The bearded tech assistant gave a little laugh. “Well,” he said, “If I don’t do this right, you will be in fourteen different places.”

It was the laugh that annoyed me, actually. It wasn’t a laugh that indicated any particular deference or uncertainty. It was a — dare I say it? — yes, chuckle. It was the sort of gentle chuckle that bearded young men tended to give when they were around other bearded young men of the same social status and educational background. It was a chuckle that said we all know what’s going on here, man, and it’s that we’re getting the shaft by fate, so let’s have a beer and let it work itself out.

Only I was not a similarly statused bearded young man. I was August Mowbray, son of Justice Mowbray, who, for all intents and purposes, was the closest thing to fate this assistant would ever touch. And I had, as I mentioned before, fourteen other places to be besides this gymnasium-sized greenhouse full of corn. The entire room smelled like chemicals, modified soil, and, beneath it all, possibly, plants.

“I would laugh,” I said, “But the intricacies of elevator humor escape me.”

“Elevator!” the assistant said. “If this was just an elevator, you’d be out of here and I’d be kicking back, man.”

Using every bit of my personal fortitude, I managed to avoid wincing at the word ‘man.’ “Enlighten me.” My father has an incredible fondness for technology and gadgets and, as County Principal, he was always looking for new ways to implement them in his benevolent rule. As his son, he’s exhorted me to show some interest.

This was me, showing interest.

The bearded tech assistant chuckled again. I could see it, the word, ‘chuckle.’ He said, “This greenhouse is forty-seven miles away from the building you came from. When you got into that ‘elevator’ back in the library, your molecules were dis-assembled, transmitted across the hi-4 wires your dad was so nice to lay out here to Meadville, and then put back together in the same configuration that you like ‘em in. Then the doors opened and you got out to look at some corn.”

I felt violated, and if Mercedes had been around, I would’ve told her so, in an ever-lasting attempt to get a laugh out of her. But the little viper wasn’t here, and I wasn’t about to joke with anyone who referred to me as ‘man,’ so I said, “I feel like there should’ve been a warning label before I attempted that.”

The tech assistant brandished a tool that I thought was called a wrench. Or a socket. I was sure I’d seen some educational and entertaining children’s program at some time in my youth where they’d established the difference, but I couldn’t remember it. “Not normally a problem, you know? Safe as airplanes. Safe as trampolines. Safe as hydro-boarding. Whatever, you know? But it doesn’t like the heat of the greenhouse. And the fan’s not really getting up to speed for some reason. Just let me try —”

He went to town with whatever the hell tool it was he had in his hand. I rolled back around to lean on the wall beside the not-elevator doors, the false sun from the high above illuminated ceiling hot on my face. Corn stretched and stretched in front of me, growing incrementally as I watched. It had already gained a foot since I’d first arrived, and tiny ears were beginning to swell against the stalks. The nearest row of corn swayed as a second, unseen assistant moved on the other side of it. I was meant to return to my father with a report of how the accelerated crops were doing here in Meadville. Why he couldn’t have accomplished the same thing with a Helyo visit was beyond me. Actually, it wasn’t beyond me. August, it’s important that we get out among them. They need to see that I — and after me, you — are just as invested in our collective well-being.

I was invested in our collective well-being. It was just that I could have been invested at the other end of a Helyo visit, nodding into a camera in the corner of my bedroom and then going back to sleep.

“So if your repair efforts are less than stellar, my molecules will be scattered across the County?” I asked.

The assistant strained against a meaty looking washer along the length of one of the metal tubes entering the not-elevator. “No way. Matter likes to stay with matter.”

“Rubin’s Theory,” I said.

“Very good,” the bearded assistant said with genuine approval, and this time it really did take all of my considerable self-control to avoid forcing him to ingest his own facial hair. Out here in Meadville, they didn’t even have the imagination to dream about the education I’d gotten. I’d tutored under Rubin himself for four months.

The bearded assistant shoved up his glasses and peered at me. “So matter stays with matter. If the molecules don’t all get assembled correctly, fast enough, that vacuum of matter-staying-with-matter is a killer, man. The people-mover will keep trying to put you together, but it’ll use what’s around. Last month some dude went through a malfunctioning mover, and it pulled some molecules from the board table he was going to. His whole arm, man. Wood and vinyl and shit. And of course, the desk looked like hell too. They kept finding fingernails places. How tall are you, man?”

I kept looking at him.

“Sir?” he corrected.

But the way he said ‘sir’ was as disagreeable as the way he’d chuckled. He said ‘sir’ like one bearded young man would say it to another, like it was a shared joke. I found nothing funny about ‘sir.’ When I got back to Philly, I was suggesting Meadville get a few more weeks of bad weather to give them time to contemplate their role in the world. It would be more snow, of course. My father preferred snow as punishment. I failed to see the punishment in snow. When I became County Principal, it would be tornadoes and hail.

“Five foot eleven,” I replied.

“Same as me,” the assistant said happily. I smiled thinly at him. Let him think anything about us was remotely similar, if it made him work more efficiently.

The second assistant emerged then — did everyone have beards in Meadville! — holding a forked soil collector by his side. He was a little taller than the first assistant, but he wore the sallow apathy of rural twenty-somethings in just the same way. When he spoke, he had the accent my father had always told my mother to eradicate in her own voice. You’re better than that, Ellen.

“How’s it going, Ben?”

“Oh, it’s nearly there,” said the first assistant. “I just need the, you know, the thing, man.” They both looked at me, and I realized I had been standing without considering my expression for several minutes, which meant I could still feel the shape of boredom and disdain on my mouth. I rubbed my lip.

The second assistant asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, man.”

The second assistant moved to a small, plywood shed that bore more resemblance to a dog house than to a supply shed for a hi-tech growing facility.

“What, pray tell,” I asked, “is a ‘thing’?”

The second assistant emerged with a flat, plastic-looking disk, its surface rippled and molded. A few bright green wires ran around the outside of it. “It’s a Fascia-Protector. It’s just a safe-guard, in case the fan’s not working. You’re going to hold it over your face while you transport. Ben’s going to go with you, to make sure everything’s good on the other end too.”

“You and me, baby,” the first bearded assistant said, punching his fist into my shoulder. My hackles didn’t go down this time.

“You’re sure this will work?” I demanded. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The second assistant handed Ben a second fascia-protector and hit the button to open the people-mover’s doors. We stepped in front of it. Inside, the mirrored doors reflected us: my courtly, proud form, the result of generations of good breeding; and Ben’s slouching, humble one, a man who knew his place in the world. Behind us stretched the corn, the cobs now bursting with ripe kernels.

Ben and I stepped into the people-mover.

“See you later, man,” Ben told the other bearded assistant. He leaned forward to bump knuckles with him. I’d had about enough of the outer County’s customs. I wanted to be back home. “Fascias up.”

As the doors slid shut, we both lifted the fascia-protectors. I saw now that the molding roughly corresponded to the dips of a face: bump out for the nose, chin, eyebrows. In the mirrors, Ben and I looked identical behind the protectors. Around us, the people-mover began to hum as it had before. Before, I’d thought I was traveling up floors or at light speed or — I’m not sure what I’d thought. I thought that I’d been moving as a unit, though, not as a collection of individual molecules. I hadn’t thought I’d been assembled.

The people-mover stopped humming, and the doors slid open, revealing the library of my father’s house.

Ben said, “I think both you and your father are sons-of-bitches, and you’re going down, man.”

I ripped down my protector at the same time that he did. I opened my mouth to snarl a response, but for once, words failed me, not because I wasn’t permitted to use them, but because I couldn’t find them, because my lips weren’t my own.

I had nothing left to say, really, because he wore my face.

__________________
Author’s Note: Our common prompt this week was “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” This story began as a dream and went from there.

image courtesy: jcoterhals

Since, he’s come to rely on me. I sit at his knee on a three-legged stool, my ankles together, hair oiled and braided into as much of a crown as I’ll ever receive, in a plain but finely made dress there’s no question everyone can see. From there I observe his court, and when the king asks what I see, I tell him. For my eleventh birthday he bestowed upon my mother a small retirement cottage outside the city, and my uncle who helped raise me a stipend to open his own clock shop. When I turned fifteen I was granted the title Truth Sayer, and a tiny sapphire and emerald ring with the king’s seal. I’ve always striven to serve His Majesty well, never skimping on the truths I see or sparing anyone. My word has led to executions and revelry, to the king’s fury, consternation, and eternal gratitude.

Tonight will be the last time.

The moon hangs low and orange over the garden. I stare at it, listening to the voices from this afternoon echo in my chamber. Three hundred and seventeen dead, Violet. His priorities are changed. You know this is the truth. You always do. Three hundred and seventeen. Do you have to tell their mothers why they died?

My heart pinches, cutting off the memories. I shudder and stand, taking up the dagger from the windowsill. Its jasper hilt is cold in my palm and slippery. I slide it into my skirt pocket, through the thin slit. There’s a hilt strapped to my thigh, an assassin’s tool.

Bennett waits for me in the hallway, his fine jacket gathering dust for how still he stands. Like a shadow he peels away from the wall and holds out his hand. I ignore it, for the truth is I won’t accept any comfort for what I’m about to do.

We walk silently through the royal corridor. My skin feels expansive, billowing off my body to collect all the sensations around me: thick carpet through my slippers, a warm draft from the sconces, the scent of roasted meat and lavender perfume when we pass the princess’s suite.

A small group of courtiers sits in the round hall outside the king’s bedchamber as always, chosen for the honor by currying the appropriate favors with His Majesty’s staff. Red-suited guards stare at everything, their elegant long axes cradled against their shoulders and ever-ready.

The difference tonight is that I see the same truth on every courtier’s face: death.

It was the king’s niece Amber who began it, three weeks ago when the messenger rode into the courtyard wearing the uniform of her husband’s soldiers and a white armband tied tight to his wrist. All eyes of the court locked onto that signal and knew the general sent to us that the war did not go well.

She sits in a narrow chair with her hands folded in her lap and no pretense of being busy with anything while she holds the king’s dream vigil. I’d read the private letter the general sent her, detailing the facts from the front line. The truth had been in her tears and in the vacant smile my king offered when I told him we were losing.

Each of the five courtiers studies me as I enter, reassuring themselves their conspiracy is safe in my hands. But they all know once I see the truth it’s everything to me. I’ve become my role.

Edden Baxter the court physician keeps his mouth in a flat line, and he wants to say, This is not the only way. Let me do it, Violet. Not because he wishes to save me from it, but because he knows if one of the guards asks me why I’m visiting the king in the middle of the night I’ll tell him. Safer for Edden and Amber if I’m not here. But it must be me.

When I finished reading the general’s private letter it fell out of my numb fingers, fluttering to the rug, and I closed my eyes. A tear fell from each, hitting my cheeks with splashes I imagined were as loud and wide as fireworks.

No, Amber whispered, gripping my shoulders. I didn’t want to be right.

But she was. This was the truth: we were losing our war and the king couldn’t see reason, no matter what I or anyone else said. We were better off without him. With new leadership. They showed me the letter knowing I would not be swayed by my love for the king, or the general. That I would look through the layers and even if it was horrible, even if every breath of mine wanted to scream out against it, I would be loyal to the truth I found.

I am the nation’s safeguard, not the king’s.

Before I step up to the bedroom door, Bennett’s finger whispers against the nape of my neck.

A shiver streaks down my spine and I falter, but only for a moment. A fraction of a moment. I think of his mouth and its constant disapproving frown, of the square set of his shoulders and his constant silence as he does his job. Protecting the truth.

But I keep going, and neither guard challenges me. The one on the left, older and named Horace, flicks his eyes back to Bennett because where I have passage, he does not. I leave everyone behind and enter the king’s bedchamber alone.

The door clicks shut behind me and I’m in the dark but for that gentle blue light that’s the moon pushing through the king’s stained-glass window. Blue and pale green glass are cut together to create the ancient crest of his family. Just as is on my ring. I glance at it, wondering if I’ll be able to wear it in the morning, then make a fist and go to his canopied bed.

There is my king, my handsome Alistair. Who I saw for the first time when I was seven, strutting on the balcony before his people, as naked as a baby. Now he’s old enough to be my father, but with his face slack that’s easy to forget. He grew a beard last year and I touched it lightly, saying, It’s more silver than brown, sire.

Does it make me look older then, Violet?

Definitely. Though no less handsome.

He preened at that, but had his man shave it off the next day.

I perch on the edge of the broad bed. In his sleep he shifts toward me. Hair flops over his forehead and the one hand atop the blanket reaches blindly before settling again. His own signet ring clings to his middle finger, thick as my thumb knuckle, but it fits his hand as if grown there naturally.

My hand hovers over his face, and I imagine putting it to his cheek, stroking under his eye until he wakes so that I can tell him he created a monster in me. That maybe sometimes the truth is the wrong thing to rely on. That there are many kinds of truth. It’s true that he was never the best king. It’s true that the war will end if he dies.

It’s true that is this is wrong.

“What is the most true thing?” I whisper. I’ve never been so naked before.

The king’s eyelashes flicker and as he wakes I reach into the pocket of my skirt for the dagger. Edden said, You’re not strong enough to be sure of hitting his heart. Amber said, Here is a poison. You only must cut his skin.

Bennett said, This will change you, in the loudest voice I’ve ever heard from him.

“Alistair,” I say. “Wake up.”

He blinks hazily. “Violet? What are you doing here?”

I show him the dagger. “I came to kill you.”

Even the air between us freezes when the king stops breathing.

We sit. My blood rushes in my ears, and His Majesty sucks in a fast gulp of air. “And are you going to go through with it?” he asks evenly, as if there’s no fear.

“I don’t know.”

“Do I… deserve to die?” In his voice is the measured tone he uses when asking me for a truth he knows he doesn’t wish to hear.

Because he asked, I know the answer. But I can’t say it, so I shake my head, no.

Fast as a falcon strike, Alistair seizes the dagger from me. He throws it across the room where it clatters against the marble hearth. The king is on his feet, pacing so tightly he might as well go in circles. His nightshirt flaps around his knees and his hair flares messily.

“What should I do, Violet?” he asks.

I could say a hundred things that are all true: You should step down. You should end the war. You should let me go far away, far from you. Bennett will take me. Maybe in the mountains I can find the truth again.

But instead I avert my eyes and only say, “Put on some clothes.”

*************
This month’s common prompt is “The Emperor’s New Clothes”

picture via malias, flickr CC.

It wasn’t that remarkable. In truth, Troy always looked kind of like someone had crowned him with something heavy and now all his thoughts and feelings and vague, unarticulated suspicions were spilling out of his cranium. It was kind of his default expression.

“On your feet, tiger,” I said, clapping my hands like I was Coach Klein, calling the C Team players in from the practice field.

Troy raised his head, but didn’t change expression. “You said that they liked me. You said they’d be fighting over themselves to elect me. That I’d be an automatic.”

The way he looked at me was plaintive and the truth is, I did say that, but the other truth is that I lied. I invented this impossible, shining reality from purely imaginary cloth, and I take full responsibility for that. But honestly? It wasn’t even my story.

The real lie had started—oh, years ago—back when Troy was just a mean, ungainly eighth-grader with a growth-spurt, whose main hobbies were breaking people’s glasses and pinching girls in the halls. But he was good at sports and at knocking people down, and so everyone smiled because no one wanted to invite his wrath by not smiling. If fear is love, then yes, they loved him. Because the truth is, love under duress is complicated, and sometimes a lie is not a lie.

Sometimes, with enough attention and enough cultivation, a lie is just another name for that thing you always wished was true.

*****

Three weeks ago, when I came around the corner of the auxiliary gym and found Troy methodically keying cars in the teachers’ parking lot, I would have told you that there was no hope for him.

That maybe there was a place in the Villain Hall of Fame for those crafty brutes who exhibit an exceptionally creative sadistic streak or a particular genius for psychological torture, but Troy would always be totally and unequivocally a flunky—one of those slow-moving goons who are only there to make the hero look good by comparison. The ones who never even get a name tag.

I stood by the double doors to the gym and watched him. His graffiti was mostly two-word imperatives and childish-but-obscene drawings, but the way he scratched out the shapes and letters was thoughtful and kind of meticulous.

He labored over each line, and it was his very dullness that made me stop and watch. His commitment to mindless destruction spoke of untold possibilities. Call it inspiration.

“Hey,” I said, as he moved along the nearest row of cars, toward Principal Leonard’s Honda.

When he glanced around and saw me standing against the side of the gym, his eyes narrowed to angry slits. “You want to keep your mouth shut about this.”

It was a remarkably inelegant statement, and only made me more determined to try my hand.

“Oh, I’m not going to say anything,” I told him. When I stepped away from the wall and crossed the blacktop to him, his gaze was wary, but not truly concerned. He moved forward to meet me when he should have backed away.

“Why are you doing this, Troy? I mean, what’s the point of vandalizing cars?”

Troy studied the key in his hand, like it might have the answer, then turned, gesturing at the long row of sedans. “They’re all a bunch of tools anyway.”

I could only assume that he meant the teachers, not the cars.

“But what’s the point? So, you defaced some property—so what? It’s not power when no one knows it’s you.”

Which is pretty much the biggest lie of all.

I smiled confidentially and moved closer. “Look, if you really want to stick it to the administration, you need to be a little more sophisticated. I mean, you already have all the necessary resources and you’re not even taking full advantage of them. How come you’re not already in charge of student council? You practically run the school anyway, and everybody loves you.”

Troy’s expression was dully hopeful, and I understood that on some unconscious level, even he could see the falseness in what I was telling him, but sometimes the wish is enough to float you over every obstacle and complication. It can be so much stronger than the lie. “They love me?”

“Of course they do,” I said, and smiled my biggest, brightest smile. “What’s not to love?”

*****

The Brewster presidential campaign was about what you’d expect—short and loud.

If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that Troy Brewster would become deeply obsessed with student government to the point that a school election would dominate his every waking moment—that it would break his heart—I would have denied the very possibility. (Then, quite naturally, I would have dedicated myself to finding a way to make it happen.)

By the time the final assembly rolled around, Troy was in top form, shouting over the other candidates, demanding that people stand up and perform the school football cheer in the middle of the dress-code debate. He was amazing, and I said as much after it was over.

“Troy,” I said with an elation that was wholly unfeigned, “you were incredible! You were magnificent.”

The presidential defeat of Troy Brewster was a strategic masterpiece. An early birthday present to myself. When the votes were tallied and the results were announced, the winners declared, I could almost see the disillusionment rise up inside him and shine bleakly out his eyes.

He watched Ainsely Hammond prance up to the podium with her ponytail swinging and her cheeks radiating pinkness, ready to give her acceptance speech.

The election was a landslide, of course. They always are.

*****

When I came back into the auditorium, Troy was sitting on the edge of the stage, looking like someone had just clipped him with a lacrosse stick.

“On your feet, tiger,” I said, clapping my hands like a washed-up football coach.

“You said they liked me.”

And I nodded, smiling placidly, so reassuring. In his eyes, geometric shards of rage were beginning to crystalize. Longstanding aimlessness made suddenly vengeful. And it was beautiful.

“This is just a speed bump,” I said, smoothing the air with my hands. “A minor setback. It’s just what you need. But now, it’s time to go out there and make it very clear to them who owns this school. And Troy? You’re going to be amazing.”

The lie came out like a silk ribbon, the way I always tell them, bright and good, shimmering with possibility. So real and soft you can almost touch it.

Because sometimes, a lie is not a lie.

Sometimes it’s just the hidden door to what happens next.

Our common prompt for February is the short story The Emperor’s New Clothes .

Photo by laura.bell

Involving these things:

AND…. on Friday there will be a Hilarious Vlog as proof that we did, indeed, work. See you on the flipside!

My brothers were swans, because my step-mother said it was so, and no one disagrees with her, because she has all the money.

“You’ve ruined them,” I cried to her as soon as she had done it. When I said ‘them,’ really, I meant little Philip, the youngest of my seven older brothers. Even though he was a year older than me, I thought of him as my baby brother. He still collected insects from the back yard and chalked funny pictures on the old brick wall around the garden.

My cellophane stepmother had sighed and rolled her eyes from where one mahoghany-haired friend grew from a chair to where another friend in a brocade vest melted into a cushion. She said, “The dramatics are a bit much, aren’t they, Julie? There are worse things than swans.”

They didn’t have to be animals at all, though. They could’ve stayed boys forever. I knew she only preferred them as swans because she didn’t like them as boys, because all she’d ever known was swans, because my father was too dead to stop her. I screamed this at her while tiny lines appeared around the edge of her mouth, and then, the next morning, I ran away to New York. All my brothers flew after me. Julian, the eldest and most swan-like, every line of him an arc, found me crying in the subway on the first evening.

“Poor Julie,” he said, helping me up. He was wearing a tweed vest and looked very dapper with his frame of Broadway posters and graffiti. “This is where homeless people sleep.”

I tried not to sound pitiful, but I did anyway. “I am homeless.”

My second brother, Robert, who is the least swan-like creature you can imagine, panted down the stairs into the subway with a coat in his arms. He placed his hands on his knees and sucked in several long breaths. Julian gave him a long, arced look.

“That took you awhile,” he said.

“Some of us,” panted Robert, “Don’t take so easily to being swans. Here. Here, God, take this thing!”

Still bent over, he waved the coat in my direction. It still had the tag hanging from the wool collar. Julian helped me to put it on as a wild cat of some kind sprang from the subway behind us and up the stairs Robert had just come down. I stared after her. Back in the town that my stepmother owned, most everyone shed their animal skins at the same time. I didn’t yet know that there was no “normal” in New York City.

“You’d have a lot better time of it if you bothered to apply yourself,” Julian told Robert. “I don’t suppose I need to ask you if you kept the receipt. Where’s Teddy?”

Robert was still breathing hard, but now I thought he was making a show of it for Julian. “Doing what you told him to do. Maybe —” and this was with a sly look at me, all the subtlety of a landslide “—there will be bunk beds.”

“Good lord,” Julian said, twitching. “I should hope not. This is not the nineties.”

My brothers and I started up the stairs toward the street. All around us it smelled like a dirty, warm burrow. All sweat and pee and, far away, some sort of food I’d never tried before. It was nothing like what we’d left behind, a place of trees and clay slicked with rain.

Robert started to take the handrail, and then seemed to think better, examining his palm dubiously. “Jules, why New York?”

Because in New York, surely I’d be able to find a way to make my brothers human again.

+ + +

New York was hard for me. It took my hand and demanded to know me when I wasn’t ready to know anything, and even when I said I was done and wanted to be alone, it pranced around and around me. It was overwhelming during the day, when dogs howled from cabs and elephants simpered toward high rises shackled by scaffolding. And it was just as intimidating at night, when all of those animals reverted to human.

“Don’t go out without one of us,” my brother Simon told me. “You’ll get eaten.”

I wanted to find a way to cure my brothers, but I also didn’t want to get eaten, and so I stayed in our new apartment for the first two weeks. Much to Julian’s horror, it did have bunk beds, but only in two of the bedrooms, and since they were sleek, well-bred, Manhattan bunk beds, he couldn’t complain too much. In reality, they were not often filled to capacity, as Junior and Grant seemed to prefer to find other places to rest their heads and Teddy spent more and more hours as a swan. Evenings were punctuated by Julian’s silent arrival with a bag of strange vegetables that was meant to be dinner, Philip’s deliberately catastrophic progress up the stairs, and Robert’s crash landing on the balcony the moment he turned from swan to human.

The beginning of the third week was no different, beginning with the thunder of the fire escape and then Robert’s form appearing in the open door of the balcony. The wicker chair tried to follow him in; he disentangled his leg from the chair before stepping in.

“Good evening, brother,” Julian said, rolling a foreign fruit from his palm to his fingers as an offering. “Skilled, as always.”

“Oh, you know where you can put that.” Robert’s eyes slid from where Grant foreaged in the fridge to where I stood in the doorway to the kitchenette. “Hi, Jules. Get into trouble today?”

“I stayed in.”

Robert winced, stripping off his sweat-spattered t-shirt. “I’d rather be an animal.”

“Simon says I’ll get eaten,” I protested.

Striding across the living room, Grant pressed a cold beer to the small of Robert’s naked back, making him emit a sound not unlike the cries of a swan. Grant replied, “Isn’t that the point?”

“Grant,” Julian said. He was holding a knife, which seemed to make his voice dangerous. Lowering his eyes to the counter, he used the blade to curiously plumb the innards of the fruit. Seeds burst across the marble, red and purple. He observed, “You are looking pale, though, Julie. Maybe take your lunch to the park tomorrow.”

“I need to make this day go away. Give me your beer,” Robert told Grant. As Grant swerved toward him, he yelped, “In my hand, you bastard.”

Julian guided me to the counter and put the knife in my hand. “Now you try.”

I accepted one of the small fruits and scored the skin experimentally. There was no point in doing this unless I could do a better job than Julian. I’d taken note of how the previous one had spattered my brother’s skin and shirt with a fine, beautiful spray, and so when I cut into it, I turned the fruit so that the cut-side was angled toward the cutting board. My cautious slice was rewarded; a perfect triangle of flesh dropped onto the board, a small pool of its own blood slipping from it.

“Oh, well done, Jules!” Robert said, raising his beer to me.

“That’s aptitude, there. I saw a raven working with that much precision yesterday,” Grant said. “Maybe she could —”

Robert, vehement, retorted, “Julia doesn’t need to be anything but Julia.”

Much later, when Julian had gone to bed and Grant had gone out and Philip was playing video games, I sat next to Robert on the well-fed couch as he flicked through the channels. He was probably quite drunk, but it was hard to tell. Robert was slow and amiable and funny when he was sober, and he was slow and amiable and funny when he was drunk, and it was hard to tell when he crossed the line from one to the other.

I curled against his soft shoulder, tucking my bare feet underneath me and resting my chin against his arm. “Is it terrible?” I whispered. I meant being a swan, but I didn’t want to say it.

Robert switched to a station where a young woman was changing into a donkey for the first time. When they interviewed her mother, she said, It’s not what I expected for her but I’m proud of her anyway. Her expression was stripped clean.

He took a drink of beer and said, “It’s hard to see the point, is all.”

+ + +

I took my lunch to the park the next day. I sat on a bench and watched the women who had never been animals push strollers around and men who had trained themselves to become animals at night tossing balls to small children. I knew what Julian had been trying to accomplish by sending me here. There was a warm, drowsy comfort to seeing these people being happy and busy in the middle of the day, co-existing happily with people who were also birds or big cats or reptiles. It was the first time I felt really at home here in New York, eating my sandwich and listening to shrieking children and kicking pigeons away before they could look up my skirt. It was the first time I wondered what Stepmother had been like when she was a young swan.

I was just standing up when something careened into my head; feathers and bones and hair tangled. My mouth was full of bird fluff and talons scratched lightly along my neck. In my shock, I wasn’t delicate; I tore the bird from my hair and and threw it away from myself. A heron, all legs and neck, tumbled over and over in the grass. I touched my neck, feeling the raised skin where the heron’s claw had grazed me and pulling the loosened strands of hair free from my head. My heart was thumping from the surprise, and by the time I thought to go see if the heron was all right, it had managed to climb to its feet, still looking dusty and unkempt. It looked right at me; one eye, and then the other. It reminded me a little of Robert’s clumsy flying. I wondered if this person had been made a heron by an air-tight and powerful step mother.

“I’m going away now,” I told it. I tried not to sound pitiful, but I was sure I did. “I’m sorry I threw you.”

I went back to the apartment, my lunch unfinished, and found a note on the fridge. Julian and the others were staying out late to have a “talk” with Robert. To think it was Philip I’d been so worried about! I spent the rest of the day on Philip’s computer, looking on forums for people unhappy in their animal skins. There was one exchange that stuck with me. The first commentor, prettygirl203, said: it’s not that I mind being an animal, it’s that I mind being an ocicat. The second commentor apollos_limit said: I used to be an ocicat, but I managed to work my way up to jaguar. You just need the right connections! Keep heart!

Just after the sun set, there was a knock on the door. It was the shave-and-a-hair-cut-two-bits knock, which seemed strange, because my brothers would’ve merely unlocked the door if it was them, and I didn’t know anyone well enough to justify a shave-and-a-hair-cut knock. So I warily went to the door. The peep hole provided an egg-shaped portrait of a young man in a very yellow shirt. I kept the chain on the door and opened it an inch.

“No one is here,” I said. It was practically true. I barely counted.

“That seems like an exaggeration,” the young man said. “Did you have lunch in the park today?”

I was so surprised to hear that anyone knew of my whereabouts, much less a stranger, that I slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt before I’d thought it through. Against my ear, the knock came again. Shake-and-a-haircut.

I shouted, “You can’t use that! I don’t know you!”

“YOU THREW ME EARLIER TODAY!”

I undid the deadbolt and opened the door an inch again. “You’re the heron?”

“Not anymore,” he said ruefully.

“Why do you know where I live? Wait, what do you mean ‘not anymore’?”

“I mean I made a terrible heron. I fly like a brick.” He sounded so glum about this that I undid the chain and opened the door all the way. He was shorter than I’d thought, with curly black hair. I thought he looked Italian. I had never seen someone properly Italian before, but I heard there were loads of them in New York.

“Are you Italian?”

“Serbian. Or something. Are you Italian?” He squinted at me.

“No!” I cried. “Do you want a . . . fruit?”

He followed me into the kitchen and allowed me to slice one of Julian’s odd fruits for him. Speaking around a mouthful, he managed, “I’m sorry about your neck. It looks awful.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “It could’ve been my eye.”

He rubbed a juice-sticky hand through his curls and then regarded his hand with consternation. “I know. It’s why I just can’t do something that flies. My father thinks that maybe I can try being a horse or something. I was a horrible alligator. Kept getting my tail shut in bus doors. What are you?”

“A girl!”

“Well, I see that!” he blushed deeply and shoved another piece of fruit into his mouth. “Are you waiting to decide, or what?”

The idea filled me with a warm horror. “I’m not going to be anything but a girl! I’m here to stop my brothers from being swans.”

He stuffed a few more pieces of fruit in his mouth. He seemed to need fruit in his mouth in order to speak. “Oh yeah? What have you done so far?”

The truth, of course, was that I had done nearly nothing. That ordinarily I would have made a lot of noise and fuss and my brothers would’ve sorted something out for themselves at the same time, and it would’ve looked like I’d had a role in it. I said, “Research, mostly.”

“I totally dig research,” he said. “Is that what you were doing in the park? Have you been here long? So they all hate being animals? Like you?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. Because I’d been about to say “yes,” but that wouldn’t have been quite true. Because Julian didn’t seem to mind being a swan. Nor did Grant or even Philip. And I couldn’t even say “yes” that Robert hated being a swan, because the ex-heron-boy had said “like you?” at the end. And I’d never tried it. I hadn’t tried much of anything at all.

“I don’t hate being an animal,” I said. I tried not to sound pitiful, but I was sure that I did.

The boy who’d been a heron felt around the cutting board, but there wasn’t any more of the strange fruit left. We’d eaten it all, down to the last seed. He sighed sadly, reminding me a little of Robert, but then he brightened and said, “You know, though, you’d make a great gazelle.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Anything but a swan.”

Photo by FurLined

Our prompt this month is The Wild Swans

He always wears those A-line shirts as soon as the sun’s out, even in winter, as if he can’t stand to have a sleeve hiding his skin. Or he just wants to show off that physique. (Nobody complains unless they’re jealous anyway.) I definitely don’t complain. He sits in front of me in Pre-Calc, and even though the dress code forces another layer onto him I can stare at the back of his neck, where the first thin black feather peeks out from his collar. When I know the answer to the problems on the white board, I let myself fantasize about skimming my finger right there, and up into his hairline where I know the short hairs will tickle him. I’d put my tongue against that feather and Rory Cahill would say my name.

Nobody knows why he got it. I mean, one wing? He’d fly in circles.

He’s been asked before. By friends and enemies, in homeroom and in the quad, and memorably, during the pep rally against Newan High, Sandy Redford the head cheerleader asked right into the spotty microphone: “The question of the day isn’t whether we’ll defeat the Bighorns, or even by how much! The question is why does Rory Cahill have a one wing?”

Everybody laughed and cheered, and his buddies prodded Rory from where the basketball team stood in a line, across the gym floor to Sandy. She shoved the microphone under his mouth, (nearly gagging him I thought), and he said, “So I don’t have a disqualifying advantage over the other team.”

He was everybody’s favorite after that. We’re all shallow in the 11th grade.

His girlfriend Chaz wore these hoop earrings, with a tiny sterling silver feather dangling off the left one, and never walked on his right side as if it was this huge deal to block his wing. They broke up on a Tuesday afternoon when she couldn’t get him to answer some question. It had to do with his older brothers, and I only know that much because she yelled it louder and louder, getting the whole cafeteria’s attention. He just stared up from the plastic chair as she screamed. But his mouth stayed shut. She leaned down and scratched his forearm with her lacquered nails, leaving a long red line behind.

Rory didn’t come to school the next day or the next, and when we saw him on Friday there was no sign of the cut.

***

A rumor started up that Rory’d go out with anybody who told him why he had a wing for an arm.

Molly called me to break the news while I scrubbed burned marinara off the bottom of a pot, and I dropped it into the sink so hard Mom yelled “Don’t chip my new porcelain!” but I was nearly too full of hilarity to hear.

We threw around ideas, the worst of which was to identify his body in the event of face-altering nerve gas, the best of which was that he was under a curse. “At night,” I whispered, “he transforms into a swan with one human arm.”

***

No kidding, at lunch he sat with Tyler and Erik Quinn under the walnut tree where no girls would sit because the walnut husks stain anything, and Martha Coolidge, Brita Thomson, and Cherry Seeler all made passes. Martha pretended to drop apple right there and talked with him for two minutes before he smiled and she practically ran away. Brita was better, in that she actually has History with him and asked for notes before making her guess. Cherry just marched up, planted her hands on her diminutive waist, and said, “Because you like being the center of attention, obviously.”

Her voice was harsh, but she said it with that little knowing hip cock, like openly acknowledging their mutual narcissism was in any way flirtatious.

Rory only told her that the attention was a welcome side-effect.

***

Eleven people made guesses over the next week, one of which was in fact that he got the tattoo for body-identification purposes. That made him laugh, until the 10th grader who asked said, “Does that at least get me bonus points?” and then Rory choked. He pulled a paperback out of his bag and proceeded to totally ignore her and everybody else (including Tyler and Erik) for the rest of lunch.

Four minutes before Pre-Calc started that day, Almund Brady paused by Rory’s desk.

“Oh, my god, Nut, seriously?” said Molly from two desks over. If she hadn’t said anything Rory might not have looked up from his book. He put a finger between the pages and tilted back to look at Almund. (Giving me a better view of that one little feather I wanted to kiss.)

After a short pause, Rory shrugged. Okay, sure, why the hell not?

Almund wiped back his floppy hair and smiled that famous smile. “Because you’re stuck on the ground.”

Rory stared for a moment, and I almost expected that Almund was right and Rory was gonna have to decide if his pride was bigger than his straight. But just as the bell rang, he shook his head. “I wish,” he said and Almund slunk to his desk, the picture of dejection.

I wondered if kissing that feather would be worth making a guess.

***

Molly spent the night on Friday. We put in Bleach and drank Nati Light I found under my brother’s bed, and spent three hours with fine-tipped blue markers, drawing designs on each other’s skin. She wanted tight, choking vines to wrap around her arms and fingers, with tiny thorns and loads of petals. I stripped off my shirt and unhooked my bra, then spread out with my stomach against the floor and told her to give me wings. The pen tickled against my spine, against my shoulder blades, and I imagined it hurting like a needle, imagined the burn. I fell asleep half-naked in the pillows next to her, and dreamed about turning into a bird. A wide-winged egret or swan. Something long and graceful.

***

Saturday, I ran into Rory (literally) in the alley between Rotter’s Books N’Music and the drug store. I had a roast beef sandwich in hand that Eddie from the snack counter in the drug store made special for Dad, with Worcestershire sauce, and was balancing my soda precariously as I dug for my keys. Rory had the entire paperback series of The Chronicles of Amber tucked under his non-wing arm.

My soda erupted between us when our shoulders collided. It splashed across his A-line, soaking through and sticking it to his chest, and spilled down my face and neck, turning the curls of hair into wet black snakes. I dropped my mouth open and dropped Dad’s sandwich, too, hands flicking at my sides. Rory froze, and so there we were, inches apart, and my chin level with the brown soda-stain.

It made him smell like syrup, of course, and I was hungry. So when I tilted my head up to apologize, I couldn’t remember the words for I’m sorry.

I just pushed up on my tip-toes and kissed him. I grabbed his face, sliding my fingers into his hair, and kissed with all my strength. Any second he’d shove me away and it would be over.

The shock of my life was that he kissed me back.

His wing slid around my ribs, fingers flattening on my spine. He pulled me closer. The books in his other arm cut against my chest. I fluttered my fingers down his neck, until I found the edge of his shirt and then I held onto him. As he squeezed me, as he pulled me higher on my toes, I opened my mouth and thought, this is who I am without knowing what I meant.

***

My heels hit the asphalt and my heart beat like a laugh. Rory moved his stack of fantasies to both hands, between us. Raise shield, evasive maneuvers. He said, tentatively, “Joy?”

I swiped at my sticky hair. (Did he know it was my name, or was he just having a good time?)

Rory gripped his books.

There wasn’t anything I wanted to say, and if I didn’t leave I was just going to kiss him again. I looked down at Dad’s sandwich bag, decided it was trash, and spun.

The paperbacks slapped onto the ground, in a hollow sort of clatter, and he caught me around the elbow. “Wait.”

I did, and he stepped behind me.

He touched my neck, and I thought he is going to kiss me there but instead his finger swiped under the collar of my tee shirt and tugged it down.

My wings! I clapped my hands onto my mouth and stood rigid, caught between horror and hilarity. I wanted to call Molly right then, even while his hand was still on my back, and whisper what was happening.

“It’s smearing,” he said. Calmly. Like he was concerned and not pissed.

That’s why the first words I ever said to Rory Cahill were, “So much for permanent marker.”

“Why draw wings?”

I twisted my head to look at him incredulously, and he released my collar but left his hand there, just barely breathing against my skin. So many words tumbled through my head. I’ll tell you if you tell me. To remind me I can fly. Because your feathers are h-a-w-t. It felt good. I want a pair of my own, so I don’t fly in circles.

Instead I said, “Why not?”

He laughed. “Good answer.”

“I learned from the best.”

“If I guess it right can I kiss you again?”

“No.” It was out of my mouth before I could swallow it back. I didn’t want a game. I didn’t want guesses and flirting and walnut stains on my shoes.

But he surprised me, like I must have surprised him.

Rory Cahill didn’t say another word, but kissed me, and opened his mouth, and I thought, this is who he is.

**********

image by The G via Flickr CC.

It won’t sputter or smolder. When the blaze finally comes, it will be a conflagration. I’ll explode into flame like a dynamite crate, blackened paper and broken boards going everywhere. One of these days, the weight of the feathers and the silk will be too much. My bones will break like matchsticks, splintering, striking sparks off the edges of my cold steel core.

Two times since rehearsals started, the footlights have gone out during the Pas de trois. Back in November, it was raining all the time. The breakers kept shorting, crackling out in a shower of sparks. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but someone had to answer for it. The new director told the stage crew that if it happened again, heads would roll. We could hear her through the door of her office, screaming into her phone. The pitch of her voice was inhumane, and directors are all crazy. They’re supposed to be temperamental, dramatic. This is different. When Madame de Sevigne raises her voice, it’s like a struck bell that won’t stop ringing. You can almost hear the frequency of her stiff, violent rage, buzzing under her skin.

Three of the corps dancers quit in one week, less than a month into the season. The ones who stayed called it insane, leaving the best company in the state, but those three were done with it and even their little-girl dreams of being pretty ballerinas weren’t strong enough to keep them here in the glowering presence of the Madame. They gathered up their lace and ribbons and disappeared, leaving nothing but a few loose hairpins and sequins, a few scattered feathers.

Four is the count, the steady rhythm repeating on the floor. It’s the plodding song of the metronome. We bend and grow to it, stretching and swaying—up, down, over. We fold and crouch, silent. Low. They treat me like their queen, but that’s a lie. It’s Madame who reigns over us. We are all prostrate before her.

Five nights a week, the company rehearses. And spends those rehearsals wishing it was one of our days off. I’m the girl who never murmurs or complains. The others take my silence as indifference. They make assumptions that I’m cutthroat and hungry. That I take all the good things for myself, but that’s only an illusion. I’m just as caught, as tangled-up as the rest of them.

Six times, the Madame has made an example of someone, calling them to stand apart and take their punishment. Six times, I’ve stood silently in the crowd and wished that it was me. Sometimes, if you have to watch, the humiliation is too much. It’s better to bow your head and take the blame. If you can just save all the scorn and the reproach for yourself, sometimes it means that everyone else is spared.

Seven is the number of pounds that Marianne Porter has to lose if she wants to keep her spot. When Madam de Sevigne told her that, in front of everyone, the rest of the swans turned and angled their faces to the floor while I stood apart, with my back straight and my head up. Marianne didn’t argue or protest. She stared greedily at me, the body that Madame holds sacred. The one they’re all supposed to covet, aspire to and emulate. Later, I found Marianne alone in the dressing room, drawing X’s on her stomach and thighs with a marker. I could see her spine through the taut, uncomplaining veil of her skin.

Eight is when we stop for the evening, if the Madame is pleased and the rehearsal goes well and the stars align. We never stop at eight.

Nine is the number of circles Madame draws in her black choreography notebook before turning the page. I’ve seen her backstage, or else sitting stiffly behind the desk in her office, drawing her vicious little circles, making her little notes. She doesn’t glance up or look around, lost in the magic of her book. I think it’s where she keeps our souls.

Ten is the number of toes I have. It’s an ordinary number, but every night, I wonder. I slide them out of my pointe shoes, and it always seems for a moment that the shank and the toe box have molded them together like the gnarled feet of a bird. The other dancers gasp and wince. They cry noiseless tears until the ache stops and the numbness creeps back in. They bend their heads to hide the pain, until their whole bodies look pale and distorted, like fairytale creatures. I think that she’s bewitched them into swans but left me half a princess—a feathered girl made of skin, muscle, bone.

Eleven is when we stop for the evening, since we never stop at eight. The lights flick out and the music trails off. Everything has to stop sometime.

Twelve o’clock is soft and full of shadows. The building is empty, echoing. Still.

The only one left now is Madame, sitting grimly behind her desk.

She didn’t take my voice. My silence is legendary, but she’s not the reason I don’t speak. The other dancers stare around, craven and wide-eyed like she’s fixed their mouths, filled them up with feathers.

My own voice is still right where it belongs.

The door is cracked, and when I push my way into the office, she doesn’t look surprised. When she asks what I want, I tell her that the corps is frightened of her, that more might leave if she doesn’t start using some compassion, or at least some tact.

“Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” she says. “I appreciate your input, but really, the state of the corps is not your concern. If you’d like something to worry over, you ought to be thinking about your arabesques.”

She says is briskly, like the words are prerecorded, before going back to her nasty little book, listing of our flaws and weaknesses and our faults, recipes for destruction. All the perfect, constant circles.

Alone in the hall, I understand that my visit hasn’t made a difference. I didn’t expect it to.

The swans are useless, mute, and I can’t make them into real girls. They might wish for protection, for rescue, but they don’t love me. They’d burn me like a witch if they could, and maybe the secret to being the best is that you don’t mind too much when your feet hurt or other people want to burn you.

The cavernous space behind the stage is cluttered, all ropes and wires and dangling sandbags. There’s ancient wood paneling peeling up from the floor, water dripping from places the maintenance crew were supposed to patch. I wind my way through the boxes and the pulleys, carrying one of the feathered skirts from the dressing room. The feathers are scratchy and coarse against my arms, much coarser than they look.

This is the one elemental truth of a swan princess. The truth of Madame.

Without ceremony, I toss the skirt over the rickety fuse box, and trip the breaker.

Photo by Skye Suicide

Our prompt this month is The Wild Swans

In short, we win!

But it’s December, which means hiatus time. While you suffer through the holidays (I mean, of course, have a wonderful solstice), here are our top stories from 2011:

********************************************************
BRENNA:

“Dead Ringer v. 1″
At first it was little things—how he always wore the watch I’d given him, even though it left a raw spot on his wrist and he’d never worn one before. More…

“Cuts Both Ways”
I hate Baz Crandall. More…

********************************************************
TESSA:

“Three True Things”
For my entire life, Mom and Dad insisted they did not believe in the Piercy family curse. More…

“Mask of Petals, Mask of Thorns”
Every night before we retire, he gently takes my hand, leans in, and stops a breath away from me. “Will you kiss me with your eyes open, Beauty?” he asks. More…

********************************************************
MAGGIE:

“Hel”
It’s hard not to feel bad for the prisoners, but I guess that’s because I don’t know what they did to get in here. More…

“Deep Subject”
On Tuesday, we discovered the dragon in the well. More…

And when we return in January… we’ll be starting the Epic Countdown To The End. That’s right, May 2012 will be 4 years exactly that Merry Fates has been around, and just before our Not-Anthology comes out with Carolrhoda Lab at the end of the summer, we’re gonna go out with a bang!

January, February, March, and April, we’re going to write our stories to a common prompt, and end each month with a contest. Then in May, we will have the grandmother of all epic contest giveaways as we ask you to help us celebrate all the fun and stress and awesome creating this website has brought us.

Sere stared down at her, but Andoria held her gaze; revealing fear was just an invitation.

“Name,” Sere’s assistant said.

“Andoria Ioke,”

“Age?”

“Eleven.”

“Underage for mind consent alone,” he murmured.  “Will you submit to a mindlink?”  His voice was brisk and impersonal.  Just another girl in just another village.  Something about it irritated her.

“Do I have a choice?” she asked.

His lips tightened.  Sere held up her hand before he responded.  “Yes.  You do.”  She kneeled, looking at Andoria eye to eye.  “Do you know what a mind link is?”

“Where you get to hear my thoughts?”

“Something like that.  If you consent, our minds will be connected to each other, and I can see anything inside your head that I want.  But you can explore my mind, too.  I’m only looking for one thing so I will be fast.”

Andoria nodded.  “Will it hurt?”

“No.”  She did not sound like other adults, the lie hovering around the edge of their voices.  She sounded like she was telling the truth.  “Only if you want to.”

“All right.  I consent.”

She heard Sere’s unspoken question, a whisper in her mind, again asking permission to enter.  She wondered why Sere was asking a second time before remembering that she was too young for mind consent.  Andoria granted the mindlink.  A white light rushed at her, blotting out all else, and was gone as fast as it came.  She was in a foyer with three doorways.   She tried to peer into one, but could see nothing more without stepping forward.  She looked down at the floor; she was standing on a densely woven carpet of thin threads.  The bright light burst again.  Blinking, Andoria saw the bakery.  Her stomach lurched.

Sere nodded at her assistant who walked over to Andoria’s parents.  Whatever he said made her mother sigh, a small cloud expelled into the air.  She glared at Andoria who looked away.  The sweet steam from the bakery drifted away in the wind.  No reward, no matter what she or her father may say.

After everyone else dispersed, Sere dismissed her assistant.  She turned to Andoria, bowed, and gestured to the bakery.  With her parents following, they crossed the empty street.  Andoria held the bakery door open for Sere who stepped over the threshold, nodding.  Her father came behind her and pushed the door open wider.

“Ladies first,” he said and kissed the top of her head.

Andoria hurried inside the warmth.  Late-risers were lingering over their cups.  Through the back door, Andoria saw a dairyman’s cow waiting on a lead while the baker’s wife ordered the daily buckets of milk.  Behind the counter, the baker looped a towel around his hand and pulled cakes out of an oven.  Sere tossed three coppers on the counter and handed her a mug of honeyed milk and a small cake.  Not just one reward, but two, and they were given so easily.  Simpler than magic.

They found a table near the window, and Andoria climbed into her seat.  She picked up the mug and let the scent tempt her.

“I came here to –”  Sere began.

“If you aren’t gonna drink it, put it down,” Andoria’s mother said.

Andoria let the mug rest on the table until Sere started again and her mother’s eyes wandered away.

“I’ve been going from village to village seeking girls who have untapped talent, who have been overlooked –”

“Andi,” her mother warned.  Then, she looked at Sere, as if trying to share her exasperation.  Sere remained unmoved.  Andoria was beginning to like this woman.

Andoria took a long sip, the sweet milk coating her tongue before she put the mug down again.  She tore off a piece of cake and popped it in her mouth.  She watched snow glide on breezes past the window instead of listening to the conversation about Dastari law.  She wanted to ask about the foyer she had seen during the mindlink, but it was all adult talk.  The entire room had been made of threads.  Or something that looked like threads.  But they had an intermittent patterning and an iridescent quality, almost like a spider’s web.

Her mother’s hardened voice broke her thoughts, and Andoria’s stomach clenched.

“You are allowed to take her?”  Her mother said.

“It’s always been this way,” Sere said.

“But only for mages, only for boys.”

“For girls, too, now.”

“Since you became Royal Magus?” said her father, glaring at Sere.

“Skillful spinning is not limited to men.  And your daughter has spinners.  She is a mage.  If she cannot weave, you’ll have her back,” Sere said.

Sere handed Andoria’s father a scroll and a heavy purse.  After reading the scroll, he put it down and looked at Andoria, desperation in his face.  A chill ran though her.  He would wear that same expression when he woke her late tonight, a candle the only light.  He would not beg or demand as he used to.  He no longer needed to say anything.  Tonight, his breath would be the only sound.

“You can have a few hours together before we leave,” said Sere.

“No, she isn’t leaving.  She is staying with me,” he said.

“You don’t have a choice, do you?” her mother said.  She was regarding him, eyebrow raised.

His features twisted with rage.  He grabbed Andoria’s wrist, hauling her off the chair.  Her feet found the floor before the chair flipped over.  She clawed at his fingers, but he gripped her wrist tighter.

“Let her go,” her mother shouted.  She stood up, wrenched Andoria from his grip, and then shoved her away.  Andoria stumbled, using the chair’s leg to catch her balance.  “Let her go.  You can’t keep her.”  Her father reached for Andoria again, but her mother stepped in front of him and placed a palm on his chest. “Just us again.  No one interfering.”

The bakery was silent, and Andoria felt everyone looking at them.  He pushed aside her mother to look at Andoria.  Her mother’s gaze followed, tears clumping her eyelashes.  Sere extended her hand to Andoria.  She was not sure she could leave.  She had never been outside her village.  She rubbed her wrist, and then took Sere’s hand.  They walked out into the quiet and snow, the silence broken only by the bakery door when it swung to.

Before midday she began her journey with Sere, straddling a horse for the first time and watching her village slip from sight.  The trip was longer than Andoria expected, running three days.  It rained the entire time.  The cold drops burrowed through Andoria’s thin clothing and into her skin, cleansing her of a mother’s insults and a father’s intimacy.  Her mother’s strident tones, her father’s ragged breaths, and all Andoria had become dripped off her.  She could remake herself.  Maybe she could even be as clean as Sere.

When Andoria arrived in Ethea, she passed through the protective city walls and into a world of bustle and energy.  Men and women and like hurried past her, pushing carts or dragging children behind them.  A temple stretched up to the bright morning sky.  And when Sere’s warm hand wrapped around hers, guiding her down from the horse, she was sure she’d been purified.  She even smelled like a newborn.

*********
Thanks, Swati!

Swati is the author of SPLIT. Visit her at her website: www.swatiavasthi.com