Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 60 by Lightspeed Magazine

Author:Lightspeed Magazine [Lightspeed Magazine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Magazine
Publisher: John Joseph Adams
Published: 2015-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

2.

The pale gray leaves of the dusty-miller tree diffused a scent like minty talcum. The branches of the dusty were long and slender, withes useful in basketry, and arced and drooped to form a secret bower around the bole. From some distance off, fatwood torches spiked into the turf on the sidelines of the playing field cast their wavering illumination over the ghostly foliage, sending shadows skittering over the tapestry of leaves without penetrating the deeper darkness of the arboreal shelter. The shouts of the spectators clustered around the sides of the game field rose and fell in linkage with the action of the players, the one an enthusiastic reciprocal of the other. Panting and grunting accompanied the fervent play, intermixed with the solid thump of shoe leather making contact with a scarred leather ball. The game was in its final quarter, and the Blue Devils were battling to maintain their one-point lead over the Landfish.

Inside the canopy of leaves, Florence Cairncross leaned in a swoon against the rough trunk of the dusty. The familiar odor of its leaves filled her head with a piquant strangeness. Everything was so much altered . . . The excited voices of her friends and neighbors and family sounded like the inhuman cries of birds or animals. The light of the torches seemed to issue from watery depths, as if drowned beneath the Swolebourne. An exclamation from one of the players reached through the tangle of leaves. “Pass it, pass it!” Was that her brother, Charley, calling? Perhaps . . . It was so hard to tell; his voice had changed over the last year, maturing into a novel male roughness. And under present circumstances . . .

Florence felt a tugging at the laces of her camisole. Her starched outer shirtfront already gaped apart, one bone button missing, lost amidst the dead leaves of past seasons which bestrewed the ground at her feet. The fingers at her laces suddenly found the simple knot that secured the top of her undergarment, found its trailing end, pulled and undid it. Those same fingers poked through the crisscrossed laces halfway down her midriff and tugged. The lace-ends slid through the double-stitched eyelets as easily as water through a sieve.

She could see nothing in the tenebrous enclosure, but closed her eyes anyway.

Those fingers . . . How was it possible for a grown man to have such skin, unscarred by machinery, untainted by the stink of lux and oil? Despite his maturity, they were still so smooth and uncallused, almost as smooth as a girl’s. That had been one of the first things she had noticed about Samuel . . .

• • • •

The game that Layday had been scheduled for noon, to allow time for morning services. A night game during the workweek would have involved too much travel for the Blue Devils, who had promised to give their fledgling opponents the advantage of their home field. Although the actinic sun was high, the game had not

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