Those Who Return, Chapter 1: And She Left with the Night
In 1867, Paul Mansfield was murdered, shot through the back of he head in cold blood by Atticus J. Buckley.
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Permit me an extra moment of your time before we begin this tale, that I might lay out my goals and set some proper expectations. Roughly a month ago at the time of this writing, fellow Substack writer and lover of fantasy and Western adventure fiction
had the opportunity to appear as a guest on the Black Ibis Social Club podcast, hosted by with cohost, . If you’d like to listen to the episode, you may find it here. It’s one of their shorter episodes, making for easy listening.As one would expect given what Josh writes, the talk eventually turned to fiction. His fiction, fantasy and Western fiction, and fiction in general were all discussed in brief, but I want to hone in on a point Alexandru made on the topic of fantasy: America’s lack of its own distinct fantasy fiction. Now before you point at names like Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, or the hundreds of other American fantasy writers, let me first explain the meaning behind that statement.
Alexandru’s isn’t saying there’s no American made fantasy fiction. Instead, his statement is that while there are plenty of American fantasy authors, the fantasy we often write is distinctly European in its style and settings. It’s the fantasy of Tolkien, exported to the U.S. with all its knights, wizards, elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, and dark lords intact. It’s very much a product and pastiche of Western European culture, even when handled by American hands.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about this since Alexandru brought it up. I’ve thought about it in the context of my own fiction, much of which I believe straddles a line between the American and the European. Some of my work, such as my novella and the sequel novel I’ve been working on, are distinctly European in their influence, chiefly Scandinavian. Other stories draw from different ages and parts of the world, like my primitive fantasy stories featuring the brothers Blackpaw and White-eye. These are in line with classic adventure pulps like Tarzan. Conversely, The Pearldiver’s Adventures draw their inspiration from tales of Caribbean pirates and the Age of Sail, and as such are filled with influences from both Europe and America.
Yet while these elements are present, none of the projects have been distinctly American in their fantasy. They draw from the global empires of Europe; tales of expeditions into African or South American jungles; and from those classic tales of knights, Vikings, dragons, centurions, kings and queens, princes and princesses, and more.
Today’s story, which will be the first part of a novelette roughly the same length as my Blackpaw and White-eye stories, is my attempt at fantasy that is distinctly American. I don’t quite know where this adventure will take me, or how it will pan out yet. Will this idea work? Will the fantastical elements I plan to use properly reflect American myths and cultures, or will this all fall flat on its face.
I guess we’ll soon find out. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my attempt at some distinctly American fantasy. Or Western fantasy. Either one works.
~D. S. Brandt
He lay face down in an open field. Evening dew collected on green blades that tickled his skin, warm as he cooled. The shadow of the Earth stretched out before him. Venus had tied her belt about her waist. She sat upon the skyline, her rosy sash separating golden skin from the violet shadow beneath. He watched her as he bled from the holes in his head, obscured by grass and tree. She arose with the shadow’s deepening, and left with the night.
The year was 1867, and Paul Mansfield had just been murdered on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa. The city, recently rebuilt after its partial burning near the end of the War of Northern Aggression, had yet to truly recover from the devastation. General Wilson’s month long raid on the city two years prior destroyed much of their manufacturing foothold, and the thousands of men killed or captured slowed reconstruction to a crawl. Wilson hadn’t just crippled the city back then, he’d effectively knocked the entire state of Alabama out of the war. It was only natural that tensions remained wound tight among those still left.
The city was no longer what it once was, and that was proved again tonight. Paul Mansfield was, by most accounts, a good man. Upon returning home after serving in the war, Paul tried his best to do right by his neighbors and his parish, even in the face of his own poverty. Like so many others, much of what he had was lost in that bloody conflict, including the small plot of land where his great grandfather had built their small family farm. Paul would have inherited it from his father in a few years, had it not been burned during Wilson’s Raid.
By contrast, Atticus J. Buckley was a considerably wealthier fellow. The Buckleys had strong family ties all across Tuscaloosa and the surrounding communities. They were well liked and respected local land owners, and their deep roots in the region were a key reason why the Buckleys were among those that spearheaded Tuscaloosa’s reconstruction after the war.
Atticus was the family’s second son, and a few years older than young Paul. Like Paul, he was also viewed as a good natured man. He was regularly seen interacting with the locals, including poor sharecroppers like the Mansfields, and frequently showed himself to be of a strong moral character through his generosity and his willingness to help with the sort of hard labor that many in his position would view as beneath their station. So why, then, would a man like Atticus so brutally murder a poor youth like young Paul Mansfield?
Paul didn’t know, and that confusion plagued his final moments as he recounted the events leading to his death in his dimming mind.
Paul couldn’t disguise his surprise when Atticus showed up outside the little shack he’d been holed up in for the past couple years. After the farm burned, the Mansfields originally planned to rebuild. Alas, amidst the all the confusion and expenses involved in Tuscaloosa’s ongoing restoration, Paul and his family swift realized the monetary costs were simply too much for them. Supplies and provisions for the house alone were beyond their ability, to say nothing of the losses they incurred when their fields burned. Selling the land to the Buckleys was the best option they had, and so Paul’s family did before packing up into a cramped wagon and heading out West.
But not Paul. He stayed behind, unable to let go of his ties to the home he fought for, even though he knew it would never be his again. Thus he began his work as a sharecropper under the employ of the Buckleys, working those familiar plots with friends and fellow soldiers, but no family left to speak of. A painfully bittersweet proposition, it threatened to throw Paul into the depths of depression many times over. It was to his great fortune that Atticus was understanding of his position. He offered Paul a place to stay, and though his quarters were little more than a shack with a bed, at least it was on his family’s plot.
Confusion deepened, lingering with the ache in his head. Funny, that. He’d always assumed the pain of being shot through the head would be sharper. Instead, Paul found it dull and cold. Slowly it throbbed through his scalp, brow, neck, and nape; blooming, then receding. It came in time with the bleeding of his wounds, fast when the blood spilled, slowing as it oozed, all but vanishing as it trickled.
Why? What had he done to Atticus that deserved such foul betrayal? Paul wouldn’t say the two of them were ever friends, but he’d never believed himself Atticus’ enemy. He’d never needed much. The second Buckley son had always treated him well, and in return for that good treatment, he provided good work and never asked for more than what he needed. He’d no wish to leech off Atticus and his family, he only wished to work his family’s plot, do good by the parish, and start a family of his own one day. Were these such unreasonable wants?
Paul’s vision clouded. In the darkness of the half-moon night, the gray went grayer, and the dark, darker. Fog cast itself about his mind, obscured his thoughts, blackened his emotions. So it was to be this, then. This is how he died; not fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with his friends and brothers, not standing up against Lincoln’s Union, but shot through the back of a head by a man he’d once believed charitable and decent. Home, family, marriage? Lost to him now. Oh, dear Nellie Foster…
In his final moments, young Paul Mansfield closed his eyes and wept not for the life he lost, but the pain his absence would leave behind. For his family, who would one day hear of his killing. For his friends and brothers, who struggled through so much with him, and lost so much already.
And for Nellie Foster most of all, the woman to whom he’d given his heart. Such a beauty she was, with her flaxen hair and fine features and that cute button of a nose. How Paul ever won over a woman of means like her was beyond him. She swore that it was his reputation, built up on the back of his work ethic and strong morals. Paul was always willing to go out of his way for the sake of others, even when he had so little for himself. That impressed Nellie, and her father Jacob as well. By God, even in his dying moment, he still couldn’t believe that old Jacob Foster allowed a poor wretch like him to court his belle daughter.
Not that it mattered now. Dear, sweet Nellie, how sorely his heart ached for her. That his dying would bring her such grief was worse for Paul than Atticus’ betrayal could ever be. Why in Heaven’s name did Atticus have to go and kill him? He supposed he’d never know.
Yet his supposition proved wrong. As the light faded from Paul’s eyes, his conscious awareness on the brink of being snuffed, a voice spoke to him. It wasn’t a voice as we understand it, nor was its speech familiar or recognized. Yet Paul heard it clear in his heart and mind, and felt it deep in his soul. An urge. An order. He had been murdered, left for dead, but this was not to be. His time had not yet come.
Choking in a gasping breath, Paul’s hazel eyes shot open. He still lay in the grass, their dewy blades damp with water droplets and his quickly cooling blood. Pushing up on trembling hands, he stared down at the slick pool that spilled from his head. It glistened in the light of the half-moon, the red turned black by the dark of night. He’d lost so much. How was it possible he was still breathing?
A miracle?
A curse?
Leaning back, he fell onto his rump and sat awkwardly in the damp grass. He stared down at his hands. They were trembling, and he knew why. Part of him felt this must be some grim dream, a figment of his imagination. He wanted to believe that Atticus hadn’t shot him, and that when he touched his head, his sandy blonde hair wouldn’t be matted with blood and he wouldn’t feel the gaping hole the bullet left.
But he had to know. He needed that truth. Setting his jaw, he clenched his hands into tight fists to stop their shaking, then brought them both to his head.
“He really did shoot me,” Paul murmured as his hands came away.
His own blood, sticky and half-dry, stained the palm and fingers of his right. On his left, the first two knuckles of his index finger were coated in the stuff, soaked when it slipped into the still open hole about an inch above his left eye. He wanted to puke, but found that the disgust which filled him didn’t turn his stomach at all. Not the strangest thing in the world, considering he had a bullet hole in his head and was somehow still breathing.
“I should find Nellie,” he told himself. “She’s clever, and if she don’t know what to do, her father ought to.”
Nellie. It would be good to see her, to assure her he was okay. How much time had passed since his murder? He didn’t know, but it couldn’t have been long. The blood he’d awakened in still had traces of warmth in it. If he hurried, maybe he could get ahead of Atticus and his little posse, talk to Nellie and her father about what happened. Then they could turn him in for what he’d done.
He looked back down at his hands. He should clean. Nellie would surely panic if he showed up all bloodied like this, to say nothing for the hole in his head.
Paul stopped, his conscious mind finally catching up to his panic driven decision. He’d just been murdered, shot through the back of the head. Blood from the wound was fresh on his finger. What could Nellie possibly do but scream and faint at such a sight? No, he couldn’t put her through that.
Questions were raised. Where to go. What to do. The lingering why of Atticus’ choice continually nagged at Paul. For the life of him, he couldn’t wrap his head around that.
When Atticus came to Paul’s door earlier that evening, asking the poor sharecropper to accompany him to the meadows not far from the fields of the former Mansfield farm, young Paul hadn’t the faintest idea what Atticus was planning. After the good Atticus had done for him, he saw no reason to suspect foul play. Yet here he sat, a dead man in the dewy night, with a hole punched through his head by a bullet from Atticus J. Buckley. Even now he couldn’t quite figure it. Atticus hadn’t said anything to give his motivation away, and Paul couldn’t fathom what he’d possibly done to drive Atticus to kill him.
Presently, Paul sat cross-legged in the damp grass, pondering this very question. There must be a reason behind Atticus’ actions, a motive he overlooked. Perhaps he offended the second Buckley son, or somehow besmirched the man’s honor. If that was the case, though, why not come settle it man to man? Why the secrecy, why the murder? An answer to these questions did exist, he just needed to find it. Problem was, not only did every guess Paul made come short, he didn’t even know where to begin the search. He was still wrapping his head around the fact he’d been shot, killed, and somehow brought back.
Lost amidst his ponderings, Paul almost failed to notice the rustling of the nearby scrub. Dogwood, red chokeberry, and buckeye all bordered his small death meadow, though calling it a meadow was being generous. Really, the half-dozen so-called meadows near his family’s old farm were little more than clearings. At best they could be called small glades, and even that was a stretch. Local kids liked to play in them, and small game in the form of squirrels and hares was plentiful enough that Paul had taken to hunting in the “meadows” to help keep himself fed.
They were familiar to him; the clearings, and the animals that frequented them alike. He knew how big the small game grew, how they moved, and how the scrub rustled as they passed through it. Small motions for small critters, that tended to be the rule.
These were not small motions. Whatever was causing that rustling was pushing through the tight space between a pair of red chokeberry bushes. Lush with the bright red fruits, their flexible branches swayed rapidly, making the little red berries all but rain down. Twigs snapped in the bushes as the creature passed through. If it were a squirrel or rabbit, he’d expect to hear that maybe once or twice, not the six or seven times he just had. Then he heard something else, a familiar sort of whiny grumble, the kind a dog would make when it was frustrated.
It was no dog which stepped out of those bushes. Tawny furred and scraggly, the critter shook the twigs and leaves off its coat, then sat on its haunches and stared at him with vibrant golden eyes. Paul wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it looked like a small wolf with coarse, tan fur. But that couldn’t be right. Wolves hadn’t been seen in these parts since well before he was born, and this thing didn’t look like a proper wolf besides.
The lupine critter tilted its head. Pointed ears perked curiously, and its bushy tail wagged through the damp grass. It barked at him, or half-yipped, half-growled. He didn’t quite know how to describe it, but when Paul met its stare with confusion, the little beast pointed its skinny snout skyward and belted out the strangest howl he’d ever heard.
Yip ha-ha-hawrooo!
Two more of those laugh-like howls responded, and soon after, two more of the tawny wolf dogs emerged from the bushes to sit and stare at him. He wondered if they might be coyotes? He’d heard stories about them before from some of the Texans he’d fought alongside. Mischievous little pests, they worked in small packs and posed a frequent problem for folks further west. He’d never seen one before, though. So far as he knew, they didn’t range through Alabama, but these three matched the descriptions he’d been given–like small, skinny, tawny-furred wolves that yapped instead of howled.
After a long moment, the first one stood and yipped something to the other two, almost as if it were speaking to them. She must’ve been the leader, though Paul couldn’t place why he knew that, or why he assumed the coyote was female. They were just notions he had, hunches that he felt to be right.
In response to her yipping command, the other two stood up and ventured back into the scrub. Once they left, the leader turned to follow them. However, before she padded back into the chokeberry bushes, she stopped and faced Paul again. There she stood, observing him, gauging him. Hers was a critical eye, he felt. Discerning, wise. Far more so than her mischievous lupine form let on. Expectation was held in that golden gaze; she was to retrieve him, and he was to follow. That’s why she’d been sent, and she wouldn’t leave until he did as bidden.
Quite how Paul was able to glean all of this from a glance was far beyond his ability to understand. As with everything else tonight, these mysteries begged questions for which he didn’t have answers. And yet, there was something inside of him that told him to trust this creature. So, pushing himself up out of the grass, he took to his feet for the first time since his death and followed the coyote through the bushes and into the woodlands.
She led him on a winding path through the trees. Beech and oak. Cedar and pine. Their tall, thick forms deepened the nighttime shadows, making the land appear blacker even than the sky itself. Despite this, Paul found he had no problem following his guide at all. The coyote seemed to stand out against the darkness. Her tawny fur was always visible to him, and when she looked back to ensure he was still following, her eyes seemed to glow with a light all their own.
They hiked for what felt a long while, rounding trees and passing through bushes. In time, Paul realized he could hear the flow of water nearby. Could smell it as well, the earthy scent of wet soil and petrichor. Soon they emerged from the trees onto the shallow sloped embankment of Black Warrior River. Reedy dogwood shrubs grew along the water, and the river passed them along a sharp bend. Strangely, now that the river was in sight, Paul realized that from the moment he started hearing it, he’d stopped hearing the buzz of nocturnal insects or the songs of nighttime birds. There was only the river, the sounds of his footsteps, and the padding and panting of the coyote and her two escorts.
The voice spoke to him again. Urged him forward, into the river. Paul heeded its command and waded out knee deep into the flowing waters. Deceptively languid in appearance, the flow of water pushed strong against Paul’s legs. Yet he kept his balance, even as he felt the soft riverbed shift beneath his feet.
Moonlight shone in the river’s rippling surface, and Paul’s gaze fell upon it. The halfmoon’s reflection broke and reformed repeatedly, its shapes twisted and turned in kaleidoscopic movements. Mist then settled on the water, silver sheen brushed above the river’s surface, painted by moonlight. Ripples flowed through clouded surfaces, visible trails drawn by invisible fingers which were themselves soon made visible.
He stood atop the sheen of mist, regal and splendid despite simple garb. No color touched his hazy form, just shades of white and black forming the shape of a tall and rangy man. Feathers adorned him, tied by rawhide bands to his wrists, arms, and ankles. Some were woven into his hair, hanging like the tassels from his sleeveless tunic and his pants of supple leather. Still more dangled from the head of the spear he carried.
His feet were bare, and a doeskin draped his shoulders. Despite the grayscale of his appearance, Paul could see the twin bands of paint that crossed his face; a light band which crossed over his nose, and a dark one that went over his mouth. An Indian, his body formed from the mist he stood upon.
The phantasmal Indian regarded him coolly, and Paul met his piercing gaze. Here was the sole place upon his body that he saw color. Here he saw the brown of the man’s dark eyes, deep set and rich with the wisdom of eld. Those eyes drove a pang of fear into Paul. The knowledge they held felt somehow forbidden to him, but as their gazes met, he eased. Warmth filled him. Familiarity. Somehow, he felt as if he were standing amidst the pews of his church, looking up at the image of Christ.
“Who are you?” Paul asked.
The Indian didn’t answer. He had no need of words when a look would tell all. Indeed, Paul came to understand the more he looked into the mist man’s dark eyes. A guide and messenger, sent to point Paul down the correct path. The righteous path.
In 1867, Paul Mansfield was murdered, shot through the back of he head in cold blood by Atticus J. Buckley. That evening, he died, bled out in a tiny glade behind his family’s former farm in Tuscaloosa county. That night, he returned, that he might deliver just retribution to the betrayer who stole his life.
My first novella, In the Giant’s Shadow, is available for purchase! Lured to the sleepy farming community of Jötungatt by a mysterious white raven, Gaiur the Valdunite soon finds herself caught in a strange conspiracy of ritual murder and very real nightmares.
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Ok, I’m intrigued. I do wonder if American fantasy as discussed is perhaps more due to the writer’s background ancestry, than the land on which they lived? N.K. Jemisin, for example, is a most excellent fantasy writer and her work is not European-based.
Solid work. Especially love your emphasis of retribution over revenge, which stands in contrast to the whole revenge subgenre we're all too familiar with. Paul is a man doing what's right, not what's self-satisfactory. Enjoyed this a lot!