Dark Tales From Dandelion

1

Diana wakes in a pool of sweat. She is alone. She notices her gown is gone. She is naked. She sits up from the bed and smells something burning. As her eyes adjust to being awake, she sees the traces of a fire all around her room, blackened drapes and smoke covering the ceiling. She coughs. She tries to stand but collapses back onto the bed as she does. She’s been sick for a long time.

“Jekken?!? Ali?!?” She calls. No response. She grows frustrated and panicked. She rolls herself off of the bed and crawls out of the room and into the little hallway that leads to the kitchen. The first door on her right is Ali’s room so she leans her torso in.

“Ali?!?” She yells to the flames that engulf Ali’s bedroom. No answer. The flames have destroyed her tiny bed and her toys. A doll lies on the ground near where the bed was. Diana remembers making the doll with Ali, cutting the cloth and sewing the cotton inside. It burns as she looks. She continues down the hallway. She enters the kitchen, the entire living room to her right leaning down, the floor collapsing. Jekken lies on the kitchen floor with a tiny shape cradled in his left arm, something brown and burning sticking out of his chest.

“JEKKEN!” Diana shrieks and crawls as fast as she is able over to his body. It lies completely still, no rasps of breath, no flicker of the open eyes. Dead. She becomes very numb, then her weak body begins shaking. She touches Ali who also lies motionless in the crook of her father’s arm. Diana’s indrawn breaths from the sobs lead her to choke on the smoke she breathes. She coughs and collapses onto her husband and daughter’s corpses.

Something … vibrates within her. She’s not sure what the vibration is or where it comes from. Words drift on the edge of her consciousness. It makes no real sense to her thinking mind. She doesn’t know why it’s there, but she does know how to use it. She grabs the words like they’re her only hope, then uses them with the vibration she feels inside of her. She feels a bubbling coming up from her stomach into her chest, at first very lightly, then a density takes hold of the bubbles, like lead being pushed through her veins up into her chest. The vessels in her eyes pop, turning the whites completely red. Her torso rises up and she arches her back with the pressure of the density inside of her. She has something like a hiccup—once—twice—three times—then her chest explodes out in a spray of blood and veins that cover her dead daughter and husband. Her heart slides across the floor, disconnected from her body, pumping what blood was left inside of it out onto the soot-covered kitchen floor.

Diana collapses on top of Jekken and Ali, her heart having been literally ripped from her chest by the Lowest Vibration.

Ali wakes up coughing. A large man about eight feet tall stands above her and picks her up. He tries to move her face away from her dead parents, but Ali screams and struggles against his hand enough to see her mother and father lying there on the floor, a smoking wooden beam sticking straight up through both of their chests. The man carries Ali away and she never sees her parents again; they are burned away to ashes with the house that had been filled with so much love before her mother had destroyed it in one of her fits.

2

Leere walked down the dark brown connecting decks that were the Merrilore’s yard. These decks sat propped up above a dark swamp, and below a perpetually dark sky.

Many of the people who built their little huts here above the water did so for the psychotropic effects that the swamp’s gasses had on the brain; the migi folk sought to push their üntas out to the other endos and the gasses helped them to achieve this.

The migi folk watched Him as he walked along, drawing ever closer to the one they all loved and studied under. They would not challenge Him. They knew what He was; and, He supposed, they were all under the impression that Leere only needed questions answered. Even Leere was a story-maker in the eyes of the Merrilore, and until such a time as He actually was the Necrolore, He posed no threat to Her. Such was Her attitude, and such beliefs would be Her downfall.

He had been here before, and the Merrilore had not told him the Drake’s whereabouts or when he’d left. If the story-keeper wouldn’t give Leere the information he needed, then She had lost any value She may have had to Him, and She would become inconvenient very soon. After all, the story-keeper was, in a way, the opposite of the story-taker, the Necrolore. The story-keeper kept the stories in tact, allowing the dreams of story-makers to meander and take different forms, while the Necrolore would take the stories and merge them all into one, recreating the One Dream as He saw fit. The Necrolore could not be while the Merrilore lived. This was just one more step Leere would have to take eventually, so He might as well take it now.

He stepped past the strange red leaves that were strung together, serving as the front door to the dark brown hut. Leere wondered how well the thatched roof up above kept the elements out. The Merrilore seemed to not be as others were, rain probably didn’t matter to Her. Leere stepped over Her dreadlocked hair that lay like the roots of a tree all over the hut. There were holes in the wooden log walls, allowing these locks to go out into the swamp where they rested underneath the water. There were no shelves and there was no furniture, just several glowing wax candles scattered across the ground around the dreadlocks.

“I tink I already told joo, jooshoo mon. I don’t know where he is, and I wouldn’t tell joo if ah did,” said the woman that sat on a large cushion against the back wall of the small hut. The long, thick dreadlocks were all matted together on the top of Her head. Her yellow eyes were completely blank—no pupils. She had brown skin and she wore the same orange flowing robes that all the migi folk wore, though hers were more tattered and faded.

“I am the Necrolore, Merrilore. You and I cannot exist simultaneously,” Leere said, His voice a low, layered rasp. The Merrilore laughed, her smile stretching across her face almost too widely for it to make sense.

“Joo tink you be da Necrolore, child?” She laughed, blank eyes wide with amusement. “It could nevah be joo!”

Leere didn’t think she would find the Low Vibrations very entertaining. It wasn’t hard to feel potent hatred and fear in the presence of the Merrilore, especially when She was laughing in His face. He attuned the Lowest Vibration and slammed into her with it. All of the candles went out and their melted wax spilled onto the wooden floor. She gasped and clutched at her chest.

3

The Merrilore was panicked at first. It hurt so badly. This one had become more powerful than He had any right to be. She threw his thrumming into a dream where it found a home in the heart of a volcano. She could not see him, this one called Leere, but She could feel him, and this had made Him unsteady. She smiled. It still didn’t feel good, her heart, but She would not show fear to this servant of Low. The true adversary has yet to show itself, fool, She thought. Leere tried it again, this time an even more powerful thrumming because he had more hatred to throw into it, she assumed. She was ready for him, and She threw this thrumming into dreams of space. The thrumming froze as it touched the air. It was red in tint with a bit of bruise-like purple in the middle. It was interesting what happened when you got a vibration to slow down enough to become a solid. Leere was becoming more hostile. She needed to act, and fast. Everything in the hut became very silent and still, and for a moment, the large form in the red cloak before Her stifled its anger as confusion became the predominant emotion. The Merrilore probed into Leere with Her powerful ünta, invading His dreams and sharing in His stories.

4

Leere went through different stories in His head, leaning into some more than others, the way that some books really pull you in and others bore the living shit out of you. For a time, Leere thought his name was Booshroodoo and he was a migi that had been with the swamp for thirty years, his dreads growing down just past his knees. The Merrilore told him many years ago that he would grow in his ünta and he would go to an endo close to this one. She had also told him he would inhabit the mind of one who was called Leere ….

Leere was in a field of purple flowers looking at two figures, one dark and oily, another an old man.

He was just arriving at the swamp, his hair completely shaved off.

He was a woman giving birth to a little girl who had an eye in the center of her forehead due to the swamp inhalations her mother had gone through while carrying her in the womb.

He was a father of a small golden-haired child. She was so sweet and he loved her very much. Her mother had been sick for a very long time and he just wanted his little girl to feel better. He was giving her sweets in-between every meal and kept telling himself that he would stop the practice the next day. And as the little golden-haired girl’s belly grew too large for her to be able to walk any longer without assistance, and her teeth rotted out of her skull, and she became very obstinate and demanding, never seeming to be satisfied with anything, he found it harder and harder to stop the destructive spiral. After all, he didn’t want her to be hurt by her mother’s sickness. It already hurt him enough without him dealing with his daughter’s pain as well. Finally, he killed himself.

After going through what felt like thousands of different realities, Leere woke up after killing himself in the dream of the little girl and the father and the candy. The Merrilore was trying to get Leere to grab onto one of these and become it. If that happens, and there is no-one to feed my actual body with food and water, I will die a slow, decaying death, He thought. The woman tried to pull him into another one, and he allowed it, keeping himself a bit distant from it all the while. It was like double vision:

He was a Treespeaker named Ezra speaking to his trees behind the Black Wall in the Forest of Nevers. They were bigger trees than any Leere had ever seen, towering over him so high. He knew these were called Augustus Trees and they were not of this world, but taken from another by his(the Treespeaker’s) people.

He was Leere.

He was the Treespeaker.

He could feel the pull from the Treespeaker’s reality to fully sink into it. This was so powerful and intoxicating. Leere wanted to dive fully into this potential. If the story was interesting enough, he was sure he’d be sucked into one of them eventually; it was taking all of his will to stay out of this peaceful one, what if the Merrilore threw one at him that was peaceful and adventurous? Blissful and dramatic? Like the Jakeereeds … the more interesting someone’s mind movies, the more of them that gather to be let in. To be … let in! Leere—still half awake—pulled himself out of the dream. It was like ripping his own arm off. Screaming as He came back to the hut, He and the Merrilore both jerked. Discreetly, so the Merrilore could not see, Leere pulled the petrified Jakeereed named Stryp out of a fold in his red sleeve and unfroze the creature. He thrummed into the creature to keep it still and content without freezing it with the Low Vibrations again. The moment before the Merrilore assaulted him with dreams again, Leere held the Jakeereed out in front of Him and opened the connection between Himself and the Jakeereed. Leere was a funnel; all of the dreams that the Merrilore was pouring into Leere were going directly into the Jakeereed’s mind. While Leere could see the images and stories that She was trying to get Him to completely go into, He could put them into the back of his mind because Stryp was taking on the brunt of the assault. Leere didn’t think he had much more time before the Jakeereed would no longer be able to handle the dreams, but for now, the little Stryp was smiling and drooling and twitching from the intense pleasure it was experiencing. With a somewhat clear mind and knowing from which reality He had come from truly, Leere used the buildup of hatred He had for this woman with her stupid dreams and attuned the Lowest Vibration, but then the dreams stopped. It caught Leere off guard and he faltered in his thrumming, but pushed it into her nonetheless.

5

The Merrilore knew she was finished. A Jakeereed … who would have known that a story-watcher would be ma doom, she thought. She stopped the ünta-diving she had pushed onto Leere. She had only one option: an ünta-dive for herself, into that one who she was elsewhere, the version of Herself that walked among others that were not migi, in the other endos. Lady Fae, with da blue cloak and da sweet little moths that flutter about, She thought. His thrumming was growing more powerful as the time passed. I have but one chance. I doubt I’ll be able to go there fully while under this strain, but it’s all I have ….

The Merrilore was transparent, not quite fully Lady Fat yet.The moths appeared around Her. She had to work fast. She looked at the shape on the bed, laying on top of the purple and white colored bedding. There she is. The poor child has no idea what she be in for … if I could have told her all those years ago when she came ta me … No time for that jooshoo woman! The book! The form on the bed started laughing as it continued staring at the ceiling. This distracted the Merrilore for a moment, but she quickly regained her composure. This was important.

The Merrilore looked to the table to her left and saw the green bag that lay there open. She needed to get the right book out …. She reached down with invisible arms—She could feel them as if they were there, but Her ünta-diving was weak considering the state of Her dying body back in Her original endo in the migi swamp. This was taking everything She had. She tried to touch the books inside of the bag, but when She did, Her ‘hand’ went right through them. She focused. Come on, jooshoo woman. One. Last. Time. Her finger gained somewhat of an outline as She pushed Her ünta as hard as She could. All thought was consumed with being really here. Three of the moths that hailed Her appearance and disappearance from this endo appeared. The more She was here, the more of them there would be. She considered the moths friends. As She focused Her ünta on the books and actually touching them, the moths gathered around the book covers and started pumping their little legs to assist the Merrilore in Her effort. Thank you, friends, She thought to them, and She focused the outline until it became a hand. The rest of Her body did not appear. The book She needed was on bottom, and She only had enough strength to open it for a moment while She bent back the corner of her desired page ever-so slightly. She tried to pull the book out of the bag with what remained of Her hold to this endo, but only succeeded in knocking it slightly ajar before She was pulled completely back to Her body.

As soon as She re-entered Her body with no eyes and dreadlocked hair that touched the swamp water—hair that had grown for three-thousand years—She was killed by the man claiming to be the Necrolore. And as Her hearts were ripped from Her body, all three, She thought that maybe, just maybe He was, and if so, their only hope was inside of a book that sat slightly ajar next to a bed with purple and white bedding.

6

Leere walked out of the brown hut carrying an exhausted-looking Jakeereed and three hearts on a string. His hood was up, and to onlookers, he knew His face was concealed by shadow, His horns peaking out of the bottom. His feet were covered by the cloak, giving Him the appearance of floating. The migi folk stayed in their huts. Their thatched roofs seemed to have less holes in them than the Merrilore’s, and Leere assumed this was because they did fear the rain unlike their leader. Leere stopped.

The air grew thick and the swamp darkened. His voice entered their minds like dreams of unspeakable death.

“The Merrilore is dead. I have killed Her. I am Leere, as many of you already know. If you want to join me, your skills will be put to good use, and I will not destroy you when I merge all realities into one. If you wish to pursue a different path, that is your right, for now, and I will not harm you. I have plenty of hearts to feed the Lady of The Strings with so I do not require yours, though I am sure Shalonudra would be happy to have more …. This swamp is now mine. All those who do not wish to serve me, GET OUT!” It was like a scream that silenced even their shallow breaths. “Those that do, will remain here with the swamp, ünta-diving as you have been, but for my purposes. I will expect you to gain forms that work on Dandelion and Lavender. If you are not adept at ünta-diving yet, then you will have a two week grace period in which I expect you to learn. Any who choose to follow will bring these forms they’ve taken to the Tower of Hate in one month. Any who fail will be slaughtered. I have … ways of finding people. Either way, if you leave now, you will die when I merge all realities into the One Dream, so we all know what the correct choice is, don’t we?”

There were children peaking out through holes in the tree-trunk siding of the huts, their parents clutching them tight. An old woman sat in a dillapidated chair in one hut with her eyes closed, her daughter nervously rubbing her pruned hands. Clothes hung on lines outside of huts, above the swamp, in-between the huts, clothes from multiple families hanging there. A man stood in the doorway of his hut, grey-and-black dreadlocks down to his abdomen, resting a hand on the orange robe of his wife where her dreadlocks rested on a belly swollen with child. This was an established people, and this was their home. They had things they cared about, things to die for, but also things they didn’t want to die. It seemed there was only one option.

The first to come out and kneel before Leere was the expecting father and his pregnant wife.

“My Lord,” He said. “I am Percy. This is my wife Anabelle. Our child that grows in her belly now will also serve you. His name is to be Jackson.”

Leere nodded His head in acknowledgement.

“My Lord,” Anabelle said, keeping her gaze at where Leere’s feet would be if the red cloak were not obscuring them.

Slowly, the rest of the migi folk came out of their huts on the decks that sat above the swamp. They all knelt before their newfound Lord, who would be the Necrolore once again as he had been before.

7

Fiona lay on the purple and white colored bedding in her room at Lack-A-Daisy’s. What nice coloring. How sweet the air in my lungs. What wonderful friends I have. The thoughts were pleasant, and she was vibrating with an intensity she could not consciously recall ever having done before. It had only faded slightly since she’d pulled Vermilion through, so she was still quite intoxicated with the magnitude of it all, but like any good drug, the effects were slowly wearing off as they must, allowing her to come back down to Dandelion and exist with the other creatures here. It had been magnificent to feel the power and pull Vermilion through like that.

The thrumming lamps were turned down low, giving the red walls of the room an orange glow. She stared up at the ceiling, feeling the look of wonder that etched itself upon her face.

She heard voices.

“—I don’t know where he could be. Maybe he had other things to do, I’m not his jailer after all, he’s only my manservant,” Quint’s voice said out in the hallway. “No, I doubt he has run away to join the Cri Caravan of Oddities and Somesuch … Well if you want to join the caravan, then by Leere, go and do it, Pip, no-one is stopping you … yes I know, I’d miss you too. I’m sorry, it’s just that it feels a bit like drowning, all of this pilgrim shit that seems to be piling on top of itself ….”

Fiona was starting to get a little agitated at hearing only Quint’s half of a conversation. The agitation was probably a good thing—she knew she needed to move. Her state of paralyzing bliss had been wonderful, but paralyzing bliss was unsustainable if you wanted to play a participating roll in the dance of life. She went ahead and fueled the flame of irritation, calling on memories of grievances she had: Quint keeping secrets from her, Carter leaving her out of the loop as well and going insane trying to ‘fix’ her; Leslie and Quint going to that awful peep show in the Cleverly Named Hallway. If only someone could stand next to me in the morning, recite these grievances to me, then leave the room, I would never have any trouble getting out of bed, she thought, then laughed at the idea of someone doing just that. She guessed that Quint would actually jump at the opportunity to do this for her.

A shadow moved across the ceiling. What the—. Fiona moved her head to look for the source of the shadow. Three white moths were drifting out of the room. Must have been one of those playing in the lamp, she thought, but it tickled something else in the back of her mind. Moths … why are moths significant to me? Were they … it was gone, and she wrote it off as part of her strangely enlightening experience at the door of the Endynas City wall with Vermilion.

Everything seemed significant to her right now, and she could hardly trust herself with such things while the effects of her experience still held sway.

She grabbed her green canvas bag by its strap that hung down from the bedside table, slung it over her shoulder, then closed the flap, walked out of the room and into the hallway. There stood Quint next to Pip, Quint talking then pausing as Pip mentally responded to him. Lack-A-Daisy’s was a very large Inn. The ceilings were high, the hallways and doorways wide. There were several cushions with little ash trays next to them lining walls in common rooms and bedrooms. This place was very sesnickie friendly and Fiona felt a kinship to the owner. If I had a place, this is how I’d do it too, she thought. Fiona loved Pip and hated to think of places where sesnickie weren’t shown this kind of hospitality. From what she’d learned, there were a lot of people in the world that treated sesnickie as if they were mindless beasts, only good for their abilities—whether they consented to using the abilities for the person who had cheapened them in this way or not.

Fiona walked up to her two friends, who looked up at her as she walked up. Quint smiled, and Pip sent her the mind smile.

“So Putnam isn’t here yet?” Fiona asked.

“Heard us, eh? No, no he is not. I’m not sure what could be keeping him. I hope he hasn’t been here already and left—that would be very unlike Putnam, though. He is usually very punctual; beats me to everything. I get ready early just to attempt to beat him to a place and he’s there and settled as if that’s his address,” Quint responded. Fiona gave him a pleasant smile in spite of her continued annoyance with him.

“Where’s Vermilion?” she said.

“Downstairs in the common room, having a meal.”

“How’s he doing?”

Pip sent an image of the Drake chewing his food happily.

“I mean how is he feeling?” Fiona said.

“He’s alright, but maybe you should go and talk to him if you’re worried. Are you concerned about Carter at all or … ” Quint trailed off as Fiona gave him a flat look.

“Is Carter ok?” she asked.

“He is! He’s in the common room as well. I’ll help him up to your—”

“Quint, I need to tell you something, alright?”

“Illusions. What now?”

“It’s fine, Quint.” He was so much more infuriating to her now after learning she’d been kept in the dark all this time, not allowed to know about her own sickness. “I just … I haven’t been with Carter since before his mantra scramble. I know now that he was trying to help me but … well … things … changed, ok? Like, I didn’t want them to, it’s just … ” she turned her face away for a moment, putting a finger in her mouth, then nervously spilled out the rest. “It’s not the same, Quint so if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer he slept with you.”

Quint did something uncharacteristic then and pulled her into a tight hug. Her eyes grew wide in astonishment, and her arms stayed folded for a moment before she relaxed them, then hesitantly embraced him with her own hug.

“There is nothing to be sorry about, Fiona. Protecting a heart from breaking by breaking your own is probably one of the sorriest lies we tell in this world. We say it’s noble and we do our duty, thinking we are serving everyone around us by silently suffering. There is nothing wrong with telling someone the truth and in so doing, staying true to ourselves. If he ever comes out of this, I’m sure it will hurt, but I’m also sure he will understand,” Quint said.

“Thank you, Quint. I’m gonna go downstairs. Excuse me, Pip,” Fiona said. Pip pushed himself to one wall so Fiona could get through. The hallway was plenty big enough for Fiona to pass Pip comfortably, but Pip was being a hallway hog with all of this extra space, letting their tail and long torso curve from one wall to the next. “Glutton,” Fiona said to Pip through a smile. Pip sent an image of a fat sesnickie filling up the whole hallway.

She walked down the wide staircase, all dark brown and shining with lacquer, into a large common room with red area carpets, two fireplaces, several tables and a bar. She spotted Carter sitting near Vermilion at a square table and walked down to join them. They ate pepper bread with big slabs of bole meat, Carter drinking water and Vermilion nursing a whiskey.

As Fiona sat she waved over the barman, setting her bag down on the table. The top came open and her two books threatened to fall out onto the floor along with a few other possessions she had in the bag. She pushed them back in and closed the flap, buckling the straps.

“How are you?” she said to Vermilion, smiling. He swallowed a mouthful of meat and smiled up at her. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his mouth.

“Oh I’m fine, fine. Thank you for pulling me through back there. That was some impressive shit, getting me through one of the Woman in White’s Veils. I’m a little blown away by it honestly. Are you alright?” Vermilion asked, taking a drink of the whiskey.

“Yeah, I’m ok. Still not all the way back to reality, but enough to walk around at least. It was insane, man.”

“I bet. What’d you have to thrumm?”

“It was a combination, but mostly it was forgiveness. Forgiveness is really powerful. It just came to me, but once it did, it was obvious why it had. Forgiveness brings things irrevocably into the present, so whatever it was that the Woman in White thought you had done wrong, never even happened in that moment. It was almost like traveling through time.” The barman came up to her then and she ordered a whiskey as well, along with the slab of bole meat and pepper bread.

“Hungry?” asked the Drake.

“Yes, very.”

“So what do you mean ‘it just came to you?’ ”

“It’s hard to explain and it hasn’t happened before, or at least as far as I can remember it hasn’t. The mantrum just—”

“The mantrum is?”

“A kind of shape of the thing you’re trying to do in words. It’s the name of the vibration. Anyway, the mantrum sort of glided down at the edges of my consciousness and then—” she raised her hands to the sides of her face in an exasperated way, “—woosh. It was like I knew exactly what I was doing while also knowing nothing,” Fiona said.

“I can understand that,” Vermilion said, picking up his glass.

“You can?”

“Yeah, it’s like the words to describe it kind of cheapen it, which is the same reason that you don’t exactly know what happened or how you did it.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s the same way with shooting. It’s a place with no thought, you just know, but you also don’t know at all.”

“I’ve felt similar things before, like what you describe, but this was a little different. It was like I remembered the things. A ‘tip of the tongue’ type thing, far back in memory.”

“Well whatever it was, it pulled us through,” he said, patting Prudance who cooed in response. “We thank you.”

They sat in silence for a time after that. Fiona looked at the Drake and Prudance. Something felt off, but she couldn’t quite place what it was. Probably my lost time in the land of forgiveness, she thought. Her food came and she thanked the man, digging in immediately. The bole meat was delicious. She grabbed the butter in the middle of the table and spread a glob of it over her pepper bread, putting so much in her mouth at one time that she was having trouble swallowing it. Vermilion looked at her in shock. She washed down the bites with whiskey until it was gone, then waved over the barman again for a glass of water which she managed to order through hand motions and a noise that she made through the mouthful.

“Tho, ah wath thinkin’,” she paused to chew and swallow, “Maybe you could show me how to make those bullets tonight before bed,” Fiona said.

“Ah. Well I don’t see why not, if you think you’re ready,” Vermilion said, pulling his seven-shooter out along with several of the bullets that hadn’t had wax melted down around them yet. Then he pulled a case out of the inside of his jacket. He opened the case, and inside were rocks, chunks of wood, pieces of metal and several other odds and ends. “The bullets are made from anything you can shape that will hold form. As long as you have powder, you can make bullets. This is the Rocco Way. In a pinch, you can use wood—” he lifted up a chunk of wood, “but you might clog up your gun, and it’s hard on the chambers when you use the melting function to get your wax off of the bullet. If you’re using wooden bullets, you are going to want to make them from a very dense wood and hand load them rather than putting them on your belt in the wax casings. Wooden bullets work best close range, they tend to veer if you get too far away from the target. You’ll have to learn how to whittle the wood down exactly to get it smooth. Rocks can be used but you’ll have to melt them down and reshape them with this mold.” He held up a metal pan and a metal mold that had a draining grill in-between seven bullet-shaped depressions. “You melt the metal or rock down in the pan, then, using your tongs, you pour the liquid metal or rock over the mold. Metal is preferable to rock, but you use what you have. You’d be surprised how much metal you will begin to see everywhere on Dandelion when you’re paying attention for the sake of making bullets. I’m going to buy as much ammunition as I can while I’m in the Endynas City and that should last me a while, but a true Rocco is always harvesting makings for bullets.”

“Interesting,” Fiona said, looking at all of his different tools and bullet makings. “Have you ever run out and had to use wood?”

“Two times. One time it fucked me and clogged my chambers, the other time I killed a Rakshasa on a hunt. It’s pretty unreliable.”

Fiona’s eyes grew wide. “But you killed one of those things with it?” she said, astounded. “An … angel?”

Carter babbled something nonsensical and they both looked at him for a moment before Vermilion went on.

“Yep. Hit it right here,” he tapped his forehead with the white bullet that dangled from his neck on a chain.

“What’s that?” Fiona asked.

“This?” He held out the bullet.

“Yeah. Sesnickie bullet. But why around your neck?”

“First kill.”

“Really? And you wear it?”

“All Roccos do. To remind us of the pain that the first kill caused us. It helps us not to disconnect, to keep hunting without becoming savages. Supposed to anyway,” Vermilion said, letting the bullet and chain fall to his chest with a clink.

“Does it help you?” Fiona asked.

Vermilion paused and took a small swig from the whiskey glass. “I think it helps me remember where I come from. We hunt Rakshasas, use their bodies to make tools and weapons, and in so doing, we ensure that we never become slaves again. We are liberated monetarily by the profits we make from harvesting them, and we are empowered by our ability to continuously fight them off of Dandelion.” The Drake’s eyes were distant and morose. He looked at Fiona and gave her a wilted smile.

“Except for Prudance,” Fiona said reverently. It was not a question. She could see it on his face. He nodded.

They sat in silence for a time. Fiona looked at her babbling husband who did not feel like a husband at all. I will make you better. I promise. I don’t care that it’s different. She thought of maybe wearing something like that around her own neck, to remind her that she had a promise to fulfill. A promise to a friend. That’s all.

“Thanks for the lesson, Vermilion. Do you want to know anything about … Ken-Phae? Or the vibrations? I’ve read a lot of books. I could tell you about them.” She smiled playfully.

He gave her a small grin back and drained the rest of his whiskey. “No, that’s alright. I think I’ll turn in actually. We’ll need to get moving early tomorrow,” Vermilion said.

“Well we have to wait for Putnam before we can keep going. We might lose him otherwise,” Fiona said.

“Who?”

“Putnam. You know … our friend we are meeting here. I thought I told you about him.”

“Yeah, right. Sorry, long day. Putnam,” Vermilion said, standing up and pushing his chair in. “See you in the morning.”

Fiona watched as the big man got up and walked to the steps with his daughter strapped to his chest. Fiona felt pride in her ability to make that strap for him. Something was strange about him, but she couldn’t exactly blame him. He’d had a strange couple of days.

Wooden bullets, she thought. Kind of amazing.

She looked at Carter who was babbling and every so often sticking some food in his mouth and chewing it up. She was relieved she didn’t feel the need to carry that burden anymore. She would help when needed, but she was no longer tied to him in the same way. She’d clearly communicated to Quint what was going on—mostly—and she’d gotten those ties to not just loosen their grip on her, but fall away completely. All ties but the one I’m choosing to hold onto, to make him better. And thank the Illusions for that, she thought. She looked down at the grain in the wooden table and thought of the bullets. She got up and ran for the steps. The Drake was so graceful on his feet when he needed to be, but sometimes he just moved slow and clumsily; presently Vermilion was favoring the latter form of movement.

“Vermilion!” Fiona said halfway up the steps. Vermilion had just reached the top and turned around to look down at her as she made her way to him two steps at a time.

She kissed him. It wasn’t very romantic, and it wasn’t perfectly coordinated—in fact he had recoiled a bit nervously when she started the advance. She was on her tip-toes and pulling him down to her by his coat to aid her in the effort of getting their faces together. She was grace and he was awkward, she petite and he big. She thought it was beautiful. She liked him. Pulling back, she allowed them both to return to their respective heights and smiled up at him, then at Prudance. Vermilion looked floored. She was enjoying it.

“Fiona? I—”

“Goodnight, Vermilion.”

She turned around and went to Carter who may have been babbling more than usual, and escorted him to Quint’s room upstairs.

The next morning, Fiona woke before the others and gathered some of her Endynas Worth. The Worth here was measured in dandys and bits just like it was on the rest of Dandelion, but here the dandys had a picture of a woman completely whited out so you couldn’t see any features, just an outline and pure white; she seemed to wear a tattered dress and be walking away from you as you looked at the bill or coin. Any other Worth was not accepted here. Luckily, Quint had plenty of this as he was the inventor of the Clever, which people all over Dandelion commissioned him to build. Downstairs, she grabbed a cup of squim juice and headed out the door onto the brick street outside. Her right ankle where Pip had bitten her was hurting today, more than usual and she walked with a slight limp.

There were people riding dirfweeds—which she looked after longingly—carts pulled by dirfweeds, many people walking down the street. She saw Cri people, The toad people of West Arak-sharak, the hare people of East Arak-Sharak, all three of these wearing mostly brown tweed or corduroy suits. There were a few Deva-tar-tas but not many, as Fiona knew they preferred areas with easy access to large bodies of water. All of the streets were of brick. In the distance she could see what looked like several giant tree houses, but there were several buildings built into the branches, like little business districts contained within the branches. There were brick houses with vines growing up the sides, some of these sprouting little red flowers; barber shops, candy shops, little book shops that sold squim juice, blacksmith’s and … the gunsmith.

She walked in the shop to find a very large, very mustached man cleaning a pistol. Grease covered his apron and forehead. He wore an apron and a white shirt tucked into brown woolen pants.

“Hello, er, I mean—with you,” Fiona said, making the proper hand gesture that went with the greeting. The man behind the counter held a bullet in his mouth, but eyed her speculatively through circle-rimmed glasses.

“Wiff oo,” he said through the bullet, looking back down to his work.

“I’m looking for a seven-shooter. You got any?” Fiona asked. The man laughed. He took the bullet out of his mouth and put down the pieces he was cleaning.

“An’ just what err a little woman like yerrself be looking ferr a seven-shooter about?” He said. His accent wasn’t as thick as some of the others they’d come across in the valley, but he did have quite enough of it in his speech to tell Fiona he’d lived here most of his life. She tried to smile through the anger that bubbled up.

“I am training in—“ she stopped herself, remembering her promise to Vermilion, “—I have enough Worth. I’d like to buy a gun, please.”

“Training in ‘I ‘ave enough Werrth, eh? Do ye be ‘avin’ yerr papers ferr that then?” He asked, raising thick eyebrows.

“For?”

“Ferr yerr guns, o’ course! No papers, no guns!” He said, slamming his fist on the glass counter between them. “Now if ye don’ ‘ave em, then yerr wastin’ my time, so leave.”

Fiona thrummed into the man, subtly at first—a probing, soothing mantrum: Is-kron-epsitashti—then more intensely as she saw he was not able to resist. I’m sorry, she thought to the man.

She thrummed terror and anguish. Vo-somu-ikestama-vo-ketst. The mantrums just came to her as she needed them as if the vibrations were giving their true names to her. The gunsmith’s face contorted with fear and pain. Whatever this man had experienced that had been associated with those feelings would be playing like movies on repeat through his mind; the emotions were too powerful to deny thoughts that went along with them.

And now … Fall-maa-sto-ketst. Intense loneliness. The man began to weep openly, eyes wide with terror. Wondering what the man felt with this particular vibration running through him, Fiona thought of her own memory that fed the feeling. That’s the one. Laying in bed next to a husk.

Waiting until he looked directly at her for help, for release, for death, Fiona let this vibration slowly dissolve as she attuned the final vibration.

Fa-Ren-bishdu. Forgiveness. Of the Highest. The man visibly relaxed and a look of wonder played upon his face.

“I am here to buy a Drake seven-shooter. I will need all of your bullets that are compatible. I will also be needing any sesnickie tooth bullets you currently have in stock.

“Yes, miss,” the gunsmith said as he began running exuberantly back and forth behind the counter, gathering up the bullets and putting them all in a brown paper bag.

“Oh, I forgot to mention, I’ll be needing a holster that is compatible with my thrumming belt … Oh! And I’ll need enough gunpowder to last me through a few months of crafting bullets if I run out for some reason. Do you have any molds for making bullets, or for making wax casings for the bullets? I’ll need to attach them to my belt somehow as well,” she said loudly so he could hear her above his clattering and rushing. He nodded his head frantically in acknowledgement, and continued getting everything together.

After a time, he came up to her and reached his hand out. “The belt?” he said.

“Oh!” she said, and removed her belt, taking the sheath off. He came back a few tiks later with her belt, a new holster attached to the side that would be on her right hip, several molds, wax, bags of bullets, a bag of gunpowder, and a brand new seven-shooter. She saw several small metal hooked spikes sticking through the belt downward, then curving up into a point toward the ceiling. “What are these spikes for?” she asked.

“Those arr ferr holdin’ yerr wax loops all ‘round yerr belt—the way them Drakes carry bullets. I figured that’s what ye be wantin’, but if yerr wantin’ sommin’ otherr, I can—”

“No, it’s perfect. How much?” she asked. He looked at her incredulously. “How much?”

“I werr under the impression that I werr bein’—well—erm, I wanted you to ‘ave ‘em miss. As a sign o’ me good faith in ye bein’ a faithful customerr.”

He wants to give them to me. Terror followed by forgiveness. Interesting.

“No! I’d feel much more comfortable paying you, gunsmith,” she said, smiling at him and blinking her eyes in a condescending, impatient way. He looked at her wearily then counted up, mouthing numbers as he did.

“Erm … six-hundred fifty, and,” he counted on his fingers and continued to mouth soundlessly, “fifty six bits.” He wiped some sweat from his mustache and then his forehead, really just spreading it around more than wiping it off. She cringed a bit inside, then got her Worth out. She counted out exact change and pushed it toward him, gathering all of the things, putting most in her bag. As she was moving things around in her bag to fit it all, she saw the Leere phase mask and made a mental note to throw it away—it gave her the creeps—but then she thought of something and looked up, hands still in her bag.

“You know how Roccos carry the, uh,” she pulled one hand out of the bag and grabbed at the air in front of her neck, “bullet on a chain.”

“Erm, you mean the first kill, miss?”

“Yes. Could you make one for me?” He turned around, nodding his head. “Oh, um … how much will that be now? With the ‘first kill?’”

“Free, miss! O’ course!”

“No, we’ve been through this—”

“Right miss, so we ‘ave. Ten Endynas dandys, then.”

She was fishing for the ten dandys in her bag when she noticed a strange dent in the pages of one of her books. She did not remember folding down any pages in either of the books. She always marked her books with leather cords. She put the ten dandys on the counter and waited for the man to turn around and start working on the chain before pulling out the book that had the bent down pages: A Beginner’s Guide to the Sesnickie by Peter H. Christencrombie, the book she’d grabbed off of the shelf at random to have something to read. She opened the book to the page that was marked and read:

—The sesnickie fang has many functions, the most well-known of these being the ability to cut through the Inner Vibrations. In the hands of a skilled blade master, a sesnickie blade can stop them from affecting him/her by slicing through the vibrations in the air before they can make contact. This applies to any type of vibrations, whether they be considered Low or High, those applied by a vibrationalist, or those invested into an inanimate object with a thrumming. If, say, a vibrationalist were to place a thrumming onto an object like a thrumming lamp, making it so the light would be charged and would turn on when desired, then the sesnickie tooth would be able to cancel the thrumming if it were to pierce the part of the lamp that was invested. In thrumming lamps, this is usually the cord that leads to the lamp through the wall. Considering the fact that this cord could be cut by a knife, it might serve us better to consider something like a shield. If a shield had a specific thrumming applied to its front to reinforce its durability, the sesnickie fang would need to stab into the surface of the shield to cancel the thrumming.

While the fang will cancel a thrumming completely in inanimate objects, it will only cancel a vibrationalist’s ability to thrumm for the amount of time the fang is inside the thrummer and a short period of time after. The fang also has dulling abilities to repel—

Fiona closed the book. She had not marked this page, and she had no real use for it, aside from it reminding her of her aching ankle where Pip had sunk their teeth into her. It was interesting, sure, but she usually took something from any book she read; this passage was nothing special. This book has had a bit of a rough ride. The pages probably got bent back in one of the Veils. Most likely the third—fuck that Veil, she thought as she packed the book back into her bag. Fiona realized she’d disappeared from the shop while she’d been reading. It was a nice ability when she wanted to escape into a book, but it was an inconvenience when she was sucked in while she needed to be doing other things. The gunsmith looked at her stupidly with what looked like some concern in his eyebrows. He held up the chain with one sesnickie tooth bullet hanging from it.

She smiled and took the chain, putting her newly modified belt back on, and the revolver in its holster on her right hip.

“So I melt the wax down in this mold and put the bullets in while the wax is liquid, but starting to dry out?” she asked the gunsmith. He nodded his head. She reached in her bag and got out ten more dandys to give the man. Then she looked into his vacant, blissed-out eyes. She pulled out another thirty dandys on top of the ten she already held and handed it to the man. He took the money hesitantly. “For the trouble,” she said, then walked out of the gunsmith’s shop. She needed some oil for her sword so she went into the blacksmith’s shop next door and bought some, then headed back to the Inn.

When she arrived back at the Inn, she ordered biscuits and eggs and set all of her new toys in front of her on one of the square tables, putting the necklace around her neck and tucking it into her shirt—she did not want to shout out to the world that she was learning the Rocco Way, regardless of the gun. She was sure other people carried the seven-shooters, just not all were trained by a Rocco. After the man brought her breakfast, she pulled a candle from her bag and lit it with a match; then she set about making enough wax-loop-bullet-casings to fill up her belt, and several backups. Fiona had been feeling an overwhelming excitement since she had used the forgiveness to pull Vermilion through the Veil. She had kissed him and still wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it did factor into her excitement surely. The new gear she’d bought, the new ability to split herself four ways and continue the vibrations, all four at the same time, the ability to use the vibrations to get people to do things for her; it was certainly a lot to take in. I’ll never have to lift a finger again, she thought, chuckling aloud.

Fiona gathered her things and made her way up the stairs toward her room. She looked up as she reached the top to find Vermilion staring back at her with a pack on his back and Prudance strapped to his chest.

“Vermilion, hi. Where are you go—” but she was cut off by a needle being stabbed into her neck just behind the carotid artery. Her mouth foamed white and her eggs spilled over her chest. She collapsed down the steps and the last thing she felt was Vermilion’s big arm lifting her up and tossing her over his shoulder.