Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Behind him, a low croak sounded. Glancing over his shoulder, Sir Henry spied a frog crouching on the scree between two clumps of rough seagrass. Swiftly, he reached down and snatched it. The frog struggled, but Sir Henry held it fast and then secured it in his sack. It kicked and bounced for a moment before lying still. Sir Henry smiled. Finding it was lucky. Carefully balancing his shoulder sack again, he began to walk, bending now and then to gather the strange treasures that would help him accomplish his task.

By the time he reached the seahenge, Sir Henry’s arms were piled high with magical finds and he was sweating. But still, as he approached the circle of monoliths, he felt his skin grow cold. Carefully he placed his treasures on the ground, and then his sack. He was so close now. The moon was bright and the tall stones jutted like the ragged teeth from the gaping maw of some enormous buried beast. And at the circle’s center, rising like a many-headed hydra or the tentacles of some colossal, fossilized kraken, were the roots of an ancient oak. It had been buried in a time before remembering, its branches and bole within the earth and its lower trunk and thick roots rising and writhing toward the sky. Like the stones, it was only visible one night each year, and belonged to this twilight world which itself belonged to both sea and land, below and above, sleeping and waking.

With a courtly bow, Sir Henry took a step forward and entered the circle. His skin tingled as the shadows of the stones fell upon him. “I have come,” he said, “as was promised long ago. I have come as my father came, and his father, and his father before him, back to the time before time when we emerged from your branches and bark; back before we wrested this land from the sea. I have brought you my bride, who is also my gift to you, as she is to the Ancient Ones of the Salt. But first, as you gave us life, I give you light.”

Sir Henry approached the tree deferentially. When he was close enough to touch the roots, he reached for his silver pocket lamp and pressed the side button. The cap ignited with a hiss and a whoosh, lighting the wick already drenched with fluid.

Delicately, Sir Henry reached forward and touched the flame to each rootling tip. The old sea-soaked oak caught and sparked and spat and finally burned with the aqua flame of salt-infused driftwood. Around and around the tree he walked, lighting the lowest rootlings like the many wicks of a giant candelabrum. And as each thin finger of wood ignited, the aqua flames spread upward from root to root, until the whole underworld canopy was ablaze and Sir Henry had returned to where he had started.

Stepping back, he shaded his face from the heat of the weirdling fire that flared up without devouring the wood, and which left the bole untouched. Beneath the flaming underworld oak, he loosened the drawstring of his sack. Ignoring the croak and hop of the struggling frog, he reached inside. As the sea slapped its watery hands against the beach, drawing a murmur of pebbles toward the deep before tossing them back with a hiss of seafoam, Henry withdrew a silver knife engraved with runes, a small sack of grave clay taken from his lady’s first resting place, a purse of herbs, a vial of elixir, a goblet whose cup had been cut from his great-grandfather’s skull, a bottle of his best champagne, a shimmering folded dress, and a huge conch shell inlaid with silver. Finally, he withdrew his veiled prize.

Slowly, like a man undressing his bride on their wedding night, Sir Henry unwound her caul of sea-green velvet. As her long red hair caught in the salt breeze and blew about his arm like freshets of blood, he let her wrappings fall to the sand. Then, in triumph, he held her up to the night sky.

In the aqua light of the flaming tree, her hair burned with all the colors of hell and her glass eyes sparkled, green as sea urchins. The most gorgeous mother-of-pearl could not compare with the luster of her pale skin, nor oysters with the succulence of her lips.

With the deference of a courting suitor, Sir Henry laid the head of his lady upon the sand. Then he set about building her a body.

Her spine—from neck to curved pelvis—he took from the remains of the amorous mermaid. The bones of legs and feet, arms and hands, lovely fingers and precious toes he built from driftwood and coral. Her lungs were sea sponges and her tendons long strands of kelp wrapped around the muscular innards scooped from great scallop shells. Womb and bladder were sea cucumbers, her ovaries starfish, and her liver a giant sea leach. Her gallbladder was a yellow snail and her innards a writhing sea worm pulled from below the sand, its circular mouthful of teeth snapping. For breasts, two more lovely rounded sea sponges, and for nipples, tiny pearls.

Almost finished, he sat back on his heels and gazed upon the body of his beloved, and at her head, which rested several feet away. She looked like a beautiful saint—beheaded and flayed—though the gods this lady served were no Christian ones. Sir Henry sighed. The only missing organ was a heart.

He reached into his sack. With a frightened ribbit the frog leaped, but Sir Henry caught it deftly in one hand. Lifting it high, he felt the strength of its struggles and the rhythmic swelling and pulsing of its throat as it breathed. Oh, it would do nicely! He plunged it into his beloved’s chest where it snuggled between the sea sponges and hid.

Now all he needed was skin.

At the tide line, Henry filled his sack with wet sand rich with sea lice and tiny, translucent crabs, then lugged it back to the circle of stones surrounding the flaming tree. Once inside its circumference, he rested the heavy sack on the ground beside his lady’s body and knelt down.

One by one, he added grave clay, herbs, and elixir. When the last of these was added, the mixture frothed and bubbled. Tiny lice and crabs rose on the foam and scuttled madly over the sides of the sack, trying to escape. Unbuttoning his fly, Sir Henry withdrew his stiff member and began to stroke it, focusing his mind on the beautiful face of his lady and the lovely skull beneath. He came to climax swiftly, directing his pearly glitter into the mixture. As he buttoned his fly, he thought it was time to add the final ingredient necessary to bring this flesh to life.

Raising the ritual knife, he uttered a guttural prayer and then sliced into the flesh of his right forearm. As blood poured into the sand mixture, he whispered another spell. Arm still bleeding, he reached both hands into the bubbling, frothing mix and began to knead.

He could feel its texture change. The grains of sand—both shell fragments and pebbles—began to dissolve. The smoothness of what resulted reminded him, oddly, that sand was the main substance in glass. But what he kneaded and stretched was neither sand nor glass but something between clay and flesh. Its color, softly ruddy from the red of his blood, was the hue of a lady’s blushing cheek.

With the finesse of a skilled sculptor, Sir Henry attached head to body with muscles and tendons formed of stout kelp, and then he began to layer skin upon his beloved. As each delicate membrane was stretched over her muscles and bones and organs, it set for a moment and then softened. Sir Henry could see the little capillaries sprout and grow and spread through the dermal strata as he prepared and stretched each one, thin and delicate as a frond of seaweed, over her sleeping form. As the seventh layer set and softened, her chest rose in a gentle sigh. But though the body had begun to respond he knew that her form was, on the whole, still lifeless, since it was not yet animated by a spirit. And though the form he had given her was beautifully feminine, its nether regions were, externally at least, still sexless. But before he performed that particular surgery, his lady deserved to be dressed.