by Ash Krafton
“I’m glad you came.” Burns’ mouth, close to her ear, stirred her hair with his breath.
His sudden appearance caught her off guard. She fisted her hands to keep still.
Circling her, he paused in front of the fireplace. He wore slacks and a white dress shirt, collar unbuttoned, a glimpse of dusky chest. “Would you like to sit? Refreshment, perhaps?”
His butler re-appeared at her left, holding a tray. Coffee service. Dish of pastries.
It was too much at once. Her breath stuck in her throat, gnarling her voice. “I—what happened to the tent?”
“Tent?” His eyebrows lifted in a quizzical slant.
“The tent. I expected—” She waved her hand at the room, where silken drapes had hung only moments before. “I don’t know, pillows and belly dancers.”
“Ah. Perhaps, later. This…” he said with a sweep of his hand, “is my favorite room. I wanted to show you my personal side.”
The butler set the tray on a low table near a pair of high-backed chairs, beyond which crackled a cozy fire in a grand bricked fireplace. She took a seat, lowering herself carefully, wondering if the illusion would break and send her sprawling to the floor.
The cushion was real, and softer than it looked. “A library? It’s nice.”
He arched an eyebrow. “It’s not what you expected.”
“No. I mean, no.” She tilted her head and peered at him a moment. “I’m not sure what I expected.”
“Expect nothing.” He sat down across from her, lifting a porcelain cup. “Just experience.”
She took the cup and saucer that the butler offered. “So. You’ve destroyed a stereotype for me. A genie who lives in a library. Different.”
“When in Rome, no?” He stirred his cup before setting down the spoon with a light clink against the saucer. “Or, I suppose it is more accurate to say when in human form. When I am Burns, I prefer here.”
“Human form.” It didn’t sound right. Who said things like that, and meant it? “Can you change into anything you want? Any shape at all?”
He stretched out his legs and cocked his head, sliding his gaze up and away.
“I suppose I could. I’m getting old and set in my ways. There’s this…” He swept his hands down the line of his body.
Her eyes were unable to keep from following, not even when he lingered over his midsection. Even lounging, his shirt was tightly tucked into his beltline. No belly fat there.
He tilted his head and gave her an upper-teeth smile, nibbling gently at his lower lip. “And apparently this form is pleasing to the eye, so I wear it often. But there are others. Tiger, a favorite. Savage and regal and the colors of flames in the night. Fearsome to behold, but very useful when dealing with physical conditions in which a human form may be outmatched. Plus, I can lash my tail.”
His voice took a teasing, conspirator’s tone. “I love my tail. You’d love it too, if you saw it.”
She trained her eyes firmly upon his. No way would she give him the pleasure of checking out his tail.
Instead, she raised her cup, inhaling the scented steam. This was her lunch hour, she remembered, and she was hungrier than she realized. All this business with the mysterious door had quelled her appetite, but it was back now.
“Whirlwind,” he continued. “My father taught me that form. Air is our eternal dance partner, our consort. Think of Radha and Krishna. Eternally together, forever apart, two yet one. A dew drop on the lotus leaf. Air feeds our flames, drives us to new heights. Air spreads our fires, gusting them to nearly uncontrollable proportions.”
Light from the fireplace reflected in his eyes. He preened his hair and spread his arms, draping his wrists across the broad arms of the chair. “Air kindles our spark, urging them to sprout and grow. And, occasionally, air dances when we spin. In the desert, I am most intimidating, a roaring blur of sand and fury. Or so I’ve been told.”
She eyed him, blowing across the top to cool the coffee. A display. Here I am, says the male.
Well, she didn’t come here for a display. He was a client. Any contact between them was professional. This had to be a therapy session, not a courtship dance.
“Spinning gives you pleasure?” She sipped her coffee, waiting for his response.
“Oh, yes. Most definitely. The tilt, the rush—I crave it.”
She paused to savor the sip, a strong dark brew with a great deal of sugar. Bitter and sweet. It made a pleasant paring.
“Interesting,” she said. “Did you know that spinning activates motion detectors in the inner ear? Stimulation of those centers divert attention away from worrisome thoughts or concerns about the future. See, it touches old regions in the basal ganglia that are unable to process the concept of future. In that part of the brain, there is only the present. The now. Spinning is a way to avoid dealing with a looming concern. Is there an idea or a concern that you think about before you begin to spin?”
“Yes. You’re correct. There is.” All the show went out of him and he drooped. He hunched over and clasped his hands to his forehead.
Self-touch. He soothed himself. Something upset him, indeed. “Do you want to tell me?”
“The distressing thought that…” He pulled his face out of his upturned palms and gazed mournfully at her. “I am not human, so I have no basal ganglia. The tragedy has haunted me for centuries.”
She pressed her lips together. “You don’t need to sound so condescending.”
He dropped his hands, all pretense gone, and chuckled. “And you don’t need to find a reason for everything. Some things simply are. Look around you, woman. All this simply is. At any rate, I am not in a human form when I spin. This body could never handle the G force. Human bodies can’t handle much at all,” he added with a grumble.
“Is there a form you prefer?”
“Oh, yes.” He leaned forward. “There is one form that gives me more pleasure than any other. My true form.”
He stood and stepped to the center of the fireplace, turning a slow half-circle to face her, raising his hands to shoulder-height as he pivoted. “We are fire, Tamarinda, the strongest and hungriest of all elements. We leave nothing unaltered. All we touch is forever changed, simply for having come in contact with us.”
She sat back in her chair so she could look at him without changing the position of her head. His last words replayed like an echo.
Change. She’d already experienced it. A distant part of her mind wondered how much farther he would lead her down the path of change.
A more proximal part insisted she had no business asking. He was the client. Not her.
She glanced around, scanning the tall shelves, their higher contents fading into the shadows above them. Those shadows danced in time to the cheery fire, popping in the hearth. Wood smoke and old books and exotic coffee. Wonderful scents. “How did you do all this? This building cannot be here. Can anybody see it?”
“There is a question I will answer. Can anybody see it, you ask. Better yet, does anyone know what to look for? You didn’t know you should look for the doors with the brass lamp until I told you to look for them.”
“I would have seen them.” She reached for a pastry. Another delight. Crumbled almonds and sweet dark fruit jam, wrapped in a delicate flake of a crust. She chewed slowly, tasting each nuance as it opened upon her tongue.
“You are confident?”
She nodded. “I notice things like that. Even when I was a kid, I saw—details, I guess. Fragments and clues and ordinary tells of not-so-ordinary things. My parents thought I was disturbed.”
She set the pastry on her plate and brushed her fingertips off on a soft linen napkin. “I was odd. Even I can admit that. But I noticed what other people overlooked, and knew they were important even if I didn’t know why.”
It wouldn’t be prudent to mention her dreams, which lately had increased in clarity. She’d even begun to believe it was his mention of fire elemental that caused her to take on the image of fire in her dream
. See? she’d originally thought. Perfectly logical.
That was before all this. Now, she wasn’t sure if logic had any place at all in her dealings with Burns.
She savored the sip, allowing it to linger on her tongue before swallowing. “I once read about a little girl in India who talked about people and things she’d never seen, insisted her parents call her by a different name. Her parents thought it was gibberish or mimicry but it turns out the people and places were real. The person she claimed to be was real. They eventually came to believe she was reincarnated.”
He nodded and tapped a finger against the side of his mouth before responding. “You believe you are reincarnated?”
“No.” She set down her cup. “But I think—knowledge and ideas can be. Maybe we’re born with the potential to tap into them. Not everyone notices details like that. Some of us do.”
“Interesting. I feel challenged by your allegation that you are able to notice things that are magically hidden from ordinary sight. You are not a magician.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not.”
“Then, we will put you to the test. I will take you back outside and not tell you what to look for. You can tell me everything you see.”
“Ugh.” So much for a relaxing lunch break. “That sounds tedious.”
He stood, his chair vanishing behind him as if it had never been. “It’s necessary. Come.”
“But I didn’t finish my—”
“Come!” He grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the chair, herding her to the door into the splendid hallway. Releasing her, he set off for the far end at a brisk pace. She had to jog to keep up.
“You came in through Carbonnet,” he said over his shoulder. “We are going out a different way, a less crowded entrance. I don’t want you distracted by anyone on the street.”
They passed under arch after arch. She peered down corridors and into grand open rooms and up spiral staircases as they hurried past. Finally, he stopped near a wide stone door, one that looked out of place even here in his impossible palace.
She craned her head to peer at the vaulted ceilings, painted in vibrant jewel tones, trimmed with gold. Lush, extravagant—everything she imagined a genie’s dwelling would be, minus the bottle. “Are we coming out in the alley?”
“Not exactly.” He pressed the wall next to the door and the panel shifted under his touch, clicking and springing open as he released it. A hidden door. From the small recess within, he removed something from a hook, handing her a heavy lump of shaggy fur that had the distinct odor of a wet animal. “Put this on.”
“Do I have to?” She held it between thumb and forefinger at arm’s length and wrinkled her nose. “It smells like a yak.”
“Unless you have a tolerance for the cold.” He had donned a similar lump of fur, one that covered him from chin to knee. He resembled a grizzly. “I myself do not.”
Without waiting for her to copy him, he pulled open the door and pushed her though. A biting blast of winter chill stung her cheeks, pulled tears from her eyes. Her foot caught the threshold and she stumbled, sprawling head first toward the snow.
Chapter 7
He caught her arm before she lost her balance, pulling her upright. She clung to him, mindless of the fur, unable to make sense of her surroundings.
“Here,” he said, voice gruff. “You’ll freeze to death.”
He flipped out the lump into a poncho and pulled it over her head, wrapping a cord around her waist to secure it. “Gloves, here. And it’s not yak. It’s llama.”
She allowed him to dress her as if she were a child, head swiveling around to see everything. Rock walls formed a shallow cave, and the wind that curled into it smelled like metal and stone and faint wood smoke. “Where are we?”
“Peru. Come.” He bundled her up into a stiff mass of hide and fur that blocked the wind. “Hold my rope. I don’t want you to fall off the mountain.”
Mountain? Wind lifted powdery snow, propelled it in swirls around them. Behind them stood an iron door. The rock was jagged and black, the white of the snow blinding. She cautiously paced away from the door, closer to the edge of the level ground they stood upon; desperately glad she wasn’t wearing peep-toed pumps. Her breath was stolen, by wind and by view.
The darkening sky hinted at twilight, its shade swallowing the horizon.
Below lay a cliff that ended in cloud, above, more cliff. A narrow trail had been carved into the side of the mountain. It led down to the right a measure before curving out of view.
He pulled a thick cord loose from a coil on his belt and thrust into her hands before leading her down the trail. “Come on. I’m cold.”
“Why here?” She grasped the guide rope with both hands and allowed him to tug her along. A gust of wind kicked up powdery snow in a spray, stinging her eyes, momentarily blinding her. “You’re a desert kind of guy. Don’t genies hate snow?”
He turned and paused long enough to look directly into her eyes, a look full of heat. “Because of all the lands I visit, these people know how to truly appreciate fire.”
They trudged along a thin rocky path, snow packed by frequent travel by animal and man. The path wound like a ribbon, clinging to the side of the mountain, and passed down through cloud after thick cloud. Relentless wind whistled around them, the chill a constant bite upon her skin. She pressed the furry hood closer around her face, leaving only enough space open to see where she walked.
He turned often to look back for her. Maybe he was afraid she’d fall off the mountain.
They rounded a sharp turn, taking small careful steps to avoid spots where the path had crumbled away. As they cleared the ledge, Tam spied smoke curling from a cluster of rough-hewn buildings huddled together. A village.
The path broadened and levelled into a wide space, where the walking became much easier. He reined her in, wrapping the cord once more and tucking it onto his belt. Tucking his gloved hand under her arm, he guided her to the largest building. Snow drifted from the roof when he thumped on the door. Without waiting for an answer, he pushed it open and ushered her inside.
A group of sun-browned women knelt around a low table in the center of the room, sorting items into baskets. They turned their heads as one to stare at them.
She couldn’t imagine what they looked like, two snow-covered yaks barging into their hut.
He tugged off his cloak, his dark hair tousled. He wore a sleeveless tunic, now, and beige linen trousers with brown leather sandals. His biceps were wrapped in gold ribbon, the loose ends swirling around his elbows as he turned. The firelight clung to him, adding heat to the dusky glow of his flesh, and tiny shadows danced over every swell of muscle, every curve of sinew.
She blinked at his sudden transformation, unable to keep from staring. He looked like he’d just hopped off a camel caravan, not climbed down off a snowy mountain.
And he looked like he worked out. She blinked again, stealing another peek at his Hollister-ad abs. Definitely not a lazy genie. She’d give him that.
A young girl jumped up from the circle and ran to him, arms wide. “Fuego! Fuego!”
He laughed and knelt to hug her, enduring her rough squeeze around the neck with a grin. Grasping the child, he hoisted her high, loosening a stream of giggles from her. After a moment, he shifted the child onto his hip.
“Fuego, por favor,” she pleaded, taking his face between her chubby hands.
He waved his free hand, drawing a streak of embers that floated through the air, a fiery ribbon, before it disappeared. His laughter, deep and rich like melted chocolate, mingled with the bright chimes of the child’s voice.
An old woman admonished the child from the doorway. The little girl kissed him on the cheek before she squirmed loose.
“Madre Segunda,” Burns said, bowing low.
“Mi nino del fuego.” The woman returned the bow, her hand over her heart.
He wore an expression of tender regard, a gentle gaze that was mirrored by the softness around
his eyes, and he rushed across the room to embrace her. His touch was careful when he gathered her into his arms, cradling her as if she were made of spun glass. They chatted, muted tones of Spanish, the woman’s voice bird-like.
Tam stood apart, not understanding a word they spoke, feeling like an interloper. She straightened her shoulders. An observer. That was better. She was nothing if not an observer.
He ducked his head when the woman reached up to pat his cheek, and she ruffled his hair. His face was radiant, his cheeks dimpling over a smile that showed all his teeth. A schoolboy glowing under the doting affections of a mother figure.
And yet…there was a darkness in his eyes. Not any sort of malfeasance or negative intent—it was almost a sadness, a melancholy. Did he worry for her? Did she remind him of someone else? The darkness was a cloud, lurking too close to the sunshine that was his feeling for this woman.
She quietly reassessed him, seeing yet a new facet of his ever-shifting personality. He loved this woman. She wondered if all love was as dual-natured as the one he wore upon his expression as he embraced the elder.
Sometimes, she didn’t envy those who experienced emotion. Love. Who could pull off such a complex feeling? It must be exhausting—
“Elder Mother is the wise woman of this tribe.” Burns released the woman and extended a hand to Tam, drawing her closer. He flourished his fingers, like a magician performing a coin trick, producing a gold ear cuff. Sliding his hand along her cheek, he clasped it onto her ear. “I thought she should meet you.”
“What’s this?” She fingered the gold earring, its weight foreign and uncomfortable. The cuff pinched her ear where he’d pressed it around the cartilage above her earlobe.
“Leave it on,” he said. “She speaks only Spanish. This will translate.”
If he only knew how much she needed it. Tam slid it higher, finding a more tolerable spot.
“You are well?” He reached out his hand to the woman, guiding her closer and steering her to a chair by the fire. The rest of the women had fallen silent at their arrival and, gathering up their baskets, they slipped from the room.