sighed. Hot glühwein. It warmed my spirits.

The little blue man suddenly prostrated himself on the snowy road as a very tall man with black hair approached. He wore a golden ring on every finger; this must be the prince. I curtseyed.

The man spoke in a cold voice. “What is this you have brought me, Baba?”

“Your future wife, your highness,” Baba said. “She is timid and pretty and knows how to cook.”

“What need have I for a cook? I have three already.”

“She comes from good stock,” Baba said, ignoring the prince. “But her family are all deceased, so none will pester you.”

The prince considered me for the first time. I withered under his gaze. I stared at the ground as Baba continued to wheedle, but her voice fell on my ears as random noise. I was so afraid, my hand shook out some of the glühwein from my cup. It fell on the snow like a splash of red, red blood.

Abruptly the prince grabbed my arm. Roughly. I gasped and dropped the cup. The prince paid no mind and steered me into a gilt carriage that was waiting nearby. I should have been listening more carefully. What had he decided? Was I to be transformed, turned into another bird for his collection? Or was I to be enslaved as his wife?

And which was worse?

TO BE CONTINUED...

Pot of gold for two

“The sprite came through here,” Kardent said. He pointed at the snow. “See? He tried to disguise his tracks as hare footprints.”

“I don’t know,” Galla said dubiously. “Looks like bunny tracks to me. If that.”

Kardent rolled his eyes. “That’s the point, innit?” He set off after the tracks, and Galla had no choice but to follow, lifting her skirts to keep the snow off them. Kardent kept stopping and sniffing the air, as if he could smell a creature that stood no higher than his knees. Once he even stripped some bark off a birch and licked it. She was pretty sure that was for show. Aye, he had no idea what he was doing and was lucky it had snowed so at least he had tracks to follow.

Suddenly, he stopped and pointed to a scrubby jumble of branches and leaves and said, “He’s in there.”

Startled, Galla peered at the burrow. “You sure?”

“Sure as a tax man,” he said firmly.

She frowned. “How do we get him out?”

Kardent didn’t reply. He pulled his tinderbox out of his tunic and struck his flint behind the burrow. It was damp, so it kept going out, but he was persistent, and eventually it was aflame.

They waited.

And then the sprite leapt out of the burning burrow and into Kardent’s waiting arms. He struggled, kicking and biting and flailing like an angry cat. He had flaming red hair and a scrunched-up nose. “What’re ye doing tae me home, ye filthy buggers?” he screeched.

“We’ve caught you,” Galla said serenely. “Fair as pie. We want the gold.”

The sprite stared up at her, his big green eyes comically round. “There’s nae gold here, ye dunderhead,” he squeaked. “Ye don’t see any rainbow, now, do ye?”

Galla looked around. “No, but we want the gold anyhow.”

The sprite laughed. “You burned my house, ye blaggards! There’ll be no gold for you, not now, not ever!”

The air shimmered around the sprite, and, though Kardent visibly tightened his grip on the creature, the sprite transformed into a hare and wriggled out of his captor’s arms. He bounded away, white tail twitching indignantly.

“Ugh,” Galla said. “Now we have to start all over again.”

The anthropologist and the mummy

The hieroglyphs on the walls of my tomb speak of how my spirit will accomplish eternal life, and all the tasks I need to perform before I can live forever. The writing praises the gods, describes my mighty battles, shows me with my wife and son, and outlines the curse against all who dare disturb my tomb. The curse is powerful and protects me against grave-robbers.

I thought the hieroglyphs took care of everything. They give my soul nourishment and instruction, they glorify my name and the name of the gods, and they protect my body and my possessions. I thought that was enough, but it wasn’t. Nothing could have prepared me for you.

When you entered my tomb, you were carrying a dazzling light. My spirit watched you and wondered how the light made no smoke. This was a strange, cold fire that formed your torch. You wore a headdress with a wide brim to protect your fair skin. You had beautiful, kohl-rimmed eyes and painted lips. Your skin was exposed to a point of scandal, but your comrades did not look askance at you. Your knees were showing, and your skin glistened with sweat in the heat. You exclaimed in your high voice over the beauty of my possessions, and it was then that I fell in love with you.

I felt the curse begin to take hold of your neck, and I hastily loosened its grasp. You went straight to my sarcophagus, ignoring that of my wife and son, and you laid your soft fingers gently on the gilded wood. A tingle shot through me at your touch. I loved you completely, already. I would let you do anything—take my possessions, remove my body to your world, anything—for your love.

The hieroglyphs on my walls do not protect my soul from love.

Cutting grass

It’s the headstones he can’t read that bother Jimmy. Uncle Rick started preaching at the Lutheran church before he was born, so Jimmy’s used to the cemetery. Mostly. He’s been mowing the church grounds since he turned twelve. An exhilarating prospect, it seemed, the ability to operate machinery without any grown-ups looking over his shoulder. Uncle Rick and Aunt Eliza never give him any peace at anything else. It’s always wash your hands or help can these pickles or have you finished your homework? He wonders if his parents were like that when they were still alive, but he can’t remember.

He drags the mower from the shed. He pulls a cord, and the mower starts with a wheezy cough. It would be better if he had a riding mower, he thinks as he begins his circuit of the churchyard. If he did, he wouldn’t feel the chill of walking over someone’s grave. With his parents’ graves, he stands to the side and pushes the mower way over, bending his body in a funny arc to avoid stepping on them. But he can’t do it like that for every plot; it’d take all weekend to mow.

No, other than his parents, Jimmy walks all over the dead every Saturday. Ordinarily it’s no big deal. The somber, shiny headstones don’t seem to mind, and the big fancy pillars almost seem to like having the unruly grass tamed and in order. But a few of the really old ones, the thin flaking slabs with indiscernible markings on them, the ones that encourage dead-looking weeds to flower and bloom nearby, those don’t like it at all. A chill shoots through his heel, up his leg, and grips his heart with icy fingers each time he walks on one of those.

His friend Bo says it’s because witches are buried in the ancient graves. Jimmy doesn’t think that’s right. Weren’t witches forbidden from hallowed ground? Something like that. Thinking of Bo makes him suddenly appear, as usual, and Jimmy lets the mower die. Locust song rises to fill the silence.

“Ho, Bo,” he says, grinning.

Bo waves and stuffs his hands in his overall pockets. He is chewing a piece of wheat, even though there are no wheat fields in town anymore. Not since—Jimmy screws up his face, trying to remember what Ms. Taylor said in a history lesson—not since the Depression or some crazy long time ago. It’s all about corn anymore.

“Whatcha doin’, Jimmy?” Bo asks amiably. He is a simple boy, who would be in special ed classes if he went to school, which he doesn’t. Now he thinks about it, Jimmy is sure he’s never run into Bo outside the churchyard. Bo always asks questions to which the answer seems ridiculously obvious.

“Mowin’,” Jimmy replies. “The old ’uns are angry today. They been grabbin’ my heartstrings something fierce.” He likes that word - heartstrings. He imagines his heart tied up with loose shoelaces when he says it.

Bo nods wisely and squints toward the older section of graves. “They ain’t happy with you,” he says. “They figured with all the racket you make you’d take the time to figure out who they is.”

Jimmy frowns. He is never sure if he should respond to Bo’s fantasy world, or just stay quiet. “I dunno,” he says finally, “how they expect me to do that. Not like there’s a map. All the records got destroyed in a fire before I was born.”

“Pah!” says Bo. “You talk to ’em, of course. You talk to me, don’t you?”

He saunters away without waiting for an answer. By the time Jimmy has thought of something to say to that, Bo has disappeared behind a tree. He shakes his head. Bo is always appearing and vanishing. He’s a strange boy and he never knows how to end conversations politely.

Jimmy starts up the mower again. The other grave he doesn’t walk on is a tiny square on the ground. It has the name Bo Morley on it, 1906. He thinks it’s cool that someone in 1906 had the same name as his friend. He leans way, way over and pushes the machine in front.

Sunset on the mountain

Donald tried to ignore the burning in his thighs as he trudged up the mountain. The man ahead of him was using his sword as a walking-stick. Dust and dirt caked the warped blade, but at least there was no mud. It hadn’t rained in weeks.

Donald had strapped his gun to his back; he’d sold his sword for flour months ago. The gun chafed under the itchy, unwashed wool of his plaid. He snatched a loose end of his tartan and mopped his face with it; he was dripping with sweat. Back home, dusk fell quickly. Home… he felt a pang to think of Mary and the bairns. But here, in these unfamiliar, bug-swarmed mountains, dusk took its time. Or maybe he just felt that way because of the intolerable heat and the march through rhododendron hell. He wondered if it was this miserable in the Indies. Some of his clan had ended up in those islands. He doubted he’d ever see them again.

He shook himself. He always got like this after a long day of marching. He always brooded on what they were up against, and the cruel knowledge that he’d narrowly escaped death in one war only to march directly toward it again. You’re only tired, he told himself sternly. Just hungry and tired.

Thankfully, it looked like the column had stalled ahead. Were they finally to make camp atop this ghastly mountain? He reached the rocky precipice and couldn’t help but gasp. The bloodstain of sunset had crept across the sky and was reflecting off the granite of the mountain in a thousand shades of pink and amaranth. It filtered through the thin green leaves of the rhododendrons; they were suddenly laden with fruits of carmine and vermilion light. As he drank in the beauty of the land, the pipers filled their bellows and slowly took up a haunting song. The melody fell on the air and soared up the mountain. Donald closed his eyes against it all, and wept.

Outcast

Glaring at the post, Blikkerd morosely rubbed his sore tooth. Those jerks would get it one day, he thought, pounding one green fist into the other with a satisfying fleshy smack. Oh sure, they could point and laugh now, but Blikkerd was certain that he’d hit his growth spurt one day and grow three times bigger. Then he’d finally stand nose-to-nose with the ogre bullies, those arrogant debonair dudes who had all the girls falling over themselves for attention. Then he’d be the one tying people to posts by their teeth and winning misty-eyed female gazes.

Surely he couldn’t remain a shrimp forever.

He kicked a tree trunk in anger; its bark split a few inches. He roared in frustration. If any other ogre had kicked a tree, it would have fallen with a magnificent crash. A squirrel sat in high up the tree, skritching away at a walnut and eyeing him curiously. He roared again. The squirrel barked back at him and stuck out its tongue.

Blikkerd sighed heavily and walked on through the woods. It would be days before he could show his face back in the caves. No one would soon forget his flailing arms and unmanly shrieks when they’d tied him to the post. No, he’d need to let that effect wear off before returning home.

Feeling rather lonely, he walked for hours, barely noticing where his feet led him. As it grew dark, he started to look for a glade where he could sleep. He was NOT afraid of the dark, not at all. He had a severe allergy to darkness, was all, and the only cure, unfortunately, was sleeping near others. It was not going to be a good night, spent all alone.

He stumbled through a thick patch of fragrant pine and stopped dead at what he saw. In the clearing there lay sleeping three beautiful faeries. Their skin glimmered like snow in the late evening sunshine; their diaphanous wings caught the light and reflected prisms of color. Their lunch, clearly stolen from humans in the nearby village, lay snugged by the nearest faery. But most beautiful of all, an ogre slept against a tree, part of their little group. The ogre was ridiculously small… barely bigger than Blikkerd himself.

Blikkerd could hardly contain the feeling of hope that set his heart to hammering. He crept into the circle and settled against a tree across from the other ogre. He would wait until they awoke. Maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t tie his teeth to a post when they discovered him.

The Scotsman

Panting, he released the sharkskin hilt and pushed the blade into the soft mud. The few pounds of steel had become an unwieldy weight extended from his arm after hours of fighting through the heather. He wiped his sweaty brow and tried to get his breathing under control. Abandoning the sword, he walked a few paces to the top of the hill. Hovering just above the moist hills that stretched into the distance, the sky was a pale gray-white. Beyond that was a thick, gray-black wall of clouds. It looked as if Hell had inverted and was stretching downward to reach the earth.

He sighed and retrieved his sword. There was a long way yet to go.