A Drift of Quills: Fiction Shots #16 (Luseya’s Dreams)

A Drift of Quills are back with another three-fer! One picture, three different tales of adventure. Do you love these as much as we do?

This time our picture prompt is… a birdhouse. Not just any birdhouse, though! Look at those awesome dragons guarding the roof. Aren’t they fantastic? I don’t know who took this wonderful picture or where it’s from—an online translator gave me this: “Headline @ Shinxin Garden / Stone Heart Garden.” If you know the place or the photographer, please let me know!

Fiction Shots #16

Flash #1: Luseya’s Dreams

By Robin Lythgoe

The shadow creature was free again. If the fleeting shapes seen in the corners of her eyes weren’t enough to convince her, Luseya felt the thing in every laborious breath she drew. A weight had settled on her chest. It held her down every morning when she ought to have risen to greet the day. It burdened her with crushing exhaustion and its equally draining partner, sleeplessness—and its siblings were many: Apathy. Self-doubt. A spreading sea of melancholy. Everything took forever to do, and everything was wrong.

Over the years, the demon had grown cunning. It didn’t bolt free of its prison, it inched, and its insidious darkness crept over Luseya like a disease.

And it was getting stronger. Harder to resist.

Fear that it would infect others had long ago prompted her to leave the village where her family had lived for five generations. She’d grown up there, dreamed, fallen in love, married, had a daughter—and lost her husband there.

Traded her husband for this nightmare.

Oh, it had not been for lack of fighting. One didn’t just curtsy and step aside to let wickedness have its way. Luseya didn’t, anyway. She couldn’t say the same of others, but they were dead now. What had they expected? That wickedness actually cared about their welfare? Poor, blind fools. They hadn’t seen the danger. A pretty face and a treacherous charm hid a talented mage. Pat, pat, stab.

Luseya saw. Luseya fought back. It had cost her her husband.

You take from me, I take from you, the wicked mage taunted.

The loss cemented Luseya’s determination to keep the woman from hurting anyone else. To stop her giving with one hand while the other slipped a knife between her victim’s ribs. Taking, always taking. Turning good things to horrors, and neighbor against neighbor.

Wickedness had a name once. Now she was simply The Faceless—a descriptor in a cautionary tale, and the tale itself had changed. Facts became exaggerated or transformed altogether. Luseya herself had helped.

No one will remember your name, she’d promised as the mage breathed her last. One final blow against the vanquished enemy. The battle had nearly killed Luseya. It took years to recover, but she had the portal through which The Faceless had sent her husband.

The Faceless had her final vengeance, though. She took the secret of the portal, and left the shadow demon.

Tucked away in an overgrown hedgerow, the portal looked like a large, ordinary birdhouse. The intricate carvings adorning it kept it from ever looking common. Like the only other portal Luseya had seen, it was made of a strange, pure white wood. It had taken myriad spells to cloak it in weatherworn gray, and she still didn’t know if any of the symbols announced its purpose to the learned. Age had done nothing to diminish the wingless dragons accentuating the rooflines, the decorative curlicues over the miniature porch, or the detailed shingles and railings on the impossibly small stairs.

The thing sat low in a locust tree. Debris surrounded it, half buried by overgrowth intended to look like a refuse pile. Discarded shutters, chairs, water trough, and even a door had succumbed to weather and age. Not the portal. Despite the grayness, it looked pristine.

Aching and worn to a thread, Luseya righted a rickety chair. Sat. Rewove the spells to draw the demon back and chain it to the birdhouse. She’d done it scores of times.

Perhaps that habit was her failing.

The demon came, oh yes. It knocked her down, screamed up and down her body, ravished her mind, then left her. It would return, she knew, but for the longest time she only stared up at the leafy canopy, weeping. The tears dried, replaced by the thought that she could surrender. Let it kill her. Let others worry about it when it found them; and it would.

Hunger saved her. How silly. How disheartening. She couldn’t even win that battle. It took an age to make her way to her little house. Cold soup satisfied the physical ache. Curling into a ball, she surrendered to despair. She dreamed. Or she had a fever. The demon shredded both dreams and memories. Luseya fought back, painstakingly reconstructing the life she’d once known, or perhaps it was just the one she wished she’d had. She spoke to her husband and her daughter again. Just this last time…

“Mama,” a voice said, insistent tone matching the shaking of her shoulder.

Luseya pried her eyes open. “Beyatreza? How are you here?” She lived so far away!

Her daughter’s smile didn’t erase the worry perched on her brow. “You called me. I came.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I—I couldn’t.”

“You came in my dreams.”

“That takes effort. Purpose.” The demon had taken that.

“Nevertheless, here I am. Tell me what’s happened.” Beyatreza helped her mother sit up. Helped her drink, then move to a chair, and eat a good meal.

Luseya wept as she told the story. Her weakness shamed her.

“That is the demon.” Beyatreza stroked her mother’s hair back from her face, then braided it neatly. “Listen. You taught me well, and I am ready now. We can banish this creature forever. Together.”

“I cannot risk you.”

“That is no longer your decision. You’ve fought hard, but now there are two of us.”

“It is strong.” Doubt gnawed at her.

“So are we.”

“I am not.”

Beyatreza lowered her brows. “You’re going to let it win?”

So easy to say yes…. She took a breath against the ache in her chest. “No.”

In the hedgerow, at the portal, Beyatreza took her mother’s hands. At a nod, Luseya began the spell. Voice trembling. Confidence in tatters. Defeat underlying every word.

Until her daughter added her voice, her strength, her magic.
The demon came shrieking, all fangs and talons and rage. It was not enough. Their magic, their will, tore it apart.

It tore apart the spells concealing the portal. The white wood gleamed moon bright. Then a light grew within it, watery and filled with scores of muted, multicolored fireflies. The light poured out the windows and the door, swelling to fill the space beneath the locust tree.

A shape formed, then stepped out of the light. He stopped. Looked at his hands, then at the women. “Luseya?”

“Papa?” Beyatreza’s voice quavered.

“You’re here.” Luseya stared. She should say something more. Do something. How long had she wished for this moment?

A smile tugged at his mouth. “You called me. I came.”

She stumbled forward one step, then another. “Oh, my love…”

Flash #2: Songbird

P.S. BROADDUS

Author of The Unseen Chronicles
Parker’s website

PATRICIA REDING

Author of the Oathtaker Series
Patricia’s website