Out on a Limb

Flash fiction. The rebels carved up my father and are sending him home piece by piece.

Photo by Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

This is a short story written for Fictionistas March edition of The Great Substack Prompt Celebration. This month’s prompt had to include a slacker who steals cats, something beautiful but useless and something wrong with the water. Tricky!

Warning for vomit at the end.

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The rebels carved up my father and are sending him home piece by piece. His right foot was dropped off outside the castle first, then his calf and now his thigh, wrapped up in hide along with a taunting note. 

My siblings crowd round the map in the war room, planning assaults on all known enemy camps. As the youngest of eight, I learned long ago that I would never be the strongest or fastest or bravest, so I have never bothered to pick up a sword. While they discuss tactics and push tokens around the map, I make shadow puppets on the wall to entertain myself. The others talk as if our father might still be alive, but I know he is dead already. Battle does not interest me, only recovering his body does. 

"What about you, Ingrid? Are you going to do your damn duty?" Brun asks. All eyes turn to me. 

“You should buy some pretty figurines instead of those dull wooden chips,” I say, ignoring his question.

Several of my sisters look at me in disgust and shake their heads. I slouch off down the winding staircase and breathe in the fresh evening air in the courtyard.

I‘ve hatched my own plan to find my father’s body. Instead of weapons training, I have spent my youth thumbing through my grandmother’s grimoire and one ritual she describes helps find missing people. Cats, she wrote, are particularly attune to the invisible threads of fate, and thus with a little encouragement will lead a spellcaster to their target. 

I first used the ritual a year ago to find a missing servant. The kitchen staff foiled my attempt to capture the castle cat, so I stalked the town streets at night and trapped one with some salmon as bait. I brought it back to my rooms, waved herbs around it and fed it more fish with my servant’s hair sprinkled on top. When I let it loose again in town, it merely led me back to its home. I hammered on every door on the street just in case, but I never found the servant. 

A few months later, I stole another cat to hunt down a missing lover, but it died from the concoction I fed it. I had a taxidermist stuff it after it passed away and now the beautiful tabby sits on my dresser in a fierce pose. 

My father claimed he would exile me if I stole any more animals. I’ve been told the citizens no longer like me very much. 

It seems wrong to replicate the ritual my father had forbidden me from practising, but I cannot let his corpse remain asunder. The only option is to attune myself to the psychic planes.

I take my father’s thigh from the cool storeroom where it is being kept until the whole body can be reunited and burnt. Back in my room, I place it in a basin of water and press down on it to ensure some of my father’s essence is released. Dried blood floats away from the discoloured limb and tinges the water pink, and a faint smell of rot emanates from it. Wrinkling my nose, I remove the limb, sprinkle some herbs into the mixture, and add a few drops of my own blood. I stir it three times clockwise, then chant the unfamiliar words my grandmother scrawled down.

There is no clap of thunder or whispering voices to tell me I have performed the ritual correctly. I scoop up some of the potion into a leather waterskin and pray I have done everything right.

Night has truly fallen now, and I walk through the castle with a lantern in my outstretched arm. Guards narrow their eyes at me as I pass - my presence makes them uneasy. I step back up the winding stairs to the war room.

The room is dark and silent, but the map is still unrolled on the table. My siblings are elsewhere in the castle, preparing to leave in the morning to whichever rebel camp the scouts say is most likely keeping my father’s decaying body. I can be the one to give my siblings certainty and save them time. I can be the one to ensure his body receives the proper funeral rites. Perhaps my siblings will even let me lead the funeral procession once I have proven my worth.

I run a finger over the coarse map, then gulp down the potion.

The herbs do not disguise the taste of blood and rot in the mixture. Each swallow is more vile than the last, but I force myself to drain the waterskin. My burp tastes even worse. I take some deep breaths in the hopes it will settle my churning stomach.

I look at the map again, praying that I suddenly feel a great connection to some village or forest or patch of land. No great understanding stirs within me.

“What are you doing here? The guards mentioned you’ve been sneaking around.”

Brun stands in the doorway, arms folded.

“Not sneaking. Walking. I live here just the same as you do.” I suddenly feel unsteady on my feet and lean on the table to stop myself from slumping to the floor. “I’m looking to help you, if you must know. I’m trying to work out where father’s body is being kept.” 

“Body? He’s alive for all you know! If you’re not coming with us you’ve got no business being here.”

“I can find -” I heave, then press my hand against my mouth. It is no good. I heave again, and vomit erupts from my mouth and sprays all over the map. I find myself shaking, and Brun makes a noise of disgust.

“What on -”

“There.” I say, with as much confidence as I can muster. I point towards a village where much of my regurgitated dinner has ended up. “That’s where you’ll find father’s body.”

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What are your thoughts on Out on a Limb? I’d love to hear what you think works and what doesn’t, or how it could be improved.