George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

He turned and bounded away, his tail raised high like a flag of warning, his hooves exploding with power as he ascended into the air, dipped to the earth, and then soared upward again.

In late winter, Yan woke one night. The lunar New Year had just begun, and it was the night of the lantern festival. A great red lantern hung from the rafters on her porch, giving a little light that streamed through her window.

She’d dreamt of Huang Fa again, and the excitement of the holidays was dulled by a sense of loss. He had never come home. She feared that he was trapped in the snowy mountains, or that he had died while crossing the desert.

Yet tonight her heart told him that he still lived, and she imagined that he had come to her bed.

She inhaled deeply, trying to catch the scent of him. She tried to remember the light in his eyes, his broad handsome smile, but the memory had faded.

Yan untangled herself from the sheets of her bed, from the arms of her little sister whom she feared might waken and beg for breakfast. She went to the door. The red lantern hung above her head, burning gaily in the night.

She gazed out across the wooden bridge in front of her house, toward the bamboo grove whose leaves rustled in a light wind.

A beast stood there — huge and white. It was so large that at first she thought that it was a horse. Then she saw that it dwarfed even a stallion. Its broad antlers were like those of an enormous elk, yet webbing stretched between the tines, as if to catch the light of the full moon.

It tiptoed toward her, into the circle of light by the door, and she knew it for what it was — a Xie Chai unicorn.

It extended its snout, as if to catch her scent, and she put forth her hand for it, hoping that it might enjoy the allure of the rosewater perfume that she wore. Such animals could discern a man’s heart. It would tell her if she was good or evil.

She longed to be good, but she knew that her love for Huang Fa was too great.

The unicorn stepped near, and she was astonished at how huge it was. She saw its eyes, shining in the light of the lantern, all filled with some unimaginable desire.

Suddenly she caught its scent, the musky scent of a young man that often haunted her dreams. She knew that scent intimately, knew the young man’s clean limbs and sweet breath.

“Huang Fa?” she wondered aloud. The beast looked startled. The muscles in its shoulders bunched, as if it would dart away.

She knew him, knew what had happened. Huang Fa had turned into this magical beast, and yearning for her, he had come to her at last.

But how had this happened?

Inside the house, her little sister woke in the night. “Yan?” she cried. “Yan, I’m hungry!”

In that instant the unicorn grew afraid. There was no more coherent thought in its head, only nameless animal fear that now took over.

The proud beast whirled and bounded, leaping through the stream.

“Huang Fa!” Yan called, rushing to the edge of the porch.

A low fog covered the ground, and the unicorn bounded through it, as if leaping upon clouds, until it disappeared into the plum orchard, lost under a silver moon.

Vylar Kaftanwrites speculative fiction of all genres, including science fiction, fantasy, horror, and slipstream. Her work has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, GigaNotoSaurus, Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Cosmos, Escape Pod, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sybil’s Garage , and in the World Fantasy Award-winning anthology Paper Cities . She lives with her husband Shannon in northern California. Learn more at vylarkaftan.net.

The practice of suspension is horrifying to some and beautiful to others. “Suspending” the human body by having hooks placed through the skin is unquestionably one of the more extreme forms of body modification in practice today. People do this for purposes of spirituality or art, and for private reasons all their own.

For the Native American Mandan nation, at the core of the practice was personal sacrifice. The deliberate agony of suspension was just the beginning of what a young man was expected to offer up to the spirits of his tribe.

In both the modern and traditional contexts, the suspendee is never forced. The spirit must be willing.

In our next story, Kaftan brings us a short tale of suspension and sacrifice, as a young woman endures the unimaginable, making us ask ourselves: What would we be willing to endure if the stakes were high enough?

The naked peasant girl swung from rusted hooks in the throne room’s center. Her hands and feet were bound with leather straps, which laced the hooks together like a bodice. Blood trickled from her scarred back. She was just alive enough for the pain to crush her thoughts.

Lords from the eleven kingdoms sat in the eleven iron thrones. They chewed turkey legs and spat gristle on the floor. Bones piled beneath the girl, stained with meat and blood and chunks of flesh. They were foreign sorcerers, these bare-chested lords with gold-ringed noses and iron-studded cheekbones. Sharpened stakes pierced their chests — one for each stolen century. Someone stirred the brazier, thickening the acrid smoke. The room was hot as a bonfire.

“Is she dead yet?” asked the lord of the wasted grassland.

“Not yet. She must submit to the magic,” replied the lord of the bloodied sea.

“But she chose this path, no?”

They fell silent. The girl sagged, skin glistening with sweat and turkey fat. She had chosen this, truly, but no one could ask her. She drifted silently through haze and pain. Each hook burned like wildfire. Smoke seeped into her wounds, blackening her blood with magic. Her drippings thickened to tar, oozed off her body, and clotted on the turkey bones.

“Soon her heart will harden,” said the lord of the rotted jungle. “They never last more than a song once they blacken.”

“I wish she’d get on with it,” said the lord of the caustic crater, smoothing his gray-streaked beard. “My back is killing me.”

He reached up and pushed her. Hooks tore her flesh. She moaned, spilling black blood to the ground. Wings of pain sprung from her back as dark magic filled her veins. She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t survive. But she’d sworn her vow, unknown to these demon-men. The fruit still tingled her lips, the sweet tangy citrus of the Goddess these men thought dead. The orange-tree guardian knew where she was.

The lord pushed her again like a loose chandelier. Lightning-pain shot from torso to fingertips, and she nearly passed out. Stay conscious . She had to stay conscious. Until the magic reached her center — the place where she pulsed with life.

“We should do this more often,” said the lord of the salted fields. “I don’t like the aches I get at this age. Don’t we have other peasants? They breed like swine.”

“They need to come willingly,” said the lord of the poisoned island. “If they don’t, it won’t work.”

“Tighten the laces,” ordered the lord of the glittering cesspool. “Make her scream.”

She knew that the magic didn’t need that. They just wanted to hurt her. She bit her tongue as they racked her. Flesh tore from her back. Black blood seeped toward her heart. The orange-tree Goddess had warned her of this — said she would die like the land these sorcerers now ruled. She remembered the Goddess’s breezy hands stroking her hair. Back in the orange-tree grove, the choice had seemed easier.

But now agony seared like juice in her wounds. It wasn’t pain happening to her, it was her happening to the pain, her tortured body wildly throwing her soul into the abyss. She sank below herself. She was screaming. Dying.