Fear Is A Weapon

She was ice itself. And she was behind him, sharp nails digging into his shoulder, lips at his ear.

Her voice was silver and black, champagne and moonlight and velvet blankets.

The shadows before him writhed. He'd known, when he came in, beckoned by her voice and her lips and her deep deep eyes that he would have to face the monsters, as Arthur faced the dragon.

His hand by his sword trembled.

"What do I do?" he asked as his panic peaked, as the shadows blinked. 

She breathed against him. Her breath was ice. Her fingers shocked his skin. He could feel those deep deep eyes on him. He was no hero. He could desire her, but he could not save her. He could not save himself.

He clutched his sword. He could try.

She leaned in, to kiss him, he hoped. Her words painted the darkness with new hope. His fear was an animal he could tame. "Don't let them see you're afraid."

He pulled the sword from its sheath and looked into the eyes of the shadow. Her hands were leaving him. He stared into the shadows, still feeling her cold breath on his neck, and lifted the sword.

Art by Anna Dittmann

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Silent Wordsmith

Her father had taught her silence. He was not a man comfortable with words, but he could steep in silence for hours, and when she collected her books and went to bed with a quick kiss on the cheek, she felt as if they'd said more than they ever had in any conversation.

She had learned to be quiet, to be watchful and wary, but also to lose herself in her novels. Though not, she remembered, all the time. She had been so absorbed in The Three Muskateers when she'd first read it, sitting in a tree, that when d'Artagnan dodged a sword, so had she, and promptly lost balance and fallen out of the tree. Her concussion had been so severe the doctor insisted she stay in her bed. Her father had relocated for several days to her room, with a new stack of books each day, and they'd sat in silence, in their own worlds, closer than ever.

Silence, she came to realize, was a breeding ground for stories, but not books. In silence she could make up entire aventures and epics, but without words they withered and died. Her father was a collector of stories, but he was not a wordsmith.

She found her fertilzer, her compost, her sunlight and water and root-growing soil for her stories in libraries, where she easily camouflaged herself with grey blouses and black skirts and listened to the conversations on the other side of the stacks. She'd never longed to have conversations like that with anyone.

Her father had filled shelves and shelves of books for her. One day she caught him glancing at the black smudges on her fingers. The next day, with a biography and an annotated version of Alice in Wonderland, a box of pencils and a silver sharpener appeared on the shelf.

She made notes of the stories she'd collected, and when they felt ready to grow, she planted herself in the silence she'd collected, and touched the tip of her pencil to the page. Words bled from its tip, and the silence consumed them.

Art by Ludovic Jacqz

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Seven

"It's the Seven!" they whisper, behind not-quite-closed doors, watching and waiting for the blue door at the end, the one covered in vines, to swing open.

"I've seen it open," boasts one of the oldest, who has seen all the doors open, though, being just a child when the Seven appeared, can hardly remember it. Still, she boasts, swinging her cane and speaking with her hands to anyone who will listen.

The Seventh door is the last in the line, the least frequently opened, the most overgrown with vines. Until yesterday, when the warning - the missive had come. The Seven shall arrive tomorrow. Prepare your children. Two will be chosen.

One is a place for children of good learning, where they disappear and return with secrets and inside jokes and a skill they have honed for years. Two is an honour, those who return become scholars. Three is slightly more dangerous. Only a certain number of children return, and half of them are unrecognizable, mad and haggard and relegated to street corners where they spout half-nonsense prophecies. Half of them come true, but they are never pleasant, and the villagers prefer to listen to pleasant things. The fourth door is for musical children. The Fourth produces children with the skills to draw whole flocks of sheep through gates with a few notes, to chase snakes from the hutches, to send children to sleep. The door to Five collapsed long ago. Some say it began the way Seven did. The door had opened less and less often until it had stopped opening altogether. It was had splintered and nearly come off its hinges and the villagers had decided to leave it be, that the higher powers would fix it if it was their intention. It has stayed that way for years. Six is a place for athletes, the ancient Sparta of the doors. Those that are spit out years later are rigid with muscle, nimble with their fingers, and generally not the kind of people one wants to anger.

But Seven, oh Seven is a different door altogether. And the Seven, the person-teacher-thing beyond it calls for only one or two children, at irregular times. No one has ever returned from Seven.

The children of the village are groomed and combed and perfumed and wrestled into itchy lace and uncomfortable trousers and pinching shoes. When the time has come, when the clocktowers are arguing noon across the rooftops, they are put into a single file line, before the door.

They begin at the first chime. They wait only seconds to see if the door opens. There is no movement from it, not fo the first child, nor the second. There goes the baker's son, the butcher's boy, the mayor's daughter, the farmer's twins from down the lane, the woodcutter's son, the orphans from the orphanage, looking particularly grey in their worn clothes. The librarian's son steps forward, meeting the number on the door with his calm, green gaze. He feels as though it is looking back at him. Very slowly, it opens. Just a crack, enough to cast a small shadow on the wall it is set into, but the villagers see it. The librarian comes to stand with his son beside the door, holding back tears.

The humber of children in the line dwindles. Villagers hold their breath until the door rejects their child, relinquishes them for some other destiny. The Seven does not want their children today.

It opens again for the cobbler's daughter, a tall red-headed girl with shining shoes and her hair loose, though most of the girls have tied their hair in ribbons for this occasion. She does not seem to believe at first that the door has opened, not until her father takes her shoulders with his shaking hands and steers her toward it.

The Seven swings open. Beyond it is immediate darkness. A cold gust of wind blows the librarian's son and the cobbler's daughter a step closer. The Seventh is getting impatient.

The librarian gives his son a quick kiss on the forhead and a pat on the shoulder. The cobbler embraces his daughter for the last time, kisses her cheek, and pushed her gently ahead. She steps into the darkness, just before the boy. They are swallowed by it immediately. The door swings shut. There is no noise. No sound. The Seven has made its claim.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay