by August Li
Dante pushed the barrel of the gun into Blossom’s cheek, denting his flesh. “Get your pasty ass out of here, and if I ever see you again, you’re fucking dead. Got it?”
“But—”
“Come on, Blossom.” After steadying Charlene, I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him out of the flat, then down the stairs and back out into the chilly night. As soon as we hit the sidewalk, he broke free and faced me with a snarl.
“What are you thinking, demon? The cats were right! The cats came after Rosalind. We need to go back inside. I’m going back to make them tell me what I need to know.”
“The hell you are.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why not?”
Above us, the blinds were cleaved open a hair, and I knew Dante was watching. A block away, a dark figure with a hood up leaned against a lamppost. Also watching. “We need to get off the street. Now.”
“Why?”
“What are you, five? Come on. We’re being followed. Probably by the person who lured us here. We need to shake them.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” he protested.
I turned in the opposite direction of that dark figure and walked as fast as I could, tugging Blossom like a mule on a rope. When I glanced back over my shoulder, the person had moved—keeping their distance, but definitely following. Something seemed almost familiar in the way they held themselves, their posture. But that had to be paranoia. It’d been a weird fucking night, and I was off-kilter and acute.
“Do you honestly think they’ll be a match for me?” Blossom continued.
“Look, arsehole.” I leaned close and spat the words into his pointy ear. “Magic will attract attention—attract more mages. Mages who likely tricked us into coming to this place and waited for us here. Who knows how many of them could be around? Can’t you like… do something to hide us?”
“Oh. Of course I can.” He reached his long fingers above his head, moved them in circles. In less time than it took me to look back down, snow and wind pelted us, coming so fast and thick that I could barely see him even though he stood inches from my face. The snow was almost a solid wall, just coming at us horizontal.
“This isn’t what I had in mind!” I shouted over the howl of the wind. “We’ve got to get out of this—find a place to go!”
“I have an idea,” the faerie said, and he clasped my hand, seemingly oblivious to the snow that smacked me in the face like frozen rocks. He sprinted cheerily up the sidewalk, and I let myself be pulled along like a toy on a string. It was either that or stand there and fucking freeze to death.
Chapter Eight
THE PERSON who resided in the blue square dwelling was one who saw shadows and dreams, one who could look past the mundane world into other realities. Since Inky and I were shadows and dreams, this was as good a place for us as any. I knocked on the cold metal door, disturbing a little grapevine wreath with a faux wren perched on one side.
It was early morning, a time when most mortals slept, but the lights in the little domicile came on, and soon after, the door opened to reveal a tiny woman in a floral nightdress covered by a pilled yellow sweater. Her wispy white hair was pulled back in a severe knot, and her face was as lined as a dry riverbed. But when she saw us standing there, snow thick on our heads and shoulders, she broke into a wide, toothless grin. She reached up and closed her small fists around two locks of my hair, pulling me down to smack loud, wet kisses on both of my cheeks. “Ramon! It’s so good to see you. You don’t visit your poor old mama as often as you should. Come in, come in. Get out of the cold. And your brother is here too! Raphael, come inside. You’re letting out all of my heat. I don’t work for the electric company, you know.”
There was very little heat to speak of in the tiny room we entered—some sort of seating area similar to the one in Dante and Rosalind’s residence: a battered settee; stacks of paper tied up with twine; thin glossy books arranged in piles; and hundreds of little statues, animals and things—arranged on every available table and lined up in formation on much of the floor. The old woman had created careful trails between them, and she traveled along one to reach the small kitchen visible through a large open square. She turned on a light above a table piled with more paper and knickknacks, announcing, “You boys must be hungry. You look so thin. I’ll make us a proper breakfast, and we can sit and talk. How does that sound?”
“Good, good,” I said, bending down to pick up a little squirrel holding an acorn. I dusted off his back with the cuff of my jacket and carried him to a windowsill, where I set him next to an owl with wide eyes and an elfish little man in a furry red suit. There was also a stack of corks and a half of a potato sprouting in a metal dish. A bronze-finished birdcage hung from the ceiling, stuffed full of more little creatures like the wren on the wreath outside. It also held some faux pears covered in glitter, and they caught the sun when I shifted the old plaid curtains. “What an interesting and delightful place.”
“Oh, Blossom.” Inky laid a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. Charlene wailed mournfully as a clicking sounded in the kitchen, followed by the whoosh of a flame and the clatter of pots and pans.
“What’s wrong now?”
“This poor old woman.”
I looked around at the little statues and some crystal moons and stars hanging in front of another window. A large jar held a beautiful variety of small colored orbs that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on and examine closer. And artwork covered the walls—realistic black-and-white depictions of a number of people, alongside pictures of bottles of perfume and sumptuous meals. The wall itself was quite lovely as well: painted roses in vertical lines with satiny green strips between them. I was confounded. “Poor? This woman seems to have a great many valuable possessions. Some truly wonderful items.”
“No, that’s… I mean, I think she must have Alzheimer’s.”
“Have what?” The woman was smiling and humming as she hunched over her frying pan, steam rising in a veil around her.
“Dementia,” Inky said. “She doesn’t know what is really going on around her.”
“Of course not,” I answered. “She sees other realities, visions. That’s why I chose this place. Do you have a problem with it?”
“It’s just sad, that’s all.”
“Sad? Tell me, what are her desires?”
Inky turned his head toward the kitchen, and Charlene butted him beneath the chin. “She doesn’t really have any. She thinks everything she loves and values is already here.”
“Another reason I chose to come here. The last thing I want to watch is you fulfilling someone’s desires. This woman already has everything she could possibly want.”
He picked up a metal canister of beans with a spoon sticking out of it. “She only thinks she does.”
“Well, it’s the same thing. Come now. We were invited to have breakfast, and it would be rude to be tardy. I’m sure Charlene is hungry as well.”
The table held more wonders: fronds of fabric leaves edged in glittering gold, spools of thread in every color of the rainbow, and a veritable army of salt and pepper shakers, delightful pairings of one black and one white cat, samurai and geisha, vegetables with smiling faces, eager to season their people for consumption. I couldn’t help laughing with delight. A pair of plump pigs with curly tails and wide, innocent eyes stood next to a pineapple and a palm tree. Fascinating! It must have been truly wondrous to possess such items, to be able to pick them up and inspect them anytime. I could see how that bestowed happiness on this woman.
Our host insisted upon putting our coats in a small cupboard with some mops and brooms, and then we took our places and accepted our repast on thick plates in primary colors. We ate sautéed plantains with sweet red onions, fried cheese cut in triangles, and I gave the eggs and thick, spicy sausage to Charlene, who then curled up in a basket full of skeins of yarn, underripe mangoes, and packets of sunflower seeds. The coffee was delicious, strong and sweet.
The conversation was even more entertaining. Mrs. Guzman saw me and Inky as her sons, Ramon and Raphael. Her perceptions were not limited by the linear confines of most mortals. She saw, all at once, past, present, and possibility. So when she asked me about my wife, I declared she was a Spanish princess, and the old woman cheered. When she asked again moments later and I explained my wife was an English student, a prodigy studying starlight and the nature of perception, she responded with equal enthusiasm. For her, the possibilities existed simultaneously.
Inky was good at the game. I imagine he honed in on her aspirations for her sons and spun the tales she most wanted to hear. Her fondness for her children shaped him as well; as they talked, his skin became a dark shade of olive, his hair mahogany and straight, his eyebrows thick above his expressive brown eyes. Watching him spin tales of his children, all geniuses, about to enter university, amused me almost as much as Mrs. Guzman’s gleeful reaction. Then he spoke of his daughter, a makeup artist on movie sets in Hollywood, and the old woman clutched her chest. I hoped she wouldn’t die; it would make staying here more difficult, and I liked it here.
After our meal, Mrs. Guzman announced, “You boys are tired. Such hard workers, both of you! You’ll get a good sleep now that your bellies are full. Come on. I kept your room just the way you left it.”
She ushered us into a tiny chamber with a narrow bed hugging each wall. In her eyes, we were children again, and she said, “I’ll clean up. You boys take a nice nap, and maybe later we’ll go to the park.”
The door closed with a soft click, and Inky dropped onto one bed, folding his arms behind his head and staring at the water-stained ceiling. “I doubt we’re going to the park or anywhere else in this fucking storm you called up.”
It was clear there was no pleasing this one. “You wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be followed, and now we won’t be.”
“But now we’re stuck in here, and this place makes me sad. There’s so much loss here, and it’s tearing at me.”
I went to the chest of drawers pushed against the wall a few feet opposite the beds. A lacy mandala covered the top, but the wondrous little statues were absent. Instead, a yellow metal vehicle with big segmented wheels and an overstuffed leather glove sat on the surface. Two pictures hung on the green-and-yellow striped wall above it: a man with short-cut hair and a wide smile, wearing what I assumed was a military uniform, and a younger fellow with shaggy fringe and a pensive expression, his shoulders curled forward and his long fingers wrapped around his arms. “Huh. These must be Mrs. Guzman’s sons. A brash, idealistic hero and a calculating schemer. I wonder if the younger boy is a mage. He has the look.”
“This isn’t some fucking story, Blossom.”
I looked over my shoulder at Inky, who’d propped himself up on his elbows on the bed. “Of course it is. Everything is a story. Just because we’re partaking of this one doesn’t change its nature. What is a story when all is said and done? It’s merely a series of things happening.”
“But this poor old woman sees things that aren’t really here.”
“She sees into other realities.” I picked up the padded leather glove and slipped my fingers inside, wondering what it could be for. “There is always a bargain, demon. The more she perceives of other worlds, the less she is able to see of this one.”
“But this is what actually exists.”
“Does it?” I asked him. “Does it exist if you don’t perceive it on any level? Aren’t things you can see and touch and hear and feel the ones that exist? And how can you be sure the things you perceive are the same ones perceived by others?”
“I….” Inky shook his head. “You’re hurting my fucking brain. Besides, we should figure out what’s going on here.”
“Agreed.” I sat on the bed across from him, and he rose up to face me, raking his long silver hair away from his eyes. “I’m sure you have an opinion on what that might be.”
Inky dragged his hand down his face and covered his eyes with his fingers. “That’s just it. I fucking don’t. I don’t get this at all. From what I can tell, someone, some mage or group of mages, succeeded in summoning a faerie here. That’s you. So they did that, and all I can suppose is you didn’t pop out where they expected. So they lured us… planted these clues to bring us here…. But fuck me, why? Why would they make it a challenge for us to find them? That doesn’t make a damned lick of sense.”
I steepled my fingers and tapped the tips of my thumbs against my lower lip, thinking, trying to imagine what it would entail to weave magic like that. “No. It’s impossible. To craft an enchantment like that, they would have had to either know exactly which mortals we would encounter and bewitch them, or… or the spell would have to be crafted to react to our presence, to influence anyone we might come in contact with. And even that doesn’t account for the sheep-meat fellow. He was looking for us. Only a spell that affected this entire area, screwing its tendrils into everyone and everything on the chance we might interact with them…. But no. There were steps in it, cause and effect. The players speaking of the cats, and then the cats appearing. The caster would either have had to influence those actors to put on that play—probably months ago—or they would’ve had to know of it, known to use it. That… that kind of magic is impossible. It would take the skill of one of my kind and the calculation of a human. It would take years to construct something like this. Even then, there are so many variables to take into account. So many minutiae that could throw the whole thing off.”
Inky’s eyes scrunched to slits, and his pinkish irises darted back and forth, not that the changes he’d undergone for Mrs. Guzman’s benefit seemed to fade without her presence. “Some of the guilds have years. Sekhet-Aaru does. They could’ve put this in place. They think long-term, orchestrating political movements among the mortals that won’t yield anything in their lifetimes. I understand they went to great lengths to fuel the animosity between Islam and Christianity, with the ultimate goal of destroying both religions. Leaving a hole for magic to fill when the mortals need something to guide them. But they know it’s going to take three, four generations. Maybe more. Hell. Some say they’ve been at it since the Crusades. They can wait. I’ve also heard rumors they’re allowing global warming, positioning themselves to save humanity when things start getting rough. They’re playing the long game, trying to get things just right so people will accept mages as their rulers again.”
He had no knowledge of the way magic ebbed and flowed, leaving empty caverns behind to swell into other spaces. The balance escaped him. “It can’t be done, Inky. It would mean everyone… everything was mobilized toward bringing us to this point. It would mean a spell that changes and adapts on its own, magic given a will, for lack of a better explanation. Something that lives independent of the caster. It’s impossible.”
“Then what?”
When I stretched out on the small bed, my booted feet hung over the scalloped wood at the foot. I didn’t know how to answer him. No one and nothing I knew of had the power to assemble a spell like this—I couldn’t have done it myself, and that made me… uncomfortable.
“Then what, Blossom?”
“I… I don’t know who could’ve done this, or how. I….”
There was another scuffed blue chest in the corner of the room with three drawers. Pale wood peeked out from deep gouges in the facade. On it sat a doll’s head atop a conical base covered in shimmering silver brocade. The thing had teardrop-shaped eyes and a mournful little mouth, wings with feathers congealed by metallic paint. I stood and picked it up, holding it on flattened palms a few inches from my chin. What if…?
“What if it is wild magic, raw magic directed by someone who doesn’t even know they’re directing it?”
The bedsprings creaked, and I felt Inky’s warmth at my back. “What are you thinking, Blossom?”
“The girl,” I said. “The girl who prayed every night for an angel to save her. If she—” The idea that this little peasant had manipulated me was horri
fying, wrong in every way, but I could think of nothing else. “What if the magic answered her call? What if it brought me here, made everything happen in just such a way so that I would come to her?”
“That’s….” Inky put his chin on my shoulder and stared at the shoddily constructed thing I held, its tangled yellow hair coated in dust, its rosy cheeks bisected by scratches. “Do you really think? Wait, though. Most mages have a sort of glow about them. Colored light. I didn’t see anything like that.”
I threw the grotesque doll to the ground and crushed it beneath my boot, flattening its hollow head and making the candle fly from its chunky hands. “Some of them can hide such things. In the young especially, the power can ebb and flow: strong and bright at times, nonexistent at others. We have to know. If it is true, that little urchin is the greatest mage in a millennium. This is…. We have to know. We have to go back to that house.”
“And do what?” he asked.
“And get her to release me.”
“And if she can’t?”
“If she can’t,” I said, “then I will do what I need to do. The spell is broken upon the caster’s demise.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“What the— What? Kill a little girl? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I turned to face him, catching and holding his gaze with my own. “Of course I’ll attempt to reach a bargain first. But I refuse to remain trapped here. Mortals die every day, demon. Do you think you can stop me?”
He opened his mouth, revealing thick, sharp fangs between his purplish lips. “You son of a fucking bitch. You piece of shite. No, I can’t stop you, but I sure as hell won’t help you. You know what? I hope you fuck up and end up strapped to some mage’s table while they prod at your insides. Fuck you. I’m off.”
“You won’t ever regain what I took from you,” I told him.
“I don’t fucking care. Being in the same room with you’s making me sick.” He left the tiny bedroom, slamming the door behind him.