“Oh! Better screams.”
Indeed.
The Bird Smells Trouble
TAURUS
I’m standing on the porch in the open air; it’s sticky and damp in that way that makes your shirt cling and your hair coil at the back of your neck. The trees drip with last night’s haze, and I’ve got the feeling—the one that comes when cicadas go quiet, the hush before a tornado, or the pause in a bar right before the glass smashes someone’s face.
Something’s running up my spine—a tingle, a warning, a ghost—but I can’t figure out if it’s a memory or a premonition.
Sampson’s awake, which is odd for the lazy stoat, but today I have the porch to myself for a minute because I needed space before the walls caved in. I’m barefoot on the stone, feeling the smooth surface as I listen to the hum of mosquitos stalking my blood. I hate how the little fuckers never let you alone, how you can slap yourself raw and there’s always one more. I smack my ankle and wipe the smear on my thigh, irritated, trying to focus on the sense that’s nagging at me.
I know what it is, even if I don’t want to admit it. Something is coming for us. Not in the apocalyptic sense, like a bomb or a pandemic, but something smaller and sharper. It’s the kind ofthing that slides in between your ribs and works its way up until you’re bleeding to death. I know it in my bones, which is why I’m standing here brooding when I feel Sampson step up behind me.
He comes out quietly with his hair a mess and his eyes half-open, and he acts like he doesn’t see the tension in me. But he knows, just like my wife always knows. Rafe closes the screen door and puts his chin on my shoulder so his mouth is right beside my ear. “Morning,” he whispers, and I feel the heat from his breath on my neck, which should be comforting but only makes the tingling worse.
When I’m jumpy like this, even comfort makes my body react like it's in danger.
I lean into him because his arms are strong and firm. Letting myself press against his chest, I feel the thump of his heart and the slow, careful way he puts his hands around my waist. “Morning,” I say back, and I try to keep my voice light, but it comes out gravelly with frustration.
I’m not fooling anyone, least of all Mr. Perceptive back there.
He kneads the back of my neck, working his knuckles into the places where the nerves are all bunched up. “You’re so tightly wound right now,” he murmurs. “Something eating at you, love?”
I close my eyes and let him work. He’s the only one who can get the knots out, like he’s learned the map of my body by heart. “Yeah,” I say, “there’s something bad coming; I feel it. I thought maybe it was just me, but it’s not going away, even after the storm dissipated.” I pause, searching for the right words. “It’s like the universe is holding its breath.”
The stoat doesn’t laugh or tell me I’m being dramatic like the women often do. He just keeps working up my neck, his fingers finding the tension right at the base of my skull and rubbing until my vision goes sparkly. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it,” he says, and I want to believe him.
I want to believe we’re safe in the home I built, that all the bullshit is behind us. We need it to be just us on the porch, sweating and swatting bugs, but I know better than to assume it will happen. We’ve had very little peace, and that’s enough to make anyone paranoid. My suspicion is because this isn’t the kind of story that gets happy endings; there are too many variables working against us.
I tilt my head back so I can see his face. He’s got the shadow of last night’s stubble and soft, adoring eyes that don’t look away. The sun is behind his head, and it makes him look like something out of a photograph, but I know he’s real because I can smell his skin and feel his warmth.
“We’ve been living the happy as best we can,” I say. “The women, us, and the animals in this big house doing what we can to survive what’s happening out there. But it will not last; it never does because those people won’t leave us alone.”
He shrugs, the way men do when they don’t have an answer but want you to know they care. “Maybe this time is different,” he says, but I hear the doubt in his voice.
Even Rafe knows that the populace of this cursed dimension is ridiculous and grasping, with no respect for anyone other than themselves.
I turn away and look at the empty stretch of land surrounding our home. Between it and the gates and the magicalenhancements, it prevents a lot of issues with people being where they don’t belong. Unlike his former residence, the doors stay locked and people cannot move in and out as if they own us. Both Talia and I insisted on that, and neither Rafe nor my wife complained. Now it feels like that demand was prescient and we were brilliant for making it.
My mind drifts to the meeting that’s supposed to happen today. I don’t know who’s coming, but I know what community members called for it and why. Keeping them happy is important to my wife, but I have the sense that nobody is going to walk away from it unchanged. Those nasty bitches are going to make this a spectacle and a public flogging for our whole family; I just know it.
And yet, that’s still not what the bad feeling is about.
“There’s a lot converging,” I say. “Everyone’s been waiting to air their shit, even Talia—fuck, especially her.”
Sampson pulls me around so we’re face to face, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me, but he just looks at me. “Whatever happens, we protect our own.” His voice goes low, like a growl. “No one fucks with our family.”
I nod, but I don’t tell him that sometimes it’s the family that does the fucking. I don’t say that sometimes you have to choose who you protect, and that it’s never the person you think.
Because I’m a bit terrified that he and the cat might end up having to choose the good of the Resistance rather than the goddess and me.
I think about the way the troll stood at the party with her manic grin and her voice like a chainsaw, laughing even as she tried to tear us apart. I think about how the cat clung to me when theblogger appeared, refusing to let go even when she cried after returned home. I think about how his silence was louder than anything I’ve ever heard, and how the goddess said he didn’t shed a tear over the resurrection.
“She’s going to go boom,” I say, and I realize I’m snarling inside again. “It’s going to be bad.”
Sampson puts both hands on my shoulders and squeezes, grounding me. “Which one?” he says, but his eyes are scanning the horizon, like he’s looking for the threat already.
