Introduction

It’s been a hard road these last few weeks. My beloved cat Nemo died suddenly. The election…happened. I had to shelve a book. But I’m fighting back, because all we can do in this wild world is keep going.

Today I bring you a short story I wrote about a woman fighting to escape the oppressive system she’s in. Fighting against death and horror. I hope you enjoy it.

The Magpie God

CW: blood, murder

#

It was an honor, to become a Death.

An honor bestowed only on the deserving, whatever that means. 

An honor I had never wanted.

#

“Mimic,” called the High Doctor. “Mimic, are you paying attention?”

I was not, but I told him that I was, and I stood back in my row. Really, I was watching everything else: the rain pattering against the lead glass windows; the tree branches, scratch-scratching at the walls; and a magpie, sheltering in the outer window frame, its white ruff slicked down with wet.

“Mimic!”

“Yes, High Doctor,” I said quickly. Shit, I was really going to get it this time. But the High Doctor only cocked his head and looked—well, it was difficult to tell how he looked through the glass eyes of his plague mask, but something about his posture, his slumped shoulders, looked sad.

“Now,” said the High Doctor, returning to the chalkboard, “as I was saying, today is your last day in lessons. Each of you are now eligible to be a full-fledged Doctor, with every honor inherent to it.”

One of the servants brought around a basket full of glass vials. In each glass vial was a quantity of red liquid.

“This potion,” said the High Doctor, “will seal your connection with the power of the Doctors forever! This is not a light thing. It is why we take our oath. Repeat it, class.”

I mouthed the words along with my classmates.

“Take no life. Do no harm. Submit to the will of the universe. This and always.”

“This and always,” the High Doctor repeated. “Yes. Now, take a vial, and drink. You are Doctors in truth! Congratulations!”

And each of us, a vial in hand, pulled up our masks just enough that we could tip the potion into our mouths. A salty, metallic tang assaulted my tongue. I swallowed it down, eager to get rid of the taste. If I was supposed to feel some great power, some kinship with the universe, I didn’t. There was a lightness, yes, and a sense of change, but I did not feel less restless than before.

The High Doctor droned on, but I wasn’t listening. I was tapping my fingertips against the lead glass window, borrowing the attention of the magpie. He tapped his beak against the glass where my fingertips were, and for a moment, we were connected, he and I.

Until he flew away, into the lead-colored sky, where I could not follow.

#

We returned to the dormitories, my classmates and I, all the same marching in our long black robes and black plague masks and black-glass goggles.

One of the new-born Doctors sidled up to me. I knew by the feel of the ether changing that it was my friend, Memory. I hadn’t seen his face in a year. A pale boy with muddy eyes and a chipped front tooth. Simple. Beautiful.

“Mimic,” he said quietly. “What’s wrong? You seemed far away today.”

I smiled, with my lips at least. “You know me. My head is always in the clouds.”

He flicked me behind the ear. I giggled, genuinely this time. “Of course,” he said, “but today…today is special! Today we are Doctors!”

Doctors. It was an honor, of course, to have such power over life and death.

An honor I had never wanted. An honor forced upon me, like everything else in this godsforsaken world. Chosen for me before I knew what it was to choose.

But Memory had never thought the same. Memory had felt the vocation. Memory had been called.

He chuffed my chin. “What’s wrong, little flower? Your eyes are sad.”

I dropped my voice as low as I could while still being intelligible. This was not the kind of talk to be overheard. “I worry, Memory. I worry about the Death.”

He cocked his head, sweet and not understanding. “Oh, there are so many Doctors, Mimic. It is unlikely you’ll be a Death.”

“And what if I am? There’s still a chance!”

I could imagine that Memory’s face went grave and there was a reproof in his eyes. “If you are chosen, there is no need to worry. It is for the good of the people, for the good of all.”

“But what will happen to me?”

In my mind’s eye, the reproof softened. His smile, spreading his lips over his teeth, would be beatific. He took my hands and spread them out, like I was flying. “You will be a part of the universe. A part of everything.”

And for a second, I almost caught the tenor of his ecstasy. But too quickly, I remembered the magpie, trapped behind the glass, flying free only for himself.

#

What do Doctors do? We ferry the living and the dead to their respective worlds. Fate, she has decided the roads already. But only Doctors can move the souls along.

In that first day of doctoring, I feel something in my own soul break.

It is in the bleak brown eyes of a dark-skinned woman whose child lies slashed and bloody from a dog mauling, when I make the sign of Death’s god and place my black-gloved hand on his forehead.

It is in the hunger of the boy’s sister as she watches down the room where another Doctor pulls white hot life from the chest of a brown girl who had stopped breathing.

It is in the tenebrous pallor of a white woman who shrieks and shrieks for a man who died years ago; a woman who, by the graces of the Doctor, will live still longer in a world in which she has no part.

When we are called to rest for the day, sweat slicks the inside of my plague mask; it is a cone of condensation and fog. A cone of shame, because it hides my true expression from my patients.

Their expressions, I will not forget.

Their deaths, I will not forget. The impression of that little boy’s soul, cheerful and cornflower blue, will remain in my mind forever. That soul I shoved down into the netherworld like it was refuse for the eternities.

And his mother cried, and his sister yearned.

And tomorrow, I will do it all again.

#

When they came for the first Death, no one cried out. No one but me.

Memory was so serene, so ready. When the Takers tapped him on the shoulder and took him by the arms, he did not falter.

Not at first.

But I knew, knew what was happening to him, and I cried out, “Memory! Stop! You must stop them!” And I leapt across the floor towards him, but some of the Takers peeled off from their crew and wrested me by the arms. I am small and thin; I did not stand a chance, could not yank myself from their grip in time to save him.

It was something he saw in my eyes, I think. A darkness recognizing darkness. Because, at that moment, his placid expression shattered into confusion.

“Where am I going?” he asked. “What is happening?”

“You have been chosen,” said the Takers in unison. “You are the Death.”

And he had known that, but somehow beneath the tenor of wonder he caught one of fear. Drew the poison from my terrified eyes into himself, and let forth a riotous scream.

But the Takers were too strong. They wrestled him down the center of the room through the door, and then he was gone, and I went limp in the arms of my Takers, unable to move, unable to stop what was to come.

#

They locked us in our dormitory.

We sat each on our beds in silent contemplation, as we were supposed to do when a Death was chosen.

We waited. We waited.

Until a commotion in the courtyard drew us away from our beds. While we all gathered round the windows, the High Doctors in the temple courtyard raised Memory’s naked body up on a cross. He wore his plague mask and goggles still, so no one could see his eyes as they stabbed a spear into his side and let the blood rain down like so many garnets.

But we could hear his long, curdling scream.

One of the High Doctors came over with a basket and placed something small against the bleeding wound. It caught the light; glass. A vial.

He filled it, or she did, and then filled another, another, while Memory, alive, squirmed and screamed muffled screams.

I recalled it instantly. The vial of blood I’d drunk at initiation without care or thought, and only a little grimace from the salty iron taste. The blood that had made me a Doctor.

I sat in rage. Rage, rage against the dying of the light, Memory’s light, against its theft by so rapacious a god. Was this worth it? Had any of this been worth it, to gain the power we had?

And who had been the Death to grant my powers?

Another boy, like Memory, with a kind smile and a chipped front tooth, who believed wholeheartedly in the immense beauty of the universe?

I watched as his heart gave out, as he slumped over in death, and then one of the High Doctors ferried his soul to the netherworld, and it was over.

#

After that day, I did not struggle. I sent my souls to the netherworld, dredged some up into the light, and I spoke to no one except where necessity required it. I knew our work was important. Without Doctors, the souls would be caught forever in limbo. I knew that, and yet I doubted.

The other Doctors avoided me. They had not much cared for me when we were fledglings, and now that we were full Doctors and they had seen my insolence and insubordination, they were even less likely to haunt my steps.

My only friends were the magpies who nested outside the dormitory windows, chattering nonsense at me. I tried to teach them how to talk, to say things like “freedom” and “Memory” and “death.” Clever birds, they picked it all up instantly, and were soon known to be flying about the temple grounds, pedaling their mantras for all to hear.

I loved the magpies. They reminded me that even if I were trapped, at least my heart’s desires could be free.

They reminded me that I still had a heart to desire.

#

One month, one month.

No one cried out when they came for me.

No one cried but me, and my voice was quickly stifled behind a heavy hand.

No one cried, but everyone watched. Watched in neat rows of beds and bodies. Watched as they manhandled my struggling body towards the door.

I don’t know why I struggled. I had seen Memory struggle to no avail.

Perhaps it was the indomitable human spirit, that will to live I must still have even though it slumbered beneath a thick mat of self-loathing and doubt.

Only my body was not so indomitable, and I crunched inward on a punch to my gut and followed pliantly along, down corridors that had always been forbidden, towards a single, dark door.

#

My wrist was taken in soft hands, and I was gently pulled into the quiet, dark room wherein lay a pool of dark water below a ceiling open to the starry sky. My robe was stripped from me and I was pushed gently into the pool. I sunk, down, down, and almost thought I could keep going on forever into the blackness, but then strong hands fished me out and soaped up my hair with lavender and rosemary and harsh, bitter lye.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

The three silent women scrubbing and washing me did not respond.

“Please,” I begged. “This is a mistake. Let me go.”

They looked upon me with pitying smiles, and it was the smiles that undid me. They knew they had all the power here, and I was just a Death, a novice Doctor; I had no power to end them.

I was wrested slippery as an eel from the pool into a fluffy white robe, dried off, and then marched naked down another hallway. There was light at the end, so much light that I squinted. Just enough to see a High Doctor with an oily thumb rub a cross of myrrh over my forehead, then lines of frankincense across my collarbones, and a line of ambergris to my belly button. Heady with the scents, I stumbled forward, barely able to keep myself upright without the two servants on either side of me.

They marched me out into the courtyard, where bonfire light illuminated the scaffold for a wooden cross. I was too woozy to fight, even to think as they tied my limbs to the arms of the cross, tied my feet to its staff, and heaved me up into the air.

As they went about their preparations, ignoring me, my eyes and mind began to clear. That’s when the terror set in. What had happened? What had I done? How had I let them swindle me? Something in the oil, it had fucked with my will.

As I waited and watched and searched for a way out, a magpie alighted on my shoulder. Then another on my arm. Then another. Twelve of the birds at least taking me as their tree.

And they began to cackle.

“Freedom. Freedom. Death. Memory. Freedom. Death. Memory. Death.”

A cacophony that drew the notice of the High Doctors below. They shrouded their eyes from bird shit and waved their hands, as though their meek little movements could sway these magpies, these death birds come to carry my message.

One of the magpies pecked at my cheek and it was the pain I needed to wake myself.

I knew what I could do.

I drew into the part of me that helped the souls cross over, only this time, I twisted it and broke it apart until the power surged through me, until I glowed with it. And I chattered madly like a bird and ululated into the air.

The magpies ruffled their feathers, squawked. They could feel the coming storm. They understood their assignments.

They leapt into the air and divebombed the Head Doctors, shredding exposed flesh with their sharp beaks, then surging back up before they could be caught. One Head Doctor dropped the basket of vials; they shattered into starlight on the ground. Another stabbed their spear at a circling of magpies, and then from nowhere, another magpie attacked their hands with claws and drew gouts of blood. The High Doctor dropped the spear on impulse and, before it could reach the ground, a glut of magpies took it by their claws and flew it up the cross, to my outstretched hand.

More and more magpies flocked to the temple courtyard, and the Head Doctors struggled in vain to protect themselves from the onslaught. It was as if these magpies were not only magpies but fragments of my rage, so long held back, and, now loosed on the world, they devoured.

“What do you want!” called one of the Head Doctors. “We will give you anything!”

I clutched the spear in my hand. “You can give me nothing.”

And the magpies, they tore at my bonds until they shredded away from my wrists and ankles and torso. And just when I thought I’d fall straight off the cross, they clung to my sleeves, dug their bloody claws into my shoulders, and lifted me off with a strength no ordinary magpies possessed, landing me gently to the ground.

“Please,” said one of the Head Doctors on his knees, his glassy goggles broken by magpie beaks, “please do not leave us. Please do not forsake us. The ritual…we will choose someone else.”

“You’ll find a new way,” said I, animated with the possibility of it. The magpies perched on me, circled me, cawed and cackled around me. They were no ordinary magpies, no. These magpies were rage and magic. These magpies were memories.

And memories could wound.

“You’ll find a new way,” I repeated. And in my mind, I pictured what I needed.

The magpies spread out and dived claws-first at the eyes of the Head Doctors, at their throats, at their soft tissues. Shrieks filled the temple courtyard. Shrieks and the scent of blood and piss.

It wasn’t long before the chaos stopped, and the magpies returned to their woman, leaving gouged eyes and shredded throats behind them.

There was nothing left of Memory here, not even his real name. Nothing to go back for.

I looked up, towards the windows where the novice Doctors watched in horror and excitement. I raised a hand at them, and waved.

And then I turned around and headed out the entrance that led into the city. Where I would go from here, I didn’t know. But the magpies would follow me. And if the Temple tried to make another Death, well…

We would hunt.  

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