Wyldblood: Science Fiction and Fantasy

Next new free fiction on 11th September.

Dim Meridian

Ells Montgomerey

                                      

This time, we walk to the line together. It’s evening; I’m hoping that’ll make it easier.

Noa’s arm linked with mine is as warm and certain as it was on the day we met, when she told me she could be my sister now. Mine is as shaky, but I don’t think she notices—she’s in one of her faraway moments, like she’s looking into forever and heading for it. I’m just an old home waiting for her to come back.

In the gloom before us, the line looks innocent: a thick band of copper inlaid into the earth, separating our dirt from theirs and stretching into forever. It’s worse in the day, when you can see the dark wall of the Dimness stretching up on the other side above the line, like the copper’s cleaving day and night in two.

It’s quiet. I wonder if others will be crossing so late. The Brothers will return to guard the line soon; only a few hours of Passage remain.

I study the Dimness ahead of us, afraid to look at Noa’s face.

What we knew of the inhospitable dark on the other side of the line was what the Sisters taught us in Lesson. Only the most lost souls crossed on Passage Day, the Sisters said, and only one way. A person choking on their demons might leave our cities and go to the Dimness. But they would not return.

We believed it. Noa did, too, until she ran away from the orphanage the first time and met a boy who said he’d come from the other side. He’d said it wasn’t inhospitable, just dark. That the plants fed on darkness and animals ate them and people lived. Then Noa said she’d never believed the Sisters at all.

Now, without warning, Noa releases me and steps over the line.

I’d expected build-up, some big goodbye, but of course she doesn’t wait. I’ve behaved so far, walking arm in arm with her to the border, but she must be thinking of the other times, when I wrestled her to the ground at the edge of day and dark, unwilling to be orphaned again.

Noa takes a few more steps, making sure of the separation between her and the life she’s leaving behind. Then she turns to face me.

It’s shadowy on both sides, but I can still see the difference. Her darkness is more complete, curling into the hollowest parts of her: her cheekbones, her collarbones, the sloping angles between shin and ankle. Her hands are invisible.

“I…” She pauses. I watch the darkness funnel into her open mouth. “I’m not trying to leave you,” she finishes. Her voice is muffled. Thick, like there really is more to the air she’s breathing. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” I tell her automatically. My rational brain believes it. The rest of me is unconvinced, but the rest of me is selfish.

“So,” she says. And then she just stands there, and I stand there, the copper line quiet and sure between us. Bushes rustle gently in the distance, and then more loudly, and then twigs are splintering, and a hundred yards down the line from us, someone bursts out of the woods.

We both turn to watch them, their head down and arms pumping as they sprint toward the line and over the copper and into the dark distance on the other side. Noa’s side.

Something about the speed of it makes me want to laugh, but nothing is funny. The cold air prods at damp spots on my cheeks like it’s making fun of me. I try to say something else, something like “are you sure,” but my voice comes out ugly and swollen.

Noa reaches out for my hand, and I instinctively meet her halfway. She always did run hot; of course her fingers are warm on mine. The touch feels too small, like we should be hugging instead, but one of us would have to take a step for that. My hand is already partly over the line, I realize. And it was so easy.

I take a small step, my toes inching into the margins of the copper.

Noa’s eyes widen to moons. Whatever else the darkness is stealing from view, it leaves her eyes, her perfectly crooked teeth.

“Are you sure?” she whispers.

And I’m not sure, not at all. But if she needs to be in the dark, I can sit with her in it. I want to be with her, in it.

She suddenly drops my hand and sprints away into the Dimness. She goes so far I can barely see her: a dark smudge in a canvas of greys and blacks. But she pauses there. She’s giving me a chance to let her go, to make this a story of her outrunning me and me turning home.

I think it’s the option, what settles it.

I step over the line and chase her into the dark.

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Elis Montgomery is a speculative fiction writer from Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of SFWA and Codex. When she’s not writing, she’s usually hanging upside down in an aerial arts class or a murky cave. Find her there, on Bluesky @elismontgomery.bsky.social, or at https://www.elismontgomery.com

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M. Luke McDonell – Thin Skin
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Matt Hollingsworth – Sprung
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Robert Bagnall – We Are All Made of Stars
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Erin Enley – Immunity
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Brick Marlin – The Rep
Charlotte Langtree – That Was Unexpected
Bridget Haug – Butterflies
Mike Murphy –Joey Salami’s Halloween
Jason Lane – Captain, Please Respond
Karl Dandenell – Final Exam, Demonology
Marge Simon – Pilgrims
Claire McNerny – Slowing Down
MM Schreier – City of Lights
Trey Dowell – Head Games
Chrissie Rohrman – The Long Way Home
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Aeryn Rudel – News from Home
Ian C Douglas – The Instant Karma Vending Machine
Craig Aitchison –Hearken
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Malina Douglas – The Needlecraft Guide to Averting Doom
Tova Hope-Liel – Palingenesis
Sam Winner – The Silence of the Owl
Jennifer Loring – Burn
N.E. Rule – Eye Candy
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Eric Fomley – War Crimes
Sarah Gallego –The Final Voyage of Amos
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Ian Robert Krueger –It Lives
Chrissie Rohrman – Small Packages
Abigail Celeste –The Bees
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Dawn Vogel – The Dark Forest Takes
Vaughan Stanger – In Every Dream Home

M. Luke McDonell – Thin Skin
Steven French – Just a Little Chat
Pauline Barmby – Second Cryogenesis
Matt Hollingsworth – Sprung
Jason P. Burnham – The Water is Lava
Robert Bagnall – We Are All Made of Stars
Melissa Ren – The Look of Seconds
Erin Enley – Immunity
Guy Lingham – Telemetry
Akis Linardos – Rose Loaded Gun
Sarah Jackson – Canary Glass
KT Wagner – Promise Me You’ll Stay
Gabby Giliam – Reading Lies
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A.D. Sui – A Girl’s Heart is a Wretched Thing
Liam Hogan – Man from Mars
David Contara – My Flesh, Your Blood
Tiffany Michelle Brown – Showtime on Sandstone Lane
Wayne Faust – So She Danced
Anna Vinogradov Neidle – The Planet’s Gone to the Dogs
Julia Leef- Don’t Leave the Grim Reaper on Read
D.K. Latta – Greetings, Distant Travellers
Diego Lama – Vendetta
Sean MacKendrick – Keepers
Karl Dandenell – Ruby Throat and Gold
Laura Blackwell – In My Forest of Inky Night
Dana Vickerson – Entertain, Embrace, Eat
Emmie Christie – Appealing Skin Model
Leila Murton Poole – The Hanging VIne
Kai Delmas – Under Fire, Under Steel
Austin Shirey – Feels Like the End of the World
Rosalind Goldsmith – Weeper
J. P. Relph – Declawed
Anna Clark – Ice in the Furnace
Madalena Daleziou – Master Craftsman’s Apology
Lyndsey Croal – Space for One
Holley Cornetto – The Orchard of Dreams
Kit Campbell – Coming Home
Y.M. Resnik – Magic Is Like a Box of Chocolates
Robert Bagnall – I Was Just Doing What You Asked
Megan Baffoe – Away with the Mermaids
B.A. Booher – High Stakes
Matt Bliss – Penny Rutherford’s Super-Awesome Adventure Journal
Devan Barlow – Shaping
Jessica Andrewartha – Without a Step
Shelly Jones – Like Footprints in the Snow
Mike Adamson – Rain Girl
Nina Kiriki Hoffman – Shifters
M. Shedric Simpson – Gods Once
Anna Madden –Broken Wing Syndrome
André Geleynse –Last-Minute Shopping List for your First Space Road Trip
Kai Delmas – Once Upon a Time
Lara Slabber – The Garment Dragon
C.C. Rayne – Days of Creation
Sandra Skalski – Dancing in the Treetops
Erin McQuaig –Fish
Linda McMullen – The Diagnostician
Eliane Boey – Scrap
Meirav Seifert – Better Than Nate
Avra Margariti – Mercurial, Like the Ocean
Lindsay Mcdonald – Faceless
Andrew Fraknoi – The Listener Between Worlds
O.S. Curran – Squandered, Spent
Elizabeth Broadbent – Atop dead Trees
Kai Delmas – All the Time in the World
Susan Cornford – Death and the Maiden
Holley Cornetto – Queen of Flowers
Tara Campbell – In the City of Chuckling Roses
Addison Smith – An Itemized List of Charitable Contributions
B. Zelkovich – Lifelike
Elizabeth Broadbent – A Map Like Constellations
Matt Krizan – Swallowed by Darkness
Dawn Vogel – Patience
David J. Thirteen – My Foolish Heart
Rick Danforth – Strawberries in Spring
Robert Bagnall – The Naming of HMS Ark Royal
Amanda Pica – After They’d Gone
Joshua Grasso – Feeding the Dark
Maura Yzmore – Barry
Jason Burnham – Just Ask Clio
Nick Wisseman – You Are What You Mage
Taylor Rae –Run with the Hunted
Eric Fomley – Intervention
Helena Pantsis – Artificial Autonomy
Daniel Lidman – Ship Astray
Andrew Kozma – The Tower of Seed and Promise
Bridget Haug – Unbounded
Jessica Wilcox – Hephaestus Clockwork
AR Turner –Drift
MM Schreier –A Mathematical Betrayal
Jason P. Burnham – Today’s Daytime Tasks
Jon Lasser – Pictures from a Hotel Room on Fire
Jacey Bedford –Mort’s Laws
Kai Delmas – A World of Broken Things
Tiffani Angus – If Wishes Were Horses
Eric Fomley – Download Day
Thomas Griffin – Pickup Artist
Judy Darley – Milk Tooth
Dylan Kwok – Vicky Cooper
Joachim Heijndermans – Please Remain Calm
Karl Dandenell –Five Things You Should Know Before Summoning a Demon
Lyndsey Croal – Nuckelavee Winter
Julie Pitzel – The Breach
Marissa James – Bite Back
Brett Abrahamsen – The Fermi Paradox
Katie jordan – When Time Runs Out
Eric Fomley – Fragmented
Tara Campbell – Ghost Wolf
Emmie Christie – Craving for Another Summer
Maura Yzmore – Custom Welding
Robert Stahl – The Trouble with Goblins
Ash Jones – New Year’s Dawn
Liam Hogan – Beginnings
Emma Lewin – Carbon Dating
David Zweifler – I Like to be Hit
Francesca Lembregts – A Line on the Map
Brick Marlin – The Rep
Charlotte Langtree – That Was Unexpected
Bridget Haug – Butterflies
Mike Murphy –Joey Salami’s Halloween
Jason Lane – Captain, Please Respond
Karl Dandenell – Final Exam, Demonology
Marge Simon – Pilgrims
Claire McNerny – Slowing Down
MM Schreier – City of Lights
Trey Dowell – Head Games
Chrissie Rohrman – The Long Way Home
J.D. Harlock –Sariya Grants a Wish
G. Ekman – Willow
Maura Yzmore – Among the Monsters
Sam Winner – Friday the 13th
Alyson Tait – A Little Monster
Brian Maycock – Curfew
Lynne Lumsden-Green – The Wager
Eric Fomley – Clone Care
Natalie Burrows – Within These Walls
Tim McDaniel – Black Friday
Liam Hogan – The Dragon Hunter
James Cato –It’s Free to Laugh
Aeryn Rudel – Rhymes With Dead
John Adams – Even Bad Guys Have Good Days in Excelsior City
Holly Schofield – Special Delivery
Danielle C. Chen – Excurmania
Eilidh Spence – Cameo
Cathleen Davies – Frankie Says Relax
Marc Ruvolo – Posthensile
Andrew Kozma – The One with the Red Door
Carys Crossen – Blood Wolf Moon
Aeryn Rudel – News from Home
Ian C Douglas – The Instant Karma Vending Machine
Craig Aitchison –Hearken
Adria Bailton – Submerged
Fija Callaghan – Last Wish
Melion Traverse – Salt and Moonlight
David J. Rank – Walking Dog
Holly Barratt –Rabbit Ears in the Laundry
Holly Rae Garcia – A Werewolf’s Lament
MK Roney – Cornerstone
Malina Douglas – The Needlecraft Guide to Averting Doom
Tova Hope-Liel – Palingenesis
Sam Winner – The Silence of the Owl
Jennifer Loring – Burn
N.E. Rule – Eye Candy
Jane Saunders – looking Back
Eric Fomley – War Crimes
Sarah Gallego –The Final Voyage of Amos
David Rogers – What We Found on the Way to Alpha Centauri
Robert Bagnall – Felis Sarcasticus
Alexander Xavier Urpi – The Pit
Russell Hemmell – Bird Masks and Leather Butterflies
Ephiny Gale –Light and Sleek and Strong
Richard Wren – In My Image
Bob Johnston – Debt
Michelle Muenzler –Neither Sleeping, nor Alive, nor Dead
Cheryl Sonnier – Wolf Whistle
Marisca Pichette – The Tail
A. P. Howell – Purple Lizard Skin
Adam Knight – Parts
Avra Margariti – College Survival Tips for Girls and Wolves
Ian Robert Krueger –It Lives
Chrissie Rohrman – Small Packages
Abigail Celeste –The Bees
Jacey Bedford – The Loneliness of the Long Distance Panda
Dawn Vogel – The Dark Forest Takes
Vaughan Stanger – In Every Dream Home

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