Borrowed Strength

  Rona has always liked heights. Whenever she could she climbed trees, and walked on walls, and stood as close to high edges - as the ravine's - as she could, without falling. Still, there is a difference between walking along a wall of stone and walking along a rope, however taut that rope is stretched. The prayer-rope is not meant to be walked on.

  But she has no choice. Barefoot, she edges out onto the rope, holding her arms out for balance. With every step she can feel the air beneath her feet. She can't help looking down: the rapids below promise a swift death if she falls.

  She takes a deep breath, trembling, and fixes her eyes on her goal. She is not a fugitive, she tells herself. She is not a refugee. She is a dancer: she is light-footed, surefooted, graceful. She will not fall.

  In the before-days, before Rona was a fugitive or a refugee or a thief, before her mother was taken - in the before-days, Rona once saw the circus. She draws the memory close: the darkness, the colored lights, the beautiful women in sparkling clothes - women who danced and flew through the air and climbed up bolts of silk, and who walked along tightropes without fear, without faltering.

  Rona thinks of the sparkling women, and looks at the prayer-rope beneath her feet. There are threads of blue and silver woven in among its strands. It holds the might of the river in check; it is not meant to be walked on. But its form is not so different from the tightrope's. And Rona is not so different from the women, after all.

  She dares not close her eyes - she will lose her footing if she does. But in her mind's eye, the prayer-rope becomes a tightrope. The ravine becomes darkness, the river a stage. The sun is a spotlight, shining down on her. Her ragged tunic is covered in sequins, glinting in the light; and she is a dancer, an acrobat, graceful and surefooted, and she will run across the rope as lightly as a cat.

  She can hear the roar of the crowd. She steps, steps again. She is beyond their reach now.

  They cheer, wild with admiration. One throws her a rose - it glints like a spear in the spotlight - it falls short of her, and she pays it no mind.

  She is beautiful, and graceful, and she will not fall. She cannot look at her audience now - her eyes are fixed on the goal - but she knows that they love her.

  Except -

  They aren't throwing roses any longer. They're throwing stones. Their aim is poor, but she can feel the wind as they sail by her, and even that wind threatens her balance. Her foot slips -

  and she falls.

  The Way After Waking

  The man fell heavily to the ground. Rain washed his blood into the fallen leaves, and his eyes were already misting over with death.

  The sounds of the battle faded; and it seemed to him that he was standing again, though he felt no weight on his legs. His body lay at his feet, staring eyes and parted lips and dark blossoms of blood. He looked at the empty woods around him and saw that he had died.

  Then it seemed that a woman came to him, as pale and misty as the rain itself, with a somber mouth and hollow eyes. She said to him: "Come, and I will wash the life from you."

  He took her hand: her fingers were as thin and light as the wind. She led him past trees that grew ever barer, through mist that grew ever thicker, until he could see nothing of the woods around him; then the mist cleared, and he found that he was standing in a lake, with the walls of a cave all around and above him.

  The clothes he had worn had vanished, and he stood before the woman as naked as a child. With a white cloth she washed the blood from his wounds, and the color from his eyes and hair and skin, until he stood before her as pale and empty as she was; and with a black cloth she washed away his life, and his memories, and his name. When she had finished he was clean, and new, and hollow.

  "Lie down on your back," she said to him, "and the water will carry you onwards."

  He lay on his back, and dark waves lapped at his white skin and urged him on.

  They carried him down into the depths of the earth. When at last he came to rest against a bank of stone, there was a woman standing above him, pale as the first but dark-eyed and smiling. She drew him out of the water and into her arms.

  "Come," she whispered into his ear, and her voice was warm wind through summer grass. "Come, love. Now you may rest."

  And he closed his eyes, and slept.

  Billy and the Truth Fairy

  Challenge #6: write a story for a child encouraging them not to tell lies.

  Billy was always fibbing. He fibbed about little things, like whether he had brushed his teeth yet, and he fibbed about big things, like the color of the sky.

  One day Billy was playing alone in his room, making up an especially long fib about what his toy soldiers were doing, when he heard a little voice by his ear.

  "Please stop lying, Billy!" it said.

  Something tumbled out of his hair and into his lap. It was a tiny woman with shiny wings and a green dress.

  "I am a Truth Fairy!" she said. "We Truth Fairies protect the Truth in the world. Truth makes everyone happy! It makes people understand each other! Lies make people sad and angry, and sometimes they make people fight. Please stop lying, Billy!"

  But Billy just laughed and kept telling fibs.

  But the next day people really were sadder and angrier than normal. The washing machine broke and his mother yelled at him and the bullies stole his shoes. He wondered if the washing machine had broken because he had fibbed too much.

  "Yes," said the Truth Fairy. "Truth keeps things running smoothly. Lies make things break." So Billy tried not to tell any fibs that night. But he didn't want to brush his teeth, and when his mother asked him "Have you brushed your teeth yet, Billy?" he fibbed and told her that he had.

  The next morning Billy's father's car broke down on the highway and Billy's father broke his leg. He was sadder and angrier than Billy had ever seen him.

  "Please stop lying, Billy," said the Truth Fairy. "When you lie, you make things break. You make people sad and angry, and then they make mistakes and break things. The Truth in the world can't keep things running when you lie so much!"

  So Billy tried not to tell any fibs that night. He even brushed his teeth. But then when he couldn't fall asleep he looked at the moon through the window and forgot about the Truth Fairy. He made up a fib that it was a snowball that someone had thrown so far that it got stuck in the sky.

  The next day a bomb fell on Billy's city and almost everything was blown up. Billy's house was blown up and so were his parents. Everyone he saw that day was so sad and so angry that nobody cared about stealing Billy's shoes anymore. Even Billy was sad and angry that day.

  "This is all your fault, Billy," said the Truth Fairy.

  Billy never fibbed again.

  The Color Without a Name

  There is no name for the color of my hair, but there is a small section of it just left of the back that I must always braid when I leave home, so my sisters told me. As long as I wear that braid, I will be safe and nothing can harm me.

  There was a girl I loved who lived on the edge of the desert. She was a year older than I was, and a bit larger, and light-skinned and blue-eyed with hair like twilight. Rashkah was her name. We were friends at first, but then we were more: she would take me dancing, and she would hold me on her lap, arms tight around me, lips by my ears, and she would kiss my cheeks and my lips and my hair and my braid, and I loved her.

  On my last night she ran her hands through my hair and found my braid between her fingers, and she whispered into my ear - won't you undo your braid for me? And I knew that she meant more. I knew the words she never spoke.

  And I wanted to say yes -

  - but we were young, and my sisters had warned me so often that I must never undo my braid unless I was home. So I pushed her hand away, giggling, and I said no, not yet, not yet. Someday, Rashkah - not today.

  And that night I kissed her fingertips goodbye and walked back through the desert, back to the Mountain, back home, and I ran my hands through my hair as I walked. I could still smell h
er on it. I fingered my braid and thought - not yet, Rashkah - not yet - but someday, someday, yes -

  I was in the empty desert now, away from the dangers of the village. What could be the harm? I was thinking of her, and I pulled my hair free of its braid and let the wind play through it. Someday, I thought - someday, I would release it not alone in the desert, but with Rashkah, together. And I would give myself to her completely. Someday.

  But I never reached the Mountain where I lived with my sisters. There was a great beast that roamed that desert, that had killed many people already - the Satre, it was called - and it caught my scent on the breeze.

  I don't remember dying. But I remember seeing its claws.

  My eldest sister had carried a sword as long as I could remember. I am told that she slew the Satre in my name, and that she was celebrated as a hero. They were still singing her name three hundred years later when the world came to an end.

  And Rashkah? Legend does not tell what became of her. I mourned her for years after I died, and I feared that my second sister - who had always been protective of us all, and quick to anger - might have blamed her for my death, and hurt her for it. I prayed that she had not, but there was nothing more I could do.

  Long after I died, when the hurt was old and faded, I found a new love: one who is kind, and wry, and filled with darkness but also with strength. She is three years younger than I am, and taller, and light-skinned and green-eyed with hair the color of forest. And I undid my braid for her.

  There is no name for the color of my hair, but she tells me that it is purple when I am lonely; that it is blue when I am sad; that it is green when I am content.

  And I am.

  Finding the Line

  Three caricatures of distinct religious, ethnic, or professional groups walked into a drinking establishment.

  The first of these, speaking for the entire group, addressed the bartender in a humorous fashion consistent with the stereotypes typically associated with his religious, ethnic, or professional group. He ordered punch for all of them.

  The bartender waved them over to the other end of the bar, where things were much busier. "My colleague over there is in charge of the punch," he said. "You'll have to queue up."

  As they approached, they saw that there were actually three distinct queues on that end of the bar. The first of them approached the first queue. "Is this the queue for punch?" he asked.

  "No," answered the humorously out-of-place farm animal queuing in front of him: "this is the queue for peanuts."

  The second of them approached the second queue. "Is this the queue for punch?" she asked.

  "No," said the humorously out-of-place undead menace queuing in front of her. "This is the queue for napkins."

  The third of them approached the final queue. He had not yet debriefed his companions and was therefore unaware of their progress in locating the punch queue. "Where is the queue for punch?" he asked.

  The person queuing in front of him turned around to reveal hilariously startling facial features.

  "This is it," he said. "This is the queue for punch."

  Three Brothers Were Granted Three Wishes

  Challenge #7: write a three-sentence story featuring something usually found in threes; you must also summarize the story in three words.

  (Summary: Wishes have consequences.)

  Three brothers were granted three wishes, and the first wished for gold: he grew wealthy beyond any man's dreaming, and all that he desired was his - until one day a dragon chanced to hear of his hoard, and claimed it for herself; its owner was burned alive.

  Three brothers were granted three wishes, and the next wished for glory: his name was passed from lips to lips, and all the world praised him - until one day the folk had need of a hero and begged him for aid, and he was unable to give it; his lies had led to their doom, and he went to the gallows.

  Three brothers were granted three wishes, and the last wished for garlic: and though the maids thenceforth were loth to kiss him, he never feared vampires again.

  Twelve Drowned Roses

  They are waiting for him in the water.

  He can see their faces - pale and fish-bitten, so swollen with water that the tide might slough them from their skulls at any moment. Their eyes are dark and hollow, but he can see the emotions swirling in their depths: love and lust and loneliness, despair, longing. They claw at him with rotted hands. Always they stay below the surface of the water; never do they reach out into the air.

  He looks from one waterlogged face to another, naming them. Emma, Jamie, Kathryn, Elsie - little Elsie - she was his first, in her fluttery white dress. He remembers the flowers she was holding, roses in pale yellow and white. The petals fluttered about her in the breeze - now her dress is fluttering beneath the waves, ragged and torn, and her little mouth forms his name in silence.

  She was his first, and an accident. He had never meant for it to happen. But it happened all the same; and she looked so lonely there, a single white rose buried in the blue, that he went looking for others.

  He has a bouquet now. They are white and graceful, though some of them are little more than bones by now. They reach up to him as though to pull him down, longing for his warmth.

  Someday I will come to you, he promises, blowing kisses into the deep. But he isn't ready to join his white roses just yet. Until the day when he lays his life aside, he stays away from the water. He never enters it, never touches it. He only watches.

  And they reach up to him with water-worn fingers, waiting.

  Narasimha

  Challenge #8: write a serious story about social justice without using first-person pronouns.

  There are two bathrooms: one for girls and one for boys.

  There are two sports teams: one for men and one for women.

  Everywhere (s)he looks it's the same. Changing rooms, clothing styles, shoe sizes, polite forms of address, even job descriptions: "Seeking a woman or man who can..."

  The trouble with breaking things down into categories, Josef(ina) muses as (s)he regards the signs, is that doing so introduces loopholes that exclude outliers. There's no help for it; (s)he'll have to hold it in.

  Into the Deep

  Lena was playing in the forest when she heard the call.

  It sounded like singing, or maybe weeping. It was one of the most beautiful sounds she had ever heard. It slithered through the trees like silver, or crystals, or stars: a melody she knew at once, as though it were engraved in her heart, although she couldn't think where she might have heard it before. She had certainly never heard the beautiful voice before. She would remember it if she had; she was sure of that.

  She followed the voice as though it were a thread, or a veil, a thing she could pick up and roll into a ball as she traced it to its source. It led her away from the path, over hills and flowers and babbling brooks, through trees and over meadows. It led her to a dark place in the forest where everything was green and wet and mossy and mushrooms sprouted from the trees and from the ground. It led her downwards, into a cave, into darkness.

  She remembered to be afraid, then, for a moment. Not of the voice - how could a thing that sounded so lovely ever hurt her? - but of the darkness itself: what if she stumbled? What if she fell?

  She laid a hand on the crumbly wall of the cave and hesitated, looking down at the darkness before her and then back at the green-gold sunlight she had left behind.

  Then the song called more strongly - and she turned back to find the air filled with tiny lights, green-white like fireflies, floating all around her and lighting her path. Entranced, Lena forgot her fear and stepped down into the cave.

  The song led her down - down - deep into the earth, deep below the forest, down deep where sunlight never reached. And at last she saw something else there, in the darkness, something that wasn't a floating light. She stopped short, peering at it.

  It was a woman she saw, long and thin, with long, thin arms and long, thin fingers and long, thin hair. She
looked silver-white under the little floating lights, and she was curled up in the darkness. She was singing or weeping or both: hers was the beautiful voice, and hers was the beautiful melody that had called Lena to her.

  The song stopped, and Lena stood in silence, there in the darkness under the floating lights.

  And the woman unfolded - and unfolded - she was tall as a tree, and thin as a branch, and her long thin fingers were tipped in long sharp nails like claws.

  And her teeth - oh, they were as long and thin as the rest of her.

  Lena never saw the sunlight again.

  Awakening

  Challenge #9: write a science fiction story featuring at least one non-human character; it must contain the phrase "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it."

  She had been sleeping for a thousand of her own years, curled tight in her pod as it soared through galaxies and nebulae and unending vacuum, past stars that burned brighter than souls and planets that were, somehow, each unique despite their infinite number. She was sealed tightly in her pod, and sleeping besides, but she saw the universe in her dreams as it streamed past her. She saw the tiny worlds all around her being born, and growing and living, and finally collapsing. She saw the glitter of moons and starfire and space-ice.

  At last her journey came to an end. Her pod had reached a planet that was green and brown and blue and white, all swirled with clouds, and she orbited it for only a few of its days before floating down into its atmosphere. Her descent was slow and careful, and soon the world's own winds carried her to her landing-place and set her gently down.

  It was a good place: there was rich soil all around her, heavy with wet, and the world's sun shone bright onto her pod; she could draw power from both. Her waking would take a few days. Only when she had fully recharged would the pod open.

  But it was opened from the outside before that, before she was ready.

  The native fauna had found her pod and wrested it from its landing-place. She was carried away from the sun and the soil, to a hard unforgiving surface and a dim narrow-spectrum light from which she could draw but little power.