Chapter One of my fantasy novella-in-progress, currently titled The Bone Queen and the Trickster's Daughter. (first draft)

30 May 08: Switched it for the second draft version of the chapter. Still not done, but at least it's a little more polished. Now a novel-under-editing, called The Bone Queen.

CHAPTER ONE

Shadows sliced through the rust-red sand as the small caravan rode into Gold Town.

Oh, was Beth’s first thought as she reined her brown mare to a halt. Well, was her second, I don’t think they were expecting this. The hushed murmur of voices from the front of the caravan confirmed her guess.

Running a hand over the mare’s thick mane, as much to still the creature’s nerves as her own, Beth let her gaze wander over the town. Wooden buildings lined the main street, some painted with signs advertising a general store or stables or bar -- all faded, the paint peeling and casting distorted shadows in the sinking sunlight, strung with cobwebs and crumbling in places. Somewhere a gate creaked on a rusted hinge. The faint breeze licked a scrap of paper through the street. An old wanted poster, Beth saw when she jumped down from the mare to grab it. She didn’t recognise the man’s name.

“Well,” said a voice from behind her, “and here I was expecting a nice hot bath drawn by a busty barman’s daughter.”

“Me too,” Beth murmured, looking to the two men still conversing at the caravan’s front. “I expect we’ll be staying here, though, for the shelter. Maybe there’s some food left.”

“True.” A low thud sounded as Jeckel jumped down from his horse. “Can’t say I like the feel of the place.” He raked thick brown fingers through his cropped dark hair and stepped up to Beth’s side. “Neither do the horses.”

“No.” The beasts worried the dust with their hoofs and showed the whites of their eyes. A couple, younger judging by the un-scarred hides, looked poised to bolt. Their riders attended to them with comforting touches and words and a palmful of grain. Beth offered the same to her mare, though it seemed calmer than most. Really ought to name you at some point, now it looks like we’re going to be together for a while, she thought idly. Her lucky hand at poker a few weeks back was proving a greater boon than she’d expected.

A wordless shout from ahead drew her attention. When all were paying attention, one of the leaders pitched his voice loud enough to carry along the caravan’s length. “We’re gonna be staying here tonight. Bring everything into the street for shelter.” His name hovered just beyond Beth’s memory, even though they were only four days out of Effecie. “Beth, Jeckel, make sure we don’t get any surprises.”

“Right,” Beth murmured, and waved her hand to signal affirmative to the leaders. The wagons began to roll into the main street, horse-pulled, while the traders looked on anxiously. Nothing jumped out to devour them or slice open their throats like cheese. When it looked like that wouldn’t change, Beth and Jeckel swung back onto their horses and rode out.

It was a small town: just the two parallel lines of stores and homes with the main street running between. The backs of the buildings showed the same signs of decay as their fronts, and there were no signs of life. Only remnants -- a white shirt caught on a nail fluttering in the breeze, a pile of empty tins behind one house, the half rotten carcass of a buffalo with most of the meat cut cleanly from it -- attested to a recent human presence.

“Animals should have eaten that,” Jeckel said, gesturing to the bones-and-meat with his pistol.

“I don’t think animals want to come here.” Of its own volition Beth’s mare took two steps back and tugged a little on the reins. “Let’s keep moving.”

Half a minute’s walk later they found the dried-up stream where, presumably, the residents had sifted for gold and earnt their town its name. How many Sand Country towns bore the same name, used the same logic in choosing it? Beth didn’t know. “It was a gold-rich stream,” she said, eyeing two grains that winked at her in the orange light. “That’s not why all the people left.”

“Do you really want to know what happened here?”

The breeze was already starting to cool, sending a shiver through Beth’s lean body. “Yes. No.”

The final slice of sun dropped below the horizon as they returned to the main street. The only street, Beth thought, and yet a sign calling it ‘Main’ hung at each end. Fading, like the rest of the town.

She and Jeckel found a fire already going, using stoops and shelves for fuel. The old shops were dead now, part of the desert’s backdrop. The traders heated their pots of soup with it.

The two leaders stood to one side. “There’s a whole lot of nothing out there,” Beth said, jumping down from her mare in front of them. “Nothing where there should be something.”

One of the men nodded. The other spat a gob of saliva onto the street. The moisture soaked through the thin coating of sand, revealing the stone of the street beneath. “We’re moving out at first light,” he said. “’til then, kindly keep your fears to yourself.”

“Right.” The thinly veiled insult rankled her, but she held her tongue. She was afraid, a little.

Tension hung around the fire, thin like the smoke rising up from it but noticeably present. The traders spoke in low voices, laughing seldom and weakly. After heating up their pots of soup, Beth and Jeckel hung back, sipping the hot liquid, their attention on their surroundings. Nothing stirred; even the breeze had finally died down. We’d be better out in the open, Beth thought. Would sleep easier for sure. The fire’s shifting light cast shadows and patterns across the buildings. Even the unimaginative among the traders would sleep uneasily, turning the shadows into wraiths.

#

Beth took first watch. She sat away from the fire, so that the glare wouldn’t interfere too much with her night vision and the crackling wood wouldn’t prevent her from hearing much quieter noises, and passed the time with her long-barrelled revolvers. The habitual motions of stripping one weapon, laying out all the parts across a thick cloth, cleaning each and re-assembling it helped to calm her nerves; the feel of the other revolver against her side and her foot-long knife on her back certainly added to a veneer of security.

Still nothing stirred.

That was worse than something. On a normal night she heard countless little things: the rustle of small creatures through the sand, the call of larger things, sometimes the scuffle of an encounter between predator and prey. Even the whistle of a breeze through the buildings would have been better than the utter silence beyond the fire’s crackle and the occasional snore from a trader.

When Jeckel rose from his sleeping roll to take over, she gave him only a single shake of her head.

To her surprise, she dropped into sleep within moments of crawling into her own roll.

#

Pre-dawn woke her, a faint light creeping across the sky and smearing out the stars. Shivering in the lingering chill, she crawled from her roll and went to the town’s old well to attempt ablutions. The thin trickle of water at least took off the top-most layer of sand and grime from her sun-browned skin. She tugged her comb through the long, dark hair that badly needed a cut and plaited it again. For once she wanted a real haircut in a nice salon, rather than the crude work she made of it with her knife.

“Somehow I doubt that’s happening any time soon,” she muttered, re-dressing. The faint, flat timbre of her voice was the only noise around.

She shared a quick breakfast of porridge with Jeckel, before returning to the well to fill her canteens. Neither of them said a thing.

The caravan moved out as the curve of the sun peeked above the horizon, and as the horses and wagons left the ruins of Gold Town there was a distinct air of relief. Allowing herself a small smile, Beth patted her mare’s neck. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but it was definitely something. Maybe the town truly was deserted. The thought felt immediately false.

Endless, empty Sand Country stretched away from them. Plants grew patchily in the rusty earth -- cacti, mostly, and a few scraggly bushes. With the familiar tattoo of hoofs and wheels upon the hard ground, Beth almost forgot the earlier absence of animal life. Only as the day worn on, as sweat trickled between her shoulder blades, drenched the cotton vest she wore under her thin, un-buttoned shirt, did she begin to wonder if that unnerving nothingness hadn’t ended with the sunrise. Few animals stirred during the heat of the day, but she usually saw a lizard basking, flies around the horses, sometimes a bird of prey soaring above.

“There’s nothing,” Jeckel said in a low voice, riding up alongside her. His weather-beaten face was scrunched up in a frown. “No animals. No noise beyond us. Nothing.”

Beth only had time to nod before a cry went up ahead. One hand on a revolver, she rode to the front of the caravan; Jeckel stayed back, to keep an eye on the rear.

“There,” said the leader, the one who’d spat the night before. “I think it’s a man.”

Following the line of his outstretched arm, she saw a hunched-over shadow sitting alongside the track only a hundred or so yards ahead. “Yes, I think.” Her hand didn’t stray from her weapon. Something about the shadow felt wrong -- the shape of it, more angular and more fluid than a man ought to be. “Stay here.” She drew both revolvers. “I’ll ride ahead.”

Using only her legs to guide the mare, she approached the shadow at a walk. Sweat beaded on her face. She swiped it away with the back of her hand and gripped her revolvers tighter, glad of the strips of material tied around her palms to keep them from slipping.

“Stranger!” she called out at two-dozen yards’ distance. “Do you have a name or a purpose?”

It was the traditional greeting in the Sand Country, a way of sounding out another’s intent without broadcasting one’s own.

The shadow shifted, giving her the impression of rags and sun-darkened skin. Her conviction that the thing was not human firmed. “Stranger!” she called again.

It shifted again, suddenly, and with a lurch of panic she realised it was moving towards her -- faster than she could comprehend, moving in a way that wasn’t so much a walk or run as a pushing, sliding through the air. She aimed and fired without thinking, holding onto the mare with her knees and hoping it wouldn’t throw her. With a high-pitched whinny it danced backwards, away from the thing, but it didn’t rear or run.

Beth shot again, and again, emptying her cylinders, but still the thing slide-pushed towards her. Swearing, she holstered the revolvers and drew her knife, and jumped down to the earth with a low thud. Already she felt more stable, more secure with her feet on the ground, but she was painfully aware of her reduced speed as the thing rapidly approached.

This had better work, she thought grimly, sidestepping and thrusting the blade.

It hit the thing with a wail, a high-pitched noise that sliced through the air and sent shudders through Beth’s body. She held fast, forcing the knife into the thing with all her strength. A powerful wave of smell came over her -- the reek of rotting things -- and she bit back the urge to vomit.

Suddenly the noise and the smell stopped. The thing fell away from her knife, dissolving to the ground, and she staggered forward, momentarily unbalanced. Her boots crunched over black squares.

She was still standing in the circle of perfect squares the thing had collapsed into when Jeckel dismounted beside her. “Well, that was peculiar.” His rough, cigar-ruined voice edged her back to something approaching normality, but even as she stepped back from the black squares she felt a little dazed. “Interesting weapon you’ve got there,” Jeckel remarked, toeing the squares with his boot.

Looking down, she saw white lines glowing along the knife’s length. She hurriedly sheathed it. “Kills some things most weapons won’t,” she said flatly.

Jeckel picked up a handful of the squares and sniffed them. “Smells like rotting,” he said, turning his palm over. The faint breeze returned, briefly, and took them away, scattering them along the track. The movement of air along Beth’s skin and sweat-drenched clothes brought a soft sigh to her lips.

“There’s no more danger here,” she said. “We should go back.”

No danger right here, she amended mentally as they rode back towards the caravan leaders. But there’s still plenty out there, somewhere. There was still no sign of animal life.
She brushed away the leaders’ questions with lies of, “It was nothing really,” and, “Just a little thing, gone now and no more of its kind around.” Eventually the leaders accepted her response and rode on, but she saw them pause for a moment by the squares.

#

That night she sat with her back closer to the fire than usual, facing the empty plain. Still nothing stirred.

“You killed that thing,” Jeckel murmured, an hour into his watch. “Go to sleep now. If I see something unnatural, I’ll wake you.”

Nodding, dragging herself from her reverie, she murmured a ‘goodnight’ and curled up in her sleeping roll.

That wasn’t what I was looking for, she thought.

Tags: the bone queen
Mood: creative