Community of Magic Pens

by Community of Magic Pens (epub)

  “Maybe they have the wrong house?” she asked, her voice squeaking out the last word as her muffled name could be heard through the wood. The other boys, catching on to this, started chanting her name as well.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” her grandfather asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. Emma bit her bottom lip, unsure how to answer.

  Was she in some kind of trouble? She had gone into her grandfather’s office, used his things, and now had a mob of boys at her front door. She wasn’t sure if she should fear the mob or her grandfather more.

  “Define trouble.”

  Her grandfather sighed, his shoulders sagging in defeat as he turned for the door.

  “Wait! You’re letting them in?”

  “I’m a little curious, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head, not at all curious. Anxious, terrified, guilty—those were the broad spectrum of her feelings. Okay, and maybe a teensy bit curious.

  “Before you open the door, there’s something I should show you.”

  Her grandfather leaned against the door and crossed his arms. It was almost as if he knew she would cave. Emma scratched at her wrist, as if it would buy her some precious time, before lifting her sleeve all the way up to her elbow.

  Scrawled on her skin in her loopy handwriting were the names of five boys: Travis Demma, Miles Parsons, Ethan Wright, Scott Lopez, and Chase Adams. She noticed her grandfather’s eye twitch, a sign that his blood pressure was on the rise and a blow-up would surely ensue. She braced herself, her fingers clutching the hem of her sleeve.

  “Let me take a wild guess,” he drawled out, pointing to her arm. “The five guys outside match those five names.” Emma nodded and let the sleeve drop. “You used the pen in my office to write that.” Emma nodded again and took a step backward.

  Instead of an exasperated declaration of ‘Just what did you think you were doing?’, Emma was met with laughter—loud, bent at the waist, literal knee-slapping laughter. Her brows furrowed as her face set fire, and she decided that this was almost worse. It was one thing to be reprimanded when you already knew you did wrong. It was another to be made fun of and humiliated.

  “You have no idea what you just did, do you?” he asked, wiping under his eyes once he’d contained himself. Emma shook her head, watching him with wary eyes. “Emma, who am I?”

  “My mean grandfather.” There, point for Emma. He sighed and asked the question again with more emphasis. “You’re Cupid,” she muttered under her breath.

  Emma had always known the truth about her grandfather, but it wasn’t special if you couldn’t tell anyone. And it especially didn’t mean anything if Cupid wouldn’t help you in your own love life. He claimed that it wouldn’t be fair to abuse his power, and with her at the ‘hormone-driven age of sixteen’, she apparently didn’t know what real love was.

  “That I am.” Cupid snapped his fingers, and the pen from his office poofed into his hand. He rolled it between his fingers, studying it with mild amusement, before holding it in the space between them, as if putting it on display. “And do you know what this pen you used does?”

  “Obviously not.” She flushed in embarrassment, not meaning to snap at him, but sometimes it was so hard to ‘respect your elders’ when your own grandfather looked to be about twenty-five.

  “This pen is what I once used to help people fall in love with their soulmates,” Cupid explained in an even tone, his eyes steady on hers as if to gauge her reaction. Emma snorted and rolled her eyes.

  “Nice try, but I did take Mythology last year. You use arrows. Everyone knows that.”

  Cupid shook his head, wincing as the boys started in on an attempted serenade that sounded more like squawking seagulls. “Arrows are so medieval and completely inefficient with the growth in population. I went to pens decades ago, writing names on people in their sleep. But then that got troublesome, especially when tattoos came about.”

  “You don’t use the pen anymore?” Emma asked, her curiosity once again piqued.

  “Nope.” The pen vanished suddenly, and Cupid reached into his back pocket, fishing out his phone. “Technology is great. I barely have to travel with this bad boy.”

  “What, you like text them or something?”

  “No,” Cupid scoffed, leaning back against the door. “I have an app, of course.”

  Gee, they really did have an app for everything.

  Cupid’s body vibrated with each pound of the door, and Emma worried if the boys would be at this all night. Or all week. For eternity . . . Was this her fate for the rest of her life? Surely they would overwhelm her in their haste to get to her and claim her as theirs the second she opened the door. She could feel the sweat gather at her hairline, but Cupid looked calm and collected.

  “So what does this mean? I wrote five names on me with your secret magic pen!”

  “You have five soulmates, my dear. Zeus would envy you.” Emma did not appreciate his amused smirk, but she needed his help, and fast. Puppy eyes it was.

  “Please, grandfather, I am so, so sorry I disobeyed you!” She clasped her hands in front of her for good measure and pouted in an overly obnoxious way to get her point across. “I’ll never touch anything of yours again. Now, please help me!”

  “Of course I’m going to help you,” Cupid said as he shut off his phone and slid it back in his pocket.

  Reaching out, he took her hand and gently rolled up her sleeve to study the names scrawled on her arm. Emma’s eyes ping-ponged between Cupid’s face and her arm, every passing second causing her heart to thrum harder. The boys outside grew restless, her name sounding louder, each plea more desperate than the last.

  “So?” Emma prompted, breaking the silence. “What do we do?”

  “We’re going to have tattoo your arm, I guess,” Cupid said, his tone low and laced with sorrow. “How do you feel about full sleeve?” Emma’s eyes practically bulged out of her head, and she wrenched her arm away.

  Once again, Cupid was laughing. Emma grumbled obscenities under her breath as she pulled her sleeve back down. Cupid breezed past her, stopping just shy of entering the hall bathroom. He jerked his head towards the door, and Emma hesitated just a moment before following.

  Cupid hummed to himself, half his body swallowed up by the closet. He reappeared holding a golden bottle that shimmered in the light. Emma would not admit that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  “You have no sense of humor.” Cupid tsked at her in mock disappointment while unscrewing the bottle cap.

  “If that’s what you call it,” she shot back.

  “We’re going to wash the names off with this,” Cupid explained, shaking the bottle a little. “The boys will forget all about today, and you will never use that pen again. Are we in agreement?”

  Emma nodded enthusiastically, her smile so wide, she could feel it stretch from ear to ear. Oh, what a relief it was that all this would soon be a bad memory. The entire ordeal had been more than embarrassing for everyone involved.

  “It’s lucky for me that you have this soap,” Emma said, starting the water in the sink. Cupid poured the golden gel over her arm, and Emma took to scrubbing away the five names that were surely giving the entire neighborhood a headache.

  Slowly, one by one, the voices died off. The door became silent after a few minutes, and Emma could swear she heard their retreating footsteps. She sagged against the sink, letting the water wash over her arm, and tried her best to ignore the tingling sensation of the magic erasing the ink.

  “Meh, I’ve been known to make mistakes. Aphrodite had this concocted for me after a few blunders.” Cupid capped the bottle and placed it back in the closet.

  Emma turned off the water and closed her eyes, basking in the silence. She could hardly believe a pen could cause so much trouble. She vowed to herself to not be such a nuisance to her grandfather for the rest of her stay. But one thing still nagged at the back of her mind.

  “Were any of those boys my real soulm
ate?”

  A knock at the door interrupted Cupid’s answer, and his eyes twinkled as he smiled down at her. “Why don’t you go to the door and see for yourself?”

  Stella B James (she/her) is a Southern girl who appreciates strong coffee and losing herself in fantastical daydreams. When she isn’t writing about the complications of life and love, she can be found reading romance novels of any genre, drinking prosecco while watching whatever she has left over on her DVR, or talking herself out of buying yet another black dress. She has published several short stories with various publications, and is currently writing her first romance novel. You can find her short stories on her website, stellabjames.com. Check out her Instagram @stellabjames, where she shares her writing and inner musings.

  The Healer

  M. Kaur

  “Kakaji! Sultan is ill again. Can you help him?”

  Partap Chand glanced up from his newspaper. His neighbor’s daughter, Nusrat, was peering over the brick wall separating his courtyard from hers. Putting his teacup back on the saucer, he got up from the bamboo chair and hurried over.

  “Get down from there, child. If you fall again, your mother will blame me.”

  Undeterred, the eight-year-old clambered over the wall and jumped onto his newly planted flowers. Touching her ears in silent apology, Nusrat looked up at him expecting to be told off. Laughing, Partap helped her up and led her to the breakfast table. He always had morning tea outside in the summer months, at least on the days it didn’t rain. And this August, in 1947, it had been particularly pleasant. The sweet smell of freedom pervaded the air in Sindh province, in the new country of Pakistan, created just a week ago when the British finally left the Indian subcontinent.

  “Tell me about Sultan, what’s wrong with him?”

  “Colic, the vet says.” Nusrat picked up a ripe mango from the fruit bowl on the table and squeezed it before putting it to her lips to suck out the juice. “He says it’s time to put him down because he’s in pain. But you can help him, can’t you?”

  Partap looked at the girl, staring at him with hope in her big hazel eyes, and winced. Ever since he had written on her hand and cured her of a fever, she believed that he could cure anything and anyone.

  “I don’t think my grandfather’s pen works on horses, child! If the vet says it is time for him to go, maybe you should listen.”

  And there it was, the thing he was afraid of—big, fat, teardrops in her big, round eyes—threatening to wash away any hope of reasoning with her. Knowing when he was beaten, Partap got up from the table and went inside to get the pen.

  “Never use it on your own family,” his grandfather had said. “It is only for the benefit of others. Never take money in exchange for the words; they will not work if you don’t give them freely as a gift. And never, ever tell anyone what you write, except your son.”

  Partap had knelt beside his grandfather’s deathbed. He could still feel Dada’s gnarled fingers on his head as the old man had blessed him before handing over the qalam. The calligraphy pen should have gone to Partap’s father by right, but he had passed away ten years ago of typhoid. Everyone in town had shaken their head at the irony of the healer’s son, dying of a disease his father had cured in others countless times.

  But the gift was not for the benefit of his family, Dada had said, as he watched his firstborn fade away.

  “I’m sorry, Partap,” Karim Sumrah said. “Nusrat should not have bothered you.”

  Karim and Partap had grown up together. Living in neighboring houses, the two men had been best friends since the first day their mothers walked them to the neighborhood school. Their wives were from the same village; they studied the same subjects in college and marched in the same protests during Gandhi’s Quit India Movement. The only difference between them, if you were determined to find one, was that they belonged to different faiths. Karim was Muslim, Partap was Hindu.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Partap assured his friend. “I don’t mind doing this for Nusrat. I’m just afraid she’ll be disappointed when it doesn’t work. Dada never said it would work on horses,” he laughed as the two men strode to the stables behind Karim’s house.

  Nusrat ran over with a sheet of paper. As Partap sat down to write on it, she carefully averted her eyes, knowing the rules. No one could read the words the healer wrote; else, they wouldn’t work. When Partap had written on her hand, her mother had tied a cloth over it. But Sultan was being led around the stable. The vet said he would be in more pain if he stopped. So, the plan was that Partap would write the word, Nusrat would stuff the paper in a cloth purse, and Karim would tie it around Sultan’s neck.

  “Have you heard about the riots in Punjab?” Karim asked as the two men walked back to the house later. Nusrat remained at the stable, keeping an eye on Sultan. The vet had gone home, washing his hands of the case, muttering something about “superstitious nonsense.”

  “It will die down,” Partap said, sounding more confident than he felt. “People need some time to adjust, and then life will go back to normal.”

  “I don’t know, my friend.” Karim paused at the gate and placed his hand on Partap’s shoulder. “I think maybe you should go to Karachi for a while. You have relatives there, and if the violence spreads, you can take a boat to Bombay.” He hesitated before continuing. “I’ve started to hear rumblings around town. Refugees have brought reports of Muslims being killed in India. Some believe that Hindus in Pakistan should pay the price.”

  Partap stood in silence, gazing at the spire of a mosque, visible next to the saffron flag flying above a Hindu temple in the same street.

  “So, did the horse get better?” Partap’s granddaughter asked.

  It was August in Bombay in 1974, and the monsoon season was in full swing. Partap put down his cup on the table set up in the balcony of their highrise apartment. He liked to have his evening tea while looking down at the bustling street below. His eight-year-old granddaughter, Vijaya, sat beside him, eating piping hot pakoras.

  “Yes, he did. And then, Sultan saved our lives in return.”

  Nusrat had climbed over the wall in the dark of the night to warn them of the attack. Partap and his wife had gathered their children and followed Nusrat to the stables where Karim was hitching Sultan to a tanga. They escaped through the orchard behind the two houses in the horse-drawn carriage while the mob tried to beat down their front door.

  “So, the magic does work on animals too. I knew it would!” Vijaya reached for a mango to sweeten her mouth after having devoured the fiery pakoras.

  Partap looked at her and smiled. His sons had shown no interest in the gift of healing passed down in their family for generations. They were both doctors and didn’t believe a calligraphy pen could have any magic at all. Instead, they put their faith in the pills and powders they dispensed in their clinics. He hadn’t written on anyone’s hand for a long time. His qalam remained wrapped in cotton and packed away in a small wooden box he hadn’t opened in years. Perhaps the time had come to pass it on.

  “Never use it on your own family. Never take payment in exchange. And never tell anyone what you write, except the one you pass on your gift to.”

  And then Partap leaned over and whispered the word in Vijaya’s ear.

  M. Kaur (she/her) @manjitsekhon is a learning strategist turned creative writer. She is writing a collection of short stories based on her family’s experience during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. “The Healer” is inspired by her grandfather who was said to have the ability to heal fevers by writing a word on the patient’s hand. Her flash “The Red Scarf” was recently published in Apparition Lit.

  Magical Markers

  Lena Ng

  Author’s Note: This story was inspired by my sister’s family friends whose young son passed away at age seven from childhood cancer.

  At the end of the eighth ward, in a small room with a grey tiled floor and awash by dim fluorescent lights, there lived a little girl named Rose. She smiled
, when she could, though those closest to her noticed the lengthening distance between them, as the fluid dripped from a large bag into a drip chamber and then into her pale, thin arm. She knew, but didn’t really understand, that she was dying. Her parents had cried when the doctor, a Taiwanese pediatric oncologist, had said with a sorrowful expression that Rose’s neuroblastoma, a cancer which can successfully be treated in many patients, had spread extensively despite the abundance of treatments they had tried.

  Rose’s days were mainly spent sleeping but she was sometimes blessed with visitors: other children with varying degrees of hair loss, somber relatives from near and far, clowns and other costumed entertainers sent to bring a breath of cheer to the ward. During the day, her constant companion was her grandfather, who liked to read aloud fairy tales about dancing princesses and sweetly singing nightingales. He could transform his voice into that of a talking frog or a questing prince or a noble king. He kept watch over her, watching cartoon adventures or helping Rose to put together puzzles, until one of her parents arrived after work.

  One afternoon, as the sun started to kiss the horizon, a small rap sounded on Rose’s door. In walked a young woman, her complexion as fresh as a new lily, dressed in a blue dress with blue wings made from pipe cleaners, felt, and chiffon. She carried a small woven basket. “Hello,” the young woman said, her voice like a breeze skimming a field. “I’m the Blue Fairy. I’m here to make your dearest wish come true.”

  Rose’s brown eyes, the colour of polished teak, widened on her round face. “Any wish?”

  The Blue Fairy brought out her wand, which was made from a wooden tongue depressor and construction paper. “Only the one you long for most.”