Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

By the sixth day, shadows had gathered under the glassblower’s eyes, and his ears rang with a noise like a hundred delicate glass ornaments shattering at once. At two A.M. he looked from the window as a twinkling star leaped over the horns of a crescent moon. He had become fixated and paused only to nap or shower. Sometimes he forgot to eat. Long moments he spent staring into the crucible, for it gave him a strange joy to see the living glass breathe and sparkle. Meanwhile the annealers were jammed with pieces, iridescent, opalescent, and clear. Half-asleep, he looked up and saw a child close to the still-hot vases, but when he cried out, she vanished. He felt more conscious of his body than ever before — the sorely tested strength in his arms and back and legs, the weariness that lay along his neck and made it droop.

On the seventh day he wanted only to rest but forced himself to go on; he was too close to success and could not let the fire die. Everything he made that day and the following night was a shadowy blue and purple and green flecked with gold. The wares in the annealers looked like dream glass — vessels the inhabitants of another world might take for granted, but never of this. The yellow cat patted at a drop of twilight sealed to the floor and bolted away. Xan caught himself reaching for the hot glow of a bowl and slapped his cheek. He was being pulled hard toward slumber. Shapes were dwindling. He made a tiny pot on four legs, the dream kettle of a witch. He made a thumbprint vase. He made a fluted vase, a flower vase, a fat-bellied vase: slightly crude but lovely. Drifting into a doze while holding the blowpipe, he ruined a calyx and woke, shaking his head like a dog fresh from the stream. The sleep flew away in drops, but a fresh tide of drowsiness rose up to drown him.

In the last hours of morning before the end, he made a vase small enough to hide in his fist. It was as mysterious and dusky as the others. Never had he made so much glass — never had it come as such a surprise. When he looked in the annealers and on the countertops, the vases and bowls and pitchers seemed a fanciful townscape from an alien realm, sweeping from the dawn brightness of the early days toward the twilight pieces of the last.

His heart was stirred by the shapes and colors and the light spangling on surfaces. Tears blurred the toy landscape.

“It’s good.” The words washed against his ears like syllables heard in a shell.

Glove raised to protect his face, he peered into the rippled fire of the furnace. The orange glow laved the coals like bright water over stones.

“What—”

Backing away, he stumbled. His glance settled on shadowy vases that only increased his unease. What had he seen? He groped for a blowpipe and carried it to the furnace. Probing the depths, he grew certain: something was creeping in the bed of coals.

He shivered, the tiredness in him moving like ice in his marrow.

Taking the long-handled pastorale, he scooped up coals with the flat plate and drew it from the furnace. His face burned, though the temperature was dropping; he had quit laying on fresh wood. With shears he nudged the coals away until there was only one left.

A creature had curled around the shuddering orange as if for warmth and camouflage.

Xan groped at the mystery with a gloved hand: it shrank from him. Grasping the coal with tweezers, he shook it gently. In response, the little animal hugged itself tightly against the glowing wood. Then, all at once, it sprawled onto the plate.

He spilled the incandescent creature onto the marver. As he bent to examine what the fire had done, a surge of delight made him tremble. Slowly the orange flush began to ebb. The substance of the body proved clear at the outer edges but was tinted a pale ruddy color elsewhere, with coppery flecks on the back and front legs. It was unmistakably a salamander of living glass.

He hesitated. Would it sear him? Holding his palm over the backbone, he could feel heat rolling off the skin. The creature seemed to flinch from the shadow of his hand. The ruby eyes swiveled in its head, looking up apprehensively. He dragged over a chair and waited for more of its warmth to be leached by the cold marble. The salamander played dead, eyes narrowing to slits. After some time had passed, he tested a pad with his fingernail but judged it still unsafe to touch. The skin twitched.

Hadn’t he fired the furnace for seven days and seven nights — despite the fact that part of him was sure the idea was mad — in order to anoint his hands with the blood of the salamander?

He hoped that it could not feel pain.

The shears seemed too large and threatening, so in the end he used a pair of sharp tweezers to pierce the delicate hide. Though the salamander appeared to have neither heart nor veins, rosy juice spilled across the marble.

Xan washed his hands in the hot liquid. It steamed but cooled quickly on the stone. He tore off his shirt and smeared blood on his arms and neck and chest. A surprising amount remained, so he stripped naked and anointed every inch of his body, even the soles of his feet. Soaked to the roots, his hair was stiff with the life of the salamander. He splashed blood in his eyes until the room seemed rinsed red. A Fra Angelico portrait of the crucified Christ — the eyes two pools of vermilion staring at forever — glanced through his mind.

The little being drooped, its lids almost closed.

“I’ve killed it.” Why had he hurt the thing — was it so important to be immune to fire? He had gone twenty-four years without such a gift. What nonsense to fantasize that blood could protect! The whole business seemed a madness born from lack of sleep.

With tweezers, he slowly pinched shut the gaping hole. The head wavered, as if to look up.

Need to sleep pressed down on his shoulders. Closing watery eyes, Xan stood as still as one of his own vessels. He appeared to have been sprinkled with sadness.

“What should I do?” The words fell from his mouth, startling him.

Forgetting the risk, he cupped the salamander in both hands and found the skin had cooled. He was so spent, any idea that the blood had already worked its magic did not occur to him.

Drenched by pity and hot grief, he impulsively lifted the creature to his cheek and held it there. In his weariness, tidal feelings seemed liable to wreck him. From a distance came a sound like a thousand windblown bells.

“Glass would crack. I wonder if you will. Maybe you’ll be nothing but morsels of frit in the morning.”

He reeled, shivering, his body wanting nothing but to lie prone. But there were the soft pads, tacky against his flesh. Using the pastorale, he slipped the salamander onto the coals. The cooling glory hole might be right to help in healing.

It lay without moving in the oven.

“Let it live.” His mouth could hardly form the words.

Sleep slammed against the naked man. He pulled on his pants, staggered forward, and collapsed onto the daybed. Like a stone shot from a sling, he plunged into the deep.

He woke to Fritsy’s damp nose pushing against his neck, her breath whiffling — evidently he smelled interesting. A tongue rasped against his jaw. Rolling onto his side, Xan groaned. She settled on his ribs, purring and kneading her paws.

“Out.” When he flailed an arm, the cat arrowed from the bed. He cracked open an eyelid; it was daylight, though earlier than before — he must have slept for a day and a night. The glory hole had come open. Closing his eyes, he tried to dive back into sleep, but an image of the door ajar kept niggling at him.

“All right,” he exclaimed, setting his feet on the cold stone and rubbing his face. When he felt his hair, clumped and stiff, he remembered.