#where are the teenagers with blue hair and belt chains supposed to hang out

[the-kneesbees]

the death of shopping malls in favor of strip malls is devastating

[malikmata]

Notes from a Brown Boy - Kansas Diaries

*Author’s Note: Some people’s names have been changed to protect their identities

The rain was the first thing to greet me when I landed in Wichita. Overhead the gray clouds loomed, shadowing the farmland that yawned in the distance. Distance. At first glance, the city seemed like one long stretch of prairies and cracked parking lots, occasionally punctuated by billboards of grinning injury lawyers and lit up restaurant road signs.

If you spend enough time here amid the crumbling old buildings, watching the weeds sway in the vacant lots, you’ll feel the slow, inevitable creep of dread or something like it.

It’s easy to feel lonely here.

But, if you’re receptive enough, you’ll run into many friendly folks. Sometimes too friendly.

For example: During my first week, I went to Freddy’s, a local fast food chain, and ordered a crispy chicken sandwich with fries. The cashier, a young woman with glasses and short blonde hair, suddenly started confessing her fear that her 8-year old chihuahua wouldn’t live a long life.

“I still think of him as a teenager,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “He’s a chihuahua. They live long lives.”

Out here, in the most middle-of-the-road cities, you sometimes get a chance to show an act of passing kindness. While waiting in line at one of the hip, new cafes downtown, a place called Milkfloat, a tall elderly gentleman recommended which coffee and pastry to get.

“My wife says this place has the best cold brew in town.” Afterwards, grabbing his pastry and coffee, he wished me a good day. Most folks here always do and you better hope it comes true. Because here, like elsewhere, a day is filled with ordinary heartbreaks.

I will simply call her “Tita.” She works as a tailor at a department store, the only tailor working there, hemming and tapering racks full of suit pants under fluorescent lights. The nature of the job requires exact measurements and a keen eye for detail. She works hard, often skips lunch, and comes home dead tired. Her husband is recovering from 4 broken ribs after a car repair job went awry. Nothing can be done but wait until he gets better.

They live in a languid suburb on Wichita’s east side, a street with few sidewalks but plenty of lawn.

And noise. Plenty of noise. The neighborhood sits next to a car dealership. The skies overhead rumble continuously with airplanes and thunderstorms. Dogs bark at anyone who gets too close. A pickup truck blasts a corny country song as the cicadas and frogs belt out their lonely mating calls. Occasionally, a child’s laughter rises above it all.

Gossip is one of the great pastimes in towns like these. Even if you shut yourself up in your home, stories trickle in.

The neighbor across the street shot himself in the head.

The elderly couple that used to live next door got committed to a nursing home.

A fellow around the corner is on his third attempt to grow weed.

A college student starves himself morning to night so that he can save money for college.

Down the street, a kid lifts weights and punches the heavy bag hanging on his front porch.

Here, dumb luck seems, more so than in the big cities, the providence of God.

A man told me he got a job installing new carpets at a friend’s house. He was in desperate need of money, having sent most of it to his mother back home, who proceeded to gamble it away. When he ripped out the old carpet, he found a bundle of $10,000 dollars just lying there. His co-worker said, “We should split it.”

“No, no, we can’t take it.” the man said. He gave the money to his friend.

Sometime later, he went to the casino and couldn’t stop winning jackpot after jackpot. He brought home close to $16,000 in one night.

“So, if you do something good,” he told me, “God will remember that.”

Many people have come to live and die here, all of them wrapped up in the melancholic churning of faded ambitions and familial obligations.

Some people here have found something that returns them to the placidity they once felt in their youth. Sometimes that’s enough to keep them going.

For example:

I met Phil Uhlik, the namesake of the music store on E Douglas. He heard me playing an old Martin acoustic in one of the rooms. He shuffled in slightly hunched over, wearing a blue paisley shirt and brown shorts. He looked at the sunburst guitar in my hands and said, “It’s got a little beauty mark there.” He pointed to a small nick just above the sound hole. “All girls have beauty marks.” He pointed to his cheeks and smiled.

Uhlik started this music store 51 years ago and enjoys every moment of it.

“When you go to work for Boeing, that’s work,” he said. “But this, it doesn’t feel like work.” He motioned to the instruments all around him.

“How’d you get started?” I asked.

“I started off playing one of these,” he said, taking one of the accordions off a nearby shelf. As he strapped it on, all the years seemed to disappear. With a big crooked-teeth grin, he breathed life into the old accordion, his hands dancing up and down the keys. The smile never left his face as we bid farewell to each other.

I wish everyone in this world were as lucky as Phil.

I’m always seeking indie bookstores when I travel. Eighth Day Books provides much needed shelter from the summer heat. The shop was built 33 years ago and used to be located about half a mile east, in Clifton Square Village. About 17 years ago they moved to their current location, a 1920 Dutch-style colonial house on the corner of E Douglas and N Erie. Its blue trimmed windows peek through the foliage of neighboring trees.

When you walk in, you’ll see shelves of books on Christianity and Theological studies, most notably in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I’ve never seen a bookshop with a section dedicated to Iconography.

Wichita, despite its size, feels like a small place. And with that cramped spaciousness, you’re likely to run into someone you may remember or who may remember you. Here I ran into my girlfriend’s 8th grade English teacher. A bald, bespectacled man with a gentle demeanor. After a bit of catching up, he said to us with a smile, “I hope all your dreams come true.”

The short story writer, Raymond Carver, once wrote: “Dreams… are what you wake up from.”

Wichita is a land that hypnotizes you; it makes you dream, dream of something beyond the miles of strip malls and airplane factories, beyond the shocks of wheat and windswept plains, beyond the doldrums and ennui. But it also shakes you awake, reminds you that you’re in it, that you better stop dreaming.

I’m not the religious sort anymore, having survived the regime laid down by my Catholic parents. But there is something enthralling, maybe even inspirational, when I look at the rows of beautifully painted portraits of saints and martyrs. Such solemn faces surrounded by golden halos. According to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, such paintings transcend art; they’re supposed to be windows through which you can glimpse the divine. They remind me of my grandparents with their judging eyes and moral seriousness.

My book haul for the day:

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata

The Diary of Anne Frank

Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries by Marina Tsvetaeva

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

In that last book, I found this lovely little passage:

…”in the Revolution, as always, the weight of everyday life falls on women: previously--in sheaves, now in sacks. Everyday life is a sack with holes. And you carry it anyway.”

From Earthly Signs, P. 40

According to the 2019 United States census bureau, 15.9% of Wichita's population lives below the poverty line. That’s higher than the state average, which hovers around 11.4%. That’s not the lowest nor is it the highest in the country. As befitting its location, Kansas is right in the middle.

The minimum wage in Kansas is still $7.25 despite efforts to increase it to $15. When Covid-19 hit, city and service workers bore the brunt of the impact. You can keep all your empty slogans like  “We Love Our Frontline Workers.” Congratulate me all you want for my hard work but where’s my pay?

When you see that business here has returned to normal--people freely walking around without masks, no longer socially distancing--it still feels all too strange; we spent an entire year under lockdown. There’s still a pandemic by the way.

Loved ones fell ill, died alone, hooked up to ventilators in closed off hospital rooms. I believe every interaction now carries the weight of all those deaths. My family, like so many others, didn’t escape unscathed from the pandemic. My grandpa, Amang, caught Covid. Since he was an elderly citizen (and suffering from emphysema to boot), he was among those considered most at risk. We all feared the worst. Somehow he survived. The doctors called him a “trailblazer.”

Now, with businesses back to 100% capacity, I’m afraid that, just like the 1918 Flu epidemic, the past will fade like a nightmare upon waking. But it was so much more than that; it was an avoidable tragedy.

If you want to know what this pandemic has done to people and their livelihoods, is still doing to them, take a ride through downtown.

Things were already going bad before Covid hit. Back in 2004, the writer Thomas Frank wrote,

“There were so many closed shops in Wichita… that you could drive for blocks without ever leaving their empty parking lots, running parallel to the city streets past the shut-down sporting goods stores and toy stores and farm implement stores.”

What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, P. 75

What led to all this blight? Frank attributes the decline to:

“the conservatives’ beloved free market capitalism, a system that, at its most unrestrained, has little use for smalltown merchants or the agricultural system that supported the small towns in the first place.”

-P. 79

The same story happens in a lot of places. A megacorporation keeps eating everything around it and leaves nothing else at the table.

The people are left hurting, a pit in their stomachs, and some asshole somewhere profits off of it.

While at the DMV, I overheard this:

“You have a good day now,” the security guard said.

“I’ll try my best,” a woman said.

My girlfriend heard them too and laughed.

“You really do have to try your best in order to have a good day here.”

At some point, we hit the town with a couple friends: Monica, and her boyfriend Will. Both are musicians trying to carve out their niche in a place that, on the surface, seems apathetic to creative pursuits.

It’s impossible to not be captured by their energy. As soon as we walk into their house, Monica, with her dark blonde hair draped over her shoulders, reached in for a hug. Will, a tall and bearded fellow with a bear-like presence, also went in for the hug.

“Ready to experience some Wichita nightlife?” Monica asked.

What is the nightlife here like? A group of high school punks wanted to fight us over a couple movie theater seats. Bored kids play rounds of “Chinese Fire Drill” at stop lights. I heard a nazi biker gang rolled into town at some point during my stay. Regular things like that.

At a low-key bar downtown called Luckys, I met a guy named Cory. He told me how he met a 15 year old kid loitering here, looking lost and forlorn.

“I don’t know what kind of advice I can give you but I’ll do the best I can,” Cory said.

This is the spirit I’ve often come across during my stay: A sort of slightly intrusive compassion. For a cynical Californian like me, the behavior seems a little strange, maybe even a little annoying. But I’ve come to appreciate the candor of it.

“Guaranteed we’ll know half the people here,” Will said.

Right away, he shook hands with the bartender—a high school friend of his—and asked him how his band was doing. Afterwards, we sat down and talked. Talking, after a year of pandemic lockdown, has become a lost art to me. But a little alcohol loosened the lips and suddenly I talked as though I’d known these people my whole life.

Will sipped his whisky on the rocks and told me:

“If everything in this world is meant to break down eventually, then any act of creation becomes an act of defiance.”

It may sound naive but to me, it’s true. I think about the words of the writer, John Berger:

Compassion defies the laws of necessity. To forget yourself and identify with a stranger has a power that defies the supposed natural order of things.

--The Shape of a Pocket, P. 179

Making art has to be, in some way, a compassion act, because it involves letting the environment and the people you meet speak for themselves, allowing a collaboration.

“When a painting is lifeless it is the result of the painter not having the nerve to get close enough for a collaboration to start… Every authentic painting demonstrates a collaboration.”

--The Shape of a Pocket, P. 16

You need to open yourself up, feel what someone is saying behind their words, and hopefully, feel what they feel.

Art, like Compassion, is defiant.

Among the 4 or so Asian markets here, you can find all the ingredients you need to cook up something good. During my first week, I stopped at a place called Grace Market. Like a lot of small Asian markets, it’s family run. A father from Taiwan. A mother from Korea. The son usually helps out when he can. Today (June 23), On this warm Wednesday morning, the son is manning the cash register.

“You’re from California? I’m from there too,” he said.

“Where at?” I asked.

“Sacramento. How about you? So Cal?”

“Nah, Bay Area.”

“Funny. That’s where my parents met.”

“Small world.”

On a different day, we met the father, a jovial man who never fails to say hi when you walk in. He came here over a couple decades ago from California, doing work for the US Army in Garden City. Once his service was over, he decided to stay in Kansas.

“I think you know why,” he said.

More and more young folks these days are leaving California. The high cost of living is presumably what’s driving this exodus. I told him I was also thinking of leaving the Golden State, as much as I love the place.

“Well, a town like this has a lot of potential if you want to save money,” he said. “If I tried to start this business in California, I don’t think I could’ve done it.”

The summer heat can, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, give way to thunderous storms. Speaking as someone from California, whose home has gone through excruciating periods of drought and wildfire, these nightly downpours are a startling yet relaxing sight.

The distant boom of thunder in the distance reminds you of how much of our lives depend on the weather, how small we are in comparison, how we are never separate from the goings-on of nature. The rain doesn’t come down lightly here. At night, it smacks and drums against the window pane with all the force of an animal trying to get inside.

But I don’t find myself frightened by it so much as awed by the combined power of wind and rain colliding against our rickety old house.

Kansas lies in the Great Plains, where layers of cool and warm air often combine into a low-level jet stream. Unimpeded by any natural obstacles on the wide flat plains, the wind roars across the expanse. Thunder growls over the prairie. And lightning flashes on the horizon in a fearsome red tinge.

The storm rages throughout the night, the only source of light in an ocean-sized plain.

“In general, the gods of the Wichita are spoken of as "dreams," and they are divided into four groups: Dreams-that-are-Above (Itskasanakatadiwaha), or, as the Skidi would say, the heavenly gods; and (2) Dreams-down-Here (Howwitsnetskasade), which, according to the Skidi terminology, are the earthly gods. The latter "dreams" in turn are divided into two groups: Dreams-living-in-Water (Itska-sanidwaha), and the Dreams-closest-to-Man (Tedetskasade)”

From The Mythology of the Wichita, P. 33

If you go downtown, you’ll see a sculpture called “The Keeper of the Plains.”

It’s almost 9 o’ clock when I get there, so large crowds have gathered to watch the ring of fire lit around its perimeter.

The statue was designed by indigenous artist and craftsman, Blackbear Bosin. Born in Cyril, Oklahoma, but living much of his adult life in Wichita, Kansas, Bosin was of Comanche and Kiowa descent and almost entirely self-taught as an artist.

When you come upon the Keeper of the Plains, standing tall on the fork of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers, you can’t help but feel a mix of admiration and sadness. It’s a striking statue, especially when set against the beautiful orange and lavender hues of the setting sun. But monuments like these end up reminding you of the Wichita peoples who were killed, displaced, driven from their land, and left to die in reservations, forgotten. The tribes that once lived here along the southern plains still show traces of their culture but now, you’ll see it mostly as a memory in a museum or as art hanging on the walls of a library.

I learned from a video by the Wichita Eagle that the last speaker of the Wichita language, Doris Jean Lamar, died back in 2016. It must be indescribably lonely to be the last speaker of a language. There is no one to have a conversation with, no one to whom you can confess your hopes or your regrets. But in the video, Lamar, even knowing that she is the last speaker, expresses hope that future generations will know what the language sounded like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ScPkN_xGRI

Is forgiveness even possible when injustices are still committed today against native peoples everywhere?

Not enough can be said about the skies here, which seem at times so brilliantly marbled with peach and lavender colors that you begin to walk with your head perpetually craned upwards.

It’s this aspect, the overwhelming sense of the sublime, that will probably stay with me long after I’ve left Kansas.

I think again about the nature of dreams. It isn’t such a sin to dream about things, about things that haven’t happened yet, and about things that have happened. To quit dreaming seems too cynical, like admitting from the outset that everything is screwed, that you should stop trying.

During my stay here, I’ve met many people who aren’t so irony poisoned yet, people who are achingly sincere and kind. They haven’t stopped trying. There isn’t much room for cynicism here. I appreciate that a lot.

Farewell to you, Kansas, you and your clumps of cumulus and vast fields of cows and grass. I’ll see you again.

Check out Will’s music! It’s gloomy, melancholy, and LOUD!: https://teamtremolo.bandcamp.com/album/intruder

[nyacat39]

KHUX: The Lost Ones Ch8

Last Chapter

Next Chapter

First Chapter

Winds of Change:

Ventus walked down the familiar streets of Daybreak Town, holding a notepad and a pencil as he took notes with a bored look on his face. He was supposed to check on the Dandelions today… and in all honesty this was probably his least favorite of the chores that all of them swapped through. To do this one has to usually check their physical conditions within the pods they all rested in… before climbing into a modified pod and going in to check out the “Data World” all their minds were in.

What are we even looking for here? Everything looks like how it did before the War began… Ventus thought as he looked down to the check list in the notebook and marked off a few more boxes as it seemed nothing was off. The young blond found himself sitting down near a fountain as he nearly finished with his job for the day, a bored sigh making itself well known as he slumped in his seat.

I’d rather be back at the clock tower then here… least I have friends there. Ventus thought as he raised a hand up to rub at metal of the partial helmet piece that Blaine had given him. The kid practically wore the prototype armor piece all the time, well aside from when he went to bed that is. As he felt the cold metal on his fingertips, his bored look slowly shifted to a sadder one.

Then again… they’ve all been busy for a while now. Is… is this going to keep up once we all become official union leaders? Am I… am I going to lose them again?  

“You okay kid?” a female voice caught the young blonde boy off guard, making him stumble in his seat a bit before looking towards the voice.

A teenage blond girl, who looked to be around the same age as Lauriam and Blaine. Her hair was a little unkempt with some bangs hanging above her left eye and two spikes that stuck up like little antennae. She had a light blue colored jacket over a white blouse, a black tie, a black skirt with a belt that had a chain attached to it and light blue, knee high boots. Her teal colored eyes looked surprised by his reaction.

“Oh geez, sorry kid.” The girl rubbed at the back of her neck as she watched Ventus scramble to straighten up.

“Uh… it’s uh… it’s fine really!” Ventus exclaimed, while in his head he was practically screaming as he remembered the rule they all made, to try not to interact with any of the Dandelions in the Data World. It wouldn’t do well to have “conflicting memories” after all… plus for Ventus he had a hard time opening up enough to make new friends. Hell he felt awkward just even saying “Hi” to Ephemer’s friend Avery. “You… You uh, you just…. Caught me off guard!”

The confused expression on the girls face made Ventus want bury his face into his hands and scream his lungs out.

“Okaay?” She spoke up looking the younger blond over a bit, and making Ven feel like he needed to run away right now. “Doesn’t really answer my first question though kid.”

“Uh, w...what was that again?”

“Are you okay? From your reaction, something’s going on.”

Darkness take me now. Ventus thought as he practically felt sweat rolling down the back of his neck, as the girls teal eyes looked him over with a calculating gaze. The blonde teen soon let out a small, thoughtful hum as she crossed her arms.

“... First time fighting heartless?”

Whatever Ventus had thought she was thinking about, died right then and there.

“YES! VERY NEW! JUST GOT MY KEYBLADE AND EVERYTHING!” Ventus exclaimed with little to no thought as he latched onto what he Dandelion member thought, his voice a little squeaky from his earlier nerves affecting him. However as soon as he shouted the whole thing, the young blond boy froze, his blue eyes wide as he realized he might have screwed up… especially as he saw her looking at him with surprise… and a hint of suspicion.

“No need to be blowing out my eardrums kid…” She hissed quietly, raising her pinky finger up and clearing out one of her ears.

“S-Sorry…” Ventus looked down immediately, his eyes practically looking for anyway to get out of this place.

“It’s fine. Look kid… what did you say your name was again?” The girl sighed as she tilted her head a little bit, her eyes seeming to take everything about Ventus in, right down to the armor piece that made itself at home around his lower jaw and back of the head.

“You uh… you never asked before ma’am…” Ventus countered, mentally marking down a point of exit not to far away.

“Shit… knew I forgot something.” Ventus’s head raised up in surprise. She just swore! Sure, Skuld would say “Damn” and “Hell” sometimes, but this was a couple notches above those two words! He remembered hearing Blaine say it once after stubbing his toe… only to get slapped upside the head by Lauriam. It had to be a really bad word if Lauriam got violent about it!

….

Somewhere back in the real clock tower. Lauriam felt a sudden urge to go into the Data world and slap someone across the face. Blaine, who was with him in the same room, turned to the pink haired boy with a unsettled look on his half hidden face.

“... You ever get the feeling something pure in the world just got a little tainted?” Blaine asked in the uncomfortable silence the two had felt. The books they had been looking through going completely ignored for the moment.

“Yeah… and I have no idea why…”

….

“My sister would give me hell about this if she knew…” The girl sighed, completely unaware of the flabbergasted look on Ventus’s face from her earlier comment. Turning towards the younger blonde, the unknown girl straightened up a bit. “Name’s Elrena. Who are you kid?”

“Uh Ven…” Ventus stopped, wanting to slap himself on the head for sticking around instead of running like he was planning.

“Nice. Now-” Before Elrena could continue the sound of the clock tower chiming cut her off, and providing a perfect cover for Ventus.

“Oh man it’s that late already! Sorry gotta go! Nice meeting you, BYE!” Ventus exclaimed as he quickly darted away from the fountain area and away from the scene, with every intention to get back to the real world as he ran.

“Wha- Hey wait!” Elrena exclaimed as she tried to reach out for the younger boy, but was to late as Ventus ran away. “... I didn’t get to ask him about my sister…”

Looking a little downcasted by this, the blue clad girl began to turn around but paused when she saw the notebook Ventus had earlier sitting down next to his seat.

“Shit…” Picking the notebook up, Elrena turned and booked it right after Ventus, not knowing that she wouldn’t be able to find him until an hour later into her search. Even when asking other Keyblade wielders she ran into if they had seen “Ven”, no one even seemed to have even caught a glimpse of the kid.

Where the hell did he go? The blonde thought to herself, glancing down to the notebook with a frown. Glancing around before looking back at the notebook, the teen bit at her lower lip as temptation reared its head.

“Don’t do it Sis! That’s someone else's personal belonging!” She imagined her little sister yelling at her… making Elrena’s heart ache a bit at the reminder that the younger girl was missing still.

“People sometimes place information on where they live inside the cover. If it’s important enough for Ven, he probably at least put down a street address.” The voice of her stepbrother popped up in her mind, soothing away the pain a bit, though a faint sense of longing was still there.

… Sorry Litzia…

The blonde teen opened the notebook.

….

Ventus practically hopped out of the pod the minute he woke up outside of the Data World. As he did, the young blonde felt his head hit someone else's, knocking both back a little in pain.

“Ow… What happened?” the voice of Skuld asked as Ventus rubbed at his own, pain filled head at the moment.

“Sorry Skuld…” Ventus hissed, carefully pulling himself out of the modified pod this time and a little bit away from the black haired teen to get some space.

“Nah, Nah it’s fine… Man you’ve got a tough skull there Ven.” Skuld commented as the pain started to lessen a bit.

“Sorry… again.” Ventus responded immediately before looking up at the older teen for a moment. “What… What brings you down here?”

“What? Oh crap right! You and I are on food duty today, so I was wondering what you think we should prepare.” Skuld answered, motioning for Ventus to follow her. The young blond blinked for a moment before ginning and following along.

“Maybe we could make a cake!”

“Nice try mister, real food first.”

“Aw, but Skuld!”

As the two walked away, within one of the pods that rested in the Garden, teal eyes slowly opened for the first time in almost a year.

[ours-is-feral-love]

Red Sand

A/N: And . . . another one. Really couldn’t get this idea out of my head. [SPOILERS if you’ve not finished the show!]

Enjoy.

Summary: Alyssa sneaks into the hospital where James is being held following his capture. [T for language ] [Word Count: 2,621] [Alyssa’s POV]

I look the police officer over carefully from where I sit, watching his heavy eyelids droop over his evil eyes. He shouldn’t be too hard to fool. He looks like quite an idiot.

Nurses and doctors pass by on a continual loop, each of them shooting nervous glances at the doorway behind the drowsy PC. I want to tell them all to fuck off. I want to shout it really, really loudly. Scream it until I can’t speak anymore. Until there’s blood coming out of my mouth. But I stop myself. Making a scene won’t do me any good. No one can know I am here. Mum thinks I’m tucked underneath my duvet like some fucking caterpillar waiting to become a butterfly.

They’re scared of him. They’re all terrified he’s going to escape his restraints and slaughter them as if he is a psychotic serial killer.

Pussies. Each and every one of them.

None of them know who he is. They don’t know what really happened that night. They think they do because of the shitty news coverage, but the media is full of liars and money-loving fakes. And a story about an unhinged boy on a crime spree sneaking into a rapist’s house intending to murder said rapist sells better than the truth. That James only killed him to protect me.

He’s a hero. He deserves a medal, not shackles. Not a bullet hole in his left arm.

I heard on the BBC they had to give him blood transfusions because of how much of his own supply he lost on the beach. Because the bullet that hit him snagged an artery on its way out.

It’s been nearly a week, and I’ve unintentionally blocked that day from my memories, but I remember that bit. I hear that final gunshot as I sit staring at the sleeping officer and I see James go down as if it’s happening all over again. He sprawls on the ground, arms and legs at strange angles. I’m still screeching his name, but he isn’t moving. And there’s red. It’s everywhere, spilling over the wet sand . . .

I close my eyes before I lose my shit in the middle of the hospital. I breathe in a shaky breath, clutching the seat of the uncomfortable chair I am occupying near James’ room. The scratchy vinyl feels gross, but the cracks in the material scrape my palms and the pain is somehow soothing.

I think I've always needed a little bit of pain to get me through the day. It's why I put up with Tony for so long. Why I let my mum talk down to me like I was the most massive disappointment. Of course, I'm suffering a lot more than I'm used to at the moment. General teenage angst seems to have not prepared me for a situation like this. A situation that involves the boy you love being shot and then shackled to a hospital bed.

I am so lost right now.

But I know if I could see him, just for a second, that everything would fall back into place. I won't be so lost when I get past that snoozing guard.

I open my eyes and get to my feet. It's time for some fucking action. I pinch my cheeks, slouch my shoulders, and push my bottom lip out. Satisfied that I look like someone in need of some help, I approach the policeman.

I poke him hard on the arm. He jerks awake, and for a moment I just want to slap him. Bring him to the ground and beat the shit out of him. But I manage to hold myself back.

The man's bulging eyes look me up and down. His face softens.

It is this moment I am outrageously glad my parents’ genes mixed in just the right way to make me look like a fucking twelve-year-old.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" he asks in that voice my mum uses when she's talking to the twins.

Ugh. The desire to punch him comes over me again. He's even more fucking disgusting than I thought.

“Some—someone stole my bag." I sniffle, watching the geezer before me take on a hardened look of determination. "It had a present for my mum in it."

"Okay, darling. Which way did he go?" He reaches out for my hand, but I quickly use that one to point behind me.

No way do I want this old creep touching me.

"That way. I think I saw him going down the stairs. He's probably not even here anymore." I put my face in my hands and pretend to cry. I make ugly noises for added effect.

Maybe I should be a fucking actor when I grow up. Do they let criminals on TV?

"Don't cry," he says. "Don't cry. Look. I can't leave this spot, but I can ask a nurse to take you down to the security desk and they can help find your bag. Okay?"

Not okay. So not okay.

I remove my hands, frowning. "I need to find it now! My mum is dying of fucking cancer and you can't be a decent enough policeman to help me get back the present I bought for her with literally all of my fucking money? What if she dies in the time it takes for me to go down and start explaining this shit show to someone else?"

Gotcha.

The officer's face is wide. His mouth hangs open. His saucepan eyes swerve around the room, making sure no one is watching us.

"Okay," he says in an angry, hushed tone. "Okay, I'll see what I can do. What did the man look like?"

He stands up, straightening the weapons belt around his hips.

"Tall. Dark eyes, brown hair. Wearing a dark grey sweater with blue jeans and black snazzy shoes. Tan. Probably forty or so," I say. It’s Tony’s description. Maybe he’ll be walking down the street when the PC comes along. 

Turning as the policeman does, my back is now to the door. 

I can practically feel James.

My heart thumps wildly in anticipation. It hurts. I can't breathe.

"Alright." He motions to the seat at the back of my knees. "Stay here. Make sure no one goes inside."

"Why?" I ask as he starts walking away. "What's behind the door?"

"A monster," he says.

That's it. If I see him again, I'm definitely punching him.

I nod in agreement to his request, staring after him as he disappears round a corner.

This is it. I turn towards the room and shove the chair out of the way, moving close enough to the door that I can smell the wood. I reach for the handle. It’s cold, but unlocked. Twisting slowly, my eyes darting left and right, praying to the countless number of deities I’ve heard of throughout my whole life that I won’t get caught, I hear a click and the door falls inward. I go with it, pressed to the wood, and sneak inside the room.

I actually gasp. Like a fucking cartoon or something. The door closes softly behind me. I look around the room. There are wires and machines everywhere. Beeping noises collapse against my eardrums.

A heartbeat. James’ heartbeat.

And there he is. Right in front of me, asleep, looking sickly and pale and like he hasn’t properly showered in a few days. His arm is in a sling. He is connected to a saline drip through an IV via his uninjured arm. He is cuffed, too. To the side of the bed. There is a metal handcuff around his thin wrist.

God, I am so fucked off. I want to go at the restraint with a chainsaw.

Looking at him makes me want to cry. It always has. Ever since we first met. But right now, I really want to cry. More badly than I have ever wanted to before.

But I shouldn’t. I can’t. I need to be strong for him.

Swallowing the giant cricket ball forming in my oesophagus, I creep on my tiptoes towards the giant hospital bed. He looks even worse close up. There’s a dark shadow over the bottom half of his face. Deep purple bags lie underneath his closed eyes.

I’m too far gone. I can’t stop the tears. They crawl down my cheeks, slip past my chin, and land on the grey-blue blanket covering James’ body. One, as I move my head to get a better look at his face, drips over his eyelids.

He comes awake. The beeping grows quicker. I swear my lungs have stopped working. Reaching out, I place my hand over his mouth as his eyes snap open. His jaw parts. Hidden behind my palm, I feel his heavy breaths bathe my skin.

“Shh,” I warn, breathless. “I’m not supposed to be here. We don’t have much time.”

He shakes his head and I lift my hand. “You need to leave,” he says. It comes out all croaky and dry. He’s broken.

It makes me so angry. If he had just let me come with him, none of this shit would be happening.

If only I hadn’t been silly enough to believe my dad was a decent fucking human being, we would be in Switzerland by now, hiding in a bakery or skiing down some snow-capped mountain.

“I’m staying,” I say defiantly. He can’t tell me what to do.

He starts to sit up, but the effort exhausts him and he quickly lies back down. His brilliant eyes—the most beautiful things I’ve literally ever seen—gaze up at me. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

To be honest, I don’t want to see him like this. But I hold off on telling him that. “I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care that you’re handcuffed. James,” I say, the tears forming again. I reach for his chained hand. His fingers are sweaty, but he holds onto me regardless, entwining our fingers. I could collapse in a heap of despair like those women in the 19th century used to. “What’s gonna happen to you?”

“I’m not sure,” he says.

The words come out thin and brittle. I think there’s a cricket ball in his throat too. With my spare hand, I grab the cup of water by his bed and slowly, like he’s a baby, I tip the cup towards his mouth. He swallows a couple of gulps and coughs away any excess dryness. He mutters a thanks and I return the cup to its original spot.

“They’re keeping me here until my arm heals a bit more,” he says. “And then I’ll be moved to a jail to await trial. Then I’ll be prosecuted.”

He says it with such indifference that I find myself wanting to take him by the shoulders and shake him viciously.

“How can you be okay with this?” I ask, my face hot and wet. My lips tremble. My forehead hurts from frowning. “None of this is okay. None at all. It’s a giant mess—a total miscarriage of justice.”

I’ve been watching a lot of that American TV show Law and Order while under house arrest.

The longer I stare frustratedly at James half-lying down on his hospital bed, the blurrier he gets. But I blink rapidly, clearing my vision, when his face bunches. He's crying too. Not as much as me, but there's a small tear trolling down his scruffy face. Instinct compels me to wipe it away. I scrape at it with my thumb and hold my hand against his warm cheek. He presses into me, nostrils billowing like a curtain caught by the wind.

Okay. So, he isn't okay with this.

"I'm sorry," I say, rubbing the tear back into his skin. "I know you're just trying to be brave."

"I just," he says, "want to be with you."

My heart is going to explode. Is it possible for words to kill you?

"And I know that when they put me away, I'm not going to be able to be with you anymore," he continues, the words vibrating. "I don't want that to happen."

Fuck. Neither do I.

"I'll come see you," I promise. "And when you get out, we can be together again." My knees are starting to buckle under all the pressure. I hold tight to James. "Maybe we can get married . . . and then I'd get those conjugal visit things."

It's a joke. Mum would sooner disown me and throw me in the streets than allow me to marry a convicted felon.

But it does make James laugh. And that makes me smile. And some of that pressure lifts away.

"You would visit me?" he asks, and I sense the genuine worry.

"Yes. Fuck, I'd be in there with you if I could." If you'd let me. “Can I lie down?”

“What?”

“In the bed with you,” I say. “Just for a minute.” The guard’ll be on his way back soon. I’ll need to set off before then. But I need to lie with him. To feel his body against mine one last time before he’s taken away from me.

“I don’t know how easy it will be.” James looks to his shackled wrist and then to his bullet-hole-ridden arm.

I start climbing in, kicking my sandals off and bunching up the yellow sundress Mum got me when I was released from hospital the day James got captured. I wore it so she would let me out of the house. How long does she think it takes to pick up chocolate from the Co-op?

James can’t move a lot, but he slides over to make room for me. Lying on my side, pressing my hand flat against his chest, I rest my head on his shoulder. We sigh together. A sound of true contentment.

As much as he can, James holds me. His shackled fingers bend and move over the skin of my neck. I shiver into his hospital gown. For someone who looks so horrible, he smells just the same as always. Like lavender soap. I breathe him in, forcing myself to memorise the scent.

“You changed your hair,” he notes, fiddling with the short strands that just barely reach my neck.

“Mum took me to the salon immediately,” I say. Guess she wasn’t all that fucking pleased about the blond. “The woman made it too dark. I don’t like it.”

“Well, I do,” James says.

I smile into his neck.

I shouldn’t be happy at all. Things are about to get a whole lot worse for the both of us. But he’s touching me and I’m touching him, and everything just feels . . . right. I know it’ll be gone the instant I leave this room, but I will revel in it for the few minutes I have.

“You shouldn’t have come,” James says.

I lift myself up. Our faces are only a few centimetres apart. His breaths wash over my face. “Why?” I ask, confused and hurt.

James continues stroking every piece of available skin. “Now that you’re here, I don’t want you to leave.”

Oh.

“I don’t want to leave,” I tell him.

“But you have to.”

“But I have to,” I agree. “But not yet. In a minute.”

I have to kiss him. I have to remember the feel of his mouth on mine.

Lowering my face the tiniest bit, I close my eyes and affix my lips to his. He can’t properly embrace me, and I can’t move too much for fear of further injuring him, but he is soft against me and that’s all that matters.

I was wrong before. Now everything is right. The seas have calmed. The earth has stopped turning. And it’s James and me against the world.

[azvolrien]

The Hawk Steppes - Chapter Six

The last couple of weeks have been very busy and tiring without a lot of time for writing, but I’ve got through Chapter Seven now so - in accordance with my system - here is Chapter Six! Involves archery.

~~~

           “No, no, you’re not following,” said 1348, leaning against the tent pole at the edge of the racecourse. Off-duty, she had shed her armour in favour of a plain linen tunic and trousers, and had turned out to be about Calburn’s age with short reddish hair and pale skin that suggested Sea Loch ancestry. “I wasn’t taken away from some unsuspecting family to be raised as a god-soldier. We aren’t recruited, or selected. We’re born. My parents are god-soldiers too.”

           “So, ‘One-Three-Four-Eight’ actually is your name?” asked Calburn, mystified. “It’s not something that was, like, applied to you?”

           “No, it’s my name,” she assured him. “Or at least, it’s my official name, how I’m recorded in the stud books, but to be honest the numbers can be a bit of a mouthful – especially in combat. We all have nicknames as well; we gave them to each other when our war-pack was formed, though they’re mostly just used among ourselves.”

           Calburn cocked his head curiously. “What’s yours? Or are you not allowed to tell outsiders?”

           “No, it’s allowed. I’m ‘Ferret’.”

           “Ferret?”

           “From the numbers,” she explained. “Four-Eight. Ferret. You can call me that if you like – I don’t mind. You met 1350, right? He’s ‘Silver’.”

           “And your – your ‘war-pack’ as a whole is called the Paladins?” said Calburn, trying to sort through these previously unknown nuances of god-soldier culture.

           “Another nickname,” said Ferret with a shrug. “Officially, we’re Imperial City Pack Twelve, Bastion Guard. The nickname was ironic at first, but we kind of grew into it.”

           “I suppose that makes sense,” said Calburn slowly. “Can I ask you something else about god-soldiers?”

           “Go ahead.”

           “What’s with the wolf motif? I thought Kiraan’s symbol was a bear.”

           “It is, but bears don’t hunt in packs, and our training focusses heavily on teamwork. Ooh, here they come again!” The horses hurtled past again on the final lap of the race and crossed the finish line to a roar from the crowd, both cheers of triumph and groans of disappointment.

           Calburn shook his head. “Well, I can’t say I’m all that comfortable with the whole idea,” he said. “Numbers, stud books, having to obey orders… It all seems a bit twisted. But I suppose it’s not my place to criticise.”

           “There are some safeguards, if it makes you feel any better,” said Ferret. “We only have to obey orders from higher up our chain of command – I  wouldn’t have to do anything if, say, you tried giving me orders – and there are some orders that it’s specified we don’t have to obey, even if they do come from up the chain of command. Besides, we’re not constructs, no offence. Just because we’re given an order doesn’t mean we can’t get a bit creative about how we carry it out.”

           “I suppose.” Calburn adjusted his belt, settling the satchels properly to each side. “I’m meeting my friends over by the archery ranges – are you coming?”

           “Can’t, I’ve got to swap in for guard duty. Promised my pack-mate Pike I’d take over for him. Tell Roxy good luck for me, though.”

           Calburn waved goodbye as Ferret jogged off, then made his way out to the edge of the camp where a wide space had been fenced off for the archery contests. Along one side of the field, stands had been constructed from wood and metal, very temporary-looking but nonetheless solidly built. Along the other side, a row of targets had been set up, some solid, others hanging from ropes and swaying in the wind, while a wooden shelter at one end protected the operator of a scorpio, smaller than a true siege ballista but much larger than an ordinary crossbow.

           At the opposite end of the field, a corral had been set up where the archery contestants waited with their horses.

           “Ignore the crowds,” Ernak was saying as Roxy saddled her horse. “It’s just you, your horse, your bow, and the targets. No different to when you’re out hunting pheasants.”

           Roxy nodded and adjusted the buckles on her horse’s bridle. “First time in a contest like this,” she said, strapping her quiver to the saddle.

           “You’ll do fine,” said Rhona from where she sat on top of the corral’s fence. “This should be easier than hunting pheasants, in fact, as most of these targets aren’t going to fly away.”

           “Where do you come in the lists?” asked Calburn as he climbed over the fence.

           “Last,” said Roxy with a grimace, “out of fifteen. These contests are split up by age group.” She tied a strip of cloth around her forehead, keeping any strands of hair that escaped her braid out of her face, and strung her bow. Aysel silently handed her a canteen of water, from which she took a deep swig.

           The first of the contestants, a heavyset youth with blue Mojor tattoos, rode past on a tall bay stallion. He reined his horse in at the corral gate, looked down at Roxy and her little gelding, and, sneering, very deliberately reached up to pinch his ears into points.

           Roxy let go of the saddle and started forwards with a growl, but Ernak caught her shoulder. “Leave it,” he murmured. “You’ll show them what an elf can do.”

           Roxy muttered vengefully, but mounted her horse with no further arguments.

           “Has she had to deal with a lot of that?” Rhona asked Aysel, too quietly for Roxy to hear her.

           “That and worse, to hear Ernak tell it.”

           Calburn reached up to rub his own right ear between thumb and forefinger, frowning with uncomfortable thought. “At least both of Roxy’s ears are intact,” he said to Rhona when she caught his eye and raised a curious eyebrow. “Makes you wonder what all he went through that he never told us, eh?” Rhona just nodded sadly.

           The Mojor youth, satisfyingly, did not do particularly well: he missed some of the swinging targets entirely, and never managed to achieve a bullseye on the stationary ones. One by one, the teenage archers took their turns riding along the field; soon the targets were peppered with arrows, each one painted with different bands of colour to identify the contestants that had loosed them.

           Finally, the gate opened for Roxy, and she spurred her horse into a gallop. In one smooth motion, she drew an arrow from the quiver, nocked it to the bow, drew back the string, and loosed the arrow without slowing down. An instant later, the arrow slammed dead-centre into the first target. The rest followed suit, all either true bullseyes or close enough that it made little difference.

           Calburn’s jaw dropped. “She’s… really good.”

           “She’s Yaigan,” said Ernak with subdued pride.

           Within the space of only a few seconds, Roxy and her horse were almost at the other end of the archery field, and Roxy was almost out of arrows. As she drew closer, nocking a final arrow, the scorpio operator cranked back the string, loaded the device, and pulled the trigger, violently flinging a small wooden disc into the air. Still at a full gallop, Roxy raised the bow, drew, and loosed. The little disc fell to the ground with the arrow embedded in its centre.

           For a few moments, there was only an astonished silence, before the watching crowd surged to their feet with a cheer – and not just the Yaigan audience, either. Roxy turned her horse and rode back to the corral, holding her bow aloft with one hand. The Mojor boy stared at her as she rode through the gate; in reply, she stuck her tongue out and tugged lightly on the tips of her ears.

           Ernak lifted her from the saddle before she could dismount by herself. “Aysel, send someone out to the markets,” he said, perching Roxy on his shoulder. “This needs celebrating.”

           The festivities in the Yaigan campsite went on long into the night; even some from outside Ernak’s band joined in, always up for a party regardless of whether they knew the reason. The tribesfolk sent to the markets returned with baskets filled with exotic fruits and freshly-baked bread and cakes, as well as bottles of wine and koumiss, while one of the band’s young bullocks was butchered down to roast over a newly-dug firepit. Once she had seen to her horse, Roxy sat down in front of her tent, showing off her bow and her new gold medal to anyone who would stay still long enough to look at them. Ernak shook his head fondly and carefully positioned a long copper trough below the roasting carcass to catch the fat dripping from the meat, ready to be scooped up and ladled over it again, while Aysel, Batu and the young man called Lajos set up a folding wooden table, several metal platters, and an impressive array of carving knives.

           Calburn sipped from a clay beaker of wine and sat down beside Roxy. “So you were asking the other day about using magic in archery,” he said without being prompted.

           “Yeah, how would that work?” asked Roxy, looking up from admiring the galloping horseback archer embossed on her medal.

           Calburn took a deep breath through his nose and another thoughtful sip from the beaker. “First up, I’m not the best person to ask about it,” he admitted, setting the beaker down beside him. “Constructs are my thing – I know a trick or two but combat magic isn’t my thing. You’d want to talk to someone up at the College, from the School of Combat – or hell, even a Legion warmage. But the easiest is what we call a concussive strike: taking a weapon or, or just your fists, and manipulating the, the force of it so that it hits much harder than just what your muscles alone can give it. There’s a thing called a concussive wave as well that just works with the air itself, but I’ve never had the trick of that. My mate Wygar, he’d know. I’ll have to give you his address, you two’d have so much to chat about…”

           “Focus, Cal,” said Rhona, smiling as she sat down on Roxy’s other side.

           “So yeah,” said Calburn. “Concussive strike. Here, c’mon, I’ll go get my big sword…”

           “Do you really want to be waving that thing around when you’ve been drinking?” asked Rhona.

           “Hey, I’m only a little bit drunk. But… Yeah, you’re probably right, I’ll just use my hands. Gimme something you don’t mind getting broken. Bit of wood or something.”

           Roxy got up to fetch a plank from the stack of wood by the firepit, not yet broken up into kindling, and held it up. Rhona took it from her and dug the short end into the earth underfoot, a safe distance from the firepit and the cooks.

           “Concussive strike,” said Calburn, getting to his feet and bunching up one fist. Rhona swiftly adjusted it so that his thumb was on the outside. “Cheers, Rho. Right, we told you magic is about energy, right? Manipulating, amplifying. So what you do is you focus on the kinetic energy of your weapon,” he waved his fist, displaying the odd shimmer in the air around it, not unlike a tin roof on a hot day, “and you… amplify it!”

           His punch was wavering and ungainly where it struck the plank, not appearing remotely forceful enough to even dent the wood, and yet it shattered beneath his knuckles.

           “Aaarghangggm’fffin!” Calburn immediately bowed over, clutching his hand.

           Rhona rolled her eyes. “Did you just angrily shout ‘muffin’?” she asked, stretching his hand out to extract the newly-acquired splinters and heal the other splits and grazes in his skin.

           “Well, it’s not what I was going to say,” he said, his voice a little strained, “but I didn’t want to swear in front of the kid.”

           “I’m fifteen,” said Roxy, gathering up all the splintered pieces of wood. “I don’t think there’s much swearing I haven’t heard at least once by now.” She tossed the wood into the firepit, stirring up a little plume of sparks against the bottom of the metal trough.

           “So that was a concussive strike,” said Calburn once his hand was back to normal. “And – Oh, I knocked my wine over… Anyway! You can do that with just your hands, or a sword or a club or whatever. I suppose for a bow you’d just be amplifying the energy of the arrow, but you’d need to concentrate to stop it just shattering midair. I’ve never done that and I’m not sure how. But that’s the theory of it, anyway.” He bent to retrieve his beaker and wandered off to refill it. Roxy looked thoughtfully at her bow, just as Lajos came around with a platter heaped with cuts of beef.

           “Ernak said that magic isn’t common on the Steppes,” said Rhona, spearing three cuts on her fork and lifting them over to her own plates.

           “It isn’t, really,” said Roxy, taking a few pieces for herself. “Doubt there’s more than a few handfuls of mages among the whole of the Yaigan tribe. Healers, mostly. Sometimes people who enchant things, make them stronger or waterproof or whatever, but I’ve never seen anybody making constructs like Calburn does. Never heard of anyone who could draw stuff in from outside, either,” she added, and reached out towards the fire to transform a little of its heat into a hovering witchlight.

           “It’s rare even in places where magic is common,” said Rhona, “though I have heard that it’s more common amongst elves.” She paused. “Do you… remember your birth family at all?”

           Roxy fell into a contemplative silence, slowly increasing and decreasing the brightness of the witchlight, before she finally moved her head in a motion that wasn’t quite a nod or a shake and let the light disappear. “I wasn’t even two when they were killed,” she said. “Sometimes there are these little… flashes, sort of – a smell, or a feeling – but… No, I don’t really remember them.” She fell silent again. “Maybe that’s for the best, considering what happened.”

           “Perhaps,” said Rhona quietly. “There’s no telling who you got your magic from. Its inheritance can be… unpredictable. Sometimes people get it from a parent, sometimes from a grandparent. Sometimes one sibling inherits and another doesn’t, which can be awkward – that happened with my yearmate Heddwyn and her brother. All of my family are wizards, but almost none of Calburn’s were; as far as he can tell, the ability sort of… lay dormant in his bloodline between his great-grandfather and him.” She shook her head. “There are people at the College who study it, but really, they’re not much closer to understanding than they ever were.”

           Across the firepit, Ernak had produced his zither again and started to strum a lively reel, joined before long by a few other tribesfolk thumping on tambourines and playing a small wooden flute. Calburn grabbed Aysel’s hands and swung her into a slightly wobbly dance around the flames.

           “He likes you, you know,” said Roxy, watching the scene with a smile on her face.

           “Who, Calburn?” asked Rhona, wrinkling her nose.

           “No! Ernak.”

           Rhona sighed.

           “What? Don’t you like him?”

           “Listen… Ernak is a fine chieftain, and he’s clearly done a good job as a father.” Rhona pushed her glasses up and rubbed the corners of her eyes. “My… my last lover… He… I… He died. Maybe if things were different, but as they are… I’m just, I’m not ready for another relationship yet.”

           Roxy watched her for a few seconds, then nodded. “I’ll warn him off for you.”

           “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

           “He was betrothed once, before I came along,” said Roxy. “But it fell through somehow. He never explained why.”

           Rhona watched Ernak play his zither. “Did you ever think about learning an instrument?”

           “I don’t have the patience for it,” said Roxy, shaking her head. “I sing sometimes. That’s enough for-”

           Her words were cut off by a sudden ear-splitting, animal screech, then another. Immediately, Ernak dropped his zither and lurched to his feet, a look of utter terror on his face for the first time since the wizards had met him. Soon the voices of humans, horses and cattle joined the cacophony. A tent went up in flames nearby, filling the air with choking smoke.

           “Arm yourselves!” shouted Ernak, diving into his tent and emerging with an unsheathed sabre in his hand. “Mount up!” Aysel let go of Calburn’s hands and ran to fetch her own weapon, a short-hafted spear. Soon every member of the band old enough to carry a weapon was doing so, whether a bow, a sword, a spear or just a sturdy chunk of firewood. Calburn, looking more sober, collected his big two-handed sword. Rhona found her polearm. The band ran to fetch their horses, mounting the animals without bothering to saddle them. Calburn and Rhona summoned their constructs; Tyren stood as blankly as ever, but Mostol shook his head and snorted as if picking up the humans’ unease. Calburn gripped the construct’s saddle with his knees, resting the big sword across the front of the saddle.

           Footsteps sounded through the veil of smoke – the footsteps of something very large and very fast, two-legged and moving at a dead run. Everyone with a spear levelled it towards the sound, forming a spiky hedge between the band’s children and whatever was coming.

           It leapt from the smoke before anyone could react, shrieking like a demon. The horses wheeled away in fear, desperate to put distance between themselves and this new threat, but not before the creature seized Batu by the shoulder and dragged him from his saddle to shake him like a ragdoll until, with a horrible crack, he went just as limp as one.

           For a few very long moments, Rhona could only stare. It was, most certainly, a bird, but like no bird she had ever laid eyes on before. It stood at least ten feet tall with stocky legs and a muscular neck, far more heavily-built than an ostrich, with a viciously hooked beak like some monstrous eagle. Its feathers were mostly a pale grey, fading to white on its chest, but each red-rimmed, lemon-yellow eye was covered with a broad black stripe that extended past the back of the creature’s head in twin crests and its long tail feathers bore striking black and white chevrons from one end to the other.

           Then the bird lunged at her, still shrieking, and the spell was broken. She lashed out with her polearm as Tyren wheeled in place, cutting deep into the bird’s shoulder above one tiny, uselessly-fluttering wing, but it didn’t even seem to notice the pain. An arrow pierced its other shoulder and it swung its head around to see Roxy nocking a second. Immediately it left Rhona alone and charged Roxy instead, ignoring the second arrow as well when it carved into the base of its neck.

           Ernak flung a lasso around the bird’s head and tugged, pulling the noose tight around its neck. Other tribesfolk soon followed suit until the bird struggled at the centre of a wheel, each spoke a rope and the rim composed of riders. It tried to lash out with its powerful legs, but the nearest horse danced out of the way just in time, avoiding the hooked claws. Aysel readied her spear, but before she could strike, the bird threw back its head, gave one final scream, and collapsed to the ground. Its pupils, shrunk to pinpricks as it rampaged, slowly dilated.

           Calburn cautiously prodded it with the point of his sword. It did not move. Breathing hard, Ernak dropped the lasso and dismounted.

           “I expect you’ve worked out what this is?” he said, looking directly at Rhona as he lifted the bird’s beak with the point of his sabre. Blood trickled from the corner of the mouth.

           Rhona swallowed hard and cleaned the blood from the curved blade of her polearm. “That’s a thuru, isn’t it?”

           “Yes. This is, indeed, a thuru. Get down, I want you to take a look at it.”

           Rhona stared at him. “You want me to try and heal that, that horror-bird?”

           “No, it’s dead. I want you to examine the horror-bird.” He nudged its limp neck with the toe of his boot. “Thuru are vicious, but they won’t usually try to attack so many humans at once, not on their own. And I want to know why it just died like that. We weren’t strangling it hard enough for it to go down that quickly.”

           Rhona glanced over at Batu’s fallen body as Lajos silently covered it with a blanket, and climbed down from Tyren’s back. Without speaking, she knelt beside the dead thuru and held out one hand. The faint green light of her magic shimmered above its feathers as she slowly moved her hand down from its head to its deep chest. Finally, the light faded and she stood up, rubbing her mouth with one hand.

           “These symptoms…” she said. “It reminds me of… yes… but where did they get it? Doesn’t make sense.”

           “Try explaining that again, but with more words,” said Ernak with rather forced patience.

           “Yes, sorry. Firstly, it died like that because… Well, quite a few things, but I suspect mostly because its heart gave out. And not just that it stopped, that it sort of… ripped itself apart. There was also severe damage to the bird’s lungs, brain and muscles. I’ve seen this in humans – rarely, but I have seen it. Between the physical damage and the way it was behaving… I think somebody dosed this thuru with bearskin elixir.”

           Aysel gasped with recognition, but Ernak looked blank. “Bearskin elixir? What’s that?”

           “Very illegal, to start with,” said Zar’s voice. Everyone turned to see him walk into the campsite surrounded by all twelve of the armoured Paladins, each one armed with sword and javelin and carrying the curved rectangular shield of the Legions. Ferret caught Calburn’s eye from behind her helmet and gave him a tiny nod, but maintained a professional silence. “Two of those brutes ripped their way into my tent,” he said soberly. “They were slain by the Paladins in short order, but I’m afraid Sanderling was killed. Go on, Master Carnwennan.”

           Rhona nodded. “It’s distilled from a kind of moss that only grows in the Sea Loch Country,” she explained, “and it’s used to induce what’s traditionally known as battle-madness. It increases strength, quickens the reflexes and gives a greatly heightened resistance to pain, but it also causes uncontrollable aggression and does away with all the usual safeguards the body has to avoid damaging itself. In very low doses it can be used to restart a stopped heart, but at higher concentrations… Well.” She gestured towards the dead thuru.

           “Wait,” said Calburn, dismounting Mostol and planting his sword point-first in the ground. “You’re saying that somebody took what’s already a very dangerous predator, and they turned it into a berserker?”

           “Artificially caused rather than the usually dormant battle-madness seen in in-born berserkers,” said Rhona, “but… essentially, yes.”

           Zar nodded and held out a rolled-up map. “Sanderling was working on compiling the reports from everyone who’s had a run-in with the Charek recently. We think that we’ve narrowed down the location of their base to a few possibilities, none too far from each other.” Ernak took the map, and Zar slowly turned around to survey the damage that the drugged thuru had inflicted. Screams and smoke still drifted on the wind, and Zar’s face was completely clear of its usual good humour. “When I find the ones responsible for this,” he said, closing one hand around the hilt of the long, heavy sword at his hip, “I will have their heads.”

~~~

The Paladins’ nicknames are Ferret, Silver, Woodsy, Pike, Dovey, Steak, Fly, Bruin, Chilly, Knives, Pony, and Apple. The stories behind them vary but usually boil down to ‘you had to be there’. None of them are ever used in official documents.