Beneath Ceaseless Skies #50 Read online

  “Bring me a child,” I told him as he stirred awake and smiled sleepily at me. “One of your own blood, still a babe unspeaking. Then I shall have my ruby, and you shall have my eternal love.”

  I watched him ride away down the scrubby wilderness path, the plume of dust rising in their wake a golden beacon in the dawn. Between scattered boulders, the daisies nodded in the breeze—my cheery jailers. Little grew out here but them, and they grew in any season, through drought and flood. The morning star gleamed, and swallows swooped over the land, gulping insects shaken loose by the king. I used to fly as free as they, unbound by the stones of this cave.

  Three hundred years past, a now long-gone sorcerer-king lured me to this cave with the promise of his daughter’s soul. She was a mother like myself, and I knew that devouring her would make me weep but would satiate me for weeks. But when I arrived, she held me off with stories of her children. Though I knew I would hear her tales echoing in my heart when her soul was in my belly, the passion in her eyes, the clasping of her hands, the scratches on her wrist from her daughter’s kitten—these would all be lost. So I enjoyed them while her father poured a ring of holy oil around the hill.

  Daisies grew along the line that bound me. The final tale the daughter told me before I devoured her was of her toddling son stalking grasshoppers through daisies. I would take him, I thought, when next I hungered. But I was imprisoned before I could, and now the daisies watched me with eyes as dark as his mother’s.

  Years passed, and generations. The sorcerer-king taught his son, who taught his son, and they all came to torment me and use me. But the arts and knowledge were lost. A king overthrown, a nephew crowned, ignorance reigned but the runes were worn, because after all, is that not what a king wore? They never knew the true purpose was to guard a soul against my hunger and bind me to their command.

  And so I was raped by ignorance.

  But my horse, my magic horse.... Made with the love of my captor, I could ride it past the daisies and be free once more.

  The baby he brought me was his daughter, his very own daughter, birthed by his lesser wife on the night of a tawny moon. I nursed her on the breeze from my teats and teethed her on locusts. I plucked out her hair and replaced it with willow. I peeled off her skin and replaced it with the surface of a sun-reflecting pond. I gave her an eagle’s eye and a bat’s ear. I showed her how to ride the wind and I named her for the long lost princess who lured me to my doom.

  From me, she learned astronomy and numbers and reading and other things no man would have her know. I taught her to bake bread and butcher deer. I taught her seduction, and told her to trust no man, for men would only chain her.

  And when she grew to an age when her womanhood budded, when she knew it was a treasure but had yet to find it, I sent her away. She rode the wind into the city and learned the ways of mankind. The king told me she bought a pig in the foreign market and slaughtered it herself in the palace courtyard. They feared my foster daughter, my beloved foster daughter.

  But the king loved her as he loved me. Every week now, he came to me, longing for my embrace. Soon, he came every day. Outside, his men grumbled as they camped by the daisy line. He came to me when he should be minding his lands, they said. He spoiled his daughter, his unholy witchy child, when he should be training his son for kinghood. The runes, they said, it was the runes that ruined a once noble family. They needed a king who would not carry the marks of sorcery so boldly.

  Oh, how their anger pleased me.

  Any day, my child would fly to the neighboring land to steal the ruby. The city would overthrow their worthless king and enthrone one without runes to guard him. I would leap the daisies and burn the city.

  My revenge, my daughter, bring me my revenge.

  When she came to me, she was a woman—a mother, she said.

  “I went to the city of the ruby king,” she said. “I rode the wind through palace windows and bound the guards with my willow hair. With just a kiss, the youngest guard opened the treasury, and we explored the riches together.”

  And she held forth the stone, the twin of my horse’s eye. A golden eagle claw clasped it on the hilt of an iron knife. She pulled it from the silken folds of her robe, which she bared to show the black runes inscribed in the water-smooth skin around her heart.

  “I love my father,” she said. “And I love my daughter, and I love the sweet innocent guard who gave me that daughter and who died because of my seduction. As I fled the city, they threw him from the walls, and I saw the blood flowing from his blinded eyes. It stains the sand even now.”

  “But you’re free,” I said, “without the will of man chaining your heart. And your daughter will be free, and we will all fly with the wind in the wastelands.”

  She brandished the knife in the style that I had taught her. “But you do not love! Who will I love in the wasteland? I love my city, and I love the mothers whose children your sisters devour.”

  “Every child I take, I love,” I said. “As I love you, more than anything.” My heart, my breaking heart straining against its chains. Would that I could curse all men for turning my daughter against me.

  I tore off my face to blast her with wind. The skin of my lifeless horse blew away; the bones twisted aside. My daughter staggered back, but her willow hair bent, and her water skin rippled and carried its own malleable power. She rode my wind in the vortex of the cave, looping back upon me to drive the knife into my broken heart. She shattered the chains, and rent my skin.

  Now, I rage over the cities. I see my daughter nursing her fleshbound child in the house of an unfallen king. The city calls her a whore, but she loves too much, and she does not care.

  And I blow and I rage.

  I touch the blood-stained sand around a city’s walls and curse the hearts of men. Yet I am but a storm, and my rage will pass by. My silken skin is gone, no flesh can hold me. I hunger and I hunger, but no babe will fill my belly. My sisters fly on their owl wings and weep for me. My envy rains upon them and they hide from me in olive trees. For I am but the wind, the wind that flies through shattered hearts.

  Copyright © 2010 Liz Coleman

  Comment on this Story in the BCS Forums

  Liz Coleman lives in the Pacific Northwest and works at a printing press, surrounded by wooden cases of dusty metal type. “Winecask Bellis and Owl Wings” is her first publication.

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  COVER ART

  “Spring Sunset,” by Andreas Rocha

  Andreas Rocha lives in Lisbon, Portugal, with his wife. He studied architecture, but after college his main occupation veered from architecture towards digital painting, something he had done during college as a hobby. He has been working freelance for three years now, doing conceptual and finished illustrations, matte paintings, and 3D architectural visualizations. See more of his work, including a movie version of “Spring Sunset,” at www.andreasrocha.com.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1046

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Copyright © 2010 Firkin Press

  This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.