Fingers of Frost - Part One

This week: the first of three parts of my grimdark fantasy story set in the same world as Nagual.

Hello readers,

I hope this issue of Strange Speculations finds you decked out in black clothes and decorating your home with spiderwebs.

I don’t have too many updates for you. I am continuing to query, little by little. I will have passed the 150 queries sent mark by the end of this month. It’s been a lot of ups-and-downs with Nagual. I’ve received a handful of full and partial requests, including one that came in yesterday, so I’m going to keep sending it out until there are no more agents to send it to!

In the meantime, I’ve been working on my next projects. My critique group has my horror novella in their hands and I am making my way through a second pass of my fantasy western novel, so I can get it in the hands of some alpha readers.

All that aside, however, I’m excited to finally do something I said I’d do on here when I started: share unreleased work.

I have a folder on my computer of trunked stories and I’ll be going through and picking out either segments of them or entire pieces to share with you over the coming weeks.

Today, I’m sharing part one of a grimdark fantasy short story, set in the same world as Nagual.

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Fingers of Frost

by A.P. Thayer

Sonea Marcet dragged a potato sack filled with rotting meat through the frozen undergrowth of the Wyrdwuld. Each time the burlap caught on a frozen root or dead shrub, she had to yank it forward. Each time she did it with just a little bit more force than was necessary.

Whose idea was it to kill the squelch this way?

Yours, fool. Sonea’s inner monologue, the one whose voice sounded exactly like her mother, was especially biting today.

She shoved the voice away and pulled the sack free once more.

The reek of the meat stung her nostrils and she sneezed. She spat the bitter taste out of her mouth and dropped the sack for a moment to lean against the trunk of an impossibly tall tree. She sucked in the air and sought the sky. A glimpse to free her from the oppressive murk of the Wyrdwuld. The gloomy boughs above her, from pines and evergreens ancient beyond her reckoning, had other plans. These weren't like the firs from back home. These held a primeval malice to them that resented her presence in their ancient world, so far from civilization. Dark whispers echoed high above her, somewhere inside that thick canopy blocking her view of the sky. A malevolence grew in the shadows of those ancient trees.

She scratched at her Carrion Company tattoo. A geometric and highly detailed rat skull inked onto the inside of her left forearm. She’d gotten it two years ago—closer to three, actually. The dull, repetitive pain of the needle injecting ink into her skin should have been a distant memory, but no. If anything, as time wore on, the memory had become sharper. How she had signed the charter and sworn the oath. How she'd given her life to the monster hunting outfit in exchange for a criminal pardon and a new purpose.

Two years, eight months, and seventeen days ago and it felt like yesterday. Two years, eight months, and seventeen days of having to stare at that grotesque rat skull on her forearm, without the crow skull above it.

It was a record, as the Captain and the other Hunters at Dirge Hall liked to remind her. Both in number of days as Rat and her being the oldest Rat in the annals at twenty-five. This hunt, this job, was her last chance before getting—no. No use thinking like that. She would follow her plan. She would kill the squelch and when she returned to the Hall, she would finally get promoted to Crow. She’d earn that crow skull tattoo.

She bent forward and pressed her palms against the rough leather kneecaps of her armor to finish catching her breath. She was greeted with a nostril full of the miasma of putrid meat. Bile rose in her throat and she spat saliva from a too-full mouth into the icy undergrowth. She straightened back against the tree, panting. Sweat poured from her temples and trickled behind her ears. Strands of her hair were plastered to her forehead and she shivered under that biting wind that threatened to turn her sweat into ice.

"What the fuck am I doing?"

The dim loneliness surrounding her didn't answer. She sucked in a deep breath, picking up the sack of meat, and launching herself further into the forest. The thought of that pulsing needle waiting for her, of Captain Ardanna's look of approval and respect, of finally pulling herself out of the mediocrity of her career in the Company, drove her on.

I cannot abide self-deception.

Shut up, mother.

She went over the plan again in her mind. The meat would lure the squelch out of its swamp, away from where its power was strongest. She would leave a crumb trail of rotten meat leading from its home to a more suitable kill zone, back near the edge of the forest. A bear trap, made of Blackfire-forged steel, buried under another pile of meat, and a direct crossbow hit would finish the job. She would be the first Hunter to kill a squelch single-handed.

A brilliant plan, if she did say so herself, right up until she'd picked up the animal carcasses and gotten a whiff of the meaty contents she had to drag several hours through one of the most inhospitable forests in all of Skarthun, maybe all of Ebria. Still, if she was successful, she'd have found a new, better way to kill squelches.

She'd rehearsed the plan, focused on her training, and brought everything she needed. Right? She heard her mother chuckle in her mind. Why did she feel like she was forgetting something? She went over the plan again, went over the inventory again, and still couldn't put her finger on it. It was just anxiety. Self-doubt. She would attain Crow.

The sound of cracking ice brought her back to the present, but too late. A thin layer of it over the boggy ground hadn't been able to support her weight. Frigid water rushed into her boot and she grunted a moment before the smell of the bog hit her.

A malevolent clicking echoed out from the darkness all around her. Anger and hunger battled waves of curiosity and excitement in Sonea's mind. A nonverbal question from the squelch materialized within her. Her presence in its swamp was a tasty mystery to it. It wanted to know what had just intruded into its territory. It wanted to know what was for dinner.

You miscalculated the distance, girl.

Sonea dropped the bag of rotting meat as the dark thoughts echoed out from the black, ice-covered pools around her. Black trees, gnarled by decay and twisted by the lack of sunlight, pressed in all around her, growing around the larger coniferous trees like a blight. Light was dimmer here, the air colder. Dark gray ice covered everything. Malice dripped from every branch and froze into icicles. Hatred bubbled up from the stagnant pools of half-frozen water around her. She was right in the middle of the monster's lair, where its power was strongest.

Squelches are known for their control of disease, poisons, and empathic enchantments. They project their emotions and thoughts, as do all Ethrytes, but their specialty lies in entrapment and charms.

The passage in the Company guidebook flitted through Sonea's head and she fumbled to bring her crossbow up from her belt loop. As she hunted for the hidden form of the beast, she tried to cobble together a new plan.

…to be continued next week.