Though we both knew Slavik’s will would have to be done, I found myself saying, “The spirits have spoken to me.”
Irina stood up, her façade of bravery frailer by each moment. Prince Ilja flicked his hand, to signal his warriors to keep their hands off their axes and swords, to listen.
I said, “King Slavik has summoned me to serve him in the after life.”
The crowd gasped, terrified of the thought of losing me. Even as stone-faced as the warrior’s were, their raised brows and low muttering displayed their surprise.
Prince Ilja took a deep breath of relief. “So be it.”
The slaves sealed the entrance behind us with rocks and mortar. They sang an ancient hymn, asked the past kings to welcome Slavik to their ranks. I led Irina deeper into the mound, as I didn’t want the slaves to see even a flicker of my fear.
Despite the torches lining the corridor, the way into the heart of the kurgan was dim. The smell of sawed wood and beaten soil grew stronger with each chamber passed. The sacrificial horses snorted, distressed by the confinement. The dogs barked.
We spoke not a word as we left behind the room where mead and smoke waited to intoxicate Slavik’s spirit. We trailed down past the drawn swords and polished shields. The air turned stale before we reached the huge chamber, the heart of the kurgan.
Slavik’s embalmed body lay on the deck of his dragon-necked longship. He clutched a huge claymore with a bear shaped pommel. His braided hair formed an intricate web around his head that his rage-dented crown adorned. His muscular chest was bare, a huge bear tattoo covering each side of his body. Even dead, he looked just as hard a man as he’d been in life.
Irina stared at her father’s body, calm and composed. “How long do we have?”
I glanced at the torches that gave an eerie haze to the chamber. Their flames would die when we ran out of air.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
Irina drew me in, placed her palms on my cheeks, then kissed me, right there next to her father’s body.
We got lost in each other and forgot all else. In the end, there was nothing left for us but the one last dream to share.
When I awoke, I wasn’t in the kurgan, but under the bluest of skies. Rolling hills spread around me as far as the eye could see. Wind played in the tall grass. I recognized the place.
I had entered the after life.
My relief, however, turned to panic as I realized that I was alone, that I no longer held Irina in my embrace. I struggled up, my heart jolting in dread. If Irina had died first, if Slavik had been waiting for us, if he had taken her…
Pale shapes formed at the edge of my vision, twisting in the air. I turned around, around, still not seeing what they were or where they lurked. I feared they were Slavik’s bears.
I curled my hands into fists, bared my teeth. I would fight the bears, though they’d tear me out of existence. I would face their fangs and claws. I would—
“Sage?” Irina’s voice came to me, faint and mellow. The shapes settled to solid forms. They didn’t belong to Slavik’s bears, but two fine steeds. Irina’s spirit horses. A third smaller shape trotted to join them. My fox.
Irina sauntered to me, horses following at her both sides. The lush grass bent in the gentle breeze, under her feet. The cloudless sky above bore no sign of approaching storm. “Do you feel it?”
I took hold of her hand, just to make sure she was real. She was. “Slavik’s curse is gone.”
“He will come for us anytime now,” Irina said, accepting the situation as it was. She reached out to touch the closest spirit horse. “My companions, I’m sorry you’ll have to face his fury.”
But now that the curse was gone, Slavik had lost his link to the lands of the living. He could haunt our people no longer. An idea started to form in my mind.
A hollow grunt tore the sky apart, calling forth clouds and thunder. The sound gnawed its way towards us. Clouds spread to stain the sky, ruin the calm.
“Slavik’s bears,” Irina said. Her horses tossed their heads. My fox started to growl.
“Irina…” I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of the idea before. We didn’t actually need to fight Slavik, at least not today. His bears were malicious, but quite slow in their movement. And the spirit world was vast. Endless.
“How fast are your horses?” I asked.
Irina turned to face me, a smile budding on her lips. “The fastest.”
© 2013 Leena Likitalo
Leena Likitalo is from Finland, the land of thousands of lakes and at least as many untold tales. Leena draws her inspiration from years spent on horseback and at the bottom of chilly pools playing underwater rugby. Additionally, she’s keen on traveling to faraway places and spending all her money on chocolate and coffee. Her fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, WeirdFictionReview.com, and Abyss&Apex. She earns her living by breaking computer games.
How did you come up with “The Horses Under Her Skin? What stages did you go through in the process of getting the idea down?
First, as always, there was a pile of completely unrelated ideas: transformations in a sauna, tattooed spirit animals, love that couldn’t and shouldn’t be. For a long time, the story was hanging just out of my reach, waiting for the right characters to step forth. Then, last summer, a friend of mine sent me a link about a grave find in Siberia. The pieces clicked together so forcefully, that I spent the next two days typing furiously to bring to life The Horses Under Her Skin. I loved the story blindly well before its current incarnation - I owe huge thanks for D and D for helping me to bring the story to its full potential.
Ultimately, “The Horses Under Her Skin,” is a love story. What themes or inspirations do you find yourself considering or returning to in your work?
I guess you could call me an emotion-driven writer. I’m a sucker for beautiful tragedies and plots that unravel to reveal subplots.
My inspirations come usually in the form of strong emotions. Then I wait for the right characters to shell around the emotions. Sometimes, I’m fascinated by a specific setting(such as kurgans in bronze-age Siberia), but have to wait for a long time for the rest of the story. Patience, patience…
Your first English language short story publication was in the last issue of Weird Tales that was edited by Ann Vandermeer. How exciting was the experience?
Exhilarating! I had been writing in English for only a few months when I heard that the Vandermeers was coming to Finland. I couldn’t believe my luck when I found out that I could actually participate in their workshop. What topped all my expectations was that the story I wrote in the workshop became my first ever sale. I’m very fortunate to have met such super encouraging people as Ann and Jeff.
Why write? Surely there are so many other, far easier, things you could be doing?
Believe it or not, I ask the same question all the time. Because English is not my native language, every time I want to write about a new topic, I first have to study the related vocabulary. Also, I never know for sure if my sentences are grammatically sound or not. Which makes writing double-challenging. Which makes me love it even more.
But concerning writing, I don’t think that I actually have a choice. Stories come to me and demand to be told. Often the characters blatantly take over and finish the story without asking my opinion. And because I’m thus privileged, I write.
What are you working on at the moment? Where can our readers find more Leena Likitalo?
I’m happy to tell that I’ve recently finished the first part of my YA fantasy trilogy. Silverwing tells the tale of an innocently self-centered lady who, after a scandalous engagement lasting only one night, is willing to do anything to regain her social standing. Lots of catfights and dark twists ensue.
While I’m knee-deep in the query process, I ease my nerves by writing short stories. After polishing, polishing, and polishing a full-length novel, short stories feel blessedly easy to work with. My short stories Watcher and Bird in a Cage can also be read online.
Sam knew Madeline’s flushed cheeks and wide, starry eyes had nothing to do with him. As he walked her home, she stared past him and prattled about how funny her boss had been at dinner. About how nice he looked in that suit. About how he was so great.
Sam knew her boss was great. He was perfect, in fact. He was everything Sam was not. But she didn’t have to go on and on about it. It was their date after all. Even if it had been a company dinner.
They stopped at a crosswalk and waited for the light. He went to kiss her; she turned her head so his lips brushed her cheek.
“I’m going to be laughing about that story he told for days,” she said. “Wasn’t that crazy?”
“I was too embarrassed to notice,” he said. “You clearly had too much to drink. You were flirting with him all night. I understand now why you dressed like that. You obviously wanted to show your boss your boobs.”
Sam regretted the words the moment he said them. They would have to go in the Box.
But the Box and the typewriter were back in his condo. He would have to write the words down, for now, in the little notebook he always carried for just this purpose.
Sam was so focused on scribbling down the words that he didn’t hear what Madeline said in response. When he looked up, Madeline was storming down the street, as fast as she could go in heels. He shrugged. It looked arrogant, he supposed, or just weird, to take notes at a time like that. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting his mistake down now, word for word, so the Box could take care of it. So that the Box could make it as if it never had happened.
He felt sorry for people without Boxes. How horrible, to be forced to live with the consequences of every word they spoke.
As soon as he got home to his condo, Sam pulled the case down from the shelf.
He’d tried to clean the typewriter case once years before, soon after he’d found it in his father’s apartment, the day after his father’s funeral. Sam had only been a teenager but the job of clearing out his father’s junk fell to him because no one else in the family would have anything to do with his dad, even after death. The cleaning hadn’t made much difference to the case’s surface, worn in places, coated with grime in others.
He lifted the lid. Inside, there were two worn felt compartments. The smaller compartment held the Box, cheap grey painted metal about the size of a small paperback. He lifted it out. Bits of paper peeked out from under the lid, as if they were trying to get out.
Sam pulled the little typewriter out of the larger compartment. It was gorgeous in gleaming aluminum, the moon-faced keys fanning out into the air. He flipped the little space bar down, checked the ink roller, put a fresh sheet of paper in.
It typed beautifully, so long as Sam provided it with a fresh ink roller from time to time. Unfortunately, no one made rollers for a century-old Blickensderfer 6 anymore. So Sam used rollers from printing calculators. He had stockpiled enough to keep him typing and out of trouble for the rest of his life.
Sam pulled out his notebook and carefully, carefully typed in what he’d said to Madeline. The black rubber typewheel bobbed and dipped. He was a hunt-and-peck typist even on a normal keyboard, and the Blickensderfer’s keys were in odd positions. But he had to use this typewriter. The Box wouldn’t work otherwise.
When Sam had finished, he pulled the sheet out and read it over, twice.
I was too embarrassed to notice. You clearly had too much to drink. You were flirting with him all night. I understand now why you dressed like that. You obviously wanted to show your boss your boobs.
He cringed as he read. But there was no point on dwelling on it. Once he put the words in the Box, nobody remembered that they’d ever been uttered – not even Sam.
With long black scissors he snick-snicked along the grain of the paper, trimming it to the typed words to save space, and then rolled the strip into a little cylinder.
Biting his lip, Sam opened the Box just a crack, quickly and gingerly, as he always did. Merely opening the lid wasn’t enough to free the memories but it was enough to engulf him in a miasma of regret and put a bitter taste in his mouth. He slipped the disc in against tightly packed strips of rolled paper and let the lid drop down.
It wouldn’t quite close. He pressed down on the lid but there were too many memories.
How did that happen? Could he have possibly needed to use it that many times?
There must be some that could come out. Some youthful mistakes – getting the name of a writer or musician wrong in conversation at a party, maybe. An off-color joke or two. Surely there were some he could live with, now that years had passed. At least enough to free up some space.
But which ones? He couldn’t read any of them without taking them out and remembering.
He rooted around a little, pulled out a grimy wad. It looked old.
The memory came back like a punch as he unrolled the strip of paper. He didn’t even need to read the words. He remembered what it had felt like, to make nasty jokes with the cool kids about his teacher’s artificial leg, then to turn to see the teacher – his favorite teacher – standing behind him. He furled up the memory and thrust it back in the Box, deep.
Sam tried another. Instantly, another memory blinked back: The time he’d told his mother he held her responsible for his father’s death. He winced and shoved it back in.
He poured himself a shot of whiskey and decided to grab a few at random, and learn to live with them whatever they were.
Out they came, off the top. Bang, bang, bang, memory upon memory. The pain they caused as they came out was almost physical, in his gut.
He’d quit his job, a few months back. Jesus, what had he been thinking?
He’d got in an argument with his neighbor, said some nasty things, and at the end of it, called his neighbor a fag. He’d never used that word in his life. Or so he had thought.
Apparently, he had broken up with Madeline several times, in ugly ways, even though they’d only been dating a few months.
He pictured Madeline, back in her apartment now, sniffling perhaps over the latest fight, suddenly remembering worse moments as they came out of the Box.
He stared at the Box for a few minutes.
Which course was the least painful for everyone, now?
Sam put the newest regret, his insult to Madeline, carefully down on his writing desk. He stuffed the rest back in and closed the lid.
As the memories themselves faded, he could not forget the thought that flashed across his mind once the lid was closed: Jesus Christ, I’m a bit of an asshole.
Sam paced, and downed his whiskey. He leaned against the condo’s plate-glass seventh-storey window, staring at the city lights.
He’d make room for tonight’s bad memory, but that would be the last. He would do that for Madeline, because he never would have inflicted those words on her if he hadn’t had the option of erasing them.
Sam fished a memory out from the bottom. Before he took his hand out, he told himself, no matter what this is, so long as it’s better than what I said to Madeline, I’ll live with it.
He unrolled it.
You never learn, do you, you little prick? You’re selfish and a coward and I’m ashamed of you.
Sam remembered those words, all right. But he didn’t say them. His father did.
Sam was 14 at the time, on one of his weekend visits to his dad. For once, his dad remembered to pick him up. They went to the park so Sam could shoot hoops and Sam tormented a younger kid, to show off.
His dad yelled, and it hurt. All those years Sam had put up with his dad, had defended him to his mom and to everyone else. That day, however, he saw the truth. He saw his dad was a bastard.
Strangely, right after, Sam forgot his dad’s words entirely. He went back to thinking his dad was just kind of a screw-up with a well-hidden heart of gold.
A few days later, his mom told him his dad had died, and told him he could go to the funeral if he wanted. The next day he’d discovered the Box, in his
dad’s place. He’d opened it and found the strip of paper in the bottom, with those words on it. Sam remembered, then, that his dad had said them. Angry tears in his eyes, the younger Sam had thrust the piece of paper back in. And he’d forgotten what it said, again. Instantly.
That was the moment he understood that his father’s typewriter, and the funny Box that went with it, had a special power. That was the moment it began.
Sam smoothed out the strip of paper on his desk.
All these years Sam told himself he used the Box to make himself a better person, the way an artist uses an eraser. Deleting the worst of himself. But he was wrong. He was a walking lie: a man with bits of his own past excised, cut out with long black scissors. He was not the person he thought he was.
You never learn, his dad had said.