by K. C. Finn
“Perhaps she just wants to keep you talking,” Lily mused. “Talking therapy… That’s a thing, isn’t it?”
“I guess so,” Salem grinned, “and we all know my favourite subject is me, so…”
He chuckled, and Lily did too, though she couldn’t shake the doubtful feelings that were churning in her belly. It was odd to have someone like Jeronomie rushing in and suddenly running your home and fixing all your friends’ problems without even involving you, and Lily didn’t like to admit that she was feeling a little left out where Salem and Jazzy were concerned. Still, if the talents of the potioneer were making them both feel better, Lily had no right to argue with Jeronomie.
Even if her instincts were starting to tell her otherwise.
February
Tales Of The Glassman
Lily opened the little white book, her fingers slipping to the place where Forrester’s invitation was keeping the page marked. She had started from this point in the book several times before, but had always been interrupted, and had to hide the volume of fairy-tales away before she could finish the story. Now, she was secluded in Bradley Binns’s empty lecture hall, a full hour before anything was due to start, and she was determined to take in the full account of the bogeyman of shadechildren: the notorious Glassman.
Once, long ago, when the two Great Worlds were still as one, there was a leader of djinnkind who called himself the Glassman. Tall and resplendent, with skin that shone clear as the sun-kissed sky, the Glassman was a mischievous soul, and one whose beauty often persuaded others to follow in his wicked wake.
The Glassman was a trickster, and his favourite pastime of all was to play ruses out on unsuspecting shades. Shadesons and shadedaughters went about their play beneath the bright white sky, little knowing that the Glassman’s ruby eyes were watching. He could travel by reflection, as all the djinnkind could, and he watched them from the shining surfaces of their homes, waiting for his moment to strike.
He watched them from the river too, and there were times when brothers and sisters went to play in the water, using their powers to lift the liquid from the flow and transform it into shapes of style and wonder. On one such day, a Little Brother who struggled with water magic sat beside his Big Sister, watching as she showed her mastery for the craft.
“It’s perfectly simple,” said Big Sister, haughty as she was. “You must learn not to concentrate so hard.”
Little Brother thought that not concentrating hard was a stupid way to learn anything, but he dared not enrage Big Sister, who was older and far more talented than he.
“I’ll try again,” Little Brother promised, sighing.
True to his word, the boy stood up and approached the riverbank. He stared into the swirling water, which moved too fast for him to see the sunken red eyes of the Glassman, who watched from deep beneath the current. The mischief-making djinn was a blurred reflection, ever-changing and shifting in the water as he let his powers brew. When the right moment came, the Glassman would strike and teach his lesson.
Little Brother rolled up his sleeves and crouched beside the water. He put his palms flat against the sprinting current, eyes closed and tense with concentration. Then, remembering his sister’s chiding words, he let his mind wander and stopped thinking at all. Little Brother heard the trickle of the water, and the rush of the current, and every other noise that the river made in between the two. He felt a tingle in his heart as it began to beat faster and, when he opened his bright eyes, he exclaimed with joy:
“I’ve done it! Look!”
Big Sister watched from her perch on the rock, and gave her brother the tiniest nod of approval. Praise was praise, however small, and Little Brother beamed as a long strand of water, thick as a rope, connected his palm to the river. He toyed with the rope like a whip, slashing it to and fro as he laughed with the childish joy of first achievements, and it was in the depths of this joy that the Glassman made himself known.
The water-rope coiled high into the air and, when it landed again, it was around Little Brother’s throat. The noose lifted him into the sky before the shadeson even had a moment to scream, and he hit the river’s surface with a slap that drew Big Sister from her own world of thoughts. She flew into the air above the river and thrust out her hands, fighting against the strand of magic that threatened to pull Little Brother below the surface.
The boy was face-to-face with the rush of the river, the rope at his throat making him splutter and stream with painful tears. But worse than this was what the boy saw within the current of the water, as the layers of liquid shifted and a face began to form. The visage of the Glassman shook and juddered in the stream, his vicious eyes seeming to bleed from their sockets. Little Brother saw the reflection of his own terrified face, coloured red within those pools of mischief and destruction, and his tiny heart gave a frantic thump as he became certain that he was about to die.
Big Sister was not about to let her brother die. For one thing, her parents would not be pleased if he perished on her watch. Her powers were greater than the Glassman could have guessed for one so young, and she raised her bony little hands above the water, summoning her fiercest strike of gravity. A tree with mammoth roots came flying from the other side of the riverbank and crashed into the water. It lodged itself right where the Glassman’s horrid face had just been, cutting the water-rope in two.
Little Brother clung to the log and turned to see his sister, who had returned to the bank with her hands on her hips.
“You stupid boy,” she chided, “you can’t even control a strand of water without drowning yourself. It’s disgraceful.”
The boy’s face was pale as Big Sister picked him up in her powers, carrying him back to the safety of the bank on a cushion of air. Little Brother hugged his arms about him, eyes wide with shock, and stammered:
“You didn’t see it? You didn’t see the face in the water?”
Big Sister let out a disparaging sigh, rolling her eyes at the shadeson.
“You always have to find a story to blame things on, don’t you?” she accused.
The Glassman’s wicked face was no fiction, and Little Brother knew it. He could never have imagined the wicked terror of the djinn who frightened him to the very edge of his life, but he knew that if Big Sister didn’t believe him, the rest of his kin wouldn’t either. And that was what the Glassman enjoyed best about his trickery. He relished in the fact that he had great and terrible power, but no shade was willing to admit that he truly existed, even when they had seen his garish beauty for themselves.
He would strike again and again, tricking shades everywhere with his ill luck and mad folly. The Glassman would haunt the shadeborn even when the world they shared was no longer the same, but he would always be thought of as a fable, and an illusion created to warn little brothers not to play too close to the water.
Until the Day of Breaking, of course. That fateful day when one of the shadeborn would rise to expose the Glassman for what he really was, and banish him from the hearts of fearful shades for good.
Lily closed the book, and it was only then that she noticed the tiny hairs standing up on her arms, and the bumpy gooseflesh that ran from her wrists all the way to her shoulders. There was something in the air that was more than the echoes of the story, and Lily felt her stomach sink as she realised what it was. High above her, in the glass-panelled ceiling of the lecture hall, a pair of eyes glanced down. Lily didn’t have to look up to know that those foul coral orbs were there, for the stomach-churning feeling of the presence of ill luck had now become unpleasantly familiar to her.
“Go on then,” she said, her voice echoing in the empty hall. “What do you want to do? Trap my nose in the book? Have a bat fly in and muss my hairdo? Go ahead and do it. Frankly, I’m getting used to you bothering me now.”
Some of what she said was true, but there was still genuine fear buried beneath Lily’s bravado. She feared that her direct challenge to the creature behind the glass might reflect badly on peopl
e like Jazzy and the troupe but, at the same time, it felt wrong to keep giving the djinn the satisfaction of seeing her suffer. Lily reasoned that, like a child in the face of a bully, not rising to the bait might be some small way of warding off the smaller mishaps at least. She waited for an answer, never once looking up to the leering bluish face that had terrified her on that fateful first day of lectures.
The hairs on her arms settled down again, and the gooseflesh receded to its usual smooth texture. Lily felt warmer than she had a moment ago, and she slipped the book of fairy-tales back into her satchel, replacing it with her notebook for the lecture ahead. When she did dare to glance to the glass-panelled ceiling of the cavernous hall, the pane of glass she focused on was just as plain and transparent as the others. Lily smiled to herself, letting out a breath of fearful relief that shook its way out of her chest.
Looks like the Glassman isn’t the only trickster around here, she thought with pride.
Night Talk
Lily was doing her level best to stay awake at night. With January tests over at Pike U, classes had fallen back into their usual, dreary regularity, which meant she was able to catch up on her sleep in the hall, so long as she sat at the back. It was for this reason that she found herself climbing up the stairs to the Imaginique’s roof at around three in the morning, where Novel was already mid-way through his usual starbathe. At the doorway that connected the attic floor to the rooftop, Lily paused and watched for a moment with a small smile. Novel’s lithe body floated a few inches off the roof and, when he inhaled, a great rush of bright blue light surrounded him in a brilliant aura.
It was a marked difference to the last time she’d seen him lying on the ground, with that heady grin of violence on his lips in the fray with Pascal. In the starlight, Novel looked serene, and Lily took the trouble to float gently towards him so as not to disturb his deep thoughts. As she reached his side Novel took in another breath, and this time the gentle waves of power lapping around him began to lift him into the air. Lily held out a hand, hovering over his stomach, and when the illusionist rose and made contact with it, he opened his eyes, and looked around.
“Don’t you go floating up to the stars,” Lily warned teasingly, “I need you here.”
Novel began to sink, his pale brow creasing.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sharply.
Lily shook her head, clambering down to lie beside him on the rooftop.
“Nothing at all, for a change,” she replied. “I mean, aside from Jazzy and this illness. I wish the curse hadn’t chosen her to pick on, it’s playing on my mind when the next attack will be.”
The pair of shades gazed up at the sky thoughtfully, and Lily shuffled closer to Novel by their twinkling glow. It was her turn to breathe deeply of the night air, and feel the strange watery sensation of the stars’ power as it invigorated her own. Amid the tingle of the starlight, Lily felt the warmth of a flame where her shoulder brushed against Novel’s. He turned his head, his lips resting just shy of her neck, and allowed a small grumble to escape his lips.
“It is most unfortunate that Jazmine’s become the djinn’s new target,” he agreed. “I suppose she’s the weakest amongst us, and the one whose suffering would hurt you the most.”
“There’s you, too,” Lily answered at once. “What about that guillotine that nearly took your head off in front of a hundred paying guests?”
“Oh, that,” Novel said dryly, “We don’t know what that was-”
“Yes we do,” Lily cut in. “This djinn creature knows us far too well. It went for you at just the moment when it might have caught you off guard, and I was too far from the stage to help in time.”
The illusionist turned on his side, sliding one arm across Lily’s waist. His head was half-buried in her shoulder, and his voice sounded heavier when he next spoke.
“That’s over now,” he soothed, “and I won’t be using the guillotine ever again. The damage from the white light was irreparable.”
Lily dared not add that she was glad to hear it, but the memory of the great structure being slashed by the brilliant glow came rushing to her head.
“Have you thought any more about that light?” she asked.
“Constantly,” Novel replied with clear irritation, “and I keep reaching the same conclusion. Someone was looking out for me.”
If there was any speculation as to who, then Novel didn’t volunteer the information. Lily let him hold her close, her hand rising to stroke the tiny white hairs at the nape of his neck as they lay together in their moment of twilight solace. Tiredness was threatening to close Lily’s eyes, but she forced them open to carry on watching the stars high above the Imaginique, and the quiet little town where her whole life had changed forever. Beneath the great, dark blanket of the night, her troubles didn’t seem so big, and she felt that her world was quite secure, for tonight at least.
That was when the firework came flying onto the rooftop, and exploded inches from Lily’s head.
“Look out!” Novel cried, already dragging her away as the cinders erupted from the rocket.
The bang was deafening, and red sparks flew everywhere as a brilliant, blinding light consumed the whole rooftop for several seconds. Lily was on her feet without really knowing it, Novel’s harsh protective grip digging into her shoulders as he pulled her one way, then suddenly in the other direction. Somewhere in the flash of the red rocket, a screamer had sounded, and now a blast of yellow and white flames was exploding right in the spot where Lily would have been standing a moment before.
“What the hell’s going on?” Lily cried.
“Djinn!” Novel snarled, just as another explosion crackled overhead, showering him in tiny blue embers. “Just our misfortune to be on the roof when-”
Lily grabbed him by the shirt-front, shaking her head. Amid the deafening bangs of the fireworks, a new sound was emerging to echo in her ears. It was the sound of laughter.
“Djinnkind don’t throw fireworks,” she said, “idiots do. Come on.”
They raced to the edge of the roof, ducking just in time to avoid another screamer, and the white sphere of chemical energy exploded in a halo behind Lily as she looked down at the dark pavement of Old Mill Lane. A series of figures were stumbling and giggling far below, with handfuls of rockets and paper-lighters. One in particular stood out as far less steady on his feet than the others, a loud belch confirming Lily’s suspicions as she cupped her hands to her mouth to shout down.
“Oi! Sampson! What are you and the Illustrious Morons playing at now?”
“Them,” Novel growled, his discerning sneer firmly in place. “Look at them. Tiny drunk humans with highly explosive armaments. It’s a wonder this world wasn’t destroyed centuries ago.”
Michael was too far below to hear Novel’s chiding words, but he seemed to have caught most of what Lily shouted to him. It took him a moment to crane his neck to see her, for the first time he tried, he fell flat on his back. The fireworks scattered everywhere on the street, and the other equally-drunk members of the IMLS clambered to collect them around Michael. He threw his arms open wide and guffawed like a child.
“Chinese New Year!” he beamed.
“Which is two weeks away,” Lily shouted back, “and you’re not even Chinese!”
“Ooh, sorry,” Michael replied mockingly. He pointed with a wavering arm at Novel. “Did I singe your hairdo, Mister Monsieur?”
“Right,” was all Novel said, then he leapt from the roof.
Lily followed as quickly as she could, floating down the three storeys carefully with her gravity powers. Novel was not elegant in his flight, and he only cushioned his fall mere moments before his feet connected with the pavement, sending a shockwave through the ground that sent two of the IMLS kids to their knees. Michael wobbled again, for he was nearest to the impact, and Lily flew to land in front of him before Novel could march straight up to his face.
“Blimey, they can fly,” slurred a girl’s voice from the darkness.
“Um,” another voice added wearily, “Mikey, maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea? We ought to go, mate.”
Face to face, Michael looked a lot less brave than he had when he’d been teasing them from three floors down, but Lily recognised that blind resolution that so often overcame him. The confidence that had first impressed her, what seemed like a million years ago now, was Michael’s greatest downfall. And, if Lily didn’t keep control of things, it would soon earn him a sound beating from the furious illusionist to her right.
“You’re not welcome on my property, Sampson,” he sneered, “I’d ask you to leave, but that would deny me the pleasure of removing you myself.”
“Think you can, magic man?” Michael slurred back. “I’d like to see you try it without those powers of yours.” The boy looked the shademan over with a drunken laugh. “So skinny. Lils, I thought you liked fellas with a bit of meat on their bones.”
“Having more muscles than sense is hardly an asset,” Novel griped. He stepped closer, his iron visage fuming with disgust and irritation as he looked down on the boy before him. “Tell me, have you always been so short? It strikes me that I’ve never really cared enough to notice before.”
The illusionist made to move closer still, and Lily had to wedge her body completely between the two males to stop him. She was facing Michael, and she gave his muscled chest a shove with both palms, sending him tottering back with an offended look on his face.
“Go home, you fool,” she snapped, “even I could batter you with my bare hands right now. You’re a state. You can’t even stand.”
True to Lily’s words, Michael paused to wipe a line of escaping drool from his gaping mouth. He cast a bitter glance at Novel over her shoulder, then turn on his heel with a force too great for his inebriated brain to handle. He stumbled again, one leg crossing over the other in a way that might have been comical, if Lily didn’t pity him so much. When Michael had his bearings again, he began to walk away, following the trail of his long-departed friends.