Beneath Ceaseless Skies #153 Read online

  Issue #153 • Aug. 7, 2014

  “Five Fruits I Ate in Sandar Land,” by Michael Haynes

  “Make No Promises,” by Rachel Halpern

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  FIVE FRUITS I ATE IN SANDAR LAND

  by Michael Haynes

  Bitter Apple

  The bitter apple is fatal. Only in large quantities, though, and its offensive taste makes it nearly impossible to eat enough of them to kill a man. As the sun dips below the horizon, I eat one my first night in Sandar Land, barefoot and sweatsoaked. The juices sting my chapped lips and give no comfort to my throat. It’s the first food I have eaten in three days. While I chew, I try to imagine it as something less noxious, but with each bite I nearly retch and lose it all.

  Swallowing the last, I hold up the slender core, stem poking out the top, seeds near the heart of the fruit, and nod at the man who had dared me.

  His friend nudges him in the ribs. “Make him eat the core, too, eh?”

  The man hesitates a moment, looking me over. I will eat the core if that is what he demands. I have come too far not to keep going; have yielded what little I was born with except my honor in my attempt to rescue Rose, whose father betrayed her. If I stop now, I will retain nothing.

  There’s a flash of something in the man’s eyes—pity, most likely, though I prefer to think of it as sympathy—as he reaches into a soft cloth pouch and tosses three coins at my feet.

  * * *

  Sweet Melon

  Further into Sandar Land, I come to a village at a crossroads. I have been told to wait here for news on where to proceed but not how soon the news will come. I take work at an inn. The innkeeper is old and gruff, and the fare her staff are served is rarely better than that slopped to the pigs she keeps. But I have a place to sleep and food to keep my body alive while the days pass by.

  One night a female merchant dines with her traveling party. From the corner of my eye, I see her gaze at me several times as I serve the food and keep the guests’ glasses full. By the time of evening when I pour the cheapest wine, she acts as drunk as all the rest. But I know I haven’t filled her glass since before the food was served.

  I pass close by her and she reaches out an unsteady hand, placing it on my thigh.

  “You’re quite the young man,” she slurs.

  I hesitate, unsure what to say. She continues, saying: “You have a healthy look to you. Like the roses I’ve seen in the capital city.”

  My heart quickens at the mention of Rose’s name. “I have never been to the capital.”

  “But surely you have seen a rose?”

  She drops her spoon to the floor. I bend to pick it up and as I do so her lips brush my ear. “My room,” she says, in a voice totally sober. “After midnight.”

  I hand her the spoon and she reaches out with a morsel of sweet melon between her slender fingers. She pushes the fruit to my lips. I accept it and let its sugary taste fill my mouth before giving her the slightest of nods.

  When I arrive at her room, moments after the midnight bells have tolled, I find her naked on her bed.

  “You’re quite the young man,” she says again. “Now close the door.”

  I hesitate, but only for a second. Surely Rose would forgive me.

  Afterward, the merchant tells me what I need to know.

  * * *

  Jangofruit

  The jangofruit is grown today only in one Sandar valley. There used to be many orchards, when the land was still ruled by the Kaglamen; they viewed the fruit as holy. But that was centuries ago. The valley where jangofruit is still grown is home to one of the last communities of unassimilated Kaglamen.

  I go to one of their prophetesses, and she breaks open a jangofruit as I sit at her table. Together we pick out all the seeds and place them in a cup. Then we eat the fruit, and when each of us has consumed our share she places her hand on top of the cup, shakes the seeds, and spills them across the table.

  “You have traveled far,” she says. No great insight there; my rust-colored skin marks me as an outsider throughout Sandar.

  “You are losing hope.”

  I stay silent. The prophetess runs fingers, bent with age, over the seeds. Then she looks at me.

  “But you are on the right path. If you turn back now, you will regret it.”

  I wait, hoping for more, but she sits back with a deep sigh.

  “Is that all?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Yes. But it will be enough.”

  “More prophecy?” I ask as I pull coins from my leather purse to pay for her time.

  “No. It’s what I see in your eyes.”

  As I shut the door behind me, I think I hear her softly say “Good luck.”

  * * *

  Spirit Oranges

  In the capital city, where I have lived now for six months, I wait for my brother to arrive. I had called for him as soon as I’d confirmed that Rose was indeed here, that day when I heard the Baron’s odious assistant bragging about his master’s newest concubine—her hazel skin, her grey eyes. And all the rest, all that she had sworn would be ours alone.

  The room I rent is above a tanner’s shop. Across the street a fruit vendor sets up every day, and each morning I buy a spirit orange from his stall.

  My brother was to have been the first attendant at our wedding. My father accepted the offer of a minimal dowry from Rose’s mother and uncle. But before the wedding day her wretched, drunken father returned from battle alive. Rather than give even the two horses and twenty gold pieces Rose was to bring to our marriage, he spirited her off in the night and sold her to a man two towns over while my father and brother and I were away on a hunt.

  I went after her as soon as I returned home and heard the news. The man in the other town, I found, had sold her to another man who had, in turn, sold her to the Baron.

  I eat my spirit orange each day and stow the large central seed away in a pouch. The fruit’s color reminds me of the central color from my family’s crest.

  The pouch bulges from all it holds. Soon, when my brother arrives, I will hire a young boy out in the street and have him deliver the pouch to the Baron.

  * * *

  Starberries

  The starberry is not native to Sandar Land. I acquired three of the berries, red with bright white stars at the spot where they had been plucked from their vine, in Puran, before I even made it to the Sandar border.

  I stand under cover of darkness outside the cabin along Lake Sandar where the Baron and Rose are sleeping. Eight men guard the cabin, four outside and four within; enough that the Baron surely thinks himself safe.

  I take the three berries and pop them into my mouth. They are the sweetest of all the fruits I have eaten in Sandar Land.

  Within seconds, I feel their power well up inside me. My pulse beats heavy in my head and my breaths come fast as I sprint toward the cabin. The lapping of waves on the shore has slowed to a low murmur and the trees’ leaves barely rustle. The guards outside the cabin look as if they are almost standing still as I tear across the field. My lungs burn and I feel the skin of my feet flay against the ground.

  My brother waits among the trees; to him I must look like a blur.

  I burst through the door with a bang that echoes lazily off the walls, past the inside guards who are playing dice at a table. Clack... clack... clack.... The cubes bounce only thrice as I run across the room to the inner door.

  Inside, my fiancée lies in bed, asleep. I take just a moment to crush the Baron’s neck before I scoop Rose up in my arms and hasten for the outside, my heart going faster with each step.
/>   Beyond the trees, gasping for what breath I can still take in, I place her at my brother’s feet.

  My vision blurs and I fall to my knees. Then, with a hot rush inside me, everything is back to normal pace.

  I topple the rest of the way to the ground, next to Rose, our faces only inches apart. Her eyes are open and I see fresh tears in her eyes.

  “I love you,” I whisper with the last air in my lungs.

  My chest explodes in pain, and I close my eyes.

  The starberry is fatal.

  Copyright © 2014 Michael Haynes

  Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

  Michael Haynes lives in Central Ohio where he helps keep IT systems running for a large corporation during the day and puts his characters through the wringer by night. An ardent short story reader and writer, Michael had over twenty stories accepted for publication during 2012 by venues such as Intergalactic Medicine Show, Nature, and Daily Science Fiction. He is the Editor for the monthly flash fiction contests run by Kazka Press. Visit him online at michaelhaynes.info.

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  MAKE NO PROMISES

  by Rachel Halpern

  My sister Lydie and I often walk in the hills when our morning lessons are over. We take our lessons separately—I am the younger by three years, so the history lessons that give me such trouble my sister has already mastered. Fencing is even worse, where besides my lack of training, I have also my shorter reach and my weak left eye to contend with.

  She will always be the better swordswoman.

  Today was mathematics, my favorite subject. Numbers are logical, trustworthy, unchanging. I can set variables into a system of equations and find clear and certain answers—better yet, I can know why. I know what the people around me will do, but their motivations baffle me.

  When I finish with my tutor, my sister is just getting out of her own lesson, and we meet in the fortress library as we leave.

  “It’s too fine a day for chess,” I tell her before she can speak. We’ve just learned the game from our mother, and now Lydie only wants to play chess, while I would rather enjoy the cool weather.

  “We can at least bring it along,” she says, quickly enough that I know she anticipated my protest. “The rocks in our usual clearing are flat enough for a game or two.” I hesitate, and she widens her eyes at me pleadingly. “I’ll even let you win a game if you like.”

  That startles a laugh out of me. “You will absolutely not. I believe you to be fundamentally incapable of losing at anything.”

  Lydie gives me a tragic look. It’s mostly theatrical, but I can see her real disappointment, and I relent. “Then you have to carry everything,” I say. “And pack up all the pieces when we’re done, and go pack the case up now while I change into better shoes for walking.”

  She’s laughing now. “I will, I will, I promise you. I won’t even complain about how heavy the pieces are on our way up. And I might let you win, you know, just one time.”

  “Make no promises,” I say.

  * * *

  I put my books away and change clothes, throwing a scarf over my head to keep the sun off; putting on thick-soled sandals to bear the sun-heated stones. When I am finished, I sit by the window and wait for my sister’s return. There are two flights of stairs between our rooms—it will take her some time to pack away the chess pieces and come to fetch me.

  My rooms look out on the back courtyard, so if I turn my head I can see everyone passing through. Just now, it’s the stable boy my sister has been pining after. Looking at him, I see our futures etched in the air between us, the courtyard filling with echoes of what will come. My sister will wait for him to approach her, careful of the power difference between them, but they will court for a time.

  I will be fond of him for my sister’s sake, and for his kindness, and he will be almost like family for a time, though too in awe of our mother as god-prince of our small city to ever truly join us. I understand—my mother has ruled our people as god-prince since long before I was born. She controls the storms, bringing bitter hot wind and sand to burn our enemies, and sometimes draws down rain when even the summer brings too little water—killer and life-giver in one. And she is centuries old, and half the myths and legends we tell in our city are about her or people she knew. It is intimidating enough to be her daughter; I can barely imagine how frightening she must be to an ordinary servant of the fortress.

  They will separate a few months after that, and within a year or two, while my sister is away at school, they will both have moved on entirely. He will fall in love again and get married, to a tall farmer’s daughter who sells vegetables in the town below.

  I visited her stall yesterday, just to meet her; this girl my friend will someday marry. I wore a scarf over my hair and half-covering my face, so she would not recognize me as Prince Rienna’s daughter. Before I returned home, I left three gold coins hidden under the long mesquite pods. She has not found them yet, but she will soon, with no obvious connection to me.

  She and the stable boy will be happy together, I think. Past the point when my sister leaves for university, they fade from our family’s lives, and so from my awareness. I could press the point, but I have no need. I am not known for my sense of humor, but the farm girl made even me laugh, and the stable boy has always been—will always be—kind to me. They should suit each other well.

  * * *

  “Mandeva,” my sister says behind me, and I turn, startled.

  She took less time than I expected—my vision is clear, but the depth of my perception is poor, in my sight of the future as in my daily life.

  My left eye has always been weak, where I will lose it fighting to defend the fortress, and my mother, against my sister’s return. My sister has always been the better fencer—she will be faster than I, sure and swift, her blade striking before I can even unsheathe my own sword. She will fall short, though, misjudge the distance, and though I will lose the eye, I will not die as she intended.

  Lydie smiles, apologetic, at my surprise. “I did knock,” she tells me. “Not loud enough, I guess. Thinking dark thoughts?”

  “Nothing important,” I tell her. And it is true. She never falls truly in love with the stable boy; it will not hurt her badly when he leaves. Away at school she will find someone new, a young man from across the ocean.

  They will be together until she dies, which will be sooner than I ever expect, in the dungeon where I will throw her when I take back our city.

  * * *

  We walk into the hills together, Lydie keeping to my right so I can see her clearly. In the sun, her clothes are bright against the warm dark brown of her skin, making the walk feel particularly festive, a celebration of the weather turning slowly into the cooler season of the year.

  The paths are familiar, and my feet are sure on the sand and stones for all that my vision has never been whole. Someday I will give up on being prince and go wandering, telling stories and seeing the world. I will always miss this, though—walking with company. When I travel I will travel alone.

  “How was mapmaking?” I ask my sister, and she groans theatrically.

  “If Master Kinan has children, he needs no lullabies to put them to sleep. He drones on at me about how small our city is compared to the vast and beautiful city-states across the sea, and lectures me about the different kinds of farmland and the perils of the unmapped deserts until I never wish to travel again.”

  “So has he persuaded you yet to stay home from university?” I ask. The college where our mother has secured us a place is a week or two away by sea.

  “Not on your life,” she says, and as always I listen for some hidden tone, to know whether she sees, as I do, what is coming. But she sounds so careless, throws my life around so easily in her words, that I think she cannot know.

  “I don’t understand how you bear it here,” she tells me. “The closed walls of the castle, the endless stretches of sand and mountains, the string of tutors who k
now little more of the world than we do.”

  “I’m certain you’ll meet many fascinating people while you’re away,” I tell her, because I am certain.

  “I hope so,” she tells me. Perhaps three years older means three years better at pretending not to be omniscient, but it seems ever more likely that I alone will bear the burden of her violent return, of our mother’s blood on her hands. Of her blood on mine, as I lock her away to die.

  It isn’t a long walk to our usual clearing. By the time we reach it, my sister is already involved in recounting the most interesting pieces of her lesson, for all that she would claim to have learned nothing of value, and we gaze at the familiar stony land, as if we can see the tropical beaches of another land if we only look hard enough.

  I can, of course, in glimpses, if I follow my sister’s path, but the farther away she is, the less I know. I have seen the beach where she lands on her return but nothing of what changes, what takes us from friends to enemies while I sit at home and wait.

  “And inland there, the ground is rich and easy to farm,” she tells me, as she finishes setting up the pieces. “So much that even where no farmers work, the land looks green with all the plants. And trees twice the height of ironwood trees grow all around!”

  I laugh, because the image is absurd, but I see from her face that she really believes it. “Too much green,” I say, playing along. “I prefer the greys and browns of desert land, and all the shades of stone. And so many trees—how do they see the sky?”

  Lydie waves a dismissive hand and moves a pawn forward. “Of course no one would want to live there forever.” I shift a pawn of my own, and she moves again immediately, and we settle into the game. “But what a thing to see. And from what I’ve read, the university library is three times the size of our collection. I think I will never want for anything, as long as the other students can play chess.”

  I smile and move my bishop and do not let myself wonder whether all this chess we play means she is already thinking of revolution. She has asked me, once or twice, whether I mind that our mother will be prince for centuries more before we gain any kind of power, and though she has stopped asking, I suspect the resentment continues to fester.