This story was originally published at Every Day Fiction. While “Hunger” is my only yeti story, I’m pretty sure this is my only dragon story to date—unless you count the starships in “The Dragon Ships of Tycho.”
THE LAST INCANTATION
There is no such thing as a young wizard.
“Life is but a thin candle,” was among the first lessons Thalen taught us. “If you aren’t careful, it can melt away before you know it.” I listened eagerly then, having finally come of age to study the arcane arts. I was intimidated by what lay ahead and excited about being lectured by Thalen himself.
“We do not teach magic to young people,” said Thalen, “because most of them lack the maturity to use it wisely. This sort of patience cannot be learned; it is acquired only with natural age. That is why you had to wait until you turned thirty to begin your studies.” Rumor was that Thalen himself had broken this law and learned his magic as a young man. There are many such rumors of Thalen and Gessa, the best among us.
They had not trained at the hall. They arrived already masters of sorcery, crackling with power, and madly in love with each other. Thalen and Gessa were the stuff of legends. There was no challenge they would not undertake together, no spell they could not cast. They healed the sick and won battles with an easy grace, and always together. They gave generously of their magic for the benefit of others, and in doing so they aged quickly. By the time their bodies turned sixty, Thalen and Gessa retired from active spellcasting.
After only two years of study, those of us who persevered were aging men and women in our mid-forties. You can’t learn magic without practicing it, and that takes a toll. To mend a broken leg steals a week of your life. To break a drought and summon rain might cost you a couple of months. You can kill a man with a glance, but you will instantly age a decade. Anything is possible; the more powerful your magic, the higher its price.
Some of my former classmates appeared old and wizened but others remained in their forties. A few chose a quick and easy path – trade a decade for a trove of treasure. Is it so different from toiling much of your life away as a farmer or craftsman? Precious few were idealistic enough to use their powers for the benefit of others, to give of themselves the way Thalen and Gessa have done. I harbored my abilities like a miser with a fistful of copper. A mere threat of magic could serve nearly as well as the real thing.
In their twilight years Thalen and Gessa became convinced that magic could be tamed. They dreamt of casting spells without draining one’s life force. Had anyone else suggesting such a thing, they would have been laughed out of the hall, but these two had earned our admiration, and their theories were treated with respect even if they never seemed to yield any results. They kept trying to cheat the universe of the price it demanded for miracles, until Gessa ran out of time.
Anything is possible with magic, even rejuvenating a person – but the bargain isn’t a kind one. You must age three years for every year of life you bestow. Thalen, who would have gladly sacrificed anything for Gessa, watched her body succumb to old age. He did not have enough magic left to help her. As she wasted away, Thalen worked feverishly to master the new magic. Then she slipped into a coma, her final hours upon her.
Thalen announced that he would make his attempt. He would combine old and new magic to bring his lover back from the brink. He invited his favorite students to observe and study his new methods, to preserve the new magic after he was gone. We did not have much faith in his mad plan but came anyway, and made preparations of our own. We came to say goodbye to the greatest of us all, for no matter the outcome for Gessa, one thing was certain: Thalen would not survive his incantation.
One hundred wizards filled the hall. I watched Thalen whisper a spell over Gessa’s frail body as it lay still on the bed in the center. Her ragged breathing was loud enough that I could hear it from where I stood. Thalen’s chant grew until he was shouting the words of power, shedding weeks and months of his life with the casual disdain of a youngster. The air sizzled with energy. Thalen gave everything he had left until he collapsed onto the ground, barely more than skin stretched over a skeleton. The last thing he must have seen as he died was a forty-year-old Gessa, stirring under the blankets, her breath no longer belabored by age.
I looked around at the faces of my fellow wizards. Their eyes were moist with grief and brows sweating from their own arcane efforts. The math of a rejuvenation spell is brutal. Three years will buy you one, and that is a poor bargain. Thalen must have died happy, thinking his last incantation proof that he had discovered a way around paying this price. Except that he hadn’t.
One hundred friends and students, volunteers all, each gave a year of our own lives to Gessa. Over thirty years shed from her body’s age in moments. A gift we gave gladly, even if Thalen would have never knowingly accepted it of us.
Gessa will wake soon. She will never know of our contribution. She will believe that Thalen’s incantation had worked, and will continue their research. If anyone besides Thalen is capable of creating an entirely new way to do magic, it is Gessa. One day she might even succeed, and everything will be different.
Until then, there will be no such thing as a young wizard.
This story was originally published by Kazka Press.
The magic system it features is my favorite by far. I’ve been told by numerous readers that they would like to see a longer story—a novel perhaps?—in this setting. But, while I may indeed reuse this particular magic system in the future, I mostly view this sort of a comment purely as a compliment: the reader enjoyed the flash story and wanted more.
AN INDELIBLE FEAST
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Men make stupid decisions when they go through their mid-life crises. They get into bad relationships, buy muscle cars, and book trips to climb the mountain peaks on Mars.
The day after Cynthia left him, Pete spent his life savings on a single meal.
“Have you dined with us before, sir?”
The waiter was as pretentious as the venue itself. He was a trim, older gentleman with graying temples and a bow-tie. If not for the lack of facial hair, he could’ve been a spitting image of Alfred, Batman’s butler from the old comic books.
Alfred looked down his nose at Pete, as though he already knew the answer to his question. Pete wasn’t the sort to be a regular diner at the most expensive restaurant in the world. He wasn’t the sort to eat there even once; yet, there he was, seated in a spacious private dining room and about to consume the most unusual meal of his life.
“First time.” Pete flashed a feeble smile at the waiter.
“Welcome to Adria’s. Founded in 2015 by the legendary molecular gastronomer Ferran Adria, we have been at the forefront of food science for fifty years. We are the only restaurant ever to be awarded four Michelin stars.”
The waiter’s practiced tone suggested that he gave this speech several times a day. Not that Pete needed to hear it—like any dedicated foodie, he knew all about Adria’s. Alfred’s tour-guide rhetoric was about as useful as summarizing “Casablanca” to a movie buff.
“There are no menus at Adria’s. Order any dish you can conceive of. In fact, we encourage you to challenge us and push the boundaries. We guarantee that our chefs will be able to prepare any three-course meal you desire, or your dining experience is on us.”
Pete thought better of his extravagant expenditure, and tried to get his money back a few weeks after making the reservation. He decided that thirty grand was too high a price for any one experience. But Adria’s offered no refunds. His one chance at seeing his money back was to stump the wizards in the kitchen.
“For my first course,” said Pete, “I’d like a bowl of sea turtle soup.”
Recently Pete caught a program about sea turtles on a nature channel. They were thought extinct until a small colony was found in 2035. Since then a network of zoos tried desperately to rebuild their population, each specimen carefully tracked. No way could Adria
’s kitchen get their hands on one.
Alfred made no comment as he took down the order. He merely returned twenty minutes later with a steaming ball of delicious-smelling broth. He smiled at Pete’s baffled expression.
“Adria’s grows our own stock of every edible animal you can think of,” he bragged. “We even offer vat-grown meat of extinct animals engineered from their DNA. Perhaps you’d like Stegosaurus steak or Woolly Mammoth stew for your main course?”
Pete had another ace up his sleeve.
“I’d prefer a simple pork chop with mashed potatoes and apple sauce,” he said. “Prepared in accordance with the rules of Kashrut.”
Pete wondered if the restaurant would call him on it. Ordering the non-existent kosher pig had to be against their rules. Yet Alfred didn’t protest.
Pete tried the soup, and it was almost worth the price of admission. Subtly flavored and savory, it was easily the best thing Pete had ever tasted. He ate every drop, forcing himself not to gulp it down but to enjoy every spoonful. Even so, it was over all too quickly. Then, the main course came out.
The pork chop looked as good as the soup.
“This is a popular selection with our Jewish and Muslim patrons,” Alfred said smugly. “Our biologists worked hard to redesign the pig digestive system to ruminate. Finding a Talmudic scholar willing to rule that the resulting lab-grown animal isn’t, strictly speaking, a pig, and can, therefore, be kosher, was the really hard part.”
He set the plate in front of Pete.
“What would you like for dessert?”
“Let me think about it some.”
Pete dove into the pork chop and it was divine. Still, his enjoyment of the meal was marred with regret over losing all that money. Only one chance remained, and Pete was ready to try something drastically different.
He pushed away the empty plate and Alfred appeared almost immediately.
“Have you made a dessert selection, sir?”
“Yes,” said Pete. “Bring me a Twinkie.”
“A… what?”
“A Twinkie. Childhood comfort food, you know. A perfect way to round out a meal.”
Alfred scurried off to the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later, frowning.
“My sincere apologies, but the chef is unable to fill your order. The man was indignant. He insists,” Alfred sighed, “that he cannot, in good consciousness, serve items that aren’t food in this establishment. We have a reputation to uphold.
“Please make another selection. Your meal will, of course, be complimentary.”
Pete smiled and set himself to the pleasant task of picking out a dessert.
This story originally appeared in Stupefying Stories Showcase.
I’m a foodie, and while I don’t write all that much about food, this story is infused with food references. Ferran Adria is a real chef, and a real molecular gastronomer. The highest Michelin rating is three stars. And, more importantly, this plot gave me an excuse to write about a kosher pig!
THE STORYTELLER
You don’t know the entire story.
The fable has some of it right. There was a young woman named Scheherazade, and she lived in a dark age. The Persian tyrant king took a virgin to his bed every night, and then had her beheaded in the morning. Scheherazade was a vizier’s daughter, growing up at court and blossoming into a beauty. At a time when most people couldn’t read, Scheherazade was a student of history and art, and a collector of books. She understood the nature of men and feared that her father’s position wouldn’t protect her for long.
To her family’s dismay, Scheherazade had volunteered to become the king’s next consort. She begged the king only to let her tell him a story, as they lay in bed, afterward. Bemused by her audacity, the king had agreed. Armed with her knowledge of folk tales and history, Scheherazade spun a saga of heroes and villains, enchantment and excitement. And as the dawn was breaking, she got to the most interesting part. Fascinated by the story, the king had spared her life so that she could finish it the following evening.
Night after night, Scheherazade would finish one story and start telling another, always managing to pause on a cliffhanger at dawn. You may have heard that she kept this up for a thousand and one nights before she finally had no more stories to tell, that the king was in love with her by then, and made her his queen. That isn’t what happened. In fact, she never ran out of stories at all.
The king did fall in love with her, and that did not take nearly so long as a thousand nights. Her life was no longer in danger after merely a hundred stories, once the king learned that she was with child. He loved her well enough, but he cherished her stories more. He constantly demanded new tales, pushing her considerable talent to its limit. He no longer cared to hunt or to feast, and left the affairs of state to his ministers and advisers. He lost weight and grew ill, and died having heard a few short of nine hundred stories.
Scheherazade was no longer forced to invent new stories. She should have been relieved to finally let her imagination take a break. Instead she found that the stress of her situation, the pressure she lived under for two and a half years broke something within her. She realized that she could not stop.
Her levels of anxiety rose steadily until her heart beat so wildly it almost escaped from her chest, and she was overcome with nausea. She needed to tell her stories as much as she needed to breathe. The court physicians recognized her mental affliction as one usually manifested in an irresistible desire to perform the same task over and over again. They had no remedy, and suggested giving in to the compulsion as the only means of managing it.
Every evening a select audience was invited to the palace. As Scheherazade began to tell a new story, a wave of calm washed over her, her confidence returned, and her smooth voice flowed like the Euphrates.
The legend of the storyteller queen had spread across the world. Scholars and adventurers, heroes and philosophers traveled to Persia to hear her tales. Even the elder pagan gods, whose power had not yet entirely waned, were taking notice. Zeus himself, pathologically unable to avoid meddling in any scenario that involved a beautiful woman, arrived at the palace. Masquerading as an old poet he listened to her spin a yarn, but it was her own tragic saga of being blessed with great talent and cursed to constantly use it that appealed to his divine sensitivity. And so, for the first time in millennia, Zeus had elevated a mortal. Scheherazade became the tenth muse.
To this day she walks among us, eternal and tireless, telling stories. She appears to William the playwright as he labors on another tragedy to present at Globe Theater. She is there as twelve year old Billy inexpertly tries to write his first adventure novel, three and a half pages long. She visits the talented, and the hacks, and everyone in between.
You did not know this story. Neither did I, until she showed up here and whispered it, urgently, into my ear. Then she was gone, just as quickly, to find her next audience.
Like the previous tale, The Storyteller originally appeared in the Stupefying Stories Showcase.
I’ve always seen One Thousand and One Nights meta-story as a really dark tale. The protagonist is forced to entertain a psychotic murderer for nearly three years, under the constant fear of death, and her “reward” is to marry him. Seems pretty horrific to me.
The idea behind this flash was to explore the mental state of Scheherazade as she lived through this harrowing ordeal. What if her storytelling became an outlet for obsessive-compulsive disorder (some of the symptoms of which are described above, in the scene when she briefly stops telling stories)?
While I’ve only written one yeti story and one dragon story, I have somehow written two Scheherazade stories! Here’s the second one, for comparison.
ONE THOUSAND AND FIRST
…this will be the last story I ever tell you, my sultan, and so I humbly beseech you to listen and to delight in it, and to keep your promise of allowing me to finish this very last sentence, uninterrupted, even as the sun is already rising from beyond the Eastern
dunes and the executioner sharpens his scimitar; I have told you a thousand stories—tales of flying carpets and bottled jinn, bold sailors and treacherous viziers, magic and wonder and all manner of things beyond the mundane—but this last story is about an ordinary young woman, a woman who caught the eye of her sultan and who managed to survive their wedding night, and a thousand nights afterward, using no weapon and no magic but her imagination alone; the sultan was mesmerized by her wondrous fables at first, always eager for another, but as the years went by she found it more and more difficult to keep his attention until, finally, he had had enough and wanted to hear no more stories—but being a kind and generous ruler he graciously consented to allow the woman to finish speaking before the guards would take her away (everyone knows that the sultan’s word is his bond) and the poor woman swallowed her tears, drew in a big breath and began her tale thus:
this will be the last story I ever tell you, my sultan, and so I humbly beseech you…
One day, I’m hanging out on Twitter with a bunch of other writers while beta-reading a story by Anatoly Belilovsky. The story is excellent, but at one point it has a run-on sentence that was literally 90 words long (I checked). So I send the following tweet to Anatoly:
“Dude there is a 90-word sentence in your story. I had to go find a snack in the middle so that I could get through it!”
And then, in the comment field of MS Word I write: “This is an enormous run on were-sentence that makes me want to go out and find stakes, and garlic, and whatever else kills were-run-on sentences.”
We all proceed to have a good laugh about it, and then I mention that a famous Russian author Victor Pelevin wrote a one-sentence short story that went on for several pages. Anatoly replies that Gogol is known for some page-long sentences, and Jake Kerr chimes in that so is Henry James.
And then Ken Liu says: “This would seem to be a good challenge to take up. Shall we all try to write a one-sentence story?”
Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories Page 35