Joseph Lewis - Wren the Fox Witch

Wren raised her hands and pulled the aether down between her resonating bracelets, pulling the cold mist in, grasping it tightly, and holding it in front of her where she could watch it fly around and around in a blinding sphere of white and silver light.

“Get down, Ty, and stay down.”

She ripped her hands apart, tearing the sphere out into two endlessly long whips of aether that spiraled out and out into the northern sky, reaching across the vast empty air for the airship above the harbor of Constantia.

When the aether whips struck the distant souls of the men and women aboard the ship, Wren felt the aether shudder in her hands, and she began to pull. She pulled, not with her arms, but with her whirling soul, reeling the aether back in toward herself, and dragging the four souls of the airship crew down, down, down toward the black waves of the Bosporus, and with those souls, came the airship itself.

The crew must be crushed against the floor and walls. If I pull too hard, I’ll crush the life from them, but if I take too long, they’ll die all the same, only slower.

The flying machine moved slowly at first, and then faster, gradually gaining speed as it sank down toward the earth, and just as the cabin reached the surface of the water, the edge of the huge balloon touched the edge of a jagged broken wall along the harbor, and the balloon tore open. It ripped apart and quickly began to deform, collapsing in upon itself and dropping the cabin into the water, and Wren released her grip on the souls of the crew and drew her aether back into the sphere between her hands.

“My God,” Tycho whispered.

“Shhh.”

Wren threw her arms out a second time, casting her aether whips across the sea and seized the crews of the other two airships high above Stamballa, and she pulled them down, one with each hand. They came down faster than the first one had, and they came together just above the water, their balloons scraping and rubbing against each other until some bolt or buckle snagged the fabric and tore them open, spilling their gas upward into the sky and dropping the cabins into the sea.

Again Wren gathered the aether back between her hands, and again she felt her hips shudder and her knees wobble as the whirling of her soul set her whole body to tingling.

“Ty?” she said softly. “Show me which are the Turkish warships, and which are the Hellans, and which are the fishing boats.”

“Sure, sure.” Tycho leapt up and moved to the edge of the wall a few paces away, and he began pointing. “There and there, those are the Turks. And there and there, and back there, are ours, and just about everything up that way are the commercial ships.”

“Thank you. Now get down again.”

He dropped back down behind her. “So you’re going to sink the Turks?”

“No. I’m sending them home. I’m sending all the warships home.”

“What do you mean, home? And what do you mean, all?”

Wren drew in a deep breath and hurled out her aether lines for the third time, but instead of a whip in each hand she hurled a slender white wire from each finger tip, half to the south and half to the north, and she seized the crews of all the Turkish ships and all the Hellan ships. There were hundreds of souls packed into the warships, and as she grabbed hold of them she could feel all of their little bodies fly across their tiny wood and steel rooms and flatten against the walls as she hauled the ships from their anchorages.

The huge warships groaned and popped and creaked, and then they began to move. They dragged their anchors, grinding slowly through the waves, heaving up and down against the pull of the aether, but they did move and then began to move faster. Tiny rippling wakes formed around their armored hulls, and then those wakes rose higher and foamed white and green as the massive warships surged through the Strait faster and faster, and when they were all whistling through the spray, nearly skipping over the waves, Wren twisted her hands and turned them all aside.

The Turks bore off toward the docks of Stamballa as she let them go, and their tremendous momentum carried them on, crashing through the cold black waters and then crashing up onto into the wooden piers and stone quays of the Turkish city. The ironclads slashed inland like a dozen enormous hatchets slicing into the shore and grinding up higher and higher, crushing the docks and sea walls and houses and roads, until they finally shrieked to a halt, all leaning at sharp angles on their exposed hulls above the high tide line.

At the same time, the Hellan destroyers were surging straight into the Seraglio Point and the gunboats smashed up on the pebbled beach one after the other, sliding up side by side and crashing into the sterns of their sisters and nosing all the way up to the sea wall just below Wren’s feet. The wooden ships crackled and splintered and burst and shrieked as their hulls scraped up on the land and a huge wave swept up out of their wake and crashed against the wall, sending a curtain of freezing white spray high into the air.

And then it was over.

Wren stood very still as the last wisps of aether flew off into the sky and vanished from her fingertips, but her soul was still whirling and her skin was still tingling. She ran her tongue across her lips and said breathlessly, “It’s done.”

Tycho stood up and stared down at the ruined Hellan fleet at the base of the wall below them, and then across the sea to the ruined Eranian fleet, and then to floating wreckage of the airships out in the middle of the Strait. As he stood there, one of the Mazigh pilots emerged from an airship cabin, pointed a gun into the air, and let a bright red flare shoot up into the sky above the water.

The bright red star shot upward into the colorless cloud of gas from the crashed balloons and a brilliant golden fireball erupted across the sky, rolling about in a cloud of smoke, and then vanished from sight.

Tycho nodded. “I don’t know if it’s over, but it’s definitely going to be very quiet out there for a long time.”

“Good.” Wren took a step toward him. It was her first attempt at moving her feet since she began to summon the aether, and her legs shook beneath her, sending her stumbling into Tycho. They fell together to the floor, and he held her to his chest, and they laughed.

“Good catch,” she said.

His hand was cupping her breast, and he moved it. “Sorry.”

“I’m not.” She pressed her mouth to his and sought out every corner of his mouth with her tongue. Her hips pressed against his, and her jaw trembled, making her gasp. Her thighs were still pulsing with heat, still throbbing with tiny thrusts almost entirely on her own. And she felt Tycho quickening against her shaking skirts. She smiled, her lips still grazing his. “Don’t move.”

“Wait,” he whispered. “I don’t know if… I’m ready.”

“Neither do I.” She smiled. “Let’s find out.”

In half a moment she had his trousers around his knees and her skirts up around her waist and she plunged down onto his warm flesh and felt them suddenly become a single, shivering, thrusting body. She clenched him between her thighs and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek to his, feeling his hot breath on her neck as she rolled her hips over his again, and again, shaking and gasping in silent ecstasy.

When it was over, Wren lay on her back staring up at the sky, listening to the sea and the birds. She floated inside her body as her soul finally stopped whirling about, leaving her feeling infinitely still and solid and real.

She kissed Tycho, and he kissed her, and they watched the clouds drift overhead.

“The sailors will be coming off the ships soon,” he whispered.