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Chance Meeting at the Cemetery

By GRACE DION

Memorial Day, and I plant
yellow and white chrysanthemums.
Driving by the other family plot
I see Fred, my cousin once removed,
Fertilizing. The grass is the main thing,
he says. We visit. It’s cloudy, cold, windy,
the usual for Memorial Day,
but I hang around.
I eat Fred up with my eyes:
His long stride, his high bony shoulders,
his small beaked nose, the hands
that slant from the third knuckle,
the way the hair grows at his nape,
its pattern of grayness,
the shortness of his neck,
the way his cheek melts into it:
genetic nudging that revivify
my grandfather, uncles,
my father …

I make a grisly remark and Fred laughs:
it’s the family humor.
He’s eighty, I think, slim, looks healthy,
but has to rest after fertilizing,
or lifting the fertilizer into the trunk.
Still I linger. What else can we talk about?
When he’s gone, they’ll all be gone;
but for now, I have in my sight
that way of turning,
that tilt of head, that hat.

Grace Dion has an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington and has published poems and stories in various journals.

Gunpowder Trails Chapter Five

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Gunpowder Trails

By Andrew Sharp

Gunpowder Trails is a serial novel. It debuted online with chapter one in November 2015, and is slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four

Chapter Five

The Appalachies strung their hammocks between trees on a rocky slope near the summit of a mountain, on ground Charles would not have considered a campsite at all. To call it a slope was optimistic; it was more of a dive. Had he tried to sleep there in his usual bedroll, instead of a hammock, he would have been in terror all night, afraid rolling over would put him a thousand yards downhill.

The Appalachies napped in their hammocks in the mid-afternoon sun, except for one sentry. The sentry also lounged in his hammock, but kept his bow on his lap and his eyes open.

The Appalachies did not bother to tie Charles up. To get away, he would have had to climb from rock to rock, and had he tried it, they could have cooked supper, eaten it, taken a nap and then shot him down at their leisure.

The camp was simpler than Charles had expected. He hadn’t given much thought to the Appalachies’ living arrangements, but he had pictured huts of some kind, perhaps a pot of something cooking over a fire, tools scattered around, and people doing primitive activities like making arrows or daubing on face paint.

All this camp consisted of was the hammocks and a pile of wood, which the Appalachies had not lit. Each warrior had a small leather pack tied to his hammock.

There were only ten warriors, so Charles concluded they were heading for some kind of main camp somewhere. It was remarkable this handful of savages had been able to make the smugglers’ lives such a nightmare.

It was almost as if the myths were true, that the Appalachies were part spirit, part body, ethereal people of the woods who could melt away when they needed to and reappear elsewhere. These Appalachies looked pretty solid though, and had not tried any melting as far as Charles had noticed. If they were spirits, they were smelly ones. And their hammocks were pretty ordinary. The one they had given him seemed to be woven out of some kind of plant fiber.

It was comfortable, which freed up his mind to worry without any distractions. What reason could they possibly have for kidnapping him? Were there any of these reasons that did not involve disaster for himself? He thought not.

His first thought, when he had turned around and seen the Appalachies standing behind him, had been, Why me?

His next thought, as they prodded him along through the woods, had been, Why am I not dead yet? He could see why the warrior with the gun hadn’t shot him so close to camp, but the other Appalachies had bows, so it wasn’t like they needed to take him somewhere private to shoot him without drawing attention. Why didn’t they just fill him full of arrows like they had done to Pete and get on with their day?

He didn’t know a word of Appalachie, and in fact had never met anyone who did, so he had no way of getting answers to these questions. The Appalachies made no effort to communicate with him, either. They just jabbered to each other in their twangy, nasally, barbaric language. Occasionally he thought he caught a word that sounded familiar, but it could have just been a chance melding of syllables in the torrent of sound.

The three warriors who captured him herded him farther into the woods, where seven others joined them. They stared at Charles and spoke in an excited and congratulatory gibberish. Then they spoke to Charles, firing one short word at him several times. When he failed to react, they repeated it several more times and jabbed him with a gun barrel by way of illustration, until it dawned on him that the proper interpretation was “move it.” He soon concluded that it meant “move very quickly,” because they kept up a trotting pace that left Charles panting. He had thought his long journey on foot had already toughened him up.

Despite the rush, Charles studied them as he got the chance. They were the first Appalachies he had ever gotten a good look at. He was disappointed they were not the ghostly white of the stories. They were more the color of fine bread, lightly burned. The strangest part about them was their eyes. In the kingdom of Easton, if you passed green or blue eyes in the street, you looked again. But most of these men had eyes in some shade of green or blue.

They wore buckskin, and catskin caps like some of the smugglers, with the added style touch of a claw dangling above each ear.

Their sickly light-colored hair was long, down over their shoulders, and straight. Their goat-like beards drooped far down their chests. One of them had painted his head a blazing red, achieving the effect of a walking fire.

By the time the Appalachies decided to make their mountaintop rest stop, Charles estimated they had already put about twenty miles between them and the smugglers. The halt was well timed, because Charles had just decided he was going to lie down soon, even if they shot him. His legs no longer felt like they were on fire, because they had settled into semi-numbness.

Charles had hung onto the hope as they fled that smugglers might come charging through the trees to rescue him any second, but that hope shriveled as the hours passed. No smuggler ever ventured this far from camp. By now, Charles was just another one of those unfortunates who had disappeared in the last few weeks and would never be seen again.

When they woke up from their naps, the Appalachies stayed in their hammocks, chatting. Charles could tell, to his annoyance, that they were often talking about him.

The one closest to Charles was the man with painted red hair. The dying beams of the day’s sunshine made the man’s beard glow, and as Charles looked at it he realized with amazement that the hair wasn’t painted at all. It was simply red. Did any of them have blue hair, or green? Charles didn’t realize he was gawping at the man until the Appalachie imitated him, staring back at him with big frog eyes and mouth agape, and laughed. Charles quickly looked away.

For supper they ate pemmican, and handed a little to Charles. The recipe tasted about like the smugglers’ pemmican, with possibly a little more fat in it and another flavor Charles couldn’t identify, some kind of herb. The seasoning did not do much to disguise the familiar nasty taste.

As twilight deepened, Charles began to wonder if the Appalachies would ever light a fire. He imagined hanging in his hammock in the pitch black, straining his ears for the padding of cat footsteps or claws tearing at the bark of his tree. He wondered if maybe this was why the Appalachies hadn’t killed him. Perhaps they were performing some kind of religious ceremony involving leaving him there in the dark to be eaten, while they went over the mountain and started a nice roaring fire.

To his great relief, when it was almost dark they did light a fire. So that was why the smugglers never saw any smoke from any Appalachie fires. The savages waited to start their fires until the sky was darker than the smoke column would be, and probably got up at dawn to put them out.

Charles did not sleep well. For hours he stared up at the dark leaves, the glowing sliver of crescent moon sometimes peeking through. Crickets rasped, owls hooted, and occasionally a sentry coughed or stirred the fire. Eventually he dozed in and out, dreaming that the Appalachies had set up a village on the edge of Easton, where the huts were made out of giant mushrooms, and he and the other children went to play football even though the adults told them it was dangerous, and George was there, playing goalie, and then Jeff came to warn them that soldiers were coming.

Between dreams like this, he despaired of ever getting any real sleep, and was surprised to wake up a short time later and find that it was getting light, and the Appalachies were putting out the fire.

They soon set off again at what Charles was disappointed to find was their habitual rapid pace. It wasn’t as if they were in a hurry; they just strode along as if it had not occurred to them that anyone might want to walk slower. If they noticed Charles dropping behind, they poked him with their weapons to remind him that this was no time for ambling.

By noon, ferocious barking from camp dogs greeted the travelers, and then sad-eyed hounds with jutting ribs jumped around them, growling at Charles and then yelping as the Appalachies kicked them away.

The camp wasn’t much, only a handful of skin tents ringing a central stone fire pit. Women, children, and a handful more warriors came out to meet them, jabbering their twangy speech.

Charles did some quick counting and figured there were about twenty warriors total, and maybe fifty or sixty people in all with the women and children. The small children, boys and girls, all wore skirts, and they ran around him in circles much like the camp dogs had done, jumping and shouting and pointing. The adolescent boys wore buckskin trousers like the men, though they were all shirtless. The women and girls, Charles was interested to note, wore about as much clothing as women in Easton. The rumor that Appalachies ran around half naked was mostly untrue, then.

Many of the women wore necklaces made of colored glass beads, probably ground out of the bottles and glass shards that could be found everywhere in ancient town sites. Some women wore dangling glass earrings as well.

The adults, unlike the shouting children, looked at Charles with narrowed eyes, giving him the kind of calculating look a murderer might use when evaluating the most effective spot to stick a dagger.

A tall, stocky Appalachie with a giant black beard stepped forward. He settled down on a stone by the fire ring, and another warrior grabbed Charles by the shoulders and pushed him down onto another stone on the opposite side of the fire.

Charles could not understand what he was seeing. The man was as dark-skinned as he was, with eyes so brown they were almost black, and the familiar light-colored palms of normal hands.

“Well now,” the man said in good Easton, with a rural accent not very different from the one spoken around Trappe. “What do we have here?”

After a pause, he said, “Might want to shut that mouth before something flies in.”

“But, but, who — how —?”

The man laughed. “Roger’s my name.” He seemed to be searching for words. “You will have to pardon me if I’m a little rusty with my Easton. I don’t use it very often.”

“But how, why, are you here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Roger said. “Me, I guess I’m one of those lost woodsmen you hear about. One of those who went out in the woods and never came back. Died a horrible death at the hands of the, uh, what do people call them, the Appalachies. To tell you the truth, I came very close to doing that, but that’s another story for another time.”

Charles glanced around, and lowered his voice. “So … you can’t leave?”

Roger shrugged. “I guess I could. I don’t want to. By the way, you don’t have to worry about them understanding you. They don’t know any Easton besides ‘My name is Roger and I mean no harm.’ But as far as leaving goes, fact is, son, life here is a lot better than scrapping by in those disease-infested villages trying to get enough money to pay taxes and then just when you pay up, you get conscripted into the army. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly why I left.”

“It’s better living with savages?”

Roger frowned. “You oughtn’t to call them that. They are good people. But no, I didn’t come out here to live with them. I came out to live on my own in the wilderness where no king can tell me what to do. Didn’t think too much about the people already living here. But enough about me. What about you? You’re pretty small for a smuggler. How’d you get mixed up in that?”

“I am not a smuggler,” Charles said. “I’m a slave to a smuggler.” This seemed to be an important point to make. Now that he was over his shock at meeting a fellow Easton out in the wilderness, thoughts of what might be in store for him came rushing back, and his pulse started pounding faster. “What are you going to do to me? Why didn’t they … why am I still …” Charles hesitated, unsure whether it was smart to remind his captors that they didn’t usually take prisoners.

“Why didn’t they shoot you full of arrows and leave you for the cats to find? We’ll get to that,” Roger said. “So, you’re working on your big dream of becoming a real smuggler someday, are you?” He said “smuggler” the way other people said “plague sore.”

“No,” Charles said. “No. I am going to …” he stopped. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if he ever got free from all the smugglers and Appalachies who seemed to be lining up for a chance to hold him captive. But he did know one specific. “I’m not going to be a smuggler, whatever I do. I’m not going to spend one more minute on the gunpowder trails.”

“Right,” Roger said. “And the smugglers will just let you walk away, even though you know so much about them you could get them all killed if you spill the beans on them. I suppose you’ll go to town and set up as a house servant, which will be way better than being a forest servant.”

“Not a servant,” Charles said. “Something else.”

Roger shook his head and looked at him with a half smile. “You poor little slave.”

Charles tightened his fist. That was all he did, though, because Roger was pretty large and had a long knife strapped to his waist.

As he sized up Roger, Charles noticed two familiar looking packs leaning against a tree behind him, one with a tin medallion dangling off it. His stomach fell. He had seen that before. It was old Jumpy’s. When they found him dead a couple years ago, he’d been stripped of his weapons and pack.

So these Appalachies had harassed the smugglers before. This man may even have killed Jumpy himself.

Roger followed his glance, and gave an ugly smile when he saw Charles’ wide eyes. “You’ve seen those packs before, have you?”

Roger was a traitor to his kind, an Easton man who lived with the white savages and killed his own people. Charles had known, theoretically, that he was among people who must have killed smugglers. But seeing the trophies displayed here gave him a strange slurry of emotion: hatred, anger, fear and bewilderment to find himself identifying with the smugglers.

Roger said, “So you’re not one of them. But you sure get upset when they get killed. And you’re telling me you’re just a prisoner, held against his will by the awful smugglers and forced to go on the trail, huh? Or you’re just saying that so we’ll let you go.”

“They’ve treated me well,” Charles said, breathing fast. Yes, he was upset about Jumpy and Pete and the others who had died, people he’d shared life with. That didn’t make him a smuggler. That didn’t mean he was one of them, or that he was content with being a slave.

Roger switched to chatting with the Appalachies, then turned to Charles again.

“Chief is on the way, and we’ll grill you more when he comes. Until then, you can just sit here or wander around the camp. Just don’t try to run away. Chief wants you alive.”

“I’m not going to tell him anything,” Charles said.

Roger grinned. “Oh, I think if he wants you to talk, you’ll talk,” he said, holding his knife blade out over the coals and watching a small blue tongue of flame lick around it. “But we already know about as much as we need to about your bunch. Still, I hope you’ll tell us the truth.”

Charles was again puzzled at his emotions. He was no smuggler, so he should have no shame in telling the Appalachies what they wanted to know. Why should they be his enemies? And yet he felt somehow that he should refuse to talk, that to cooperate with the Appalachies or join their side would be treachery. He put his face in his hands.

Roger now spoke to a small boy, about ten or eleven years old, with almost white blond hair down to his shoulders. The boy’s ribs showed clearly. They didn’t overeat in this camp.

The boy motioned Charles to follow.

“South Wind here will show you around camp,” Roger said. “He’ll show you where you’ll sleep. And don’t try to sneak off. South Wind is pretty good with a knife.”

He spoke to South Wind again, and the boy laughed, pulled a knife out of his belt, flipped it into the air and caught it by the handle again, without seeming to make any effort. Charles was impressed. It took a little of the sting out of being assigned such a puny bodyguard, although not all of it.

The boy strutted through the camp, leading Charles and a procession of chattering camp children. Charles noticed as he looked around that the Appalachies seemed to have been at the campsite for some time. The ground in front of the tents was packed down, and well-worn trails led off into the woods, among a scattering of stumps with chop marks.

The tents were large, with straight walls and sloped roofs made of stitched hides. Each tent roof had another little tent on top, which puzzled Charles until he realized it must be a cover to keep rain out of the smoke holes. Smoke was pouring out from under the covers now, along with the smell of roasting meat. A pang shot through his stomach, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since morning.

Charles noted several other fire spots around the outer edge of the circle of tents, where the savages must stoke fires at night to keep the cats away. The dogs would help keep the cats away too, he guessed. Fierce as the cats were, they would usually run from a pack of dogs.

The boy came to a dingy tent with spider webs over the doorway, and pointed at it. Charles peered into its dark interior and hesitated. Was he supposed to go in there? He looked at the boy, who just stared back.

Charles remembered now how weary his legs were, but he was reluctant to enter the tent, which reeked of old deer fat and wood smoke and had who knew what inside it. So he just sat down with his back against one of the tent poles. He found himself at the center of a ring of grinning children, with South Wind seated in the center, his arms crossed, stern in his sentry duty.

They were a motley group, with long tangled hair and ragged, dirty clothing. They were light brown like the warriors, an unhealthy pale tone that looked as if they had some kind of terrible disease that had leeched the color out of their skin and hair. Where their clothes were torn, even whiter skin shone out. Many of them had yellowish hair, some had very light brown hair and there were a few more of the absurd red-haired ones too. Surely only a disease or malnourishment would do that to hair.

Tired of being the circus bear for these children, he crawled into the privacy of the tent and shut the flap, wondering if this would meet South Wind’s sentry surveillance standards. The children increased their chatter, but nobody followed him in.

It was dim in the tent, with a glow from the smoke hole in the roof, and he listened carefully to make sure he was the only inhabitant. The tent appeared to have been vacant for a while, and anything might have crawled in here — snakes, dogs, mice, spiders. He heard nothing rustling, and gradually as his eyes adjusted, he began to make objects out in the gloom. A couple of sturdy poles supported the beam of the roof, and in the center was a ring of stones for a fireplace. There was plenty of space. He wondered why it was empty. Maybe one of the warriors had died recently and they hadn’t gotten around to taking this tent down yet. Or maybe they kept an extra tent handy for prisoners, a sort of town jail.

He found a bundle of fur, seemingly an heirloom of sorts, holding the musty smell of many nights of dried sweat. Charles shook it out to make sure nothing was living in it, then checked the floor to make sure nothing was living under it. Then he flattened out the fur, stretched out, and closed his eyes.

He woke up to the tent door flying open and sunlight streaming in. He sat up and covered his eyes.

“Wake up, sleepy!” Roger boomed. “Hope you’re all rested. The chief would like to ask you some questions. Well come on, don’t just sit there blinking, get a move on!”

Charles staggered out into the sunlight, where South Wind was still vigilant at his post. Followed by South Wind, Charles followed Roger across the camp toward the fire ring. Charles’ mouth was dry and cracked like an empty stream bed, his stomach screamed at him, and his thoughts struggled to reassemble themselves out of sleep. It was late afternoon, the sunlight golden and drowsy.

A muscular man whom Charles took to be the chief sat by the fire, surrounded by warriors, warming his hands and watching Charles walk toward him. The chief’s face was mostly hidden by long brown hair and a bushy beard with streaks of gray in it. It was hard to read his expression, but his eyes looked sly and calculating, like the rest of the Appalachies. He was dressed about the same as the others, except that he wore a necklace with the white skull of a cat dangling from it.

The Appalachies drew in around Charles as he and Roger arrived at the fire, warriors closest and the women and children on the edges, peering around.

“This,” Roger said, “is chief Running Elk.”

Charles wondered how he was supposed to address the chief. Bow? Wave? Eager not to offend, he eyed Roger to see what he would do, but Roger just stood by Charles’ side. Deciding to play it safe, Charles bowed deeply from the waist.

Laughter broke out around the group, and he straightened up quickly, blushing. The chief, also smiling a little, held his hand up to his forehead and shoved it outward stiffly, a gesture Charles had not seen before. But not knowing what else to do, he repeated it. The crowd made approving sounds, amid more laughter, to Charles’ relief.

A number of warriors had taken seats around the fire, and so Charles began to sit down as well on a nearby stone. But Roger prodded him.

“Don’t get too comfortable, little slave,” he said. “Nobody said you could sit down.”

The chief, no longer smiling, spoke at length to Roger, who listened and nodded.

“All right, little smuggler,” he said then to Charles. “How many men are in your band? Be careful to tell us only the truth.”

“Thirty, or something like that. I can’t remember exactly. They aren’t all men, though.”

Roger conferred with Running Elk, who nodded.

“How much sulfur do you have?”

“Not very much.”

Roger knelt and held his knife in the fire, then pulled it out and examined it, turning it different directions. It was glowing.

“How much?” he said again, looking Charles in the eye.

“We really didn’t have much,” Charles said, his voice shaking. Roger took a step toward him. “About twenty packs’ worth!” He would cooperate. The smugglers could deal with the consequences.

“The trading was bad, it wasn’t much,” he babbled, desperate to make Roger believe him. “Could hardly get any sulfur, and we had so few men left after the ambush —” he stopped. They wouldn’t know what ambush he was talking about. “Other years, we had about fifty packs, but this year, it was bad.”

Twenty packs of sulfur would still be a huge haul for a band of Appalachies, he realized.

Roger talked with the chief again. They seemed satisfied.

“He thinks you’re telling the truth,” Roger said. “I guess we’ll see.”

Charles, who had been watching Roger’s knife, felt a rush of relief.

“Now,” Roger went on, “he wants to know why your band thinks you can just go marching through our land.”

“Your land?” Charles said. He didn’t know what Roger was talking about. “We never came through this village. We’re just passing through these mountains, way over there.” He waved in the direction of the smugglers.

Roger swept his arm out in a wide circle. “All this land belongs to us. Our forest. Our deer and wild boar. You are trespassing.”

“But … but you can’t just claim all the mountains,” Charles said. “It’s ridiculous. This is wilderness. Empty woods. There’s way more than you need. There are only a few of you, and you move around all the time.”

“This whole woods is our home,” Roger said. “We hunt. These trees are our fields. You barge through here and shoot our animals, never asking.” His words were sharp and loud. “Typical darkskins. You think the world is yours, and you can just take whatever you can reach.” It was strange to hear him speak as if he weren’t an Easton himself, and dark as Charles.

“Your people claim a lot of land along the bay there,” Roger went on, “even though they don’t use all of it. And now they come walking through this forest of ours like they own it, like we’re the ones trespassing on their back woodlot. Some kind of arrogance.”

It was ridiculous, Charles thought, this handful of savages claiming more territory than Easton and Scranton combined, but they were holding weapons and he wasn’t, so he dropped the argument.

“Why did you kidnap me?” he asked instead. “Are you just going to kill me now that you’ve asked me some questions?”

Roger laughed. “Oh no, we didn’t kidnap you to ask you questions. We’re happy to have you give us helpful information, though. Tell me, who is your master? Some weak smuggler who can’t carry his pack, and needs your help?”

Charles stood up straight. “My master is the chief of the band.”

Roger smiled. “Ah, very good!” He turned to the chief and spoke, and smiles spread around the group. Some of the women clapped their hands.

“So, slave to the leader of the band,” Roger said, “he must want you back. We were worried we would have to discard you, since you claim not to be a real smuggler, but as the chief man’s slave, you must be worth some sulfur. If your good friends the smugglers don’t see it that way,” he shrugged, “well, we will just have to discard you after all.” He made a gesture with his finger across his throat. “What do you think, slave, will they trade many packs of sulfur for you?”

Charles was aghast. He couldn’t picture George agreeing to giving up sulfur for this kind of extortion, even if the Appalachies had kidnapped several of the band and not just a slave. A payoff would only encourage the Appalachies to repeat the stunt, and the smugglers would end up arming their enemies. He remembered back in Scranton, when George had made that extra trip despite the danger just to add a couple of packs of sulfur to their haul.

Charles knew how the smugglers would think. Charles had been caught alone in the woods, they would reason, which was the same as death. Whether it meant death then or later was up to the Appalachies, but it wasn’t the smugglers’ problem.

“Ah, of course,” he said. “Yes, many packs of sulfur.”

Roger eyed him. “Hmm. I hope you are right.”

Charles’ mouth was dry. “How … how do you plan to get in touch with the smugglers?” he said. “You can’t just walk in there. They’ll shoot you.”

Roger smiled. “Oh, that will be no problem at all.”

Alone that night in his tent, Charles stoked a small fire in the fire ring. He didn’t need it for safety. The Appalachies had already lit the sentry fires, and he could see the light from the flames flickering on the wall of the tent. But he had slept by a fire for months now, and with his eyes closed and the heat and crackle of the fire next to him, it felt almost like he was back at the smugglers’ camp. Strange, that a place he had hated seemed like home.

Charles wondered where the band was by now. He had been gone more than a day. If they had shot any game at the water hole, they must be drying the meat now and soon would be ready to go on the trail again. He wondered if they even missed him much. Gary probably wouldn’t be all that sad. Marguerite? She seemed to hate him as much as anyone. George would resent the insult of somebody killing his slave. Would he feel anything else?

Charles could not let this be his miserable end, alone out here in the wilderness, his throat slit by a bunch of savages because he wasn’t worth enough of the miserable sulfur he hated. He tried to come up with an alternate plan.

He wondered if he could just live with the Appalachies, although that would mean giving up everything he really enjoyed. His thoughts drifted back now to the library at George’s estate in Trappe. He couldn’t imagine never seeing it again, never reading another book.

The best times in Charles’ life, since George had bought him, had been during the winter when the smugglers stayed home, feet up by a fire while sleet beat on the windows. At George’s estate, house servants took care of most of the menial chores. Charles ran errands for George, delivering letters or memorized messages, and making the kind of discreet purchases a smuggler needed, but didn’t want to make himself because of the risk.

George made use of Charles’ mechanical aptitude, letting him tinker with useful items for the estate like lanterns or crab traps or other gadgets. Charles had come up with an efficient water pump he was particularly proud of, and was also experimenting with making clocks like they had in Easton.

He enjoyed that kind of work, but the evenings were the best, went George allowed Charles free time and he went straight to the library.

Charles read anything, but especially books about math and science, like biology, chemistry and physics. Invention fascinated him. One of his favorite books was “Learn From the Past, and Repeat It,” an old volume by a philosopher and archeologist named Phil, which held out the tantalizing promise of a new world.

George didn’t mind Charles using his library, especially if it made him a happier slave, and he also found it useful to have a person of letters around the house who saved him the money and risk of hiring a scribe.

Charles had daydreamed about working as a scribe for George, after he was free. During the summers, when George was away, he could serve as his estate manager, and have plenty of time to study. Charles had not yet had the nerve to ask about such a job, and now it didn’t seem likely he ever would.

He could argue to the Appalachies that he hated the smugglers, that he would make a useful addition to their band or even a good slave. He hated the idea of groveling, and wished he had the nerve to just die like a man. But he wished even more to live. Even living in the endless forest with nothing to do but hunt would be better than dying.

When savages had captured Roger years ago, somehow he had convinced them not to kill him. Maybe Roger, remembering that, would have sympathy for him now. He would ask Roger in a roundabout way how he had survived, and try to enlist his help.

Failing everything else, Charles would watch for a chance to escape. He tossed around a few ideas, but if he was realistic most of them ended with him pursued by a pack of irate Appalachies who knew the woods better than he did. Even if he somehow evaded the savages, he wouldn’t be able to get back to the smugglers’ camp before dark.

But he may as well die running as standing still.

Charles did not sleep well.

To be continued

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four

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His Dew (O’er Grass): Lessons from the Gullah Isles

By C.Z. HEYWARD

The susurrations of His morning call
reflected in the morn as algid mist

In this ritual I love to watch dragonflies chase sleepless fireflies who wanted to be butterflies

My feet bare, as were hers
I mirrored my grandmother’s steps as we crossed the peacock and teal tapestry

My feet became bathed by Him as He had done for Peter
An asomatous cleansing that started with our soles

I often wonder why they’re called blades?
They should be called feathers
or wings, for my heart takes flight with each crystalized step

At the coup the symphony is predictable yet always delightful
Scratches and pecks

Scratches and pecks

And then I watch dragonflies chase sleepless fireflies who wanted to be butterflies o’er grass

C.Z. Heyward is a native of Harlem, New York, who cherishes his summers spent on the coastal isles of Charleston, South Carolina. His work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals. He has also presented his work at the Nuyorican Cafe in New York City, and the Artlinks Festival in Athens, Greece.

Quote

Intersecting

By KAYLI WREN

a girl washes dishes in place of her mother
frothy soap and sticky water
clean her fingernails as her father sits at the table,
chin propped on one hand

a boy plays with ants
crawling on his knees and pressing down grass blades
clearing a path to help them reach home

sweat beads on a woman’s upper lip
fingernails dig into soft skin
she screams and clenches and pushes
as he brushes back her hair

young people count down from three
they break each other’s hearts
and skip the part where they should
dance to old records
they carve hollow spaces in each other’s chests
leave the matter
lungs and heart and pieces of the diaphragm
back in the car where they said goodbye

lives intersect
people crack each other open and
heal each other again.
people exchange threads
from unravelling balls of yarn they hold,
collecting strands from the people who touch them

the world is getting thicker and fuller of yarn
that grows and overlaps and gets twisted
as we are born and kill and love
as we meet each other’s eyes and breathe each other’s air

when a woman dies,
she will drop her ball of yarn to the floor.
people will feel the slack
and her son will fumble along the ground,
reaching along the rope she isn’t a part of
hands deep in the spider web she made.

the childhood best friend
the neighbor who always smiled at her,
each on her line of connections.
having felt the slack and having followed it,
they will gather around her fallen yarn
and raise it off the floor together.

Kayli Wren is in her senior year of high school in Virginia. She has previously been published in Canvas Literary Journal, Literary Orphans, Quail Bell Magazine, and GirlSense & NonSense. In addition to writing, she enjoys acting in theater productions, knitting, and baking lemon squares.

The Knowledge of the Queen Chapter Two

By Posted in Knowledge of the Queen Leave a comment

By Juan Ersatzman

The Knowledge of the Queen is a serial novel, debuting with chapter one in January 2016 and slated for release chapter by chapter over the coming months.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Both Hiram’s reign and his personal life were marked by flaws of personality, and the influence of senseless tragedy. As is often the case with great tragedies, it began with tremendous optimism.

Taking the crown from his father at the tender age of 24, Hiram made the perfunctory public statements of intent to rule with wisdom, impartiality and benevolence, as he perceived his father and forebears to have done. Indeed, newspaper reports surrounding both the funeral and coronation remark that Hiram was a particularly subdued figure, “notable for the newfound soberness and humility of his bearing.”

He was also commended for his diligent attendance on the widowed queen. The editors of the Embrettiton Chronicle wrote in a glowing editorial that “there was evident in our prince’s carriage, and precisely his compassionate attentions to his bereaved mother a transformation of character which speaks well of his abilities to govern the nation. A good son is a good king.”

The Earl of Maltin, with the tactlessness that was his wont, wrote to a confidant that “The way this louse has pulled himself together, there might be hope, yet.”

The Earl was regarded for his candor, not his prescience. This prediction was characteristically straightforward, and just as characteristically wrong.
               –From A History of Trevendland: Chapter 3, “Hiram I, and the Dissolution of the Monarchy” by E. Kodrave

 

“PUT IT AWAY!”

The second scream broke from Ma Gnowker like a deluge from a dam and shook Marigold from her stupor.

Hivelgott was frozen in front of her, eyes fastened on the glowing amulet in her hand. The amulet itself was smooth, and cool against her fingers. The light of the letters winked up at her. She shuddered.

The moment she moved, Hivelgott came unstuck. He flung himself down among his piles of trash with a happy squeal, and began to thrash, rolling over and through the mountains of his merchandise, kicking his legs and howling.

None of the events of the day thus far had prepared Marigold for a spectacle on this scale. She stumbled back, away from Hivelgott. All around the square, villagers were sitting and standing in dumbfounded silence, knitting needles frozen, cigars dropping from slackened jaws.

They were not staring at Hivelgott.

Marigold’s chest felt tight, and she could hear her own throat gasping for air. The amulet was too wide for her pockets. Marigold pushed past her mother into the vegetable stall. She slipped the amulet into one of the plastic bags Ma Gnowker used for her vegetables. She let go of the amulet, and the lights went out.

Ma Gnowker had stopped screaming, and was now mewing and whimpering, clutching at her daughter’s arm.

Marigold was gripped by a loathing for Valeview with its shrieks, and madmen and popeyed villagers. She thought of her apartment in the city, of tiles under bare feet, of the quiet, cool, darkness of her living room with something like thirst.

She would take the produce she needed for the week and go. She did her best to ignore the stares of the villagers, picking up carrots — turning them over, putting one down and selecting another — and finding a head of cabbage and a cucumber. She slipped them into her bag, and spun it shut without looking up. After eight years of unceasing embarrassment, she had no intention of letting anyone see her humiliation.

The attempt to preserve her dignity proved costly. When she looked up, she found that Hivelgott had staggered to his feet, and was standing before her, a vision of apoplectic malice. His hair jutted out in all directions. His lips were pulled back into a snarl, and his eyes were bulging out.

“SEIZE HER!” he roared, pointing at Marigold.

No one moved. The villagers stared. Marigold speculated bitterly that none of them had blinked nor breathed since the amulet lit up in her hand. Nor had Ma Gnowker ceased to weep and wheedle.

“Ma,” she said, pushing her mother away, “Ma, I need to go, now.”

“SOLDIERS!” screamed Hivelgott, beckoning to the guards at the gate, “Soldiers!”

He turned his gaze around the whole of the square as though unable to believe that no one was rushing to apprehend her. Marigold stepped out the side of the booth.

Hivelgott bent down, plucked a rusty bolt from the sea of his rubbish, and hurled it. Marigold was too stunned to move, and the missile caught her just above her left eye. She fell back against the post of the veranda with stars in her eyes. Her mother screamed again, and so, it seemed to Marigold, did everyone else in the village.

Regaining her balance, Marigold saw Hivelgott rushing at her with a clay pot raised above his head. As he swung it, she stepped sideways, and the pot shattered against the post.

For an instant, Marigold found herself peering straight into Hivelgott’s eyes. They were yellow, and the veins stood out like rivers on a map. His pupils had grown until there was nothing left of his irises — only black pools of nothing. It occurred to Marigold — in much the same way it would have occurred to her that she was out of milk — that he wanted to kill her. Indeed, he was having a go at it, right now.

Her body moved without the volition of her mind. It extended both its hands, grabbed the old man, off balance from his swing, and flung him headlong into the ground in her mother’s vegetable stall.

As Hivelgott crashed down, her body stepped into the alley between the Municipal Music House and the Valeview Carpentry, and ran. As she ran, she heard a sudden swelling of yells behind her, and redoubled her pace.

At the end of the alley she turned right, away from King’s Avenue and the guards. One block down, she cut left toward the carpark, then left again, back in the direction she’d come. She was breathing hard, running through a neighborhood of empty houses and walled gardens in the direction of King’s Avenue when her foot caught on a cobblestone. She fell headlong, crashing down on her elbows and her chin. She scrambled up and tried to run, but wobbled back to her knees. The gash on her forehead was bleeding freely, and blood and sweat were dripping into her eyes. Marigold swiped at her eyes with her free hand, and succeeded only in grinding dust from the street into the paste of blood and sweat. Her eyes were on fire, but she forced herself to her feet, and took two halting steps.

“Marigold!”

From the obscurity of the world, behind the red wall of agony in her eyes, someone was shouting. Marigold staggered toward the voice, and back into the shadows of another alley. She reeled against the wall for a moment, then forced herself on, propping herself up with her left hand.

She could make out sunlight ahead, and guessed that whoever was shouting at her was standing across from the alley. As she approached the street, she saw that someone was standing in the open back door of the Hotchkiss dry goods warehouse, directly across from the alley. The figure raised a hand in warning, and Marigold stopped.

Tears and blinking were beginning to clear the sand and sweat from her eyes, and she could see that it was a young man who had called out to her. He was of medium height, wiry and dark. His was familiar, but not enough to know him.

He was staring down the street, off to his right toward where Marigold assumed her pursuers would be, if her gambit of reversal had succeeded. His jaw twitched.

Then, without turning his head, he beckoned to her.

Marigold darted across the street, and tripped on the threshold of the warehouse. She would’ve sprawled on her face, but the young man caught her shoulders and pulled her upright. He smelled of flowers, and scented oils.

His hands were still on her shoulders. Marigold blinked. The shelves that ran along the walls, lined with bags of seeds and flour were reduced to smudges in the gloom of the warehouse, and she couldn’t make out the face of her rescuer.

“Thank you,” she said, though it sounded more like a gasp. He might’ve nodded, but Marigold couldn’t tell. He was guiding her by her shoulders across the room, past two waist-high stacks of seed bags on wooden pallets, toward the shelves along the eastern wall.

“Behind these,” he said. Marigold crouched down between the stacks. The young man stepped away toward the shelf, and a fresh profusion of blood from her forehead rolled into Marigold’s eyes and set them stinging. She closed her eyes, and felt her heartbeat shaking her whole body.

“Come on,” said the young man, looming up from the shadows, “in here.” Marigold opened her right eye. He had pulled open a small space between bags piled up beneath the bottom shelf along the eastern wall. As best she could, she pulled herself across to shelf, and eased feet-first into the space behind the bags, where she lay down on her back.

“Stay quiet,” said the young man. He pushed the bags back flush with the other stacks and Marigold was swallowed up in darkness.

Marigold lay in the niche beneath the shelves, soaked in sweat and blood, caked with dust and flour stirred up by her and the young man’s movements. The flour caught in her throat, and she fought the urge to cough, until her whole torso was shaking with the effort. But she kept still.

When at last the shaking subsided, Marigold lay still, staring up into the darkness, exhausted.

And the darkness held its peace. For a long while, she heard nothing. Then, after a while, there was a loud, but confused trampling of feet. Marigold lay taut while footsteps clattered around the room, but soon enough, they clattered away. Whoever they were, they were gone. She felt secure enough to take stock of her situation. She was already sore from the unexpected strain, marveling at how far she’d regressed from the lissome, durable farm girl of yesteryear. Although the blood had dried to a paste, the wound on her forehead and the scrapes along the base of her hands still ached.

What did it mean?

In the span of one day — one morning almost­ — she’d gone from dozing on the train to being hidden behind bags of flour by strangers to protect her from — what? Soldiers? A mob? She couldn’t decide which was more improbable.

This much was certain; either soldiers or villagers had come after her, and Hivelgott had set them on her. But why?

That was easy enough; the amulet. Marigold sat up in the dark as far as she could, gingerly raising her head until her hair was brushing the underside of the shelf above her, and slid her hand into the bag. She worked through the carrots and the cucumbers, and found the amulet at the bottom.

As her fingers slid around it, the lines of script glowed out through the bag. The flour still suspended in the air shone in its light. With painstaking care, she slid the amulet out of the bag, and held it up. The amulet bathed the whole niche with its inexplicable luminescence.

The slick-dressed trio from the city, and the slim little man who followed them must have been aware that Hivelgott was running some scheme with the amulets. But who were they, and why resort to subterfuge? Was it illegal to sell imitation amulets? But why would Hivelgott hide the amulets if it weren’t?

This one glowed in her hands — the other two had not glowed in the hands of the customers. Hivelgott hadn’t touched any of them. So was hers real and were the others fake?

That seemed like nonsense — the real amulet would glow in the hands of the rightful king or queen. Not in the hands of an exiled village girl.

Why had Hivelgott handed her the amulet, and then attacked her when it glowed?

It occurred to Marigold that she didn’t even know what the glowing letters said. Hivelgott had called them the “dread words of destiny,” but in her haste to escape, and through the chaos that followed she’d never stopped to read them. She blinked, and squinted into the light.

“Stay quiet, stay calm,” said the letters. She checked to the right, and to the left. The sentence was repeated over and over through the swooping lines of the amulet.

Marigold couldn’t restrain a giggle. The idea that she was hiding from a mob led by a maniac, because of an amulet inscribed with platitudes was too preposterous.

But the mob was real enough, she supposed. The maniac certainly was.

Marigold eased down onto the floor again, folded her hands across the amulet in the center of her sternum, and stared up at the underside of the shelf. Could this ever blow over? How big must a misunderstanding be to change person’s life? Could she crawl back out, return to the market, and show everyone that the amulet was a fake, have a laugh and go back to life?

She thought again of her apartment, and the back of her throat ached.

Marigold wasn’t aware that she was asleep until the sound of the flour bags being pulled away, and a trickle of yellow lamplight falling across her face woke her up. She yawned, blinked, coughed, and squinted into the light. There was a foul taste in her mouth, and her head, shoulders and hips ached as though someone had taken to them with a hammer.

The light, pale as it was, hurt her eyes. An indistinct number of silhouettes were hovering over her hiding place, jostling to get close. Marigold stared at them, unable to grasp their significance.

“Get back,” hissed a voice. “Give her air.”

Marigold recognized the speaker. It was Almira Hotchkiss, barging into view through the wall of silhouettes. Almira set her hip and shoulder against the stack of flour bags, and pushed them further back so Marigold could escape, clicking her tongue at the rest of the company while she did so.

“If you’re going to let her out, let her out.”

Marigold felt the now-familiar weight of stranger’s eyes as she took Almira’s hand and crawled out of the niche and into the warehouse. Almira helped Marigold onto one of the stacks of seed bags she’d hidden between earlier, and took a seat across from her while the rest of the silhouettes pressed in close, and stared at Marigold.

“Water?” Almira asked, holding out a clay mug. It was faded with age, and a chip was missing from one side of the rim. Marigold took the cup and drank a deep draught. The chill of the water spread along her collarbones and down to her stomach, tickling the nerves beneath her skin, and clearing the fog from her mind. She looked around the room.

All of the light came from oil lamps, with wicks trimmed low. Most were set on the shelves, but a man near the door, and the young man who had hidden her, were carrying lamps. Shadows shifted and flickered as the men with the lamps moved through the room. In the shifting light, Marigold could see the water jug and a kettle next to Almira on top of the stack of bags, and a poker leaning against the side. She was a trifle puzzled not to see a fireplace.

“Marigold!”

Her youthful savior — he was about her age, even — shouldered his way into the inner circle. For the second time in the day, Marigold was taken aback by his familiarity.

Almira reached out and caught him by the wrist,

“Give her half a second, Harrison.”
She stared up at him in staunch disapproval. Harrison furrowed his brow, started to speak, then thought better of it and slunk back into the ranks of the shadow-folk. Almira turned to Marigold.

“Made you some soup, if you want,” she said softly, and held out another mug. Marigold set down the water, cupped the mug in both hands and drank the soup straight from it. It was more of a stew than a soup; the carrots and potatoes burned the roof of her mouth, and the broth savored of goat. Marigold couldn’t recall the last time she’d enjoyed a meal so much.

Minutes passed before she spoke again. As she ate, the shadows muttered to one another, and watched her with great care, as though they were taking notes for an exam.

“Thank you,” she said, lowering the mug, “Than you, that was lovely.”

Almira smiled and looked down at her hands.

Marigold surveyed the room again. The shadows made counting heads a guessing game but she estimated that there were fifteen people in the warehouse. Beyond her and Almira they were all men, and mostly villagers. She noticed that Almira’s husband was missing.

Harrison was sulking on the edge of the circle, just beyond Almira. There were two other plains-dwellers with him, and Marigold wondered why they had come. For her? For a silly girl and an imitation amulet?

Shame rose in Marigold’s chest, and she felt nauseous.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, more or less to Almira, but also to the murmuring mass arrayed throughout the room, “at all.”

“You know all you need to know,” said Harrison, unable to hold his peace. He stepped forward and standing next to Almira. His brown eyes glowed in the light of the lamp.

“I promise you, I don’t,” said Marigold. She added, “Thank you for saving me, though.”

Harrison’s face stayed stern.

“You know how badly we need change,” he said.

“Um,” began Marigold, “I —”

“You know the prophecy,” he went on, raising his voice for the benefit of the room.

She didn’t, and wished for an unostentatious way to say so.

“I’m awfully, awfully sorry,” she said, “But I —”

“You know how the backs of the people bend under the weight of corruption,” said Harrison, who was almost shouting, “how the people of the plains and the mountains are sacrificed for the whims and appetites of the wealthy, how the —”

Marigold strove not to broadcast the blank astonishment she felt, and hoped the shadows would hide what she couldn’t. She glanced at Almira, who was staring at her. Marigold shifted her eyes away.

Harrison may have gone on without end, but he was interrupted. There was a muffled crash, and then the door from the dry goods store to the warehouse was flung open with a bang. A stocky white woman with a shock of unevenly-cut grey hair hove into view in the doorway, clutching a wooden staff with ornate designs carved into its head. She was scowling a jowly scowl.

She pointed at Harrison. “You!”

He flinched. She stomped a foot, and glared at him.

“Me?” he asked, recovering himself. “Who are you?”

Now the woman smirked, advancing into the room, shaking her staff at the silhouettes, which scurried out of her path.

“I’m the prophetess,” she announced, “And I’m here to help.”
There was a pause.
“When you say ‘prophetess’ …” said a middle-aged, white farmer — Floyd Witmok — stepping closer, “Do you mean —”

“No,” said the Prophetess, plopping down on the seed bags next to Marigold’s, sending up a cloud of dust. “No, I’m not the woman behind your ridiculous prophecy. Not at all.”

There was a general sigh. The prophetess turned to Marigold.

“Believe me,” she said, puffing out her cheeks, “If I were the woman behind your prophecy, you’d know it. I don’t do these mumbo-jumbo riddle-me-this, wide-open nonsense prophecies. If you say you can predict the future, predict it, dammit!”

She gave her staff a rattle, and the villagers shied away from it. She didn’t seem to notice, but began to cast her beady eyes around the room.

“So,” she asked, “Who’s the holder of the amulet?”

Almira, unspeaking, pointed to Marigold.

The prophetess smiled, exposing a mouthful of huge, square teeth. “Wonderful!”

“Almira!” exploded Harrison, having once again maintained silence for as long as he could. “What are you doing? We don’t know her! We don’t know who she is, where she’s from, who’s she’s working for —”

The shadows — nervous as they were about the prophetess and her staff — muttered in concurrent disapproval.

The prophetess shrugged. “It’s a question I can’t answer,” she said, “but I’m as trustworthy as anyone here and I’ll prove it soon enough. In the meantime,” her voice dropped to a growl, “I’d invite any of you to try to throw me out.”

She shook the staff, and scanned the room, locking eyes with Harrison until he turned away.

Then the prophetess’s flat face wrinkled into a smile. She leaned into the lamplight
and peered at Marigold.

“What do you know, and what don’t you know?” she asked.

“I don’t know what I don’t know,” said Marigold, feeling befuddled. She peered around the room. Across from the prophetess, Almira and Harrison were staring at her. Beyond them was the shadowy ring of the others were also staring at her, “And I don’t know anything, actually.”

The old woman narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips.

“OK,” she said, slowly, “OK. You live in the city, yes?”

“Yes,” said Marigold.

“You used to live here.”

“Yes.”

“And how did it happen that you went from living here to living in the city?”

“The people chose me. I was a Oneness Student. It’s an integration and diversity program,” said Marigold. “An exchange. They take children from the plains and the mountains to the city for school and training.”

There was a rumble around the room. Marigold stopped.

“Go on,” said the prophetess, “what did they tell you was the point of all that?”

Something fluttered in Marigold’s chest, “To make us a stronger country. It’s — it’s the slogan — ‘Strength as one.’ Combining the people from the plains and the mountains and the city — they — um, it brings us closer as one.”

The prophetess nodded. “Why do you think they choose you?”

Marigold shook her head. She didn’t know why they’d chosen her, but she could remember the day they’d come for her. It was late spring, and she was done with chores early, so she had been out in fields, running barefoot through the sloping meadows. Warm grass rustled against her calves and water from flooded streams thundering downward to the valley froze the soles of her feet. She was just that age when boys and girls begin to feel that there are things they are too old for. She felt a whisper that she was too old to spend the afternoon running through meadows, but it was spring, and she ignored the whisper.

When she straggled home, all muddy feet and ruddy cheeks, she found her mother and father in the kitchen talking to three strange men in suits. Her mother was crying, and her father, still wearing his work boots, caked in mud, was looking around the room like he didn’t recognize it.

Ma Gnowker had swiped a forearm across her eyes, taken a deep breath, and told her daughter that the people needed her. She was to leave with the men, and go to the city. Tonight.

“I don’t know,” Marigold told the prophetess.

There was a murmur of surprise around the room.

“WHAT?” hissed Harrison. Almira turned sharply to face him, and he went silent.

“We took a test,” said Almira, leaning in, “you might not remember. You only took it once. A month from the end of the school year, we took a test with colors and shapes and words and patterns. And they gave us a medical exam.”
Marigold nodded. She had a hazy memory of it.

“That’s why they took you,” said Almira, “That’s always how they choose.”

The prophetess grunted, “They take the best and the brightest from the mountains and the plains to the city, and they turn them into cityfolk. The mountains, the plains and the coast? They lose their leaders. The power, the money, the smarts — it’s all in the city, now.”

She locked eyes with Marigold. “They say it’s about oneness. When was the last time the city sent their best and brightest here?”

Marigold shuddered. Through the ache in her hip and her back, she felt the same hollow feeling that had come over her when she drank the Hotchkiss coffee in the morning.

“When was the last time anything good happened here?” asked Harrison.

“The road,” said Almira, “they repaved the road.”

“Right. Certainly,” said Harrison, leaping at the chance to retake the floor, “The road! Of course. One road.” He turned to Marigold,

“Her husband is gone!” he said, his voice rising, gesticulating at Almira, “Went off to find work, and disappeared. Probably dead. No one no notices, one cares. No one cares!”

Marigold bit back a gasp, and was ashamed. She hadn’t noticed his disappearance.

“Hell,” said Harrison, his voice dropping, “Tad never liked the government, so they probably don’t want to look for him. Better if no one thinks of it. She’s having a baby! In the city, she’d be fawned over by gangs of doctors; she’d be tethered to a thousand machines in a sterilized room. Instead, she’ll have her baby in the bed of her own home, festering in blood and dirt.”

He seemed to be raging at Marigold specifically, and she wasn’t sure why. Because she lived in the city? Because she’d been taken?

“The taxes go up, and up and up. Every year we pay for our children to be kidnapped by the city! We’re getting poorer, we’re getting weaker, and the city takes it all. All we have left is our anger.”

“You’re getting poorer?” asked Marigold, looking around the room.

“Sure!” said Harrison, sweeping onward, “They repaved the road. They repaved the road and built a train. Now they could come and gawk at us like we’re monkeys.”

“That’s — that’s awful,” said Marigold, “I’m sorry. I had no idea — I had no idea that things were so bad —”

“That’s the problem!” interrupted Harrison, “Cityfolk —”

“— but I have no idea what it has to do with me,” finished Marigold, raising her voice and channeling the vocal power of her Gnowker heritage to drown Harrison out. She finished, and the room was still.

“I’m sorry that things are so bad,” she said in the silence. “I truly am. I’m sorry that I didn’t know. But I don’t know what it has to do with me, and what you expect me to do about it.”

The farmers and villagers and day-laborers stared at her. Harrison furrowed his brow, and stared at her. Almira only looked down at her hands, caressing the baby bulge beneath her dress.

The prophetess snorted. “You’re bright,” she said, “Obviously you are. So stop being silly. What do you know?”

Marigold blinked. “I know you think there’s something special about me and the amulet.”

The old woman nodded. “But what you don’t know,” she told Marigold, “is the prophecy. A couple of years back, some whispery nymph slinking around the forest moaning about spirits tossed out out a so-called ‘prophecy’ about how a new monarch would rise unexpectedly from the ruins, clutching some sign of his or her right to the throne, and lead the people to peace, prosperity, and triumph over the city’s regime.”

She turned her beady eyes around the room, and smirked at the would-be revolutionaries.

“These little children believe it,” said the prophetess, gesturing to the watchers.

“You don’t?” asked Marigold, who would have believed a prophecy ten years ago, wouldn’t have ten hours ago, and couldn’t make up her mind, now, “You’re a prophetess.”

“I’m a prophetess,” said the prophetess, “Which doesn’t mean some hussy half-dressed in deer-hide is. The prophecy’s —”

She was cut off by another crash from the dry-goods store, a sound of splintering wood, shattering glass, and seeds and flour cascading onto the floor.

Two of the men — Floyd Witmok and a young plain-dweller — who had been standing in the circle, anxiously listening to the interchange between the prophetess and Marigold sprang for warehouse door, first. As they approached it, there were pops and flashes, and another crash. Witmok spun sideways, and crashed to the ground. More villagers rushed forward.

Marigold turned back. Almira was sitting frozen on her stack of bags, staring straight ahead. Someone in the press of men around the door shouted suddenly “Get down, get down!”

Marigold leaned forward, snatched Almira’s wrists, and dropped down behind the stack of seed-bags, dragging Almira with her. Almira twisted as she fell to protect her abdomen, and landed hard on her hip.

Above them, the prophetess stood up, and produced from beneath her robe a revolver resembling in form and size a cannon better than it did a handgun.

“COME ON YOU BASTARDS!” she bellowed, pointing it in the direction of the hubbub at the door and setting off the gun.

There was a sound like the end of the world, and an accompanying flash of approximately equal magnitude. The prophetess staggered back from the recoil. Over the ringing in her ears, Marigold heard screams, bangs and clattering from the direction of the door.

The assembled would-be revolutionaries had remembered themselves, and were surging either bravely toward the contested doorway from which the pops, flashes and sounds of dispute were coming, or somewhat less bravely toward the freight door at the back.

Marigold glanced in the direction of the fighting. The men in the room were crowded around the door, but trying not to stand in the line of the gunfire. They had stopped jostling for a moment to stare at the prophetess and her enormous gun.
“DON’T STARE!” boomed the old woman, cocking the pistol, “FIGHT!”

She fired again, but Marigold had no idea what she was aiming at — there was no one visible in the doorway. The blast blinded Marigold.

Behind her, the freight door rattled open and cold air swirled into the room, accompanied by shouts and screams. The group that had surged to the back door now came surging back to the middle of the room, driven before a wave of black-clad figures that had come rushing in out of the darkness making efficient use of sticks and cudgels.
“Oho!” howled the prophetess, “Another country heard from. Come on! Come on! Come and get yours!”

She wheeled to face them with another ear-popping report from the gun.

Marigold fumbled in the shadows between the stacked up seed bags until found Almira’s hand and the bag containing the amulet. But Almira shook off her hand, struggled onto her knees, and picked up the poker she had leaned against the stack of bags. She looked at Marigold, and tilted her head toward the back door. Marigold nodded.

The prophetess’ pistol went off yet again behind the girls as they stumbled to their feet. Everywhere around them was flickering pandemonium. Everyone who — less than a minute before — had been staring at Marigold in silence as she protested that she didn’t know what they wanted from her — had been stricken down, or driven toward the center of the room, where they grappled with assailants in dark knots of writhing limbs and heads. Near the back door, an oil lamp had shattered on the floor, and sooty flames were licking at the underside of the shelf.

Marigold picked up the water jug with her free hand, glanced again at Almira, and darted out from between the bags, making for the back door. As she ran through the chaos in the warehouse, one of the black- clad invaders wrenched free from the villager he was fighting, and snatched at her.

Marigold twisted away, staggering off-balance, and Almira — one step behind Marigold, brought down the poker on the man’s head with a clang.

He reeled just long enough for Marigold to swing the water jug, catching him in the head and knocking him back. Water from the jug splashed across Marigold’s shirt.

Marigold and Almira charged through the melee for the back door, hearts pounding, striking out with the jar and poker in desperation and fear. They careened through the oil fire, and broke clear of the building.

It was cold, and the air hurt their throats as they gasped for breath. The moon was almost full, and Marigold could see every detail of the street etched out in sharp relief. There was a sentry at each end of the block, and what appeared to be a child’s body, lying at the foot of the warehouse wall, thirty feet to the right of the door.

Almira gasped, “NELL!” ran to the little heap of a person. Marigold went stumbling after her, unsteady on her legs. Almira knelt down, hiccupping and gasping.

Standing behind her, Marigold’s head swirled. Both sentries had seen them, and both were coming toward them at a run. Prompted by Almira’s scream, both sentries were coming toward them at a run. People were scrambling and falling out of the door behind them, some still fighting, others fleeing into the night. Flames were licking up the doorframe, and the shouts from inside had taken on a desperate tone.

“Nell!” repeated Almira, turning the girl over, and staring at her face.

Blood was still oozing from a long wound that ran along the side of Nell’s head, and a small pool of had collected on the cobblestones beneath her. Almira drew a sharp breath.

“Almira,” said Marigold, as evenly as she was able, “Almira, the sentries.”

Almira slapped at Nell’s face. “Nell! Nell, wake up!”

The first sentry was on top of them. Almira made an attempt to stand, and strike him with the poker. It was a late response, and too slow. She flailed at the man, but he stepped sideways around her swing and lashed out with his cudgel.

The swing hit Almira in the side of her head, just behind her temple. The blow was glancing, but it was enough. She fell, dropping the poker and rolling on the ground.

While his arm was still extended, Marigold drove her jug into his face. He stepped back, stunned. Marigold gritted her teeth and swung the jar upwards as hard as she could into his chin. The jar cracked in half, and fell away, and the man sagged downward.

Marigold flung the remains of the water jug aside and turned back to face the warehouse door. Without moving her eyes from the mob, she stooped, and picked up the poker. She smelled smoke, and her mouth was full of the taste of blood. She could feel the pulse in every inch of her body.

The skirmish at the back door was over. Three villagers were splayed out in the street at the feet of two tall figures enveloped in black. They turned toward Marigold.

“Come on,” she said.

They came, steady and businesslike, sweeping aside her pitiful swing with the poker, and wrapping iron arms around her, pinning hers to her side. Before Marigold could process or respond to this development, a squat, robed figure plunged out of the fiery warehouse and barreled up the street.

“Let her go,” roared the prophetess, arriving with a flourish. She fetched the man on the right an almighty blow to the temple with the butt of her gun, then spinning the weapon in her hand, placed the muzzle to the ear of the other attacker.

“Let her go,” she repeated, “Or I’ll speckle the wall with bits of your brain.”
The man — still steady and businesslike, released Marigold and backed away with his hands in the air. She tumbled down to her knees, gasping. Beside her on the ground, Almira was moving, pressing a hand to her head and moaning.

The prophetess had turned to face the crowd spilling out of the burning warehouse,

“NO ONE MAKES A MOVE,” she admonished them, brandishing the pistol, “OR YOU DIE WHERE YOU STAND.”

The crowd paused. They were unenthusiastic about the prospect of running toward the prophetess’s revolver.

“Hmm,” said the prophetess, turning to Marigold, “We’re going to have to run.”

“But Almira,” said Marigold, “Harrison.”

“They’ll be alright,” said the prophetess, “We need to get gone before the boys with guns get out here.”

Marigold gaped at her.

“Go,” moaned Almira, who had raised herself into a seated position and was staring at the flames consuming her family’s warehouse. “Go,” she repeated.

Marigold nodded, picked up the vegetable bag, and they went, inching into the shadows of the nearest alley while the prophetess covered the crowd with her pistol.

As soon as they were in the alley, as Marigold had that afternoon, they ran.

This time, though, there was no attempt at misdirection, just flight. They pounded through streets and alleys, headed south. In the distance behind them, Marigold heard a spattering of gunfire. Lights blinked on in the houses they passed.

They crashed into the scrubby wall of brush that divided the town from the carpark, and turned west along its length. They scrambled along the thick center of the fencerow, panting and casting glances up at the moon and back toward the town.

They heard no sound of pursuit, and saw no sign of danger. After an eternity of running, when Marigold was more tired and sore than she could ever remember being, they reached the border of the woods that lay to the west of the town. The prophetess, wheezing and coughing, led Marigold under the shadows of the trees. In the shadows, they proceeded more slowly, but did not stop until they were well into the trees, out of sight from the wood’s edge.

“Well,” said the prophetess, sinking down on to the forest floor with a groan, “That was not what I expected.”

Marigold said nothing. Her clothes were drenched with melted frost, and she could not feel her feet. Her lungs ached, and the wound on her forehead had opened again. Warm blood was running down her face and neck.

“Aren’t you a prophetess?” she asked at last, roused from silence by curiosity.

The prophetess shrugged, “Sometimes you see the beginning and the end — or at least you see the end — but not what’s in between. I don’t decide what I see.”

“Do you know what comes next?” asked Marigold.

“Sure don’t,” said the prophetess, and sighed, “We’re still in between.”

Marigold sighed, as well. “Between what and what?”

The prophetess said nothing.

“Between what and what?” asked Marigold again.

“Hard to see,” said the prophetess, “Harder to say.” She gave her staff a little shake, and the beads rattled.

“I don’t think prophecy’ll help us tonight,” said the prophetess sadly, “Sometimes, you just have to figure it out. Sometimes, even that doesn’t work.”

She gazed into the darkness for a moment, lost in thought, then shook her head, “Still, figuring it out’s worth a try.”

The prophetess leaned back against the trunk of the nearest tree. “Let’s start with what we do know,” she said. “What did all those overgrown children in that seed-store believe about you?”

“I told you,” said Marigold, “I don’t know.”

She said it harshly, and hoped it would end the conversation. She was too cold, and miserable to be polite.

“No,” the prophetess was undaunted, “I think you do. You told me that they thought there was something special about you and the amulet.”

“Oh,” said Marigold, “Yeah, yes. Apparently.”

“Well.” Said the prophetess, “What is it?”

Marigold found she had no ready reply. She stared into the shadows of the woods, at the bright pools of moonlight dappling the blackness. Her tongue was thick, and her throat was dry. It was cold.

“What is it?” repeated the prophetess.

Marigold swallowed.

“What. Is. It?” asked the prophetess, rising to her knees, and fixing her eyes on Marigold, “say it.”

“They think I’m the queen?” asked Marigold.

The prophetess leaned back and chuckled, “Seems they do.”

“But I’m not,” said Marigold, “I’m not — this amulet’s a fake.” But saying it brought no relief, and she heard in her own voice a telltale lack of conviction.

“Is it?” asked the prophetess. She leaned forward, “May I?”

“Of course,” said Marigold, and reached into the bag. The lettuce and cucumbers were bruised and oozing cold, sticky liquid over everything. She grimaced, dug to the bottom, and lifted out the amulet. The words glowed golden in her hand, and lit up the face of the prophetess, staring at it.

The prophetess took it. As soon as it left Marigold’s hand, the light inside the disc went out. The prophetess laughed,

“Sure, it’s a fake,” she said. “Give me your hand.”

Marigold held out her hand, the prophetess placed the amulet in her hand again, and the lines glimmered to life.

“Doesn’t seem it’s a fake,” said the prophetess. “Does it?”

“I don’t understand,” insisted Marigold, who didn’t. She blinked. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes.

The prophetess looked at Marigold and held her gaze, her tiny black eyes boring into Marigold’s.

“By now,” she said, “I think you do. Not the in-between, but you understand the end.”

“How do you mean?” said Marigold, shivering.

“Maybe you don’t know why, or how it came to be this way, or what will happen next, but we both know now that the amulet’s not fake,” said the prophetess. “And it won’t lie. I think we both know what that means.”

Marigold’s hand tightened on the amulet. She felt a shiver pulsing through her core.

The prophetess studied her face for a moment, and sighed. “I don’t want to say it,” she said. “I don’t want to ask it, even. I don’t want to think about what comes next.” She exhaled slowly, and deeply. “But it has to be asked.”

“Marigold, are you the rightful queen?”

Marigold’s eyes spilled over. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. Her pulse raged in the wound from Hivelgott, and the many bruises, and scratches on her aching frame. Her whole body shook.

And then the tremors died away, and her eyes were dry. She was cold, and clear, and calm, and Marigold said, “Yes.”