Ellen Datlow - The Beastly Bride

They floated in the blue fire, and before he taught her how to swim, Xan gave her one long kiss — and something else.

“Open your mouth,” he said. When she did so, he pushed the gauzy soul inside and barred the way out with his fingers.

The first tears pooled in her eyes. She held on tight, and they rolled over the waves and the simple faces of the dead. Afterward Xan swam toward shore, towing the salamander girl while she fluttered her arms and legs to some little effect. When the surface fell to waist level, they began to wade. Soon they were skimming along in the shallows. As they fled up the steps, Attorney bellowed for the demons to come quickly and see his plumule of a tail. Xan flung the girl through the slit at the top of the stairs. They tumbled onto an island of ramps and bellwort, with curled sprouts of black cohosh snapping under their bodies.

“I’ll be.” There was the farmer, his sack almost full.

“Garland,” cried the girl. A single clear note of laughter sprang from her lips.

“Let’s go home,” Xan said, casting a backward glance at the rocks. “My lovely Salamandra needs a trout from the stream and some just-picked ramps for dinner.”

“She can talk!”

“Demon’s work. He forced words in her mouth.”

“You’re barefoot and half-naked.” Garland surveyed them and smiled. “The sun’s going down, so my wife will be worried. But I’ve got ramps.” He hoisted the fragrant bag to show his pickings. His sleeves were rolled up, the trousers stained green at the knees. With a flick of the wrist, he cast a handful of ramps into the crack in the earth.

“That’ll hold your sky blue friend a while — a whiff of the sweet incense of creation. And your Salamandra’s got a laugh that’s as sweet as a bell. It’ll make their ears itch.”

More than ever, Xan felt a liking for the older man, seeing him there in the dusk with a ramp tucked behind his ear.

“Garland, take a look at something, will you? Below the left shoulder blade. It feels as if an arrow point struck me there.” Ripples from a stone lobbed in a pool of flame, pain washed across his back.

The farmer touched him tentatively. “Hard to make out in this light, but it looks like a raggedy splotch of metal. Or a silver flame.”

“Or it might even be a curled salamander,” the girl offered, stroking the offending spot.

Xan shivered at the caress. “If that’s all,” he said, “let’s go.”

I must’ve missed a half inch of skin. A chink in the armor . He would find out soon enough whether the hurt was going to stay. If so, the goal had been worth the price. She was worth it . He knew how to live with a burn, because he had taken one often enough in his apprenticeship. “Chasing after beauty has a cost,” Russ had said, bringing an ice pack to hold against his skin.

Xan and Salamandra followed Garland’s footsteps to the road, where all three stopped to peer into the valley. The blue of day had been swallowed up. Night lamps in rural yards were already burning like fallen stars as the sunset flung up veils of persimmon and ruby. Here and there, clusters of silvery tin roofs on houses and country churches softly reflected the colors back. Slowly the sky became shadowy as strands of color altered to purple and green and cobalt with streaks and spatterings of gold. Spires and houses stood like a dream kingdom of glass in the valley.

The pain dimmed like a flame seen through a smoked lens.

“I want to learn the glass and the colors like you, Xan.” Salamandra slipped her hand in his. “And I want to see things that go with the words inside.”

“You’ll make a marvelous gaffer. We’ll make glass that no one’s ever seen before. Because the salamander’s blood is on me and in you.”

“I want to live happily ever after,” she whispered.

“Did the demon put those words in your mouth? How could that be?”

“With you, Xan. And yes, he did. He put all the words in my mouth, the good and the bad, even the ones made from tears and the blasphemies that should never be spoken.” She laid her head on his shoulder.

He saw now that all things could be bent to evil. The world could be hot glass twisted in the claws of a demon. But it hadn’t been meant so at the start, that perfect gather of blue and green glass .

“She’s going to be awfully surprised when she finds out that you’re not always dyed cinnabar from head to toe,” Garland remarked, slinging the bag of ramps over his shoulder. He eyed the younger man’s hair, caked with blood. “Pleasantly so, I reckon.”

“These jeans, do you think—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” The gaffer let out a spark of laughter. “Not a thing.”

The roofs in the valley glimmered and faded, and sparks of stars blew in from the hearth of the sky and made the girl cry out in fear and joy. She’s really only a newborn baby , Xan thought, despite the words . So he would sleep in the studio and yield the cabin to her. He would have to let her grow a while before they could promise to live happily ever after. A year and a day floated into his mind; surely he could wait a year and a day. But it was already in him to love her, as it had been from the moment he had helped her from the glory hole — perhaps even when he had lifted the salamander to his cheek. Her blood on the marble had claimed him as her own as surely as if the marver had been not a glassmaker’s tool but some pagan goddess — a boulder of granite stained with the blood of children, set up in a grove of stunted acacia trees, somewhere hot and distant and long ago. But she wasn’t of that cruel world. She had been burned in the glory of the glass fire and owned a soul.

He shuddered, remembering the stone in the lake of blue flames and the faces drifting beneath the waves. Glancing down, he saw the girl’s bare legs glowing white above a drift of dwarf iris leaves. Oh, he longed to remake the world to be as smooth as glass for her feet! Garland was unlocking the car, tossing the ramps into the trunk. Xan felt that he would never be done thanking the man for telling him about the living creatures born from fire. He and Salamandra would visit Garland’s farm; then he would go see Eva and show her what sort of woman he could win for himself. Though the widow might be sad because change is often sad for the old, she would welcome them in. There were strands of color in the bewitching ball of Earth — enough to hold them secure in its web.

“Listen!” Salamandra stepped forward. A spine-tingling sound like a waterfall of crystal swept toward them. “The music of the spheres,” she said, her face as naked in delight as an infant’s.

An enormous windblown tree blossomed in Xan’s imagination, its leaves splashed with raindrops, its twigs and branches hung with an endless number of glass bells. Sweet as a mountain breeze, the sureness came to him that all his life to come would be more radiant than before. He sighed with pleasure, gripping the girl’s slender fingers. He had feared the stain of Attorney, but now he was certain: the soul had found a better place to nestle and, like a wing of thinnest glass, would unfold and flash with rainbow colors. She would make it her own. Before they turned toward Garland and home, he and his salamander bride-to-be looked up at the glory of the constellations, now strengthening and shining in the furnace of night, and one or the other spoke.

“Before the stars were made, we were dreamed and meant to be.”

MARLY YOUMANS is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent fantasy is Ingledove . Her novel The Wolf Pit won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. Val/Orson , a novella set in the California treetops and drawing on the legend of Valentine and his wild twin, Orson, was published in 2008. Her first book of poetry is Claire . Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Salon Fantastique; Logorrhea; Firebirds Soaring; We Think, Therefore We Are ; and Postscripts , and reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror , and Fantasy: The Best of the Year . Her Web site is www.marlyyoumans.com.