Human for a Day (9781101552391) (10 page)

“No one came,” she said simply.

He shook his head. “No one knew I was there and no one could have made it even if they had. The shelling was too fierce.”

The sound of it filled the room and he pressed his palms against his ears to block it out, but it was coming from inside, not outside, and so he dropped his hands again and saw her do the same. She'd heard it, she'd known it. There was no need to describe it.

“They came for Artie,” she said after a moment. “The medics came for him, but it was too late. It had been too late right from the beginning. A shell took both his legs and he bled to death in my arms almost at once. But not before he made me promise to go on living. I held him and I promised and they came for him and carried him away.”

She slumped, her energy spent. “I almost left the war right then,” she said. “I could've; no one would've been the wiser, but I saw his body back to camp and went back out. I did my duty. We both did, though for the life of me now I can't imagine why. The next day I learned they'd signed the armistice. Years later than they should've. Bastards.” She shook her head. “Matter of hours and he would've been safe.” She swiped irritably at her eyes.

“I walked out after that,” she said. “I found a house and I broke in. I traded my uniform for a dress and a kerchief and I went back to camp as Margaret Townsend to claim my brother's body. They gave it to me easily enough; I looked so much like Mark. But they couldn't find Mark. They looked but they never found him. They thought he must have died somewhere out there.” She gave a sad smile. “At least they never said I deserted. There were some that did desert, of course,” she acknowledged. “But less than you might think.”

“I know.”

“Most of them just died,” she continued as if she hadn't heard him. “Unseen in the mud, you know?”His throat ached as he nodded.

“I brought him home and I buried him and I turned my back on all of it. I never spoke of it, but I never forgot it, either. I married a fellow that had been too young to go, just like I had been. We had four children. The first boy was old enough to go when the call came around again but he wasn't right enough in the head for them to take him, bless him, but he was a good lad for all that. The others were too young. They had babies of their own and those babies've had more; just like they should. Just like Artie should have.” She gestured at the collection of photographs and drawings on the wall above her bed. “None of them chose the life we chose. None of them had to, so maybe it was worth it after all. I don't know. But I lived, just like I promised him I would, and I never forgot him.”

She peered up at him suddenly as if truly seeing him for the first time. “That bastard Death is coming for me now, whatever me and Artie might want, isn't it?” she asked.

He nodded.

“How long have I got?”

He glanced out the window although he already knew the answer. “A few hours, maybe less.”

She gave him a shrewd look. “Is that why you're here? To make me accept that blasted candle?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

He looked into her eyes, and past the trenches and the hiss of gas, past the fear and the resolve, he saw two grinning soldiers in brown woolen uniforms.

“I've come to bring you back to Artie.”

“But Artie never went away,” she said suspiciously. “I can feel him.” She pressed her hand against her chest. “In here.”

“I know.”

 

They left her room together, an old woman in a pair of flowered pajamas and a young man in a worn brown uniform, boots leaving no more than shallow dents upon the carpet. The old men and women in the wheelchairs watched them go. Some smiled. Some frowned. Most continued to look inward to their own memories as they passed. They left the building unremarked but, as they stepped into the street, the cold wind caught them and she shivered.

“Is it far?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Good, ‘cause I'm too old and it's too cold to walk for long.”

He shrugged out of his tunic, passed it over, and watched her fasten the brass buttons up her chest. He felt cold, then numb; looking down, he saw the beginnings of a dark red stain begin to trickle down the ruins of his shirt. Scraps of moldering wool began to unravel around his body and he felt the press of leather at his ribs and the bite of wire around his arm.

“Hurry,” Margaret urged him, her white hair turning grey as his turned brown. “Before the bastard gets us both.”

They ran.

 

The setting sun chased them all the way. She only stumbled once as her slippers caught on a jagged bit of pavement and he pulled his own boots off immediately. She stuffed her feet into them, staring down at him as he bent to wrap the linen around her calves.

“You'll soon be naked, boy,” she noted, flicking the gathering snowflakes from her face.

Pulling off his helmet, he set it on her head. “I'll soon be bones,” he answered weakly. As he rose, he swayed, and she threw her arm around his waist and pulled him upright. They broke into a shambling run. He felt his legs grow cold. He saw the candle burning brightly as the setting sun burned in the twilight and he stumbled as he felt the mud reach up and catch his legs. But this time someone came. A pair of strong arms pulled him forward and he lent his failing strength to them. The memory of the mud released him as Margaret Townsend pulled him onward.

 

They reached the cemetery gates just as the sun caressed the treetops. They passed the tombstones and markers; as her clothing stiffened as his softened; her arms grew stronger as his weakened. When they reached the monument, he sagged and she laid him down before it, staring upwards at the sky. She cradled him against her chest as she had cradled Arthur and he felt his journal press against his ribs, safe against the ravages of time.

“Are you Death?” he whispered.

She pushed her helmet back and grinned at him the cocksure grin of youth. “No,” she answered. “I'm Private Mark Townsend, missing in action at the battle of Ors in 1918. Who are you?”

He smiled back at her. “I'm Private William Falkner, missing in action at the battle of Passchendaele in 1917,” he answered. His eyelids fluttered and he fought to keep them open. “And found again,” he finished dreamily. “In 2011.”

“Do you see the candle burning?” she asked him.

“I do.”

“Can you hear the bugle sound the ending of the day?”

He nodded.

“And do you see them, the lines of the fallen, our fallen, moving off into the distance?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Follow them.”

 

She left him lying before the monument and turned, stepping up onto the sentry box. The final memory they shared was of a team of diggers lifting the bones of a young soldier one by one, out of the earth. Scraps of cloth and rusted bits of wire followed and the remains of a leather journal and two brass buttons. She took the memory from him and released him to the candle flame.

 

Physical sensations left her slowly, so slowly that she had time to remark upon their passing. As the sun dipped below the horizon, she felt the serenity of silence and the strength of stone; watched Private William Falkner passed beyond the trees and felt her brother's arm drape companionably across her shoulders.

Erik Scott de Bie

 

 

 

 

T
he time for words had ended—the time for swords begun.

The Master and the Rival studied one another. Both stood at the height of ability, and both knew of the other's skill. They were men of war—men of passion and anger thinly veiled in honor. Their deeds inspired songs and their swords carved legends.

They met in this place, beneath the blossoming cherry trees by the river, to enact the final test—to see which proved stronger.

Darkness traced one of the blades, and the wind split apart and whistled around the edge. The Master had slain uncounted men on such nights as this, and his sword had drunk of every felled foe. This was the Bloodsword, and it delighted in death.

The light of the setting sun caressed the other sword, and its reflection illumined the calm face of its wielder. The Rival had killed men as well, but he had taken no joy in it. His steel was called Soulsword, and it wept at what was needful.

Time meant little to the warriors. The battle lasted hours in the space of a single moment.

They met, blades flashing. The dark sword struck relentlessly and the shining blade parried with a song of warfare. Steel rang in the night, each sword fighting to drown the other in its scream. They danced as the world crawled around them.

It ended as soon as it began. The Master fell to his knees.

“Why can I not beat you?” Blood trickled from his mouth. “I am the stronger.” His murderous sword fell from his hand, into the river.

Cherry blossoms drifted down into the swift water, and as they touched the fallen blade, they split apart and dissolved into nothing. The sword drifted among a sea of slain beauty.

 

The Bloodsword languished for a time, lost and forgotten where it caught among the rushes near the sea. The blade would take no rust, and the water parted around it. Curious fish touched the sword and died, floating away in two pieces.

The Bloodsword hungered.

In autumn, leaves turned red as blood floated atop the water—the sword cut these as well. The winter snows fell, and boiled away atop the churning river.

Its Master had drawn it but not sated it, and it could not sleep.

The sword did not know its Master's name, but names meant nothing to the sword—only simple truths. It knew the Master and the Rival: it remembered the one slain and the other victorious.

The Bloodsword hungered still.

 

In time, a fisherman's son found the sword in the river. Its handle bore no recognizable carvings, and the steel seemed impossibly pure.

The boy took the blade, and its darkness filled him as he touched it. The sword saw what was in his heart—lust, anger, inadequacy—and it promised vengeance for those things.

Afterward, finding the Rival took one day and night.

With the boy's body, the Bloodsword carved a swath of death and fire. No man could stand against it. The two of them destroyed village after village, slew challenger after challenger. Every wound the fisherman's son suffered spurred him to greater urgency. He bore a single word on his lips, set there by the sword: “Rival.”

The boy and the sword found him after a day and night of carnage. He was a shadow of a man standing calmly against a field of fire and brandishing the Soulsword. The spirit of his blade spoke to the Bloodsword with familiar sadness.

The Bloodsword hungrily drove the boy to the Rival. The boy bled from dozens of wounds and fear filled his heart, but the sword compelled him.

They fought, and, inevitably, the boy died. In desperation, the Bloodsword claimed the boy's life.

It was not enough to assuage the terrible hunger.

The sword fell once again, discarded among the burning detritus of a dead city. It raged against its fate, to lie forsaken amongst the ashes.

The sword hungered still, but now it knew what was needed. In one day, it had found and faced the Rival. It could do the same again, if it had one day for its vengeance.

One day.

 

The skeleton of a city stood monument to the sword that could not be sated. None sought the lonely ruin by the sea. Tales of dark spirits frightened away travelers, who said that voices whispered amongst the stones, weaving tales of rage and death. They guarded a deadly treasure untouched by time.

Entombed, the Bloodsword hungered.

In time, a man braved the haunted crypts and defeated the spirits that roamed there. The sword sensed him but could not know him, for he did not claim it. Instead, he knelt before the fallen blade and whispered prayers to old gods, speaking of peace and honor. The darkness lifted from that place, leaving only the hungry sword.

The sword called to him in all the ways it could, promising power and skill if he would only wield it against the Rival.

The man took the blade then, but not as the sword wished. Instead, he bore it as a servant does a great treasure. He carried the sword to a shrine, where he cleaned it, washed it in blessed water, and prayed over its dark, folded steel. All the while, the sword raged against him—named his cowardice and threatened him—but the man would not be swayed. He set the sword upon an altar, and there it remained.

The sword hungered still.

One day.

 

The swords clashed again and again.

The power of the Bloodsword corrupted more men like the boy: monks and farmers, soldiers and nobles. Each took the sword for his own reasons, and each fed its undying hunger. None of them could sate the Bloodsword.

It wanted one man—the man who had defeated it when he should not have.

Again and again, the Soulsword came against the Bloodsword. The Rival faced them each time, and each time, the sword's chosen wielder failed. None could match the Rival. And every time, the Rival reclaimed the sword and returned it to its place in the shrine.

The sword hungered with a painful longing.

One day, it would find the right wielder.

One day.

 

In time, men came to pray over the sword. They filled the shrine, kneeling before the altar, and communed with what men cannot see. None of them touched the sword that could not sleep. It demanded—it begged—it
raged
—to no avail.