MCM's Blog, page 23

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She slept as she always did, whether on a mountainside or in a bed: arms crossed, hands pushed tight into her shoulders, and knees pulled up hard. And as he'd done at every opportunity, Dragan tucked the cloak closer in around her shoulders, then he slipped off the filthy mattress and crouched to dress.

There were things he needed to do in the village and she could rest. The door was only woven oak and willow. He would have preferred something more substantial, but there was no way to lock her in or strangers out. The day was dawning again on a ropey ball of tension that he couldn't shake, and the desire to keep her safe, to protect her, was just one more knot.

Looking down at where she slept, he shook his head slightly. The smoky stench of the room had worsened overnight but he left the shutter closed against the chill of morning air. She'd returned to the room without complaint and slept soundly in the squalor she'd hated the night before. He looked around himself; he could see nothing in here that had made her so fearful. Sometimes she was a mystery.

* * * * *

The seamstress had quickly recognized both his urgency and her advantage. The clothes he had managed to buy were not the soft, expensive garments he had hoped for. They were coarse woolen skirts and a plain bodice, with none of the fine embroidery or colored laces other women seemed to like. They were made for another customer and had cost the same as the finer garments he'd ordered. Compensation for the inconvenience. The underslip was fine soft linen, but it had been made for someone fuller-figured than Freya. He hoped it would do.

When he returned to the room, she was waiting impatiently.

"The horses are ready," he said as he entered.

She stood at the tiny window, staring out across the green. "Good. The sooner we leave here, the happier I'll be."

He tossed the roll of clothing down onto the mattress and waited for her to turn. "Maybe."

"Why?" She eyed the bundle suspiciously. "What is it?"

"Your concession. These people don't find change easy." He watched her kneel on the mattress and pull at the clothes with a look of disappointment or distaste on her face. "They're suspicious of a woman in uniform."

"Bollocks. They want their women in uniform. This uniform." She held the underslip up and pressed her face into it, peering at him through the near-translucent cloth. When she dropped it she picked up the heavy overskirt. "These are harder to run in."

There were ghosts in her eyes, old fears that still haunted her, but this was a small compromise and one that would be worth the effort in the long term. "There's nothing to run away from out here."

She didn't answer, but her eyes said there were things that would keep her running for as long as she lived. Things, he guessed, he would never understand, but they turned his thoughts to the men Paske had ordered in pursuit.

If they had returned to the lakeside camp, they were unlikely to track her as far as Bralz. Even if by some miracle they had been able to follow through the forest, once they hit the hard surface the direction she'd taken was open to the winds. Paske alone knew Dragan was with her, and he would not be sharing his thoughts with anyone else.

There was not a great possibility that they would try to follow anywhere. With their comrades dead and the officer who ordered the chase lying frozen on the mountainside, they would most likely return to Orlik. An assumption could easily be made that Freya had continued on eastward and disappeared into the ranks of the dispensable.

It could do no harm to keep his thoughts on pursuit to himself. All they needed was to gain the safety of his farm. If she moved all the faster for the thought of being pursued, it would be for the best in the end.

She turned into a corner in a bashful attempt at privacy as she changed. He had known her body's blinding naked passions for a decade, yet in cold daylight she always turned away into shadows. There was food to pack and miles to ride, and he left her to her deal with her dress dissatisfaction alone.

*****

At their second meal stop, late in the afternoon, her expression was still reproachful. The skirts were harder to ride in and the shoulder straps of the bodice slipped down her arms repeatedly, but they had passed close by to a number of dwellings, all with watchful eyes, so the choice had been justified despite her complaints.

"Do you think they're still following?" She picked at the bread she held, rolling the heavy crumb into balls and placing them in her mouth one by one.

He leaned in to the fire, stirring cold mutton and morels gathered from the forest floor into a coarse gruel of barley and lentils. When the thickening mix bubbled, he sat back to look at her. The plain answer was no, but he didn't want to say it. Instead, he answered, "They can't track us on the roads. Even if they followed us as far as Bralz, they have no way to know which way we moved. If they are still coming, they're running blind on the chance they chose the right direction. We will be at home by sundown and no one will find you there."

"No." The answer didn't cheer her, and she flicked flakes of crust at the flames. Her thoughts were running in anxious circles, visible in the ticks and frowns that formed and fled as she stared at the fire. But he couldn't read their content.

There was nothing to fuel her rising agitation. He stirred the porridge and readied her mug to take a portion. "There are sixteen lambs this year," he said calmly, as he ladled and then held the mug toward her. "Two sets of twins."

She looked up sharply, ignoring the food. "I don't know anything about lambs."

"Not yet, but you will. It's spring. There are babies everywhere." He lifted the mug higher, forcing her to acknowledge it.

"I don't know anything about babies, either." She stood to snatch the offered food, and pulled the loose bodice down into place once again. "I don't know anything about this home of yours. Or spring. Or lambs. These are things I've never had to think about."

Dragan frowned as he watched her. Her free hand raked through her hair repeatedly, tugging down through the length of it until her fingers pulled free with wisps of hair caught around them. The terror that shone from her eyes was that of an animal cornered and it made no sense.

She was safe; he'd made sure of it. "You'll get used to it."

Freya froze, glaring at him as if he had accused her, or ridiculed her, or at very least ignored her opinion. If her anger had a point, it was not one he could see.

"What are you worried about?" he asked, but the question had rhetorical undertones and he stirred his own meal, easing some of the heat before he selected a lump of mutton and ate. Her answer was silence and she stalked off toward the nearby riverbank, tripping and catching at her skirts as she went.

Sighing at the inevitability of her moodiness, he searched through his food for the dark shreds of mushroom. There would be time for her to come to terms with all that was changed in her life.

* * * * *

The farmhouse stood in a sheltered hollow, with its louvered ridge-cap smoking gently and soft lamp light spilling through the open doorway. As they approached, Dragan was pleased with the scene it presented. The home he had always known was solid and well built. Its heavy thatch was clean and dark in the evening shadows. The smokehouse and the bier stood near, higher on the slope, so the cottage itself seemed to nestle comfortably amongst the budding fruit trees.

It looked as much like a home as any he'd seen, and he was proud of what he had made of it.

There was not enough light to gauge Freya's reactions, but he pulled his horse to a walk and waited for her to ride abreast. "That's it," he said plainly. "Home."

She pulled her horse to a stop and sat looking at the scene below. When her silence had grown cold, he reached to rest a hand on her shoulder.

"Tell me again it will be all right," she whispered. "Tell me this is my best choice. My only choice."

"It will be better than all right. You'll see. I asked you to trust me; I won't let you down."

"You never have."

"So let's go down there and get out of these saddles. I've ridden enough in the last few days to last a lifetime."

"Funny," she said. "I was just getting used to it again."

He led down the slope slowly, watching ahead and keeping a wary eye on the lit doorway. He was home a good month before they would expect him, and even if Lenka had obeyed his command, which was unlikely enough, she would have stayed on with his mother while she thought he was gone.

They dismounted at the bier, turning the horses into the safety of the house-yard, and she followed as he walked the narrow path with their packs over his shoulder. When they reached the door a cry went up and Lenka burst from within. "It's him, Mother. Dragan's come home."

She dropped to her knees in the weak light, sobbing on the path before him. "You've come home," she repeated, sobbing and gripping the roughness of his breeches.

"Get up." He had no patience for this kind of foolishness. Not now. Not tonight. Ahead, as he grabbed Lenka's arm and tried to pull her to her feet, his mother's face appeared around the jamb.

"Get up, girl," she echoed her son, strength enough in her voice for a woman too frail to manage her life. "Get up now, I tell you. He's not alone."

Reynolds Hotel

The Reynolds Hotel was a fairly grand affair at first glance, especially considering its location. Though it was built for comfort, it had an imposing aura, not unlike the outside walls of a prison, the simple windows begging to be lined with bars, with lonely, angry men staring out of them. The latter was prevalent, since this was the usual stop for travelling salesmen, and they stared out of their small windows to the street below, sallow faces devoid of family and friends, carefully monitoring the world's progress.

Most of the cars on the lot were black coaches, with layers of desert dust and mud caked on them. The salesmen themselves looked worn, their suitcases and small packages of wares dragged behind them, all of them seeking a good stiff drink and some decent rest. It wasn't an easy job travelling across the country over and over again, trying to make a buck. Reynolds Hotel was the one place a hard-working peddler could drop his professional ruse, undo his tie and grab a solid bottle of whiskey to drink alone and in peace.

The lull of motor oil tickled the back of his throat, but he ignored it. Clara was all smiles as she parked their ridiculously extravagant motor car in between two basic black coaches, the gleaming white and cream mocking their simplicity. "Can you believe we're here?" she giggled. Her eyes danced as she took in the clientele trudging their way through the entrance. "I came here plenty, once with Ricky Blue Eyes, and once with Jimmy the Shank. I can't really say who else, they're all the same face after a while. But this is as far as I got no matter how hard I tried to get to California. Someone always dragged me back to Chicago, kicking and screaming."

"I imagine."

She pursed her lips and checked her lipstick in her small hand mirror, her pale white skin glowing eerily in the dusk. "I know the concierge here. I did a bit of fancy work for him a while back, and he owes me one. So put away your wallet, this one's on me."

He didn't need her favours, and he peeled off a few bills anyway, shoving them into her palm. "That's the last of the cut you stole from Georgio. Unlike your friend, I don't believe in owing you anything."

She cast him a cold glare at this, her exit from the motor car swift and graceful while his own was clumsy. He fumbled with the door, and she left him behind as he struggled to open it, the long body of his host unfolding from the car like a complex origami puzzle. He smoothed out the wrinkles of his suit and adjusted his vest, the gold chain of his watch dangling at just the right angle, his pork-pie hat affixed in as jaunty and cheery a way as the drummers who populated this place. He felt constrained and over eager. He fit in perfectly.

Though the Reynolds Hotel sat in the middle of what was that most southern of places, that being Texas, there was a distinctive northern feel to it that couldn't be shaken. He passed a couple of snaky-looking characters who mumbled to one another as he followed Clara inside, their hats obscuring their faces, cigarettes lit and held aloft in question after them. The foyer of the hotel was far from its grand exterior, its furnishings simple, the atmosphere oppressive and dark. A long oak counter separated them from the residents of the hotel, an impressive array of cubbyholes filled with various envelopes and packages cluttering the space behind the clerks. A young woman with bleached blonde hair plastered in severe waves against her scalp gave them both a warm smile, one that didn't reach the hollow judgement in her blue eyes.

"Mr and Mrs…?" she asked.

"We aren't together," Clara assured her. She pursed her lips and shrugged her shoulder at him, dismissive. "He's my assistant. We have two rooms booked, one for Clara…."

"Clara!"

A short, thin man with a weasel complexion and sharply parted, slicked back black hair marched up to them, his arms outstretched in greeting. He kissed her on both cheeks, his hands pressing a firm grip on her arms. "Clara, my Clara, how good it is to see you again!"

"Now, Reggie, you don't have to be so gregarious, not when we're old friends like we are." She gave him a coquettish wink and flicked the tip of her finger across his nose in flirting familiarity. "I'm not some special guest, you don't have to give me the royal treatment. Just simple and plain, that'll do. Only… A wine list might be nice. So send that on up later."

"Nothing but the best for you my dear Clara!" he exclaimed. His grin faltered slightly when he realized she was not alone. "And you are?"

"This is Frankie," she said, too quickly, and Reggie gave her a puzzled look.

"Frankie," he said, obviously trying to paste the face he saw now to the one he already knew. He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite recognize you. But then, it has been over a year. Things change so quickly in this business, isn't that the truth of it? People in, people out, business in, business out. A real valley and peak of success and failure that never wants to end." His former exuberant appearance tripped over his inner disappointments, leaving him confused in their presence. "Clara…" he said, as though not sure she was really there, and was more illusion than fact.

She slid her arm in the crook of Reggie's and pulled him along towards the elevators, which were richly decorated in hammered tin, the surface gleaming with complex flowers in raised relief. "We'll have a drink, Reggie," she said to him, her voice full of sing-song pleasantry. "We'll go to the same room, just like the last time."

She gave her companion a glance over her shoulder. "Finish up, will you, Frankie? Reggie and I have some talking to do."

As quickly as they had arrived, she disappeared into the elevator with her old friend, his arm shaking as he held it across her shoulders and guided her further in. The elevator operator gave them both a respectful nod before shutting the gates and pulling the tin doors closed with his expert touch on the lever.

"Everyone knows she's just a whore."

He rubbed his jaw with the palm of his host's hand and turned to the bleached blonde woman at the hotel desk. She was leaning over a ledger file in what a Hollywood director would call a 'provocative pose'. She tapped a pencil at her bottom lip, her blue eyes sizing him up. "She's bad news, but I get that you've figured that out already."

"What I don't understand," he said, "Is how I can be in Texas and no one here possesses one fifth of that famous Southern hospitality. Or accent."

She gave him a slow, lazy smile and rested her elbows on the large, oak desk. "Nobody who comes here wants to be here. It's just a rest stop to somewhere else." She nodded at the elevator where Clara and Reggie had taken off to catch up on old times, a meeting he hoped didn't end in a game of x's and o's. "Your girl has a long history with this place. She tends to come here, draped on some backwater gangster's arm, thinking she's all special for it. But she's no different from any of the other molls and mistresses who come here, keeping them travelling salesmen company. She's just a shot of whiskey. Feels good at the time, but too much just plain ruins your life."

He leaned against the oak desk, interested in pursuing more of this conversation. He rapped at the thick wood with his knuckles, feeling the strength of its solidity. "We're going to Hollywood," he confessed. "She thinks she's going to be a star."

"Her and a million more girls just like her." The blonde rolled her eyes and leaned back from the counter, her chin jutted out in haughty judgement. "I'll give her this, though. She's got a real killer attitude when she wants to."

His own blood pulsed cold alongside his host's veins. "Yes. You are absolutely right."

She gave him a small smile at this and then slid over to the wall and its rows of keys. She picked room 313 and handed the key to him, pressing its cold metal shape into his palm and covering it up with a near embrace from her hand. "It's a nice room," she promised him, her voice a near whisper. "You're a nice guy, from what I've met of you. You don't want to be hanging with a girl like that. She'll destroy you, in ways you don't even know yet."

He clenched his fist lightly around the key and gently pulled away from the tenderness of her embrace. "I'm afraid I know all too well," he told her. Then, because he felt she understood some of his secrets, that she had knowledge that was deferential to his cause, he looked her in the eyes and said, without hesitation: "May I have a can of motor oil sent up to my room? And if you could supply a shot glass as well. That would be most beneficial."

* * * * *

No one actually from The South stayed at the Reynolds Hotel. Not even the bellhop possessed a proper Southern accent, and instead had little understanding of English and babbled incessantly in his native French. "J'ouvres la porte, est voila! C'est magnifique!"

"Thank you."

His bags were rushed into the room ahead of him, small as they were. There was a hasty brush of a hand on the hotel bed and a slight tutting sound emitted over the occurrence of a wrinkle in the top blanket, but once these problems were dealt with, the bellhop had little to say, other than 'Merci, monsieur' and a heel to toe rolling balancing act that suggested he was expecting something.

"Is it money you are looking for?"

"Merci, Monsieur."

He sighed and reached into his side pocket, pulling out the very last of Georgio's remaining wealth. "I'd disinfect this first, if I were you. I hear a dead man's money tends to hold curses."

"Merci, Monsieur."

The bellhop was unconcerned as he pocketed the cash and whistled his way out of the hotel room. He sat in a chair near the door, contemplating the simplicity of his surroundings. The bed was simple, the linens crisp and clean. In a small room to the right was a bathing room the size of a closet, with an upright shower for the convenience of its customers. An unusually extravagant addition, he thought, since most hotels of this ilk had a communal bathing room at the end of the hall, where one had to be given an allotted time slot for cleanliness. There was an unwrapped mint on his pillow, which he picked up and discarded into the nearby trashcan near the window. Outside the small window, the world drifted past in sandstorm dunes, a Mars landscape of molten heat and dry desolation.

He turned away from the window, reluctant to be yet another drummer prisoner, eking out the sparsity of his free time by staring down the jailing of his freedom. He hung up his suit jacket and placed his host's hands in the deep pockets of his trousers, the black bands on the arms of his white shirt chafing the starched fabric against the skin. Despite the art deco wallpaper and a few flowery touches, this room wasn't much different from the one he had occupied in Chicago. All that was missing was the outlined shadow of a cross.

He opened the drawer of side table next to the bed. No omission, then. A Gideon had placed a portable copy of the New Testament within it. He closed the drawer, the unpleasant feeling of running in place to a point past exhaustion overwhelming him.

There was a knock at the door and he opened it eagerly, hoping it was his order of motor oil that had finally arrived. He was looking forward to the slick, black ooze that made life on this linear dust bowl easier to bear, the liquid outline of its influence muting his increasing sense of unease. So it was with grave disappointment that he saw a man in a police officer's uniform standing before him instead, his badge held out in proud view.

"Don't mean to be causing you no inconvenience," he said in what was a strangely refreshing Texas drawl. "But seeing as how the folks using this place has been on the road and all, I was just wonderin' if I could ask you a few questions."

There was an eerie familiarity about the policeman, as though they had met before. He nearly asked him, but stopped himself just in time, wisely not willing to reveal too much about his acquaintances, especially with Clara as his road raging companion.

"There was an accident, just up a ways between Foss and Texola. Pretty nasty smash up, don't know how anyone could have walked away from it." He looked his target up and down, searching out invisible injuries. "I reckon you don't know much about it, seeing as how not a hair on you is has so much as a bend to it. Mighty strange business all around, I must say. Leaving a scene like that and not telling no one. Killed a farmer outright. Truck on fire, burnt him to crispy bacon."

He smiled wanly, and the familiarity grew into an understanding. He had shades of Sheriff Borgen to him, enough to be his brother. Perhaps this was the lunkhead he had spoke of, the one he had trouble keeping in line. There was no one to do so now, not with Preacher Joe sporting that gold tooth.

"A nasty accident ain't something I properly set to mind," he replied, his hat tipped again in polite deference. "But seeing as how my brother ain't answering his calls these days, and not a one has seen him for the past couple of weeks or so, I'm getting a little on the worried side. Can't blame a man for asking questions when someone he knows well has gone and vanished and there's a car wreck on the horizon with more than half its passengers missing. Makes a guy ask lots of questions, that it does." He smiled, but there was little mirth in his voice. "A brother don't just up and disappear like that, no sir. Especially not when he's a Sheriff and all." He narrowed his eyes on his prey. "You seem a mighty quiet sort of fellow. Like you're thinking hard on something. You got some information I might be requiring?"

"No. I don't think so."

"Well, that's a strange way to answer, if you don't mind my saying so. Either you know so, or you don't, it's just a car crash is all, you either saw it or didn't. Not thinking so doesn't go into it, if you ask me. What is it you don't think happened?"

Sheriff Borgen was wrong. His brother was no lunkhead. When brains had been handed down the Borden clan, it was this brother who had gained all the intuitive cells, his understanding thrusting through the miasma of unspoken lies and hidden meanings to get deep into the truth. He frowned slightly and shoved his way into the hotel room, his hat taken off in that usual Southern politeness, the rim turned around in half circles by the busy workings of his slightly tremulous fingertips.

"It's a might strange thing to lose a brother," he said, his voice losing all sense of levity and descending further into a strained treble of desperation. "Him and I, we shared a womb together once. Him being my twin and all. Oh sure, we don't look alike none, but when you bunk with someone that closely at the beginning of life, you get a connection you don't have with anyone else." He brushed a hand over the suit jacket draped on the coat rack, the tip of his thumb brushing against the tiny drop of dried blood at the centre of its collar. "You get certain ideas about things that might have happened to your bunk-mate, like a phone line that ain't made by people, but that lives between you. Something umbilical. Like how I know when he's in trouble." He let out a low sigh, his gaze riveted to the paisley carpet at his feet. "And how I knows when that line is dead."

"I don't know anything about your brother."

Borgen's twin kicked at the carpet, his heel dredging up fibres on an ugly red paisley flower. "You say that so quick, like you're right sure. Like you met him once and you got to convince yourself you don't remember him." He tapped the side of his head and offered another wan smile. "Got all the intuition, but my brother, he got all the brawn. A bit of a handicap. You can't go lying to a guy like me, I can suss one of them fibs out with the best of them. Trouble is, I got to figure on how much of a lie are you telling, and the only way I'm going to get that answer is if I drag you off to my station and give you a proper talking to."

He grinned, his teeth stained by nicotine, their alignment perfect. "But I don't want to do that. I can see by looking at you that you're a man that thinks all the world is full of nothing but evil and sorrow. That there ain't no good in any of it, and all we're made for is to kill or be killed. It ain't all like that, no matter what it is that's making you believe it to be so. There's real good in this world, good people too, like my brother. Like me. Don't go giving us good folks a short shrift just because the bad is loud and noisy. Folks like to help out more than just run each other down, that's a real rule those bad folks don't tell you about. There's more of us than them. They don't want that getting out, neither, and maybe it's the same for good folks like me, like my brother. Like you. We're just real quiet about it, is all."

And he was quiet. A long, tortuous moment that stretched past infinity, defying the linear time that ticked each second off in measured amounts. Between them an eternity of information erupted, a long, never-ending confession that ended with a cough directed nervously into his fist.

"I'm sorry," he said to Borgen's brother, who merely nodded in sad understanding and reached for the set of cuffs at his side.

His liquid, jelly body pulsed within his host's arms, tensing the hands. He'd never done anything this tactile before, but he knew the strength he could muster was considerable. Coordinated speed was never his strong suit, but he managed to subdue the officer long enough to get a good grip on his neck. With one twist he gave it a radial snap. The body collapsed at his feet.

"I'm so sorry," he repeated.

Ring

Freya watched them watching her as they walked from the room, and savored the bitter taste of her past. She filled her mouth with thick brew and swirled it around, sucking it back through her teeth as she swallowed. "You didn't have any trouble here, before?"

Dragan didn't look up from his meal. "Eat," he repeated as if food would fill any holes she might have torn. "I want to talk to you. There are things we should settle."

Lumps of grey gristle skidded away from the tip of her spoon, and grey-green turnip hid in grey-green gravy. There was no appetite that this food was likely to satisfy. Under the vague awareness of hunger, her stomach churned. It was empty, and it seemed a good deal easier to pour herself another mug of ale, and let the bitter tonic fill her slowly to the brim.

It was easier, too, to look away from things that hurt too much for words. Until now, some of the issues that arose from her choices had been sketchy. Until now, there remained in her the hope that everything might somehow return to the way it should have been. Until now.

In a market town where old husbandmen gathered to drink and moan, atop the stairs in a dirty inn, a room was waiting. On top of the mountain there had been too much of nothing and nowhere to go, but now she found she had followed at breakneck speed, to find a tiny room where four walls might cut off all her air.

She caught a turnip lump with her spoon and squashed it flat. "If push came to shove, how many of them do you think we could take? I think all, but it looks like most of them would rather spit at me and leave, than stand to argue their point."

"Eat."

"I don't want to eat. Drink. Here, let me pour you some more of this fine bitter ale." She poured until his mug slopped over, and he moved it from her reach. "Don't waste it," she said. "Drink it."

When he looked up, pushing his empty bowl away and bringing the overfull mug to his lips, there were shadows in his eyes that made her churning stomach flip. "If you don't want to eat, we should go upstairs."

"I want to drink. And maybe make some new friends, here. What do you think are my chances?" She tried a smile, and hoped it was brighter than it felt. Her cheeks had gone cold, and a numbing fear was spreading up her spine. The hand that held the jug of beer shook.

"It's your clothes. That's all. If you wear skirts, this won't happen."

"That simple, huh? Well, let's drink to that." She tried to refill his mug but he covered it with his hand, and looked directly into her eyes. She set the jug down, reaching instead for her own mug but he caught her fingers. His free hand reached to his throat, to a trifle tied inside his tunic and he pulled, snapping the cord that held it.

"This is for you." He slapped his hand down onto the table and when he moved it away, he'd left a silver ring. The leather cord still wound through his fingers, and he lifted slowly, letting the ring slide off to roll and settle between them. It was a simple band, a twist of wires beaten flat, but it terrified her.

"I haven't had a contract drawn, I thought I had time, but it's easy enough." He smiled at her, and a buzzing started in her ears that made his voice seem very far away. He held onto her fingers, tight, they were beginning to throb with the pressure of his grip. "Everything I own is yours to share."

Suddenly she wished she'd eaten. The ale was bubbling up toward her brain, making her uneasy stomach lurch and spasm, and there didn't seem to be enough air in the room. She kept trying to breathe, but her chest was refusing to fill. "And me?" she whispered, her mouth dry and hestitant. "What do I give to you?"

"You. Just you."

"Me. I give you me?" That was a high price to pay for a bit of land somewhere with sheep. It was a high price indeed.

There was an earnestness in his face that terrified her even more than the small piece of silver that still sat among the splinters and spilled beer. Should she take it? Should she put it on her finger?

If four small walls had seemed constricting, now she had the circumference of a tiny silver band to fit every part of her life into. "This is what I've chosen, isn't it?" Until he answered, she could not have been certain whether she spoke the words aloud.

"Yes."

"What you've chosen." It was his choice, his arguments, his dream. Her frozen body was trying to move backward, wanting to pull away from the table and all it held, but she was unable to do more than brace her feet against the filthy floor. Only her insides moved and writhed. Fears as vast as Hades opened in her belly and everything that made her solid fell into the pit.

"Yes." He looked down, moving the ring with his finger, rolling it slowly back and forth like a silent debate, but when he looked up at her again she saw fear in him for the first time. It mattered what she said, here and now. With the urge to cry, to beg and plead for another answer, burning behind her heart, and the sure and certain knowledge there was no other path she could take choking her on resentment, it mattered how she answered.

She'd done her begging and there was no more to gain from whining. The future had made itself. His choice or hers, it hardly mattered. It was the only choice she had. Trying to hold it steady, she reached her hand toward him and let him slip the ring onto her finger.

It wasn't too tight. If it had been it might have sent her running for the door and out into the night, alone and ready to slash and punish anything that stood in her way. It was loose, spinning easily below her knuckle and she pulled it off and moved it to her index finger. There it was a snug fit, and she looked at its shine against skin that was still chapped and dry from her weeks of scrubbing. It was her hand, but she held it at a distance, trying to find words for any thought that didn't concern ownership.

"So, that's it?" It was all she could manage.

"That's it. Unless you want witnesses. Who's left behind me? Anyone you think looks like a wedding guest?"

"No. No one special."

"It's not what you imagined."

"I never imagined."

"Let's drink, then." It was the kindest thing he'd said all day. They could drink to the joy of a newly bound couple, to a future not imagined. She could drink.

"Our health," she said. She forced a smile. It didn't come easily, but it mattered; she knew it mattered to Dragan.

"A clean start," he said.

And the tears she'd denied burned hot as she wondered when he'd thought she was dirty.

The room was small. The wooden floor was carelessly laid and smoke from the fire below filtered up on drafts. A grey pall clung against the low ceiling. A dirty lamp added greasy smut to the mix without offering any useful light. That might have been for the best. What she could see did not impress her.

Dragan couldn't stand. He ducked the door frame and remained hunched over until he chose to sit on the wad of dirty straw that masqueraded as a mattress. Even rocks and tufts of grass were clean. Freya preferred a military cot; at least the frame and woven straps were usually free of vermin. The mattress here looked and smelled as if it had housed many and varied generations. Some were plainly still in residence.

"Nice," she declared half-heartedly, and he laughed. With their saddle bags laid against the wall, the room was full and yet there was nothing in it to discuss. The window was a narrow loophole, used as a roost by rock doves at some time in the past. They had left their opinion of the amenities streaked down the wall, and when she walked to the opening to pull the shutter closed, she brushed away a layer of dust and feathers. "The stables were cleaner. He wasn't being an ass, he was offering advice."

"It's warmer in here."

A remark about hot blood rushed up to her mouth, the sort of thing she would quip without thought on any other night, but here she bit it off, afraid of the implications it might hold. She didn't want to turn back to face him, but standing with her fingers on the dirty sill and looking at a closed shutter was too obviously an evasion.

She wanted to scream.

It was a scream that had burned in her bleak centre for as long as she could remember. And the mechanisms, whatever they were, that had always stilled its hysteria, pushed it down so far into the darkness inside she could only hear its echoes. Except when she felt cornered and powerless.

Tonight she could hear it, ringing in her ears, and she could feel its icy burn.

She made herself turn; made herself smile. This room was too small and she did not want to give herself to anyone. Not even Dragan. Not even him. The rush of noise inside her head was making her breath short and her palms clammy, and there was nowhere for her to run.

She couldn't fight. She had no reason to smash him in the face but her hand trembled with the urge to do violence as she rubbed it up and down the roughness of her hip. And none of it was his fault. The shaking in her hands was getting worse, and she spun back to the window and pushed the shutter wide. There was no more air to breathe there, only dust and dander.

"Freya?"

"Huh?" She snapped the shutter closed again, turned and used the momentum to keep herself moving. It was only two steps, three. She couldn't make any more intelligible sounds, but she'd moved close enough for him to reach for her. To touch her hand. To hold it.

She wanted to pull it away, but mastery was rising over fear. Her throat was working hard to swallow something she could not make into words, and she made herself look at him.

"What's wrong?"

A short sharp laugh shocked from her mouth, and she wiped a hand across her chin. "This room stinks. We should go outside." Inspiration clutched at straws. "We should go out onto the green. There's no moon. Come on, we could give them all something to gossip about." She pulled at his hand, but he didn't move.

"They'd kill you. They've killed others for less."

"They could try." Desperation was pushing a potent cocktail into her system and she laughed again. "They're a bunch of old farmers."

"No, they'd be a mob. Different animal altogether and not one you want to try to face down." Shaking his head slowly, Dragan used his grip on her hand to help pull himself into a crouching stand. Carefully he shuffled past her to the window and pushed the shutter open wide again. He grunted, nodding slightly as he reached back for their cloaks, took her hand and said, "Come on."

Passing down the stairs, he handed Freya her cloak, and mumbled about the cold. Grins and giggles of relief were starting in her chest, and she forced her face to model serious intent as she followed through the nearly empty front room and out into the night air.

He walked as if he had been called on an urgent errand, and she jogged every second step to keep up. Where ever they were going, they were going to get there soon, and the churn of emotion that fired in her blood was boiling itself into aphrodisia. They crossed the muddy green and into the shadows of an open bier. It was little more than a thatched hayrick; feed stored for the stock brought to market.

With her back to the fragrant straw, he stopped suddenly and pulled her against himself. "Close enough?" he whispered.

"Close enough."

His mouth was hot, and the night air bit her skin, raising gooseflesh sensitive to every brush of flesh or breath. All around her the silent night had eyes. The village shadows were full of threats, vague and invisible but she could feel every one.

Her hands were eager, skilled and unerring as she unbuckled the wide leather belts from their hips, and drew the laces of his trousers. His tunic was stiff, woven from coarse-spun wool and she dragged it roughly up his back, struggling with the bulky weight of it. Liaisons had been so much more easily accomplished in the days when they'd dared to wear less. But experience counted for something, as he reached over his own shoulders, gathered the garment up his back and tugged it off over his head.

Even as she slipped the ties of her breeches and wriggled them down over her hips, her eyes traced the shadowed contours of his chest. She knew the scent of his skin, the shape and form and feel of his shoulders, stomach and arms. She knew every ripple, mound and dip where muscle met bone, and she didn't need moonlight to see him. Her fingertips remembered every curve. Her tongue knew the sweet taste of him.

And his hands knew her.

They lifted her higher against the haystack, rucking her tunic up her sides and opening the softness of her belly and breasts to the cold air and the heat of his mouth. Her skin puckered and drew up tight in response, and a sob of pleasure broke the cold silence.

Her breeches were still laced into her boots, and they tangled at her ankles, frustrating her attempts to raise her feet. Straw was scratching against her back with every thrust and her tunic was bunching up under her arms and around her throat, but the small constrictions made no difference in the end. Even when the ring she wore caught in his hair, she redoubled her grip, weaving her fingers tighter against his nape, and released herself into the wash of pleasure he brought her in return.

If she had to submit herself to any man in this world, there were worse choices than this.

Strength vs. Intellect: A Philosophical Approach to Fictional Characters by Bonnie Sparks

I believe that entertainment, including what we read, watch, listen to, and play, is a very powerful tool.

Entertainment and media have the power to influence, dissuade, persuade, create an outcry, and bring people together. While I notice quite a few characters in books that favour brawn or brains more than the other, it is rare I find a protagonist who is exclusively with one. I know part of this is due to me not having any interest in following the story of a pure jock-like character, but I believe it's also due to jock-like people not often being writers, and the type of character that would use only brawn is rare to find.

To me V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is a great example of a character using both aspects. Here is a character that knows how to fight, how to unleash his physical might, but he only does so with discipline and planning. His greatest weapon is his intellect, but he is not weak and while he is not someone to mess with, V is shown as still being human and not invincible.

Recently I read the tween novel You Will Call Me Drog by Sue Cowing and there are instances where both strength and intellect are used. In most cases when strength is used though, it has come about via anger and confusion. Perhaps this is an obvious cliché when a protagonist is using strength, but in this story it shows there is no intelligence behind it and there is a negative connotation derived from its use.

These days, there is a trend in society where we try to teach children that violence and brute force is not the answer, an intelligent solution is, but at the same time these children (and adults) are being bombarded with conflicting ideals. We see people with lots of muscle in advertisements and on music videos, sport is popular worldwide and athletes are considered to be part of the brawn element, whereas intellectuals who are portrayed are considered to be geeky and that denotes a negative and weak persona. How often do you see a stereotypically geeky person kicking arse in an action movie or dancing with all the ladies in a music video? I embrace geek power myself, but you can't deny what society conveys to us every day.

My inclusion of a jock-like character in the beginning is a great example of how easily people are influenced and how ingrained this idea of a rift is between strength and intellect. Where does this idea of two distinct elements and their deeper meaning, that of brawn equalling stupidity and brains equalling weakness, come from? Is this something that is still born from generations ago when our ancestors had to use force to bring home food and perhaps only their strength was celebrated? Surely it would have taken intellect and strength to kill a mammoth?

Yes, I'm going back a very long time, but society can take an exponential amount of time to shift in perspectives and opinions, especially when something has been ingrained in us for so long and became part of our culture and way of thinking.

Over the last few years the books I've read, not including classic literature, the characters have for the most part been a dual aspect of both brains and brawn. Call me idealistic if you will, but if writing reflects what is happening in society then surely this shows that the rift is either slowly closing or the idea of strength equalling stupidity and intellect equalling weakness is gradually disappearing.

 

 

Bonnie Sparks is the admin, editor, and a reviewer at Bookish Ardour in between being a struggling writer working on her first novel. You can find Bonnie on Twitter (@Bonnie_Sparks), her personal/writing blog, GoodReads, and Facebook.

 

 

Monsters

It wasn't long before they found Preacher Joe's motor car, a slim, convertible affair that had Clara salivating. "It's impractical, like that first one," he tried to warn her, but she was keen to slide her arm along its streamlined sides, her hip bumping against the polished, painted steel in a sultry caress. She sighed and dug into her handbag, pulling out her tin cigarette case.

"It's a beauty," she said, fishing out a match and lighting up. Within the darkness, she was a solitary red ember. There was a deep swell of breath held, then slowly released as her smoke gathered in the thick air around her. "Built for two. A cozy ride, all the way to Hollywood."

He had more important things on his mind than the road that never ended. Clara reached into the motor car, her fingers gently smoothing out a greasy fingerprint that lay in wait on the clutch. "We can't steal his car, it's inappropriate."

"How so?"

"He's no doubt on a mission. One similar to my own."

She scoffed at this, and braced her hands on the side door, her heel delicately kicked up at the romance the motor car was working on her. "He doesn't deserve a beauty like this, an unethical man like that."

It was his turn to be snide. "Ethics. That's a strange word on your tongue. Mind it doesn't burn your lips." He leaned against the trunk of the motor car, his black oiled wounds seeping onto its pristine white surface. Clara shooed him away, and tutted over the mark he'd smeared onto it. "He's the focal point of a group of human beings, their philosophy one I haven't yet been able to fathom. That has to count for some philanthropy, as you call it. I only impersonated a priest, he truly is a religious leader."

"Lunkhead, that's you." She took a handkerchief out of her small handbag, the one that she had wrapped her switchblade in. He knew it from the pale bloodstains still evident on the kerchief's surface. "He's no leader, he's a confidence man, as snaky as they come. Didn't you see the expensive cut of that suit he's wearing or that gold tooth? It glinted good and shiny, and that tells me that repair is new, even if his flesh and blood isn't. He's the worst kind of con, taking money from poor folks who can barely rub two crumbs together." Her eyes were bright and earnest as she met his gaze, not a shimmer of hesitation within their glass surface. "Remember how I told you some people deserve their fates? This is one hell of a good example."

"You can't kill him," he reminded her. He shrugged in impatience as she slid into the driver's seat, her hands testing the steering wheel in giddy glee. "He'll just slither off into the water and find another host."

"He'll be stuck in a coyote, then," she assured him.

"So be it, until he tears out the throat of another human being, creating a door to slip in. Coyotes are plentiful around here, and from what I've heard such attacks do happen on occasion."

She cast a glance at him over her shoulder, her skin opalescent in the moonlight. She looked made of stone and with just as much heart. She remained in the front driver's seat like a carefully polished, sanded work of marble, destined to remain in that haughty pose forever.

"I'm not giving this up," she promised.

"When I tell you that it's impossible to kill him, I hope you are not looking to me for a solution." He was feeling weak from the loss of tissue and sinew muscle in his host, and he collapsed next to the back wheel, his good arm draped over his stump, fruitlessly trying to stop the constant shifting of parts of himself into its gaping hole. "We don't just randomly murder our own kind, we're not like you."

"There is nothing random about what I do," she coldly informed him. She took a final drag of her cigarette and tossed the tiny lit stub that was left into the deeps of the thicket. A warm breeze pulled the branches towards them before tugging them back, a swaying gossip session in arbour. "I'm not like you. I have my reasons, and they aren't just blind orders."

"I follow what I am sent to do, and it is for serious reasons."

"You don't know what your target looks like. You don't know where he, or she, is. You don't know how long he's been here, or even if you should be trusting me to know where he is." Her marble pose remained stock still while the shadows of leaves passed over her in the near darkness. A flickering statue of marble. An image, set on glass, real enough to believe solid, but impossible to touch. He was wrong, she wasn't chiseled out of rock as he had first thought. She was a wispy trick of darkness seeping through light. "At least I have a word or two with the people I take out. You've never told me your target's crime."

He shrugged. "That detail isn't necessary."

"There's the difference between you and me. I'm a detail girl. I like knowing why people have to die and I have all kinds of good reasons." Her eyes narrowed as she peered into a deep, black part in the thicket, a rustling making her pause before continuing. "All you do is whine about it. 'My target, my target, my left watery nut for my target'. If you ask me, the reason you haven't found this person yet is because you don't really want to kill him. It's not a big moral dilemma to me. If you don't feel like killing your friend, then don't do it."

He was angered by this. "My feelings have nothing to do with the matter."

"My target, my target," she whined, mocking him. "Feelings are everything. It's why you keep going on about it. If you ask me, this constant whining of yours says you don't give a devil's damn about what your friend supposedly did that was so bad because you know in your oily, slimy heart that the crime doesn't fit the punishment."

"What of your punishments?" he snapped back. "What did Stella do that was so evil you had to play a game of x's and o's on her?"

Clara was quiet a long moment, her attention still riveted on the dark hollow in the thicket. Leaves whispered harsh inside of it. "I never killed her."

"I don't believe you."

She was quiet a long moment, lost inside of her own reflection. Mention of Stella had created an inward question that he was surprised existed. When she turned her attention back on him, her face was as grey and polished as sanded stone, and the illusion of her solidity was set again. "Moral platitudes only work when you're on the other side of the universe. This is my dimension, and you have to trust me to know what's what. Don't judge me again. You won't like the outcome."

He wanted to shout at her, to tell her how wrong she was in her assumption that he trusted her. Clara, like the preacher, was so covered in lies they slid off of her marble surface to evaporate in the air around her in a thick, impenetrable mist. Nothing she said was true. Not one observation, not one philosophical reasoning that slid from her ruby red lips had merit. She had only one concern: herself. The person to whom she lied to most of all.

He couldn't quite understand the reason why he followed her, other than that there was nothing to lose in talking to a person who cares nothing for you.

"I'm forgetting who I am," he said.

He was embedded in the crook of the injured arm, holding on with what he had left of himself.

"Aren't you the lucky one," Clara bitterly replied.

There was a pronounced rustling in the thicket, a sound that made them both tense. Coyotes. He had read about these scavenging creatures, four-legged beasts that tore into human flesh. Or so the legends had it, for lies were common enough to be half-truths and exaggerations and who was he to deny a meal to a hungry animal? To be free of this current decrepit human shack would be a comfort. The coyote in its benevolence would latch onto his throat and rip him apart and devour him, the animal not realizing it was giving him a new home.

He closed his eyes, and waited for the teeth to sink in. He wondered what it would be like, walking on four legs instead of two. At least he wouldn't have to follow Clara any longer, he could forge his own path. A coyote's sense of smell was strong, and he could suss out his target with that sensitive organ alone.

Disappointment came in the human shape that emerged from the thicket, the clean cut vision of Preacher Joe who walked towards them out of the darkness, his arms outstretched in greeting. "I never hoped to find another one of us again, not on this terrible, lonely place full to bursting with suffering." He smiled sweetly at Clara, his hip against the hood of his motor car. "How charming that he has found you as a companion. I've never much liked your kind, myself."

* * * * *

"That's right, my brother, just a few feet more."

"I can feel it, Preacher Joe! I can feel your healing power coming over my soul!"

"I'm sure you do." The bullet went clean through the side of the parishioner's skull, where it ricocheted inside the silky grey matter, killing him instantly. He collapsed to the ground, at the feet of the trembling figure that lay forcibly animated at the wheel of the motor car. With a relieved sigh he slid out of the gaping wound in the missing arm and slipped into the new offering, a bubbling acid bath laying thick on the sand behind him. He coughed out a chunk of skull from the back of his throat and shakily stood up, his jelly body molding to his new house. He turned to Preacher Joe, unsure of whether he was supposed to be grateful or horrified.

"It's comfortable," was all he could say.

"It's quite a treat, Frankie, you stumbling to see me like this."

Frankie. That name again.

He frowned, not sure how to respond. "That's not who I am."

"Of course it is," his alien friend replied. "I'd know you anywhere. There's a certain shadow to your features no matter what cloak you're wearing, and you are Frankie, through and through."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Clara warned him, her words averted from Preacher Joe who was sitting across from them on a log, a long stick playing in the sand. X's and o's. Preacher Joe drew a line down the middle and giggled over its secret significance.

"He's obviously mad," Clara harshly whispered.

"And here I thought you were in California," he said, shaking his head. "Making your dream come true, whatever silly reality it was you wanted to create. I'm content to be here, pretending on paradise, but not you. You're more ambitious than I am, I suppose." He gave them both a toothy grin, his gold tooth glinting in the moonlight. "I wish I could be like you, Frankie. Just giving up those pieces of myself I didn't want to deal with. How much easier that would be, to just discard part of myself."

"I don't understand. Why are you here?"

Preacher Joe spread his arms wide, encompassing them both in his spiritual embrace. "Why not be here as anywhere? What other heaven can there be than this linear world, where the present is obvious and the past can't crawl back up on you, and the future is always open, like a vast horizon waiting for you to head towards it. I preach Hell and Damnation to these small-minded souls because they can't appreciate the beauty of what they already have. A moment to moment life. Every second an exclamation of something new. Small-minded and trapped in here, that's what these people are." He tapped the side of his head, the slight indentation revealing the bullet that had ended his host's life.

Preacher Joe had a great fondness for his pistol.

"They sent me here for exploration, and got bored when I turned native. Haven't had orders in decades. Every now and then I get myself a clean house of skin and move on to another part of the country. A flock might go hungry, but a preacher never does."

He leaned back, resting his head on the tree behind him, a long stick drawing lines through his solitary game of x's and o's. His suit was freshly pressed, not a wrinkle from his earlier dervish visible. The pistol he sported was well hidden beneath his vest, with only the shadow of its handle visible in the moonlight. There was something eerily familiar about him, the imprint of a person they had met once before creeping along his features. He smiled and the mirage immediately faded, leaving nothing but an alien blur behind.

He narrowed his gaze at Clara, who stubbornly remained in the driver's seat of his car. "You, now, you're a puzzle. Why would you hang around Frankie, knowing what he is and how he has to survive? There's not a human I've met yet who wouldn't find the whole taking over a stranger's corpse thing a little unsettling. You didn't so much as blink an eye when Frankie slid into our Billy Jameson's flesh." Preacher Joe let out a low whistle at her apathy. "Billy was a mighty good carver, too. Shame we won't be getting that service anymore."

"He keeps calling me Frankie," he said to her, and she waved his concern away, agitated by Preacher Joe's judgement of her.

"We got more similarities of purpose than even he realizes," she explained. "We're going to California. I'm going to meet up with a contact there, a fella who's going to get me into the moving pictures. There's talk he's worked with Lillian Gish, and anyone worth their salt knows that kind of prestige isn't something you can ignore." She checked her nails, and clucked over their dirt. "I got talent in spades," she bragged as she rummaged in her handbag and took out a nail file. "I once won a beautiful baby contest, not a month after I was born. 'Chicago's Bonniest Baby', that was me. I was born to be in the moving pictures, I was. Front page and all."

"Frankie," Preacher Joe said to him, his voice in earnest. "Tell me you won't go back to California. You should stay here, with me, we can travel the rest of the country together, bringing our dance on the road, our Dervish Obscuria." He was intent as he leaned closer, the stick he had used to draw in the sand piercing the earth's flesh. "We can get into the souls of these stupid people. We'll take their money and go to Europe. Or not, Germany can be a superstitious place these days. It might be better to go somewhere farther, like India, where there are constant riots and thus plenty of new hosts to go around."

He bristled at the very idea, Preacher Joe's gold tooth sitting ill in his gut. "I'm going to California to take out a target that has been assigned me by my superiors," he insisted. He drew his heel across the game of x's and o's Preacher Joe had drawn in the dirt, obscuring its entirety. "I'm not here to play games with human beliefs in order to run from my responsibilities."

"A shame. You really are a fool." Preacher Joe dusted off his trousers and stood up, his hand held out in cheery friendships. "We can shake on it. That's how they seal the truth on this planet. By shaking."

He clasped his cold hand in his own and was roughly pulled to standing, his nose nearly touching Preacher Joe's. Joe's eyes were black with motor oil, his breath metallic as his slimy words slid out. "You think you're the moral high ground, but you're not. Responsibilities. Targets. They don't exist. But then, how can I expect you to know that? You're only a fragment of yourself, Frankie. The only thing you are is a forgotten task that was meant to be completed."

He released him, pushing him against the passenger door of the motor car. Preacher Joe cast a long, dark glare at Clara before shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging inward. He rolled back and forth on his heels before turning his back on both of them.

"Take the motor car. I've no use for it anymore."

He descended into the thicket, its darkness obscuring him until he was completely absorbed by it. They listened, himself and Clara, for the breaking branches and footsteps to fade into an untraceable distance. On its periphery, hands were clapping in joy, humans dancing over the promises of death.

He turned to Clara, who remained staring at the black hollow of the thicket. "We should go."

"You two… you're just…." She bit her bottom lip, the pearls at her throat rolled between forefinger and thumb. "I'm always stuck with the monsters. Rotten luck, I guess."

He stepped gingerly over the steaming remains of his former injured host, his hands braced on the passenger door. "Like attracts like," he explained.

"Like hell it does." She narrowed her eyes at the thicket, her lips pursed in thought. "What if I did it? What if I just left you here to spend the rest of your days with him, to be some leftover monster spreading poison all over the world?"

"You won't."

She turned on the ignition, the engine coming to life with the smoothest hum they had ever heard. He remained balanced against the passenger door, his hands clutching its side, waiting with perverse expectation for her to make good on her word and escape from him. Perhaps she would drive forward a few feet and then careen back, eager to run him down. Perhaps she would turn the engine off, and get out and walk.

Every one of those scenarios filled him with a strange joy.

She reached over and opened the passenger door, and beckoned him to get in. His liquid heart fell into the bottom of his foot, settling deep in the heel. He slid into the passenger seat and its luxurious comfort with ill ease, the road a long, tortuous stretch before them. It was rife with dangers now. Hurdles that could rip them both apart.

She reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a shining piece of metal. As she turned onto the road and began following it to their destination, she tossed it into his lap.

"I'm guessing that's a souvenir that Preacher Joe decided to keep. He'll be sorry he lost it."

He turned it over and over in his palm, the implications curious.

A sheriff's badge. Sheriff Borden's.

Preacher Joe's gold tooth was as sound a confession a lawman could get.

Numb

Freya heard him and the cold morning air filled her up from her toes to her ears and iced over like a hex. With all the words that wanted to be spoken, not one could make itself heard. The expressions that went with them skittered and flicked across her face, just as erratic and without order. She shook her head, her shoulders twitched toward a shrug that questioned or denied or asked what was next. None of those thoughts took form.

Dragan pulled away the support his focus had given her. He looked away. He looked ashamed.

He turned his horse back onto the narrow path along the ridge, moving slowly southward. Looking into the distance she could see his reasoning. Had to keep moving. Had to keep moving. There was a fold in the skirts of the mountain up ahead; there was some low scrubby vegetation clinging into the sheltered rucheing; there was likely a path of sorts in the shadows. Likely enough, and he had to keep moving.

She sat there, surprised by the fact that she was not breathing. She pulled her shoulders back a bit and coughed. That made it easier.

To the east the rising sun was lifting a thin fog from the shallow gully beside her. Past the silvered grasses and over the rise lay the pass between peaks. The freed horses had cut dotted lines through the frost, marking the way to the easier paths of the eastern flank of the ranges. Odd the way they rose so stiffly on the west, but fell in gentle layers on the eastern side.

Her chest had set hard again without her notice and she drew in a deep breath and held it, stretching.

Dragan was a way ahead now. She turned her horse and looked back at the campsite they had left. He'd made no real attempt to clear it. Discarded bags lay by the firepit. Saddles. A mess. Once he'd have taken care to clean the site. Spread the waste. Make their footprint harder to see.

Below her the mountainside seemed to bow outward. The road was down there, but the slope contrived to hide it from her view, and if the riders they should flee were climbing now, there was no way to see them. There was no smoke column from a camp anywhere on the air. Maybe there was no pursuit. It looked from her vantage point as if the forest spread below unmarked. Darkest green spread as far as she could see. Except for the mere.

All of the empire spread out before her, past the darkened trees, further than her eyes could see and all of it lay down there at her feet. All she'd ever known of that world was a city far to the west. They were still out there, too, the cities of the empire. She'd seen them all on the arras, spreading around the coast, clinging to the edges, leaving the hardships of the farmland, the forests, and the mountains to the less deserving.

Yet again she found she'd stopped breathing while she looked at the world around her. It was empty. She was empty too, and she let her chest fill again. It seemed a bit pointless, breathing, if she thought about it. She rubbed the back of one cold hand with the other. Her fingers were icy.

It was funny, but she couldn't smile. Here she was on top of the world, with open air and freedom stretching away on all sides with nothing but the vagaries of the landscape to dictate where she could go, and nothing gave her any direction. She was sitting in the middle of one of her maps, looking at the swirling greens and beiges. And there seemed no point at all in moving.

On the front lines… she cut off the thought. There was nowhere to go, that way. To the north, if she followed the crest of the mountains maybe she would find herself at the walls of Aporta. No. Nothing there.

South, Orlik. She coughed again, but a lump had formed in her throat and the sound strangled. Home. Her home. Icy fingers rose to scratch a tickle from her cheek. Everything she was. Nothing south. Not now, not anymore.

A small whine rose in the back of her throat and escaped through her nose.

Her life and all she wanted was below her to the east, and she couldn't go there. She couldn't even think about it. She didn't want to move, except maybe to lie down on the rocky ground, roll in a ball and sink into the mountain. The peaks swallowed men, that was a certainty she could always count on. The rough ground ate the flesh and drank the blood. Wolves took what they wanted and left the rest to bleach into dust.

If she had died on the field last season, she'd be bleached bones by now, or ash, burned up in glory and blown on the wind. That was gone, that possibility. She couldn't even hold it as a dream.

She tugged at her reins again, pulling the horse's head back to the south. Dragan had stopped, frozen on the path ahead, slouched over and not looking back at her. Last time she'd let his reasons take the place of her dreams, she'd been jammed into rocky shadows and she'd hated him for it.

There was nothing she could do, nowhere to go, and there was not enough heat in her blood to call anger. Nothing at all. She had slipped back from the brink of perfect happiness into an abyss of limitless freedom. A prison of circumstance, without walls, or paths, or purpose. Or anything solid to rail against.

Just like the small child who had hidden under market barrows and in sewers, she had nowhere to belong. Nothing to hold. Nothing to do.

Really, she couldn't lie down on the rocks. And she couldn't sit on this horse on the crest of a mountain until she fell to dust. She had to move, had to keep moving. She drew in another deep breath, stretching all the stiffness out of her chest and blew it out in a long hard gust.

Touching her heels to the side of her horse, she pushed him into a jog and followed the tracks Dragan had left over grass and stones.

* * * * *

By moving directly west, keeping the sun always ahead, Dragan pushed through the pine forests without the benefit of roads. The tall straight trunks presented little difficulty for the horses, and the stretches of dense-leafed darkness were mercifully short. He dealt with the silence of the ride by pressing as much speed out of it as possible.

Freya rode without comment or complaint, and he convinced himself again and again that as never before, the end of this journey would justify any means. A small lie, and so much in return.

He made no move to stop through the day; he had no interest in food. Ahead, no more than twenty leagues, was the future he had made. The sooner they were safely home the better. Then they would have time to mend; time to settle and to find a life together. The faster they moved the better. And if he pushed them hard enough all day, he could clear the forests and follow the road north to Bralz. It was too soon for his gift to be ready, but he'd find some way to give her the best of this life.

He would find ways to make the lie worth its cost.

"Dragan, that's enough." Her voice made him startle as if he'd been caught or compromised, and he pulled the horse up hard. "I need to stop, this is ridiculous."

"Of course," he answered, regretting the need to stop just as much as the need to keep pushing ahead. She was out of breath, and she lifted her water flask and drank deeply. "We can make it through the forest and out onto the road by nightfall if we keep moving, that's all. But we can stop."

"Of course we can damn well stop. You weren't afraid of those riders on the mountain; I can't see why you're so desperate to outrun them down here."

Her logic stopped him for a moment, and he laughed. "I'd forgotten them." It was true, he'd given no thought to the men sent after Freya from the moment she had decided to follow him down the rough slope and on into the forest. None of his thoughts had travelled backwards. All of his concentration was on the journey ahead.

"Yeah, right." She swung down from the saddle and arched her back. "We aren't running away from the mess I made, are we? We're running toward… No, it escapes me." Tugging loose the straps of her saddlebag, she stretched an awkward smile over her mouth. There was no way she could pretend it was real humor, or that their situation was amusing, but it was an attempt at making everything okay, and normal, and he smiled back.

"Paradise," he finished for her. "You'll have to take my word for it, but it's there."

"Good." The smile had gone, and she searched through her open bag for bread. She tore off a lump and threw it up to him, reminding him he could climb down out of his own saddle. There was a bag of dried apples, and she sniffed at them, grimaced and threw them too, to where he stood. "They didn't plan on being away for long, did they? Look at this muck."

"No." He hadn't given it any thought. "I suppose they figured on catching up with you yesterday, and then back in barracks by nightfall."

"Eight of them." There was a little more joy in the grin she threw at him, a little bit of pride, even if it twitched and faded into a silent nod. "Not bad for one defector."

"Not bad."

They ate, and Freya walked some of the kinks out of her back. She didn't speak about the fact that all she had ever wanted from life had gone in a moment. He didn't question her silence. Before he could be forced to acknowledge his avoidance, he called her back to the journey. In the half-light of the woods, it was more gut than science that told him the hours left of daylight were few, and he assured himself as they moved off again, that they had to make it home soon. As soon as they were home safe, everything would be okay. The sooner, the better.

Darkness had fallen hard by the time they broke free of the trees, but the road was clear and wide, cobbled from pale stone and easy to follow. Bralz was within spit, with the promise of hot food and comfortable rooms.

Bralz had other ideas.

With the hours of riding cramping in his back and thighs, Dragan allowed himself the small relief of slouching, letting go of the rigid determination that held his back straight. He even smiled, nodding a brief hello at the first two villagers who watched their progress toward the market square. The inn, or what passed for an inn, was away from the town centre, dumped between the village green and the market stockyards.

The front room smelled stale, with ale and piss rising over the hot stench of slow rotting straw. A stew pot stood on an open fire, and a barkeep sat among the dozen clientele, apparently uninterested in the arrival of his guests. He was alone in his disinterest. Every other face in the room watched openly as they entered, or covertly from under their brows and behind their mugs.

"You've come through here before?"

Dragan nodded to the speaker, a small man with nothing to mark him as any more than a customer. "And I'll take a room again. Two meals, two ales."

"You could take a stable." A second local chipped in, less inclined to stand free of deeper shadows at the back. Dragan took a single step forward, not toward any one person, but deliberately away from the door.

Beside him Freya straightened, and he could feel old angers rising to heat her skin. Her eyes moved quickly over the assembly, narrowing as she made an assessment, and he was thankful her sword was strapped to her pack. At least it was not in her hand.

The proprietor, a man who valued peace or recognized an uneven contest for what it was, stood. "There's a table," he mumbled. "Got stew. And ale. Room's at the top of the stairs." He moved his own jug of ale and some mugs to a nearby table, then shuffled slowly toward the stew pot, and one by one the watcher's eyes settled back onto their own affairs, or onto hands more used to plows than swords.

Dragan motioned to the free table and she took a seat, facing out so he sat with his back to the room.

"They're old," she said quietly, sipping ale and calmly evaluating every other man in the room.

"They are." He nodded. She was gripping the handle of her mug tight, and lines of strain had formed around her mouth and eyes. The innkeeper dropped two bowls onto the table in front of them, and as he did several patrons stood to leave. "And they're nothing to us. Eat."

Fiction-phile: Spiritual Taxidermy by Tim Sevenhuysen

Spiritual Taxidermy

Damien Isherwood scratched the back of his neck as he peered into the corners of his refrigerator, pushing a few jars aside and fishing out a pudding pack. His arm brushed against a lidless jam jar and came away sticky and red. He rubbed the mess on his used-to-be-white sleeveless shirt, where it added a touch of art to a pastiche of dark brown stains.

He had to do something about all these midnight snack attacks. If his wife was still around, she would've told him putting sugar into his body in the middle of the night was a bad idea, and she would've been right. She always had been.

Damien sighed and dropped down on the couch. He peeled the lid off the pudding and dipped a thick finger into it. When it was empty, he tossed it towards an old ice cream pail that had been acting as a garbage can. Time to stop kidding himself: it wasn't his eating habits that were the problem. It was the project he'd taken on last week. He'd had a bad feeling about it from the start. It just wasn't right, doing this to a human being.

Fifty grand or no, Damien was above this, wasn't he? He was an honest-to-God, professional, certificate-holding big-game taxidermist, not some psycho Egyptian embalmer. He worked art with lions and buffalo and bighorn sheep, and sure, he was a little eccentric, but he was the best, and he had earned his respect.

Tomorrow he'd call the client and tell her she was insane; a corpse belonged in the ground, not on a wall. She'd have to find someone else to stuff her old dead mom. He didn't need the money, not really. He had some jobs lined up for next month: there was a giraffe for the museum, and a guy who wanted to turn the hyena that had almost killed him into a trophy.

But he'd never backed out on a job before. He'd never failed to deliver. It might be bad for business.

Ah, he was dodging the issue again, just like he had every night for the past week. It wasn't squeamishness or professionalism that were causing problems for him: it was that foolish, stupid pact.

After his wife died he'd been drowning in self-pity. He'd felt a lot then like he felt now. Then he'd bumped into a man in the produce department who seemed to know everything about him, and offered to give him a purpose.

It was weird; the whole thing was weird. But it sounded great: he got a free vocational education in exchange for promising to live a lifestyle that had, at the time, seemed nothing but advantageous. "Allow the departed ones to express themselves through your hands," he'd been told, "and don't cast their remnants on the ground to rot or be carried off by the lesser animals."

Balachandra had taught him how to perfectly preserve an animal, how to gently tease out its insides, to primp and preen its hair, to draw its mouth and eyes into expressions that conveyed real emotion. He had always done what Balachandra had made him promise to do: he ate the meat of his creations, and so honoured their passing. Damien had never really seen the downside of the arrangement. This way, clients paid him not only in money, but also in free meat! Sure, he'd eaten some pretty weird animals along the way, but he was a good cook, and he'd always made it work.

It had been great. Until last week. Until he'd agreed to stuff a human.

Now he had a freezer full of salted human flesh, and if he didn't eat it, Balachandra would know. Somehow, he would know. Yesterday Damien had taken a chunk of the woman's liver and held it over the garburator, and just before he'd let go, there'd been a knock at the door. When he'd opened the door, no one was there.

Balachandra would know. The spirits of the earth would come after him and do terrible things. But would he rather be haunted by vengeful spirits, or condemned by his own conscience?

Damien rubbed his eyes with his broad, meaty hands. Both haunting and condemnation sounded more appealing than this soul-sucking indecision. He had to make a choice tonight. He had to move on and either wash his hands of it or get it done.

With a sudden surge of resolve–maybe it was the sugar–Damien hefted himself to his feet and stomped down the stairs to the workshop. There she lay on his plastic-covered table. Her bloodless skin was pale and slightly translucent. A half-shaved, gray-haired scalp and empty eye sockets gave her the aspect of a banshee, and for a brief moment Damien wondered if this was what would torment him if he failed to uphold his promise.

For the thousandth time, Damien mulled over his options. There seemed to be no way out that wouldn't utterly destroy him.

Unless there was a non-cannibalistic way to appease the spirits. Didn't ancient cultures often present sacrifices to their gods, with altars and fire? What if the spirits would accept something like that?

With the desperate, semi-blind irrationality of a dying man who clutches at suicide and sees in it a final hope of self-determination, Damien pulled a roll of clear plastic from the wall, wrapped it around the banshee, threw her over his shoulder, and pushed through the door into the backyard. He tossed the corpse onto the woodpile, doused it with a jerrycan of gasoline, and stumbled back to the kitchen for a pack of matches.

Halfway up the stairs he felt a sudden weakness. He tried to steady himself using the handrail, but it slipped through his fingers and he fell, tumbling to the bottom where he lay hyperventilating in fear as his heart hesitated, and gasped, and slowed, and stopped.

He tried to say, "Forgive me," but he wasn't sure to whom.

Tim Sevenhuysen is completing a Master's degree in sociology at the University of Victoria, and writes daily microfiction at http://FiftyWordStories.com. He also worked with MCM as the "antagonist" for Fission Chips.

Bone Fragments in Print!

A week ago, we launched Bone Fragments by Gabriel Gadfly, a book that "will capture you and leave you MIA until its completion". That's a great quote. And very true, too! The whole reason 1889 started publishing other writers' work is because there are books that are just SO GOOD you have to share them with the world. And Bone Fragments is definitely one of those books.

Now if you're one of those people who prefers printed material to digital copies, I've got some good news for you. Bone Fragments is now available for purchase on paperstuff! You can grab it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble or pretty much anywhere good books are sold.

And related to that, the special launch promotion for the ebook of Bone Fragments will be wrapping up in one week, so if you want to take advantage of the $0.99 price point, you'd better buy it on Kindle or Smashwords before it's too late!

So that's a lot of Bone Fragment news! And if you want to get more (including a chance to win a free copy!) be sure to check out the 1889 Facebook page!

Dervish

The congregation was mostly white southern America, with a few misplaced blacks skirting the periphery. Clara remained at the entrance, a dull glow emanating from behind her thanks to the reflection of the moon on the thick mist that crawled across the earth. She tucked her foot neatly behind her slender calf, scratching the healing cut in her leg before swaggering into the back row. She chose a splintered crate to sit on while she listened in, and he hung back at the door, his corpse-like appearance no match for the white gloved perfection of the women and the slicked back hair of even the most burly farmer. Some of them glanced Clara's way, fanning themselves with slim hymn books, their gossiping whispering travelling across the floor of the shack.

It housed no more than thirty people, but there were close to fifty crammed within the tiny space. It was standing room only for most of those present, save for the infirm and women with small children, of which there was a high number. Destitution often bred more of itself, he had learned. The seat Clara took had been improvised from an old milk carton that had seen better days and had possibly once housed a hen. She plucked the feathers out of the splintered wood and contemplated their brown fluffiness.

"Soft and downy," she said, wistful. "I bet she tasted good."

At the pulpit, the preacher was clearly vexed that the attention of his flock had been so rudely diverted. He was of the charismatic type, prone to expensive-looking three piece suits and arms that stretched wide, a shining gold tooth proclaiming the victory of Heaven, if only people would dig deep into their pockets and give, give, give to the Lord. The same kind of preacher existed in Chicago, only they were sneakier in their workings in the windy city, their purpose more subtle as they slipped into dirty speakeasies, one hand on the Bible, the other in their pockets. "Temperance is the will of the righteous," they would proclaim, and then, with their flock's money, they would slap a bill onto the surface of the bar and push it forward. "But the Lord loves a sinner as much as He loves good wine. Give us two bottles. One has to keep the pulpit well oiled."

He wondered if they knew each other, these travelling preachers. The one he remembered had droopy eyes and a sweaty palm that left greasy imprints on his tall glasses of scotch on the rocks. This specimen was considerably more fit, his chest a wide expanse of muscle and well developed sinew, his arms strong as he held them out in a mock embrace of his congregation.

"The DEVIL," the preacher continued. "Is a mighty LIAR. He can't tell the truth when it's obvious, even when blue is blue and red is red, he will muddy up them colours, he will make them purple with his lying rage. The devil is a MIXER. He mixes people up, he grabs their truths and twists them, grinding them up, offering them back like they were SCRIPTURE. But don't make a meal of his rancid bread. His LIES crawl into the BELLY of the SOUL. They FERMENT and PUTRIFY!"

Clara eyed him from her perch on the splintered milk crate, the road map folded into a fan that did little to ease the stifling heat in the shack. "Come sit here," she insisted, but he held back, respectfully remaining outdoors where it was cooler and the threat of being mistaken for the risen dead was minimal. "When we get to Shamrock I'll have something special for you," she promised, her voice a low whisper through the slats of the shack wall. "There's a lead I've been following concerning my contact in Hollywood, and it's got connections to your target. Georgio let a few things slip when I had that little chat with him on his porch. It's a sure thing, your goal is where my goal is."

He frowned, unsure of what she was saying. He leaned against the shack, his thick, oily black blood smearing the planks in gory globs. "How can that be? Our targets are not the same, they don't communicate with one another."

"Goes to show what you know." She bit her bottom lip, her string of pearls hanging from her neck pinched between her forefinger and thumb. "Everyone wants to be seen. You should go to more of those flickers, you'd be surprised at how caught up you get. I bet you would get that need, too. The need to be seen. I bet you'd like standing up in front of people, talking and bragging about how there's no linear time where you're from. Like Heaven, only insanely boring. Nothing good, nothing bad, just one long, never-ending day of neutral."

His voice felt thick as he spilled it through the space in the wooden slat. "My target doesn't want to be an actor. You're confusing that entity's goal with your own."

"I'm not confusing nothing," she said, resolute. She tapped a pearl at her tooth, the clacking irritating the fat woman with four children sitting to the left of her. "Where you go, I go, and everything comes together. That's how it's been, right from the beginning. I got your plan in sight as much as my own, and now they are woven together, all in a neat little package. " Her eyes danced with dark mirth. "It's going to be beautiful in California. The beaches are so warm you can singe your toes in the sand if you aren't careful."

"I'll be very careful," he assured her.

He braced his stump against the outside wall. Black ooze seeped between the dry wooden slats.

She swivelled around on the crate, the pearl clasped in her fingers tap-tapping on her front tooth, all attention suddenly riveted on the preacher. He was handsome enough, if not a little on the red side, a sure sign of a man who enjoyed his liquor, and lots of it. Clara leaned towards the ugly woman with the four children, ignorant of the curious glares the woman visited on her. "He talks an awful lot about the devil," Clara said. "One would think he knows him personally."

"You don't go talking like that about Preacher Joe!" The woman heaved a crying infant onto her breast, the cotton flowered print of her dress pulled tight by the effort. She had thick jowls and a large mole on her left cheek that had sprouted four hairs. One for every child. "He's saving our souls, don't you forget that. God Himself talks through him. Preacher Joe knows when the end is coming, he's gonna line our path with gold and lead us up into Paradise before this awful world buries us in its cracked soil."

Clara glanced back at Preacher Joe, who was as red as a cherry in a whiskey and water. She let her pearls drop, her hand held up to stifle a yawn. The infuriated woman beside her muttered 'Heathen' and packed up her children, the baby lost inside of her cleavage, and shuffled them all off to the opposite corner of the shack.

Clara looked on her abandonment with bemusement. "Seems I know how to clear a pew."

"People are easily offended here," he observed.

"Regardless of what they say, people always are." She scraped her crate closer to where he was listening in, the black ooze, now a thick puddle at the centre of the wooden slats. The heel of her shoe dug into it. "When someone tells you 'I'm never angry' or 'I'm not one to judge', facts are they are exactly both of those things. They say things like that to make you feel at ease and let down your defences, so when you have a moment of weakness they can fire off a fist at you, or dismiss you as unworthy. It's all about power and screwing the next guy over. Never trust a man who says he's honest, never believe a man who says 'I never judge'. These things are on their minds when they claim to not care about them. A truly trustworthy man wouldn't have to convince you, and a non-judgemental man wouldn't feel the need to stake claim to moral integrity. It's on their minds, all these good things they can't do, that's why they have to tell you all about it."

He thought on this. "That's an insufferably confusing ethos. It suggests people don't understand themselves."

"That's because they don't."

The ugly woman cast a glare at Clara over her shoulder before turning her face with its wart and four hairs back in rapt adoration of Preacher Joe, who was now lighting the tips of his fingers on fire, an old magic trick done with alcohol that any twelve year old knew how to do. "See," Clara said, nodding back at the woman and giving her a big smile. "She's a good follower of Preacher Joe, here. She's all tolerance and light, not a judgemental bone in her body."

He rested his head against the dry, creaking wood, the outside wall so fragile in construction it could blow over with too loud a whisper. "We should leave."

"Let me just hear the rest of this guy's bullfrog. With all that Heaven and Hell talk I'm thinking he's gong to be a real croaker."

Preacher Joe stood away from his makeshift pulpit, which was made up of haphazard bricks and a large hand-carved cross bolted into the centre, a gift from some talented parishioner. Large vines intertwined over its surface and in the centre were the crude figures of a nude man and woman, their nakedness in stark, disturbing detail. They were not young, and the carver had given them tortured, diseased faces, full of pockmarks. The eyes were misshapen, their limbs elongated and alien, with spidery branched fingers reaching up not to heaven, but to the slender snake that wound its way all around the cross. They seemed to be in worship of it, the woman holding up a round object, two large bites taken out of it, a used offering to their slithering god.

"The DEVIL knows well how to LIE."

"Amen!" a burly man in the back row shouted out. There was a wave of murmured agreement.

"The minions of the DEVIL. They are his key keepers!"

"They are!" the mole faced woman proclaimed.

"They burrow into the SOUL and ROT it from within with the DEVIL's LIES."

"Hallelujah!"

Clara turned to him again, her voice an impassive whisper. "We need a new vehicle to get us into Shamrock."

He ignored her, his attention riveted by Preacher Joe and his graceful movement at the pulpit, his arms swaying upward to an invisible source of power that seemed to be filling him with its supernatural grace. Or so he claimed in his exclamations, the congregation cheering him on, begging for the end to come nigh and take them all with him into the land of honey and riches.

Where he came from was no Heaven, and yet the people here were convinced that a non linear life was an easy one, where there would no longer be any worries of right and wrong, of an act not yet committed influencing a past that never happened. They strove to become a part of the complex without having a clue how to understand it. The end of life and death to wander into the miasma of decades that pass by them in shadowy waves, all possibilities happening at once–these simple people couldn't handle such a truth. For them to realize that Heaven was just as hard and incongruous as this world would break every tired spirit in that destitute shack.

Only Preacher Joe would remain standing, his arms wide, his lips curled back over a winning smile that beckoned all to know the glory he alone had found. "The DEVIL's LIES are the worst kind of lies–because in every heart that listens his words sound like TRUTH!"

His outstretched arms shook violently, the clean, three piece tailored suit he wore wrinkled into thick lines as his back twitched and tore at him at odd angles, pulling him into an otherworldly trance that only he could fight off with success. His eyes bulged and rolled white, his head jerked back and then side to side, the movement so fast it was difficult to see his features. He frothed at the mouth, his tongue purple as he tried to spit out the demon that had so viciously begun its attack.

His head shook ever faster, until his face was nothing more than a smudged blur, a blank slate upon which no human features existed.

Clara let the pearls at her mouth drop. Her eyes were wide when she looked back over her shoulder, willing him to come into the worshipper's shack. At the pulpit, while Preacher Joe continued his unnatural, motion blurred dervish, the piano player began banging out a Southern hymn, one which the congregation latched onto with gusto. Feet clad in worn shoes and hands calloused from overwork kept time in a steady rhythm. Other members of the congregation began twitching and fainting, arms outstretched upwards to an unknown Heaven, terror transformed into exultation. One of the children of the ugly woman ran up to the pulpit, his tiny head shaking side to side in a mock impersonation of the frightening vision Preacher Joe presented.

Clara glared at him, her eyes seeking him out through the slats in the shack's wall. She was paid no mind by any of the congregation around her, their stomping feet a roaring crescendo that threatened to tear the structure of their makeshift church apart. "He's like you," she said, angry. "Just my luck to find another alien babbler."

"It's not possible," he assured her, but he knew he was lying. There was no mistaking that misshapen warping of space and time, the amalgamated effects of an indulgence in motor oil. It sped up engines and thoughts and time, morphing them into this blurred chaos that sent a rush of awe through those who witnessed it. Clara laughed as Preacher Joe spun around, a mini-storm brewing around his ankles as space and time were tied into circular knots and forced to dance with him.

"I'll give him this–he's more entertaining than you. All you do is leak black ooze and mope."

"I don't care about your silly observation."

"Yes, you do. Look at that, moping already."

He looked on, impassive at the spiralling display of tornado limbs and flesh, a storm that was comfortable in its chaotic dance. He'd been like this once, he thought. As he watched he felt a sudden longing for those days where the past didn't have to be relegated to fleeting glimpses in his mind. He'd been this whirling devil that held onto all possibilities, the ends tied so tightly on each that he had known no such thing as worry, no questions burrowing deep inside of himself. Nothing mattered but the ebb and flow of one's existence.

Perhaps these people were right, and that was a sort of Heaven. But even alien angels like himself could take such assurance for granted.

He had to wonder who this Preacher Joe was, who spun and pulled upon the heartstrings of all who lived in this tiny ransacked community, their belief so keen on his message they had forgotten the world existed outside of this shack. All eyes were riveted upon the preacher's dance, the men holding their chins with dirty hands, concerned faces knowing they were looking upon the supernatural workings of some incomprehensible God. Only Preacher Joe wore a fully tailored suit, the rest of his congregation eking out a life in overalls, what suits were present a threadbare affair of patched elbows and arms that were far too short for long limbs.

As suddenly as his spinning trick had begun, Preacher Joe abruptly stopped, his arms held out to balance himself, not a tremor to be found anywhere in his stance. He stood to his full height, his head held high as his eyes rolled skyward, to the holes in the tin roof of the shack. "When the day comes we will be AWARE!" He shook his shoulders, his head slumping to his chest. "The DEVIL will not have his snare on us."

"No, Sir!"

"Amen!"

"He won't catch us!"

"We will RISE into the FUTURE. We will lay down into the PAST. We will embrace the PRESENT." He closed his eyes, his lips breathing a beatific sigh at the very thought of it. "We will go HOME."

It was Clara who broke the rapturous spell. "There's no such thing as home. There's just a place once in a while you can tap your feet to and have a drink." She ignored the scandalous glares sent her way and motioned to her companion that they were leaving. "Come on," she said to his curious, secretive onlooking. "There's nothing for us here."

"But that man, that preacher. He's another being, he's one like me." He hesitated in following her, his bleeding stump sloshing his liquid stomach into it, making him feel ill. "I don't understand why he's here. He's not my target, and there are strict rules against going onto foreign planets, especially linear dimensions such as this one. I was not informed there were others of my kind working here."

She shrugged as she let the crudely constructed door to the alien's church slam behind her. "Don't ask me, I don't even get what you're so worried about. I say we light a match and let the lot of them burn up. It's not like they aren't looking forward to Heaven and they figure they're shoe ins." She cocked her head to one side as she looked on his shocked expression. "Don't go getting all high and mighty again, we both know better. These people don't appreciate the life they have, and they're content to spend it in utter misery while they figure something better's got to be around the corner. There isn't. It's just a discarded gift, this life, that's all their suffering is for."

He cast a glance back through the slats of the shack. Hungry, miserable faces looked upon Preacher Joe with expectant wanting, a starvation of soul and body apparent in every hollowed out stare.

He shook his head at Clara's observation. "It's not that simple."

"Of course it is," Clara snapped. Her pearls clacked against each other as she gingerly stepped through the bush, veering to the left and away from their motor crash. "They're wasting their time listening to his rot. He says nothing but lies."

Come with me

It was dawn when Dragan woke her, and Freya stretched her aching back before she tried to sit. Lying near a failing fire with little to keep her from the stony ground, she wished for her tub of steaming water and the small luxuries of the citadel. When she did rise, scratching at her scalp and yawning, he put a mug of steaming tea and some bread from the soldiers' rations before her. It took a moment to realize Paske was gone.

"Where is he?" Her pulse kicked up, but she was willing to hear Dragan speak before she jumped to any conclusions. In the state he was in he was unlikely to have run away.

"Dead."

Two of the horses were saddled, and a selection of gear collected from the various packs lay across the fire from where she sat. "Bastard," she grinned. "I wanted to keep him around a bit longer."

"Eat," he said; "—and let's move."

Freya pushed herself to her feet and climbed a small outcrop of rock, looking along the crest they had gained and down into a small hollow running due south. Beyond the dip, the pass between peaks was clearly visible and the route looked straight forward enough. "Easier in daylight," she said half to herself. "We can cross the range there and then start moving east."

She accepted his silence as agreement. Riders might be closing by now, and the easy way had to be the best way. They needed to cover some ground. Returning to her tea and bread, she lifted the document cylinder and noted its weight. "Where are they?" She held up the empty case and frowned at him.

"Burnt."

"Why?" She dropped the cylinder and followed him as he carried packs to the horses and tied them in place. "What have we got to show the men, now?"

"Nothing. We don't need anything." He was keeping his back to her and it set her nerves on edge. He always hid his eyes when he had secrets to keep. Without looking up, he pushed back past her to the fire and began to stamp it out.

"No? Paske is dead and you burned the only other evidence I had of what he told me. It wasn't much but it would have shown them at least that the administrative officers are lying about the war to the people in the cities. No one is going to want to believe this; I hope you can explain it all when we get there."

"We're not going to the front." He was still keeping his face down, intent on small duties, speaking as if the decision was his to make and of no importance to her.

Damn it all, damn it, damn it; all her irritation whined in her throat and she stamped across the ground behind him. "We are! I told you. I am, whether you come with me or not." Running just to match his stride, she circled, tried to block the way toward the gear he was loading. Of course he'd caved too easily the night before, and she cursed the sun and moon and every instinct in her body that should have warned her this would come.

"I'm not. There's no point. The front's east, home's west."

"You can't go home, Dragan. You can't just go and not tell the men we've fought beside for fifteen long years that this is all for naught. Don't you want to stop this? Isn't it you who says there's nothing for men to fight and die over but someone else's gold?"

"I've said it before. Didn't stop anyone then." He ducked past her, reaching for a blanket roll and gathering it under his arm. As she stepped forward, he moved again to lift a half full food pack.

"But now we know it's true. Now we've heard it from the serpent's mouth. We can stop the fighting. Centuries of war, and we can put an end to it today!" She rushed to follow again as he moved to the horses.

"We have to move," he said, buckling the straps of the food pack to his saddle, handing the reins of her mount to her, and striding off toward the line of spare horses. "Those riders will be close behind by now."

"So that's it? That's the end of it all? I'm riding east to do my duty to my comrades, and you're going west to go home?" She was still trying to run, hobbling over tussocks and lichen-loose stones. When he stopped and turned she slipped in his tracks.

"What duty? You don't even know it's true, but if it is, if, then you don't have a duty to this empire or its war. You and I don't owe a single thing to anyone, except ourselves. We owe ourselves some peace. We've paid for it in blood."

"And the others? They don't deserve the same freedom?" She was going back. The fates had spun their wheel and after all she'd cursed and wailed she was at last going back. "I'm going back. This is my life; this is how it is supposed to be. They know me. The men who fight out there know me, and I won't be remembered as a coward who ran away from the fight. I will be the one who gave them all the freedom they earned with blood." He would not take away her glory. Not again.

"If it's true!" he bellowed. "If there is a single word he said that counts as more than bigoted spite." Coiling the horses' lead rope as he freed it, Dragan raised his arms; "Yah! Yah!" The startled horses jumped back, spun on their haunches and gathered to rush along the southward crest and over the valley toward the distant pass.

"If it's true." He spoke more quietly, but when he stepped in closer there was fire and fury in his eyes. "If. And if you go to those men, the ones you are so determined to be loved by; if you tell them everything you think you know, what then? Oh, you'll be their hero as always. You'll be the one that took away their purpose, and took away their pride, and gave them all the fiercest anger ever lit in any man." He straightened, pulling his mount in closer as he finished. "You'll be the one that turned them back from fighting on the mountainsides to fighting all across the empire, turning back to get their revenge on anyone who made them nothing." He stepped up onto his horse, looking down on her like she was a wretched urchin cowering in his shadow. "You'll be the one who turned them from a war with Verdan, to a slaughterhouse in the cities of their own kind."

* * * * *

He had one more jibe, and only one, and if she gave him cause to use it, it might be the one that broke his heart. Already he could see the cost of every word he'd said. The shadows in her cheeks and eyes had darkened, and a death mask glared up at him, shocked and silent. Every word had cut her, stripped away the fantasy she valued more than simple life or death, and left her with a stark reality he hoped she could not deflect.

"You're leaving me?" Her words were so small they barely crossed the cold space between them, but they struck him like ice picks. All the hours between midnight and dawn had not been enough to breed confidence. No conviction, no determination that there was no other way to play the hand he held, could suffice against the image of her, hurt and alone.

"We're both leaving. I'm going west." He was glad of the saddle and the strength of the horse under him. If he had to stand close enough to say the words he'd settled on, she'd have seen the fear that twisted in his stomach and trembled behind his knees. It was hot, rolling like eels in a bag; like a slimy black knot of betrayal. She'd have called his bluff. She still might. "Which way are you going to go?"

"Come with me," she begged.

She had no other way to argue, he could see it. Her arms reached, her shoulders slumped and her chest hollowed over the need. It was pleading from the core of who she was and what she believed. But what she believed would kill her. She was small and grey in the shadows of morning, frail and childlike. There was nothing of her to throw against the machinations of power, nothing but broken flesh and bone.

"Dragan, please. Come with me. This is how my life is supposed to be. I don't want peaceful freedom; I can't survive that." She jogged back, as fast on her feet as ever, but the lift into her saddle pulled on torn muscle and bone. She couldn't hide it, even though she made no sound. The pain flashed across her features like a flare. She nudged her horse closer. "We can do it this way, you and I. We survive, don't we? Everything. No matter what. We always make it through. We always have."

"I'm going home." It wasn't enough to say it. He wanted to beg too, as he'd done before, but the choice he had made for her then had been wrong. Even if it was the only one he could make, it had hurt her more than he had planned. He had hoped she would find some middle ground and some pride, but he couldn't have known the days in the citadel would take so much of her strength.

He pushed his horse forward, moving along the southward ridge, trying to focus on the terrain ahead as if finding the best way down was all that mattered. Four steps along and she hadn't followed. Five. Six. Seven. How many could he stand? How far could he go before he broke and turned back to plead?

"Dragan."

Reflex jerked the rein but he made his heel press the flank. He had to keep moving. Eight. Nine. Ten.

"Dragan, stop." She kicked her mount to follow and relief leaked from his lips like a prayer. He kept moving, and she kept following. "I tried. I gave it my best and it didn't work out, and here I am. Look at me. This is where I belong. And you belong with me, out here, in the mountains."

"No I don't." This was cause to stop. With this argument he could look her in the eye and speak from the heart. "I've had all I can stomach of this life. I've had enough of blood and enough of cold and enough of wondering if each day will be the last. I belong with you, but that's the end of it. Not out here. Not over the mountains. I have my life planned, I have had for years, and now I can see it, I can feel it. I can take hold of it, if you will just let go of this absurd fascination with fighting and come with me. Haven't you had enough?"

"No, I guess not." She even tried a small smile, but it didn't convince either of them and she let it go. "I miss it. I want to feel like me; like I'm alive."

He knew that was true. He'd seen the light of mania shine in her eyes; he knew the heat that rose in her flesh, the thrill and the laughter that burst from her lips when the risk was all or nothing.

There were other thrills. She would find new joy. Babies.

An image of Lenka pleading, begging for the chance to be a mother, came to mind and he nodded to himself. All Freya needed was the chance, too. If she could just find the peace within herself, she would know the longing every woman felt. She would be content. He knew it.

What she needed was safety. A place she could relax and let go of all the fears that she had lived with. A haven. A nest. And he had made that place for her, if only he could get her there. If only the rest of the world could be made to stay away.

Injured, with or without him, she would return to the field to die. There was no doubting it. But looking at her pain, at her longing, he could not bring himself to tell her that single damning truth. She was not what she wanted to be. Time and pain had cut away the edge she'd relied upon. That he'd relied upon, as well. But he could not say it. He could not twist that one last knife to cut her free from her dreams.

Her voice became a whisper, a desperate plea. "We can at least tell the men the truth. We can leave after that. We can leave them to fight, or to rebel, or to get drunk in celebration, but don't we owe them that? Can't you give me just that one concession? Please?"

No, he couldn't. If they rode down the mountain together, they would die there. Her injury would damn them both to death and there was no need for it. Everything he'd ever wanted was waiting for them just beyond the forest, in the foothills and pastures around the Iultea River. He couldn't tell her the truth, and he'd never lied to her. But now, there was too much at stake to quibble over details.

"It isn't true." The words burst from his lips. There was no chance now to consider truth and lies and the ethics of right and wrong. It was as simple as choosing to live. It was his only choice. "Nothing Paske said to you is true. He told me. Last night." The sudden darkness that flooded her eyes almost gave him pause. His words had hit their mark. He'd found the one lie that might keep her from martyrdom. There was only one more nail to drive home, and she would be held. "He's already branded you a coward. If you return to Orlik, or if you go to the front, you'll be flayed as a deserter."