The Sky is No Longer Blue: A Deadlaws Story

Keith: Hey all, I was looking at an old story of mine and thought it would make for some good Deadlaws lore, actually, so I rewrote most of it. It's told nonlinearly because I'm an asshole, and the prose is overdone because I'm just like this. I don't know if it's good writing, but it's certainly more of it!

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AFTERNOON

Cassidy held his arms close to his body, as if he were cold, a gesture that paired poorly with the blazing midday sun. The slender brown marten’s head never faced one direction for long, scanning every alley and corner as he walked, his eyes wide like that of a prey animal.

This colorful frontier town is where Cassidy had become a man, but its neighborly warmth had proven to be conditional. As he shuffled down the street, the buildings towered overhead, their mismatched heights more resembling the crooked teeth of some vast, terrible jaw. That’s what the feeling was. That shiver down his spine. Why he couldn’t master his breathing.

Cassidy was in the maw.

And he felt small, like he’d never been an adult at all. Alone, vulnerable, in an alien space that wore the trappings of his previous life to taunt him, well-worn streets tainted by the promise of blood. The marten wouldn’t sleep here another night. No, he’d grab what he needed, and if he couldn’t carry it, then it didn’t matter. All that mattered was being able to breathe again.

The small town had never felt so vast as it did on this fraught journey home, but Cassidy allowed his shoulders to fall with a sigh as he approached his dwelling, seconds from rounding the final corner.

“Never figured the runt for a killer, honestly.”

The young marten flattened himself to the wall before he even understood the voice that he’d heard. It was high, nasal, and uncertain.

A commanding baritone answered, the last voice he wanted to hear right now. “Yeah? Suppose that's how he thinks he got away with it, dimwit!”

“Oh c'mon, and you think he'd come back now? After a show like that?”

“Oh he'll be back, just you wait.”

A small whine squeezed out through clenched teeth as Cassidy trembled there, his humble plan snatched from him in an instant. Laird. He’d very nearly walked right into that vicious coyote and whatever pack of thugs he’s mustered for his hunt.

Shit shit shit

This was it. This was happening. This was no longer a creeping concern, or a fleeting moment of angst of which he might later think better. They were coming for him. Cassidy slid down to a crouch, squeezing his knees as he stared out with unfocused eyes. His hands balled into fists, which were soon kneading his forehead as he fought back tears.

“You hear something?”

The marten didn’t remember standing, but he’d torn off in the opposite direction, all gasps and heavy footfalls as he ran for his life. He never checked whether anyone was giving chase. The sprawl of civilization soon gave way to a vast expanse of cracked dirt and baked vegetation. The land of opportunity.

He had no map, no supplies, and no plan, but he knew that he could never go back. He had to move. Cassidy caught sight of the afternoon sun where it hung like a guillotine, and he knew it would break his heart to watch that burning harbinger fall.

So he went east.

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HIGH NOON

Cassidy peered deep through the barred window, squinting to make out anything in the inky abyss that was shaped in harsh contrast by the midday sun. “Tom!” His whisper seemed loud in the near-silence, “are you in there?”

“You shouldn’t have come here.” The large fox’s words came out as a barely-audible rumble, meek and drained of his usual confidence. The tone was so unfamiliar, it hurt to hear Tom sound like that.

“Where the hell else would I be?” Cassidy hissed back. “We both know you didn’t do it. They said you were the last one with her, but I know damn well that isn’t true! I can fix this. I just need to talk to the sheriff and set this whole mess straight.”

“Don’t you dare.” Tom was trying to puff himself up, to growl it out all stern and final, but his words quivered. “Do you have any idea what that would do to me? To my family? You’re not saying a goddamned word to anyone.”

“Your family? Tom, they’re gonna hang you at sundown. Your family’s worth jack shit right now.”

Cassidy heard a long exhale through a snout, somewhere in there. A silence followed, for a beat too long. When the fox finally spoke, there was a darkness in his words. “You’re gonna walk away.”

“What?” Cassidy couldn’t accept what he was hearing. His eyes searched desperately for the fox’s face, but found no purchase. “This isn’t right! You can’t make me do this.” His voice cracked. “You don’t know what it’ll do to me…”

Brilliant orange flooded his view as something toothy and growling slammed into the bars, sending the marten stumbling back. “You say one goddamn word and I will never forgive you. I’ll have nothing left.” Tom had never threatened him before.

“You’d have me…” Cassidy reached for him, his vision blurring, but the fox turned away, leaving him alone.

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AFTERNOON

Cassidy’s breath had long since turned ragged and pained in the dry heat. His joints were in agony, and he had no desire to see what kind of chafed and split mess his footpaws had become in boots that were ill-suited for the task. Cassidy had never needed a drink so badly in his life.

He’d run for what felt like hours, but the scenery never changed. His only assurance that he was headed in a straight line were the rays he felt at his back. The marten hadn’t turned back, not once, refusing to track the progress of the falling orb.

Cruelly, the sun was not so easily ignored. Cassidy’s shadow stretched longer and longer before him, his monstrous double waxing as he waned. The marten averted his gaze from the earth’s unwelcome news, only to have it rise up and slam into his face. He cried out pitifully, newly prone, snorting a melange of blood and dirt where it pooled in his nose.

An ankle, poorly cared for, was wrenched from the burrow that had snared it. The flattened marten swallowed hard as his day threatened to catch up with him, but he stood once again. Cassidy groaned as he tested his paw with a step that sent hot pokers up his leg. The hand he’d been dealt was only looking worse, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was gaining as much distance as he could.

So he walked. Hobbled. For hours. He adopted a staggered rhythm as he dragged himself across the wilderness, left alone in silence with thoughts that he didn’t want to have.

He didn’t notice it at first, the noise. Its introduction was too subtle, too modest, despite its import. Then came the denial, for he could more easily hear than believe. But when a thousand mirrors crested the horizon, the river could no longer be ignored.

Cassidy fell to his knees when he reached the bank. Throwing caution to the wind, he drank eagerly, splashing his face. When the surface calmed, the man in the river looked back at him, and began to sob. The marten’s tears returned what he stole.

“And how am I ever supposed to forgive you?”

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MORNING

Tom blinked as he walked in, blind from the morning light, into the dim interior of his favorite establishment. The familiar place however was not manned by the familiar face. “You've got the saloon today, Rose?” The fox scanned around, the regular host nowhere to be seen. In fact, the whole place was unusually empty. “Evie not make it or somethin'?”

The tired rabbit forced a smile. “I haven't got a clue. Ya'll stay up late last night, run my girl ragged?”

“I, uh- we...” Tom cleared his throat when it caught.

A shorter marten seemed to appear out of nowhere from behind the fox’s silhouette, grinning ear to ear. “Tom was soaked through, so I had to drag his dead weight home early.”

Rose cocked an eyebrow at that as she served them the usual. “Big Tom went under the table? Ya'll must have been hitting the good stuff without me.” They hadn’t. “You're liable to make a girl feel left out.”

Tom gulped down his early drink, clearly not comfortable with the lie by omission. “We'll uh, we'll be sure you get the full show next time.”

The three enjoyed a few minutes of the delicate silence of the late morning until it shattered along with the front door. “There he is, that sunovabitch!” Laird bellowed the alarm as bodies flowed past him into the room. For a moment Tom was lost in a sea of hands as they punched and grappled with him, one man against an overwhelming tide. Many voices overlapped.

“What kind of monster does that to a girl?”

“You'll get what's coming to you!”

“Her own mother couldn't even look at her!”

Jaw agape, Cassidy could only shake his head slowly in his shock as he watched. Tom slammed into the door frame, winding him on impact. Creatures that Cassidy no longer recognized tore at the man's clothes, hauling him away. The expression on Tom's face lingered in the doorway long after he was gone, terror of the likes he’d never seen.

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EVENING

The gaunt marten suffered in silence on the shoreline until he was shaken from his stupor by a cold shadow that eclipsed his form. He whirled like a cornered animal, only to find an unfamiliar stagecoach standing in sole defiance against the infinite expanse of the country beyond.

Cassidy’s heart ached twice. Once when he realized that he’d unwittingly turned to face the sun, and again when he noted it was low enough to be blocked by the vehicle.

“I wouldn’t drink that if I were you, boy.” A pudgy, older ferret stared back at him. He looked too clean, clad in strange, colorful clothes, the chain of a pristine pocket watch swinging from a paw that had clearly never seen labor back to one of his coats. “What in the blazes are you doing all the way out here? Were you robbed, or something?”

Cassidy’s shoulders fell. “Yeah. Something like that.”

The ferret flicked both hands upward, dismissively. “Well, get in already. I’ve got a schedule to keep, but we can drop you off in the next town, I suppose.” He seemed genuinely annoyed that Cassidy had not already anticipated his hospitality.

Carefully rising despite his swelling ankle, he checked where the coach’s horses were headed. They weren’t about to take him back, so wherever he ended up would have to be good enough.

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LAST NIGHT

“You ever wonder if we'd be better off back east?” Evie was getting all wistful again. The doe usually did so when she was drinking.

Cassidy blinked at the question. “What, uh, paved roads and shit?”

“Hah!” Her pointed ears bounced as she laughed. It was the kind of noise you could only steal with a surprise. “Yeah, I suppose, paved roads and shit.”

“Reckon it's a lot harder to clean horse leavings out of that cobble or brick or whatever than it is to clear outta the dirt.” He really was out of clever things to say this many drinks in.

“Sure? I'm not exactly looking to do that no matter where I'm livin’.” Evie performatively scrubbed a glass to prove her point.

“Naw, you're too good to sweep streets. I'm sure you've got a foolproof plan to land yourself in pocket watches and petticoats.” Cassidy only said that because it felt good on the drunk tongue. He had no idea what a petticoat was.

“And what exactly do you think a petticoat is, huh?” Dammit.

“Oh what d'ya know,” he slapped Tom on the back, whose muzzle rose from the bar with a bleary grunt, “looks like it's past m'boy's bedtime, we'd best be gettin' on.”

“You boys done already? It can't be an hour past sundown yet.” Her mock dejectedness was infectious. “We got the whole place to ourselves and you're gonna cut out early?”

Cassidy slid in under Tom's shoulder and grunted as he strained to lift him. “And yet you've -ugh! You've already served us enough to tranquilize this bear here. I've gotta get him outta here before you somehow make him heavier!”

Evie rolled her eyes. “Alright, ya'll take care now.”

Progress toward the door proved difficult work. “Woah, woah, you're gonna have to help me out here a little, big guy. This is like trying to carry a cow over a river.” Tom's response was unintelligible. Cassidy sobered up a bit when the door suddenly opened to reveal a tall, lean coyote with a face twisted in an awful scowl.

“Eh!-uh, evening, Laird.” An apologetic greeting came from the pair as they lumbered clumsily past the canine, who made no motion to help. All the same, Cassidy was eager to be rid of him. “Asshole.” The marten said it under his breath, but when he looked back moments later Laird was still watching them.

Cassidy shuddered, but not from the cold of the outdoors. Shit, he couldn't know, could he? They were always so careful. Afraid to look again, he trudged on. Tom mercifully regained some clarity as they walked, slowly removing his weight from the smaller marten. He was walking on his own by the time they reached his porch.

“You got it from here, Tom? I can head- oh!” A strong arm herded Cassidy inside. He always hoped an evening would end like this, but he never knew when it was coming. Callused hands fumbled at his clothes as they'd done many times before, and he tried to push from his mind the worry that Tom would only do this when he was proper drunk. Falling onto the mattress, their limbs entangled in a mess of ragged gasps as they sweated through the sheets.

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SUNDOWN

“End of the road, boy.” The old ferret shuffled to open the way out of the cabin.

Cassidy grew self-conscious of his predicament. “Thank you, sir. I only wish I had some way to pay-”

Those soft paws flicked his comments away once again. “Think nothing of it, young mister, er…”

Prodded for his name, Cassidy hesitated, then spouted the first lie that came to mind. “Argo.”

“Argo?” The ferret perked up a bit. “It seems your parents knew their Greek. Well, young Argo, you cost me nothing and you owe me nothing, but hurry along please, I have to be on my way.”

As the marten shuffled through the door he expected to shield his eyes against the outside world, but the glare never came. His boots landed on soft dirt, he scanned the horizon, and his jaw trembled with realization.

The sky was no longer blue.

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THE HERO OF SOUTHPAW

Over the coming months, tales spread of a cunning marten, armed with a revolver that he was far too clever to fire. He fended off brigand and native alike, and soon found himself showered in women and drink, but partook in neither.

The Hero of Southpaw was known for his dashing good looks, a sharp wit, and peculiarly, the golden sun stitched onto his back.

Strangest of all, despite the many retellings of his story, the town of Southpaw does not appear to exist.

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???

Argo was content.

He was well fed, well rested, and now clung to the vast trunk of the large wolverine that he’d tied to his complimentary bedframe the night before. The marten traced the outline of the larger male’s chest while it rose and fell with his snores, chuckling to himself.

He didn’t even know his name. Didn’t care, either.

Stretching with a yawn, Argo rolled from the mattress and rose, striding nude across the room. It was still quite dark, which struck him as odd, as he felt he’d had more than enough sleep.

A gasp was torn from the marten as he reached the window and was greeted with an impossible night sky. Thousands of brilliant stars twisted into vibrant nebulas. Distant planets were starkly visible. A comet streaked across the horizon. It was truly the natural spectacle of a lifetime.

But as Argo stared into the heavens they began to warp in a sickening way. Something was very wrong.

“Oh.”