All Stories – Kenzie Leong's Creations

Flowers for the Pyre (4/4)

Ironically, dry firewood and kindling were among the last things Kaveh placed on and around the pyre.

“Careful!” Kaveh warned. “You’ll get splinters.”

Yin raised her eyebrow—her only one, since the left never grew back through the scar tissue. “I promise I’ve had worse,” she said, tucking the broken sticks beneath the larger branches of the nest. “We need some dry moss and grass—really you should have started with that before you built the rest. Have you never built a fire before?”

“It’s been centuries since I did this part myself,” Kaveh sighed. “I suppose it would be easier with oil, but I just… I can’t stand the smell.”

“We can fit it in underneath,” said Cassius, pausing amid his furious knitting. “We just have to make sure the pillows don’t smother the fire before it can properly start.”

“Oh, as long as we can keep the stones,” Kaveh said eagerly. “They’re lovely, and maybe they’ll keep the fire from spreading.”

“And you wanted me to keep them in a box, gathering dust.” Yin teased.

Flowers for the Pyre (3/4)

Yin followed the path up the mountain until, eventually, there was no real path anymore. Her only guide for climbing safely was the odd deer trail cutting through the undergrowth, but eventually she was left clambering over bare rock again. Clouds gathered overhead; eventually she climbed high enough for the lowest ones to dampen her hair. The air smelled of the coming spring rain.

That was good, on most days. The mountain would need rain, if it was going to replenish the flowers on Kaveh’s pyre.

By the time she reached the cloud-crowned peak, a comfortable ache had set into her limbs, offset by the cold, wet air. Her arms rippled with gooseflesh.

Standing at the top of the mountain she called home, Yin turned her single eye toward the gathering rainclouds, and called for her mother.

Flowers for the Pyre (2/4)

“Cassius?” He’d been staring blankly off into space for almost a minute, and Yin had almost missed it because he’d been sitting in her blind spot.

“Hm?”

“What are you thinking about?” Yin asked.

“Uncle,” he replied, and blinked into an expression of shock and regret.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Help me gather wood, will you?” she said. “Kaveh’s building a nest for the pyre.”

“He really is a bird.” Breathing out a laugh, he set aside the herbs he’d been sorting uselessly, and got up to join her.

Flowers for the Pyre (1/4)

Kaveh woke with a sniffle, and knew it was nearly time.

Over the course of the night, Yin had migrated to the middle of the bed and wrapped around him like a snake, as usual. With practiced ease, Kaveh coaxed his pillow into his place in her arms, and slipped out into the quiet beyond their bed.

Cassius’s shoes and walking-stick were gone. There was no surprise there—Cassius grew restless and irritable the longer he stayed indoors. He’d insisted on sleeping under the stars at first, until a spider had crawled into his bedroll in the night and reminded him that being inside had its advantages.

Gracious Hosts (3/3)

Rahim had been little more than a boy, the first time he laid eyes upon a fairy. He’d been sitting beneath his favorite tree, an elm with ample shade not far from the home where his parents raised him. From early childhood to later youth, he had sat beneath it to read and write, until the day a deer with leaves and blossoms growing from its antlers stepped out from behind it, gazed at him for a moment, and began to walk deeper into the woods

Rahim had followed it, fool that he was, until a chorus of chittering laughter reached his ears. A crowd of fairies had crawled and slithered from the carpet of loam, grasped his clothes, and pulled him deeper into the darkness. A mortal! they had laughed. Come, come with us and serve, our lady has use for your long legs and strong back. Then one unlucky fairy had reached his hand, and found the cold iron rings on his fingers. Rahim had stumbled back onto the road in a daze, to find that night had fallen and he was very hungry.

He was not that foolish boy anymore. Against his own will, he was both a warrior and a king, with hundreds of subjects turning out to celebrate the birth of his first child. But as he watched Lady Eisendusk step into the town square like a shadow to join them, he felt suddenly very small and cold and hungry again.

Gracious Hosts (2/3)

Asha’s father was a wiser man than Rahim’s grandfather had been. Rather than resting his fate on the patronage of one of the continent’s fair-weather kings, he’d kept his business to himself, constantly on the move whenever another warlord crested the horizon. A lack of permanent roots had been a small price to pay for deep pockets. Rahim had been a scholar with a decent mind for numbers when Asha married him.

And now here he was, another fair-weather ruler with a storm on the horizon.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

He wasn’t sure who he was addressing—Asha reading a letter in her favorite chair, Mama with her needle letting out one of Asha’s gowns, Baba lightly napping by the window, or Freda, the midwife’s daughter, humming as she swept.

Gracious Hosts (1/3)

Lord Armel fell in the late afternoon, three months after the battle began. It was a glorious fall; an enemy charge had scattered his men, and he’d met them singlehanded. Dozens of warriors had fallen before him, and in the end it was impossible to say which sword or arrow had dealt the final blow. He had died well, but he had died.

Oh, thought Rahim, as Lord Armel’s horse cantered back to the Garnian line, dragging its master’s body by one foot still caught in the stirrup. We’re going to lose.

Lucy

A shadow has infinite forms, and yet it was not until ages and eons past my birth, when my daughter’s blood soaked my feet, that I first took the shape of a fool.

I am a thing of cold and dark. When this world first formed, a fragment of the blackness between stars broke away and walked upon its cooling surface. When the world first sprouted Life, the blackness swallowed a piece and became me. When Life learned to think and speak, I laughed at their attempts to give me a name.

I have had many names. I have only had one daughter.

Broadside

The oddest thing about the archives was just how eclectic it was.

The project was fresh and new and still finding its footing, still focused on gathering enough materials to justify its existence. Its scope was the history and past membership of a local organization that had been a fixture in the community for over two hundred years, but as far as Rose knew, the other archivists on the project were taking in everything that was offered. Scope and relevancy were stretched to their furthest extent and then further. Among their materials were the belongings of now-deceased members, salvaged from attics and basements and closets in the homes of their descendants, many of whom she had to assume were hoarders. In one collection she found a box three-quarters full of Beanie Babies, thrown in with a battered old paperback entitled “The Handyman’s Guide to Astral Projection,” a painstakingly annotated copy of the Key of Solomon, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

The second oddest thing was probably the dead people.

Aggressive Mimicry (3/3)

They found Trent’s car at the Bird Island parking lot.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Nolan said. “Actually you probably shouldn’t.”

Rosalie was already unbuckling her seatbelt. “Go to hell,” she said without much venom. “Do you have ear plugs?”

“Uh.”

Rosalie reached into her purse, pulled out one pair, and made to toss a second in his direction before hesitating. “Wait, you don’t—like you’re not into girls, right? Or guys? Or… people? Will they even—”

“They almost got me once,” Nolan admitted. “The song told me there were night heron hatchlings on Bird Island.”

“God, you are such a nerd.” She flung the earplugs at him, then herself out of the car.