Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds Read online

  “Embroidery floss has longings?” Miss Cubbins looked ready to dash off at any moment and beg admittance to Bedlam.

  “If it did not, the waters would have no effect upon it,” my younger aunt said in her soft, unprepossessing voice. “Quod erat demonstrandum.” She indicated the gently nodding cotton bolls.

  “Good thing you weren’t carrying lunch in that basket, eh, girl?” Tithonus chuckled.

  The governess clasped the cameo brooch at her stiffly starched collar. At first I thought she was distressed at the thought of a ham sandwich suddenly regenerating itself into a wheat field and a living pig or portions thereof, but her thoughts tended elsewhere: “Merciful heavens, the tales of this accursed house and misbegotten family are true: You are witches!”

  “How dare you, you ignorant minx!” Aunt Domitilla exclaimed. “Witches, are we? By the eternally nibbled liver of Prometheus, it is a blessing that circumstance has removed you from your post before you had the opportunity to infect our precious niece with such thick-witted drivel.”

  “If only we were witches,” Aunt Euphrosyne said with a heartfelt sigh. “Things would be so much easier. At best we might expect a steady income from the sale of love philters and potions for gentlemanly enhancement, and at worst a burning at the stake.”

  “We are custodians,” Aunt Domitilla said. “The spring and many other features of Dyrnewaed’s grounds have powers that attract the attention of otherworldly beings—we can attest to that. We have accepted the responsibility for keeping watch and ward here, with great help from the centuries’-long enchantments shielding this place from the direct view of supernatural creatures. Without such spells we would have been overrun ages ago.”

  “But where’s the harm, auntie?” I asked in all innocence. “If a creature wishes to use our spring to revert to its original form, why don’t we permit it? One splash and done!”

  “Dear Melantha, you are too young to realize that it would not end with that initial splash,” Aunt Euphrosyne chided me gently. “Most metamorphoses should on no account be reversed, for they encompass generations. What dreadful impact it would have upon the population of this island if Arachne managed to dip one pedipalp into this pool! She would not be the only one affected. Every spider of her bloodline would become a young woman with overweening pride in her talent as a weaver. Most of them might find employment in the mills of Manchester, but the rest would be a burden on society.”

  While this exchange continued, Tithonus sloshed to the edge of the spring and stepped out onto dry land. “My toes look like oil-cured olives,” he muttered. “And I’m still hungry. Hey! One of you women stop yapping and bring me bread, wine, oil, and a nice collop of roast lamb!”

  “I am sorry, Your Highness.” (Aunt Domitilla did not sound sorry at all.) “Your refreshment will have to wait.”

  “For what?” the Trojan prince snarled testily.

  “For the inevitable. When Miss Cubbins’ basket hit the water, ripples ensued.”

  “Well, of course ripples—”

  “I do not speak of physical ripples alone.”

  Tithonus looked bewildered and was not alone in this befuddlement. Miss Cubbins and I were equally confused, but my elder aunt saw no need to elaborate. Fortunately, Aunt Euphrosyne took pity on us and explained:

  “My dears, imagine a blazing fireplace entirely hidden from view by a pair of heavy draperies. Now picture what might happen if someone dropped a smidgen of gunpowder into the flames. Even the smallest explosion would be heard on the far side of those draperies, and the cloth itself well might ruffle or bell out, and so—”

  “—people would suspect that something was behind those draperies, even if they could not see it, and they might draw nigh, in order to investigate it more closely,” I concluded.

  “Oh, my sweet Melantha, if it were only people with whom we shall have to deal now!” Aunt Euphrosyne looked mournful.

  “Wait, wait.” Tithonus pinched the bridge of his shapely nose, eyes shut tight in furious cogitation. “You’re saying that when the basket hit the water, I exploded?”

  My aunts exchanged a look and sighed in tandem.

  “Men,” said Aunt Domitilla.

  “Myths,” Aunt Euphrosyne amended. “Though I shouldn’t be one to talk.”

  Before she might say more, a faint rumble arose from beyond the stand of poplars marking the western edge of the manor grounds. The necessary presence of these trees as a windbreak was all that had saved them from the Elizabethan “improvements” committed by Lord Wielward, but now their luck seemed to be at an end. The proud trees swayed as though caught up in a tempest. Towering trunks groaned under the strain before they snapped and fell. Some simply shuddered where they stood before bursting into showers of splinters, as though obliterated by an artillery barrage. Miss Cubbins squealed.

  She might have saved her breath for more inspired screaming. It wanted but an instant more of arboreal destruction before the real horrors came.

  They poured out from between the ruined trees in a mob of fur and feathers, scales and squamous skin. Seven swans came swooping in above a lumbering she-bear, a sharp-toothed weasel, an assortment of cruelly-horned cattle, and a slither of nasty-looking snakes. The beasts carried such an air of unnatural bloodthirst as to turn a reasoning person’s spine to jelly. I vow there was a mouse amid the throng that looked capable of tearing my throat out and using my esophagus for a skip-rope!

  “This is only the beginning,” Aunt Euphrosyne murmured. “These are but the metamorphosed beings who happened to be in the neighborhood. Once word spreads, we shall be inundated!”

  As the creatures neared, I noted fresh cause for alarm. “They’re huge!” So they were, each at least thrice the size of ordinary beasts of their breed. If the mouse had startled me before, now it absolutely terrified me. I flung myself into the sanctuary of Aunt Domitilla’s arms.

  She thrust me away unceremoniously. “For shame, Melantha!” she said with cold severity. “Is this how the mistress of Dyrnewaed behaves in a crisis? Where is your inbred gumption? Were you not born daughter to the hereditary primate of the Ecclesiam Omnium Daemonum, whilom prelate of Our Lady if Dis, Somerset, as well as to our sister Celaeno, whose dark wings obliterated the sun and whose foul droppings were the nonpareil of loathsome filth? Shall you not fulfill the promise of your parentage?”

  My jaw went slack with shock. My mother was famous for her foul what? My father once headed the Church of All Whom? (Well, I suppose that sort of religious affiliation would explain the things in the wine cellar, and the crypt, and dear old Scylla’s peculiar taste in beverages, but I always thought we were just schismatic Muggletonians.) Head reeling, all I could manage to do was wail: “But—but Mamma’s given name was Cecily!”

  “Is that what you have gleaned from my words?” Aunt Domitilla was fit to be tied.

  “Now, ‘Tilla, it’s our own fault for having sheltered the child from her heritage.” Aunt Euphrosyne was ever the voice of reason. “It is rather a lot of family secrets to absorb so abruptly. You should have done it more gradually.”

  “As I intended, dear sister, once the girl showed us she’d mastered her mundane studies.” Here she glowered at Miss Cubbins and me in equal measure. “Which might have been accomplished ere now if Melantha had been a more attentive pupil supplied with a far more doughty teacher.”

  Miss Cubbins crumpled. “My lady, I swear by all I love to be the doughtiest of governesses to Miss Melantha in future, if only you will save us from our present peril!”

  “Oh, fine,” said Aunt Domitilla, and threw me into the spring.

  The spot into which she cast me must have been the deepest part of the pool, for I submerged fully. I had only an instant to realize my situation before the waters closed over me. As I fought my way back to the world of air and light, I thought I heard the muffled sound of two additional splashes. My head broke the surface in time to see that I had heard correctly: my aunts were just emerging from the wavelets
beside me.

  My aunts. . .my goodness, they were a sight! Domitilla and Euphrosyne spread dripping black wings and tossed back their ebon tresses as fierce shrieks broke from their feathered throats. As they took flight, I saw that their still-human faces were now youthful and lovely, their feet transformed to talons, their breasts indecorously bare. Her Majesty would never have approved.

  As for me, the spring had wrought similar though not identical changes. My shoulders felt oddly heavy, possessed of strange new musculature. I flexed things I did not know could be flexed and was rewarded by the leathery crack of my own unfurled wingspan. I know not by what instinct I soared from the pool into the sky, only that I did so. Vanity and curiosity in equal measure made me look down as I ascended, so that I might see my reflection in the water.

  Gracious, wasn’t I the most extraordinary creature! I had my aunts’ dark wings, but these sprang from a lithe, reptilian body, and my familiar human face showed a mouth filled with fangs. Flames flickered in my nostrils, and for some reason my clawed hind paws were sheathed in black gaiters that went quite nicely with the scarlet cassock veiling my immature bosom from view. Part harpy, part dragon, part demonic clergy, all added up to make me one very odd duck indeed.

  Odd, not effective. As my aunts attacked the approaching wave of creatures with talons and certain unsavory bombardments, I struggled to find a way in which to help them. The very notion of a harpy’s traditional strategy—to rain mythic guano upon one’s opponent—revolted me to the point where my innards simply would not cooperate. I lacked Pappa’s clerical training, which meant I could not summon any of his former infernal parishioners. I might have used my draconic strength directly, but single combat would not be efficient. While I battled one beast, a horde of others could reach the spring.

  The spring! Inspiration struck me instantly. I turned in midair and dove back toward the source, scooping up a large mouthful of the transformative water, splashing poor Miss Cubbins willy-nilly in the process. Beating my wings frantically, I flew back around the manor house and in one wild, mad, make-or-break feat of valor. . .I spit on the front door of Dyrnewaed.

  “What sorcery is’t that wakes me from my unsought slumber?” With lightning-tipped staff in hand, the graybeard wizard Merlin stood amid the wreckage of the heavy oak panel that had contained his spirit since before Great Eliza’s reign. “Reveal your name unto me, O mage and savior supreme!”

  “Introductions later, magic now,” I shouted, snatching him up in my claws and whisking him back to the embattled ground between the woods and the spring.

  To his credit, Merlin did not waste time giving arguments or demanding explanations. His cool blue eyes took in the situation in a trice, his supernatural sense allowed him to perceive where to place his loyalties, and his magic enabled him to raise a spell on the spot. It leaped from his staff and rocked the ground it struck, causing a wall of warding to erupt around the troublesome water. Undetectable to mortal senses, the barricade thrummed with sorcerous power that blasted all of the attacking creatures off their feet, out of their flight paths, and halfway to perdition.

  My aunts alone were spared from the general eviction. They hovered in mid-air, astonished by the sudden depopulation of their theatre of war, until their eyes lit upon the wizard. They drifted to earth with the grace of autumn leaves and bowed before him.

  “You have our thanks, O Merlin,” Aunt Euphrosyne intoned. Her harpy voice was considerably more impressive than her tremulous human one. “What dread agency set you free from your ages-long durance to aid us in this, our most desperate hour?”

  “The dragon-thing spit on my door,” the wizard replied simply.

  “Melantha!” Aunt Domitilla ruffled her feathers. “Spitting in the house? And you, a lady born and bred. What next? Public nose-blowing?”

  “Excuse me, dear Aello,” Aunt Euphrosyne murmured, calling her sister by what I presumed to be her true name. “If we are being accurate, our sweet Melantha did not spit in the house so much as on it.”

  “Do not chop prepositions with me, Ocypete,” Aunt Domitilla replied in the same wise. “The fact remains that the child’s intemperate actions have caused a dreadful upset in our domestic arrangements. We now have a legendary wizard for whom to provide, as well as the dawn-goddess’ castoff lover. However shall we manage to introduce them to the vicar and the local Hunt? O, we are socially ruined! I shall never be able to contribute my tatting to the parish jumble sale again, and you know how it piles up!” She flapped her wings in despair.

  “Does this mean you will be staying at Dyrnewaed?” I asked innocently.

  “Of course we will!” Aunt Domitilla (née Aello) snapped as we all wended our way back to the spring. As my aunts had chosen to walk rather than fly, out of deference to Merlin, we made a rather comical procession. Harpies are cruel grace itself when airborne, but on the ground they tend to waddle. “It would not do to leave you unchaperoned with both a legendary wizard and a prince whose manners thus far have been less than—”

  She stopped in her tracks and stared. Miss Cubbins stared back, her face pale, her expression sheepish, her hair serpentine. Tithonus was pale as well, though this was due to his having become as fine a piece of marble statuary as the British Museum might covet.

  “Oh my,” said Miss Cubbins, while her hair hissed and writhed. “I am most terribly sorry. I did not mean to turn the gentleman to stone, but when Miss Melantha splashed me, it simply could not be helped.”

  “A gorgon!” Aunt Euphrosyne exclaimed. “Did we know she was a gorgon when we hired her, Aello? I’m sure I was unaware of the fact.”

  “Apparently, so was she,” my elder aunt remarked with a wry smile. Turning to Merlin, she added: “I am gratified to perceive that your magic has protected you from the effects of our governess’ coiffure.”

  “Shieldings and wardings, Madam,” Merlin said smugly. “Never cut corners on your shieldings and wardings, I always say.”

  “Indeed.”

  At Aunt Domitilla’s behest, the wizard turned his powers to restoring us to our human guises. Despite the social niceties, the governess went first. As her fellow Mythics, we were immune to her petrifying gaze, but my aunts declined to become the empirical proof of whether our mortal bodies would be equally unaffected.

  Later, over tea, it was arranged that Merlin should stay on at Dyrnewaed as a long-lost uncle, newly back from the Afghan border. Miss Cubbins also agreed to remain, with the proviso that half a glass of spring water accompany her to all of our lessons, a visual memorandum for me to remain on good behavior or—as she so crudely put it—else. I thought it beastly of my aunts to approve this, but had no choice in the matter.

  As for Prince Tithonus, Merlin’s magic had no effect on him, alas, nor did repeated aspersions with the spring’s restorative waters. My aunts had him removed to the conservatory, for shelter from the elements, and Miss Cubbins frequently brought me there for lessons, though certain aspects of his undraped physique proved distracting for us both.

  “Perhaps he has no desire to return to the flesh,” I remarked. “At least in this state he will retain his youthful vigor.”

  “You need not speak of flesh quite so knowingly, Miss Melantha, nor to stare at the poor gentleman so attentively,” my governess chided, but she was goggling at the prince’s vigor as much as I. “Now open your Latin book to Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and let us begin.”

  Ah, the delights of a Classical education!

  Introduction to “True Calling”

  Irette Y. Patterson writes science fiction, fantasy, and romance. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. “True Calling” is her first professional fantasy sale.

  Irette says the inspiration for “True Calling” comes from her mother. “My mom does not bake,” Irette writes. “She doesn’t even keep butter in her refrigerator. Once a year, though, she breaks out her hand mixer and makes my dad a birthday cake with homemade lemon filling and fluffy frosting. I can’t help but think that the effort
she puts into making that once-a-year cake involves a lot of magic.”

  True Calling

  Irette Y. Patterson

  Cat waited for a moment as she stepped into the bakery, the bell dangling from the door announcing her arrival. Trays of baked goods surrounded her. Silver trays with goodies packed to the edge—baklava, chocolate sponge cake layers held by ganache and lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, the lemon filling betrayed by the dollop of neon-yellow filling on the center right on top. In front of her were the clear glass display cases of more yums available for sale. Sample cakes were displayed at a slant on the wall behind the cashier.

  No. This was no place where you sauntered in. You gave it its proper reverence. The bakery sat there on that strip of a road having been there before the area devolved into strip clubs and all-night pancake places. It had history. And family. And presence.

  The fact that she could get a baklava with its honey oozing against her finger and sticking to the sides of her mouth would have been reason enough to choose this bakery for the event.

  The real reason, though, was that it felt right. She wasn’t from the Path side of the family so she couldn’t read another person’s thoughts. She wasn’t an engineering whiz like the Freeman girls. And life would have been so much easier as an aura-seeing Bow. As a Hart she specialized in the heart of the home and family. And this place was filled with love and family.

  “Move it, Chick,” a voice came behind her pushing her aside.

  Cat sighed and moved so that her friend could step in. “Really?” she said.

  “Look. We got to get back to work. The board is meeting today and you don’t know when they’re gonna need us to run some numbers or something.” Her friend Kesha brushed past her to the cashier, “So. Let’s see this cake that you’re getting for a man who doesn’t know you exist.”