Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

Kypre Alundshaw considers the question, then considers his reply twice as long. "The Weaver," he says, "like her Seraphim, is an alien to our lands. We have undone one weapon, but we must begin to consider what other infernal beings she might spin. We cannot know her mind, any more than we can know the mind of the Dragon, your Grace."

For a moment they stand together atop the barbican, listening to the wind roaring through the Gash, through the mountains and around the jagged edges of the Weal, and then the Glaistig shivers, and the alchemist leads her back down to the courtyards.

And, blind to wars and the sacrifices that may end them, if only for a time, the wheels turn as the wheels have always turned…

Dancy sits on one of the old marble headstones in the overgrown cemetery and watches the church burn down. She didn't start the fire; she isn't exactly sure what started the fire, but she knows that it's probably for the best. Fire will make the earth here pure again, her mother's ghost whispers from beneath a tangle of blackberry briars. Fire will burn out all the evil, and good green things will live here again.

Dancy keeps waiting for her mother's ghost to evaporate and the angel to show up and take her place. It usually happens that way, first her mother and then the angel. Sometimes, she actually prefers the angel. There's a loud crack , and Dancy looks up to see that the roof has collapsed completely. The sky is lit with a flurry of red-orange cinders as the last of the shadows, freed from the inferno, escape into the night. That's okay. She didn't come for them. Where they go and what they do, that's none of her concern. Someone might almost mistake them for smoke, streaming up and out of the flames. One passes directly over her head and vanishes into the thick wall of live oaks and magnolia behind the little cemetery. The shadow's screaming, so maybe it believes it could die in the fire. Maybe it's even afraid, Dancy thinks, and then she thinks about all the places a shadow can hide.

Those are the souls of bad people, Julia Flammarion assures her daughter. They were never baptized or they died without making confession, so they can never go to Heaven. Some of them were pagan Indians, and some of them were murderers and thieves and drug addicts.

Dancy glowers at the blackberry thicket where her mother's hiding, not so sure she believes that God would turn an Indian into one of those shadows just because it never got the chance to be baptized. That sounds even less fair than most things seem to her, but she knows there's no point arguing with her mother.

Dancy glances up at the eastern sky above the tops of the trees, and there's the faintest pink and purple hint of dawn. The heat from the fire is keeping the air around her warm, so at least she doesn't have to worry about the dew or the morning chill. Then she remembers her knife, that she hasn't even cleaned the blade the way the angel has told her she should always do. She looks down at the monster's dark blood already gone to a crust on the steel and frowns. She'll have to find a stream or a pond somewhere to wash it clean, as clean as it's ever going to get. She wipes it once against the leg of her jeans, but hardly any of Elandrion's blood comes off the carving knife.

"Is it over?" Dancy asks her mother. "Do you think that was the last one?"

I ain't the one you ought to be asking that question, her mother replies, then rustles about in the briars like a raccoon or a possum or something.

"Sometimes I think I'm crazy," Dancy says.

You fight those thoughts, her mother says, sounding angry now. That ain't nothing but the demons trying to slow you down, trying to confuse you and slow you down.

"Is that what she was?" Dancy asks her mother. "Elandrion. Was she a demon?"

There's a long silence from the ghost of Julia Flammarion, then, and Dancy sits on the headstone listening to the roar and crackle of the burning church, to the screams of fleeing shadows and the uncomfortable, rustling sounds the trees are making, as if the fire frightens them.

No, her mother says. You remember what I taught you about the Watchers, the Nephilim? And Dancy says that yes, she remembers, even though she really only half remembers.

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children unto them.

"So Elandrion, she was one of the Watchers? She was half angel?" Dancy asks and wipes the knife against her pants leg again with no better results than the first time.

They have many other names, her mother says, and then the blackberry thicket grows still and silent.

But the monster told Dancy that she should know better than to believe it had any name at all. She considers telling her mother that it said that, then decides she doesn't need to hear anything more just now about all the ways the evils of the world will try and de-ceive her.

She touches the tacky bloodstain on her jeans, the small smear the knife's left behind, and suddeny she's back inside the church and the fire hasn't started yet and the monster isn't dead. She's just buried her knife in its throat all the way up to the hilt, and it looks surprised, more surprised than hurt or scared or anything else. Blood that's black as molasses runs from between its sharp yellow teeth. She pulls the knife free, and the shadow things howl their disbelief as she raises her arm to plunge it in again, meaning to cut off the monster's head, just like her angel told her she ought to do.

But it's speaking again, strangling on its own blood, but she can make out the words clearly enough. And Dancy's hand hesitates, halfway down to the monster's windpipe.

"Now I see," it says. "Yeah, that's a damn good trick. That's an amazing fucking trick, hiding there in her skin, and I don't think she even knows-"

But then the knife comes down again, comes down so hard it goes in all the way to the monster's spine, and Elandrion closes its empty, boiled-egg eyes and doesn't try to say anything else at all. It's body shudders, and Dancy smells smoke, and then the shadows begin to scream-

She opens her eyes, disoriented and almost tumbling off the edge of the headstone, wondering how long it's been since she shut them, if its only been a moment or an hour. She glances back at the eastern sky, and it's not much brighter than the last time she looked, so it couldn't have been very long. There's an angry sound behind her, and she knows that it's the angel.

"I don't want to do this anymore," she tell it, as though what she wants might actually matter to it. "I've killed three of them now. Find someone else to chase down all the rest. I'm done for."

But she knows better, that there's a long road ahead of her, whether she's had enough or not, and she sits on the headstone and listens to the fire and the panicked cries of the shadow things. But mostly she's listening to what the angel's saying, how she's got to walk east, towards the scalding summer sun, and somewhere out there she'll find a gas station and a hand-painted sign that reads "Live Panther-Deadly Man Eater" in tall white letters. The angel tells her to kill everything and everyone she finds there, whether it looks like a monster or not.

And she nods her head, because she knows she'll never say no, and it doesn't matter how many monsters she has to kill. Because her mother's told her time and time again about seeing the gates of Hell and all the demons swimming beneath the sea that tried to make sure that she drowned herself. So she knows there are worse things, no matter how tired she might get.