“The West Canal”

Jesse Hajicek

When gutter witch Julin Drum finds Miki floating facedown in the canal, he captures his ghost and takes it home. That's what witches do. But Miki is an uncommonly intense ghost, and things are getting personal.

Takes place in the same world as the Kastor Chronicles, but stands alone.

Story Warnings:

Language:

Colorful – intermittent cussin’ ahead.

Sex:

Sex Onscreen – somebody gets laid.

Violence:

Lethal – that could

kill somebody!

Tags:  complete, fantasy, Kastor Chronicles, series, short story

Warning icons drawn by Sarah Cloutier.

I'm not looking for ghosts when I find Miki in the canal.

I'm not looking for corpses either. Actually, I'm looking for crawfish. But Miki is what I find. When a ghost's upset enough, it'll find a way to get noticed.

It's about an hour shy of midnight. It's never really dark in Verdichane, but on a clear night after the house lights are out, down by the West Canal where there's no street lamps, it can get pretty murky. All I can make out down below me is the white rag I tied to my crawfish trap. I can't even see the string going into the water. I'm dangling my legs over the lip of the canal and dreaming.

Mostly I'm dreaming of crawfish. I once caught ten in an hour not far from this spot. If I could leave my trap overnight, I could totally live on crawfish and then some. But if you leave a trap somebody will steal it, guaranteed.

I must be really hungry, or really tired or in some other way impaired, because the first I know Miki is there is when I see a sketchy twist of glow dancing up in front of me. It licks up real fast, right in front of my face, and it has eyes in it, and I yelp and swear and damn near piss myself just like I wasn't a witch at all.

It's gone in a second. It sure got my attention, though. People say ghosts don't show up to the eyes, and you're actually seeing swamp gas or something, but I tell you what, when you see a ghost, you know what you saw. I tie my string to a boat cleat and go looking for whatever the ghost is stuck to.

About five minutes later, I find Miki floating facedown with his feet bare and a chunk of his scalp hanging loose, and I sit down on the water stairs and cry. He was just some urchin, same as me, only he wasn't even a witch, just a junk picker and maybe a bit of a thief. So I cry because no one else will.

I didn't hardly know him, to tell the truth. Mostly I recognize his clothes and his hair. He always wore these stupid blue striped culottes he got from a Fioradine gunner, and since he was skinny as sixpence he tied them up with a piece of rope. He tied junk to the rope, anything shiny he could get a string around, mostly broken glass. He was a real light blond, still towheaded years after he should've outgrown it. You couldn't miss him, he was kind of part of the neighborhood scenery. And now someone's vandalized him.

He's mad as hell about it, too. I can't get anything out of the ghost for quite a while except a general sense of frantic and the twinge of recognition that made him light up at me. He remembers me, he remembers I'm a witch, and he wants something done goddammit, even if he isn't sure what.

When I'm done bawling, I go in and pull him out. The stairs are slippery with crud, and even though I left my sandals on -- you never know what you're going to step on in there -- I fall on my ass a couple times while backing up with my arms around his waist. Miki wasn't a big guy, but neither am I, so it's not a real graceful procedure.

Water pours out of his mouth when I get his face clear, like he's vomiting. For a moment I wonder if he isn't quite dead. Sometimes people's spirits will come loose if they're real close, but they'll go back. He's cold, though. Being folded over my arms and jouncing like that is just pumping him out like a pudding bag.

I lay him on the top step and flop down next to him. On a dark night like this, you can't tell a corpse from a drunkard just by looking. His eyes are closed. There's nothing wrong with his face. I smooth his hair back, starting to feel a little sniffly again.

My fingers encounter a softness at the back of his head. I pull my hand back in a hurry. I wipe it off on his shirt, scrub my eyes with the back of my wrist, and get out my jar and knife.

It only takes me a minute to get the tip of his little finger off. His ghost zags around my head, agitated. There's more blood than I'm used to, because he's so fresh and because his hand is flopped down one stair below the rest of him.

I touch my bloody knife to my tongue. It isn't a ritual thing, exactly. I just feel like it.

"I'm taking you home with me, Miki," I whisper. "You just hang on to this, okay?" I put the fingertip in the jar. A faint tendril of Miki curls around it, curious. "That's right. Keep hold of that, and you can come with me." I put the cork in the jar and the jar in my pocket.

Then I go back to my crawfish trap. I don't want to be found sitting next to Miki if someone comes along.

Nine tenths of ghost-herding is listening. You have to be patient, and you have to know yourself well enough to tell which thoughts aren't yours. Gram used to say that's why most witches are old women. She said young folks are full of fantasies, and old men are full of pride, but old women know themselves. She said the reason I'm good at it is because I'm an old soul, and since I'm bent I don't have all that manly pride to blind me.

Gram was talking out her ass. Old soul or not, sixteen is sixteen, and I have plenty of manly pride, thank you very much. But I do know how to listen.

Miki sure isn't hard to hear. He's not taking this quietly. He babbles, unloading like a heartbroken toddler.

Ghost babble is like a bad dream, a barrage of images and feelings, all jumbled up and so strong they hurt. Ghosts don't talk in words. Not fresh ghosts, anyway, and Miki isn't even sure he is dead, even while he's throwing conniptions about being hit on the head and drowned. That's how ghosts are. They can be hollering at you about punishing their murderer, and at the same time complaining how they can't feel their legs.

It's never fun. They're always mad. Scared. Hurting. They wouldn't be ghosts if they weren't. I live through it with them. We go around and around until the pain fades. That's how you tame a ghost: you suffer with it. Nobody would do it if they could afford legal magic. But down here on the West Canal, it's witchery or nothing. I charge two talims to cure an infected cut, four for a fever. Most people can scrape up that much if they pester their relatives. I really should charge more. I can hardly live on that. And ghost-taming, as I mentioned, hurts like fuck.

I caught my first ghost when I was twelve. By now I can get murdered with Miki and catch breakfast at the same time.

After a while I hear thunder in the distance, so I pull in my trap. Four crawlies. One of them is too small to bother with, though, so I pick it out and throw it back. Maybe I should put Miki's body back in the canal so he can feed the crawfish. The thought bothers his ghost, but it doesn't bother me. Things eat other things and then get eaten in turn, that's how it goes. Maybe later I'll eat a crawfish that ate part of Miki. Nothing wrong with being part of the world.

I don't throw Miki's body back in the water, though. I'm not going to be a dick to him when I don't have to be.

At home, I put the crawfish in a bucket of clean water to purge overnight, eat a quick snack of leftover rice, and then go to work on Miki's finger. He writhes in my head while I clean it, but he isn't angry, just a little disturbed. If he tried seriously to escape at that point, I would let him. He's done me no wrong. We might've been friends if we'd gotten to know each other. I don't want to torture him or anything. There's curiosity along with his disgust, though, and a little prickle of mental fingernails in the back of my mind, like he's holding on to me all the while.

When the bone is clean, I burn the binding into it with a piece of wire heated in a lamp. Gram swore by carving, she said burning's no good, but it's always worked fine for me, and it's a hell of a lot faster. Maybe she didn't burn hers deep enough when she tried it. You have to actually char out a groove or it'll just rub off. I burn in everything but the spiral. Then I show Miki the bone.

He hesitates. I feel that prickle of clutching fingernails again.

With you. He's forming words now. Good sign. Not in a... thing. In you.

"I'll keep it with me," I promise him.

The bone will be cold. The canal was cold.

"I'll wear it next to my skin. I won't let you get cold." The prickle eases, but doesn't let go. "Miki, I won't let you get cold, I promise."

Still he hesitates. But when I'm about to speak again, he suddenly lets go of me and grabs onto the bone. I burn in the final sign, the spiral, the gateway. A false gateway that leads nowhere. I feel the bone vibrate a little in my hand, as if Miki is shivering.

I get a bit of leather cord and tie it around the bone nice and tight, then wet the knot so it'll shrink tighter. There's a little knob on one end of a fingertip bone and a flare on the other, so as long as the knot doesn't come undone it isn't coming off. I tie the cord around my neck so the bone rests in the hollow of my throat.

Miki settles against me with a sigh, like an affectionate dog. I can almost feel his weight.

I blow out the lamp and get into bed. I lie there listening to the thunder, waiting for the rain, feeling Miki getting used to me. Getting used to him in turn. This isn't my usual procedure.

"My Gram said to never sleep with a ghost trap on," I murmur. "I never did before. I mean... you can't really get cold. Can you?"

You're warm, he tells me plaintively.

"Well, anyway, it's all right if it's you. You never harmed anyone. At least, not that I heard. You seemed nice. Were you a nice guy, Miki?"

I don't know.

"Yeah, I think you were a nice guy. A bit weird. I like weird, though."

You're weird.

I laugh softly. "Yeah. I guess I am. We should've been friends."

... Jule?

"Yeah?"

Julin?

I belatedly realize he's not trying to get my attention, he's confirming that he knows my name. Names are important, and ghosts forget quick. "Yeah, it's Julin. Julin Drum, remember, the witch?"

Jule, he sighs in my mind, satisfied, and again I can almost feel his weight.

"You sure are a cuddly ghost."

A sense of laughter. You know what? I was scared of you.

"Well, I'm a scary guy."

He laughs some more.

"Seriously, the earth shakes when I walk, I'm like a god on --" I break off with a yelp as thunder cracks right overhead. My ghost laughs his insubstantial ass off at that.

I sigh and stroke the bone with a fingertip as we both calm toward sleep. Rain begins to hiss down outside. I roll over and pull up my blanket, gathering the corner of it in my arms as if I'm holding someone. Like maybe a skinny towheaded dead boy who needs a little comfort.

"I'm going to sleep now," I whisper. "It might be confusing for you. You might dream my dreams with me. But don't worry, they're only dreams."

Me too, he says uncertainly. I'll dream too.

I don't know if he will or not, since all I know about sleeping with ghosts is that you're not supposed to. If not, at the worst he'll get a little bored. We're going to find out, anyway, since I can't stay awake much longer. I let myself drift away.



The whole vastness of the world is around me in colors so bright they taste in my mouth like fruit and salt and skin and metal. All the people are talking so cheerfully in musical bird languages. Up on their roofs they're talking, on the shiny teacup tile roofs of the houses leaning tall and far apart like crocodile's teeth, with so much colored world between. I can go everywhere. I can go so fast. My legs can run so fast it's like flying. The birds in their flagflying silk scarves applaud me as I go.

And he's clinging to me like a backpack, like a baby, like a lover behind me and murmuring in my ear like soft thunder, "Jule, slow down, it's too much all at once." His voice is deeper than I thought it would be.

The rush of affection I have for him is a shocking tsunami of sugar and heartsblood, and as I turn to hold him at arm's length and wonder, it encloses us somewhere darker, smaller. He sighs relief and sinks down with me on our knees in the soft yellow sand. Night folds around us like a cloak, a small night but starry, made of my tidal surprise just for him.

"I didn't know I liked you so much, Miki," I tell him.

"You didn't." His smile is just a pulling back of sidemouth. Too old for him.

Poor Miki. I wrap my hand around his head to soothe him like a baby, and my fingers sink into wet warmth.

"Don't," he says without a change in his smile, but his eyes dampen. "Don't, you're the one who saw it, you brought that here."

"I know. I'm sorry." I take my hand away. I show it to him cupped in my palm: not blood. Just canal water. Palest yellow green like tea. "I did like you, too. I liked to see you around. But I thought you were simple."

"I am simple."

He's not. His eyes glow with awareness. They're brown green like the canal on a cloudy day, funny to see with his pale hair, darkness like hollows, and I want to put them in my mouth and suck on them in the form of glass marbles. I kiss the skin beside one. He leans against my shoulder and sighs.

After a while he starts crying.

"Jule? Am I really dead?"

I pluck a blue crystal star from my warm velvet night and try to distract him with it instead of answering. He's having none of it. Shaking now and crying harder. I want to cry with him, but what good would it do? The only reason he's here to be comforted is because he's dead.

"I don't want to be dead," he moans. "I don't get it. They weren't even mad. They didn't even rob me."

"Who, Miki?"

He shakes his head. He winds around me like a vine. His body is thin and hot and trembling with angry life, and I have never ached like this. The mad fancy takes me that I could wake up and go down to the corner by the fruit market and find him there, that having realized how sweet he was I can now have another go at meeting him, as if I was an ignorant fool and not a witch at all. As if I wasn't fed on death from my mother's tit and schooled by ghosts instead of priests.

I want a miracle, and that's an uncomfortable thing when you don't believe in them.

"Stay with me, Miki," I command.

His breath flutters against my neck. Around us, our warm water-stars-cloak-cave is fading into brightness like paint washed down a gutter. I'm beginning to feel the sunlight on my eyelids.

"Stay with me," I beg.



I will. Don't let go.

His breath still tickles my skin as I open my eyes, and the charm feels heavy as a kiss pressed to the cup of my collarbone.

"Miki?" I whisper. Not sure why it's a question. His awareness is so present it almost has me spooked, and I don't spook easy.

Where did it go? His voice is startlingly clear. The stars. You made me stars.

"It was a dream."

Go back to sleep. Dream it again.

"I can't sleep all day, sweetheart. Got things to do."

His reply is a sigh I feel on the back of my ear. Only then do I realize what I called him, but I can't bring myself to be ashamed of it. The way he clung to me in the dream... whether it was as a child or a lover, he's earned some pet names from me. I doubt sweetheart will be the last.

So this is why Gram said not to sleep with ghosts. You never want to get out of bed.

Despite my late night, it's still morning. The sun just cleared the roof across the courtyard. Halfway between dawn and noon. I hear my downstairs neighbor pounding rice, and the next-door lady's chicken chortling outside my door and no doubt shitting all over my piece of the balcony. When the hell is she going to eat that thing already?

I want a pet chicken, Miki tells me.

"You want breakfast," I say, "and so do I."

I... eat? What? A sense of bewilderment, yawning into hollow horror as he remembers he has no body to eat with, that he's a ghost chained to a bone. Jule! It's a moan I can almost hear with my ears.

"Ssh, baby," I soothe, fingers pressing the bone as I shuffle loose of my blankets. "It'll be okay. You're with me now. Trust me."

Jule, I'm dead.

"Happens to all of us. Not everybody gets to make friends afterwards, right?"

He lets that cheer him some, more to humor me than because he actually feels better. No ghost has ever come through so clearly before. It's almost like he's bound to me rather than the bone. Unsettling thought, but... not as unsettling as it probably should be. Gram would kick me so hard if she was still around.

I check on my crawfish. All still sluggishly alive. I grab my cookpot and slog down to the courtyard pump to wash the rice crud out and fill it with clean water. Some girl tries to talk to me while I'm doing that; I give her I-just-woke-up face and grunty answers, but she still follows me halfway back up the stairs before her mother calls her.

Back in my tiny two-room, I light the stove and plunk the pot on. And by 'stove' I mean 'high-sided open fire pit with a bent iron grill on it' -- this tenement is like two hundred years old. There isn't a even a chimney, so I have to leave the shutters open whenever I cook. Which is extra awesome in the summer, since my mosquito netting has holes in it.

Is she your girlfriend?

"Who?"

An echo-image of the girl's faded red dress and cheerful chattering voice. Is she?

"I don't even know her name." I shake a generous pile into the lid of the salt box and dump it in the water. There are things I skimp on, but salt and hot peppers are not among them. Salt and hot peppers can make anything taste good. "Why, are you jealous?"

Miki growls, and I feel a scrape like teeth on the back of my neck. As I put my hand up to the place, his growl moves to my ear. I should've called dibs on you when I had the chance.

"Now I have a raging boner, thanks a lot," I grumble. No way am I going to point out that he's only hitting on me because he's got nothing left to lose. When he was freaking out a few minutes ago, it just about made me cry, that's how intense he is. I like him better laughing, which is what he's doing now.

A ghost has a crush on me. How weird is that.

I have a crush back, that's even weirder. Only... it's just the kind of pointless, morbid, yet oddly not depressing thing I would do.

My grocery basket is pretty close to empty. I decide to just go ahead and finish off everything that's left. I sing to Miki as I peel vegetables. He seems to like that.

Lots of carrots, he says. I like carrots.

"This is all the carrot I have, baby." I snick it into the pot, reserving the last bite to eat raw. Miki makes a frustrated sound. I feel a feather touch on my lips, as if he's trying to snatch the crunch of it from my mouth. I was going to feed him when my food was done so we could eat together, but I guess he's too hungry to wait.

"Here's how it works," I say, and dig the point of my knife into my arm. "That's your food. You eat blood, not carrots."

A moment's shock. Sick longing. Then he's lapping up the blood as fast as it can run, going sorry sorry sorry all the while. Red steam twists into the air and vanishes, my life essence given freely, the only nourishment he can take now.

"Don't be sorry. I knew I'd be feeding you when I took you home with me."

Hurts you.

"Not hardly," I chuckle, and go back to my veggies while his insubstantial lips suckle at my arm. I keep munching bits raw, because goddamn I'm hungry, but at least half the veg goes in the pot. The cut on my arm starts to clot up around the time I'm finished.

"Now you heal it up. You should have enough energy to do that."

Heal? How?

"It's something spirits can do. It's why witches keep them. Well, except for I'm keeping you because I like you and you didn't want to go. But you can help me too. Just close the cut, it's only a little one."

I don't... I never... But even while he protests, the cut pulls closed, itching madly as the skin knits.

"Perfect," I say when it's done. I lick my thumb and rub away the clot. "Like it was never there."

Weeeeird, he intones, and I have to laugh. If people knew ghosts think it's kind of freaky to do the things they can do, witches would get a lot less elbow room on a crowded street.

"Blood is a life essence. I'm giving you some of my life." I get down my little mortar and pestle to grind up some dried peppers with oil for sauce.

And then I drop the pestle on my foot, because Miki's invisible hand just totally grabbed my dick.

I want more of you, he whispers. I feel his lips on my throat. I can feel his hand, every thin cold finger. It's a good thing I have to kneel on the floor to cook, or I would've faceplanted. As it is, I flop back on my hands and nearly put my foot in the fire.

Is... that... life essence too?

"I don't know," I gasp. "Miki, this is a little strange." It's a lot strange. Part of what's strange is how sexy it is. "I can't touch you."

You've been stroking my bone all morning. His laugh is bitter, but there's no cruelty in his hands. Which are not letting up for a second.

I scoot back away from the stove so I won't kick ashes everywhere. His touch stays with me. I can't get a feeling for where he thinks the rest of his body is, whether he's kneeling over me or what, just those hands on me right through my pants and his soft mouth all over my neck. Teeth tugging my earlobe. I scramble to open my pants so I won't make a mess in them. He redoubles his efforts.

"Oh fuck," I groan. "Miki..." I close my eyes, and he kisses me. Teeth, tongue, everything. As long as I keep my eyes closed and my hands at my sides, I can imagine he's alive with me. I pretend if I wanted to I could reach up and slide my arms around his skinny body. I pretend if I opened my eyes I'd see his sandy eyelashes and freckled cheek.

Then he whispers my name even though he's still kissing me, so I can't pretend his voice is coming from his mouth, and shivers crawl over me from head to toe. And because I am a perverse bastard, that's what sets me off.

I open my eyes at the end. He's there above me, prone in the air like a reflection of me. A sketch of glow like what I saw last night, but a lot more Miki-shaped than it was then. His eyes even have a touch of green to them. And as I twitch with the last of my orgasm, I see my semen evaporating in midair just like my blood did.

That's better than blood. His voice comes from beside my ear, though I see him above me, and even while I watch his lips curve in a fond smile I feel them brush my forehead.

I am so, so, so creeped out. And also kind of in love. "Anytime," I pant.

He settles on me as he fades. I feel his weight along my whole body for a moment. Then it's gone. Only the bone is heavy. I close my eyes and just breathe. My eyes are stinging a little. This is way more emotion than I'm used to dealing with. I mean, I can ride the grief and rage of a fresh ghost all night, but that's not my pain. Whereas Miki... oh Miki, oh hell, Miki is dead and I don't want him to be.

My door suddenly shakes in its frame as someone pounds on it.

I jump, scrambling to pull myself together. Whoever it is out there, they sound like they're in a hurry. Must be an emergency. Looks like Miki's going to get to try out his new healing skills right away. I'm a little bit grateful, actually. Nothing like saving somebody's bacon to take your mind off your troubles.

"So much for breakfast," I say as I turn the latch, trying to grin.

The first thing I see is a City Watch uniform. I try to slam the door. It bounces off a booted foot. The watchman shoulders in, a tall rawboned woman who looks like she chews nails for fun, and I pinwheel back, trying to remember if there's anything below my window that would save me if I dove out.

"You need to come with me right now," she says, and I freeze.

Wait a second. I know her. It's Daisy Wheeler. Local girl who used to wait tables at the Red Goose, and bounce too when things got rowdy. Last I heard, she got a better job and moved to a nicer-smelling part of town. So this is her new job? "Daisy? I didn't know you turned copper."

"Somebody's got to look out for you lot. Now come on. No time to argue. Forget your fucking soup!" she snaps as I glance toward my boiling pot. "They don't know where you live, but it won't take them long to find out."

That's not the kind of statement you c...