The Dark Issue 13: The Dark, #13

By Sean Wallace

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editor Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:
 

“The Hibernating Queen” by Leena Likitalo 
“Free Jim’s Mine” by Tananarive Due 
“The Bat House” by M. Bennardo 
“The Slipway Grey” by Helen Marshall 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533741561

Sean Wallace

Sean Wallace is the founder and editor for Prime Books, which won a World Fantasy Award in 2006. In his spare time he is also co-editor of Clarkesworld Magazine and Fantasy Magazine; the editor of the following anthologies: Best New Fantasy, Horror: The Best of the Year, Jabberwocky, Japanese Dreams, and The New Gothic; and co-editor of Bandersnatch, Fantasy, Phantom, and Weird Tales: The 21st Century. He currently and happily resides in Rockville , MD , with his wife and two cats.

Book preview

THE DARK

Issue 13 • June 2016

The Hibernating Queen by Leena Likitalo

Free Jim’s Mine by Tananarive Due

The Bat House by M. Bennardo

The Slipway Grey by Helen Marshall

Cover Art: Danse Macabre by Peter Polach (Apterus)

ISSN 2332-4392.

Edited by Sean Wallace.

Cover design by Garry Nurrish.

Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

Copyright © 2016 by Prime Books.

www.thedarkmagazine.com

The Hibernating Queen

by Leena Likitalo

The first summer I grew fur and gained fat around my slender limbs I was happy. I could hardly wait for the peacocks to arrive, and so I spent the days craning through my tower chamber’s window. When I finally saw my best friends soaring across the blue sky, I instantly rushed to greet them.

I’m the oldest and only daughter of the Hibernating Queen. I know every hall and hallway of the Cavernium Castle. My favorite place in the whole kingdom is the garden carved in the south side of the rugged gray mountain. The garden grows on a crescent shelf, and during the long, white summer days the grass grows lush and the topiaries cut to resemble bears rustle so loudly they hide all secrets. There is also a pond with orange-finned carp. I often feed them pastry crumbs. However, what I love the best is the peacock tree.

The peacock tree stands proud at the exact center of the garden. It’s a leafless oak, hollow with age, but with branches spreading out like a multitude of arms yearning to embrace you. But it isn’t the pure bareness or any of the previous that make the tree so beautiful to me.

It’s the peacocks that come visit the castle every summer, the birds wearing the most dashing greens and blues of the season. The sharp-witted dandies perch on the dry branches chattering and bantering the days through. Ever since I was a little cub, they’ve entertained me with anecdotes about their faraway homeland. I can see the lands they come from with my mind’s eye, but never with my own. I do like what I see: golden sandy beaches that stretch on forever, glittering turquoise sea with white-crested waves dancing in the distance, arching palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze that tastes of salt and jasmine.

But the summer I first grew fur was different. I felt it as soon as I entered the tunnel leading to the garden. The feeling strengthened as the sound of my steps echoed against the arching walls. It became overpowering when I reached the iron gates, and my paws did tremble as I unlocked the gates wrought to resemble birds whose necks curled around each other in an unnaturally elaborate manner. As I pressed the gates shut behind me, I attempted to evade this uneasiness by descending down to all fours and galloping to meet my best friends.

I failed utterly and miserably. As I dashed to the leafless tree, the peacocks paused their chattering. Their beady brown eyes widened as they turned to stare at me. Even as I slowed down to a waddle, then straightened up to two paws, they eyed me as if they didn’t recognize who I was.

I halted there before the tree and folded my paws behind my back. It’s me, Karaval. Don’t you recognize me?

The peacocks glanced at me, at each other, white beaks clicking melodically with the language they don’t share with other creatures, not even with me. Yet, it was obvious they thought me a crazed, grizzly bear, more like my late father than my sophisticated mother.

That hurt. After the dark winter months, I’d been looking forward to seeing my friends. I’d dreamed of the day I could flaunt them my gorgeous fur that gleamed like burnished copper. I’d practiced posing before my silver-coated mirrors, admiring my beautifully thickening limbs. I couldn’t wait to tell them that come next autumn, I’d get to hibernate with my mother rather than have to stay up in my chamber, reading books and carving statues with my claws like a furless cub!

Val? the bravest of the six peacocks sang at last.

One thing to note about the peacocks is that they don’t have names and they all look and sound the same. The color and pattern of their plumages might vary from year to year, but all of them always wear the same outfit. They call it fashion, a strange rule they must follow, though this means they’re pretty much impossible to tell apart. What . . .

. . . have they done to you? the second one continued where the first trailed off. This one perched on the thinnest top branch. The sun brushed his chest into a shade of blue that rivaled with that of the very sky.

I’ve grown up, I proudly announced, though their behavior was starting to mar my excitement. We hadn’t seen each other in half a year, and now they treated me like . . . not like a stranger, for then they’d have been more polite, but like they were somehow disappointed in me.

You’re so silly! I grabbed the lowest branch.

But something had indeed changed during the tedious winter months. Always before, I’d climbed the tree with ease, but now . . . I couldn’t haul myself up. And to make things worse, the hollow oak groaned so horrifyingly that the voluminous hair at the back of my neck jumped up.

Val! The peacocks shuffled their blue wings in apparent shock.

I tried and tried to pull myself up. I tread the air with my legs. I pulled, but my arms lacked strength. The tree continued complaining.

Val, you’d better let go. You . . . The first peacock tilted his delicate head to left in a rather patronizing manner.

I gritted my teeth and hang onto the branch a while longer, even though my arms already ached. I was the heir to the Cavernium throne. One day I’d rule the whole kingdom. Who were the peacocks to tell me not to do something I wanted to do?

. . . you can’t join us anymore, the second peacock sang.

The branch creaked again, and my hold would have slipped if it hadn’t been for my claws. Had the harsh winter hurt the oak? For never before had the