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An Instructive Listing of the Pests of Tabat, being Pamphlet #2 of the fifth series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

The newcomer to Tabat will find the pests they are accustomed to: fleas, lice, and rats are no strangers to the city. But several creatures indigenous to the area may cause the unwary traveler distress.

In late summer nights, the gold and orange wings of phoenix moths will be visible in their mating swarms. Despite the beauty of the phenomenon, the creatures are destroyed whenever possible, for the flames created when they deposit their eggs and immolate themselves in order to harden the casings can lead to larger fires.

Marsh flies are prevalent on the city’s eastern side when the wind is from that quarter. The fierce bites of these insects have been known to drive even the most placid creature to the brink of madness. Citronella and other scented candles and lamp oils are the most popular remedy for these creatures, along with bed netting in the summer months.

Parasitic Fairies have, for the most part, been eradicated, but clusters of the minute Fairies known as slavemakers still exist in the farmlands. While they rarely if ever make their way into the city, those traveling in the areas directly around Tabat should be aware of the danger they pose.

Mandrakes are neither animal nor Beast, but rather a plantlike intelligence found only on this continent and capable of ambulation in their early stages. Mandrakes kill larger mammals, using the corpse as a plant in which to root themselves and propagate and are, like parasitic Fairies, only a danger to those venturing outside the main city.

Due to Tabat’s damp weather, a myriad of molds thrive in untended corners. Scarlet mold, toxic to animal and human, may appear and is invariably accompanied by black mold worms, whose bite produces severe hallucinations.

***
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#sfwapro

I finished up a story I’ve been wrestling with for the past week this afternoon. It’s for a game world, and it’s a fun one. I’m not sure why I had so much trouble with this one, but I rewrote the beginning four or five times, which is unprecedented for me.

Anyhow, here’s a chunk:

The book supplied a hand-colored map of the coastline. Letitita had not seen that many maps in her lifetime but she thought that this one might have some shortcomings. For one thing, the area they were heading into was a spot colored a vague green which turned out to be towering pines and cedars, shaly hills, and tiny streams inevitably at the bottom of steep-walled gullies full of blackberry brambles. It was lettered, the amount of lettering sparse in comparison to the amount of blank space provided, “Unexplored Forest,”
They were three days into changing that into “Partially Explored Forest” when they heard the screaming.

It called from off the road, among the trees, unseen but close from the volume, the sound of a horse crying out, and then a second echoing noise, like the harsh squeal of an enormous machine wheel. Poppy’s bow was out and in her hand, the other one pulling an arrow from its quiver, as she sprinted towards it; Letitia followed, pulling daggers from her belt as she went, but moving more cautiously than her mistress and therefore slower.

She arrived in time to see Poppy’s first arrow strike the monstrosity towering over the fallen unicorn, a mass of black fur and teeth and more than one head, protruding at awkward angles from around the main one with its ferocious canine grin. Every eye in the multitude it boasted burned bright as fire, red as madness.

The arrow extinguished one of that pair burning brightest and largest. The beast threw its head back, and the sound of that tortured clash came again, so loud that it throbbed in Letitia’s ears.

Daggers sang from her hands, thrown almost without thinking, thunk thunking into that glistening black snout. Annoying wounds at best, but another of Poppy’s arrows flew straight and true ““ had she really merely said she’d been “all right with the bow” when a girl? ““ putting out the other mad red glare, and as it died so did all the tinier ones, heads slumping awkward as it toppled, halfway over its fallen prey.

They circled it warily as they came up. The unicorn let out a tortured breath. Poppy made a hurt sound in her throat and started to step closer, but Letitia tugged her back.

“You can’t help it, boss,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears, obscuring the gaping belly wound, the entrails fanned out from a savage bite. “It’s hurt too bad.”

“I can put it out of its misery at least,” Poppy said. She tugged one of Letitia’s daggers free from the monster’s corpse, and moved towards the unicorn, speaking softly, calmingly, an ostler’s murmur, soothing and nonsensical, theretheremylove, theretheremypretty.

The gleaming ivory horn raised an inch from the ground as though in challenge, but was too weak to move further. She stroked her hand along the broad neck. Letitia held her breath.

“Move no further,” a voice said from behind them.

In other news, Rappacini’s Crow and All the Pretty Little Mermaids both made Ellen’s Datlow recommended list for Best Horror. Hurray!

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