Tales from the Wishing Well

Welcome to Tales from the Wishing Well, an experiment in cyber-funded creativity! Basically, in July 2008, I asked readers of my Livejournal to give me word prompts inspired by letters of the alphabet. With this set of 26 words, I am creating 26 works of art: either stories, poems, essays, or creative nonfiction sometimes accompanied by photography or handmade jewelry.

 

If you'd like to read along on Livejournal, friend Earthwalked and follow along! Or you can browse the stories with the links to the right or simply read through them by scrolling below.

 

If you like what you read, think of this as me busking in CyberPark: throw me a dollar or two if you consider it worthy!

 

 

 

divider

 

In Extremis

Part I

A Tale from the Wishing Well

 

by Deborah J. Brannon

 

Marshall tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Abaddon.

 

They only come in winter or summer. In extremis, by extremes. In summer, my door opens upon Baghdad alleys, in dunes southwest of Mut, upon the infernal wastes of Ifrin and the trackless breadth of Death Valley. In winter, penitents must come through Moscow sewers, walk leagues north of Helsinki, dig through snows in the Ice Queen's realm, or steer fifth star to the right and straight on till morning toward the Antarctic.

 

They always know the ordeals, the way. They find the broken-latched door in shadows and water and snows and collapsing waves of heat. Though iron or wood, banded in silver or leather, it always bears my sigil: the staring hollow eye and the insatiable locust splayed across the pupil. The sigil is a chain, burned into my flesh as well, an invisible connection that means the door will always lead to me.

 

No matter where I run to, in this world or any other, they will always find me with their blazing eyes and their scrabbling hands. So full of burning guilt and freezing desire, they will never let me forget why it must be me.

 

Abaddon. Title, name, and purpose.

 

If they come to me with their blood frozen, they must walk down a corridor of fire: walls of flame and floor of coals. If in summer with the heat rising in waves from their skin, they must swim a freezing and unfathomable pool. The corridor is twenty cubits and there are no short cuts. The entrance to my temple abuses flesh beyond endurance, burning with bitter cold or unforgiving heat.

 

Yet after such rigorous travel, my penitents beg not for release but punishment. For age after age, I have provided. I have flayed skin already cracked beyond recognition. I have broken bodies to match the fractured foundations of their souls. I have done this and more until my fingernails are crimson with blood that will never fully wash away.

 

And always are they talking: not screaming or praying but pouring forth what has brought them to seek my ministrations, their sins and mistakes, horrors witnessed, dreams undone. At the last, they rattle their gratitude at being remade. Their words do not cease until I have punctured and cracked and peeled away their flesh and forms from them, so slowly: unfolding their bodies to the secret heart, their incessant tongues at last stilling as I regard what our labors have revealed. A delicate creature, small and new, with staring, hollow eyes. Their quiet and glowing beauty emerging from the wreck of blood and bone no longer moves me. I leave it on my doorstep for the Malakhim.

 

They come to the Lady of Locusts to be made hollow, deconstructed and made new. But I am full, so full, and I am tired of obliging them.

 

I have played the penitent before, mounted the ladder, wended the long way to Heaven on the heels of the Malakhim. Angels make climbing look effortless, but we earthbound demonkin grow fond of bodies with muscles that bunch and strain and skins that run with effort.

 

Thus limp and winded, I have thrown myself upon the mercies of my celestial counterparts, begging to be made new. Must I serve, only, and receive no surcease? Could not the tool of absolution be herself briefly absolved? The black eyes of my brothers and sisters have gazed at me, bowed and trembling, with blood-stained hands and feet. Their gaze has swept over my taught skin, sallow by their own sacred glow. Their hands have twitched toward my ravaged wings, feathers tattered and torn through the passion of my calling and finally, with pitiless compassion, they have made me new.

 

Yet they would never let me speak: my words crowded behind my teeth, stymied by their holy hands that bid my words not profane such a sacred place. Though their hands were gentle and cleansed my skin, clearing away the sweat and blood; though their breath was refreshing, summoning new feathers from my beleaguered wings; though they clothed me in glorious raiment, they denied me further speech. So I learned that Abaddon's eyes could grow wet as rain-washed rust and still she-- I-- could not cry.

 

I have descended the ladder, my skin once more golden, wings burnished, the only grooves in my body the brand of my sigil. I have once more shone as the rising sun and dazzled my penitents in their grief, until such beauty reflected in supplicating eyes has seemed a mockery: so lovely and unmoved a visage is unseemly with such bloated turmoil roiling inside.

 

When I can take no more, when I have laid more perfect beings on my doorstep and my hands still wash clean, I have taken my keys from the hook in the pantry, stepped over the ravaged body that would dissolve at dawn, and knelt in the center of my inner sanctum. I have inserted the key of brass and bone into smooth stone, opened the door that revealed itself a moment later, and descended into Hell.

 

Shining and clean, I have thrown myself upon the cruelties of my infernal counterparts, begging to be made broken. Must I serve, only, and receive no surcease? Could not the tool of absolution be herself briefly absolved? I have stared into the yellow eyes of my brothers and sisters, inclined my head at their twisted visages and clenching claws. They have smiled, sadly and terribly and, with passionless pity, they have made me broken.

 

Yet their ministrations are so severe that I could not speak: my screams burst forth as they execute tortures honed to breathtaking perfection by eons of practice. They begin with finessed and delicate inflictions of pain, moving through their repertoire until blunt and unsophisticated methods are all that's left to them. I scream until I whisper and still I cannot cry.

 

At least, in the end, I have been slightly emptier and so I have endured.

 

I have repeated this cycle many times: each time, there have been less years in between revolutions. Until now. My last penitent found me gasping, gutted and bleeding on my temple floor, the outline of the door to hell still flickering redly as I pulled forth the key and flung it across the temple. I hadn't expected another so soon, and gazed at him with my wet, red eyes, waiting for my ruptured flesh and broken bones to knit.

 

“What have you done?” He spoke to me; not at me, not begging, but to me, asking a solicitous question. “I thought... to me.” He finished lamely, incoherently.

“I hurt,” I croak. “Not this, but--” I gesture to my chest, then my eyes, as full as his with horrors witnessed and dreams undone.

 

He kneels beside me, takes my hand. He gazes at me wordlessly, mindlessly stroking the flesh over my sigil, one of the only places not bleeding. Looking into his eyes, I see room enough for me: something breaks and I begin to speak. My temple, always echoing with the words and deeds of others, echoes at least with mine until, with disbelief, I found myself spent and my penitent touching my face. He pulls his fingers away wet with my tears.

 

“Now you are hollow, lady.”

 

“Now I am,” I agreed. I show him how thankful I am in my new understanding: I take him into my arms and lovingly making him hollow.

 

 

Join in the discussion of this story here or here.

 

Return to the top of the page.

 

divider

 

 

The Brotherhood of Applied Sciences

A Tale from the Wishing Well

 

by Deborah J. Brannon


Douglas tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Brothers.


The men were brilliant, marvels and masters of modern science. All the papers would say so, would hail them as the conquerors of death and enhancers of life. Or would have done, if they'd ever heard of Dr. Henry Sexton and Dr. Adam Valincourt. The papers never would hear a whisper, though, and death would continue unchecked, blithely harvesting each life in its time.


Each life, that is, except for two.


Thanks to selling off some less advanced technology, Sexton and Valincourt had extensive financial holdings, a fully automated scientific facility, and a highly paid, tightly controlled security force. They returned to this facility every 60 years (a most sensibly-devised half life, given the times), downloading themselves into carefully engineered 25-year-old bodies which aged but slowly and bore faces of fictional descendants.


Each 60 years, their ritual was the same:


Once they finished with the less flattering conventions of their regular resurrections-- coughing up fluid, staggering about, eventually attending to hygiene and dress-- they met in a small, blue-painted room featuring a single mahogany table and two wing-backed chairs. On the table waited a tray bearing a decanter of aged brandy and two crystal glasses, carefully prepared by a discreet servant with financially-controlled muteness.


They greeted each other, sat, and talked about life.


At first, the previously sedentary scientists indulged themselves in wildly adventurous lives, throwing themselves into rare game hunting, extreme sports, and the fine art of womanizing. Sometimes, two lives might go by in such blazes of glory, or they might alternate with a more staid existence, focusing on mastering a musical instrument or building a family.


Henry was the first to degenerate: achieving things honestly or even dishonestly became quite passe. In a pique of boredom during his fourth life, he casually pushed his maid down the stars and clattered after her to see what happened. She died: quickly, but somewhat less than instantly. The only thrill for him from that point forward was in the destruction, dissolution: he flirted with the very facet of humanity he had rejected, becoming a connoisseur of the inflictions of pain. He was an addict whose only fix was that one ephemeral moment of fading consciousness in sentient eyes.


Apart from an initial argument borne of revulsion, Adam held his tongue and listened with endearing fascination to each of Henry's reports. He appreciated his associate's unapologetic brutality, the thoroughness with which he assessed and mastered the area of human pain and endurance.


“Have you ever thought about practicing your arts on me?” Adam asked suddenly, interrupting the third litany of Henry's hobby. They were both approximately 350 years old.


“What, old boy?” Henry's reply was quick, accompanied by a hearty chuckle, but his eyes glittered at Adam shrewdly. “You're too wily for me to catch! Besides, the one thing I couldn't abide is loneliness.”


“I feel compelled to point out that you could, at great cost to your time and finances, organize for someone else to resurrect at your side each generation.”


“Pah! And what would I do with a wet-behind-the-ears mate who's no match to our genius? Our unique understanding measured out in six lifetimes upon this globe? Say no more, Adam, my boy, for I'll never part from you.” Quite pleased with this outburst of his own sentimentality, Henry raised his glass in a silent toast. His slender partner, bristling at the sideburns in his current incarnation, gave him a smile at last.


“Loneliness is, in fact, the only thing I'm still curious about,” Adam commented after they both drank, and so their conversation continued.


In their seventh lives, Adam quietly returned to being a research scientist. Very quietly: he disappeared from the public, never published, and kept his activities to himself. In fact, unbeknownst to Henry, he never left their facility. He spent 60 years improving their cloning technology, set on evolving to the next level of their project: longer half-lives, slower aging, and improved bodies.


On the date of their next meeting, Adam downloaded as usual, but into one of his new and improved vessels. He met Henry in the blue-painted room, where they got down to the serious business of drinking and debriefing.


After a litany that would leave a war crimes tribunal unconscious with horror, Henry stared moodily into his glass and muttered to the amber-colored liquid: “Sometimes I just don't remember what a life's for anymore.”


“You have become the monster that cannot die,” volunteered Adam, sipping carefully at his own drink. Even after 400 years, Henry hadn't learned his limitations regarding alcohol. He was well into his cups.


“That's right, Adam, my fella! The monster that cannot die! And what use all this horror I've inflicted on my sweet subjects, all this food I've served up to Master Death-- what use if I do not join him at banquet?”


“Now you want a normal life?”


“A normal life! Pah! I want such a DEATH-- an orgy of destruction fit for raging Bacchus, a pile of corpses to summon Death, my love, a pile of corpses at the END of a - a long road of corpses and only then for my spark to be snuffed out. No resurrection, no more, my death at my hand...” A froth of spittle hung from his lips and he stared blearily at Adam. “But you, my boy, I would never leave alone.”


“Well, Henry, I have had a long run with you. Besides, I'm ready to start my experiment in loneliness.”


Henry stared at Adam, his bright gaze dulled, trying to make sense of what he could. “Ready to end... the project?” He whispered, finally.


Adam gave him a smile, a nod.


Henry straightened up, setting his drink down with exaggerated care. His hands shook. “Right. To end so that there can be such an end!” He glanced anxiously at Adam. “Should we do it? The codes?”

 

Adam gave him an encouraging smile once more, helped Henry rise, and steered him helpfully to their holding rooms. They stopped first at Adam's: he entered a seven digit code, all lights turned red, and a lysing agent was injected into the preservative fluids embalming his remaining stock of clones. They continued to Henry's, where he bit his lip, but stubbornly punched in his own code with a soul-deep sigh. They did not proceed for him to see that a third room had been converted to a new clone repository.


They returned to the blue-painted room, where an antique handgun rested in place of the decanter of brandy. Adam entered ahead of Henry, crossing to the table.


“And now we complete our lives, eh, Adam? What a blaze of glory!”


“Yes, you're all done here, Henry,” Adam said, turning around.


“I'm all--?” A loud report punctuated Henry's words before he could finish his own statement.


Done, Adam set the gun down, thoughtfully. “I begin my experiment in loneliness now.”


Join in the discussion of this story here.

 

Return to the top of the page.

 

divider

 

 

Our Lady of Crows

A Tale from the Wishing Well

 

by Deborah J. Brannon

 

Mary tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Crow.

 

Inverted feathers, black to white slip sideways through a sky, ash-grey and breathless, all stopped-- the feathers explode in a shower of pale dust. A shadow clutches a burning brand and bears it earthward.

 

They say Crow stole light for us all, burned black when he set it in the sky. They do not say he was not alone or that his feathers were the color of starlight. His mate was the color of burnished gold in a westering sun, and it was her keen mind that prompted the act: stealing fire from the gods.

 

Some women remember the true tale: the women of dawn, with dew on their lips; the women of noon, with skin scorched umber; the women of midnight with eyes full of stars. These women of moment, perfect clarity, remember still how two crows took off in the nothing-dark, winged in tandem, together tamed the spark of life, and how it was she who first grasped the glittering brand.

 

Our Lady of Crows flew far and fast, knowing she burned. Her feathers flashed with coruscating light:

the burnished gold crackled black, then greyed as the light liberated her heart. She tossed the fire to her mate then with the last of her free strength. Her eyes burned liquid gold and she exploded in flowing light and ashes.

Crow returned, burned black and dour, sad but proud. The others hailed him for his genius and sacrifice and offered to him a kingly feast. Yet he turned away from all foods except those closest to death and always ate first the glassy eyes, hoping to see his Lady on the other side.

But those women who remember the true tale know she is not there.

 

The women of dawn remember how her ashes drifted on the wind in the light of that first day, eddying in patterns before coming to rest in a hollow of verdant green and new flowers, saturated with dew. They remember how her ashes were quick, not dead.

 

The women of noon remember how the ashes shimmered in the midday heat, how a long rain filled the hollow with water, drowning the plants and flowers and drumming the ashes into the hot baked earth. They remember how her ashes bore pressure without disintegration.

 

The women of midnight remember how starlight reflected on the pool of water and how a woman rose, gasping, out of the hollow: some say she was black as night, some as golden as the sun, some as pale as starlight. They all remember her as a child of the sky and earth, a new thing touched by fire.

 

Thus rose Our Lady of Crows, who still walks among us with eyes black as the void between worlds: a reminder that light cannot exist without the darkness. Her mate's brethren know her not, though she favors them. But we women of moment, tracing the tangled skein of our lives back to burning feathers, stolen light, and a hollow at midnight: we remember, and honor.

 

Join in the discussion of this story here.

 

Return to the top of the page.

 

divider

 

Taliaferro's Angel


Mortal Desires
A Poem from the Wishing Well

by Deborah J. Brannon



Rabbit tossed a coin into the well, and upon this coin was inscribed: Desire.

"I seek mercy! I seek absolution!"
I offer neither.
"I seek love... I seek peace..."
I can be both.
"I fear you! will run!"
I will follow.
"I am weary. I await you!"
I will embrace you.
"I seek passion; I seek... feeling."
I am cold.
"In darkness, there is peace? In coldness, there is love?"
I am here for you.
"What do you want from me?"
Only you.

Only


You.

 

Join in the discussion of this poem here.

 

Return to the top of the page.

 

divider