Here's what I wrote.
Haven't edited it yet, and it's not exactly formatted for posting online, but hopefully it's good enough to read clearly.
Might help if you shrink your window with so a more comfortable size.
Comments and feedback are welcome, and I don't bruise easily.
Edit:
Okay, one round of edits is down, and I've just pasted the newer version over the old!
When A Man Dies
The stranger rode into town on a pale green hoverbike, wearing armor black as death. If they’d arrived an hour later, the stranger’s approach would have been hidden by the lowering sun, and the fact that they didn’t wait for that meant the stranger wasn’t shy about anybody seeing their approach. Which either meant they were friendly, or that they were simply unafraid of anything the town of Goodwater might have in store.
Pitcher watched from her own vehicle, a much less impressive rusty brown Chipwell pickup that’d belonged to her grandad. She was sitting on the hood, relaxing after a long day with her standard pipe of kinnikinnick, her eyes half-lidded, oblivious to the foolish smile on her own face.
“Can I have some?” Eddie asked. He always asked, and Pitcher always said no, no matter how stoned she was or how much Eddie pleaded. Quigg, Eddie’s father, would absolutely murder her if she shared her pipe with the boy. Pitcher wouldn’t have shared anyway, probably; the kid was only 8 years old, and that’s too young to start smoking. Pitcher herself had gotten started when she was twelve, half her lifetime ago, enticed by an older boy she had a crush on. She often regretted starting so young, and didn’t want to get to be responsible for hooking somebody on the stuff at even an earlier age.
“No,” Pitcher said. She shaded her eyes with her hand, trying to see the stranger better. Odd, she thought. I should be able to hear the hoverbike by now. Either this stuff is making me deaf, or it’s one hell of a quiet machine.
“Please?” Eddie’s eyes were big, round, and pleading. The kid was good, but Pitcher had built up a mental callous he couldn’t break through. “At least let me play with your lighter!”
Eddie was fascinated by the lighter Pitcher used to light her pipe. It was a hefty thing, more of a tiny turp-fueled blowtorch.
“Shh.” Pitcher said. “Somebody’s coming. A stranger.”
She pointed toward the approaching bike making its way down the western road, making its way to where Pitcher and Eddie were perched on the front of Pitcher’s truck for her evening ritual of getting high and watching the sunset. Pitcher put the palm of her free hand over her pipe bowl, smothering it. Something more interesting than kinnikinnick was about to happen to her and this town; she could feel it.
She had mixed feelings about interesting things happening.
The last interesting thing that’d happened in Goodwater was when some of the Clan Ravenous had showed up under a flag of truce, trading various hides and meats for other supplies, a rare event. The clan of stalkers usually kept to themselves, content to stay in their own territory far outside of town, and all the locals--including Pitcher herself--were half-expecting trouble. Instead, she’d gotten a new pipe and hat, along with a very sturdy hand drill which had become a favorite companion when she went into the northern forest to tap pines for their sap. It’d cost her two buckets of pitch and a barrel of sap, but it’d been well worth it. She’d gotten some food and other trinkets, but they were long gone, eaten or traded.
The interesting thing before that had been when those black things had squidged out of the lake, and come at the town looking for food, chewing a hole in the outer palisade helping protect the town. Nobody had died, but a lot of livestock was lost before the things slid and squidged their way back into the lake. Pitcher shuddered thinking about it.
Interesting wasn’t always good.
Eddie was asking if he could at least have some of the birch candy from the bag she always carried with her. Pitcher absently handed him a piece, then realized through her haze that if this turned out to be the bad kind of interesting, it’d be best if Eddie was far away. Right now, he was watching the stranger with fascination. Adorable kid, but he’d always been too curious for his own good.
Pitcher handed the kid his bow and quiver, the told him to run off to find his father.
“Tell your dad to take you home. Trouble might be brewing. Tell Gid there’s a stranger.”
Gideon’s store was one of the main focal points of the small town, second only to the bar in the amount of locals and gossip that came through. Goodwater didn’t have a town crier, but word still spread quickly.
By the time Eddie was done grumbling, whining, and walking through the West Gate they were parked next to, the stranger was close enough for Pitcher to get a better look. The armor wasn’t as black as she’d thought, actually. Some parts were patterns of dark brown and green as well, a camouflage pattern Pitcher’d never seen before.
She could see long, light hair blowing in the breeze, swept back behind the stranger’s head by the air by their swift approach. There was something white on the stranger’s chest, some kind of emblem maybe. Pitcher tried to clear her head, and think what to do, but the smoke had slowed her down enough that by the time she’d put her pipe away, hopped down off the hood of the truck, and contemplated grabbing the old Bullhunter 1911 she kept in the glovebox just in case, the stranger was slowing their bike and pulling up next to Pitcher and her truck.
The stranger’s face was entirely covered by a black mask, smooth as an egg, with more of the green and brown patterns around the mouth, jawline and ears. An impressive mane of bone-white hair streamed from the back of the stranger’s head, probably artificial, part of the armor itself. The helmet had no eyeholes, and for a second Pitcher’s dulled mind assumed the stranger was blind, but then she realized it must be that kind of one-way-transparent megaplast Kirk O’Petrov had told her about. Kirk ran the town library on the east side of town, one of the few large buildings located technically in town, but still outside the outer wall.
Kirk, come to think of it, was the interesting thing to happen to Goodwater before the latest lake-thing incursion. He’d come from the south, walking on foot from somewhere far, far beyond the lake: someplace called Missouri, hundreds of miles away. He hadn’t started out on foot, but long-distance travel was a foolish and dangerous thing. He was lucky he stumbled onto the town when he did. If he’d missed the town and kept heading north, he’d have run into bug country eventually, and that would have been the end of that.
“Hey, there!” The stranger’s face was electronically twisted, coming through some kind of speaker instead of a mouth. Probably the only way to talk through the heavy helmet they wore. “I’m headed East, and need a place to stay for the night. Is there an inn in this place?”
Pitcher took a long time to answer, not out of caution but out of a mix of smoke-induced daze and a kind of awe at the stranger’s appearance up close. Whoever they were, they were the coolest damn thing Pitcher’d seen in a long while, maybe even ever. Their armor covered their body from head to toe, without a single gap, made from some kind of dark material which looked both flat and shiny at the same time. Where the sun hit it, the armor damn near sparkled black, and where the armor was shaded, it blended with the shade like a cat in the night.
Whoever they were, they’d seen some serious action. The bike was mostly in good condition, but had some blast marks on the side and back. There was a large energy rifle of some kind holstered on the side of the bike, and a sheathed sword jutting up from the back. The stranger had a large energy pistol strapped to their hip, and a hefty knife down on their left calf. Four weapons, powerful weapons. The rifle and pistol both looked megaclass, and the sword’s hilt looked loaded with tech. Probably a vibro, also megaclass. Maybe the knife was just a knife -- Pitcher couldn’t tell without getting down on her knees to examine it-- but just as she started to bend down, she realized that’d be a weird thing to do.
Megaclass weapons were rare and powerful, too powerful. They were no good for hunting, and too much overkill for fending off most bandits. Pitcher knew of only three megaclass weapons in town.
Quigg had an energy rifle he’d brought with him from some city far off east he wouldn’t say much about, the place where his wife’d died. Crazy Jack had that strange glowing crowbar he’d used to help chase off the lake things. They were mega too; arrows, bullets, and shotgun slugs bounced off their hide like they were nothing. Oh, and Random Malloy, the town’s only real mechanic, had a laser torch in his shop. He’d also helped the last time the things came, turning the torch up to max and frying the things from ten feet away. If it hadn’t been for them, Pitcher suspected the town would have lost a lot of folks to those astonishing large mouths the things had. Quigg would have helped too, but he and Eddie lived too far out of town. He hadn’t even found out about it until the next day when he came to trade venison and buckskin with Gid.
This stranger was better armed than the entire town. And they were the only person she’d ever seen wearing full armor. Pitcher was looking at a walking death machine, and just as she was thinking this, she saw that the large white emblem on the stranger’s chest was the image of some kind of skull.
“You’re the coolest damned thing I’ve ever seen,” Pitcher said aloud. Mist me, she thought, that was lame and weird. She was regretting the kinnikinnik, but how could she have known a stranger would ride up?
The blank black egg face seemed to stare directly into Pitcher’s eyes, and it was like being stared into by an abyss.
“Thank you.” The stranger’s electric voice sounded amused. The egg moved up and down, looking Pitcher over. “You’re not bad yourself.”
Pitcher felt her face warm, a mixture of embarrassment and other emotions she couldn’t quite identify. She looked away, the egg face of the stranger making her feel vulnerable and self-conscious. The stranger could look at Pitcher’s face, but all she could see was the stranger’s armor.
She knew the stranger was just being nice; Pitcher was covered with filth and dried sweat from her daily labors, and she reeked of smoke, not just from the kinnikinnick, but mostly from double-boiling resin into pitch. Green pine burned hot, but smoky as hell.
The stranger leaned closer, the dark egg tilting a bit to the side as the featureless face of the mask came within inches of Pitcher’s face.
“You smell like fire,” the stranger said. They sounded pleased.
Pitcher had no idea what to do with this information. Now they’d both been weird at each other, though, and she supposed that made them even.
“Uh,” she said, sounding like an idiot, “We don’t have an inn, but you can stay at my place, if you want. I got a cabin a bit to the north. It’s that or the stables, and I’ve got better food.”
She had no idea why she offered, except there was something absolutely exciting about this unknown war-machine of a person. She instantly regretted it. Strangers were dangerous; she could be killed, raped, tortured, or worse. Sometimes really, really bad stuff happened to folks.
The stranger simply nodded.
“You take credits?” they asked.
Credits? Who the **** uses credits?
“Uh, no.” Pitcher said. “But we can work something out. It’s all barter around these parts.”
The stranger looked at her, and said nothing. Pitcher felt incredibly awkward and self-aware.
“I make and trade pitch,” she said. Then helpfully added, “That’s why they call me Pitcher.”
The stranger nodded, then reached into a saddlebag and pulled out a shiny red gem the size of a healthy walnut still in the husk.
Pitcher took it, inspected it. She had no idea what it was. It seemed too light to be a real gemstone, but too faceted and beautiful to be anything else. It sure wasn’t made of polished resin, not any kind Pitcher’d ever seen, anyway.
“Thank you, yeah, this’ll work,” she said. “Uh… what IS it?”
The stranger gave a low, electric chuckle.
“It’s the eyestone of a night-laugher,” the stranger said. “I killed some out west.”
Pitcher had no idea what a night-laugher was. How far had this stranger traveled?
“What do you do with it?”
The stranger shrugged. “They’re just pretty, I suppose. People trade them, cut them like gems, that kind of thing. I may need to stay here for a while. Will this buy me a week or more?”
“Uh… sure.” Pitcher was sure she was being severely overpaid. She didn’t know how common these were out west, but she’d never seen or heard of one. On beauty alone, though, she knew it’d be worth a bundle in trade. “Yeah, that works.”
“Do you mind taking me to your cabin now? Been on the road a long time, and could use a lie-down. I’ll check out the town tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Pitcher started gathering her stuff, putting it back in the truck’s cab. She was pretty sure she was good to drive. Wouldn’t be the first time she drove while a bit stoned. Of course, if she ended up with the truck in a ditch, it wouldn’t be the first time, either.
She drove home carefully and slowly, the stranger following her on their hoverbike. Once she felt secure in her ability to drive, she grabbed the mic of her truck’s radio, and called out over the channel Gid’s radio was always set to. He responded, and she explained about the stranger as best as she could.
“This might be trouble,” Gid warned.
“If it is,” she said, “there’s not one damned thing we can do about it. This dude’s fully armed and armored, all megaclass stuff by the look. Didn’t see any weapons on the bike, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a hidden laser or launcher under the hood. They seem friendly so far, though. Here’s hoping it stays that way. And hey, maybe this’ll be a good thing! Wait’ll you check out the rock they gave me. I’ll bring it by tomorrow.”
When they got back to Pitcher’s cabin, she hopped out of the truck, leaving her headlights pointed at the front door until she could get it open. She loved her home, but was suddenly ashamed at the drab crudity of it. She quickly lit some lamps, then went back out. The stranger parked their bike next to her truck, Pitcher shut off her engine and lights, and the two of them went inside.
It was a chilly night, so Pitcher lit a fire in her woodstove. All her firewood was pine; she gathered it from the northern forest when she went around checking her taps and buckets. The tail end of her truck bed was filled with six large wooden barrels she used to gather and store the sap, but the front half of the truck was left clear for firewood. Pine was not very good firewood; it burned far too hot and far too fast, and the smoke gunked up her chimney, meaning she had to clean it regularly. But it was easier for her to gather wood while driving her route than to make extra trips in the opposite direction to gather wood from the oak, hickory, and glow-elms that grew along the lake’s shore.
Besides, she didn’t like going near the lake if she didn’t have to. And pine was one hell of a lot easier to cut, load, and stack.
Even still, the northern forest had started to feel a bit… odd to her. The massive ancient pines which grew there used to feel like her second home, but in recent years had grown to feel more and more unsafe. Nothing she could pinpoint had changed about the woods, though. Maybe the woods weren’t changing at all. Maybe she was.
“What do these things burn?” The stranger was holding one of Pitcher’s lamps.
“Camphine,” she said. The stranger stared at her with their blank mask, and Pitcher couldn’t tell what they were thinking. “Uh, it’s an alcohol and turpentine mix. I get turp when I’m making pitch. Truck runs on straight turp; my grandad hired an op to build it special.”
“An operator?” The stranger’s voice suddenly sounded more interested, more intense. “How long ago was this?”
“Back in Grandaddy’s age. I never met the guy.”
“Hm. Good. Best to be careful around those folk. Many of them are… tainted. “
“Okay.” Pitcher had no idea what the stranger meant, but she couldn’t remember the last time an op’d been through town. “Hey, you need to eat?”
“Wouldn’t mind a bit,” the stranger said.
Pitcher’d gotten a load of venison from Quigg recently. He was a hunter, and his boy Eddie was getting good enough with his bow that he’d probably be joining his daddy on the hunts pretty soon, if he wasn’t already. She busied herself chopping veggies and cooking some deer steaks. Normally she spread the meat out more; steaks were for special occasions, but she had company over. Besides, the eye-stone thing would more than pay for this meal and many, many more. She wondered if the stranger had any more of those, and how many.
“Is that a book?” The stranger was still in the main room, but their voice carried easily into the kitchen. This was not a large cabin, but at least it was better than a one-room.
“Uh, yeah.” Pitcher only had one book. Kirk had given it to her as a gift. He was teaching her how to read. It was a slow process, but she had most of the alphabet down and could write her own name pretty well. The book was supposed to be for practice, but it just made her feel stupid when she tried to read it on her own.
When she came back out to the main room with a tray of food for her guest, she found the stranger sitting in her chair, looking over the book. As she approached with the tray, the stranger read aloud.
“‘The Magic Zone is a constant source of fear and trouble for Chi-Town and the neighboring territories. Few humans, other than practitioners of magic, psychics, and the foolish, dare travel the forests of southeastern Missouri and Arkansas, southern Illinois, or the Ohio Valley.’” The stranger’s tone was inscrutable as they read the passage. “Well, that much at least is true. Have you been reading this?”
Pitcher looked down. “No, I can’t read. But I’m trying to learn; Kirk is teaching me.”
The stranger looked over at her.
“I can’t read either; my armor translates it for me. Reading is dangerous.”
Pitcher didn’t know what they were talking about.
“Who’s Kirk?” the stranger asked.
“Oh,” she said. “He runs the town library on the east side. It’s pretty big; he’s got a couple dozen books.”
Pitcher didn’t know how many books there were exactly. Math wasn’t her speciality either. Kirk was trying to teach her that too, but most of her efforts had been on reading, so math had taken a back seat.
“Really? Do your townsfolk read very much?”
“Oh, goodness no. But Kirk is teaching us, especially the children.” She laughed. “They’re picking it up faster than anything! It’s amazing. Quigg’s boy Eddie? The one in buckskins that ran off when you were driving up? He’s already got the alphabet down. Those’re the letters.”
She handed the stranger the tray of food, suddenly wondering how the stranger was going to eat. They still had their full armor and helmet on.
“Hmm.” The stranger hmmed as they took the food. “Who’s Quigg?”
“Just a local hunter. He and his boy live outside of town.”
Pitcher gathered a tray of food for herself, and got mugs of water for both of them. When she came back to the main room, she saw that the stranger had their helmet off and was eating their meal with pretty fair enthusiasm
“This is good!” The stranger, it turned out, was a woman. Pitcher’d expected a man under all those arms and armor, but wasn’t entirely surprised to find a woman under there. She was surprised at how beautiful the woman was: large, round eyes, fine blonde hair, and a smile that almost outshone the lamps lighting the cabin. “Haven’t had a meal like this in a while. Are these potatoes?”
They talked about the food for a bit, the stranger asking lots of questions about local produce, meats, and customs and such, as well as the townsfolk. Pretty soon, she didn’t feel like a stranger at all, but almost like a new friend. The kinnikinnick had worn off enough that Pitcher was suddenly very aware she’d given the stranger her name, her nickname anyway, but she’d never asked for the stranger’s name.
She corrected the oversight immediately and found out the woman’sname was Vanda. Vanda turned out to be immensely pleasant company, and Pitcher told Vanda her own birth name, something she didn’t normally do with strangers.
Pitcher lit up her pipe, offered it to Vanda.
To Pitcher’s surprise, Vanda accepted. Later, Pitcher broke out her jug of applejack, and they passed the jug back and forth as they talked.
She ended up telling Vanda a lot about the town. She told Vanda how Kirk had arrived in town, and gone about turning an empty cabin just outside the town walls into the library. She told her about Quigg arriving in town with his baby years back, and about how he’d moved into Skoog’s old cabin, then told her about weird old Skoog himself, and how he vanished without a trace one day. She talked about Gideon and his store, Mike and his tavern, and about how after little Sheryl Bass’s parents died, Mike had taken her in and raised her. They talked into the night, the alcohol and kinnikinnick loosening Pitcher’stongue. She talked too much, she knew, but couldn’t help it.
She kept some things back, though. She didn’t mention Quigg’s laser rifle or Malloy’s laser torch. She talked about Crazy Jack and how he got that name by building a cabin right on the lake’s shore after the last time the things came out, but she didn’t mention Jack’s glowing crowbar. She talked about the town itself, and its history, but didn’t get into any of the town’s defense other than the obvious wall, didn’t discuss security.
She thought she did pretty well, considering.
The fire had burned low. Vanda helped Pitcher reload the fire, reaching in with her gauntleted hands and moving the hot, burning logs that remained into a better stack, then putting the new wood on top.
“Careful, don’t let it burn you!” Pitcher warned her.
Vanda laughed, a magical musical laugh that made Pitcher smile.
“Not a chance,” Vanda said. “It’d take plasma to burn this armor, and it’s rated up to 300 degrees centigrade.”
Pitcher was impressed, but didn’t know what ‘300 degrees centigrade’ meant. She handed Vanda new logs, until the fire was roaring again, hot enough she had to step back a bit. That’s pine for you, she thought. Or maybe she said it aloud.
“There is absolutely nothing in this town that can hurt me,” Vanda said. “Certainly not a little log fire.”
“Okay,” Pitcher said. “Good to know!”
Vanda was strongly interested in the lake and the strange light which came from the lake’s depths sometimes, often before things came out of it.
Vanda talked of many of her travels and adventures, but gave little in the way of personal information. She’d apparently traveled all over, and talked about strange lands, people, and customs she’d run into, like a strange village far off to the southwest.
“I’m serious,” Vanda laughed. “Once a year, the entire community gets massively drunk, and all bets are off! People fight, frolic, and go completely nuts! I saw a guy punch another guy in the face for no reason, but the next day it was like they were best friends. They said it helps the community vent out tensions, and to bond. I don’t get it.”
Vanda’s laughter was contagious, and Pitcher fell out of her chair laughing at the way Vanda told the story. Vanda tried to help her up, but between the applejack and the pipe they’d been sharing, Vanda just ended up falling next to her. They looked at each other, and there was a moment. Their eyes met, locked, and didn’t look away. Vanda opened her mouth slightly, bringing her face closer to Pitcher. Pitcher’s heart beat a bit faster in her chest, nervousness warring with anticipation. She parted her own lips slightly, but instead of a kiss, Vanda ran her still-armored hand through Pitcher’s grubby hair.
“Wait right here.” Vanda abruptly climbed back to her feet, and walked out the front door.
Pitcher just lay there, closing her eyes to keep the room from spinning. Oh, what are you doing, Molly? But she knew what she was doing; she was being stupid. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. She wanted to blame the kinnikinnick, but she knew part of it was just the isolation of living alone for so long. Tomas, the boy who’d showned her how to smoke it, had been three years older than her. She fell for him hard, and they got married several years later. It hadn’t turned out well, and after two years of being married to him, he’d fallen off his boat into the lake. His No body was ever found.
Pitcher didn’t miss him, but she missed being with somebody who, at least on occasion, made her feel loved --, or at least attractive.
Vanda was stirring things up, making Pitcher’s heart do things it hadn’t done in a long time. Making Pitcher feel wanted. She wasn’t sure what to do. She looked at Vanda’s helmet perched on the table next to Vanda’s empty chair. The blank mask seemed to looklooked back, seemed to know something. Pitcher closed her eyes, and the room slowly spun in circles.
She heard the cabin door open, then close again, and when she opened her eyes, Vanda was leaning over her, her fatally pretty face peering upside-down at Pitcher.
“Get up,” Vanda said. She was holding some kind of canister in her hand. “We’re going to clean you up.”
Pitcher had a large washtub in the side room that she used for cleaning her clothes and her own body, but she didn’t feel like going all the way out to the well to draw water, fill the tub.
“I’ll wash in the morning,” she said.
Vanda pulled Pitcher to her feet in spite of her protests, then started removing Pitcher’s clothes. Pitcher didn’t resist. Maybe Vanda would draw the water. They could heat it on the stove, and she could get cleaned up. The pitch, sap, and smoke had almost become a second skin to her, and she wanted to shed it.
“You, Molly, are an utter mess!” Vanda let out a whistle, but her voice and face were friendly. She wasn’t judging, just commenting. Pitcher wasn’t very used to not being judged. Her heart did a little thing again, a kind of flutter that seemed new because it hadn’t happened for a long, long time.
Pitcher stood clothesless. The fire had burned down to embers, and she’d been too drunk to notice. That’s pine for you, she thought. Too hot, and far too fast. Then it leaves you cold.
Vanda shook the canister up and down, pointed a nozzle at Pitcher, and started spraying her body down with some kind of pleasantly scented mist.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
“Roses,” Vanda said.
“Oh.” Pitcher’s mind chewed on the word for a moment. “I think I’ve heard of those. They’re a flower?”
“Yes.” Vanda grinned as she kept misting Pitcher’s body. “They’re a kind of flower. You still smell like fire, but now you smell like flowers too.”
The mist was strangely warming, and Pitcher could feel her body flush with heat, as if her entire body was blushing. Vanda lifted each of Pitcher’s feet in turn, coating her soles with the strange mist.
“What is that?” Pitcher asked.
“They use it in the cities where I’m from, mostly downsiders who can’t get decent plumbing. Refreshing, isn’t it? It’s perfect for travel! This is my last can, but I’m on a trip home, I…” Vanda paused, and her face grew strange and dark. “I just have to take care of some business first. But when I get home, I’ll have a real shower, not just this canned stuff. Now take a look!”
Pitcher looked down at her own body and discovered that she was incredibly clean, her bare skin shining in the light of the camphine lamps and dying fire. All the grime and pine pitch--which normally took heavy scrubbing to remove--was gone. Vanda had produced a hairbrush from somewhere and went to work on Pitcher’s hair, combing and spritzing it with more rose-scented miracle. When Vanda was done with her, Pitcher felt not only clean, but beautiful. She wasn’t sure she’d ever truly felt this way before.
Vanda dropped the brush, took off her gloves, and ran her fingers through Pitcher’s hair. Pitcher leaned in, rubbing her head against Vanda’s hands like a purring cat.
“Thank you,” she said. She wasn’t sure why. It sounded stupid.
Vanda leaned in, and this time actually did kiss her. Pitcher kissed back, and they sank to the floor.
Vanda kept her armor on, with only her head and her strong hands bare and able to touch Pitcher skin-to-skin, but it was enough. Things happened that Pitcher hadn’t done in a long, long while. From Vanda’s hunger, it seemed like it’d been a long time for her as well.
When Pitcher woke up the next morning, she was still lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. The fire was dead and the air was cold, but Pitcher felt a new warmth deep within her. She was happy, she realized. She was sober, and she was happy: a rare combination.
It was amazing how quickly life could change, she thought. It felt like a miracle had happened to her, something so incredible it almost scared her with its unfamiliarity. She was happy, and she had hope, hope of a more interesting and joyful life than collecting pine sap.
She sat up, and looked around. Vanda wasn’t there.
She called out.
Vanda didn’t answer.
She got back to her feet, and looked at her shabby pile of filthy clothes. She couldn’t bring herself to put them back on, so she wrapped herself in the blanket and looked for Vanda, but in vain. She wasn’t there.
When Pitcher looked out the front door of the cabin, she saw that Vanda’s hoverbike was missing.
Pitcher tried to remember the night before, but it was pretty blurry. She felt like she remembered most of it, but the order of events and conversation kept seeming to mix around in her head. Eventually she remembered that before following Pitcher’s truck out to the cabin, Vanda had said something about “checking out the town tomorrow,” so that’s where she must be. Pitcher felt a bit abandoned, but probably Vanda had let her sleep out of courtesy. Vanda would be back, though; she’d asked about staying for a week or more, and had paid for it.
As she was cleaning up her cabin from the night’s previous revelry, she realized she couldn’t find her book anywhere. Had Vanda taken it? Why?
Pitcher put on some clean clothes, then made breakfast, wishing Vanda would come back. After breakfast, she went out to her truck, intending to use her radio to call Gid, find out if he’d seen Vanda. When she opened the door, she found a piece of paper in the middle of the bench seat. There was something written on it.
She got Gid on the radio and asked about Vanda. He’d seen her,-- the whole town had. She’d ridden in on her hoverbike, wandered around a bit, asked some questions, and bought some supplies from Gid’s store. She paid with another eye-stone, the same kind she’d given to Pitcher, which somehow made her feel less special.
As Gid was telling her all this, she was staring at the writing on the piece of paper. The handwriting was terrible, almost as bad as Pitcher’s own. She worked on remembering the alphabet, the sounds each letter made.
I.
That was the first letter, then there was a little mark. It was an easy one, because the letter was in Pitcher’s own name.
Next was an M, as in Molly, her real name.
I’m.
She sounded it out. “Eye em.”
Then she put the two sounds together, and said them aloud. “I’m.”
There was only one other word in the note, so Pitcher felt confident she could figure this out. She knew Vanda couldn’t read either, and wondered if her armor had helped her write it. It made her feel special that Vanda would leave her a written note; nobody had ever done that before.
The second word started with an S, another easy one to remember because it looked like a snake. “I’m esss,” she said.
Then there was an O, like the one in “Molly.”
The next two letters were identical, and they were more easy ones: R, as in PitcheR.
The last letter threw her a bit, though. It was familiar, made of two slashes, one long and one short.
Over the radio, Gideon was asking her how long Vanda was planning to be in town, and Pitcher told her it’d probably be a week or so. Gideon sounded happy to hear it, and Pitcher knew he was anticipating Vanda doing some more shopping.
“I was just wondering,” he said.
Pitcher was focused on the last letter: y.
“Because,” Gid continued. “The way she packed her bike, I thought maybe she was moving on soon, probably today.”
Pitcher wasn’t really listening. She was putting the message together, sounding it out different ways until she got it right.
“I’m sorry.” She said this aloud, and the warmth in her heart was abruptly replaced with a chill in her gut.
“What’s that?” Gid asked.
“Never mind,” Pitcher told him. “Say, do you know where she went after your store?”
“Dunno,” Gid told her. “Out the east gate, I think.”
Out the east gate, where the school was.
Reading is dangerous, Vanda’d said.
Business to take care of, she’d said.
Nothing in this town can hurt me, she’d said.
I’m sorry, she’d said.
The chill in Pitcher’s gut turned into an icy sword rammed down her spine.
“Gid,” she said, “Get ahold of Quigg. Tell him to bring his rifle. Tell Malloy to get his torch. And if you have any idea where Joe is, find him. I think something bad might happen.” There was a moment of silence.
“Will do,” Gid said. He sounded like he understood.
“Wait!” Something nagged at Pitcher’s brain. “What’s… What’s ‘300 degrees centigrade’ mean?”
He paused, then explained.
Pitcher drove to town faster than she’d ever driven in her life, tears of fear and pain leaking out of her eyes, making the drive all the harder. But she knew every turn, every rut and pothole, and she’d been down the dirt road to town so many times -- sober or otherwise -- that her truck could practically take her there itself.
When she reached the last straightaway into town, she pressed her foot to the floor, frantically twisting the wheel to dodge the ruts and holes deep enough to damage her truck or steer her into a ditch.
When she got to town, she drove around the outer wall; it was the fastest way to the library.
Vanda’s hoverbike was outside. The rifle was still in its holster, but the sword was missing. Pitcher’s truck slid on the grass, spinning the truck around in a heart-jolting skid that nearly made her crash into the bike, but she ended up next to it instead, facing away from the library’s thick log walls.
“Vanda!” she called. “Vanda, what are you doing?”
There was no answer.
Pitcher grabbed at the rifle, but couldn’t tug it out of the holster for some reason. It was stuck. She kept trying, but couldn’t budge it.
“It won’t work for you,” Vanda’s electric voice called out. “That holster won’t unlock for anybody but me; it’s coded to my armor.”
Pitcher spun about, toward the sound of Vanda’s voice, toward the front door of the library. Vanda stood just outside the doorway, clad in her full armor just the way Pitcher had first seen her. Except this time, Vanda was holding something in each hand.
Her left hand held her unsheathed sword, which buzzed and shimmered with some kind of powerful energy.
Her right hand held the severed head of Kirk O’Petrov.
Pitcher fell to her knees, a wordless cry of grief tearing its way roughly out of her throat.
“Why?” she screamed. She thought of the gun in her glovebox, the 7-shot .45 caliber semi-automatic.
There is absolutely nothing in this town that can hurt me, Vanda had said. Pitcher knew the pistol would be as useless as a snowball against Vanda’s armor. There were no gaps, no holes, no space for anything to get through.
“WHY!?” Pitcher felt sick, and the cry launched from her mouth like projectile vomit.
Vanda’s dark egg of a helmet looked at Pitcher.
“You wouldn’t understand, Molly.” Vanda paused, almost as if she felt remorse. “Reading is dangerous.”
The most articulate thing Pitcher could do was to scream.
“I told you I had business in town,” Vanda’s voice boomed out through her armor’s speaker. Then, a bit softer, “I told you I was sorry. You’ll understand someday.”
“Why?” Tears were streaming out of Pitcher’s eyes as the useless word heaved out of her once again. This time the word lacked the same force, but it was still uncontainable.
Vanda ignored her.
“Go back to your cabin, Molly. If any idiots in town try to stop me from destroying these books…” Another pause. “You won’t want to see what happens.”
Ragged sobs of rage and grief still tore from Pitcher’s throat.
“Get back in your truck, and drive away.” Vanda’s voice was almost apologetic, but as hard as her impenetrable armor.
Pitcher got back in her truck. The engine was still running. She reached down, grabbed the gearshift, and changed gears.
She could see Vanda in the rearview mirror. Blood was draining from Kirk’s head. Pitcher had been trying to remember something Quigg had talked about once, when he was drunk, about his wife’s death, and the nation he had to leave. What was the word?
Coalition.
They’d murdered Quigg’s wife because she was different, stomped her head until it smashed. He’d only ever talked about it the one time, but Pitcher had been there at the bar.
The Coalition didn’t like people who were different.
They didn’t like magic.
They didn’t like psychics.
They didn’t like teachers.
Pitcher had told Vanda their town had a teacher, and she’d told her where to find him.
“GO HOME!” Vanda’s voice boomed like thunder, like the voice of a powerful and angry goddess.
“I’m sorry,” Pitcher said aloud, even though neither Kirk nor Vanda could hear her.
Then she slammed her foot to the floor.
The deep tire treads spun for purchase on the dew-dampened grass, found it, and launched the truck backward.
Vanda was caught off-guard, but her sword stabbed into the back of the pickup as it rammed into her, pinning her to the front wall of the library, the rear bumper crumpling like foil against Vanda’s invincible armor.
The sword went straight through the tailgate as if it wasn’t even there, twisting at an upright angle, impaling one of the full barrels in the back of the bed.
Pitcher set the parking brake, grabbed her 1911, and leapt out of the car.
Vanda was pinned, unable to even move her arms, much less her sword. Pitcher cautiously approached.
“You can’t hurt me,” Vanda said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
When Pitcher was collecting sap from her line of taps and buckets in the northern forest, she used those barrels to store it. The barrel the sword had impaled was slowly leaking its contents onto the ground.
“Move your truck, Pitcher.” Vanda’s voice was iron, a deadly threat.
“300 degrees centigrade,” Pitcher said.
Vanda’ head jerked, looked at Pitcher. The shiny black egg was as inscrutable as ever. Did Vanda understand?
Pitcher aimed her pistol, and fired all seven rounds into the barrels. Tossing her gun to the ground, she took her lighter out of her pocket.
“What are you doing?” Vanda’s voice was no longer iron.
Pitcher sparked her lighter, and touched the tip of blue fire to the sap leaking out of the barrels. She had to jump back as the sap instantly caught fire, and the flames spread to the other barrels.
“Pitcher,” Vanda’s electric voice trembled. She was struggling to free herself, but in vain. “Molly. Stop this. You don’t know what you’re doing, please.”
Pitcher backed away as the flames engulfed the bed of the truck, engulfed Vanda and her invincible armor.
Townsfolk were coming out of the east gate, armed with whatever weapons they had. Pitcher kept backing away, the flames burning hotter and hotter, spreading to the firewood stacked in the front of the bed as the burning sap heated, flowing smoother and smoother until it ran like water, spreading flames onto the ground around the truck. The library’s walls started smoking, then caught fire.
Vanda kept calling out to her, demanding, then asking, then begging Pitcher to help her.
“You smell like fire,” Pitcher said.
She and the other townsfolk watched as the fire burned hotter and hotter, cooking Vanda alive in her impenetrable shell. The begging turned to screams, and then eventually to silence, and the town of Goodwater watched as their library slowly burned to the ground.
Rifts needs more fan created stories like these
