The Twister Sisters Read online

  The Twister Sisters

  By D.J. Goodman

  ©2010

  1

  Sun River didn’t get much news from other towns, but the news they had been receiving was ominous, if vague. All they knew was that outlying towns were being attacked. Travelers would tell Jessie stories that were the opposite of each other: in some all the townspeople were slaughtered and in others not a single drop of blood was shed. Jessie hadn’t put much stock in the stories at first, but the more times she heard them the more she had to wonder. She wasn’t the only one starting to pay attention, either. Two days earlier the town council had called a special meeting where half the town’s people had demanded measures be taken to protect the town. The other half had said there was nothing to worry about and didn’t want to waste their tax money on weapons that wouldn’t get used. The point was moot, anyway. Sun River had no major resources and therefore no way to pay for the sort of artillery crossbows or trained fighters that the theoretical threat would require. They didn’t even have a way to get the equipment into town. No railroad tracks had been built yet this far to the northeast, and there were only two steam carriages in the entire town despite being invented over twenty years ago. There were horses, but they alone wouldn’t be enough to transport that sort of equipment.

  The town council had adjourned without coming to any decisions, saying they needed to consider all possibilities before coming to a decision. Jessie had lived in Sun River her whole life, and she knew by now what “consider all possibilities” really meant. The council just wanted to put all decisions off in hopes that the situation would simply blow over in the coming weeks. Jessie didn’t think it would be that simple, but neither had she expected any incident soon. No one had. That was why the pirates were able to attack so easily.

  On the night the Twister came the sky was cloudy, and although it didn’t look like it was going to rain to Jessie there was enough wind to suggest the night was not going to be a pleasant one, so Thirsty Aunt Hilda’s Saloon was nearly empty less than an hour after sundown. The only customer was a young man calling himself Corin. Corin had come to Sun River all the way from Rhianna, so he was a celebrity in town. Most people around here had never been farther than a two-day’s ride from Sun River, so any man from some place as far away and exotic as the city of Rhianna would naturally attract the young ladies. And he was a mystery, rarely talking about why he had left Rhianna to begin with, so that only made him more interesting in their eyes. They lost that interest quickly, though, when they realized that he had brought his big city thinking with him. The women around here wanted a man who would give her lots of children and then make them dinner, not a man who thought he was their equal. The fact that no one took him seriously around here had driven him into something of a depression, and he had quickly become Jessie’s best customer.

  Jessie wiped down a few of the tables and tried to ignore Corin’s drunken singing from the corner. It was on nights like these, when she didn’t have the distractions of the entire town drinking away their day’s wages in front of her, that the depression really hit her. This wasn’t the life she would have picked out for herself had she been given the choice, but she couldn’t say what she might have chosen otherwise. It had been understood from early on that she would become Thirsty Aunt Hilda’s proprietor, and she hadn’t seen the point of deciding on an alternate path. She hadn’t even seen the point of changing the saloon’s name when she inherited it. Calling it Jessie’s Saloon would have made it seem like she wanted it in the first place.

  Everyone in town had called the prior owner Aunt Hilda, but Jessie had been the only one to whom that name was literal. Hilda had been her mother’s sister, although she was really the only mother Jessie had ever known. Her biological mother had died during childbirth, and by town law her father hadn’t been allowed to raise her. The general feeling in Sun River, just as in most of Argona, was that a man wasn’t fit to raise a child. So she had been placed with her aunt. And her aunt had devoted her life to providing Sun River with its only source of amusement. It hadn’t been too long ago that her aunt had passed away, but it felt long. Every day that Jessie was at the saloon felt like years.

  “Why so sad?” Corin said from his corner. His voice was still so sing-songy from the alcohol that Jessie thought at first that he was still in the middle of his song. It didn’t occur to her that he was talking to her until he had been quiet for several seconds.

  “Who said I was sad?” Jessie asked.

  “I can tell,” Corin said. “I know because you look exactly like you always do, and you’re always sad.”

  “I am not,” Jessie said, forcing a smile to her lips. “You just want me to be sad because you want to make me feel better. Just like a man.”

  Corin tried to raise an eyebrow, but he was too drunk to have that much muscle control right now. “What’s that suppose to mean?”

  Jessie walked over to his table and wiped around his glass. “Always trying to be the hero. Always trying to save the day. Never realizing that women are the ones really in charge and don’t need a hero. You know, a man.”

  Corin snorted. “That’s awfully stereotypliclal of you. I mean, not very forwarded thinking of you. I could know more about things than you could possibly know, you know? But you wouldn’t care to listen, I think. Just like everyone else in this damn town.”

  It was Jessie’s turn to snort. “If that’s the way you feel why don’t you just leave?”

  Another failed attempt at a raised eyebrow. “Why don’t you?”

  Jessie turned her back to him to wipe the next table. “It’s not like I can. I have my duties.”

  “Is a… it are a… I mean it’s just a bar. Not much a duty, you ask me.”

  Jessie waved a dismissive hand at him. “I’m tired of trying to ignore you for the night. Time for you to leave.”

  “Aw, come on. I’m not enough even drunk yet.”

  Jessie tossed her rag on a table and went to help him from his chair. “I’m going to close up, so get. You should go home before it gets too bad outside.” It hadn’t even occurred to her until now just how bad the wind sounded. It whistled around the saloon’s outer wall and made the entire building creak. Winds like this were common during the winter months and in the summer months they were the closest thing the town had to a warning for tornadoes, but now, in early spring, weather like this shouldn’t have been happening.

  Corin was able to walk better than Jessie had expected as she led him to the front door. The door was ripped from her hand as she tried to open it, and it banged against the wall with a loud crack. She gave it a cursory inspection to make sure it wasn’t damaged before gently pushing Corin out.

  “You sure you don’t want to walk me home?” Corin called back to her as he started down the street. Jessie could barely hear him over the wind. “If you don’t want me to act the hero then you could do it for me!”

  Jessie shook her head. “Just sleep it off, Corin.” She closed the door, locking it and making sure it was secure against the wind, before putting out the lamps throughout the bar and heading to her apartment upstairs.

  She was just about to take off her shirt in favor of her bedclothes when the wind disappeared. If the wind hadn’t stopped she probably wouldn’t have heard the first scream. It was short and far enough away that at first she couldn’t be sure if it had been real or just her imagination. After a few seconds she walked to her nearest window, opened the shutter, and looked out. The view from her bedroom was normally rather beautiful, looking out past a few small but well-kept hovels to the elegant three-story mayor’s mansion just a few streets away, with the distant rolling hills behind it. Her view now, however, was nothing. The air, even here on the second floor, w
as so thick with fog that she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her.

  Jessie’s heart sped up. Something was wrong. There was no way that a fog could have come in so quickly, especially after all that wind. Her mind went to the stories of the mysterious attacks, but that was just absurd. There was no way that anybody could control the elements like this, could they? She knew that deeper in Argona where industry was advancing at an unbelievable pace there was new steam technology that she couldn’t imagine, but something like this?

  There was another scream from somewhere out in the night. It cut disturbingly short.

  Jessie ran to her wardrobe and grabbed the crossbow and bolts she kept on top. Aunt Hilda had always kept it to discourage any drunken fights that might break out, but she had never actually fired it. Jessie hadn’t either. Most people of Sun River were unfamiliar with any weapon not intended for hunting. Unlike Argona’s western neighbors, the countries to the east had always been on more or less friendly terms with them, so the eastern towns didn’t have anything like a standing militia. They didn’t even have much in the way of a police force. Whatever was out there, Jessie may have been one of the few people with any real means to fight it.

  She ran down the stairs, trying to load the crossbow as she went and only managing to fumble most of the bolts, then unlocked the door and ran into the street. With the wind gone the street had taken on an eerie quiet. Jessie still couldn’t see much, although the fog had thinned enough for her to make out the outlines of the buildings across the street.

  “Stop!” someone cried. “Don’t move!”

  Despite the admonition Jessie spun around and pointed her crossbow in the direction of the voice. “Who’s there?”

  “Jessie? That you?” Jessie recognized the voice now and lowered her crossbow, although still keeping it at the ready. She could hear boots crunching in the rough dirt of the street, and a silhouette formed in the blur, slowly becoming a shape she recognized as Mrs. Bambridge. Mrs. Bambridge was the town barber, and she held her scissors out in front of her like a dagger. “By the gods, you scared me.”

  “What’s going on?” Jessie asked. “I heard screams.”

  “Yeah, so did I,” Mrs. Bambridge said. “Sounded like they came from the mayor’s mansion. One of her boys, maybe.”

  Jessie bit her lip. The mayor had two sons, neither being particularly known for wanting attention drawn to themselves. Mrs. Bambridge started to say something else, but Jessie held up her hand for the woman to stop and cocked her head. The night was no longer quite so quiet. She thought she heard some deep noise, but she couldn’t be sure where it was coming from. It wasn’t any noise she could recognize, but it seemed to be growing louder.

  Mrs. Bambridge heard it, too, and there was a tremor in her voice as she whispered. “What is that?”

  Jessie shook her head. The fog around them was thinning out as a breeze started to pick up again. Jessie’s heartbeat started to speed up with fear, but she still didn’t know why. “I think we should get to the mansion.”

  Mrs. Bambridge nodded, and they both started towards the mansion. They didn’t get very far before a building right next to them exploded.

  Out of the corner of her eye Jessie had seen something fly down through the air—it wouldn’t be until later that she would know to call it a harpoon—and crash through building’s wall, sending wooden splinters and debris raining through the air. She had enough time to realize the tip of the projectile had been burning before the building caught on fire and flames started to engulf it. A man and a woman ran from the building, beating at the flames licking at the sleeves of their bedclothes. Mrs. Bambridge dropped her scissors and ran to help them, but Jessie stood frozen to her spot. The deep noise from earlier was much louder now, and it was only then that she recognized it as the sound of engines. They were engines similar to that of a steam carriage, but much larger. She tried to follow the path of the projectile back to where it had come from, and that was the moment where the fog overhead cleared from the renewed intensity of the wind. That was when she got her first ever look at the Twister.

  It was lowering itself over the mansion, and although Jessie had difficulty making out details in the darkness, she could see that it was at least twice the size of the enormous mansion. From somewhere along the thing’s side another of the flaming projectiles flew out at the town below, and the light from the fire briefly illuminated the giant mechanical monstrosity. It looked like some sort of flying platform, and although the distance might have affected her perception of it the platform seemed to be almost three stories thick. All along the sides were various protrusions, pipes and openings, but Jessie couldn’t even begin to guess what purpose they served. She could just barely see what looked like a large number of towers. Later she would be able to recognize these as the engines she had heard. For now, though, all she saw the thing as was something impossible that had no right to exist. And it certainly didn’t have the right to be raining down destruction on Sun River.

  “What by the name of all that is holy is that?” Mrs. Bambridge yelled as she came back to Jessie with the refugees of the burning building in tow. Jessie could barely hear her over the roar of the engines. Somewhere else nearby she could hear more screams and confused yells, even the crackle of more fires. Another projectile shot out and soared over their heads. Another building exploded, and after a second Jessie realized where the projectile had looked to be heading.

  “The saloon!” Jessie screamed. She started to turn and run back from where they had come, but before she could get more than a few steps Mrs. Bambridge stopped her and pointed up at the flying platform.

  “Look!” Jessie looked, but at first she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be seeing. She already knew that something monstrous was upon them and she didn’t really need to be reminded so soon. Then, as the light from the fires below grew and drove away some of the shadows beneath the platform, Jessie could see ropes being thrown out to dangle from the openings in the underside. Hundreds of ropes dangled down, most hanging low enough to reach the roof of the mansion even as the platform continued to lower itself. Some other holes had large rectangular objects being lowered from them, but Jessie didn’t have any time to consider what they might be. Hundreds of voices screamed out a battle cry in unison, and each rope was suddenly occupied by a woman sliding down it. Many of them looked like they were wearing leather battle armor or chain mail, and all of them carried crossbows.

  “Dear gods,” Jessie said. “Come on, we’ve got to stop them.”

  “With what?” Mrs. Bambridge said. “One crossbow won’t be enough. We have to run!”

  Mrs. Bambridge started backing up, trying to pull Jessie along with her by the shoulder, and as Jessie looked back up at the platform she saw Mrs. Bambridge had a point. As the women slid down the ropes some of them landed on the roof and effortlessly formed up into squads, each one running in a different direction. The women still hanging all calmly watched and pointed their crossbows out over the others, ready to provide cover fire if needed as the platform continued to lower them towards the ground. This wasn’t just some random attack, Jessie realized. This had been well planned and these women, whoever they were, had been trained for this sort of thing. A handful of people with kitchen knives, scissors, and a few crossbows that nobody really knew how to use wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight fight.

  “You’re right,” Jessie said. “We have to find some place where we can get people together and make some sort of defense. Maybe the mechanic’s place or…”

  “Attack!” someone screamed nearby, and Jessie’s first instinct was to duck. The voice hadn’t belonged to one of the raiders, though. It had belonged to a man. Jessie looked down the street and saw Corin run- although it was really more of a fast stumble- in the direction of the mansion with a pitchfork in hand.

  “Corin, you idiot,” Jessie yelled. “Get back here!” He was too far away, though. He ran right under the dangling women, who were on
ly about a story up now and still descending, and through the front door of the mansion. Several of the women looked like they were watching him, yet none bothered to shoot.

  “He’ll get himself killed,” Jessie said, then turned to Mrs. Bambridge. “Go. I’ll find you later.”

  Mrs. Bambridge looked like she wanted to argue until she looked up and saw the women above again. Then she nodded, gestured for the two she had saved to follow her, and then turned and ran. Jessie watched them for a second, probably a second more than she could afford, then ran after Corin. She heard the twang of several crossbows being fired, and she felt the wind of one of the bolts as it narrowly missed her shoulder.

  Why would they fire at me but not Corin? Jessie thought, but she didn’t have time to give it much consideration. Right as she reached the door she felt a sudden sharp pain in her left leg, and she cried out and stumbled as she went through the door.

  She had been in the mayor’s mansion twice before, once when she had been young and her Aunt Hilda had taken her to visit a friend on the mansion’s staff, and once after Hilda had died when the mayor had personally invited her in order to offer condolences. Aunt Hilda had been a well-liked fixture in Sun River, and the mayor had been curious if Jessie still planned to take her aunt’s place. It had seemed almost important at the time, to actually have the mayor ask her to continue serving the community, even though Jessie had known that a trained monkey could do what she did just as well as anyone else.

  Jessie hadn’t gone further into the mansion than the first few rooms on either visit. Just beyond the foyer there was a large and ornate receiving area with decorative statues and posh couches for people to wait in. Picture windows on either side of the door lit the room in the eerie flickering light of buildings burning outside. Jessie knew that just down the hall in one direction would be the mayor’s personal office and in the other direction somewhere would be the kitchen. That was all she knew about the mansion’s floor plan.