Marten Rowsdower

Marten Rowsdower knows how to make fire with his mind. The fire is conjured with a certain specific thought. When called, it burns grey. It gives off no light and emits no heat, fuel is still consumed. Wood, cloth, flesh all burn normally, though instead of crumbling in ash, it wilts and rots. Marten's fire burns away the life of things. He doesn't like to use it. He gets very sad when he sees things wither and collapse.

Marten lives in a small, oblong house shaped like a bread-box. There is an old, chipped flower painted on his front door. He lives very close to the rail. The trains thunder by at all hours of the night. The noise shakes his little house so badly that Marten installed locks on each of his cupboards. If he happens to forget and leave one unsecured, the rattling of the trains might knock a few cans or jars from their shelves. Marten has had to replace too many shattered mugs and plates. These days he can not sleep untill he has checked every lock and handle in his house. It is his nightly routine.

Marten works as a steward for the Ministry of Untritefang in Lower Omswick. He serves His Majesty in a number of crucial undertakings. Not a month past, he negotiated a treaty between a few Westfield lobsters and the Labor Commission. The treaty freed up a thousand acres of prime real estate to be reforested. A stardancer descended for the very occasion, and Marten was given the honor of guiding the landing.

Marten has a girlfriend. Her name is Jelly, and her name is Bean. She responds to either, but never both. She is a very tall girl, and can't help but stoop when she stands. She apologizes for everything that happens around her, it is a habit. She works late most nights sorting mail for the local bank. She has very long, very dark hair that hangs straight down her back. Jelly or Bean does not have much luck with men. She suffers from night terrors. She wakes screaming about spiders and saw-blades, but never remembers the nightmares. She is not very fond of Marten, but she has been seeing him a long time. He is used to hearing the trains rattle at night and never wakes when she screams.

Marten will never be fired from his job. This is a thought that comes to Marten now and again. It should be a good thing, a reassurance. When he thinks about his job, he feels very troubled. He does not make very much money, but it is plenty for the simple life he shares with Jelly or Bean. He will be a Ministry steward until the day he dies, and he knows this. Still, when these thoughts descend upon him, he likes to think about the circus.

As a child he sometimes thought about running away as an acrobat or clown. That was all before he found his true calling, negotiation. Marten is a skilled arbitrator and counselor, and these skills prove most effecacious in service to His Majesty. Marten might join a circus if he could find one that needed a steward. They might put a spotlight on him, accompanied with a drumroll, as he worked out a settlement between two feuding farmers. They could stand right in the center ring. The farmers would sign a contract and the crowd would cheer and the vendors would sell plastic cups with Marten's face engraved on the side next to a tiger and a flying trapeze artist. The circus might want him to call his fire to amaze the crowds, but Marten does not want to do that. Marten would not like to be a part of a circus like that.

In his tiny house by the train tracks, Marten likes to wake up very early and walk around his neighborhood. Just after dawn, the world is bright and silent. He can walk past each of the houses on his block and look at them. Some are brightly colored, some have weeds overgrowing stone steps. One has a number of shiny bicycles tied up to a fence. One is having a front porch rebuilt, and maybe some rain got on the untreated wood. Hopefully the planks will not warp. Marten likes to watch and think about his neighbors. He has never met a single one of them, or even exchanged messages. He looks at their houses and lawns and thinks about the people that must live there. No one stops and worries when he does this, no one knows. Only Marten is awake at dawn. The morning has a certain smell, wet and fresh like celery. It is lovely. It is worth waiting the whole night to enjoy.

Them Chompers

In his heavy breath, "I bought them for you, Marie," with his big, stupid grin like a junkyard of rusting jalopies. He is banging away with his huge palm on the old piano his goons just dumped in my living room.

There were some flutes too. I think a saxophone, and what? A banjo? Those faceless lowbrows in black sweaters just keep bringing them in, throwing them around.

"I know how much you like music," he's shouting, but all I can think about are those chompers and how he must cut the inside of his cheeks all the time. "This is what you want," with a flick of drool arcing out. He's waiting for me to jump in here, yell at him, beg, accuse, scream. Fuck him.

"I want you to be happy," he bangs away on the piano again, the room rings with a hard, disjointed note. My head's leaking bad from that gash behind my ear, but I can still think straight. I stare at him, waiting for him to pull that pearl-handled piece out of his jacket.

"I wish it didn't turn out like this. This whole thing is such a mess," he pauses for me to speak. I clam up. Just get it over with, fucker.

He licks his lips over that jagged soup can lid sticking out of his gums. He gets in real close, leaning in, touching my face. "I want him to know it was me. When your man finds you here. I want him to know I did it. I want him to be real angry."

He wipes his sweaty palms on his grey slacks and draws that pistol.

"I want him to be angry enough to do something real stupid."

I close my eyes as he cocks back. I don't want those teeth to be the last thing I see.

Boise to Kansas City

"I'm not going back!" she shouts over the roar of the wind and the rail. I take a step closer and she pops a hole in my hat. The baggage car is rumbling and shaking, but her little hand is stone steady with the tiny .22 pointed right between my eyes. I have to admit, I'm impressed. She's only twelve and already a crack shot. Then again, maybe she didn't intend to miss.

"This is where you jump," she smiles at me, but her eyes are dead serious. She waves at the open side door and the corn fields blurring past. I watch her for a moment, she's only got one more bullet. No, no need to risk it.

I've fallen off of my share of trains, but never on purpose. I step off into the cool night and the ground rushes me like a squad of coppers swinging nightsticks. I curl up and try to roll with it, but its bad. Even when my body stops moving, my head spins like a top. I think I've got some gravel up my nose. My arms are numb, but my hip is stinging. The walk back to town is going to be long indeed. That's alright, I'll still get my payday.

I finally muster up the energy to stand. The train is already a speck in the distance. My hat is lying in a ditch. The wind picks it up and chucks it around. I have to chase after it.

The train's headed west to god-knows-where, but that don't matter. I know where she'll wind up. Her daddy's in Kansas City and so are the diamonds. I'll catch a bus in Boise and cool my heels till she shows.

I finally stumble over and catch my hat. The hole in the brim is hardly big enough to fit my pinky. She got one good shot off. Can't let that happen again. Next bullet won't be a warning.

Cluttermen

Half-formed with bits of others
We puzzle up a Really-Man
Then we can pass on the streets
Fetch groceries for the rest
We have clothes and drugs
Sometimes we even have jobs
Mostly though, we make things
Beautiful things
Sometimes we can sing
I have the pieces around here somewhere
If I find them, I can sing for you
I can sing very well
You wouldn't know it was a Cluttermen song

Chosen Ones

Stirred by a dream, the high priest awoke one night from a deep slumber. He stumbled through the grand hall to the scrying chambers. Shouting and shaking the tables, he roused the acolytes from their cells. There, in their linen small clothes, they consulted the charts, cast stones, and sorted the scalded innards of a bleating lamb brought in from the cold.

The high priest compared each augury, each divination. There could be no doubt. On that night a god was born among the humans.

One week later, all the peoples of the kingdom gathered before the gates of the mighty palace. The king stood on a balcony infront of the great crowd and asked that the newborn god be brought before him that he might shower the child with blessings and wealth. He sent agents out among the people, searching for infants born the night of the priest's dream.

The next morning, three young women holding babies were escorted into the king's audience chamber. The whole of the royal honor guard stood along the wall in their crisp uniforms with gleaming sabers. Distinguished noblemen sat on velvet benches along the side along with doctors, philosophers, and scribes. Great taspetries of rich purple hung behind the silver throne. The king in his cloak of white fur with his queen standing at his right hand and the high priest at his left.

The first of the three women stepped forward. She was a very plain sort of woman with the pitted, heavy features of a hard life lived. Her dress was of the rough sort of sack-cloth used by the fisherfolk, where the salt water brings rot and ruin to all gentle things. Indeed, when she finally spoke, her speech and manners seemed as rough and bracing as the storm-tossed tide.

"To all these mighty lords and wise men do I bring my child. Here in this court do I give name to Razhaal, god of the sea!" and she held her tiny child aloft. The assembled elite squited into their spectacles and leaned forward to glimpse some hint of divinity there, swaddled in fish rags.

After a moment of awkward silence the queen, a woman with an uncommonly sharp mind, wondered aloud if perhaps the child wouldn't mind to demonstration of his godly powers. The people of the court turned toward the fisher-wife with expectant eyes.

She beamed and nodded. "Of course, if the gathered lords and ladies can bear the sight, the mighty Razhaal will perform a miracle this day!"

She took her child and held him upside down, letting the rags fall from his body, revealing the squirming pink flesh. "Watch him now call upon the mighty tides even here in this stoney castle," She held aloft a crude knife, but sharp and hooked to peel scales. With a quick snap, she slash open the child's throat. "Behold," she cried out, "The salt-tides lick the floors, washing away the sins of the world,"

The crowd gasped in horror as the woman shook and squeezed every drop from the infant who quickly grew blue and still. "Return now, clean, to your plantations and counting houses for Razhaal has blessed you this day,"

The guards quickly seized her and pulled her from the king's sight and down to the dungeons below.

The king was greatly affected by the death of the infant and almost waved away the other women. It was the priest who counseled him otherwise, "My liege," he spoke, "Let not this one crude beast spoil this moment. Indeed, she was low and cruel, with such vulgarity. How could a god choose to live among such filth? The other women have poise, beauty and bearing. Let them bring their children before us,"

The king could not refuse such wise words, and so with a gesture, the next woman stepped forward.

"My gracious liege," she knelt before them in her gown of ruffled silk, "and the most honorable assemblage, I am humbled to find myself in such a position, to be handed such a great honor to shepard this new life into the world, to serve as a vessel to deliver such a being as this into the world," and there did she turn to show her arms and the sleeping child nestled in them.

Again the queen mused about mothers and how each must believe each singular child is the most wonderful and special creation.

"Of course," said the woman in silk. She snuck a hand into her bodice to produce three small rocks hardly bigger than a man's curled thumb. She held them out to show the assembly. "You see, this child is already a miracle, conceived in a garden from the earth itself as I lay in the sun. I lay there last spring as the world poured up inside me filling me with such a magic that just this week passed a boy was born," She placed the child on the ground and smiled over him, "This boy, Otok of the Stones, god of earth and bounty. Behold him now as he enjoys his favorite snack. Even without teeth, he can crush stones and eat them like biscuits!"

And she pushed the stones into the boy's face one by one, jamming and shoving them. The guard rushed to pull her away, but she had already burst the boy's jaw and battered his skull with the last rock. The poor creature flopped mutely there on the floor for a moment longer, then lay still. The woman in silk was sent to the dungeon.

The king was upset indeed and stood to march out of the room himself. The third woman pleaded, "Wait, my lord, those women were mad. Come see my baby, come see her. She is the one you seek,"

The king stopped a moment by the door to listen.

The third woman continued, "She has no name, she is a song of light and fire. She holds the secrets of the serpent peoples. She knows the voice of the dark!"

The king watched the woman with her child.

"She is the god born among us and I can show you," she insisted, "I'll just need a bowl of hot coals and a razor,"

The king spit on the ground in disgust and stormed from the hall.