Cursed Read online

  “I can’t release you from it, Erren,” she said. Her voice carried to the hunter easily, despite the howling winds. “I am a mortal, living thing, bound to this world as you are, and I can’t raise a hand against you. Nor can I take the curse from you.”

  “Then why do you keep coming to see me?” Erren rubbed viciously at the hot tears on her cheeks, suddenly furious. The forest spirit opened her mouth to speak, so she spoke over her. “You’ve told me so many times that I didn’t understand what I was doing when I killed your brother, that I didn’t realise the full impact of my actions. Well, I don’t think you did, either, when you made this curse. When you forced me to make those pipes out of your brother’s bones, were you really thinking of this?” Erren gestured at the blood-stained snow.

  But when she turned back to the woman, she had vanished. The small patch of snow where her feet had been was a puddle of water. Erren glared at it, and pulled her pack back on her shoulders. It was time to move again.

  * * *

  The years passed, and Erren became reckless. When she had time to eat, she requested the strongest alcohol from her hosts, and drank as much as she could before the urge to begin playing the pipes overwhelmed her. She shouted warnings to her audience as they gathered – though they were ignored – and when fights happened after she played, she ran into the midst of them for as long as she could, hoping that a stray axe would strike her down. But nothing did. Blades, arrows, bolts and, eventually, bullets, all found ways around her, as though she existed in a cocoon of safety.

  On one evening, late in the latest of a thousand summers, she played her pipes under a full moon in an exquisite palatial garden. The place was filled with night-blooming flowers, and people crushed in from all sides to see her, their faces lit with pastel light from the colourful paper lanterns strewn in all corners. From what she had gathered, the palace belonged to a young prince and his most favoured cousins, who sat in gilded chairs just opposite her.

  “Play on then!” called the young prince, half-laughing to the cousin on his right. “I’ve been told your music is the greatest this world has ever seen.”

  The reedy sound of the pipe music floated out across the garden, and the grass turned black, so thick with shadows it was like looking into a void. One by one, figures emerged, their faces turned up to the starlight, and each one of them was a young woman. They danced together for a while, their grey limbs moving gracefully across the dark. Erren found herself moved by it, by their carefully spaced steps, and the way they reached for each other’s hands. Eventually, when the crowd had grown restless, they all turned as one to look at the young prince with their sightless eyes.

  One at the front spoke for them. “We all came to this palace as servants. We all met our ends in the secret rooms here. The prince speaks sweetly, and promises much, but he has the appetites of a beast.”

  There was an uproar. Erren stood, shoving her pipes away into her pack even as a number of armed guards swarmed from the inner palace gates. The prince had evidently invited the common people of his lands to the gardens, and it was these people who had given up their daughters to him, again and again. From the speed of their outrage, Erren thought they must have suspected the prince of his crimes for many years, but had never quite had the courage to confront him with it. Her dancing ghosts had finally given them the push they needed.

  On her way out, taking the quieter paths back down towards the city, she saw the prince again. His clothes were torn and his nose was bloody. He had been separated from his guards somehow.

  “You! Bard. Take me down through the city, smuggle me out. I will pay you well for it, woman.”

  She looked at him. From the way he crouched he was clearly frightened, yet the look he gave her was direct, confident. As far as he was concerned, there was no way she would disobey him.

  “You value no life but your own,” she told him. “You saw something beautiful, and you had to spoil it. And now justice has caught up with you.” She raised her voice to call to the crowds still up in the gardens. “He’s down here! He’s alone! Come and get him.”

  As she walked away down through the quiet paths to the city, she looked back once to see the pastel lights of the paper lanterns, and the horned woman was there, an eerie beacon in the dark. She was watching Erren, and for the strangest moment she wanted to raise a hand to the wood-spirit – to acknowledge her in some way. But instead Erren turned her back and walked on into the night.

  * * *

  For a long time, Erren walked and walked and found no people at all. There were long stretches of grasslands, endless purple hills, deep forests where mushrooms grew as tall as trees; all of it passed her by without her hearing another human voice. For the very first time in her long life, she began to wonder if she might be lost, but the sense of following a path never left her, and so she kept moving, her eyes scanning the horizon for chimney smoke or the familiar structures of men.

  She came to a place where the earth appeared to have been split in two. Huge cliffs of shining black stone rose to either side of her, and the ground under her feet was a dense layer of brittle yellowed rocks – when she looked at them more closely, she saw that they were bones, the skulls of millions of tiny animals. The chasm led down into the centre of the world, deeper and deeper until the sky above her turned blue-black and was pierced with strange, multi-coloured stars. Time – always an unreliable companion on her journey – seemed to come untethered entirely, and she couldn’t have said how long she spent in the chasm. Years, certainly. Centuries? It seemed very possible.

  “Where are you sending me?”

  The horned woman never answered.

  Eventually, she emerged into a vast throne room filled with pools of water as dark as wine. All around the vast space, men and women stood talking quietly, or playing musical instruments. Except that Erren knew immediately that these were not people such as she knew them; each was twice her height, and they glowed with their own interior light. Some of them had the heads of animals, and one man with a long, golden beard had a pair of eagle’s wings sprouting straight out of his back. They watched her come with eyes that looked emptier than those of the dead.

  “Well?” the winged-god thundered. “You have come all this way. Will you play, or not?”

  Erren hesitated. The urge to play was as strong as it had ever been, but it seemed absurd to drag her old bone pipes from her pack when she could see harps made of gold, a flute that shone the colour of moonlight. The music of the gods teased her, made her feel drunk. I’m not supposed to be here, she thought again.

  But she couldn’t resist forever. She sat down in front of them and began to play. The darkness came, as it ever did, and slowly, slowly, new figures began to rise out of the shadows. They were as fearsome as the gods who watched them, vast figures with golden skin, with ebony skin, with faces so beautiful it was difficult to look at them. They danced, solemnly and without the joy that came so naturally to humans, and one by one, their stories came.

  The hero who journeyed home from a decade-long war, only to find that the woman he had married had been bewitched, and opened her bed – and their kingdom – to another god.

  The goddess who had given her own heart to save her son, only for the witch-god to burn it, gaining all her power.

  The children who had been eaten by the all-father, one by one, lest they rise up one day and defeat him.

  All of the betrayals, the murders, the violations, all of them were trotted out, and even the gods had to sit and listen to them all. Erren watched them over the top of her pipes, and saw the furious looks that passed between them, the slow draining of colour from certain faces. When it was over, the man with the eagle wings looked down at her. His feathers were turning black.

  “We have been at peace for centuries, woman, and you’ve brought us war on the notes of a beggar’s pipe. Do you think you’ll leave here alive?”

  Erren laughed. It felt strange in her mouth, a fruit she hadn’t tasted before
.

  “No mortal can kill me,” she said.

  “What do you think we are?” answered the winged-man.

  * * *

  It was quick, at least.

  There was a sensation of movement, a feeling of falling and a quick burst of pain across her chest. The next moment, Erren was some feet away, looking down at her own crumpled body. The winged-god was already stepping over her, summoning a vortex of shimmering light into his outstretched hand. He had his eyes on a man on the other side of a marble pool, who was raising his own trident. The gods were dropping their instruments and reaching for swords and axes.

  A soft voice at her elbow. “So, it’s over then.”

  The green woman was there with her. Erren wasn’t surprised to see her.

  “Finally.” The relief was so large it was difficult to comprehend. Instead she looked up at the sky. The huge stars that boiled there, blue and green and red, were gradually winking out of existence. A giant wolf, bigger than anything she had ever seen, was eating the moon. “What is happening?”

  “Just the end of all things. Shall we leave? I can take you far from here, if you wish.”

  Erren nodded, and took the horned woman’s hand. It was cool against her skin. “Somewhere quiet, I think. No music, and no dancing.”

  “Oh I think I can guarantee it.”

  Above them, the sky quietly tore itself to pieces.

  HENRY AND THE SNAKEWOOD BOX

  M.R. CAREY

  I was sitting in the window of a charity shop in East Barnet when Henry Mossop wandered by. I was not particularly well placed. The assistant (clueless little puke-stain that he was) had wedged me into a corner, between an eye-wateringly ugly vase and a plate commemorating the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

  I didn’t give Henry a second glance as he lumbered into view. He wasn’t the kind of person who invited second glances. He was basically a random jumble of limbs with a head the shape of a turnip. Greasy black hair like some kind of mycelial growth. Clothes that belonged together, but only on a bonfire.

  Second glance or not, though, Henry was a receptive soul, and fortunately he lingered long enough for me to make contact. I think it was the plate that caught his eye at first – not because he was a royalist, but because he was a romantic. He got all misty-eyed, and he leaned in so close his breath fogged up the outside of the glass. You just know he had “Candle in the Wind” playing in 5.1 surround sound in the ideal theatre of his mind.

  I went around to the back of that theatre, found the fire door, jimmied it open and slipped inside. It took about ten seconds, all told. What can I say? I’m good at this stuff.

  Hey, Henry, I said. Hey. Look. Down here. Track left from the plate until you hit the… no, no, you went too far. Back to the right a bit. Little more. Perfect. Hi there.

  In spite of this greeting, which was quite verbose by my standards and very circumstantial, Henry looked around in case I was talking to someone else who was standing behind him.

  No, I said. You. I’m talking to you. Jesus! Henry, I used your actual name.

  “Sorry.”

  Forget it. Just, you know, focus a little. This is important.

  “Um… How come you can talk?” Henry asked.

  I talk the same way you do. Well, not the exact same way. I don’t have a mouth, obviously. But I form concepts in my mind using words as semantic counters, and string them together into intelligible statements.

  “But you’re a box!”

  No, I’m really not. Common misconception. I look like a box, but really I’m a… you know, I’d prefer we leave the nuts and bolts stuff off to one side just for now. I was about to put a proposition to you.

  Henry scratched his head, the immemorial gesture of the comically bemused. “A what?”

  Proposition. Bargain. Offer. Deal. Chance of a lifetime, et cetera.

  Slightly Faustian, but still good. Well, good’s a slippery concept, but compared to most of these arrangements, I’m offering you the golden ticket.

  Henry clung to one of the few words he’d understood, and parsed it as best he could. “A special offer?”

  Yes, Henry. That. Exactly. A very, very special offer.

  “What is it, then?”

  Wishes.

  “Wishes?”

  Absolutely. You want money? Sex? A free Netflix subscription? More sex? Superpowers? Kinky sex? Whatever it is that gets your endorphins flooding, I can supply it. In frankly ridiculous abundance.

  Henry thought about this. For a value of the word “thought”, anyway. He wasn’t exactly a championship contender at that particular activity. “Are you a fairy?” he asked.

  Holy shit, I thought. This is the motherlode. But my terms and conditions are strict. I’m not allowed to lie. No, Henry. Not a fairy, exactly. Kind of like that, but… yeah, not like that at all. Different. Very different. Chalk and cheese.

  Henry gave me a suspicious look. A look that said he wasn’t the kind of man who gets taken in by talking boxes with slick sales pitches and dodgy credentials. “What are you, then?” he asked.

  And since he’d asked, I had to answer. I’m a demon.

  That’s make-or-break for some people. Henry could have just taken to his heels and fled, and I would have had to let him go. You can’t force these things. Especially when your material extrusion has been locked into the shape of a snakewood box with a hen and chicks painted (quite badly) on the lid. I’m not equipped for high-speed chases. Not on this plane. If you were to meet me on the fields of Tartarus, that would be a different thing entirely. And the meeting would be brief.

  But Henry didn’t run. He just nodded. His vacant expression didn’t change.

  Informed consent is important in these matters, so I tried again. A demon, I said. You know. As in devil. Imp. Hellspawn. That kind of number.

  “Okay. But you grant wishes the same way a fairy does.”

  I do. Better than a fairy, even. Our current package includes unlimited wishes. The normal ceiling of three is waived for premier wish-makers like yourself. You can even wish for more wishes, although with a baseline of infinity you’ve probably got all you need. We’ve also removed the temporary restriction on timeline-altering wishes. You can mess with causality all you like.

  Henry clapped his hands together. His innocent face was suffused with growing excitement. “A fairy in a box!” he said. “So cool! So cool!”

  Demon. So let’s seal the deal, Henry. Go on into the shop and buy me. I’m four pounds ninety-nine, but you can recoup that immediately by wishing for it back. I wouldn’t want you to be out of pocket here. Go on.

  The word “pocket” – a good, old-fashioned noun denoting a physical thing – got a reaction at last. Henry searched his various pockets for notes and coins, eventually coming up with a sizeable heap. “Is this enough?” he asked.

  Yes, Henry. That’s thirty-five and some odd change. Just give the nice lady the blue one there, on the top, and she’ll give you back a penny. Plus me. Oh, but Henry, before you complete the purchase…

  He was just about to enter the shop. He stopped. “Yeah?”

  I’m a demon, but I’m not Maxwell’s demon. You feel me?

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  Well, okay then, we’ll cover that part later. Do what you need to do, man. Let’s make this happen.

  And we did. I was proud of the little guy. He negotiated the transaction without a hitch, and was even given a plastic bag to carry me home in. Technically that should have cost an additional 5p, but the woman behind the counter saw no reason to press the point. She was sorry for Henry, seeing him as someone intrinsically harmless and basically adrift on the currents of life. The same assessment I’d made, essentially, but whereas I wanted to form a parasitic attachment to him in order to exploit that naivety for my own unspeakable ends, she just felt a little motherly. I guess it would be a boring world if we were all the same.

  Once we were back at Henry’s place, I encouraged hi
m to take a test drive, as it were. Something small, I said. To make sure it works. Okay, Henry said. He screwed his eyes tight shut and wished for a goldfish. A nanosecond later, there it was, swimming its little heart out. Henry hadn’t wished for a tank or water, but I threw those in anyway – along with some sand and rocks to cover the bottom, a blue LED strip to provide a little atmosphere and a filtration pump shaped like a Spanish galleon. I could have just let the goldfish gasp out its last unavailing breaths on the linoleum – the literal-minded jobsworth gambit, as we call it – but that stuff is for losers. I mean it’s fun up front, in a dopey slapstick kind of way, but it makes for diminishing returns. I wanted Henry to trust me, or at least to trust the process. To feel like he could go for gold.

  Meanwhile, a couple of continents away, an Indian textile worker’s bike lost a wheel on a downward stretch. The poor guy face-planted in the road and a car went over him before he could stop. A real mess, I can tell you.

  Oblivious of this compelling human drama, Henry gave a little warble of glee. “I’ll call him Goldy!” he said.

  You can call him Ivan the fucking Terrible for all I care, I thought. Just keep the wishes coming.

  Which he did. As I’d hoped, that first demo, modest as it was, was enough to prime the pump. In short order, Henry wished for a second goldfish, an OLED television, a recliner armchair facing said television, two more goldfish, a DVD collection of the works of Oliver Postgate (Noggin the Nog, The Clangers, Bagpuss, all the greats) and a meal of sausages and chips followed by Ambrosia creamed rice. Oh, and some money. Enough to live on, he said, which I interpreted liberally. He’d been laid off some months before from his job (insert air quotes) cleaning the toilets at the Spires mini-mall, and was as near to destitution as made no difference.

  This was still small stuff, to be sure, but small stuff can have big effects if you get the leverage right. A fuse blows in a Cape Town suburb. In the darkness someone trips and screams. A rock shatters a window. Before you know where you are, you’re knee-deep in collateral damage. I’ve done this stuff before, in case that wasn’t clear.