Plot Medics 

This story will be read at the Liars' League event on Tuesday May 12th.

I really have no idea where this came from except a bout of insomnia and a slight temperature!

The Swamp Witch (987 Words)

They call it the swamp-witch.  A tree half sunk in water.  Moss drapes it like soft green hair; one branch, towards the uppermost end, supports its weight, as though the witch leans on one arm. 

The story is that she crawled that way, dragging herself by her arms, her legs being broken. Another branch reaches out, pleading; there’s a hollow, softly cupped like a palm; just the right size for a baby’s head to rest in. 

She’s begging for her daughter, that’s the story; begging for her child to be buried with her.  A daughter they claimed she’d killed with witchcraft, along with a dozen other children who died within weeks of each other in one foul, steaming summer.

It was probably a fever; or a dozen different fevers.  These swamps were riddled with sickness and superstition, back in the bad old days.  Now the tourist boats cut clean paths through the dense brown water; moss tries to cling to their hulls and falls back, helpless, to disappear under the churning blades.  The guides grin and shrug, telling stories about the past and its follies.  Credulous people who believed in the power of herbs picked at the right phase of the moon, words spoken at the right time, dances with the spirit.  These are modern times and no-one believes such things any more.

Well, perhaps a few.  Among the sightseers are the…other tourists.  They are a slight embarrassment, but they spend, and so cannot be ignored.  They are the ones who are looking for something long swept away from their clean modern world, a world that allows for no alluring cobwebby corners.  They dress in black in the thick heat, and come here seeking mystery.

The girl with the moon-pale skin and hair dusty charcoal like a corpse’s, clings to the boat’s rail as far as she can get from her parents.  She finds them vulgar, embarrassing, and incapable of understanding her; which is the privilege of all teenage children.  Unfortunately, in their particular case, her judgement is absolutely accurate.  She watches the swamp-witch out of sight and wonders what it must be like, to grieve, to be tortured, to love a child so much.  Had the mother really been a witch, capable of vengeance but refraining from it as proper witches are supposed to do?  Or had she just been an outsider, scapegoated for the town’s miseries, because she was somehow different?

Had the baby had time to know she was loved?  Had her little drifting soul wailed as they took her body from her suffering mother?

It doesn’t matter if the story is true or not.  The girl’s mind seizes on it with a passion she will, in life, apply to many things, some worthy, some not.

Her parents whinge and mutter about the heat, the mosquitoes, the food.  They drink too much and collapse bloatedly into bed.  The girl sneaks out to relish the moonlight, the song of strange insects, the creak of frogs, the moss swaying like ghostly dancers in the midnight breeze.  Far away, thunder crackles. 

She walks into the woods, with a laser-bright torch she wishes were a smoking lantern.  It is hardly dangerous; everyone is very aware of the need for tourist dollars, and few would jeopardise them by attacking the daughter of wealthy, if irritating, tourists.  The only real danger is from the alligators, which refuse to join the modern world, and will eat anyone. 

She wanders towards the river, upstream of the bend where the swamp-witch endlessly reaches out.

To her delight, she discovers a graveyard in a clearing.  It has not been signposted; graveyards are unpopular, and this one is insufficiently quaint.  It has no crypts or mausoleums or evidence of witchcraft.  Many of its plain markers tilt, sinking into the wet ground.

She wanders among the stones, brushing them with the tips of her fingers, whispering fragments of poetry, spells, any words that seem to fit this place and its simple mysteries.  The moonlight disappears, the thunder rolls closer, and a great blue-white tree of lightning stabs down, lighting up her entranced face.  Then the rain, great fat warm drumming drops.  She begins to dance, holding up her thin white arms, laughing, her feet in their black buckled boots churning the soft earth. 

Then her boot goes deep, suddenly, cold mud sliding in over the top.  She flounders off balance, almost falls, realises that she has disturbed something, perhaps a grave. 

She is not frightened, only guilty.  She pulls herself free, looks for a stone, or a cross, to set upright.  But there is nothing.  If the grave was ever marked, it is no longer.

She bows, gravely, apologises aloud to anyone she may have disturbed.  The rain drums down; nobody answers, but she feels comforted.  Wet hair flat to her head, she makes her way back to the hotel, falls asleep still, in her mind, dancing to the beat of the rain among the forgiving dead. 

She wheedles money from her hungover parents and takes the boat trip one last time.  The river is swollen fat and excited with rain.  When they get there, only the nub of her green-draped head, the forward reaching arm are out of the water.  The guide runs through the story, but as they get closer, he falters to a stop. 

Something is caught in the branch.  Even as the people on the boat begin to murmur with shock and disgust, the girl smiles with clean delight at the sight of the tiny skull that rests, fitting perfectly, in the wooden palm.

She knows someone will move it within a day, sweep it away.  It’s too much of a mystery, too disturbing.  

And even though there is a logical explanation of flooding and graveyards and loosened earth, it works so perfectly as a mystery, that it works anyway.  The reality cannot remove the wonder.  Not now, and not ever again. 

This one came from quite a few places: the Liars' League April event, a random phrase from the We Feel Fine program, and some doodling about with word associations.  Put 'em all together and I'm back in the Weird West, or home on the strange.

Lonestar on the Bridge (973 words)

“You  got nothing to say about this, Lonestar?” asks Finnegan.

I shrug. What’s the point? There’s nothing you can say when you’ve been as thoroughly set up as I have. Serves me right, I s’pose. I breezed into River Bend two years ago looking for a hook to hang my heart on. I gave it away to the first man who smiled at me, Ed Hutchins. Big mistake. Now here I am, shuffling my feet in the dust in the main square, with all the townsfolk sweating in the sun and waiting for my sentence.

“Damned Shifty!” shouts the schoolmarm at the back. “Run her out of our town.”

“Send her out the hard way,” says Lennie. I heard his grandfather is from the Red Rock Clan, but he can’t shift. Not many of our people can. 

A chant starts up. “Bridge! Bridge! Bridge!”

“Last chance,” Finnegan says. I’ve watched his hawkish face over a poker table many a time. He’s good at being unreadable, but I know he wants to hear me say I didn’t do it. A man’s dead. I didn’t kill him, but I stole the key to his strongbox and I gave it to Ed and it all went wrong from there. I shake my head.

“All right then,” Finnegan announces to the crowd.  “No confession and no defence. She walks the bridge.” He sighs. “Lennie, leave the pitchfork.”

“There could be griffins up there,” says Lennie. Fat lot of good a pitchfork would do him. He’s going to jab me with it if he gets a chance.

They force a potion down my throat, to stop me shifting for at least a day. Then Finnegan marches me up the steep steps in the bluff behind the town. It’s a long, hot climb and only the most determined gawkers and Lennie and the other bridge guards are still with us by the time we get to the top. It’s cooler up here, tendrils of mist drift about.

The bridge doesn’t look so bad. It’s rope, of course, but the boards are in good repair, and there’s no wind to swing it. The other side is lost in the haze.

Finnegan squeezes my shoulder. “If you get across, you can come back the long way round,” he says.

“Don’t try turning back,” says Lennie. “We’ll be waiting.”

Sure enough, he pokes me in the ribs with the pitchfork, and I step onto the bridge. It sways a little. I hang on to the ropes and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

Nobody knows what’s on the bridge. Hardly anyone comes back, and if they do they won’t say a thing about it. I heard some idiot talking about a troll. I met a few in my wanderings, most of ‘em just want to be left alone. There’s a great yawning drop below the bridge, not a sheltered damp place for a troll to squat.
It’s kind of peaceful up here; my whole body takes a deep breath and stretches. I’ve been in River Bend too long.

The fog is thicker now. When I glance back, I can’t see the start but I can hear Lennie and his crew laughing.

Finnegan’s done the best he can for me. The people look to him to keep the peace and the evidence pointed to me. They all knew I was part Clan; I can’t change my black hair, and I didn’t change the name my mother gave me. But I didn’t declare myself a Shifty and I got found out. They’re afraid of us. I’m lucky not to be choking at the end of a rope.

A distant screech makes me look up, but I can’t see anything in the fog. I walk on.

I bet there’s others in town; it’s a big place. The straight folks still believe a lot of plain wrong things about us. They think we can shift into any shape we like. They’re getting us mixed up with old Clan stories about lurking beasts that turn into a tent or or a patch of fog or a pond and wait for food to walk right in.

The bridge quivers like a live thing under my feet. The ropes thrum in a way that has nothing to do with me. I pick up my pace, half-jogging.

Us Shifties just get one form, and it’s handed out by tricky luck. Everyone wants a bear, or a wolf or an eagle. Me, the terror of River Bend, I can do a mouse.

The bridge really starts to move now, swinging from side to side. I wrap my arms in the ropes and hang on tight. It gets faster, and I’m afraid it will twist right over. If I could shift I might survive the fall, but the potion won’t wear off for a while. A raucous screech echoes behind me and the movement stops.

When I’ve stopped shaking, I unwrap myself from the ropes and move on. I can see blackness in the fog, the bulk of rock at the other side, and I run as fast as I can, hands skimming the ropes, planks shaking under my feet. Overhead, I hear the whumpf sound of great wings beating. And as I see firm ground in sight, there is also a golden bulk of fur and feathers, a sharp beak curved like a scythe, bright orange saucer eyes.

I am very, very still. The griffin opens its beak.

“That was Lennie shaking the bridge,” it says in Finnegan’s voice. “I ran him off.”

“Uh. Th - thanks.”

“If I thought you did it, I’d’ve let you drop.”

He shifts back to his rangy human form, and holds out a hand to help me off the bridge. He smiles, sudden and sunny. It’s a much better smile than Ed’s.

This is what happens when you catch a bit of a programme about tomb-robbing when you're doing the washing-up...

A Place of Rest (943 words)

Hengst eased himself through the gap, into the familiar scents of stone and earth.  He was cautiously triumphant.  He had not been at all sure this tomb actually existed, and worried that someone would have got here before him.  But although there had been some disturbance around the entrance, it was old and minor; it might have been animals. 

He lit his torch, looking for curses.  A good curse meant there was something here worth taking.  The wall-paintings alone were some of the best he’d seen.  He paused to admire a pair of blonde lovelies bearing platters of fruit no less perfect than their breasts. 

Ah, and there was the curse. May death enfold him who would disturb this resting place.

Somewhat unimaginative, that.  Hengst went deeper, experience allowing him to ignore the dead-ends and false doorways. 

When he finally broke into the central room, he stood gawping, the torch drooping in his hand.  The space was dominated by a great bed supported on two carved lynxes inlaid with shell.  All around, on tables of fine wood and coloured marble, stood boxes of cedarwood thick with gold, their seals promising spices and jewels.  A throne gleaming with agates and silver.  Lamps of pierced brasswork fine as lace.  Statues of cattle and soldiers and servants in finest work.

Hengst’s heartbeat sounded loud in his ears as he wandered around the room, the torchlight dancing on gilding and jewelled caskets. So much to get out!  He’d left his horse tied some distance away.  He needed a cart.  How would he stop anyone else suspecting what he’d found? 

Should he take one or two of the smaller pieces now?  A jar of rare spice; no.  Too big.  And too obviously a tomb-piece if he were seen with it.  The tiny perfect statue of a general, glaring furiously above his beard?  Hengst picked it up.  Where it had been the procession looked gappy, like a mouth missing a tooth.  He put it back.

It was only when his stomach groaned that he realised he was ravenous.  At some point he’d lit several of the lamps; the oil was still good, and they cast a warm rich light scented with herbs.

Hengst reluctantly blew them out and made his way back towards the entrance. 

When he peered through, white light hurt his eyes.  Daylight!  Not only daylight but a bright midday, cloudshadows scurrying like the ghosts of sheep across the green hillside.  How long had he been there?

He hesitated.  If he went out now, he would be as obvious as a fly in a mug of beer.  All it would take would be one passer-by. 

He had some water and a little food.  He could wait.

Hengst wandered among the offerings.  Everything here was so perfect.  He lived simply himself, not wanting to draw attention; this dark torch-gilded richness was like nothing he had seen in a long career of plunder. He realised he was tired.  Not as young as he was.  He looked at the bed, and thought, with a little surge of resentment, Why not?  Never in my life have I lain on such a bed, and if the priests are right, in the afterlife I’ll not either; more likely have my liver torn out by wolves or some such thing.  Personally, he thought at death you got a few feet of earth to lie in, no more.  Wolves probably did eat your liver, but you would neither know nor care.

Still, he felt a little daring, as he lit two of the lamps, blew out the torch, and laid himself down.  He had never had such a mattress; it was like lying on water, or a cloud. He drew the thick fur cover over him.

Two life-size statues of women leaned above the bed, their arms outstretched, their breasts gleaming.  He imagined how it would be to be served by such women.

Some time later Hengst woke, and went up to the hidden doorway.  The bright afternoon had turned to a windy, rainspattered night.  He couldn’t take anything out in this; exposed to the weather, things might be ruined.  The thought of the beautiful carvings stained and cracked, the spices losing their scent, was painful.  He withdrew again, to walk, murmuring, among the treasures, his fingers tracing curves of stone and silver. 

The next day it had stopped raining, but Hengst saw a distant figure walking along the hillside.  Did the figure look his way, searching, greedy?   He scowled and withdrew.

***

A carpenter’s apprentice was trudging along the lane when he saw a good, broad-backed gelding, tied to a tree.  It had eaten the grass bare in a circle around it, and started on the bark of the tree.  Its reins were worn almost to snapping where it had tugged at them, trying to free itself.  The boy called out a few times, for duty; but it was obvious the horse had been there several days.  He was good with horses; it came easily to his hand when he untied it.   

The boy mounted, and tapped the horse with his heel.  His master had told him he’d found a horse wandering this lane before, some years ago, and had sold it for a good price.  He’d be pleased, and maybe show the boy how to carve the wonderful lilies he was making for the old King’s burial-casket.

They rode off into the darkening afternoon.  Above them, on the hill, a patter of earth loosened by recent rain fell into darkness, and a stone tumbled after it.  In the fast-growing summer, soon there would be no sign there had been an entrance there at all.