Welcome to biome, I am your host and narrator, Alex Zubin.
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are having a wonderful week.
“Dear listener, today I am excited to share story 8 of season 1 with you.”
If you believe in supporting great stories and the authors who write them, subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. You can also support us on Patreon and get early access to all episodes and much more. Our story today is Bright Eyes and the Lantern Path by M.D. Smith IV. M.D. Smith IV of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 Flash Stories, has published digitally
in Spill Words, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats. And now, let's live this story together. The French Quarter is our home.
To run to Lena claims she's my owner and calls me Bright Eyes, her black cat. She insists she rescued me from a storm drain when I was a half-dround kitten.
“But the truth is, it's the other way around.”
Otherwise, why would she take me with her, everywhere along the cobblestones, parks and alleys? Why would she feed me the finest scraps from cafes, bathe me only when I smell too ghastly, and provide me warm, free lodging while she works for a living? Humans tell themselves stories that make them feel in control.
I let them. Often, my eyes light the path like sodium lights for Toronto Lena when her concentration strays in the dark. Toronto Lena doesn't consider painting on Jackson Square to be a job.
It feeds the hands, not the soul, she always says.
Most days, she earns enough selling paintings of swamp spirits in half forgotten ancestors. Still, she rarely uses her witchy talents. Only when the world tips too far into darkness.
“I remember the day she saw a young girl fall from a street car near the canal.”
Her arm bent the wrong way at an angle no living limb should reach. She pushed through the onlookers, while I slipped between legs, unseen, and unheard, because nobody sees a black cat, unless it wants to be seen. Toronto Lena leaned over the sobbing teen, waved in eagle feather, whispered a chant, older than the quarter itself, and the broken arm straightened with a soft pop.
It's just a bruise, she told the crowd. But the girl, tear streaked and trembling murmured, "Wow, like magic, thanks!" I brushed against Toronto Lena's ankles. She winked. Magic leaves a taste in the air, metallic and sweet, like lightning on the tongue.
After we rid New Orleans of Drakor and his five wicked daughters two years ago, life grew calm, peaceful, even. The sort of piece that makes cats lazy and, which is restless. From our apartment above the corner of canal and bourbon, knights shimmered with light and laughter and jazz drifting through cracked shutters, below life burned bright, inside,
all was calm. My plush, round bed sat beside Toronto Lena's. So bright eyes, she murmured one night, stroking my head, "I don't know how I live without your golden gaze. You've saved us both more than once.
I purred a loud enough to make her smile. Her hand slowed, her breath's deepened. Humans fall asleep so easily.
But I stayed awake, I always do.
As peace never lingers in the corner, evil seeps through the cracks like a rising damp, soft, silent, patient. This time it came in the form of Drazelda and her venomous sister, Prunella, descendants of the Darkwood Kentucky clan. Their magic was the old kind, black lacquered, oil thick, cruel.
They oozed into the city like a slow plague, beautiful, poised deadly. Their game was murder for profit. They poisoned wealthy families, then offered the cure for a price, refused, dead by dawn. Their magic left no trace, only grief.
Later on to Lena, read the morning paper, I leapt onto the table and pod the ...
Mysterious deaths of two prominent families.
“Your right bright eyes, she said grimly, "It's up to us.”
I flicked my tail, she knew what that meant. My eyes are not merely gold, they are light, and not just a pathlight. Their glow melts wills, softens minds, and makes the strongest person pliable as heated wax. A guide's light, a hunter's light, a light meant for the dark, still we needed bait.
For two nights Toronto Lena hunted the quarters darker corners, where the air tasted of absinth, lust, perfume and old sins. By day she painted and sold postcards to tourists. By night, she whispered to spirit traders, potion sellers, and the mad women who read fortunes in spilled rum.
Tell Dreselda, she murmured, that I have a cure, even her poisons can't undo, a power she'll want to see.
“Rumors gallop faster than carriages in New Orleans.”
On the third night, a raven landed on our balcony, eyes glinting with borrowed intelligence.
It carried a scrap of parchment. She took it from the bird, who gave a squawk like an expected tip. We went to the table to sit and read it. No question who it was from. I jumped up on the table, and let out a soft meow, while she unfolded the curled paper.
She gave me a loving scratch under my chin, we read the scratchy handwriting in red ink. Midnight, will come to you. The hour arrived heavy with mist, even the jazz had died away, only the distant river whispered against its banks. But no one came.
“They liked to build suspense, Toronto Lena said.”
A delay for a meeting can heighten anxiety, but I know just what they are up to. I expect they'll show in about thirty minutes. At twelve thirty, two silhouettes appeared at the foot of our stairs. They walked up with stealth so smoothly that their heads didn't bob on each step. Dres Zelda wore a gown blacker than tar, her smile thin as a razor.
Roonella glided beside her, tall and silent with eyes like oil pooling beneath moonlight, reaching the top they entered our apartment door. The air grew icy enough to frost the windowpains. Candles flickered inside, the no-wind blew. Toronto Lena stood tall in her crimson robe, I crouched beside her, tail twitching.
She used some in-dust through Zelda Pert, you claim to possess a charm against death, not a claim to Toronto Lena said, a promise, a heartbeat of stillness, then a flick of Dres Zelda's hand, a hissed Latin phrase, a concussion spell struck like a cannon blast. The room exploded in white light, walls shook to run to Lena flew back and crumpled against the wall, my head rang in my body rolled like a rag doll.
Before I could leap up, Prunella rushed forward, yanked a black sack from her cloak and trapped me inside. My yawel muffled into the fabric. It was porous in places, and I could still peep out. "God it," she said, "good," Dres Zelda replied, stepping over me.
She kneeled beside the near unconscious Toronto Lena and smirked. "We know all about your cat," she nodded to her sister. Tie her hands behind her back, her spells are worthless without her arms. Prunella obeyed, jerking Toronto Lena upright.
As they gluted and villains always glowed, I shredded a seam in the sack with claws, sharp
as sewing needles, I widened it slowly, quietly. And when we drown you both in the river, Dres Zelda continued, encased in concrete, no one will ever find you or you're claimed to cure for our poison spells. "That's right," Prunella echoed. I pushed my head through the rip and let out the loudest hiss of my nine lives.
They turned towards me foolishly, triumphantly, and looked into my eyes. Too late. The golden fire within me flaired like a lighthouse breaking through storm fog, a light that
Was not meant to comfort, but to command, the mind's melted instantly, though...
liquidifying, Prunella tremble, "What do you wish us to do?"
“Dres Zelda stared blankly, lips parted, but empty.”
Toronto Lena shook off her dizziness and straightened. Untimely first, she commanded, Prunella freed her. I slipped from the sack and leaped down to Toronto Lena's shoulder. "Now," she said, "follow us." We led them through the sleeping quarter, down streets slick with fog and moonlight.
My eyes glow to head of us casting twin golden beams along the cobblestones, a lantern path for witches enslaved by their own greed. Toronto Lena whispered, "Bride eyes, you're glowing brighter than usual. I knew.
My power is always flared strongest before an ending.
“It turned towards the outskirts where the city meets its dead bones.”
Past shuttered shops, ghost lit lamps, and a stray saxophone's echo from nowhere. The night grew colder, the scent of a rot, sharpened. Beside an abandoned butcher shopland old-light pit, it had once dissolved animal carcasses. Now, it waited for something far more deserving. Corrupt and sagging boards covered the pit.
Toronto Lena raised her hand and they slid aside with a groan. Walk forward, she instructed. The sisters obeyed, their steps slow and dreamlike, at the edge they stepped into the darkness without hesitation. The black liquid swallowed them with a hiss, bubbles frothed, then still.
Toronto Lena slid the boards back into place. I leaped onto her shoulder and licked the blood drying on her cheek from her fall. She laughed softly. We won't see them again, but she didn't sound convinced. Neither was I.
As we turned away, my eyes glowed brighter from something, a warning. Something's wrong, Toronto Lena whispered, and it was. The shadow is behind the butcher shop shifted, slowly and deliberately, like a figure rising from a crouch, a silhouette taller than the sisters, bulkier, older, wrapped in tatters of long dead fabric, a voice rasped from the darkness.
You have taken what belongs to me, Toronto Lena stiffened. Drakor, no, the figure growled, his father. The air dropped 10 degrees, frost grew on brick, the darkwood clans patriarch stepped fully into view, and even I felt fear, curl like smoke in my belly. His eyes were voids, his fingers, bone thin, his skin, ash colored.
Those girls, he said, were promised to me.
“Their souls, my tithe, Toronto Lena whispered, bright eyes, run if you must, run, I am”
a guide, a guardian, a lantern, I jumped from her shoulder and planted myself between her and the figure, my eyes burned like twin sons, the patriarch left. Her stare cannot melt me, little cat, he was right, his mind was a black cavern with nothing soft to shape, but my light had other uses. I widened my stance, focused, poured every spark of magic through my gaze, and the world
around us ignited in gold. My light struck the ground and formed a path, glowing lines snaking outward, curving around Toronto Lena and me, the cobblestones lit like fireflies trapped beneath glass, Toronto Lena gasped.
Bright eyes, you're making a circle, not a circle, a sigil, old, powerful, forbidden.
My claws etched marks into the glowing lines, scratching symbols only a cat could carve with such precision. The patriarch lunged, the sigil flaired, a column of gold fire, shot upward, curbed, then down, and casing him. He screamed, roared and thrashed, but the light burned through him unraveling centuries of dark magic. In seconds, he dissolved into dust,
The light faded, leaving only stillness.
how did you? I walked to her and bumped my head against her shin, some magic has no words,
“some guides do not speak, some lights are meant to stand between the living and the dark.”
We walked home in silence, my glow dimmed below its usual summer, the effort drained me, and I needed a very long nap. The city breathed easy, and even the shadows seemed relieved. Back in our apartment, Toronto Lena collapsed down to her bed, I curled beside her, took a deep breath, my chin dropped on the spread. You know, she murmured, have asleep, people think I'm the witch. I purged softly. But it's you, she whispered, you're
the guide, you always were, her breathing slowed, her heartbeat softened, I stayed awake,
watching the window, watching the dark, because somewhere, someday, another shadow will rise, and when it does, my eyes will glow again, golden lanterns, cutting a path through the
“night, the French Quarter sleeps, but I do not.”
This story has it all, elements of southern Gothic, hints of cozy fantasy and a feisty, livable narrator who brings it all together. The story may take place in a dangerous world of ancient demons, but with bright eyes as our friend and our guide, we can feel safe. Cats have been protectors since time immemorial, archaeologists find depictions of veneration
of cats in ancient Egypt going back to the very first dynasty, which is over 5,000 years ago.
The first true writing in nearby Mesopotamia is only a couple hundred years older than that. It's not a stretch to say that almost as long as people have been writing, they've been writing about cats, and it's not just Egypt. Japan has the monocone echo or beckoning cat, in the US we largely know it as the cat figurines with the waving paws at the front of shops and restaurants. Cats are also one of the few animals allowed in Islamic mosques,
and in the Norse culture, cats were associated with the goddess Freya, especially in regards to magic and protection. This story takes that rich legacy and brings it into the world of the old South. The world explored by the southern Gothic genre. Some tell tale signs that you might be reading a southern Gothic piece are images of decay and ruin, which we see in the mentions of the city's dead bones and the smells of rot in this story. They also include
echoes of past sins, especially across family-lineages, such as the mention of the Darkwood clan. And of course, southern Gothic tales take place in the south, pretty much by definition. But I wouldn't put this piece squarely in the southern Gothic genre. Toronto Lena may be a witch, but she is kind, helping heal an injured girl, no strings attached. When she's not protecting New Orleans, she paints and snuggles with her cat.
Along with bride eyes, she sounds like the kind of friend I'd like to have. This reminds me of the cozy fantasy genre in which conflicts are usually pretty low stakes and the plot focuses on heartwarming relationship building. The story elegantly balances between the wholesome and the horrible, before leading us to a happy ending in which our heroes are rewarded with a well-earned nap. So what did you think of this story? Email me at [email protected]. You can also find the email
address in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. I also want to let you know that we've launched a poll over on Patreon to see what season one story resonated with you most, which one was your favorite, which one did you tell your friends and family and pets about? The link is in the show notes. I'll announce the results when we close out the season. I also want to give a special thank you to Chinella, our biosphere supporter, and a vital part of what biom is becoming. And of course, if you haven't
“done so yet, please remember to follow biom so you get each story as soon as it drops.”
I invite you to join me for our next incredible story coming out next Tuesday. Thank you for
listening to biom with me, your host and narrator, Alex Zubin. Until next time, farewell, wherever the days take you.
