Inklets are a collection of unrelated short science fiction and fantasy stories published by Inkprint Press on the 1st and the 15th of every month. See the whole collection here.
This fortnight’s Inklet is But For Snow, a short story set in the Kaditeos world about Mercury’s baby sister, Tundra. This is one of my earlier stories, but I still appreciate it for the insight it gave me into Tundra’s headspace 🙂
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The markets crowd her senses, busy with sound and bustle and smells. Tundra needs to escape the sensory overload—she needs to run.
That means sneaking away from her mother, of course. Tricky, but not impossible.
And what she finds? Something that promises all her dreams come true—if she doesn’t kill them out of misguided love first.
A tale of freedom and a love of wild things that proves that if we love something, we must let it go.
humid and suffocating everyone with a hot, sapping afternoon.
Tundra wanders away a few steps, carefully eyeing her mother as she busies herself at a stall full of twisted metal jewellery. Tundra creeps a few steps more, the soft grass tussocks compressing under her feet as though they too are trying to be quiet in the hubub of the crowd.
She reaches the corner unnoticed, peeks back to see only her mother’s fuchsia silk headscarf through the crush and bustle.
Tundra runs. If she runs fast enough, the people blur and even though it’s noisy still, it’s nearly as good as being alone. The rumble of the crowd is like the wind that whips her long hair and tickles her ears, and she laughs from deep in her belly because if she can just run fast enough, it’s almost like flying.
Tundra pauses in the liminal space of a side-alley where the evening sun doesn’t reach. She sobers; others give the alley a wide berth. Dark shadows clutch cages against the walls and the breeze that gusts from the bowels of the alley is cold and full of night, and the smell of old, dry things. Tundra peers warily, curiosity piqued by the multitude of eyes that reflect the dim light. She has always liked animals.
Tundra glances over her shoulder as goosebumps prickle her skin. Her heart hammers, not in fear of the inhuman night, but that someone might see her, might tell her she shouldn’t be here. People are always telling her she shouldn’t be in the places she wants to go.
The wind stirs her hair into wisps, ghost fingers teasing in the dark. Tundra tucks her hair firmly behind her ears and enters the alley, lungs filling with the dry-fur smell as she breathes deeply.
Iron-barred cages skulk in corners, and smaller wicker cages dance on ropes crisscrossing overhead, knocking hollowly in the breeze.
“Hello, pretty thing,” Tundra says softly as she approaches the nearest cage, stretching out her fingers for its occupant to sniff.
The creature backs away and shivers, fur softly silver in the dim light, eyes wide and yellow.
Tundra holds the bars of the cage and wants to cry. Animal thoughts are not like human thoughts—they lack the words—but she can feel that the creature does not like its cage; it remembers skies, and treetops, and rain.
Something shrieks. Tundra whips around, adrenalin pulsing through her.
Perched on a cage above her head is a large, velvety black bird with snowy white chest feathers. Tundra moves closer, standing on tiptoes to see. The bird’s beak is huge and it’s so brightly coloured that Tundra wonders if someone has painted it. Then she sees the chain binding the bird’s leg and her chest knots up again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers to the bird, bundling up her pity and sending it in a way the bird will understand. “My mother tries to keep me caged up too.”
It isn’t fair.
Something shifts in the crate below the bird and Tundra crouches. The crate is deep in shadow, and her eyes tell her it’s empty, but she knows her eyes are wrong. She can feel the thoughts of the creature inside and watches carefully, waiting for the moment when it will reveal itself. “It’s all right,” she croons. “I won’t hurt you.”
There. A shadow darker than the rest, a hint of fur, a paw.
Tundra smiles. “See? That wasn’t so hard.” She kneels on the smooth-worn cobbles, waiting for the creature to throw off its shadow cloak entirely.
White fur catches the faint light. It is a wolf, half-grown, curled tightly nose to tail.
He opens his eyes, piercing Tundra with his ice-blue gaze.
She gasps, because deep within that gaze lies recognition.
He knows who she is.
She knows who he is.
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