Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

“I’ll find you!” Xan dropped to his knees. The pitcher did not return to sight.

“Get up.” Garland hauled him onto his feet. “The car—”

They were off, whirling away from the studio, headed toward Cullowhee Mountain.

“You saw where they went?” Xan craned out of the window, staring toward the tiptop of the slope.

“Her hair’s fire in the sunlight. Near the summit road.”

Fifteen minutes later they ducked under branches that bordered the asphalt, Garland apologizing for the sack flung over his shoulder. “Might find some late greens.”

For an hour they tramped up and down the ridge before they stumbled on a fissure in the earth.

Wisps of steam and voices filtered up.

The farmer held a finger to his lips.

“Scag, did you see the glass doll? Pretty thing. We’ll enjoy tormenting her!”

“Phew! Nothing but a salamander. I haven’t seen one of those in a coon’s age.”

“Ignorant spark of pipe-guts! You golleroy! I saw one last week at a smithy in Central Asia.”

“You’re lying—”

“I snatched out my tongs and grabbed the thing by the tail and flew off before anybody noticed me fiddling in the flames. I’d been having a bask and was roasting my toes when the salamander trickled from a log—”

“Dottle-pated fool!” There was a crack as of club meeting skull, a howl, and a stutter of noise like an exploding string of firecrackers.

The two eavesdroppers moved away from the cleft and squatted by a mound of trillium and trout lily.

Xan caught the older man’s wrist. “When I find her, how do I manage to get her a soul?”

The farmer gave a slight shake of his head. “That’s not in the encyclopedia, not spelled out for sure. Some of the old fairy tales say to marry. And baptism may work if it doesn’t kill. But I don’t think anybody knows. What you really need is some fellow with a spare one. But who’s got that?”

“I’d give her half of mine if I knew how. I’m going down there. If I’m not back in three hours—”

“I’ll wait. You’ll be clambering up in a jiffy. Here.” He reached in his jacket and pulled out a dark apple. “Fresh from the cellar, an Arkansas Black off our trees. Better take it — you might get hungry. Want to borrow my jacket?”

They had sped away so quickly that Xan still wore nothing but pants and battered clogs slipped on at the door. He stuffed the apple into his pocket.

“You may need it. I have a feeling that I won’t be cold,” he said.

Garland leaned over the gap to watch him go.

Xan shimmied down the walls of a corkscrewed passage. “So long,” he whispered. He could see the other man’s silhouette against the sunlight.

Barely had he caught the answering reply when he lost his grip and began sliding. His hand found but couldn’t seize hold of slits in the rock. He drew up his knees, rocketing down a chute toward faint blue light until he shot into the air and splashed into an immense pool. He leaped upward, shocked that this was not water but fire that lapped the walls of an underground cave. It tingled all around him, warm but somehow insubstantial — distant, he thought, scooping up handfuls of blue. Looking around, he saw nothing of Scag and his companion.

An immense stone, tilted to one side, made an isle that reflected light like a moon. White splinters and spears of brightness broke the surface of waves, and here and there figures lay underneath or floated on top. Eyes open, they were not looking at him but seemed to gaze at something far off. The bodies were pale or dark, the hair floating, and they appeared as oddly simplified as if they were carved Cycladic dolls. Perhaps their details had been worn down by the tide of fire.

He paused to check each one, in case the salamander girl sailed under waves, her staring copper eyes now coins for payment to the ferryman of the dead. Once, wading near the shallows, he hauled a woman to the surface. Slowly, slowly, her eyes groped toward his face. But he couldn’t force her to answer his questions. A mist clouded her eyes; she fell into dream. Others had been skewered by the glowing white darts, and on these a golden flame played where shaft met flesh. Recalling the virtue ascribed to the salamander’s blood, he wondered if the waves could be hotter than they appeared.

Exploring the cave lake was harder than he had expected and made him think of crossing a glacial moraine. On a trip to Canada, he and Harold had toiled over rocks, trying to reach the source of a glacial stream, but it was farther than it had seemed. In the end, the old man wearied and turned back. A pang of longing like a white arrow pierced him. He had loved Harold and Russ better than any foster father, and now they were both gone, perhaps floating in some pool of lost time. What would he do if he met their faces here?

His limbs grew drowsy as his mind drifted, anchorless. A single burning point of pain settled under a shoulder blade. Gusts of wind roiled the waters and howled into distant windings of the cavern. After the last echo died, sheer silence filled up the chamber.

“God,” he said. He meant it as a prayer, and perhaps it was.

The journey stretched out like a sheet of hot glass. The white boulder in the lake seemed no nearer. He waded into a dreamlike state, automatically checking faces, swimming sluggishly when the flames grew too deep.

At last a pattering and splashing alerted him — treading fire, he hid behind a thicket of white spears. He was now much closer to the stone.

A shape in a tattered dress shirt, herringbone vest, and wool pants wormed out of the waves and hunched on a rocky ledge where the wall began to slant upward. Crouching, he licked at streaks of a mineral deposit.

“Hey,” Xan called, making up his mind to collar the figure if necessary. “Hey!”

The other sat up, nosing the air, and revealing a lean face with moth-eaten tufts circling a bald pate.

“Over here.” Xan swam closer to the heap of stones. “Have you seen a pretty girl flying by — have you seen a blue pitcher? Maybe that sounds too—”

“Look! If it’s not Adam, the red man!” He barked with laughter. “I haven’t seen you in fifty years or more. You ripped through here, searching for some kid you’d misplaced; I’m sure of it.”

Xan was confused until he remembered that his skin was stained by blood. Didn’t adam mean red? Had Adam been made from a mud like the rust of mountain clay?

One corner of the man’s mouth drew up. “Don’t you recognize me? They call me Attorney — or Atty or Fox-marrow or Sir Greedy Bones. What will you give me, Adam, if I squeal? Hair like copper? Eyes like coins?”

So he had seen her. Xan considered. “A shoe.”

“One shoe?” Attorney leered, looking sidelong as his tongue wriggled out. “Just one?”

“Yes, just one.” What else did he have to offer but his shoes?

“The shoe of Adam. Let me see.”

The gaffer waded nearer and then slipped off a clog.

“Nice, very nice,” Attorney cooed, cupping his hands. “Pitch it here.”

“Not until you tell me.”

“I could squall for the demons.” Flinching, he darted a look around the cave.

“Go ahead and squall.” Xan tapped the sole of the shoe against his palm.

“All right, be that way. She’s just there, on the other side of the boulder. Lashed on with ropes and a rag stuffed in her mouth. Easy! I made faces and her eyes went big.” He nodded, pleased. “I canoed over on a fire-bather — one of the silver ones. My favorites. You know them? They can’t tell what’s happening to them, not until the cocoon breaks up. It’s the goddess the girl’s tied to — that fat pebble! The demons pinch me, but she never makes a peep, just rocks when the earth quakes. Get it? Rocks!” A high-pitched whinny shook echoes from the walls.