Abe Werner—the third-in-line’s fourth son—always made me go out and fetch a pail of milk whenever the cellar was empty. I should have made a show of shivering and sniffling when I went out to stables. Because tonight, he blocked the way to the stables, thickset arms crossed, eyes leering, and said, “Take off your shoes.”

So I did. The ground was covered in small rocks and coarse sand. I stumbled half of the way and limped the other half. I nearly fell when a sharp wind dug into my back, carrying with it drawn out laughter. I could barely see in the stable. I didn’t mind; behind these wood walls the wind could only whistle.

I sat in the dark and rubbed my hands before reaching for a warm teat. Curtains of milk hissed against steel, slowly filling up the bucket. My feet found a loose pile of straw to rest on. The bottoms of my feet felt wet. As I worked I looked up through the stable. A particularly bright star beamed light straight through the hole in the ceiling. It was yet another clear sky.

“Huh.” It hadn’t rained in days. It might not rain for months. Something was wrong with the Earth. Winters were colder. Summers were hotter. The air was thickening like a geriatric’s blood. The creatures of the land were growing stranger. Monsters in capes flew over the skies of the east.

Still, I would rather live here than escape to the cities. Better the cruelty of the robber baron than whatever the alternative was. C. S. Lewis, I think. I wished they let me in the library more. The Werner boys hardly read. They were doers. What they did, they did to people. The pain in my feet numbed at the thought. I knew it could always be worse. Here, I had my time outside. Once one got used to the chill, it became a comfort.

The pail was full.

Milk spilled here and there on my way to the cellar. My eyes had adjusted to the dark. I followed the best path I could find and grit my teeth. I did not trip this time.

I set the pail down in the shadow of the house’s second wing. Slanted double doors led beneath the house. I grasped a handle with both hands and pulled. The door reached its peak and fell onto its side. Hinges creaked. Before me laid stairs, descending into nothing. There was no wind in the cellar but it was colder. I hurried through. At the back there was a machine—a pasteurizer. I lifted the bucket over my head towards the feed funnel.

My head whipped towards the sound of a footstep. The pail nearly fell. I set it down onto the cement a little too hard; a drop pulled up from the center of the pail, splashing onto the floor.

“Who’s there?”

“H-hi,” she said.

A string was pulled. Current coursed through filament in the ceiling bulb.

She had a crown of blonde hair, dropping down like a stage veil parting to reveal eyes the color of sea foam and lichen. Round cheekbones tapered into a sharp chin. She had a thin neck—almost delicately so—resting on a body draped in a pale green nightgown.

“Sorry,” she said. She shuffled back awkwardly. She was barefoot. “Did I scare you?”

“No.” I resumed the work. I turned the machine on and finished the pour.

“What are you doing?”

“Sir Abraham,” I said. “He likes to have a glass of milk before bed.”

The machine rumbled. Glasses clinked. Filled bottles began to convey into a partitioned basket.

“Oh I see,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Cassidy.”

“Guess your ma and pa wanted a girl,” she said, smiling.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Oh.” Her chin dropped, immediately apologetic.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I haven’t seen you around the house,” she said.

“I can’t go to other wings.”

“Right, of course. Of course.” She didn’t seem to know where to look. “Sorry. Uhm. Bye.”

She ran away. Almost like a mouse.

“You mark my words Fern, they’ll be coming this-a way any day. When that time comes you’ve got to be ready to defend our land.”

“Yes, Uncle Benjamin.”

“Them city-dillers they’ve got their fancy education, their shiny toys, but they ain’t got heart or soul, nor history. You need space to rear a proper family. Put that many people in a place and the devil seeps through the cracks. There is such a thing as being too communal, sharing too much. You get me boy?”

“Yes, Uncle Benjamin.”

“Some of them share their wives with other men, you know. Call it an oh-pen relationship. Ooh the thought! Now, we Werners. Are we cuckoos? Or are we free birds?”

“Free birds, Uncle Benjamin!”

“Fuck yeah, Fern boy.” He began to vigorously strum his antique Les Paul Gibson.

That awful noise. So loud. I felt it inside my skull.

“Shovel faster, Cassie!” Benjamin stopped his playing to point at me. A jagged blue arc leapt from his fingertip and blasted the ground three feet to my side, sending dust and smoke everywhere. I fell backwards and cried out. Benjamin kept playing. Fern laughed in open mouthed silence under the overruling sound. The boy was smaller than me, younger than me.

My cheeks were flushed. I wanted to run away. Or run at them with my pitchfork. The sharp metal would probably make it easier for Benjamin to hit me. I didn’t know how I knew that, but it made sense. As much as dying right now made sense. I did none of those things. I shoveled hay faster. Dixie appreciated it at least. She didn’t even moo or stomp in a panic when lightning struck. This was business as usual on the homestead.

“At least one of us likes me,” I said. I glanced over to make sure uncle and nephew were occupied, then stroked the heifer. She leaned into my palm without pausing her lazy chewing. She liked it when I scratched her while she ate.

It was late afternoon when I finished my allotment of work. The official break would not begin for another half hour. I went and helped the others. They would have done the same. It had nothing to do with generosity. Look busy and the Werners won’t bother you. Probably. Even the most predictable Werner boy had some measure of caprice.

“Shh!” The shush came from one of the other ‘steadhands. All of us looked with the subtlest turn of the chin and a shifting of the eyes.

Nathan Bronson Werner had opened the latch to the yard and was walking in. His footsteps grew louder. The ‘steadhands casually averted his path like a tumbleweed in the breeze. Their movements were smooth, natural. But their teeth dug into their lips and their knuckles were white against their tools.

Today, Nathan was not here to take a woman—or a man (on the occasion his mood went that way). He had a different appetite. He strode into the stables and left as quickly as he entered with his hand on Dixie’s horn. The cow whined. Busied hooves stirred dust clouds, desperate to move in the opposite direction. Throaty, animalistic, sputtering. She practically slid across the ground.

The bell around her neck chimed chaotically.

Two more Werners showed up with a table. Nathan dragged Dixie onto the surface top. The legs creaked as it adjusted to the weight, then creaked some more as its occupant struggled.

One of the Werners—I couldn’t remember his name—extended a forearm over her. Blades extended from his ulna. He brandished them in the sun. From the side they were a beautiful gray gradient from pencil lead to almost silver. But when he tilted them a particular way the blades all but disappeared. When he moved they vanished as well. He was invisibly fast. The sounds of struggling ebbed. The knell stopped. Dixie poured over the table and onto the ground.

I haven’t been sleeping well. The week went by anyway. Time sprinted and stayed still. Days passed, yet I was still there, standing in that yard by the stables, watching from the corner of my eye while my hands worked on their own. I saw the raised blades. I saw the snap. I saw the pour. Blades. Snap. Pour. Blades. Snap. P—

“Take off your shoes.” Abe shoved the pail into my chest. Reflex caught it before it clattered over the floorboards. I was standing on the back porch to the second wing. This was the Werner House. This was now.

I took off my shoes. I wanted the night to be over.

“I wasn’t finished, boy,” Abe said. He pointed. “Take off your shirt.”

“I…”

“What.” He said. He was so close. Too close. Hot sulfur stung my nose, watered my eyes. Abe’s ceramic shirt, vest, and tie were glowing.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I took off my shirt and stood in wait.

“Go,” he said.

I went. It could be worse. It could always be worse. Every time I had done this walk, I would clear a pebble or two out of the way with a flick of my feet. I couldn’t do much under Abe’s gaze, but it was something. Even if the wind undid my work it didn’t matter. The wind may stop. I wouldn’t. With every trip it would get easier. I made a show of stumbling and shivering. I even made a stifled noise. Abe’s laughter rung. He was sated.

The worst of the night was over. Abe never stayed out late enough to watch me come back. A manservant went and collected the milk for him. I savored the walk to the pasteurizer. The cellar was safe. The dark was my friend. Except someone had turned on the light and chased it away. It was that girl again. She sat on the floor against the machine with her face burned in the skirt of her nightgown. She was crying.

“Um…” I couldn’t find what to actually say. A real man was supposed to do something here. Then again, I was hardly more than a boy, and she was a Werner. I didn’t owe them the manure underneath my shoes. But she was in the way of the machine. I dragged the weight of the pail with me.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, startled. She wiped her eyes and shuffled to the side. I lifted and poured. The machine did its work. Bottles clinked. I started to walk away. I didn’t make it halfway.

“What happened?” I asked. I set the pail down between us and sat next to her.

“I love my family,” she said. “But I’m not ready. I-I can’t.”

I noticed the blood. A scattering of red islands on the green sea of her gown. Her hands were trembling. She was trying to gather herself, trying to be as small as possible.

“Did he…?” I asked.

“He was too- too much,” she said. “I can’t do this.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

Barely younger than me.

“There are things even a Werner has to do,” I said.

“It wasn’t like this before,” she said between sniffles. “We were happy. We had enough. Why do we need more?”

I wouldn’t know. It always had been this way for me. Except perhaps years and years ago. But my memories from then were hazy, filled with the tactility of crawling and crying. I had learned to walk, then I had learned to work.

No, wait. The work has been building for a time now. The Werner house was growing. I’ve seen construction crews come in. I’ve seen new wings, new colonnades and white brick walls being erected.

My heart pounded. I shouldn’t, but I asked anyway.

“What is happening in the family?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I can’t tell whose idea it was. But…”

Oil, mining, textiles, aquaponics, construction. Werner Enterprises. They have always been old money wealthy—whatever that meant. If what she was telling me was true, someone high in the family’s echelons was pushing them further forward, expanding their reach. But the more ground they covered, the more leaders they needed, and only a Werner could run Werner business.

“They’ve found a man for me,” she said. “From the city. He’s handsome. His skin can refract light. But he’s not a gentleman. And even if he was, I don’t much like being chosen like- like a particularly shiny apple from the tree.”

“Sorry,” I said. What else could I say? For once, maybe I was just a tiny bit glad I was a ‘steadhand. We were clothed, fed, and we only worked twelve hours five days a week. Saturday was a half day and Sunday was a time for reflection and recreation. We just couldn’t leave.

“There is something you can do,” I said.

“What’s that?” She asked.

“You’re in the family. I’m not. You can rise. I’ll be here forever.”

“Nothing is forever.”

“This is,” I said. “This is forever. There is nothing else.”

“No. You’re…” She was looking at me now, fully. It made me feel queasy. She was only pretty. I was dizzy, floating, yearning. My head was swimming. The meager light from the single bulb in the ceiling enveloped the both of us. My heart pounded. I wanted. And then I did.

My arms wrapped around her. The pail was knocked away as I leaned. She felt like a cloud and smelled like an orchard. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Someone in my position laying a hand on a Werner. Why wasn’t she knocking me out of the way? Instead, she did something equally insane and hugged me back. I felt just about ready to fly.

“You’re the first,” she said. I heard the words but they didn’t mean anything to me. I couldn’t think at all.

She continued, “You’re a sweet boy, Cassidy. So strong. Stronger than me. I wish things were different- that we met somewhere else…”

She looked like an angel.

“…You’re like no one else. Every man who had ever laid eyes on me leers. Every man who so much as touches me becomes a beast—a prudish, hungry creature. You don’t see me that way.”

The words were just sounds. I wanted to bite into her, tear her clothes off. I wanted to sheath myself in her. Only fear held me back. I was ‘steadhand. I had already done too much. I didn’t want to die. That, and it would be so wrong. She seemed so nice. No Werner had ever been so nice to me. I didn’t want to hurt her. I wanted to talk but couldn’t. A strange noise escaped my lips. It was must have been funny, because I saw her giggle.

“Please, call me Doris,” she said.

So pretty. So very pretty. I just wanted to eat her up.

My back slid painfully against the cold floor of the cellar. The illusion peeled. The clouds parted and I was back in the cellar of the house. The air was cold. My back stung.

“What the hell happened?” I said in my own voice. I could speak again. I followed the light and my heart froze.

Abe Werner. His head nearly touched the ceiling. In one hand he held the girl’s arm. She was striking him with a loose fist, grunting and crying out.

“Let go of me!” She screamed. “I love him. Let me go. I want him instead of that man! Stop!”

With his other arm, Abe picked up a bottle of milk and drained it in one slow pull. Then he gasped in satisfaction and set the empty glass on the floor. His moustache was smoking.

“Thought I would get it myself for a change,” he said. “Only to interrupt such impropriety.”

“Sir Abe,” I was sputtering. “I- I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I never meant-”

“Don’t worry, I do,” he said.

“Let go!” The girl screamed.

“Oh, Cassidy my boy.” Abe didn’t seem to feel the girl’s punches and kicks. “If brains were leather you couldn’t saddle a junebug. But I don’t blame you for coming under. You’re not a Werner, after all.”

“Sir, please,” I said. I didn’t even know what I was pleading for. Yet pleading felt the most important thing I could be doing at this moment.

“Normally we’d have you killed for touching one of us in such a licentious manner. But young Doris here is a… special case. There is room for understanding. Get yourself to bed, Cassidy. You’ll need your strength. Tomorrow, come to the stocks.”

“No!” Doris wailed.

“Oh, and,” Abe had one last thing to say. “Don’t blame Doris. She’s under her own spell too.”

I’ve seen this before. I just never knew it’d be my turn one day.

The other ‘steadhands gathered to watch them put the wooden clamp over me. I couldn’t move my hands. My neck was fastened between two blocks. The morning air was cold. But the sun was rising. Soon the heat began to bear down on me. I shriveled for hours before one of the ‘steadhands was allowed to feed me water through a straw. I think his name was Eddy. I didn’t know their names very well.

And then it was high noon. I had nothing to cry with. My eyes were so dry. It felt as though sand had been kicked in my face. My vision was blurry.

I still recognized Abe when he walked towards the stocks. The crowd moved for him. I felt a rush of gratitude. In a way he saved my life. I should have been dead. Instead, all this would be over in a few moments, and I could go back to fetching milk.

Abe tensioned the whip in his hands. It was split into three ends. He tested it once. The crack was deafening. The crowd cowered.

“Too much,” Abe said, smiling. “Don’t worry, Cassidy. You’ve been good to me. I’ll go easy on you.”

Perhaps he was an angel. This would be over soon. Oh this heat. I was nodding off. The seconds blinked and slipped through my thoughts. Abe walked around me until I couldn’t see him anymore. I felt the air split behind me.

Splintering teeth, dragging across my skin.

“Nine more, my boy,” Abe said.

A brushstroke of hell. Was I screaming? I couldn’t hear it. But my throat did hurt as well.

“Eight!”

Fire. Searing lava. Pure heat stroked my back.

“Seven!”

I was nine. There I was. I looked happy. Life only had a couple difficulties. The bullying was uncalled for. I went home once, crying to him—my father, yes I remembered him now, he was tall, dark-haired, and kindly-faced—and he said to me, ‘What you take with you is always your choice. That boy who hit you, he took his anger with him, his hate, his resentment. Anger is not strength. You will be stronger than him. You will move past him.’ And then mother—she was beautiful, so warm, with the most soothing voice—she would make me casserole, my favorite. So rich with tomatoes, cheese, and sausage.

“Six!”

Streaking flames.

They ripped the sky apart. The meteors. My world ended.

“Five!”

I didn’t remember the rest. I saw myself being taken down from the blocks. One of the ‘steadhands hosed the red off the wood. Some of the water got on me. Fresh, cool relief carried me into nothingness.

I woke again with my head in a pillow. Someone had laid me out and was stitching me back together. I smelled medicine and gauze. Seconds later I was out again.

It was night.

I breathed deep and opened my eyes to a familiar ceiling. This was the dormitories, specifically the B-1 building. I was in a bunk bed, one of a row of ten, the second row of four. My bed. The others must have carried me up. That was usually how it went. We barely talked to each other, but ‘steadhands looked after one another.

I sat up. The pain spread like spider-webs from my back, grasping my arms and legs. I climbed down slowly, one rung at a time, and made my way outside. I didn’t care that there was work tomorrow. I couldn’t stay another minute in that bed. The cold evening air embraced me. A chill seeped through the gauze and into the skin underneath, soothing it somewhat. Stars riddled the clear sky. In the distance, a cloud front gathered. Dim blue flashes echoed silently inside. There might be rain to come after all. The sky could change. I could not.

My knees fell onto the ground. Sand and pebbles dug into my skin. How long? I wish I never remembered. Father lied to me. Things didn’t get better just because you held on. They just hurt more. And whether I liked it or not I’d be carrying those marks on my back forever. They were so heavy, so stiff, that I could hardly move.

So I let gravity win. My fingers curled around dirt until that hurt too but I didn’t care. I was crying. I didn’t cry when Abe was hitting me. Why now? What had changed? I wiped them away. More came. They wouldn’t leave. I wasn’t a kid anymore. This was nothing. I shouldn’t be crying. I couldn’t breathe. I hated this. I wanted to go home. But I knew all too well that the place I had once called home had ceased to exist a long time ago. Not every city was protected by someone strong enough to smash meteors.

My ears twitched before I heard it. The sound of air being forced out of the way. I looked up. A single droplet of fire was falling. I sputtered and fell back, shuffling away, whimpering like some animal.

“Please no! Go away, go away, go away…”

The fireball only grew. I could smell its approach. But it was no meteor. Rocks did not change directions. It struck the ground, carving towards a dead stop about a hundred feet away. For a while I could only gasp. The gauze stretched and pulled at my chest. It was only when a hand reached out of the crater that I drew breath to scream.

My throat seized. A cough came out instead. My muscles weren’t working. Did the whipping do something to my nerves?

“Wait.” The person spoke. Another girl. I’ve had enough of girls. I turned to run. My legs disagreed.

“Quiet,” she said. She was walking towards me. Bumps riddled my skin. This was not the kind of chill I was used to.

She was covered in black scales from head to toe. They formed a skirt around her waist and a raised collar around her neck. It couldn’t have been a suit; the scales followed her movements too well. A monster.

“If I let you speak, you must promise not to shout,” she said.

There was something wrong with her voice. Like she was simultaneously approaching from far away and had her lips against my ears all at once.

“Do we have an accord?” She asked.

I nodded.

I could speak again.

“Are you one of them?” I asked under my breath.

She looked straight through me. Her face was a mask with asymmetric facets of black scale.

“I’m not one of anything.”

Another one. I’ve only ever been this close to a girl twice in my life and they’ve both been crazy.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

She walked towards the dorms, leaving me behind.