Indiansf issue 5 sep oct, p.1
IndianSF-Issue-5-Sep-Oct, page 1
part #5 of Vol 1 Series
CONTENTS
FLASH FICTION
Birth Of A Witch by Siobhan Gallagher
The forest seemed to scream, but no one else heard it
SHORT STORIES
Shorn of Lustre by Meg Jayanth
Yama likes his elaborate rituals
Shaking Off The Chains by Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
I have drunk deeper of the waters of truth
Sleeping... Waking... Being by Russell Adams
Maybe something new had escaped, taken up residence this summer in the flowerbeds
DIGITAL ART
Marta Dec
FLASH FICTION
Birth Of A Witch by Siobhan Gallagher
~1000 Words
The scent of mint and ginger filled her nose as she crushed the herbs together in the kitchen. The mixture was missing one ingredient. She poured a vial of blood into the mortar and started mashing it with the green pulp. This would do the fisherman's anemic wife well.
The front door opened. Footsteps echoed across the floor.
She undid her apron in haste and covered the workbench with it. Five men crowded into the kitchen, grim and tense. They ringed her at a distance as if confining a leper. She smiled and bowed her head, falsely demure.
This wasn't usual business.
The silence grew. At last one man, a scar etched into the side of his face, stepped up to her. She backed up into her workbench, tried to slide away--but he gripped her wrists with his sandpaper hands and jerked her towards him.
"Come along, witch," he said. "Village Patriarch sent us for yer head."
She squirmed and pulled, futile against his male strength. "I am no witch! Why such foolery?"
The scarred man stared her right in the eye, pupils dilated like a cornered animal. Of course, they believed it; they needed that faith. When crops were dying, and prayer had failed them, what else did they have?
"On my mother's grave, you must believe me."
They surrounded her, suffocatingly close.
#
She came back to herself with the sun's rays piercing her eyes and rough hands gripping her arms. They dragged her into the forest. A gigantic thick-limbed tree towered over her, its canopy cutting off the sun. Village folks were gathered 'round.
The forest seemed to scream, but no one else heard it.
Her stomach clenched, her bare feet furrowed the ground. Rocks and thorns scored her soles. She twisted in their grip, arms wrenched to the breaking point.
"Help!" she cried to the crowd, her voice dry and desperate. "Help me!"
"Quick --she's tryin' to call her imp!"
A heavy fist smashed into her mouth. Bits of teeth tumbled down her raw throat.
The crowd stared at her, dull and blank. Surely someone knew this to be wrong. Was there no friend to stand for her, to say "Let 'er go! She's no witch!"
Cowards all.
They hauled her atop a barrel. She tried to leap off, one last attempt, but the scarred man overpowered her. His eyes still held fear, but tempered with determination, as though hanging her would absolve him.
Foolish idiots. What good comes of a hanging? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Now the village will be without a herbwife, and they would rejoice at the loss.
They fitted the noose around her neck. She swallowed once before they tightened it. Hard to breathe. She gritted her shattered teeth and closed her eyes against her neighbors' uncaring faces. These ignorant cowards whom she had once called friends. They deserved the final circle of Hell.
And if only she could put them there herself, teach the lesson they so deserved. Let her soul be the Devil's, let her enact revenge in the name of Nemesis. She would steal their sleep.
The barrel was knocked from under her.
#
She awoke to the cool of twilight. Alone in the quiet forest. Her neck was still in the noose--but where was the rest of her? Here she was, breathing, dizzy and lightheaded, but with no hands to clutch or toes to wiggle. Then she looked down.
Lungs, heart, liver, and intestines were on full display. Her limp body, without head or organs, sprawled on the ground. She closed her eyes in shock. Opened them to gape at this new form.
She had heard about such things, rumors from the Far East of a witch capable of existing without a body.
Her tongue tested jagged shapes in her mouth, and her lips curled. She'd become the stuff of nightmares, the abomination they'd most dread... Her ghastly mouth hinged wide, row upon row of razors tearing through their flesh. Even death would not save them, for she would await them in Hell.
The lightheaded feeling was real as she discovered she could float. Head twisted, up and away, organs followed through the loop of the noose. She descended to her body. What to do with it? She couldn't abandon it to the scavengers. Her intestines felt as workable as an arm, albeit far more flexible and three times as long. After a few tries, she managed to wrap her intestine around her body, and drag it into temporary concealment in the brush. With some vinegar to shrink and pickle her entrails, she'd fit back into it like a well-worn dress.
But not now.
Her lips twisted into a grin at the thought of all those frightened faces, so eager to hang a witch in daylight. Tonight she would give them a taste of what a real witch was like.
______________________________________________________________________________
Author Bio: Siobhan Gallagher is a graduate from ASU and wannabe zombie slayer, currently residing in Arizona. Her fiction has appeared several publications, including AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review, COSMOS Online, Unidentified Funny Objects. Occasionally, she does this weird thing called 'blogging’ at: defconcanwrite.blogspot.com
SHORT STORIES
Shorn of Lustre by Meg Jayanth
~4800 words
And when Satyavan's life had thus been taken out, the body, deprived of breath, and shorn of lustre, and destitute of motion, became unsightly to behold. And binding Satyavan's vital essence, Yama proceeded in a southerly direction.
- The Mahabharata
#
There is fear in me as I move through the dance floor, sticky with a mix of spilled drinks and glitter and blood. I'm not drunk, I'm not even close to drunk, but the beat of the music slides between my ribs and pulls everything I feel right to the surface, just under the skin.
Three nagas with jewel-scaled arms hiss urgently to each other as I pass, black eyes cataloguing the lines on my face, the grey at my temples, the heaviness of my step. I'm hardly old, but age is something unknown to this ancient place, full of monsters in the full flush of youth.
I manage to angle my foot just enough to step down heavily on one of their tails - she rears up and expands her hood, split tongue flickering out of her mouth as she looks at me in what is clearly reproach. "Sorry," I say insincerely, ignoring the flex of muscle underneath her violet-black scales, the coils and coils of her glistening like oily rope.
"You always were." She shoots me another glare but tucks her hood back and turns away with her friends, and I'm wrongfooted.
Do I know them? Did I once? Maybe I mistook their recognition for revulsion. Maybe.
Someone's arm tumbles the plastic cup of water out of my fingers, and I watch it fall in a spray before the liquid is arrested in mid-air by a man wearing fairy lights round his horns and the lamellar armour of a Byzantine soldier. A bright-haired woman wearing a thin chiffon sari laughs delightedly and leaps into the glittering spray, but the droplets stay as fixed as stone, sharp as shards of diamond as they rip open her flesh in long jagged weals.
She is blinking calmly at the coin-sized hole in her palm displaying edges of delicate bones when the water goes abruptly liquid again, spattering me with slivers of skin and pale diluted blood.
The horned man takes the woman's unmaimed hand and appears to be mouthing apologies but as I watch her face flares bright with power and the flesh reknits itself around her injuries. The streaks of dark arterial blood left on her now-whole skin give her the aspect of a warrior fresh from the battlefield. The man gives her a respectful half-bow before whirling her into a dance.
That was impressive, even by the very warped standards of this place. She gives me a friendly sort of wave which makes me feel somehow complicit before slipping away into the crowd; an involuntary shudder passes through me.
I try not to think about death, and fail. There are many ways to die here, and it appears they keep inventing new ones.
#
The bartender looks irritated when I tell him I want a glass of water, but it comes chilled and clinking with ice in perfect spheres and hexagons, carved with arcane symbols that melt into different ones as I try to decipher them. I sip, and ignore the infinitesimal tugs of power that accompany each mouthful. Every moment here erodes away my independence into a thousand tiny debts and fealties, and these are just a few more. Besides, I'm thirsty.
I lean over the bar as the barman serves another customer - six and a half feet tall, bronze muscled, wearing the face of Mahatma Gandhi, bloody hell, - and he rolls his eyes in annoyance. Maybe that's what makes me announce, rather pompously, "I'm here to see the Lord of Time and Justice."
I smile like I've practised, like I've got too many teeth jostling for place, but he doesn't look impressed. He's probably poured tequila into the mouths of creatures with the heads of sharks and handed glasses to dancers whose palms are ringed with sharp yellow teeth - my human mandible just can't compare.
He ignores me until I pull Yama's amulet f
I let it hang in the air until he reaches for a rune-scratched glass bottle on a high shelf behind the bar. A droplet of his blood uncorks it with a shuddering hiss, and he reaches in and hands me one of the lotus blossoms within. He watches it darken from grey to a pale pink as it leeches the warmth from my hand.
"But you're not even his type," he blurts, face flushing with embarrassment.
"I know," I tell him, "He's mine."
#
I lick the firm petals of the flower one by one - a tedious task, but Yama likes his elaborate rituals. Everywhere my tongue touches the pink flushes a deep bruise-bright purple, and I pluck the petals off one by one and toss them in my wake, walking with a measured step. Soon enough, the ground begins to shift under my feet and the dance-floor fades away in shuddering slices of light and distorted music.
I make an effort not to look to either side, but I catch glimpses anyway: canopies of roses twisted with jewel-bright snakes, palaces carved out of sand flash-burned to black glass, blood-spattered marble hallways draped in velvet, weightless paradises of wheeling stars, autumn orchards laden down with gold-sheened fruit, orchestras playing instruments made of living human hearts and stripped bones.
I pull the last petal from the lotus and the ground evens. It's my stop: a vast candlelit glass-and-metal stair that grows thick with flowering vines as it plunges deep into the earth.
#
I pass one of my clones sitting in a rock-cavern carved into a filigreed gazebo near the entrance. A woman with black-veined wings is lapping blood from her neck like an incredibly elegant tick. The clone's eyes catch mine and slide professionally away, playing by the rules, though I can see the curiosity settle into her features like they're my own. They are. Or were. Let's be clear: they're not mine any more.
I don't like my clones. It's not a psychological thing, some self-hatred thing. I don't like them because they know all about me, and I know very little about them, about who they've grown into. They've got a built-in advantage. It makes them unpredictable. Dangerous. Especially if you're unpredictable and dangerous to begin with - and I've been called both many times.
#
There's a deep pool in the centre of this underground realm, and that's where people tend to congregate, dipping their legs and arms and tails and wings and antlers and whatever the hell else into the navy blue water that's always the perfect temperature. Picking marigolds and lounging in the shade of silver-leafed trees as the filtered sunlight plays through them. Drinking long drinks chased with poppy seeds and sweet wine and palm liquor.
A swirl of neon pink and white leaves brush past me in a rush of cold laughter, singing a song from my childhood against the nape of my neck. A woman's high voice sliding over words of love in a language I barely speak any more. I reach out and pinch one of the leaves into powder and the swirl retreats, their song breaking into sharp shrieks.
He is - of course - sitting by the edge of the pool with his long brown limbs trailing in the water, watching the mermaids with their tails sharp as knives. Their fish-scales are glittering metal coins like armour in copper and gold. They're bloodthirsty, like all the beasts of this realm, but he splashes water at them and laughs when they flash their fins in contempt. He has nothing to fear from them, and they have nothing to gain from him. He doesn't bleed. His fine bones aren't full of rich sweet marrow; they'd probably break the mermaids' ragged teeth if they tried to take a bite. The mermaids all still as the wind carries my scent to them. Nictating membranes turn their hungry gazes blessedly opalescent as they watch me and chitter to each other.
That's when he turns his fire-red eyes towards me, ringed with kohl and the smoky glittering paste of crushed jewels.
"Oh my dear," he says, with a brightness that makes me want to turn back around and leave, "Oh my dear. How long has it been?"
I try not to look directly at the attendants and lovers and servants clustered around him, sipping wine and playing musical instruments and dancing. One of them offers me a plate of ripe-fleshed mangoes which turn into pomegranates as I watch. As if I needed more symbolism in my life. He picks up one of the pomegranates and crushes away the skin. Glowing red juice that's nothing like blood drips all over his fingers. I wonder whether he's the one playing the party tricks or whether it's just this place, picking up on all the emotions pressing against the backs of my teeth. He licks his fingers in between his words as I watch, half-revolted and half something else altogether.
"My dear. You're not paying attention to a word I'm saying," he complains, with a quick amused glance at his companions. "Not at all the proper aspect to present to the Lord of Time and Justice."
He punctuates his title with a grandiose bow to scattered applause from his retinue, and catches my eye to let me know he heard me announce myself to the barman upstairs. I had always derided those vainglorious affectations. Once upon a time, I had mocked them fondly. And he had let me.
"I asked how long it's been since you left," he prompts, making a face of exaggerated patience into the silence. "You know how terrible I am at keeping track of time."
He is no such thing as his title suggests. I unclench my jaw, careful not to let any unconsidered words slip out. "Ten years. Give or take."
His fingers dart forward too quickly for me to react, plucking a grey hair from my temple. "It has certainly taken." He looks at my hair glinting in the cool light, expression at once fascinated and revolted.
"That was not freely given." I think my voice is shaking, but it clearly works well enough because my hair disintegrates to grey ash in his grip. I feel an infinitesimal relief, which is foolish; I'm about to put myself much more firmly in his power.
He dusts off his fingers and makes a face. "So paranoid," he laughs.
"I know you."
He considers for a moment, then gives me an approving smile. "Ten years is an excellent duration. It's the perfect moment for a comeback. Suitably dramatic."
"I'm not staying," I say flatly.
"Oh, but ten years ago you said you'd never, ever, not in a million years, cross-your-heart never come back. And here we are."
I try to shrug. "Things change."
"Not here. Not unless I want them to," he corrects, with offhand confidence. "I thought you wanted all that. Change and growth and alteration. All those messy things that happen outside this realm."
I flinch.
"I need a favour," I say, and I think it sounds normal, but something must give away how much I hate to be saying the words because he smiles: his mouth has so many teeth that they seem to spill off his face, fractalling out into a wide grin that seems to stretch for bone-edged miles and hours.
He snaps his fingers and one of his servants totters over and kneels before him. Her body is painted all in green with vines of flashing silver across the bridge of her nose, her collarbones, her thighs. Her head is completely, baldly smooth, and I feel an absurd urge to put a scarf around the slim bones of her neck as she bends her head. He reaches out for her chin and tips her head up, and says, "Open your eyes, darling," just loudly enough for me to hear, and the girl does, and I realise with a sick jolt that it's me. Her eyes cut towards mine, and back away again, but in them isn't the calm nonchalance that I expect from a clone; it's a burning barely contained hatred.
I sit down, and it's just luck that one of the embroidered cushions happens to be under me. I force myself to look again at his retinue, his strange band of serfs and exquisite horrors and pick myself out of the crowd twice more. One of my clones is wearing the skin of a tiger, hands ending in long crystalline claws, and the other is dressed like a Victorian gentleman and clutching a bone-topped walking cane, complete with muttonchops and cravat resting over a tightly waistcoated chest.
"You kept them, then," I say, and even in my ears my voice sounds thin, almost plaintive. What did I think - that he'd have killed all the remnants of me in a fit of anger when I walked out? No - he wouldn't be so human, but maybe I'd just hoped. "That's sweet."
