Teeth, Long and Sharp: A Collection of Tales Sharp and Pointed Page 5

  “As you wish. Until later then.” He bowed once more, this time to both women, before swinging into the saddle to guide his horse toward the bluff. Zigana resisted the urge to watch him leave. Despite her bedazzlement, it was inappropriate to stare after her sister’s husband like a moonstruck calf, even if Jolen found him contemptible.

  Jolen dusted her palms of imaginary dirt and instantly brightened. “Well, now that unpleasantness is over…”

  “I didn’t know you had a daughter!”

  Jolen giggled, obviously thrilled at catching her sister off guard. “I was planning to tell you.” She switched subjects with the speed of a hummingbird sipping nectar from flower to flower. “Do you want that ride? We’ll be there in no time. That gelding is skittish but fast.”

  Just like his rider, Zigana thought. She wanted to know more about the child Tunde. A faint yearning settled in her breast. She had hoped to give Lukas a child when they married. Fate had decreed otherwise.

  She accepted Jolen’s offer of the ride. Once they got the gelding to stand still long enough, he was a lot easier to mount than Gitta. Not as tall and not nearly as wide, he made up for the lack of bulk in speed. Jolen’s boast hadn’t been idle. The horse practically flew over the dunes and paths, Jolen reining him to a stop in front of the cottage so abruptly, it threw Zigana against her back with a hard “umpf.”

  She swung down, feeling as if someone had ripped away newly sprouted wings when her feet hit unyielding earth. “You’re right,” she told Jolen. “He makes you think you’re flying.” She gestured to the front door. The twitch of a curtain at the front window caught her eye. “Mama is likely stuck to the glass at the moment to see what we’ll do. Do you want to come in for tea?”

  Jolen shook her head. No, I’ve duties to attend.”

  She sounded so melancholy, as if the tasks ahead of her broke the backs of the strongest men. Zigana rested a hand on her knee. “Should you change your mind and come back, I’ll put a kettle on.” She straightened the salt-crusted hem of Jolen’s skirt where it caught in the stirrup. “I know fate hasn’t been kind and the circumstances not as you might have wished them, but I’m glad you’ve returned. Will I see you again?”

  A sheen of tears glossed Jolen’s eyes, and her mouth curved into a feeble smile. “Yes.” She inhaled, straightened in the saddle and winked at Zigana. “When you’re done with your shrimping and don’t reek, come to the house. I’ll send a messenger with a time that’s good. Or I’ll come back to the beach and we’ll race the waves.” She turned the gelding around and tapped its sides where upon it launched into a canter. Jolen half turned in her seat and waved. “Until daylight, Ziga!” she called out before breaking into a full gallop down the village’s main road.

  Unlike the last rider to leave, Zigana kept her eyes on this one until she disappeared over the dune. “Until daylight, sister mine,” she said softly.

  She didn’t have long to wait before Frishi yanked open the door and strode to her side. “What did she tell you?” She mopped her damp brow with her apron. “I never thought to see that girl again once she married and moved to the capital.”

  “She’s to live at Banat with her husband and daughter for now.”

  “Jolen has a child? Well, that’s a surprise.”

  Zigana didn’t reply. Was it truly? Her sister was mercurial, vain, and sometimes arrogant, but at no point had she ever expressed a hatred for children. Zigana could easily see her as a loving, albeit, flighty parent at times. What did surprise her was the knowledge she only had one child, especially married to a man like Andras Frantisek.

  She shook her head to rid herself of his image. “My sister’s husband,” she murmured.

  “What did you say?” Frishi eyed her, frowning.

  “Nothing, Mama. I’m just thinking what else I need to do this afternoon.”

  “Well, if nothing comes to mind, I have enough of a list to keep you, me, and half this village busy for a week.”

  Though Zigana had no problem remembering the numerous chores waiting to be done, Frishi made good on her promise of providing more. By the time supper finished, she was happy to collapse in a chair next to Odon and help him mend nets.

  “Any more talk about Solyom?” She wove a bar through the meshes, making sure they lined up straight for the needle and twine.

  Odon cut a small hole in another patch of broken knots. “‘Tis said he walked into the sea to the sound of his wife calling his name. How Red Jana knows this, I can’t say, especially since he’s telling folks he didn’t actually see Solyom go into the water.”

  Zigana scowled. “He gossips worse than that pack of fishwives who gather at market day.”

  “Poor old man,” Frishi said, tending to her own repair work of darning a stocking from a basket of mending. “Maybe it isn’t such a bad way to go, knowing your love is waiting for you.”

  No it wasn’t, Zigana thought, except it hadn’t been Trezka waiting for Solyom in the water.

  The parlor was quiet after that until Frishi put her mending aside and announced she was going to bed. She kissed Odon on the lips, Zigana on the forehead, and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  Zigana waited for a moment before speaking. “You didn’t tell her what I saw?”

  He side-eyed her. “I’ll leave that up to you. Just bear in mind that when she finds out, she’ll do her best to nail your feet to the floor and not let you within a league of the sea if she can.”

  “I’m not a little girl anymore, Papa.”

  “I’m not the one who needs convincing of that, Ziga.”

  “Has she dreamed of drowning?”

  He wove his needle through the mesh, fingers flying as he looped twine and tied knots. “If she has, she isn’t telling me.”

  “What about you?”

  “Just the one I told you about, of trawling dead villagers from the bottom.”

  She chewed on her lower lip, thinking. Sea lore was rich with stories of creatures foul and fantastic that lived in its depths. Some were real, others the conjurings of sailors tipping from the spirits barrel too often. Zigana knew dozens of the stories by heart but none ever described anything like she’d seen during her scrying of the waves. “Do you know any of the old stories that tell of a monster that mimics voices and twists dreams?”

  Odon paused in his needlework for a moment, gaze blank as he looked inward to memory. “Only sirens” he said after a moment. “And none of the stories tell of them controlling dreams.” He smirked at the net in his hand. “That, and I suspect sirens are just seals. Sometimes a man spends a little too long on a ship.”

  “That was no siren I saw.”

  Their gazes met. “I believe you, Ziga,” he said.

  His faith in her water-sight reassured her in one way and terrified her in another. Odon wasn’t a man inclined to fancy, despite his own weaker talent for reading the water. That he didn’t question the truth of the images she saw made them that much more real and more frightening.

  “I really wish it had been Trezka waiting for him,” she said.

  “So do I, girl,” he replied. “So do I.”

  She woke in the small hours again that night, not to the eldritch resonance rising from the surf but to loud whinnies coming from the barn. She threw back the blankets and bolted down the stairs. A quick glance into her parents’ bedroom showed them still sleeping, despite the terrible racket. An odd thing as Odon was a light sleeper, and even without the horses making enough noise to wake the dead, Zigana hadn’t been quiet as she pounded down the treads to the first floor. She snatched a candle nub off the table, coaxed a flame onto its wick from the remains of the evening’s fire and raced out of the house.

  The night was cold, damp and smelled of grave dirt as she shot barefoot across their tiny garden to the barn. A pitchfork hung just outside the doors, and she grabbed it before lifting the bar and throwing them open. The candle’s anemic flame lit no more than a hand’s space in front of her but it was enough to see Gitt
a kicking hard at her stall door as if to bust it open and break free. Her eyes rolled and she trumpeted when she caught sight of Zigana. Voreg echoed her as did the two ponies they kept for light transport.

  Zigana couched the pitchfork under one arm and raised the candle high with her other hand. Unlike the outside air, the stables smelled of hay, horse, and manure. Pungent but living. Gitta continued to pound at her stall door as her mistress checked the barn’s ground level before creeping up the ladder to do the same for the loft. Heart fluttering in her chest, she padded across the straw-covered floor and checked behind and between the bales stored there.

  Nothing. No horse thief or intruder. No one to leap out at her and make her scream while she did her best to impale them without setting the barn on fire. When she returned to the first level, Gitta was alternating between smashing her hooves against the wood and tearing at it with her teeth. And Odon, who normally woke to the skitter of a mouse on the roof, was nowhere in sight.

  Zigana gawked at the mare. Gitta, as placid and patient as the day was long, had gone berserk. Frustrated as the stall door held closed despite her efforts, she turned and put her backside to it. Hindquarters flex as she kicked back with both hooves. Wood splintered, and the top hinge tore free of its post.

  “Gitta!”

  The mare halted long enough in her destruction of the stall to meet Zigana’s wide-eyed stare and toss her head. She neighed loudly as if to berate her mistress for keeping her trapped. A second back kick to the door and the top rail snapped off like a brittle fingernail, but the latch held.

  Eyes adjusted to the darkness, Zigana blew out the candle and set the pitchfork aside so she could climb the boards separating Gitta’s stall from the one they used to store tack and feed sacks. She leaned over the top board, bare toes curled on the wood for purchase. “Gitta, love,” she crooned. “What’s wrong?”

  The mare quieted for a moment, sides heaving as she half turned to thrust her nose into Gitta’s chest, nearly knocking her off the stall divider. Hot horse breath gusted over Zigana’s shoulders and neck. Gitta’s eyes rolled white and fiery in the gloom, and Zigana swore she heard the mare’s thoughts.

  Let me out. LET ME OUT!

  Horse and woman stared at each other for long moments before Zigana exhaled a gusty breath of her own. “All right,” she said aloud. “But only if I can ride you out.”

  The mare whuffled her agreement, shifting restlessly from hoof to hoof while her rider retrieved a bridle from a peg and opened the broken stall door to reach her. Gitta willingly lowered her head for the bridle, knocking Zigana’s shoulder with her nose when her human was too slow in adjusting the browband and throat lash.

  “Stop it,” Zigana snapped. “I’ll never get this on if you keep shoving me about.”

  Voreg whinnied a distress call to her dam as Gitta followed her mistress out of the barn. The mare whinnied back, a different sound from the ones she made in the stall. Reassuring instead of enraged.

  Without a trace to climb, Gitta was too tall to mount from the ground, and Zigana led her to the mounting block near the fence line. Seated bareback, with her shift tucked between her legs and her feet filthy from the barn, she flicked the reins and clicked her tongue, letting the horse decide where to go.

  Gitta immediately slipped into a fast trot toward the beach. “I was afraid of that,” Zigana said to herself but didn’t try to turn the mare back. She didn’t think she could anyway. Had she not let the horse out of the stall, Gitta would have torn the barn down to get out. Of that, Zigana had no doubt.

  The Gray stretched dark and endless beyond the shore. The sea no longer retreated from the beach as it did at daylight. Waves, strangely green-tinged, lapped hard at the land, their peaks and valleys no more than shifting shadows as they tumbled forward, heaved back and surged forward again. Gitta crested the dunes and slid down the other side. She trotted across the sand, stopping only until she stood in the water to her fetlocks.

  Zigana sat quiet on her back, listening to both horse and sea. Gitta snorted several times, the sound accompanied by the agitated up and down toss of her head, hard enough to make her bit rings rattle.

  The mare’s actions sent a crawling shudder down Zigana’s back. All that snorting was a warning. Why Gitta had been so desperate to reach the shore, especially when she sensed some danger near them, she’d never know, but unlike the mare, Zigana had no wish to stay here. She tried to coax her to turn around, back to the village, but neither whistles or clicks, heel taps or rein tugs had any effect. Gitta stood her ground as if she’d been transformed into a statue, ears pricked forward as if she heard a sound no human ear could detect.

  Others might judge her as stupid or mad for staying, but Zigana refused to leave her horse and return home on foot. Not only was Gitta valuable horseflesh, she was Zigana’s sister of the heart, her best friend and sometimes confidante. Still, she didn’t have to accept Gitta’s rebellion with good grace. And there were other ways to coax a stubborn horse away from its desire.

  A barefoot walk back to the village in her shift would be cold and uncomfortable. Plus, if someone was out and about in the middle of the night like she was and crossed paths with her, things might become awkward fast. It would certainly stir up gossip—gossip her mother wouldn’t relish in the least.

  Zigana slid off Gitta’s back, splashing into cold seawater to her shins. She froze, caught by the deadness that swallowed her senses. Reminiscent of the unpleasant grave dirt smell that abused her nostrils when she ran out to check the barn, this was less an affront to her nose and more an affront to her soul.

  The waters she read during the day had been polluted with the remnants of the creature’s presence, bitter and harsh and threaded with dark memory. Now, it felt viscous, suffocating. Like clotted blood drained from a corpse. Like her dream of Jolen drowning. The surf was always dangerous at night, cloaking fast-swimming hunters with rapacious appetites under its waves. Tonight though, the surf was oddly empty, not only of prey but of predator as well. Except one. One ancient and purposeful. They that hunted in the black were now hunted by it.

  She patted Gitta’s neck, the flex of powerful equine muscle rippling under her palm. Gitta’s swiveling ears suddenly pinned back, and Zigana jumped away as her head began to snake back and forth. She paused to raise her muzzle skyward, upper lip curled back from her teeth. Long breaths surged in and out of her nostrils as she smelled the air.

  “What is it, Gitta?” Zigana whispered the words, instinct warning her it was best to stay as quiet as possible. Every hair on her nape and arms stood at attention. Somewhere in the surf, the sea spider lurked, silent for now but close. Watching them watch for it.

  A spindly shape suddenly erupted out of the water. It skimmed the top of the waves, racing toward the shore. Darkness hid the details, but Zigana still made out long skeletal arms and legs, a bulbous head and an open mouth filled with spiked teeth. From that open maw, a sound to make her skin shiver on her bones poured forth. The dirge, inhuman, old, starved.

  Gitta answered with an angry trumpet of her own and lunged forward in challenge, nearly yanking a stunned Zigana, who still held the reins, off her feet.

  The creature trilled another call as it closed the distance between them. Zigana shouted the furious mare’s name above the surf’s dull roar and thrust a shoulder into the solid wall of her chest. “Back, Gitta! Back! Please!” She added a signal whistle to her command, shoving against the resistant horse.

  All the skin on her back prickled in warning, and Zigana glanced over her shoulder. Bulging black eyes in a face both fish and grotesquely human, glistened in the scatter of moonlight as the monster spidered ever closer. She sobbed. They would die, devoured as Solyom had been. She could save herself, leave Gitta to her terrible fate, and run for the safety of the dunes. But she stayed, crying and pushing for all she was worth to move the stubborn mare.

  Gitta trumpeted a second time, pawed the water and quickly pivoted. Zigana moved out of t
he way just in time to keep from being stepped on as the mare trotted back toward the safety of the dunes. Zigana raced after her, feet flying. Behind them, an angry trill sounded, thin and sharp. She didn’t look back, not until she and Gitta were safely in the salt grass. Serpents sometimes nested there, but compared to the thing in the water shrieking for their blood, they were harmless.

  Gitta’s stance was no less aggressive now, and she stomped the grass flat with her front hooves, the snake-sway of her neck fast and agitated. Zigana, winded and shaking from residual terror took her eyes off the sea creature long enough to gape at her mare, as angry and challenging as any stallion protecting a herd.

  The creature didn’t venture further out of the surf, but its song rose in intensity, a beseeching call that thrummed along Zigana’s nerves and brought tears to her eyes. Sadness overwhelmed her, and she leaned against Gitta.

  The moment she did, the despair evaporated, and the song was less of a song and more of a discordant wailing, as harsh on the ears as the earlier shrieks of frustrated rage over prey lost. Zigana blinked, stared at Gitta who stared back with a knowing look from one liquid brown eye, and turned once more to the thing pacing back and forth in the surf, still wailing.

  She straightened away from Gitta, and the wail was a song, mournful and lost, stirring up memories from when she learned of her husband’s death to the day she watched Jolen’s wedding carriage roll away from Castle Banat. She was alone. No husband, no sister, no children. Just a wretched widow living in her parents’ house, an unwanted burden.

  Gitta nudged her. The wailing returned and the despairing guilt vanished. Zigana gasped at the abruptness of it all and this time made certain she kept a hand on the mare. Whatever magic the monster used to coax its prey to commit suicide and virtually walk into its mouth, her horse was immune to it, and touching her made Zigana immune as well.

  They waited in the dunes until the creature finally gave up and crawled back toward deeper water, sinking beneath the waves until no hint of its presence remained. Zigana had wanted to run, to heave herself onto Gitta’s back and gallop back to her cottage where she’d crawl into her bed and cower under the blankets until the sun rose. But she couldn’t leave, not while that foul song echoed up and down the beach, bait to lure the unwilling and unwary to their death. She prayed no other villager would suddenly appear in response to the fatal summons, and her prayers were answered.