FSF, January-February 2010 Read online

  The enchanted forest Dad drove them to for spring break was near the Superstition Mountains, one of Navin's least favorite locations on Earth. Right now the Ridiculous Trees were in full bloom. Navin sneezed blue pollen onto his shirt. It stained.

  They were almost to their reserved campsite when Spike cried, “Stop the car!”

  Dad pulled over, the way he always did for Spike. Spike grabbed the big net and the miniharpoon and leapt out of the car. She ran into the trees beside the road, letting loose a hunting cry. She knew so many Navin couldn't keep them straight. Some attracted attention, and others served to terrify. She sometimes used them on him, but he didn't always react correctly, which to Spike was just further evidence that he'd always be a feckless, useless magician, and she would always be a mighty hunter.

  The air in the car was stuffy and smelled of the decaying baits Spike had packed. Navin rolled down his window and rested his arm on the sill. One of the lesser gnat fairies flew in, settled on his skin, and plunged its proboscis into the red center of one of Spike's targets. Maybe he could get really sick right away, and be sent home or to the hospital, so he could skip the rest of the trip.

  Unfortunately, he didn't have an extreme reaction to the bite—just the normal swollen, itchy bump, this time more decorative than usual thanks to Spike's artwork. The gnat hummed a tinkling song after it had finished, summoning a bunch of other gnat-fairies. Not all of them restricted themselves to the targets. Apparently his undecorated arm was just as tasty, and they liked his face, too. He crossed his eyes to watch three on his nose. Courteously, they didn't bite him in the eyes or mouth.

  “Navin, what is wrong with you?” asked his mother, spraying clouds of odoriferous repellent over him and stinging his eyes. “It's not like we can use those for anything. Stop wasting blood.”

  The gnats were undaunted by the repellent. One on his face gave him a kiss before she flew off. He touched the small warm spot on his cheek as Mom got out the fly swatter and swatted away most of the others. “Roll up your window, for heaven's sake,” said Mom.

  Navin sighed and obeyed. He was covered with small welts. He peeked into the neck of his shirt and saw a dragonfly pixie nestled against his chest, its little red mouth pressed to his skin. The mild narcotic it secreted as it sucked made the itching from the gnat bites fade, and started him hallucinating. He let his head roll back and watched sunlight twist and dance in sparkling patterns on the ceiling.

  Spike whooped, wrenched open the back door, and collapsed onto her seat, the net plump with three stinking, bloody howlet corpses. “Here,” she said, dropping them in Navin's lap. “Make yourself useful.” She wiped her bloody hands on his shirt.

  “Good start,” said Dad as he turned the key in the ignition. The car trolls under the hood growled in anticipation of a feast.

  Spike whistled her triumph song.

  The bodies were still warm, one of them twitching. Navin turned around in his seat and rescued the rendering kit from the snarl of luggage in the back. He fished the first howlet out of the net, opened its belly with a surgical knife, and dumped the internal organs into the collapsible gut bucket. Spike watched to make sure he cleaned out everything that would putrefy fast. He packed salt into the corpse and then worked the other two. Afterward he sat sticky and stinking until they reached the campsite and he could rinse off under the pump.

  The campground was full of hunters; it was the first day of the season, and everybody needed food for the household appliances and power trolls. Spike screamed with joy when she discovered that her boyfriend had set up a tent on the site next to theirs. Spike's boyfriend was almost as great a hunter as she was, and he was just as happy to see her as she was to see him. They immediately set up a challenge on who would kill the most game by the following evening.

  Spike and Dad geared up in orange vests and loaded themselves with weapons and carry sacks, then rushed off into the forest.

  “Catch us some trout for supper,” Mom said. She handed Navin a fishing pole and some bait. She had already skinned the howlets, fed a few cuts to the car trolls, and iced all the other useful parts.

  Navin headed for the lake. He settled on a rock and opened his shirt to let out the torpid dragonfly pixie, her abdomen now swollen with his blood. “Hey, handsome,” she whispered, clinging to his finger. “Wanna incubate my eggs?”

  “Um, no,” he said.

  “Too late! I already laid them!” Her wings buzzed into a frenzy of flight; she took off across the lake. A young dragon broke the surface of the water and snapped her up.

  Navin headed home half an hour later with five fish on a string and something the size of a squirrel attached to the small of his back. It had crept into his shirt while he was drowsing, but its bite woke him up, a ring of fire like a brand pressing into him. It had four legs braced against his back, and their claws pierced his skin, anchoring it where it was. When he tried to pull it off, it hurt as though he was trying to tear chunks out of his flesh. He stopped pulling at it, and the pain subsided until all he felt was its weight and the sleek short fur that covered it. He figured Mom would handle it.

  A campfire burned in the stone circle at their campsite. Dad and Spike were back, roasting were-rabbit haunches over the flames; three gutted outlaws hung from their seasoning tree, toes tagged with turquoise family hunting permits.

  “I got the big one,” Spike said.

  Navin spitted the fish and held them over the fire.

  “He tried to catch me! Jumped down from a tree on top of me, the fool. Had a wallet full of cash, too.” She pulled it out to show them. Four red toe-tags fell out.

  “But that's—” Navin said.

  Spike threw the tags into the fire. “Whoops,” she said, and smiled.

  “I caught something, too,” Navin said, when he could stop thinking about the fact that Spike had killed a hunter, not an outlaw.

  “Yeah, some tiny fish. Nice job, nimnull,” said Spike.

  “Something else,” Navin said. “I don't know what. It's on my back.”

  “Navin,” said his mother, exasperated. She jerked his shirt up and gasped.

  “Uh oh,” said Spike.

  “Criminy!” Dad said.

  “Why didn't you say something sooner?” Mom said. Her voice squeaked.

  “Can we cut it off?” Spike asked.

  “It's too late. It's fused with his spine. We'll have to let nature take its course.”

  “What is it?” Navin asked.

  “Something rare,” Mom said. She sounded subdued. “I'll tell you more tomorrow. For now, enjoy your dinner. Better sleep on your stomach.” She gave him not only all the fish he had caught, but two of the were-rabbit haunches, and she kissed his cheek before she bundled him into his tent under three layers of netting.

  “Come on, Mom. What is that thing on Navin?” he heard Spike ask Mom while he was drifting off to sleep.

  “A cullathoat. A parasite. It comes alive once it colonizes another lifeform. Unless Navin can separate from it using his own power, he doesn't have long before it takes him over.” She sounded sad. Would she miss him? He thought maybe she would. He and his mother shared many tasks; she always appreciated a job well done. His father had never had any use for him.

  Finally something had bit him he couldn't walk away from, he thought, and tested his mental temperature. In a way it seemed he'd been waiting for this all his life. If he wouldn't hunt, he would be hunted. This time by something bigger than his finger.

  Spike would probably miss using him for target practice.

  He raised himself on his elbows, got a glowstick and lit the end with the faintest touch of magic, then rummaged through his pack until he found his protection circle kit. This was a practice kit that had no practical applications, and the parasite was already inside any circle Navin could cast. Still, he pulled out the diagram of the strongest circle in the set and laid it on the floor.

  “What does it eat?” Spike asked.

  “Children,”
Mom muttered. “If he had stronger magic, he might have a chance to detach it, but I don't have high hopes. He doesn't seem to have a fight-back gene. Look at the way he lets things bite him all the time. He should have fought it when it first bit him. I think it might be too late now.”

  “Poor kid. He's always been kind of puny,” said Dad.

  “If the other thing wins, can we use it as bait?” Spike asked. “Or do we hunt it?”

  “Sometimes, Spike, you're a horrible child,” said Mom.

  “Wait till tomorrow,” Dad said.

  Navin had learned his anti-fighting strategy early, from bouts with Spike. When he collapsed into a helpless state, it bored and frustrated her, whereas fighting back got him much worse punishments, and he never could win. The bites of other things interested him. Once something bit him with steroid side effects and he'd bulked up for a week, which had been fun. Another time he'd gained extra sight and could see emotions. Some of the bites had narcotic effects; he enjoyed altered states.

  He had hatched a number of subcutaneous eggs, and some of the babies were affectionate before they flew or ran or slithered off. Others wanted to eat their way out of him, and he wasn't as sanguine about that. In those cases, he told Mom, and she took him to the Parasite Removal Clinic.

  Now he tried to marshal his magical power, which he used primarily for lock charms to keep Spike out of his room (most of them snapped open when she focused on them) and invisible charms to keep anyone from noticing him when he wanted to sneak out of the house or get a head start. He built power between his hands, a faint blue ball of force, spinning as he added everything he could muster to it. “Evict,” he said to it, and pressed it against the warm, sleek-furred lump on his back.

  The thing squalled, but didn't release its hold on his back. Its feet scrabbled, its claws digging deeper into his flesh.

  He muffled his own cries in his pillow as the pain intensified. They both lay quiet, the thing unmoving, Navin waiting until the pain dropped to a bearable level.

  He mustered power a second time. The ball was smaller and dimmer this time, though he worked longer to call it. This time when he lifted it to his lips, he whispered, “Sleep it.”

  When he pressed it to the animal, the animal squirmed once—pain!—and lay still. It relaxed under his hand, and its almost unheard breathing slowed. Navin waited, then tried to pull the animal off him. The claws came loose of his flesh, but the mouth remained fixed. Fused with his spine, his mother had said. Could he slice it off? No, or Mom would have said. He tugged until the pain was so intense all his muscles locked and wouldn't allow him to move.

  He called once more for magic. Only flickers came. He closed his eyes and reached into the deepest well of himself, asking for everything he had, and finally the glow strengthened. When he had gathered every shred of power he could find, he whispered, “Change us into something nicer.” He pressed the power against the sleeping parasite, now part of him. The animal did not struggle against this enchantment; he felt it spread from the animal into himself, and it felt comforting and good.

  Navin slept for a while, then woke to strange pressures in his head, hands, legs, spine. In the dim light of the fairy repellent, he saw that his skin had changed: it was faintly furred, striped with shadows. His upper teeth pressed against his lower lip in a new way. He touched a tooth, and his finger came away bloody—he hadn't felt the cut! And what was with his fingers? Instead of fingernails, he had hard points on the ends of his fingers. He clenched his fingers and claws sprang from sheaths.

  His body below the waist had changed completely. He had haunches now, strange braidings of muscles under heavier fur, and his feet had elongated, heels high off the ground, toes longer, clawed now. His knees bent wrong. He took a couple steps, and aside from a tendency to fall forward, he managed.

  Everything smelled loudly. He was way aware of the seasoning carcasses of Spike's and Dad's kills, the blood-soaked ground below them, the many scavengers thronged there to take advantage of the feast; his mother and father smelled of campfire smoke, roasted meat, and sex in their double sleeping bag in the next tent. Navin smelled the camping gear, the different woods still smoldering under a layer of ash in the campfire, the scents of trees, night-blooming carnivorous flowers, the massed and active life in the forest all around him, one thing preying on another.

  He heard rustles in the underbrush, the beat of many different sizes of wings, the squeaks and cries of mating or hunting, and he almost knew what each creature was just by the sound.

  I know, whispered something inside him. I know which ones are good to eat. The best one is—

  That smell from Spike's tent. The sour sister scent, a blend of other creatures’ blood, her own sweat, the girl, her youth, and her boyfriend, curled with her, also tasty, tender, sour and sweet. His mouth watered thinking about their muscles and blood and organs.

  He blinked, trying to steer his thoughts away. He glanced around his tent, found his pack, with its old games. It was hard to work the zippers with his new claws, but he taught himself. Should he leave the games behind? No. He could always toss them later. He snuck out of the tent, much more quietly than he'd been able to manage before, and ghosted through the camp, taking two of Spike's best knives, some smoked meat his mother had prepared (though it smelled rancid and greasy to him now), and one of his dad's firestarters. Would he need clothes? His fur wasn't very long, but he wasn't cold. It was spring. He didn't know who he was becoming or where he'd be by winter. He found a microfleece blanket and shoved it into his pack.

  He told himself to run before anyone else woke up, but he couldn't resist parting the tentflap and peering in at Spike and her boyfriend. They were both speckled with the musty-scented blood of their kills, and Spike's fingernails were caked with it. Spike and the boy smelled almost too old to Navin's new senses, not as succulent and inviting as younger kids would smell, yet better than anything else in camp. He stared down at his sister's hands that had hurt him so often, and thought how incapacitated she would be if he ate just one of them. He imagined the little bones crunching between his molars, and saliva dripped from his mouth.

  Spike stirred. Her eyes opened. She stared straight at him.

  She was unarmed, tangled with her boyfriend, naked, and she smelled tastier than anything else within a mile. He took an involuntary step toward her.

  Her hand darted out, came up with a gun. Of course, she wouldn't sleep without a weapon near, especially while she was on a hunt. “Navin?” she said. Her idiot boyfriend finally woke at the word and turned to stare up at him.

  Navin licked his lips—his new tongue was longer than the old one, and seemed able to work around his new teeth without cutting itself—and stared at his sister. Bite her, let her shoot him, what?

  Not let her shoot him. He'd sat still for too much of that.

  His stomach growled. She'd shoot him if he went for her. Anyway, he didn't want to be what she was, a hunter. Did he?

  Claws, sharp teeth, drooling at the thought of fresh meat. He didn't really have much choice. He turned away from Spike and dropped the tent flap, and then, before she could rise, he ran into the forest, his feet quiet, his breathing smooth. He could see well enough to avoid branches, traps, the snares of those who hunted with their own body parts and those who had come here from the city. He climbed a loquat tree, displacing a hive of hornet fairies and three nests of meat-eating crows, and made a place for himself as high up as there were branches to hold him.

  From here he could see stars. Even if we can't eat Spike, he thought, we'll be able to find enough to eat, won't we?

  One of his hands darted out, returned with a small naked baby tree gnome. Before he knew what had happened, it was in his mouth, and oh, it tasted delicious!

  Sure, thought his new other half. We can find what we need. We can find what we want, but you have to let us get it. An image of Spike, looking plump and tender and helpless, flashed through his mind. What happened to my niceness spell? Navin w
ondered.

  Without that curst spell you hobbled us with, we could have had the fingers off that tricksy sister before she woke, and the toes off her boyfriend, too. That spell worries us.

  His hand snatched two more baby tree gnomes from the nearby nest. So small and rounded, soft-skinned and squirmy. They smelled like ambrosia.

  Babies, he thought. Babies had never hurt him.

  They squalled until he bit their heads off.

  * * * *

  "I don't understand it, sir, the computers have only been down for an hour."

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  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  Novelet: WRITERS OF THE FUTURE

  by Charles Oberndorf

  Charles Oberndorf is the author of three novels: Sheltered Lives, Testing, and Foragers, and he is working on two more. He teaches at the University School in Cleveland, where he has taught seventh graders for more than twenty-five years. His new story, like his last ("Another Life” in our Oct./Nov. 2009 issue), is set in the far future, but unlike the last one, this tale would get a PG-13 rating if it were a movie.

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  Once there had been a thousand worlds. Ten million remaining flesh and blood souls: all this humanity divided amongst spheres, wheels, and cylinders, all these worlds orbiting the path Mars once followed.

  And there were the Minds, that silver-yellow halo circling the sun where Earth once flew its steady course. The Minds had converted the rest of the solar system to their own purposes, and nothing else remained but possibility. One day we might overwhelm the Minds and limit their omnipresence. One day we might build starships and seek other worlds where humanity might start over.

  Now a hundred worlds orbit the path Mars once followed, at most one million remaining flesh and blood souls. We live the Old Age of mankind. Today's entropic sadness is to be newborn, or ten, or twenty, to be full of youth and to not feel old at all.

  —Magnus Esner

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  I. A Writer's Beginning