Two and Twenty Dark Tales (16 page)

A million questions all scramble for placement at the front of mouth. “Why am I here?”

Her croak of a laugh sends shudders down my spine. “I can’t say, actually. It’s a first. Somehow, he must have brought you back with him when his mission was over.”

Her answer is unsatisfying, but there are too many other questions that need asking. “So all those accidents; they’ve been you. Why?”

“I’d like to tell you I’m hungry, but bored is more like it.” Amemit’s rancid breath seeps down my neck as she circles me. “Besides, your friends are tasty.”

“You monster!” I scream. My outrage is just as much for the torture she’s been putting me through as for the souls she’s devoured. Making me watch her ill-gotten meals. “I’m leaving. Let me out. Now.”

“Here’s the thing,” Amemit taunts. “The doors to my chamber only open when you bring me a soul, but you’re in here. Sort of a catch-22, wouldn’t you say?”

The wind rushes from my lungs. I can almost hear Amemit telepathically grinding the word “checkmate” into my brain. In a last grasp at hope, I turn to Kyle, who I’d left in forgotten silence once Amemit entered.

“Kyle, is she telling the truth? You need to tell me if there’s another way out.”

“Why? So you can run away and let her eat me again?”

Sweat trickles down my temples as panic sets in. I’m trapped in a dark cell with an evil goddess and some zombie boy who apparently hates me.

I’ve heard about adrenaline before, but I can’t say I’ve ever really felt it until right now. Lowering my shoulder like Andy does in football practice, I charge Amenit, hoping to throw her off balance long enough to find a way to escape. If she rolls back on her fat hippo butt, I’m sure I’ll get the head start I need. My shoulder connects with her abdomen, but it’s me who crashes backward, tripping over Kyle’s legs and skidding across the stone floor.

Then Amemit is on me, pinning me beneath her lion claws. “Was that your attempt at an escape?” Her teeth click just above my ear. “I’d tell you to try harder next time, but there won’t be a next time for you.”

No matter how hard I kick and thrash, I can’t shift her off. Her tongue, rough as sandpaper, flicks out of her mouth and licks my cheek.

Disgust and outrage well up into a scream that feels like it could tear out my very soul.

Her teeth, far too blunt and thick but backed by incredible force, rip into my throat, silencing my scream. I gurgle back blood as my body shudders, involuntarily thrashing against the pain of her attack.

Quickly slipping out of consciousness, there’s just one thought now, circling my brain: Andy’s admonition from earlier that night.

I won’t let her do this to me. I’m Hathor.

***

My eyelids are crusted shut with snow. I try to pry them open, but my fingers are so numb and swollen, they barely function. I realize I can’t feel my cheek either, or the side of my neck, and I have the sudden image of being a fish laid out on ice at the market. My skin must look blue and dead like scales by now. Although I have no idea when “now” is, or how long I’ve been packed in my snowy display case.

My brain tells me I have to move. Get up and get help. Find warmth. But my muscles aren’t responding. I try to push myself up, but my hands just slip deeper into the crusty slush until my fingertips jam into the frozen ground. Hardly any air is reaching my lungs, and I suddenly realize my neck is probably flayed open. I have no idea how I made it out of Amemit’s den, other than sheer force of will, but it’s too late. And at this point, I don’t even care.

I’ve never been so cold in all of my life and I silently pray to hear the sound of Beth’s cello, calling to me in the distance. I’m ready to let this body go and find warmth in the afterlife. I can no longer stand the exquisite torture of the cold.

I’ll follow your music, Beth. Play for me.

The only sound I hear is the crunch of icy snow as my boot struggles uselessly against it, searching for a foothold I’ll never find. The best I can do is flip onto my back, get my exposed skin off the ground. Above me, the night sky winks. Stars spin and dance and draw closer. Or maybe it’s me that’s moving? Yes, I’m floating now, heading toward the stars. My arms spin slowly, like pinwheels in a lazy breeze, but there’s nothing to latch onto.

I close my eyes and let myself float. It feels so much better than the cold. I’m sure that if I could turn and look, I’d see my body back on the ground. It was just a vessel for this life, but I miss it more than I should. I wonder what I’ll look like next time around.

And if I’ll get the cosmic power shaft again.

But even as I think the thought, my bitterness over it is gone.

I close my eyes as the stars grow brighter and the ground dims and it’s almost like an invisible lasso is pulling me toward the Milky Way.

When I think of the Milky Way, something clicks. Some legend—or perhaps it was truth— about the Milky Way being milk spilled from Hathor’s udders. My udders. And in the legend, I feel a connection. A celestial bond with the stars, and I realize I’ve accepted my role as Hathor. Accepted her power and love, and I can feel all of her other roles flowing into me, too. I wish I’d felt these things earlier—the urge to dance, the feeling of joy.

My soul stretches like the souls of the departed do once judgment is over. My new fingers feel longer than I remember. Thick, black hair hangs in perfect straight-iron form around my shoulders. And my head pulses with a terrible ache just above my temples. It’s then I realize I’m sprouting horns. There are freaking cow horns growing out of my scalp!

I reach up, running my long, new fingers over the spikes, and feel a metal disk sharing space between them. My brain is racing, even though my ascent has slowed to a crawl. Something familiar tugs at the corner of my mind. Something about the sun.

And then I know: the circle between my horns is the sun-disk. I’ve fully transformed back into Hathor as the ancients knew her. Knew me. As I’m allowing my aching head to relax, cradled by the weightlessness of space, the faintest of sounds weave their chords around my heart. I tilt my head, straining to listen. The notes grow more distinct now that I’m focusing: a song I’d never mistake anywhere.

Beth is playing for me.

Her death lullaby confirms what I already know: my time with the El Bay family is over. I can almost picture my human shell laid out in a satin-lined coffin. Beth would be clutching her cello to her chest, while Andy chuckles as he recalls some long-ago antic of mine from when we were kids.

It was a beautiful life—crappy job, unexplained goddess role, and all.

Turning my new body to Earth, I pass over the moon. Bathed in its reflective glow and awash in soft light and peace, it feels good to be back to being me.

– The End –

The Lion and the Unicorn: Part the First

Nancy Holder

The Lion and the Unicorn

Were fighting for the crown;

The Lion beat the Unicorn

All about the town.

Some gave them white bread

And some gave them brown;

Some gave them plum cake

And drummed them out of town!

– Mother Goose

London, 1603

S
USANA
trembled in the darkness, one hand gripping the flickering torch, the other balancing a goblet of wine and a single slice of plain brown bread on a silver tray. She was to take it to the King, to break his fast. He would partake only after his ghastly work was done.

Screams rose from below the winding staircase, echoing against the stone, and pummeled Susana’s heart, and her soul. She would have given a year of her life for permission to refuse her task.

She was sixteen, nearly a woman grown, but she was dressed to pass as a page in trousers and fine hose, and a brown velvet doublet so rich that whenever her hand brushed against it, she caught her breath. She wore a jeweled dagger on her belt, a warning that she would cut any man down who would dare to attack her master.

She jerked as another scream shot up from the hell beneath her feet, spilling wine on the stair. In the firelight it looked like blood.

Above her, thunder rumbled. The air was sodden. Like a wet woolen cloak draped about her shoulders, her duty weighed heavy and hard to bear. Not for the world did she wish to go down to that hellish place.

Six months before, King James I, the Unicorn, had come to London town. Susana had thought he would bring happy fortune to his united kingdoms. But it seemed that in the never-ending battle against the Devil, war had been declared upon England.

Queen Elizabeth—Good Queen Bess, the cub of Henry VIII, the Lion of England—was dead but half a year. She had reigned for forty-four years, good years. But the last months of her reign had been troubled. Her Majesty’s ailing mind had not been clear—her orders bewildering, her commands impossible to fulfill. Plots and schemes grew like fungus as rivals vied for her throne. There was talk of civil war.

Then God had roused her from her confusion long enough to name her nephew, King James of Scotland—as her successor. England was saved from violence and strife.

In haste, the royal coat of arms—two English lions—had been redesigned so that the English Lion and the Scottish Unicorn together reared proudly. King James’s new arms had been carried before him on a beautiful July day as he had entered London town for the first time. Rising on tiptoe in a cacophony of drumbeats, trumpets, and cheers, Susana had hoped to glimpse his royal presence as he headed for the church to be crowned. Surrounded by a glittering retinue of courtiers and soldiers, the king himself had ridden a fantastic warhorse, and his armor had gleamed as if it were made of gold. Sunbeams had poured down on his head, making a circle that shimmered like a halo. And so the people said, “God’s blessings are upon James.”

“Long live the king!” she had cried so loudly that others around her had chuckled, then taken up the cheer.

Then on that day, in that moment, someone had tapped Susana on the shoulder. She’d glanced left and right. But all eyes had been on the king, and as she’d looked back at King James, the tapping seemed to be coming from
inside
her.

Inside her
heart.

And a voice that whispered deep within her mind,
Fear not.

Susana had caught her breath. That was the greeting angels uttered when they approached mere mortals. But an angel wouldn’t speak to
her
. She was just a girl, and a commoner. Just a laundress.

Fear not
, the voice repeated.

As if it were already happening, Susana had seen herself dressed in male clothing. A goblet was in her hands and she was lifting it up to King James. His face was glowing, his smile saintly.

Then the image had faded, and she’d been back in the street. And at that very moment, King James had turned his head and seemed to look straight at her, that same blessed smile on his face.

She had caught her breath and staggered backwards. God Himself wanted her to serve this king. God
Himself
.

***

Fear not
, an angel had told Susana, but she had been afraid. She had cut her hair and stolen nobleman’s clothing from the laundry—a hanging offense. She had taken the name “Robin Fletcher,” and asked to be seen by the chamberlain for a position in the palace. Her answers were pleasing, her manner respectful, and she had been brought into the happy circle of the king’s company, to personally serve the king his food.

She had brought him plum pudding and wine at the very meeting where he had informed his new privy council that a great war was being waged against the person of the king. Good Queen Bess had spared England by naming him her successor, but he had become a target of evil. Great numbers of witches in Scotland had confessed that they and their sister witches in England cursed him night and day. They hexed him and plotted his doom. They didn’t want a man—much less a pious, God-fearing man—upon the throne. They did not want a woman, either.

They wanted Satan to rule their lands.

The king knew much about the matters of good and evil. He had written a book on the subject, called
Daemonologie
. He knew how to detect the presence of witchcraft, and how to make the guilty confess. In no time at all, scores of accused Englishwomen—and a few men too, had been flung into dungeons, tortured, convicted. Susana had been shocked by the filth of the cells, and the brutality of the tortures, but more astonished to see just how many Brides of Satan polluted the land.

Like the evil harridan now down below, alone with the king.

“I am afraid,” Susana whispered aloud to the angel she had not sensed since that day at the procession. “Please, can you make me not so fearful?”

But the tapping and the voice were silent, as they had been ever since the king’s triumphal march into London. And over time, Susana had begun to suspect that she had imagined the vision. In the heat of the day and the excitement, perhaps she had had a sort of mad fit.

Now, stepping off the stairs onto the mossy, stony floor, she heard the screaming and pleading—the denials—and she bit back a wave of nausea. As she began the dreary walk down the dank corridor that led to the torture chamber, the accused witch shrieked that she was guilty, through and through. Eagerly guilty. Susana reeled at the revolting secrets the old woman revealed in a tumble of half-intelligible words to the king. Yes, she was a witch; and yes, she had consorted with Satan in all manner of unspeakable ways; and yes and yes again, she was glad the truth was finally out. The witch knew this was her only chance at redemption, and she would kiss the king’s boots in gratitude, if only he would untie her from the rack… and if her arms and legs could be put back in their sockets.

“You are the king. Please heal me,” the old witch said, weeping. Her words slurred together. She had had very few teeth at the beginning of the questioning. Susana supposed she had fewer, if any, now.

“You
are
healed. God Himself has done so,” the king replied graciously.