If there are such things as demons, they would have such faces. Blazing eyes, jagged mouths, the scarlet light of hell itself pouring from within!
Morgana waved us back and the lines of earth creatures moved forward, down the slope, to meet head on with the sea creatures. Overhead the clouds boiled, like the two gods from remote antiquity watched as their servants tore each other apart. Chaos burst out on the slope as the conflict began. As for me and my companions, we were caught up in that lunatic affray, rushing down on the sea things, possessed by I don’t know what, certainly a kind of ancient madness. I felt it coursing through my veins as I shrieked with the utter joy of it. We used our blades, spurred on by Morgana, who had become like some fantastic elemental warrior, clothed in the storm-glow. I heard a deep, gurgling sound, the combined voice of the sea creatures, calling out the name of their god, indecipherable yet somehow unnerving. Morgana’s curses crashed against the sound like those ragged waves below, equally as potent.
Somewhere deep within me, something stirred, a memory of life long gone, a primeval striving, a power as dreadful as anything the sea had disgorged. It fed on Morgana’s words, on the vivid light in her blade and our combined mental resistance. Our god had a name, and it formed in the air like a blast of anger.
The dreadful contest, the mangling of bodies on either side, the tearing apart of sea thing and pumpkin monster, ensued in a sudden grotesque silence, other than the shriek of the wind and the continuing blasts of thunder and crackle of lightning. It must have gone on for an hour, although we fought in a timeless vacuum. In the end I sagged down, exhausted, expecting to be swamped, but the world had gone still.
Morgana stood over me, her mask removed. Her face looked almost human. She gripped my shoulder, her hand and arm slick with the mess of battle. “They’re beaten,” she said.
I staggered to my feet and looked down at the beach. Through the littered dead sea things and the smashed remains of many pumpkin creatures, I saw the last of the enemy slinking back to the water. A wave unrolled like a boiling carpet and embraced them, dragging them beyond sight. My companions had all survived, though they were spent, their arms like lead, their bodies coated in the muck of battle. Each of us shook our heads, not quite able to credit what we’d been through.
Morgana raised her blade and kissed the runes. “It will be a long time before they come again. When dawn comes, all traces of these horrors will have been swept clean. Your people will remember Halloween and its storm, but no more than that. What lies out in the deeps will subside and lick its wounds. The Old Magic endures. And preserves.”
Inheritance
Ann K. Schwader
This part of the country has too many trees. Too many, too close, and even the last of those famous fall colors isn’t helping. Fighting claustrophobia, Zill stares out the window of Thali’s Mercedes.
“So, did my mother tell you why she really wants me here?”
Here. Not home. Zill has learned to be careful with words, which unlike numbers harbor feelings. She is brilliant with numbers. She is not good at feelings. Her father told her this often when she was growing up, especially when he was drunk.
Which was also often. Toward the end, continually.
Thali shrugs, concentrating on the twisting seaside road towards town. “Only that she was sending you a ticket. And that you’d better use it.”
There are breaks in the trees now, but that’s not helping either. All Zill can see through those breaks are waves, gray and opaque in the failing light. She can’t smell them yet, but her memory fills in: slime and fish guts from her father’s last boat, gone from her life for over a decade. There’s another scent underneath, but it doesn’t bear thinking about. Not this time of year.
She drags herself back to the conversation. “Did she tell you it wasn’t round trip?”
Thali keeps her eyes forward. They’ve been friends forever, but she’s a few years older—and her mother and Zill’s are friends, too. Or were.
“Not that it matters,”Zill finally admits. “I owe so much already.”
Inheritance. Another word with feelings. Very complicated feelings, and one Zill’s mother has been using a lot lately. She has some sort of inheritance here, and if coming home is the only way to claim it—
Thali smiles grimly. “I hear you!”
She’s got an MBA, Zill remembers. Those don’t come cheap, though she’s been doing all right since she moved back last year—a few months after her mother went. She’s heading up the Chamber of Commerce, with two businesses of her own.
No wonder she looks so tired. Or at least older than Zill was expecting, when Thali met her at the… Oops.
“I’m really grateful you made time for an airport run. Grad school’s done a number on my social skills.” She hesitates. “Mom was so dead set on me coming, I’m surprised she didn’t pick me up herself.”
“Your mom’s… not getting out much,” says Thali. “Nothing wrong with her, I don’t think, but she doesn’t feel comfortable driving.”
Which does not sound at all like the woman Zill’s been talking to—every week—for these past couple of years. Shrike Harbor may be a classic small pond, but her mother has always made the biggest splash. Committee meetings, school board, library counciclass="underline" you name it, she’s chaired it.
She and her friends have, anyway. Her father used to call them the Seven Pushy Broads.
On a good day.
“Probably just drama.” She shrugs. “Like the damn ticket.”
Mouth tight with grimly suppressed curiosity, Thali turns back to her driving, sliding the Mercedes into the last long stretch. Zill holds out for almost five minutes.
“It’s not like I have much to go back to. That grant I won last year probably won’t be renewed.” Her hands fist in her lap. “My work isn’t going well.”
At the quantum level. Literally.
Physics plus math plus magic—that’s what she’s always called it. And until this fall, the magic still played nice with the math. The physics didn’t twist into broken equations that had nothing to do with the shining patterns she revolved in her mind.
Now her dissertation is going nowhere, and the department’s losing patience. She can still see the answers her advisor wants—from multiple angles at once—but the crude vocabulary of symbols and numbers is failing her.
Every time she almost breaks through, he shoves chalk in her hand and points at the old-school blackboard covering one wall of his office.
“Don’t talk. Calculate.”
Language for him is worse than useless, a tangle of imprecision. Only the purity of formulae will do. And there are no two-dimensional formulae for what happens—or might be made to happen—in the unseen dimensions beyond. The ones she has always sensed like shadows, behind the tedious three or four every idiot learns in school.
Thali’s lip curls. “What a useless piece of—”
“Yeah, but he’s still my advisor.”
Zill’s stomach clenches. How much of that actually came out my mouth? Thali’s always been able to read her, but either she’s gotten scarily better or her own subliminal whining is out of control.