The Saint of Osaiga

 

Miracles travel farther, faster outside the city.  

In this way, miracles are like people. Or light. Few people recognize the similarities between natural light and supernatural miracles. Left alone, light travels heartily through a vacuum without dissipating, so long as it doesn’t bump into anything. Stars from billions of light years away are visible for this reason. Without water, glass, or atmosphere to stop it, light travels in perfect paths from one source to the earth. But no light we make here on earth, steeped in atmosphere, will ever reach the stars. Isn’t it a shame? 

 

Miracles, similarly, travel easily with nothing in the way. What would it look like if miracles were as visible as light: currents of phenomenon and light grasping at other currents all around the world.

 

Some miracles go unseen, by vice of disturbance. Not all light and miracles go unseen, though. Some bounce over the surface of water, where depth and clarity join hands to volley them back at different angles. Some are refracted back by the atmosphere at a specific height and air density, and, like atmospheric refraction produces beautiful sunrises or sunsets via celestial objects, they are thrust back to the earth, less visibly. Miracles and light can be sent across states or countries, depending. Can leap from Colorado, get sloshed around in the atmosphere, bump its head on some temperature and air conditions, and land in Virginia or Maryland, mostly unaffected. 

 

And across the tundra? The sun is an accessory that many find meddlesome when they’re trying to achieve progress. So is warmth, tall buildings, medium-sized buildings, crowds of people, walls of glass. In the tundra, light and miracles can scamper to and fro so easily that they sometimes, unpredictably, end up dozens or hundreds of miles away from their original broadcasting points. A miracle in the South Pole might be found in the North Pole, just as strong as ever, or vice versa. It has been called science and religion, by saints and scientists and people who are both. An invisible animal is difficult to argue the shape of, no matter who feeds it. Which is why the scientists and saints have stopped arguing. It doesn’t matter that they both believe they’re right. 

 

Except neither had an answer when the light travelled so far across the world it took the other light’s hand and didn’t let go. The miracles went nuts. 

 

 

Osaiga was full of miracles. 

 

It was too windy for impermanent structures, and too sparsely populated for tall structures, so every structure was a cabin or barn or house in a frozen circle of cabins close to one another, possibly to share heat, like penguins protecting eggs. Like eggs, dead cars sat adrift in barbed wire and frost between the cabins. Osaiga shone with porch lights and the aurora borealis. 

 

Before Osaiga was Osaiga, the land had been nothing at all. A large piece of icy rock, connected by a small bridge south of Osaiga to the larger rock that was the continent of North America. There was little in the way of animals, less in the way of arable land. It was before the Santi’s had come north, before they’d left South America, when they had been Los Santos Santis. They had populated one town permanently, and hundreds of people seeking miracles, blessings, confession, healings, and many other things the church didn’t provide to all populated the town impermanently. Tents were always erected on the Santi’s property. Lines of tents and the occasional back packer went for miles, into the mountains. Merchants walked up and down the lines in the day time to sell cheap alcohol, small charms, prayer cards. Musicians busked in the night, moving up and down the line, getting into skurmishes when their territories touched. Those leaving left with stories- good or bad, neither dissuaded those who came to line up for the saints. They weren’t here for the good stories, just the interesting ones. Impassioned citizens who had met and survived the Santis declared they would name their children for the children in the family. This didn’t catch the attention of the government, but it did catch the attention of the Church, which brought it to the attention of the government. The government visited the Santis and told them politely that they were to stop providing miracles, or they would need one to save them. The Santis turned to the church. The Catholic Church told them, less politely, that they were to stop providing miracles, or they should ask for one to save them. 

 

The Santis had saint blood. 

 

It was getting too bright and crowded for miracles here anyway, they told the church in the afternoon. In the morning they were gone. 

 

They walked in the dark and slept in the day, until they’d found another place, flatter and emptier, enough for light and miracles. 

 

That was generations ago. Now there was Osaiga. And in Osaiga were aunts, uncles, grandparents, infants, cousins, second cousins, other relatives too distantly related to remember the titles of, and the unsaved. The unsaved occupied more and more cabins every year, and the Santis found more and more each year the idea of refusing the unsaved more appealing than buildings new cabins in the snow. The beds were full, the kitchens were emptying faster. Osaiga was full of unsaved that could not be saved. 

 

Osaiga was, as all places made by and for saints and miracles, equipped with a Shrine. There was only one, so it got the capital S. 

 

The Shrine was the oldest building the Osaiga. It had been built by two of the Santis that first travelled to Osaiga, who had completed its construction faster than any of their family members had completed construction of their own homes. They had arrived a day sooner than the other Santis and dug out a spot in the snow for the Shrine, then fallen asleep and woken up to find their work undone in the night. They promptly began to work, so diligently that they did not look up when the rest of the family settled in Osaiga. 

 

On the first day, they built brick walls into the shape of the Shrine and let loose the dogs inside while they plastered up the outside. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the second day, they’d added insulation, and turned some of the glass windows from one of the trucks into windows for the Shrine. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the third day, they fired a kiln from the warmth of their blood and made tiles for the roof, and installed them one by the one. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the fourth day, one of them woke, claiming to have dreamt of the Virgin, or at least a beautiful, celestial woman, and they carved out a part of the new roof to install a skylight through which they could see the aurora borealis. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the fifth day, they put in furniture and an altar, and from their memories of the colours of the South American forest, painted some of the glass and the walls. The other Santis were proud and pleased. On the sixth day, the one that had dreamed the celestial woman stabbed his brother with a bone knife, went to the nearest town and robbed a municipal hall full of people, then returned to fashion his murdered brother’s collarbones into a small cross for the front of the shrine. The other Santis were not pleased. 

 

He was not there the seventh day. But the cross was, and it was still there now. 

 

As was the skylight, which was cleaned as religiously as all other aspects of the Shrine were attended to. Through it, the aurora borealis hung and threw the occasional miracle. 

 

One particular saint looked after the Shrine these days. And performed most of the miracles. 

 

Carlos Frederico Santi had not always been as observant of holiness as he was now. 

 

He had been the most rotten of the Santi children, when he was a child. He was terrible enough to be exorcised. Terrible enough that no punishment could teach him, because no matter where he was placed, what tool or task he was given, he found a way to be terrible with what he was given. He had released several dogs and chased them down the road and away, first luring them with a huge steak meant to feed six people for dinner, then following them with a pointed stick his uncle used to walk without slipping in the snow, then he burned down the kennel. This was accomplished in approximately four hours. 

 

He had been terrible enough that speaking his word in a house of god was rude. Aiming his name at someone else was worse. Terrible enough that the Santis were beyond praying for him. They had prayed for miracles for him, but one had never arrived, and when Carlos remembered this, he turned his middle finger up toward the aurora. In his teen years, he had stolen a truck with his friends and decided to commit robbery. This was bad enough. They decided to rob a church. He had already robbed the Osaiga Shrine, so he turned toward the nearest Catholic Church. Specifically, toward a beautiful musical instrument that resembled a very small piano, covered in gold leaf. It was small enough to carry to the bed of the stolen truck. Or, it should have been. Carlos carried it down a hallway, then a second hallway, then a staircase. By the time he’d reached the vestibule, the instrument had become too heavy to carry. His friends joked, then tried to lift the piano, but it had grown too heavy for them. There was no chance of returning it to its original home at the back of the church, and no chance of taking it away and ridding themselves of the evidence. Carlos stared at it, thinking. 

 

While he was thinking, he became aware of a weight on him that was not new found teenage muscle, or cramps in that muscle from carrying a very small piano. Carlos marveled; he had discovered remorse, and it prevented him from leaving the church, abandoning the evidence of the intended theft, and even from lying about it. His friends vanished. Carlos waited for the priest to return in the morning. He waited inside the vestibule. He opened the doors while he waited, to watch the aurora ripple. He waited until a storm appeared, as quickly as if it had been crouched on the other side of the door. Wind rose, snow blew, ice spiked the gusts. Carlos draped himself over the instrument while the ice pelted, and waited. In this time, his many crimes and exploits and pranks pounded him, as furiously as the ice. He wished there were a real priest at the Santi Shrine, so he might repent. The ice became wind. He waited. The storm became clear sky. He waited. The aurora flooded the church with light. When Carlos moved, the piano, as light as it had been when he’d first touched it, moved as well. 

 

Carlos had returned the piano and become the current saint of Osaiga. He prayed each day. He cleaned all of the windows of the Shrine so he could see the aurora. He wore a cross around his neck and a mark on one shoulder blade from the first piece of ice that hit him the night of the attempted robbery. 

 

He prayed for the sun to rise and set, for his family, for the unsaved who were in Osaiga and those on their way. 

 

He did not pray for himself. Saints did not pray for themselves. 

 

The aurora always played a part in the miracle. 

 

Because the first miracle was this: light. 

 

Because the first miracle was to make visible what needed to be miracle’d away. The dark was always the same, beginning in the gut, like a small, slow drip. Then growing upward, like rocks in a tunnel. The slickness hardens, the uneasiness buffs, until the surface of the darkness is sharp and hard, like something that would cut you to handle it. It grows mostly unpredictably from there. Usually in layers, always in such a way that movement becomes impossible. Unlike anger, or sadness, letting a little out at a time does not reduce the volume of it. The dark remains, always. 

 

The exception: the Santis. With a hand raised toward the aurora, they can give shape and image to the dark. Under the aurora, it is visible to them, like a fish sensing rapids or currents. When a saint performs a miracle, the aurora watches. 

 

The second miracle was where the saints drew back. The second miracle involved getting rid of the darkness. This was the job of the unsaved. They could not leave Osaiga healed until they had fought it, and they had to do this part on their own. It was not the place for a saint to interfere. The Santi’s did not break this rule. The Santi’s lived this rule, breathed it, forgot it was a rule as much as they forgot it was a rule to not stick yourself in a fire. 

 

Carlos could not remember why this was the rule. Only that it led to a terrible consequence for the saint performing the miracle. A consequence worse than any unsaved’s darkness. Because it was a saint. And the consequences of saints were terrible. 

 

When an unsaved came to be saved, it was Carlos that performed the miracle. Delivered it was a better word, but looking at Carlos Frederico Santi, one could believe he had created the miracle in the first place. He was the best at what he did, and he was the best at what he did for generations. For many reasons, top of which was his face. Nobody could imagine looking into his face and not feeling holier for his presence, gentler, or gentled. His face, even without expression, suggested he loved you, and so did the saint before him, and the saint before him, and so on until you could hardly imagine ever not having been loved. If Carlos Frederico Santi had turned his face toward the Catholic Church in his lifetime, they would have fought the government in the name of the Santi family. If Carlos Frederico Santi had turned his face toward the government in his lifetime, they would have immediately become a theocracy. 

 

Miracles bring light. Not just to darkness. The day and the night after a miracle is bright. Which is why it bothered no one that there was light when Carlos finished his latest miracle. Only Rosa Santi, the one member of the Santis to suffer from insomnia, the only one awake in Osaiga in the middle of the night, was the one to notice that something had gone amiss. 

 

She began by waking Carlos’ brother. “It’s the middle of the night,” she informed him.

 

Groggy, tired, and upset, he sat up. “Yes, it is,” he observed. He observed some more. Then he got out of bed to help Rosa wake the rest of the Santis. The Santis assembled outside the Shrine in their pyjamas and coats. They did not carry flashlights. They did not need to. The day after a miracle is bright. 

 

Except it was not day. It was not even the night after the miracle had been delivered. But it was light anyway. Each Santi tilted their heads up, and one by one went to investigate the Shrine. When the last Santi left the Shrine, they knew two things. 

 

The first: Carlos Frederico Santi was missing. 

 

The second: the aurora borealis had lit up the sky. So had the aurora australis. And from here to the South Pole, everyone beneath it would wake up and realize the two auroras had bled into one another and covered the sky completely. 

 

The Santis considered. Not all Santis came to the conclusion, but some did, and they were right. The third conclusion: the saint of Osaiga had tried to help an unsaved. And this light was his darkness. 

Art by Ingo

He Will Sleep

I am not dead. Only asleep. 

 

I sleep as punishment for what I did awake. I remember waking another time, in the night, with the sky on fire. The smell of ashes was the shadow that came around the corner before our enemies did, with their torches and their arrows on fire. Unrelenting, barbarian invaders, who pressed their boots into the soil so firmly my people- they gave us a name, but I will not repeat it- were sure the rock held imprints of their boots. The invaders held high banners, threw their name, called Just and righteous! My people suffered beneath their hands and blades. The trees fell. The houses fell. Into the blood of the people who fell. My philtatos. His blood. 

 

I remember the cheers when I came onto the battlefield. When the tides turned. When I held up my blade. 

 

I killed first the man who killed me. I sliced stomach, split skulls, crushed ribs, to get to him, to watch him soak the ground red and black. As though the base of a mountain had crumbled, the rest of them tumbled back. Still, I drove forward. I dragged him fallen body behind my horse and rode from our lands to theirs, burned their houses, their women, their children, in their beds. Strung up their lords, their best soldiers, and burned their temples until their people cried mercy. Then I burned their crops and left them to devour one another like the animals they were. 

 

A hero I became. 

 

A hero I am. 

 

I could not stop. When I had killed the foreigners, I carried their lords back and dragged them over the earth, until my men averted their eyes. Then I killed the men who did, and I killed their wives, and the children they would have raised. I dragged my boots into the earth until all the imprints of our enemies could not be seen under mine. My hand dreamed of the blade when they were not together, and they dreamed of blood when they were. I had been chosen. I had been born to be a saviour and hero. I would hero my way to my death, if I could, but I was too much a hero to die. 

 

If he cannot die, he will sleep, my people said, as they pressed me into this tomb and removed my blade from me, and removed the sun from my eyes and the air from my lips. 

 

They gave me ashes. Philtatos.

 

In my dreams, I am brought from this tomb, when they need a hero again. In my dreams, my blade is returned, and we have a new dream together. 

 

I hear footsteps near. 

 

I see a little sunlight. 

Art by David Martinez

A Winter King Story

Gods love stories about themselves. Flannery’s mother always reminded her of it. She would chase Flannery’s father’s stories with it, as though to undo all the magic of the stories. Flannery remembered them, but she also remembered the gods. 

 

It was eleven at night. It felt claustrophobic in the house. Snow pressed in at the windows where there should have been the glow of Christmas lights. Three feet of snow had fallen the night before. Another three had fallen today. If more than three fell overnight, they would have to excavate a path to the car the next day, or admit defeat and stay inside. Which was why Flannery could hardly believe anyone would be ringing the doorbell.

 

She opened the door. It took a couple tries. The lock had nearly frozen. She was irritable and uncharitable and full of vitriol, as she always was at this time of year, and she hoped it was a neighbour or an official of some sort coming to inform her there had been a freak avalanche in the town or something else dangerous and interesting had happened. 

 

She stared at the group assembled beyond the stoop. The group stared back. She had enough time to notice that the pathway she’d shovelled an hour and a half ago had disappeared beneath the snow before the group began to speak. No, not the group, just one of them. But it took her a moment to realize it was a single voice instead of several, and then she wondered how she could make that mistake when the difference was so obvious. Flannery disliked the Christmas experience entirely, and she was over the mix of celebration and well wishes and condolences every year. She should have been furious to see carollers. But they weren’t singing. It was a story they were telling- no, one of them was telling. But every time she spotted the moving mouth, another mouth took over the words and led the story to its destination. The story began familiarly: longed for a child, until they came upon a bud in the spring. Then: white as snow, lips red as fever, eyes black as char. Then, much less familiar, enough to coax Flannery into paying attention to the story: meant for the season of long, hungry nights. 

 

“Jesus Mary Joseph, you puke.” Madeleine, Flannery’s older sister, and currently the head of the household because their mother was knee deep in whatever depressing shit psychiatrists had to put up with at Christmas and had locked herself in the computer room, appeared in the hallway, swaddling herself in a cardigan. “Why’s the door open? You want to pay the heating when- er.”

 

“They’re carollers,” Flannery said. She hesitated. “They’re bards.”

 

“Bards,” Madeleine repeated, as though there couldn’t be a more unnecessary thing in the world. When she wasn’t paying attention, she thought by speaking. Then she collected herself, braced against the cold and the idea of strangers, and gagged and bound her honest opinions. She had a lovely smile, and she aimed it at the storytellers as she edged into the doorway. There was just enough doorway for both sisters to occupy it. Madeleine swept the smile over the whole group. She had long golden red hair, and a mouth full of straight teeth, and she earned a pleasant look from one of the men in the group. Flannery couldn’t know exactly what his age was, because when he smiled, it changed. But Madeleine was pleased with it anyway. She tilted her head and spoke quietly through her smile. The words were skewed; Flannery, fluent in Madeleine’s pseudo-ventriloquism, turned her ear Madeleine’s way. “They’ll want something to eat. Or a drink. For payment.”

 

In dad’s stories, it was never food or drink the strangers at the door wanted. Unless they were a fairy or god in disguise. Flannery didn’t think the storytellers were here to test them. 

 

Madeleine and Flannery shared the stoop. Madeleine pulled the door nearly shut behind them. The radio warbled statically in the kitchen. Flannery faded to listening, briefly, aware she had missed much of the story, wishing she hadn’t, and also filling in the blanks. It was very close to the stories their dad used to tell them. There was a god in it, and whomever took over the story always had something to say about the god. He wore a pelt over one shoulder, whiter than any cape, softer than any grassy meadow. He had a knife made of bone, carved with the teeth of the same animal from which it had been taken. His voice made the river tremble, and the stones sing. The winter king needed no crown, nor shield, because everything yielded eventually. Flannery wondered if Madeleine was listening at all. 

 

She noticed frost on the shoulders of the storytellers. She had the vague notion that human beings weren’t meant to survive in these sorts of conditions, let along trundle around the neighbourhood singing in the dead of night. She gave the group a searching look. But every face was lit, and not one among them was familiar. 

 

The story ended. Flannery didn’t know how, but she didn’t think she needed to hear it. Their father had told such stories and the endings were the same. Madeleine held her hands beneath her chin like prayer and sighed. “That was wonderful. A winter king story. So traditional.”

 

One of the storytellers smiled. Or at least, his mouth curved at the corners. His cheeks were very pink, as though the wind had burned them. He tilted his head at Flannery, like a hungry bird. He asked, “Did you like it?”

 

Flannery said, “Does it matter if I did? To fix it to my liking, you would have to know me better anyway, and you don’t.”

 

Madeleine smacked her arm. “Flanny! Runt!”

 

The storyteller grinned, as if Flannery hadn’t been rude at all. “That’s fair. Spoken like a story teller.” He sent a knowing look to the woman next to him, who was so much older that when she changed her expression, it was just a wobble of moving lines. Her eyes were glossy from the cold. A tear wound through the wrinkles, shiny as pewter. She didn’t seem to see the look. 

 

Madeleine was clearly irritated to have been done so wrongly by her sister. She put her hands on her hips to let them know she was in charge, and she smiled to let them know she was not responsible for her terrible sister and the terrible things that came out of her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, spackling casual over her distress. “She’s especially vile at this time of year. You must be freezing. Would you like coffee? Or- tea? Or- I can check for the apple cider and heat you some. With some cinnamon it’s perfect for a night like this one.”

 

“Would you like to come tell stories with us?” the elderly woman with a face like many gorges asked. She was the only one in the group who touched anyone else, and only briefly, like they were all taking turns, or she was elderly enough to have to lean on someone at all times. She put out no hands, but other hands came to meet hers. She looked up into Madeleine and Flannerys’ faces. All of the storytellers had very direct gazes. Flannery and Madeleine’s father had done the same thing when he told stories. There was no better way to make them pay attention, he’d said. 

 

They said nothing about this time of year. Flannery wished Madeleine hadn’t brought it up. Then she wished, self-destructively/hatefully, that one of the storytellers would ask about this time of year, and she could snap the answer back at them.  

 

Madeleine laughed. She had a pretty laugh that tended to make others feel they were the cause or target of it. She asked, “I don’t have boots warm enough or a heart strong enough to walk through this kind of snow.”

 

A woman with dark hair and black pebble eyes said, “We aren’t walking.” Like many puppets on a single hinge, the group turned. At the end of the pathway, in front of the yard, stark despite the grainy, snow-grey air, a carriage with a sled beneath it rested on the snow. Before it, a huge horse pulled. It was the largest horse Flannery had seen, and the blackest. Someone sat on the horse, hands clenched in its hair, face hidden by his own long, black hair. 

 

Flannery stared hard at the faceless figure. She could see it wasn’t gazing at anything, only listening. Her chest and stomach were suddenly as ill as if she had been out in the snow already. 

 

“Holy- that’s so cool,” Madeleine said. “Is it warm enough? It’s like, negative twenty two degrees.”

 

“It’s a special night for us,” the dark-haired woman said. She slanted a look at Flannery when she did. 

 

“Longest of the year,” Flannery said, clearly, as if she were answering a riddle, or speaking to the figure on the black horse. She didn’t want him to mishear, or not hear her at all. “I’d have to ask our mother about coming with you.”

 

“It’s just us three,” Madeleine said, which was unnecessary, Flannery thought. The storytellers must have already known their father wasn’t around. At least, he wasn’t in this house. And Madeleine should have known they weren’t asking her to come tell stories. “Speaking of, mum would love to see that- sled, and horse. Or carriage. Could you just wait a moment? She’s in the other room. She- I know, Flan, but she wouldn’t want to miss this even for moping about da- I’ll go get her. Just wait here.”

 

She backed into the house, tapping her shoes against the frame before shucking them off, and shoved the door lightly as she left. She whistled as she went, which was the only habit she’d picked up from their father. The door didn’t quite close, but there was a quiet moment where everyone seemed to be waiting to see if it would. 

 

“You know we don’t take anyone? You have to have a good story to tell,” said the storyteller that had smiled at Madeleine earlier. 

 

Without thinking, Flannery said, “According to whom? According to him?”

 

Again, like a bush of plants bobbing in the same wind, they turned and regarded the silent man on the horse. The longer Flannery looked at the man, the more she could make out. His white coat, the trinkets hanging from his belt, the gloves that had never seen dirt, the too-unlikely gleam of metal around the crown of his head. The horse as well was not as she had first seen it. It was larger than any draft horse she had ever seen, but its hooves did not sink into the snow. 

 

“He almost never likes any of the stories,” the black-haired lady sighed. She sounded disappointed and resigned. “Which is why our numbers dwindle every year.”

 

“Why stop at our door, then?” Flannery wondered. “Why ask me?”

 

“We stop at every door,” one of them said. “Or we try. Some doors never open for us. But we try, to tell the stories-”

 

The elderly woman sighed very loudly. His voice vanished into the snow. Her breath was invisible, though Flannery could see every one of her own breaths as clear as a smoke signal. “We try to remind everyone of the old stories. For the sake of the winter.” Flannery could hear, as clearly as if she’d said it, that she had cut herself off. 

 

Flannery did not look at the figure on the horse. “You did come here before. My dad talked to you.” They were silent. She measured her thoughts. “Before he was gone. There were fewer of you.” She was abruptly delighted that there were more of them now, and wary of it.

 

Through the front door and the door of the computer room, Flannery could hear the argument that had sprung up between her sister and mother. Their mother was prickly at this time of year as well, and Madeleine responded to barbs by turning them outward again. The black horse pawed at the snow in front of the sled. The elderly lady watched her. “It is time for us to go. Have you decided?”

 

“Would I come back in the morning?” Flannery asked. 

 

“Perhaps the morning,” the dark-haired woman said. She regarded some of the other storytellers. “Perhaps in a year. It depends how good your story is. You have to tell us that first.”

 

Madeleine and their mother had apparently hit on both of their sore spots. Voices escalated, as though by increasing volume they could be heard over either side of the emotional wall between them. 

 

Flannery asked, “You want me to tell you a story right now?”

 

The elderly woman shrugged. “Tell us what it is about. Some stories are worth more than others.”

 

The hall banged with angry footsteps. Flannery folded and unfolded her arms. She glanced at the man on the horse. “You’ll come back in a year, won’t you? You’ll ask again?”

 

She had lived with uncertainty long enough to spot it when it was microscopic. The man on the horse tightened his hold on the mane. The horse began to move, either restless or responding to its rider. The group of storytellers fidgeted. Flannery wanted to clarify that she hadn’t made a decision. That she hadn’t said she would prefer to stay in this house and remember her father’s stories while her father was nowhere to be found. 

 

“Perhaps,” the dark-haired woman said, gently, in the way neither children nor teenagers ever fell for. “Perhaps you don’t even know a story he would like.”

 

The grey quality of the night had vanished, though the snow remained in the air. Darkness pressed in all around, as claustrophobic as the snow had been. The group began to file along the path, back toward the carriage. They made no noise in the snow beneath their feet. 

 

“What about a story about the winter king?” Flannery said. 

 

The elderly woman smiled. The figure on the horse held tightly as the horse spooked at something invisible. The storytellers began to crowd the carriage. One smiled at her. Another cried from the cold. The figure on the horse whistled a small, strange tune to it and it stilled. It turned enough for Flannery to see the shape of a smile. 

 

Her mother and sister were almost at the door. She hopped into the snow. The black-haired woman put out a hand to help her into the carriage. 

 

Gods love stories about themselves. 

Art by Kim Myatt

Other Plans

I had other plans this year. 

 

I was supposed to be getting married. My father, who had led my household but had trouble leading the horses from the stalls to the fields and back again, had found someone I didn’t mind marrying, and had actually convinced the man to say yes to me. It was one of the few things my father had ever put complete effort into. The rest of the work- the housework, the rearing of my brothers and I, the breaking of the stallions- had been left to us. Chores, or tasks, or opportunities for him to be anywhere but the house, anywhere but in a position of leadership, anywhere but at court, offering the king his service because servicing was what he did best. I had always assumed it was odd for my father to give up all the responsibility he had to my brothers, and to his daughter. But I was born a peasant, and he was born a man of the court, and he had never allowed our two worlds to overlap. I didn’t know a thing. 

 

I recalled all of the chores he had given me when I staked him through the heart the day before last. He had once told me, “Your nurse has told you too many of the old stories, Dochka. You’ll be fishing in the frozen river for leshy next.” I looked at his white skin and blue mouth and said, “Maybe it’s time to go fishing for leshy next, hm, starik?” Then I used his cane, which he’d only just begun to need to get anywhere quickly, to turn his heart into pulp inside his chest cavity. A little of it spilt on the ground out of him as well. 

 

Sasha, my older brother, had told me that in a battle, it never got easier. It was filthy work, and it did not matter how many lives you ended, ending another was always difficult. Our younger brother, Alex, insisted it didn’t matter that we were looking at false humanity right now. A human face was meant to inspire compassion, so ending a life, when you knew it wasn’t much of a life, and knew it would end your life if you gave it the chance, was still an uneasy endeavor. Alex was meant to become a scholar, to follow our father to the court one day. He was thigh deep in snow right, sweating as much as if he were next to the oven, from hacking into the frozen dirt. It was a dirty sight to see, because it was the end of all hope for a courtly life full of text and ideas and gentle women. 

 

I have been visiting our late mother’s sister when the illness hit, helping her prepare for her child, and helping once it had arrived. The child wasn’t particularly bright, if birthing was an indication. As useless as a dumb foal. He had tried to be born backward, and in the end there had been nothing for it but to allow him to die, or else kill my mother’s sister. It was just as well, in the end. A babe was a beautiful and wonderful gift in the world, especially in winter, before the spring arrived, when the flowers and the child could blossom together. But it was less useful than an able-bodied woman when you were fighting legions of the dead. A woman with nothing left to lose, and a heart full of grief-become-rage, and even the dead know to be afraid. 

 

But there was no battle to return to. No fighting at all when I got home. My brothers hadn’t thought, at any point, to pick up one of father’s knives or sword, or the axe in the wood shed, and try their hand at taking back the country. Not a single household in our town had tried to drive the upyrs back. They had ceded before the fight even began. When I put my mind to it, I believe it’s because of the stories. Stories. That’s all. Every dark story our nurse told us, every myth our father had disagreed with, was battling against them in their minds, and rather than sort out the conflict, they allowed it to rage and took several steps back. The dead had risen, the upyrs were here, and they had decided it was all God’s will and we weren’t meant to survive. Friends and family that had died were clawing and pounding their way out of their coffins and through the frozen soil to come take the rest of us back with them, and my brothers could not overcome the realization of our nurse’s stories. Not even when our nurse, death-white, pocked with holes where maggots had eaten her in the warmer time of the year. 

 

Idiots, I said. Exactly like father. It was nothing worse than battling off the birds that came for bodies on the battlefield before they could be returned to their families. What disturbed them greatly, I think, is the upyr appetite for blood and flesh. It is a necrotic disease wearing the faces of our loved ones. It is the unknown, and the known. It is the nightmares our nurse shared with us. The embodiment of my mother’s sister’s grief at her lost child. And upyr are not slow. They are as quick and violent as the men Sasha had fought in battle. But they die like men. Not of illness, but trauma. For Sasha, it may never get easier, but it may become more bearable if he can avoid looking into their faces and believing that, for all they look like they want to devour you, they are still your kin. 

 

Because they no longer are. 

 

This morning I saddled our horses and loaded a neighbour’s caravan with the last of the bread, and our warmest clothing, and every axe and shovel and knife and pick I could find on our property. I put out the oven, then shoved Alex off of it and into the caravan, and pulled Sasha onto a horse at the front with me, and we’re off to take back our town, and then the next one, and then the next until this land is ours once more. There may be more upyr now than there are our kind- there are certainly more dead than alive. And perhaps in the spring when the soil is warmer and softer, they will climb out in droves and pull us from the backs of our horses and pick at us like vultures on the battlefield.

 

Until that day, though, my brothers and I will continue to do what our father always encouraged us to do. Which is, what everyone else should be doing. This is not our responsibility alone, but we are willing. That will have to be enough for now. Because if all the stories are true, and darkness has risen, there must also be someone to defeat it. 

Art by Kim Myatt