Page 22 of Monsters After Dark

In the Burn Garden

Isoellen

The sun heated Binda’s head and back until she couldn’t take another moment of it. Dragging her hoe behind her, she sought the shade of the orchard. There was always a restless little wind waiting for her under the knotted limbs of the old cherry tree.

If anyone knew Binda’s vegetables and fruit came from this forbidden bit of land, they’d never eat another thing she brought to barter.Good lord above and below, it was just soil and sky with a bit of weirdness thrown in. And after the Fall, most places and people had at least a little weirdness attached to them. When it came to eating and profit, Binda had no time for town superstition. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

The moment she sat under her favorite tree, she pulled her lunch bag into her lap, and lifted the hair off her neck. She felt that blessed air. They’d made friends, they had. Little tendrils of it played over her cheeks, the sweat on her brow, and down her front. She laughed at the fancy thought that the wind was as gentle as a lover’s fingers. Not that she knew too much about that.

Undoing the string she’d used to replace the buttons on her top, she opened her shirt. Beneath was a make-shift bra and back support system she created herself, a side-laced get-up of salvaged bands and straps. Life as a gardener was hard work. Doing it all on her own gave new meaning to the word backbreaking.

The air felt so good on her neck that she released the straps of her bra, shucked her boots, stockings, pantaloons, and gathered her skirt up to her waist. Half-naked and exposed, Binda cooled quickly.

Wouldn’t all the married ladies of Main Street have a fit if they saw her now? But they wouldn’t. Not here. And that, really, was the whole point.

At the height of the burn season, the sun forced Binda to take her breaks in the middle of the day—the heat was just too much. She’d learned two years ago that in spring and fall she could work on through the afternoon, but she’d pass out if she kept going during this time of year.

Her sack held the light lunch of a poor woman—a jar of last year’s strawberry jam, bread, hard cheese, and black bean crackers. There was half a skin of water and a full bottle of her own brand of bad homemade wine.

It was quiet here. Chewing the crackers made a racket in her head. Birds and critters were as touchy about this out-of-the-way-place as people were. Did the energy here feel different, or were the birds as superstitious as the town in places where thousands of people burned to ash in clouds of white phosphorus?

Everyone said this was not a good place.

All those people who died in a single attack during the chaos of the Fall, turned to fertilizer, which plumped her pumpkins and tomatoes twice the size of anyone else’s.

That horrific day left behind few heroes. But it wasn’t the only history this place carried. There was more. Binda found things daily in the garden, lost things from ages past, with no business finding their way to sunlight. Bright enameled pottery, coins, buckles, and rusted metal, time-nibbled bits like the knife blades John Blacksmith crafted in town, piled against the trunk of another old tree nearby. The mound got bigger every day. The lack of ready-made goods now had returned the craft of shaping iron to popularity, but Binda should not be finding ancient look a-likes in her garden.

When Binda went to drink more water, the skin was empty. Meal finished, she grabbed the wine as lunch’s finale. It would make her sleepy and a nap was not a bad idea. Wind tugged her hair free of the loose tie on top of her head and played with it, spreading it out over her shoulders. Her newest discovery from the garden winked at her in the dappled sun, asking for closer inspection. She discovered the undamaged green and black bottle under the leaves of her squash and cucumber plants that morning. The black scrolly designs around the neck and at the bottom looked like tarnished silver. John Blacksmith would barter free service on all her tools for silver like that.

Taking it in hand, she found the glass cold to the touch, a frigid chill against her fingertips. There was something inside, but liquid or dust, she couldn’t say. The weight of it moved in a slow ooze as she turned the treasure. In less than a minute, her hands hurt too much from the odd cold, so she covered them with her skirt and used the material to clean away the dirt.

Expecting to find a rotting cork stopper or a waxed-over seal, Binda noted the lid clamped down with a lever of more black metal fine detail work. The caps at the top and bottom created singular whorls and scroll-like elaborate cursive handwriting. It also sported a line of four metal hoops. Did it once have a strap to wear the bottle over a shoulder? The odd lid looked as if it was also missing a piece. A lock, perhaps.

She’d never seen anything like it.

Fingering the lid, she must have tripped a switch, because it popped open and made her jump. Binda would have laughed at her foolishness, but bright, ghastly red smoke and an exotic scent poured out of the thing.

She continued to hold the bottle for a second, in shock, inhaling smoke as it billowed out over her face and head. The smell wasn’t unpleasant, but that red color meant nothing good. Binda tossed the bottle and crab walked backwards, crashing into the tree behind her.

Fight or flight lost out to awe as smoke continued to pour out of the bottle straight up into the air. Instead of dispersing, it bubbled into a nightmare creature. Head, shoulders, wings, and legs spread wide in aggression.

A too-big head and wide mane of black curls emerged first from the red smoke. Then a face appeared—a snarling animal muzzle with massive canine teeth above a neck and shoulders thicker than that bull of a man John Blacksmith, the strongest man Binda knew. Dark colored skin stood out in sharp relief against the garish smoke, shades of ebony and onyx highlighted poisonous green against billowing red. The smoke stayed tight, sinking into the body it created. Wings appeared to go with the predator head, a muscled torso and, last, an upright, aroused cock.

“Lords above and below. Oh, hells no! It always comes to that with you males, doesn’t it?” Binda twisted to escape the naked monster from the bottle. Now would be a good time to run, but the wind no longer teased her—it became her enemy.

Invisible air wrapped around her wrists and roped them over her head into the bark of the decrepit cherry tree. This was why people avoided places attached to stories of the weird and the tragic. But it was too late now.

“I know who I am. You have no power over me, monster,” she shouted at the thing.

Her will was her greatest weapon. Binda was not fool enough to come garden in the bright burn like this without it.

The dense smoke continued to sink into the naked body of the male, surely some sort of inhuman creature from the time of the Fall. She lacked the education to name his type or origins. He looked like parts of things put together from an insane imagination. Standing very tall, he was too strange to be born in any natural way from the body of a woman, but still passionately elemental and fully, fiercely alive.

Stretching arms and wings open under the afternoon sky, he greeted Binda with a dramatic roar. The tree at her back trembled. Or maybe that was Binda.

It took four long-legged strides for him to tower over her. His cock stood out from his body, right there, waving a crude hello. She’d laugh at it if the male connected to it was even a smidge less frightening. An aroused cock always looked silly, but Binda held her tongue. The hard body of the male and his dangerous intensity left no air for humor. His erection looked painful and urgent, dark-night blue at the crown and bruised purple down to the thick base where male hair curled above the heavy pendulum of his testicles.

And a tail. Of course he had a tail. Snaking forward, it brushed the bare inseam of her foot in a curious touch. She should have jerked away. Fought. Something.

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