WWC WK10: Calling

Author's Note: this piece, inspired by the first half of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, won 2nd place in the HarperCollins/Inkpop Weekly Writer's Challenge #10: It's All Greek to Me. The girl who beat me did a steampunk adaptation about Circe called "All Men Are Pigs." It was actually pretty incredible. I loved it a lot, actually.

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Once there was a king in the Grecian city of Thrace, son of Calliope, goddess of music and poetry, and he they called Orpheus.

But the name Orpheus can never stand alone, for with that name, the story of Eurydice is forever entwined. Eurydice was everything to the king of Thrace—lover, wife, companion, and daughter.

Not his daughter in flesh, for that would be a grave evil. But it was Orpheus's song that called forth the nymph Eurydice from her tree, giving her true life.

That is how it happened to a king of the ancient days. And this is how it happens to a boy with a musician's heart...in our time...

§

Orpheus stared at his room, seeing the glossy rock gods on the walls. He drank in the vision of the people on his music posters.

He looked at his poster of Jimmy Hendrix, in skinny jeans and leather jacket; the Viking guitarist from Nightwish with his braided beard and the lion's mane of gold dreadlocks; the lead singer of Queen of Night in her ragged, green velvet dress and brown leather jacket, her leaf-green boots and fingerless gloves.

He wanted to be them. He hated being himself.

Somewhere outside his room, glass shattered. Orpheus jumped. Sighed. His mother. She'd either tripped and dropped her glass, or thrown it at Oeugrus.

Someone roared. His mother, Calliope, threw another glass at his father.

Orpheus got up and grabbed his guitar from where he'd left it, leaning against his bedside table, carrying it into the bathroom. He often sang in the bathtub – great acoustics, but no chance his parents would hear him. The walls were too thick.

The sixteen-year-old settled into the white marble tub and draped the guitar across his chest, cradled by his legs. He deliberately pulled his hair in front of his face. The boy wore it slicked back in public because his father wanted it that way, but he despised it. He wanted it in his face, hiding his expression from everyone who always stared at him because he was so pale and thin, practically albino with his white hair and colorless, washed-out eyes. He felt like a puddle, or an almost-empty glass of water.

The black slacks and white button-down shirt his father forced him to wear didn't lend themselves to the punk-rocker image, but that wasn't really what he wanted, and he could make do with what he had.

Damn it. His head was hurting again.

Plastic hit nylon. The strings twanged. Notes hit the walls, bounced around like happy children, tugging at his hands. Where had he been? Why had he stayed away so long? That's what the music wanted to know.

He ignored it, and played, just let his fingers wander along the strings. After awhile, he began to sing, toying with lyrics he'd been working on the night before.

“Like nothing burns in front of a cold sun,
Wanna go round and round, round and round.
Fighting through empty spaces and we're done.
Just wanna go round and round, round and round

Can't hear through tinkling chimes of glass breaking,
As we go around and round, always around.
Can't see past the masks everyone keeps faking,
As they go round and round, round and round...”

Something wet touched Orpheus's hand, but he ignored it. Another wet thing splashed his wrist, wetting the skin over his pulse. It was transparent as glass, and hotter than blood. His head was pounding. He wished it would rain, so he could go outside and walk in it, instead of the sun beating down like it did in the summer, baking the sand and pavement until your sneakers melted to everything.

But wishes weren't horses, and beggars didn't ride. So the boy ignored the weather. Instead, he kept mumbling half-lyrics, adjusting here, tweaking there, listening to his heart hurting in his chest.

His fingers danced, and he tried to ignore the sound of breaking dishes, his father roaring, his mother shrieking. Orpheus wished he were older, just by a few months. Wished that it was later in the year, closer to August. Then he'd just leave for real, back to school, instead of only leaving in his mind.

Leave for real... he'd get to that point, one day very, very soon.

§

In fact, he reached it the next day. As soon as he heard Calliope spew a rapid stream of obscenities, he picked up his guitar, stuffed his shoes on his feet, and left.

Through the dust of the desert, he walked until his house was lost amidst a tiny suburban sea at the base of the mountain. Higher and higher he climbed. Cholla and paddle cactus thorns snagged his jeans. Scorpions and tarantulas scurried out of the way, terrified of being crushed under the thick soles of his boots.

And when he reached the top of the hill at the base of the Catalina Mountains, he sat on one of the near-searing red stones, under a Joshua tree. Orpheus set his guitar on his lap, and played.

He lost himself in the hum of nylon strings, the melancholy song that seemed to pour out of him. He played the sun beating down on his skin, burning him raw. He plucked out the rapid-fire chitter of cicadas, the leaping song of coyotes as the sun begins to sink, the chirping of cactus wrens and the rustling of pack rats in their tumbleweed nests.

Orpheus played it all: the music of the desert, the soul of the world.

Then the girl sneezed. His fingers stilled. Whirling around, he saw her standing behind him, eyes wide in her dusty face.

Fairy, his mind whispered.

It was her eyes; eyes so bright, they held the late autumn sun. That's what Orpheus saw at first, because somehow he hadn't noticed the girl until she was right on him. Her hair, sun-streaked brown and tipped green, streamed down her back and out like a banner, catching and playing with the light. Blue jeans with rips in the knees, a thin green sweater so worn it was almost gray and had thready holes in the elbows showed off her spiky bones. She wore brown Vans with green and no socks. Her ankles were just as spiky as the rest of her.

Now Orpheus understood why he'd first thought fairy. She was as close to one as humanly possible, this green-eyed girl.

He slowly rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off her face.

"W-w-what's...what's your name?" He whispered. Shyness suddenly surged up through him, and he ducked his head, hiding behind his silvery hair. His face burned.

"Dice," she murmured. Her voice was the tawny wind after a dust storm through the branches of green mesquite, warm as baking creosote in spring. "My name...Dice."

"Where did you come from?" He asked, because he had no idea. Somehow she had simply appeared, a desert mirage.

Her sunshine eyes flickered to the Joshua tree, then back to him. She bit her lip and gestured almost helplessly to his guitar. "You call me," she said, "from...from Joshua tree. You...you need me. Orpheus. You...Orpheus. You need me." Confusion clouded her features. "Why? Why do you need me?"

Something sharp and hot lanced his chest when her eyes finally found his. His mouth went dry. He did, he realized dazedly, eyes stinging. He didn’t even know this girl, and he needed her. Orpheus could see an answering need in her eyes, eyes as green as sahauro, in the expression on her slender face.

And not only did he need her, but somehow, without understanding how, without ever having met her before, he knew her.

As soon as he understood the fierce yearning for this too-familiar girl, he ran. Oh, how he ran.

Heart thundering, his ribs spasmed; lungs burned and legs ached. Still, he ran, on and on and on, skidding down the hillside, oblivious to thorns and stones and rattler holes. The thin, whippy branches of mesquite trees cut his face, tried to drag him back, force him to return to that girl watching his dust and calling his name.

Eyes streaming with tears, every step rattling his bones, the sobs burst from him. All around him, the desert yipped and chattered and howled, calling to him, Coward. Coward. Coward.

Orpheus would've clapped his hands to his ears, but if he did, he would pitch forward and fall. But he didn't want to hear. He couldn't let himself hear the voices of the mesquite and the Joshua trees. They accused him. They rebuked him.

He kept running. Overhead, the sky split open on the heels of a crack of thunder and the first drops of monsoon rain began plunging towards the earth.

Orpheus ran away from that girl, ran from her familiar, hungry eyes like the sun on the green blood of the sahauro, putting the sheeting rain between them. He hadn't meant to look into her eyes and see the sunshine behind her face. As soon as their eyes locked, his chest had begun to burn with an overwhelming sadness.

Tears poured like rain as he booked it down the path through the raging monsoon rains. The trail back to Houghton Road was only a river of mud now. Orpheus slipped in it, fell, soaking his jeans. He tasted grit in his mouth. Lunging to his feet, the running went on.

When he got home, drenched and mud-streaked, crying tears that tasted of acid, he realized he'd left his guitar on the hill.

§

She picked up the guitar, clutched it to her chest as she huddled under the spiky branches of her tree. The rain pelted down, soaking her to the skin. Dice didn’t mind.

She understood why Orpheus had run. She knew about freedom, about chains, about needing and depending on something so violent and furious as what had arced between them when their eyes met. She wasn’t angry.

Leaning against the rigid skin of the Joshua tree, she drew in a breath that carried the scent of wet earth and green life. Then she faded into the tree.

Dice could wait.

§

That night, he dreamed of her, dreamed of cool water and hot desert sand, the shimmer of blistering summer air and a heart that beat in time with his. He woke in a sweat, the sheets so hot they stuck to his skin like melted wax. Her name was heat and raindrops on his lips.

"Dice...."

He got up, threw on a pair of worn jeans and his thick hiking boots. In the hallway, he glanced towards the door of his parents' bedroom. His father's snores nearly rattled the windows. Smiling a little, Orpheus walked out of his house and into the moonlit night without looking back.

He made it to the hill at the foot of the Santa Rita Mountains, where the lone Joshua tree stood by the flat, red stone where he'd sat earlier that day. Leaning against the skin of the tree, gleaming in the light of the full, white moon, was his guitar.

Orpheus lifted it, strummed the strings experimentally to make sure it was in tune. With the monsoon, you just never knew. Sometimes the humidity soaked into the strings and the wood, fattening them up until they could only screech. But each of his string thrummed beautifully, and the wood wasn't even damp. So he bent his head, mentally crossed his fingers, and began to play.

Everything he'd ever dreamed or thought or hoped for or needed flowed into his song.

Dragons and roses, ocean waves, ships and stars, stories told by the hum of nylon string over varnished wood: princesses in towers, boys with wings who fell and boys with wings who flew, fairies dancing, a girl riding on the back of a reindeer, two children in a cradle like a little boat, a woman with snakes for hair in the arms of a lion-faced man.

Girls who rode on fish, boys in towers made of ice, cities melting into oceans and skyscrapers turning into mountains, skeletons and dresses like cakes: he played everything, calling to her, calling to Dice, calling to the girl in the Joshua tree. He played until his fingers bled, and then a cool hand was pulling his from the strings.

"Orpheus," she said, softly, her head tilted to the side. She looked so modern, in her jeans and sweater, her spiked hair and her electric green makeup. She hadn’t been wearing makeup before, but she looked beautiful either way.

"Dice. You... you're a—"

"Nymph."

"A nymph. They're Greek, right? Aren't you supposed to...I dunno...be in a toga or something?" He asked, feeling foolish. Her rich laugh made him smile.

"Toga?" She whispered, and blinked once. The sweater and hip huggers melted into a shimmering drape of silk the color of clouded jade and dark honey. She shook her head and the short, spiked hair suddenly tumbled down around her shoulders like a cascade of thick, viridian curls. "Like this?"

His brain shut down when she tilted her head and the moonlight touched on the shadow of her body beneath the silk. He drew in a breath, choked on his own saliva. Coughing, clearing his throat, he fought his blush. Could a guy trip over his own feet when he wasn't moving? He almost managed it.

"You like?" Her voice was the night wind.

"Um...um...yes. No! Maybe...yes! Yes? Definitely..."

She tilted her head the other way, curiosity dancing across her face in the moonlight. Pale silver light brushed against the column of her throat, the slope of her skin where it touched bronze silk.

"Jeans are fine," he practically yelped, trying to focus on her eyes, on the safe warmth flowing from her gaze, and not stare at the skin washed silver. He swallowed hard. "I like jeans."

She laughed, but her voice was cool as spring water and soothed the burning in his face. He closed his eyes, counted to five, peeked. Dice was once again in holey sweater and jeans.

"Better?" She asked. He nodded, blushing hot.

"Are you... are you a goddess or something?"

"No," she said. "I am nymph... but not common nymph." Her words were slow as time and halting, but he could have listened to her voice forever. "Not epimeliad, or hamadryad, or meliae or leuce—"

"Well, good,” he said, trying to smooth away the distress in her eyes. “'Cause I don't know what any of those things are. It's all Greek to me, dude."

She laughed again, put her hand on his arm. Smiling with her autumn sunshine eyes, she leaned in and whispered, "Orpheus." Her breath was the heat of high summer on red stone and desert sand, but sweet as the cool breezes of monsoon.

And then she kissed him, and it was like the music of the desert.

WWC WK11: Heart Gear

Darkness.

It is all around me, swamping me like the waves of the sea. I have been in this cocoon of blackness for what seemed an eternity, but I can't remember why. Who brought me here? Was it... the boy? What was his name?

Everything is different now. I know that much. I'd been sent to take care of... someone. But I don't remember who. It is simply my task to watch over... watch over... I can't remember.

I am a Recording Angel. Even now, I can feel the gears and wheels inside my chest rotating, spinning in my internal darkness. Like some well-oiled machine, my levers slide up and down, my wheels turn, my pulleys shift. And in the pitch blackness of what I can only assume is my prison, only my memories keep me sane. I was meant to record the death and resurrection of mankind. I am a recording angel.

Remember, I tell myself. Weightless madness creeps close, so I cling to my thoughts, the sound of my own voice in my head. Remember the ones you have lost. Remember the boy. He is the resurrection, the savior of mankind. What is his name?

Remember, remember, remember, remember....

***

Once there was a place for the recording angels. I can still recall the smell of aloe gel greasing the gears in my wings, the oil smoothed over my bronze feathers to make them shine. I remembered the house, stucco the color of the inside of a conch shell. In the middle of the vast desert, that house reminded me of the sea. Towering Joshua trees shaded the walls.

And I remembered the child.

I saw him, long ago before the world exploded in countless atomic fires. He ran through the desert, tears pouring down his face. Even half-complete, in my mistress's work shed, I could see the grief twisting his face. The guitar in his hands gleamed like sweat and tears. In the fading sun, the strings glinted like metallic blood. The boy rushed by me, desperate to escape some evil. And behind him, I could see the hounds.

The hounds have always been, as long as there were recording angels. They are the creatures of shadow and blackness, birthed from the life in shattered springs and gears. Vomited up after bombs and nuclear destruction decimate life. All creation brings life. Even the destructive creations made by mankind.

Those black shadow hounds chased the boy. The light turned their gears to razored wheels of bloody metal. Their eyes burned like hellfire. The child couldn't see them. I knew that. But he could feel them, the fetid breath on his neck from beasts that should not breathe. They would chase him until his pain fell away. The hounds hungered for the pain of man, pain they could not feel because of their broken circuits and springs.

I tried to move. My wings flexed, and my feathers screeched as they bent and buckled. My gears slid through the aloe my mistress used to oil them. One arm, bronze framework wrapped in brown leather, lifted. My metal fingers reached for the child. I wanted to save him. I was a recording angel, and my task was to protect man until the day of the world's resurrection. But I was not finished. I could do nothing but watch.

He outran them. This was before children grew sickly and frail, before the great atomic fires that burned the world. I watched him outrun the hounds, up a hill of scrub, cactus and red stone. And he took shade beneath a Joshua tree. In those times, the sacred still existed in the wilds in abundance.

The sun groped its way towards the mountains, desperate to hide its face from humanity as the world slowly moved toward Armageddon. Night fell like a shroud.

When the boy came back, he didn't run. He walked, hand in hand with a girl I knew was like me. Deep inside, there were gears and springs instead of a heart. Cream colored silk and dark green and brown leather hugged the framework of her body, moving as fluidly as aloe oil with each step she took.

Here was a child of clockwork, the ones that occurred naturally, that man could only try to poorly imitate. The girl was one of the clockwork pieces made by the Lord of Creation to watch over the world. She was clockwork, but the girl loved that human boy.

I could see it, even then, in her eyes.

***

My mistress finished me soon six months after I saw the boy's flight to the mountains and his return with a clockwork tree spirit. Did he know what she was? I doubted it. Except for the angels, most of us were meant to blend with the humans.

The last bolt was finished none too soon. My mistress laid aside her soldering tool, wiped the sweat from her brow, and smiled. I knew enough of human emotions to realize she was tired, and that the glimmer in her dark eyes was what mankind called fear. Was she afraid of me?

"You know what you're to do, Seraphine?" She asked, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her white coat.

I searched her face, wishing there was some clue to her fear. Was it the tiny burns flecking her skin from wayward sparks? Or the bruise on one cheek that told me someone had hurt her? When she pulled her hand out of her pocket to adjust one of my facial pieces, I saw the smallest of her fingers had been splinted. If I'd had a face capable of expression, I would have frowned.

"Tucson's been evacuated, but there are children here still. You have to find them. You have to protect them. The Avenging Angels have already been loosed in the city to create safe havens for them once you and the other Recorders find them."

Why is she here? I thought, confusing buzzing through the copper coils and along the surfaces of the gears in my body. She should not be here. Dangerous.

"Soldiers are coming," my maker continued, helping me down from the platform where she had set me to make it easier to weld me together. The feel of the dust and wood of the floor beneath my feet made my head gears whirl and click. Whatever my mistress used for my brain and my memory processed and stored the sensory input.

"Everything is going to hell," she whispered, glancing at the shuttered windows. They had never been closed before... until today. What had happened? "You've got to keep the children safe, Seraphine. There are others like you - a thousand choirs of angels. They will help."

"W-w-why? Why... soldiers?"

"We lost the war," she said, and somehow I knew her voice was sad. A drop of water trailed from the corner of her eye down one cheek: a tear. "They're going to come here first. The enemy governments suspect we've been working on clockwork life forms. You have to be gone before then. Please go."

"L-leave?"

"Yes," my mistress said, swiping at her undamaged cheek. Pushing back the wisps of fly-away hair that I had seen her fiddle with throughout my creation, she added, "Yes, Seraphine. You can't be here when they come. If they knew you existed, they'd simply bomb the city until none of you were left. They won't risk nuclear fallout if they're uncertain. We cannot allow them certainty."

"Go... now?"

"Go now."

"Goodbye?" I asked.

"Yes, this is goodbye." She touched my face. I could feel the pressure of her fingers against the thin shell of brass that made up my cheek. "You are the last one, the last Recorder, the last Angel I will ever make. I only pray I've done enough. Go well, and endure to the end, until the day of the Resurrection of Man comes. Find the one who will lead them. The boy who once could fly. Go quickly."

And she left her work shed and disappeared inside her house. I never saw my mistress again.

***

It took another six months to find the boy and his clockwork girl again. Six months of wandering blisteringly hot streets inhabited by feral strays of all kinds.

Animals like coyotes, cats, and javalinas learned quickly that to bite one such as I would result in broken teeth or bleeding cuts to the tongue. The bronze strips that held me together were edged with razored iron and though my leather skin soon cracked and became brittle under the desert sun, the sharp steel edging my "bones" kept me safe from predators.

Children whispered from their shadowy hideouts as I passed, searching for the Savior. Sometimes they would send their leaders to speak to me. Some of them knew about the Angels. Some conclaves of stray children were even guarded by the Warrior Angels that had been made by humans like my mistress.

Always I recorded their child faces and their thin voices, their stories. I was to record as much of mankind as I could for the time of Man's resurrection. They could not be allowed to lose too much of their civilization. Their words are imprinted in my gears.

"My name is Katie and I'm a scout with the Nest."

"I'm Jake. The soldiers killed my mom and dad and my older brother. I hid in the dumpster by our apartment complex until they left."

"Coraline never talks. She always has the cat with her because the cat can smell soldiers a bazillion miles away. Kitty and Coraline always tell us when to hide and where to go so the soldiers can't find us."

"I'm Janie, the leader of the Hawks, and we need medicine for our sick people. Do you know if the UMC has anything left in its stores? Or did soldiers take it all?"

"David knows how to fix cars so we can travel if things get too bad. We have army cars. He said those kinds are called... um... HumVees! Yeah, HumVees...."

Thousands of children let me record them, so they would never be lost. There was more than Katie, Jake, Coraline, Janie, and David. Too many children to count. If I were human, I could never remember them all. My mistress knew that when she made the Recording Angels.

Yet I couldn’t find the one child I needed. The boy with the clockwork tree spirit was the one. He would lead mankind to freedom, to hope. He was the one who would save us all. I had to find him.

***

Eventually I did.

Soldiers marched through the streets, shooting at stray animals and crushing the snakes that slithered under their boots. The boy with the guitar huddled inside the abandoned shell of a McDonald's. The clockwork girl peered over the row of ovens, her strange eyes intent. They widened fractionally when she saw me.

"What are you?" She hissed, her voice as golden as the gears that served as her heart. "You are not a dryad or naiad."

"Natural clockwork, I am not," I replied, hunkering down behind the scorched and half-melted ovens beside them. The boy did not seem surprised by my appearance. Had he known I tracked them? "I am a Recording Angel. I was made by Dr. Kate Martin."

"A Recording Angel?" The clockwork dryad demanded, crossing her arms. I'd never seen such a dainty clockwork creation. Whereas I had been forged of brass, iron, and leather, she was silver, gold, and silk brocade. How did she keep from tearing? I could not be so fragile and survive as long, I knew.

"I've heard of you," the boy said. "Orpheus wrote songs about you."

"Orpheus?"

"The leader of Cassandra," he muttered. If I had been human, I would have smiled. Cassandra - the resistance movement against the humans who had invaded this place. "He swore he'd been saved by an angel made of brass and leather," the boy continued. "Was that you?"

I shook my head. It had to have been one of the others of my kind, and I said so. Then I added, "I saw you running."

"What?"

"The day you found her," I said, gesturing to the clockwork girl. "I saw you running. What were you running from? You ran to the foot of the mountain."

He stared at me, his gray eyes wide in his dusty, soot-smudged face. How had the boy I had seen warped into this thin, sickly child of the resistance? He muttered, "My dad enlisted in the army."

I nodded. The war had taken nearly everyone over the age of seventeen. No wonder the hounds had howled and chased after the boy's pain.

A noise touched my sound sensors - feet on pavement, the rumble of machinery. "We have to go," I said.

"Why should Peter or I go anywhere with you?" The clockwork girl demanded. I tried to shrug. It was difficult, with the ball-sockets of my shoulders covered thickly with grit.

"Stay or go, it is your choice. But soldiers come. Will you stay to die?"

The girl turned to the boy. After six months of living, of wandering among men, I could easily read the doubt in her eyes. This, then, was the difference between a natural clockwork entity and one made by men: she could feel emotion, and I could not.

The boy, Peter, glanced over his shoulder as the rumble of tanks and Humvees made the loose scraps of metal on the stoves and dusty floor rattle. Then he turned to the girl. His determined expression affirmed what I had known all along: this boy was the One.

"We have to trust her, Bell."

The girl eyed me, nodded, and we bolted and ran.

Peter stayed between us. Bell, the clockwork dryad with the golden voice, raced ahead, the wind streaming through her hair. I smelled aloe when her scent touched my facial sensory screen. The human boy, ungainly as only a human could be, kept steady between us. I could see the sweat pouring from his skin and dampening his ragged green t-shirt shirt. And I ran, effortless, enjoying the ability to stretch my wings, to let the dust and dirt drift from my bolts.

Someone shouted behind us. I glanced over my shoulder. Soldiers were lining up beside the McDonald's, priming their rifles. If I'd been human, or natural clockwork, fear would have shivered through me. These men could run us down with their vehicles, but why not shoot us like the animals they thought we were? Did they even realize what Bell and I were? Or did they have eyes only for Peter?

"Faster, human!" I yelled, pointing to strip mall across the parking lot. Once, it had been a chain of little shops and a large grocery store. Now they were hallow, dark shells. And I knew what lay within the darkness of those empty structures. "Into the shops, there!"

I stopped and turned to the soldiers.

Peter yelled, "What are you doing?" The clockwork girl did not let him remain to challenge me. She dragged him away to the safety I had pointed out to them.

"I am a Recording Angel," I whispered. The sun glinted off my feathers. "It is my duty to protect humans. If I am destroyed, it will be because I would save mankind. All the stories I have collected have been filed and sent to Choir."

That boy would be key. He had been the first human I had ever seen besides my mistress. He would go, with the clockwork girl, into the strip mall empty of all life and find the secret that my mistress had told me of. He would find the Recording Angels, and the Avenging and Warrior Angels. And he would bring us to the Resistance he had spoken of, and we would save humanity from itself.

"I am a Recording Angel," I said, as the first bullet bit into the joint of my arm. "I must protect man." If I had been human, I might have prayed. Instead, I simply repeated, "I must protect man" as the bullets of the enemy soldiers ripped into my metal body.

One bullet slammed into my heart gear, the one that allowed me to function. Aloe oil spilled from the cushion sacks in my chest, dribbled from the voice screen on my face.

And then I heard the screech of iron and bronze, Peter screaming, and I fell into darkness.

***

So that is what happened. I remember now. But how did I survive the shot to my heart gear? I touch my chest, but all I am is strips of bronze holding brass gears and wheels together. I cannot see to discern any damage. How did I survive?

Something is swimming in my tank, the metal box that keeps me in darkness. I can't see it, only feel it, like a shark sensing a larger, deadlier predator. Is it hunting me, this creature? Or is it here to set me free? I don't know.

I flex my fingers, my thin arms, even my battered wings. Feathers fall loose from the brass frames, but it doesn't matter. I was never meant to fly. The liquid darkness that surrounds me has eaten away at the leather strips wrapping my metal body. Now I am nothing but a skeleton of brass rods and iron bolts.

But I am still a Recording Angel. I still have a mission. Just as I always have.

Light explodes overhead, a supernova blinding me with its brilliance. When my ocular screen can take in everything around me, I realize I'm not in the tank anymore. I'm on a floor surrounded by bronze and leather feet - the feet of Recording, Avenging, and Warrior angels, and two pairs of boots I don't recognize.

"Welcome back, Seraphine."

I look up to see Peter and the clockwork girl, Bell, looking down at me. Peter is older now, though Bell is just the same. She is still fierce and mechanical, like me. And Peter....

"You are leader now." My voice croaks from my voice filter. The gangly, sickly blond boy with the haunted gray eyes is gone. In his place is a barbarian king of a man in leather and denim. He holds an assault rifle in his hand, which has been replaced by a clockwork construct. "You lead Cassandra."

He nods.

"You saved me," I say.

"Yeah," he says, and grins. "You're my Recording Angel and the war is about to begin. The Angels have agreed to help, and I wanted you to be there. You saved my life first. You helped me find the Choir."

"Choir?"

The Choir was meant to protect man. We were not made to fight battles. Avenging and Warrior Angels were meant to be protectors only. What has he done? What war is he talking about?

If I were human, fear would be my response now.

"A Choir of Angels," Peter says, and laughs.

I wonder then if I have saved mankind... or doomed it. Because the key that I have saved is now entirely mad. What happened while I was in the dark? Our Savior is now our Destroyer.

I am a Recording Angel, meant to preserve the civilization of man until the Day of Resurrection. Now I must wonder, am I doomed to record the end of the world? Though I am not human, I find that I can weep for the end of the world, for the end of humanity.

I weep, for the answer is yes.

WWC WK8: The Rat Prince

Author's Note: this was my first attempt at one of the HarperCollins/Inkpop writing contests. I won second place for their Weekly Writer's Challenge #9, the revisited fairytale contest. This story incorporates "The Pied Piper," "Cinderella," "Rapunzel," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Snow White." I'd forgotten all about this story, actually, until I was going through my Inkpop/Figment account. I remember the girl who beat me did a great retelling of "Cinderella" that was just amazing, called "Frailty."

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It wasn’t murder.

When my father told me what he intended to do, the knowledge hit me with the surety of the sunrise: of course I would have to kill him. But it wouldn't be murder. It would be justice. I wasn’t the murderer in this family; he was.

He killed my mother. They don't tell you that in the story, do they? Who planted the tree for her? Who tended it, watered it, pruned its branches? I did.

Who allowed my mother to drink a goblet of wine sprinkled with ground-up glass? He did.

Glass has always been the bane of my existence. The wood of my mother's tree, planted at the head of her grave when I was a little girl, would be the end of my father's. I wouldn't let him murder Rafe without consequence.

There was no way I could stop him, of course, for I was just the servant girl and the town wanted to see Rafe dead. My love was only a rat, after all. My father was a lord of men.

And who am I? You should know me by now: the girl in the fireplace, the ash-girl—Cinderella.

The morning of my father's death, I pressed my cheek against the smooth bark of my mother's tree. It had given me so much... and taken so much away. It had given me a prince... then taken away my love. It had been my father's excuse to steal the one who meant the most; it was the means by which I would avenge him.

Wind whistled through the flute I would give my father. A simple tune, sweet and clear—a sound like angels singing—breathed through my mind from the plain wooden instrument. Thank God I wasn't the one the song was intended for, or I would've thrown myself from the cliffs near my home and plummet to my death.

That was the fate my father intended for Rafe.

My stepsisters cried the day I confessed my father's plans, because they knew they would lose everything. The stories say my sisters despised me, that my stepmother forced me to be her slave. The tellers of the tales have never met my father. They never took the time to learn the cruelties of silken courtiers and sweet-tongued noblemen.

"Is this it?" My younger stepsister, Rose, asked me softly. The swish of her dress whispered over the dying scrub grass behind our house. The branches of my mother's tree cast shadow claws over her face.

Soon Rose, whom all called Beauty, would have her own claws to deal with—her Beast was still combing the world for her, intent on saving her from my father.

"Yes."

"Snow is ready for you," Rose whispered. "She and Mother have finished."

"You sound like a conspirator," I said to my fair-haired younger sister, reaching out to take her hand in mine. People mistook us often for true sisters, because of our similar looks and because of our closeness. "Why are you whispering?"

"Are you sure it will work?"

"Yes," I said, meeting her leaf green eyes with my blue ones. "Rafe will die, then my father will die, and then I will no longer be the ash-girl in the fireplace."

"I'm going to miss you."

I didn't respond. What was there to say? I would miss her, too.

ᴥᴥᴥ

In Snow's room, where countless mirrors hung and her potted apple tree sapling stretched its bird-like limbs toward the open window, my stepmother varnished the flute. The polished wood gleamed in the light. Beside my stepmother, with her bloodless skin and ebony hair, sat Snow, the daughter in her exact image.

I could never understand how strawberry blond Rose could be Snow's twin. They were complete opposites—Snow, with her jet curls and ivory skin, and Rose, crimson-tinted blond with a healthy blush in her cheeks. I could never understand how they could love me so completely, when my own father despised me.

"When he plays, he'll die, Crystal," my stepmother told me absently, her mind occupied with coating the flute with poison. "It won't be right away—I have nothing poisonous enough for that. But he will die."

"Rafe and I have talked about it," I whispered, staring at my reflection in one of Snow's mirrors—my soot-smudged face, the eyes as blue as glass, my silvery blond hair tied up under its kerchief, my dirty work dress. "We've accepted it."

"The apple," my stepmother said, nodding towards the scarlet fruit glinting on the nightstand beside Snow's bed. "I don't know why I've agreed to this."

She had been saying that since I'd outlined my plan, but it wasn't true. I knew why she'd agreed to create the poison for me: she knew what it was to lose the only one you'd ever loved. Rose and Snow's father had been murdered by their grandmother, his eyes gouged out and his heart pierced by a rose thorn. If not for the twins, she would've done exactly as I planned to do.

"I finished these just in time, I guess," Snow murmured, looking everywhere but at me. She lifted an ebony box from beside the poisonous apple and popped the lid so I could see inside. Within lay a key, white as bone, on a thin silver chain. A ruby hung from the chain beside the key.

"What's this?"

"The last gift," Snow said. A tear rolled down her cheek. I felt wetness on my face, and reached out to hug her.

ᴥᴥᴥ

The key belonged to Snow's hope chest. Lightly tracing my fingers over the gold inlay, the leaves and flowering vines and trees on the lid, I thought of Snow, felt the tears begin to burn. I forced them back and opened the trunk.

Inside, I found a letter from my stepmother, Aurora, and wedding garments—a white dress, a diamond comb, diamond earrings and necklace, and slippers that glittered like crystal. The pendant made me laugh. It was a 14 karat pumpkin.

I memorized the letter. Then I folded everything neatly and put it back inside.

A single teardrop splashed the lid of my sister's hope chest.

ᴥᴥᴥ

Because I have never known agony, because I have never known the all-consuming grief of true loss, and because I had made a promise, I watched that afternoon as my father raised the poison flute to his lips and began to play.

Then the rats came.

From all over Hamlin, the rats came, a river of black-furred bodies heaving with the effort of racing towards that music, that beautiful melody—a sound like angels singing. First the sewer rats and barn rats and river rats and forest rats...and then the rats who were not rats began to stumble towards the cliffs near our house.

I saw Rafe, my sweetheart, the man who had asked me only a week ago to marry him, trying to resist. He kept his eyes on my window, where I had promised to stay, to bear witness...but his feet dragged onward.

In the last few years, Hamlin had begun to systematically wipe out the faeries. After the last Elf had been drowned, the humans turned their thoughts towards the shape shifters. The rats came first.

My father was the executioner. His actions would bring a slaughter down on the mortals of Hamlin, because Rafe was prince of the shifters. War would come, violent and bloody. The humans would die, thrown from the very cliffs the rat shifters now leapt from.

And before the bloodbath to come, my father would receive the payment I knew the city would deny him.

Aurora, Rose and Snow would be safe—they were witches, all. I would've been safe, but I would not live without Rafe.

High above the world in my tower room, I watched, tears rolling down my cheeks, as Rafe lifted his hand in farewell and walked off the edge of the cliffs. He disappeared in seconds, with not even a scream or yelp to mark his passing.

I screamed for both of us. Screamed until my father began to convulse; screamed until Aurora rushed from the house and plunged her knitting needles deep into his heart; screamed until Rose and Snow began hacking at him with the wood axe and the carving knife.

I bit into the apple.

In a white wedding dress, wearing a poisoned diamond comb, diamond earrings, and a diamond pumpkin pendant, I fell to the ground as a haze slipped across my eyes and sudden weakness flooded my limbs.

I knew I was dying. I welcomed it. Soon I would be with Rafe, and my long-dead mother. I would be free of my father's hate. My stepmother and stepsisters would bury me in a glass coffin.

The air eased from my lungs. The last thing I heard was the tinkling of shattering glass as my slippers crashed to the floor. The apple lay amongst the glass, poison among the pain.