by Tim Susman
“I’m glad that you trusted me.” Kip closed his eyes. “Even if it was all for nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” Nikolon said. “I did not know he was going to do that.”
“He must have hated us for years. Or he accepted us when we weren’t a threat and hated us when we were. And the British Empire wanted us exterminated, all for a few more years of power.” The flowers had perked up and their scent was sweet again. “I thought that having our own place would be protection enough, but it wasn’t. I don’t know whether anything could have been.”
Nikolon remained quiet. The stillness and peace of the garden made Kip loath to speak again, but finally he did. “This is very nice,” he said. “Do you mind if I sit here with you now and then over the next few decades?”
“I cannot keep this here for very long,” she said. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Do you spend time with other demons?”
“Some of them. There are two whose names I remember. I saw one of them recently.” She paused. “I think.”
Would his memory also be affected? Would he start to lose the faces and scents and voices of his family and friends? He searched for them in his mind and found them still there, and that was a comfort. A more recent memory was hazy, though. “Was I really a fox? An animal fox? I—I remember it, but it feels like a dream. Then again, this all feels like a dream too.”
“You were a fox. I could feel that it was you, but the barest flicker of you. There was enough that I thought with magic, you could come back.”
“And I did.”
“I’m…glad.” Nikolon looked down at her paws again. “I did not want to betray you.”
“You haven’t. You’ve been…a revelation. Trusting you was terrifying—you saw how Malcolm behaved, let alone Victor.”
Nikolon nodded. The soft sounds of the fountain continued to wash over them. “May I ask what you thought would happen when you and Victor were brought here?”
Kip drew in a breath and only then realized that he had not been breathing. He could not hear his heartbeat. The realization disturbed him, but in the grand scheme of things it was rather minor. “I thought the most likely scenario was that we would be trapped here. That would have been fine. He would have been away from where he could hurt anyone, and I would have been here but I would have saved everyone else. If you told Alice about the demon, I feel that she and Emily would have handled it, and perhaps Farley would have killed Malcolm—probably—but he was at peace with dying as well.
“I hoped that if Farley did summon him back, that Emily would be able to summon me as well. But Victor got summoned back, and that means that Alice is…” Emotion choked off his words, even though he wasn’t physically breathing.
In front of him, a four-legged fox appeared. It walked around and then sat, curling its tail around its feet and watching him.
“Did you do that?” Kip sat up straight.
Nikolon shook her head. “You did.”
He wished the fox away, and it vanished. He folded his paws together and sat staring ahead at the fountain and the flowers.
After a little while, Nikolon said, “If Emily summons me, I might remember to tell her she can summon you. I will try very hard.”
“I don’t know if she knows your name. Malcolm did.” He called a raven into being. “I wonder what happened to Ash. Malcolm’s probably dead by now or drained of magic.”
“He can drain humans also?”
Kip nodded and told Nikolon briefly about Richard’s dull, unintelligent state. The demon considered this. “It is in some ways like the way demons are treated. Our will is taken from us and we are bound to another’s service.”
“It happens all over,” Kip said. “Those who can bind others do so. People in our country still own other people, not with magic or anything, just because they have power over them.”
“We have so much power here, but take us out of this realm and we are easily bound,” Nikolon said.
“It’s funny.” Kip tried to place a peach tree in flower next to the fountain and got a misshapen blob with a few defined patches of leaves and flowers. But the scent was perfect. “Victor said everyone should have access to magic, which I think is right. But what he meant was: humans who can afford to pay him should have access to the magic he can give them.” Kip shook his head. “I suppose I should be grateful that he was so determined to be the only one with that power that he hasn’t told anyone else about his spell. Imagine if he had a whole army of sorcerers who could take magic out of people.”
“He has enough magic now to do it all himself.”
Kip reflected back to Victor’s last words. “This would be small consolation, but...he doesn’t really know what happened at the Road. Do you remember that?”
Nikolon nodded. “That moment was extraordinary.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot. I think that everyone assumes that Cott died because there was so much heat and boiling water and the ship almost capsized, or else they think I killed him. I didn’t,” he hastened to add.
“I know.”
“I think that what killed him was the amount of magic he used to undo the Great Feat. And I did a little bit of research about the Great Feats. The sorcerers who accomplished them never did anything again after that. The ones I could find records on died; the others disappeared, except for one Chinese sorcerer who toured the country after creating the terracotta army, but there are several reports that say that he wasn’t the one who did that, just someone who took his name to profit from.”
“I don’t know what a Great Feat is.”
“It’s a magical spell that remains permanently in the world and hasn’t been duplicated. There are only—well, I thought five, but I think there are more in India and so there are probably some elsewhere too.”
“To remain permanently in that material world requires a binding of a sort.”
Kip nodded. “I think that the sorcerer dies when he casts a Great Feat. Like maybe somehow his life becomes the binding. And undoing one also works the same way except that it takes a life to remove a binding. So...maybe my people will all be reduced to animals, but Victor will die from trying it. I would never have taken that bargain, if offered.” The reality of it all still felt very distant. He worked on his peach tree, firming up the visual aspects of it until it more closely resembled an actual tree. If he stopped paying attention to it, it would lose definition.
“We know the spell can be reversed,” Nikolon said. “And the other demon knew Victor’s spell. And you know that other demon’s name.”
“We know that, and we’re stuck here,” Kip said. “There’s no way out except being summoned.”
“For a demon.” Nikolon pointed behind him. “No demon has that.”
The silver tail streamed out from his tail, like a silken cord floating in water. “Victor had that too.”
“What does it feel like to you?”
He reached up to it with a paw, but his paw passed through the silver without breaking it. He focused on it like the peach tree, trying to manipulate it, and encountered resistance. “It feels like not part of this world.”
“Maybe it’s a link back to your world.”
“Maybe.” Kip stared at the silver stream again, and then a small pop sounded, faint, but one that resonated all through him, as though he were a water elemental in a pond and someone had thrown a stone in.
In a moment, the garden and fountain vanished, replaced by the ever-changing chaos again. This time more demons swirled around them, fish-tailed people and clouds of formless yellow smoke and dragons and a giant bird with snakes for feathers and still more. And near them was a brightly glowing blue outline of a human.
A demon is appearing. Nikolon moved toward it as many other demons did, closing quickly. I have only seen this a few times. Hurry!
Kip moved behind her, matching her speed. As he approached, a darker light that hurt his eyes showed in patches beneath the blue. Victor? Kip asked before
he could help himself.
The human outline turned toward him, staring through the crowd of demons closing in on it. It had no face, no features except for a mouth that moved. I know you, I think, it said in Victor’s voice. You’re Penfold, the one who stole everything I wanted from me.
Small bits of silver rose from Victor like embers and fizzled out in the void. Some of the demons that had arrived first raced to capture them before they dissipated. I got boats! one of them called. A great schooner came into being around that demon and sailed away.
Another said, London has changed so much, and melted into a human dressed in formal wear.
Nikolon captured a spark and uttered a cry of revulsion. She loosed the spark into the void, where it faded out. Cruelty, she said.
One silver spark floated toward Kip. He grasped it and into his head burst the image of the King’s College library, the smell of dusty old books, his fine white-skinned hand reaching down to turn the page.
What did you do? Kip asked Victor.
I did what I had to do to restore balance to the Earth. I—I— The blue shape turned around, only now seeming to notice that it was giving off sparks. I have magic.
Did you cast the spell? Kip noticed now that there was no silver behind Victor, nothing trailing off into the distance.
The blue featureless face studied him. You’re Penfold, it said, as if just realizing this again. I don’t like you.
One particularly bright spark drifted up from the blue form. Victor cried out and reached for it, but his ill-formed hand missed it. Kip reached out and took the spark and—
He stood in the hallway where he’d recently been a four-legged fox, and less recently a prisoner. The smells were dull, muted, but every fleck of rust on the iron bars, every crack in the stone walls and floor, stood out in sharp relief. Power flowed through him, more than he’d ever felt, more than he’d imagined was possible. He took a step back and looked down at Malcolm, lying against the wall of his cell. “I’ll deal with you after,” he said in Victor’s cruel voice. “For now, count yourself lucky. You are one of the few to witness a Great Feat.” He reached deep inside himself, felt the power there, and drew it up to send out into the world. He knew how spells were cast, knew the strength of his own will, knew that the Calatians were the rust of the world, the cracks in its stone over which good men like himself tripped, and he set about to mend them. The beaver, the squirrel, the polecat, the rabbit, and most of all, the fox, all the ones he’d drawn magic from burned bright in his memory, his successes, but now he did not have to patch each crack laboriously by hand. Now he could feel them all out there, all of the worthless animals given magic by a fool, and he gathered them up in his grip. A few he left alone, mindful of his promise and savoring the pain they would feel, but the others…he flexed his power, squeezed…and nothing happened. Impossible. He had the power, he had the will, this would work. It had to work. Fury built in him, desperation, conviction that he was the only one who could repair this terrible wrong—and power crackled around him, and all the Calatians in his grip, he could feel them squirming like worms and he tightened his grip, and magic flowed out of them, all over the world, from them into him—and the spell ended, he had done it, he had—he had—darkness flooding into him, his awareness fading? He collapsed to the ground, death’s hand around his heart as surely as he had held the Calatians a moment before.
Kip struggled free from the memory with a cry. You filthy—
Victor’s shape, still undefined, managed nevertheless to radiate pleasure. Have I done something to offend you? Good. I should never have restored you. You were better as an animal.
Nikolon, again a whirling sandstorm, enfolded Kip. Leave him, she said.
They sat again in the garden next to the fountain. Kip’s peach tree remained there, but Victor was nowhere to be seen, nor were any of the other demons. The fox’s paws shook. “That—that—“ he said. “He did it. He erased the Calatians.”
“Not you,” Nikolon said.
Kip wasn’t breathing, not as he remembered it, but imagining the slow rhythms helped calm him. He knew that he should be trying to find a way back, to undo Victor’s monstrous act, but another realization struck him. “And then he died. He unbound a Great Feat and he died. And then…” He pieced together what he’d just seen. “That was a demon. Victor...became a demon.”
Nikolon nodded slowly. “I have seen that before, the giving off of memories. We take the ones we can because they are something new, something interesting. I never knew where they came from. I thought the demons bore the memories of their creator, perhaps.”
Kip stared at the fountain, still trying to process this. “He came here and lost his memories, and he’ll be here. Not in Heaven, not in Hell, but...but in the Æther.”
The two foxes sat in silence while the fountain went on burbling and the sweet smell of peach blossoms filled the air. Kip thought again about all the Calatians in the world and turned his mind away from those thoughts. There was nothing he could do until someone summoned him back. “Then those memories you have,” Kip said. “Those are yours. You were human once.”
“Was I?”
“You lived a long time ago, to judge from the boats and the city. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Perhaps I did. I don’t recall.”
“Were you a sorcerer? Are all the demons spirits of sorcerers?”
Nikolon shook her head. “It could be so. Every demon I know is familiar with magic.”
“I wonder if I could find Cott. Or Coppy.” Kip’s mind raced. “Do you know how to find a demon by name here?”
“No. We can find other demons we know, sometimes, and we can see other demons near us, but I cannot just call a name and have the demon answer. This world is vast.”
They could summon the recently dead back from the demon plane, they could raise the spirits of sorcerers long-dead...and then Kip remembered the sparks coming off Victor, the way his spirit had lost bits of memory just in the short time Kip had seen him. Would he want to raise Coppy or Cott, knowing their spirit might not even remember him or understand an apology? Just imagining it made the garden dim and the peach tree wilt.
So he reached over and took Nikolon’s paw. “We solved your mystery. Those images you remember: they’re from your life. You were human, you were brought to another city and made to serve a king, and a friend betrayed you.”
She met his eyes and nodded. “So it seems.”
“Does that help you?”
“Not really.” She smiled. “I understand the images but that doesn’t help them become part of me.”
“Were you a female sorcerer?”
Again she shook her head. “I took on female guises to tempt sorcerers. But I liked it. Some time ago I began to keep them even when I was back here. That much I do remember.” Her paw felt warm in his, and malleable like the surface of water. “Thank you. For trusting me and for helping me.”
“You’ve repaid my trust and help a hundredfold. If not for you, I’d still be running around King’s College on four legs looking for a mouse to eat.”
She laughed. “I feel that somehow, even on four legs, you would have managed to be an extraordinary fox.”
“Thank you.” He splayed his ears. “There are so many four-footed now, former Calatians. I hate that I’m stuck here with no way to help them. We restored me, so once I get back I can work on a spell to restore others, but who knows how long that will be?”
Nikolon motioned for him to turn around. “Now perhaps I may help you. Look at that silver trailing from you. No demon has it. Tell me about it again.”
Victor had lost his silver cord but Kip still had one. If it was indeed a hallmark of someone living sent to the demon world, then perhaps Kip could follow it back to his world. He turned his head so he could see its brightness stretching away from him to an unseen end. “I feel it, but I can’t touch it. It’s like...someone holding my paw, but I can’t let go and I can’t even figure out
what paw they’re holding.”
“What else?”
He shook his head. “It’s just...there.” He tried speaking to it, as he did with Peter in the stones of the Lutris School, but nothing responded to him. “I can’t talk to it. I can’t grasp it.”
“Can you cast spells here?”
“You can alter this world by thought. What good would a spell do?” But he tried, reciting the simple fire spell he’d first learned years ago. Fire burst into being in front of him before he’d even finished the words. “Hang on,” he said. “I’m thinking about the fire, not the spell.” He extinguished the fire and tried again, but with the same result. “I don’t know. I can cast spells, maybe, but magic is all around me and there’s no need to channel it. I just take it and shape it and it’s done.”
“I brought you here with a spell,” Nikolon said patiently. “I can’t go back with a spell, but maybe you can.”
“Oh!” Kip stared up at the silver cord, shimmering as it stretched away. He envisioned the hallway outside the cell where he’d been kept, where Malcolm and Richard still languished, and channeled magic into it.
The stones of the cell came into being around him. He turned to look for Malcolm and saw the shimmering trail of the silver cord. When he turned back, Nikolon sat next to him. She looked around. “I remember this place. You wanted to go here?”
Kip nodded. “I want to rescue Malcolm. Let me try again.”
This time, he stared at the silver cord and imagined himself traveling along it, following it back to the place where the worlds joined. The stones of the cell melted away, leaving chaotic colors and shapes in their wake. As soon as Kip pictured his destination, they re-formed—and Nikolon was there again with him.
“Again.”
He imagined the silver cord as a road, and himself walking along it, running along it, back to the material world.
“Again.”
A different destination, more familiar. Pulling himself along the silver cord rather than running.