Scar Tissue - Narrelle M Harris

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bastard didn’t hurt Dad. Mum says those scars are like... sort of like badges that love makes in your skin.’

      Lachlan pulls the car to the side of the road, because it’s dangerous to drive when you can’t see. Tears are sliding out of his eyes, faster now that he’s closed them. Amelia undoes her seatbelt and reaches across the seat to wrap him in an awkward sideways hug.

      ‘I know you made mistakes,’ she says, her cheek resting on his shoulder, ‘but you made up for them, and that’s something my grandfather never did. You’ve got badges, even if you didn’t want them, and Dad’s scar… I don’t think you know. But he and mum, they say that’s his badge. Because it helped you to stop. He got his brother back. So he doesn’t mind.’

      Lachlan’s hands are over his eyes and he can’t stop crying.

      ‘This thing,’ says Amelia, hugging him, ‘with the drugs. I promise you. I’d never do that. And if I’m ever that lonely, I promise. I’ll come to you. But I never will be.’

      Lachlan gathers his girl close, his nose in her hair, revelling in the miracle of her. No, he promises her silently, you never will be.

      LOST AND FOUND:

      CHANGELING

      Bloody treacherous faeries.

      Faeries get fancies. They see things they like and just take ‘em.

      Pretty, shiny, sparkly things.

      And also babies.

      Faeries have an unfortunate tradition of taking a shine to some chubby little darling and whisking it away to the Land of Faerie. There they feed it little cakes and sips of flower nectar and generally spoil it rotten.

      They’re not stupid, though, faeries. Even they have noticed that vanishing infants and toddlers create an awkward kerfuffle amongst those slow-witted and reality-bound humans. Some of those humans are annoyingly attached to their offspring, as well as irritatingly persistent in trying to get them back.

      So faeries leave a substitute. A little changeling, very much like the child it’s replacing, but quieter. The changeling cries less, fusses less, is more placid and obedient and docile. With this sly bit of subterfuge, the faeries hope that the humans will just be grateful that their infant is suddenly much more pliable and easy to manage. The faeries hope the humans won’t pursue the matter. Parents and their attachments to their offspring are just so pestilential.

      It’s not going to work this time though. Do you see that sparkly little jacket? That pink and spangly thing with flowers in it? That belongs to a bright and lively little girl who is always chattering and giggling and, well, yes, also screaming sometimes. She’s a kid. She doesn’t know all the words yet for what she wants and needs, let alone have oratory skills to help sway her audience to her way of thinking. When she’s a teenager, she’s going to be absolute hell, in the best possible way. In the meantime she chatters and giggles and screams as occasion demands.

      Right now, she is making the Faerie Queen wish heartily she never saw the kid. Right now, she is expressing her opinions rather forcefully, even with her limited vocabulary, about the taste of bleeding flower nectar and the use of cobwebs – GODDAMN COBWEBS – as a blanket.

      Have these faeries never noticed what kind of spiders live in the Real Plane that is called Australia, that this little girl quite rightly views with concern? It’s hard to feel cosy and relaxed sleeping under a little blankie made of the butt-silk of venomous things.

      Okay so maybe the kid has a problem and if she just thought about it she’d work it through and think the cobweb blankets were neat.

      On the other hand, she’s thinking, you are not my real parents, who would never make me sleep under poisonous spider butt-silk sheets and wouldn’t make me drink bloody flower water and where the absolute hell is my bunny and my ninja and My Little Pony and MY MUUUUUUUUUM?

      For their part, her parents are not impressed with the obvious substitute they found in the stroller. This whey-faced, doughy, dull little baby with all the personality of an undercooked bread roll.

      Humans are not of themselves magic, but they’re not stupid, and they are, as explained, inexplicably attached to their children.

      These parents are going back to the gardens with this dull little changeling and they’re going to stand under the tree where they last saw their own child and they are going demand the return of their daughter. Loudly. Repeatedly. Insistently. With many, many swear words and very little in the way of attempts to bargain with the magic folk. Screw diplomacy.

      Give us back our daughter you creepy little winged freaks before we find a way to burn down your fairy fucking halls.

      And frankly, the Faerie Queen is going to be much too relieved to be rid of this bold, brave, uncompromising, strong-willed and vocally enhanced human child to worry overmuch about the lack of courtesy.

      HOORFROST

      Author’s note: This is an origin story for Kitty and Cadaver, about a rock and roll band that fights monsters with music.

      London June 1258

      If anyone but Will knew what was causing this snow – that thing in the river – they weren’t doing anything about it. Will was, though. He was swearing.

      ‘God’s nails!’ Will swore as he trudged through the fresh fall of snow. He suspected he’d wandered off the road to the Ludgate. Surely this grove of elms was further west than he meant to be? He couldn’t see the sun, much less any shadows, to judge the time in this milky light, but it must be no later than the third hour, barely half way to noon.

      The air was cold enough that his swarthy skin – heritage of a Spanish mother with Moorish blood – was relatively pale in the frame of his dark hair. His dark eyes ached in the glare of the snow and cloud.

      He cursed as his feet crunched down.

      God curse this winter and the famine that it brings; God pity the thousands dead for want of food. God curse the frozen Thames and the strange skies of this unspeakable winter. God curse the even stranger thing that lurks in the river’s mud.

      And triple curse this cocking snow that will not cease falling.

      When cursing didn’t help, Will tried to spell it warmer with a rhyme.

      Un-freeze, damn’d-dirt, God’s-heart, it’s-cold.

      His teeth chattered too hard for the chant to be spoken, and numb with cold as he was, it was a poor chant. The result was weak – he never could make much use of water; earth responded best to his call – but the beat of it kept his body moving, less cold than if he stood still. He’d have unslung his tabor, but the drum’s skin was brittle with frost. Even encased in fur gloves, his hands were stiff. At least he had boots, and the moss stuffed in the left stopped the snow leeching in through the hole and biting his heel.

      Having no lodgings, St Martin’s Le Grand’s curfew knell last night had forced Will to sleep beyond the city walls or risk prison. He’d sheltered in St Bartholomew’s Priory – its founder had been a minstrel, and the brothers there had given him water and a bite of what little bread they had. This morning he’d left, hoping to find some scraps.

      But the bells of St Martin’s Le Grand hadn’t rung to herald the opening of the markets, and that was how William Hawk knew he no longer had a choice in what he did next. Whether the problem was no bell, or no markets, the silence meant this unnatural winter was deepening and a cold and hungry death was coming for them all.

      He didn’t know what to do about the thing in the river either, but he would make his way back into the city to do it. If the church was wrong and God loved him after all, he would succeed.

      A

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