Magic and Mayhem: A Collection of 21 Fantasy Novels

by Jasmine Walt

  “Everyone around me is struck dumb today! Not for me, for her.” And she jabs her finger at the catun-girl.

  The bartender nods and returns with a bowl of cookies, which he places in front of the catun. As both Tiina and he watch, Mini flicks out a tongue and grabs them all, then swallows them in one gulp. Then, licking her lips, she turns to Tiina.

  “So, what am I to do with you, Mini?”

  She puts out her hand to pat the girl’s head, and Mini rubs her forehead slowly against Tiina’s hand. Her attention is drawn to the doors of the bar, past which she can just see another space-pod draw up. A pudgy man with the legs and tail of a Plutonian reptile, but the torso of a human and a round face, crowned with a mop of blonde hair, steps up. Tiina picks Mini up and walks toward him, reaching him just as he steps inside the gates.

  “Hey, Edgar.”

  “Hey, Tiina!” He nods a reply.

  “This is Mini.”

  “Another one?”

  “What can I say? Every time I see one of these little catun-girls, I think it could be Maya. I have to do something. Can’t just leave them to die out there or…,” she says with a shudder, “meet a fate worse than death.”

  “Surely you dramatise!”

  “You know I am correct. Well…?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, will you take her and send her back to Orvieto?”

  He demands, “All the way back to her home planet?”

  “She’s even smaller than the others. There’s no way she can make it back on her own.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” he growls in mock anger, his lizard lips curling in a smirk.

  “Well, the catun was tiny last time.” Tiina flutters her eyelashes for good measure.

  Edgar clears his throat and his pink tongue slips out as he speaks, checking the temperature of the air. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to pull all your feminine wiles on me.”

  “Great! You are amazing. One in a million, after my own heart—”

  She is about to heap on more compliments when Edgar interrupts her.

  “Enough, enough. Save some of it for later.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  When she tries to unravel the catun-girl's arm from around her, Mini burrows further into her and refuses to let go, so Tiina turns to him for help.

  Edgar shrugs a horned shoulder and bends down, then waves his palm over the little girl’s face. Mini shuts her eyes, her breathing deepens, and she falls into a deep, restful sleep

  “Wow, that’s a handy talent. I sure could use it for one uninterrupted night’s sleep.”

  “You think too much. The weight of the universe and all that…”

  She chuckles. “You mean you don’t believe that I must save the world?”

  “Whatever.”

  Edgar shakes his head, and after pulling Mini into his arms, walks out of the bar to his space-pod, Tiina in tow. He opens the panel at the back and takes out a small, cosy travel carrier, into which he carefully places Mini, then eases the case onto the seat beside his and straps it in.

  “I drop in for a casual drink, and you saddle me with a chore.”

  “You know you’ll do anything for me, Edgar.”

  “Yeah! More fool of me than not… Well, so long then, Tiina. Try to stay out of trouble.”

  She leans over and kisses his scaly cheek. “I love you, too.”

  He blushes, his green skin turning a little red, then gets into the space-pod and waves at her before taking off. Then, squaring her shoulders, she walks back into the Wanch.

  Examining her surroundings, Tiina draws in the familiar reassuring sense of the place—the walls crowded with posters of familiar pop and rock stars including the Rolling Drones, who, while getting on in years, still continue to be among the most famous acts in the galaxy despite missing one of their famous groupies.

  The posters always remind her of the room she and Maya shared back home. They had been so young and naïve, caught in the first flush of pre-teen years, just discovering their budding sexuality, entranced by the music that hit a chord in their hearts. As twins, they had that uncanny ability of reading each other’s thoughts.

  Tiina smiles as she returns to the bar, once more in the company of friends.

  The first time Tiina walked into the Wanch, it all seemed so curiously familiar. Nostalgia, the thick taste of homesickness, coated her tongue and the well of melancholy erupted sharply in the pit of her stomach. The year when she had lost Maya, they had both been almost ten and the music from the nineteen-seventies had enjoyed a revival. The music had been downloaded, re-engineered, remixed, re-sung, and had achieved cult hits. That was the year when Tiina and Maya had recreated their own summer of love on Ka Surya, the same year she had met Yudi and lost him. The memories of Maya and Yudi were forever intertwined in her heart. She had found love and lost family in the space of less than forty-eight hours. A coming-of-age with a vengeance, she liked to call it.

  Over the last few days, she has come close to reliving those same feelings. Life often repeats itself, and she thinks back to how Egreog had appeared in her life the previous weekend.

  She spots him at the weekly Saturday Salsa night at the Wanch. While seated at one corner of the dance floor, she admires his dancing skills. Still an amateur, she had taken up dancing just a few weeks ago. Egreog loved to salsa; right off, she notes he is really good at it, too. To her surprise, he looks straight at her, smiles, and approaches, leaving his beautiful dance partner stranded in the middle of the floor.

  He holds out his hand and she takes it and is swept off to where their moves and the music matter more than life.

  Their next meeting takes her as much by surprise. On her way home to her small apartment on Hollywood Road in the central suburb of Java City, her mobile device beeps.

  When she answers, he asks, “Enjoying your walk?”

  “Where are you?” She smiles, recognising Egreog’s voice.

  “That was you in orange, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like talking to yourself?”

  “What?”

  “I saw you talking to yourself.”

  “Oh!” Tiina laughs, embarrassed at having been caught in the act.

  “It’s cute.”

  Then, realising that he must not be far away, she asks, “Where are you?”

  “In the transporter that just passed you.”

  “Oh!”

  “I’m seeing you tonight, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time will you be there?”

  After regaining her composure, she answers, “Mmm, not too early, not too late? At the right time.”

  “The right time…”

  She can almost sense him digesting that.

  “Okay, then,” he agrees.

  A scene from When Tiina met Egreog etches in her mind, a tableau of sorts. So innocent, yet her mind replays it over and over again in the coming months—him watching her watch the rain.

  “That was innocent, right?” she asked herself many times. Then why does it bother me so much?

  Later that night, waving to the few people she recognises at the Wanch, Tiina walks to where the regulars are chatting.

  The music changes to a tango and an elaborately dressed middle-aged, intergalactic couple strides onto the floor, taking the first tango stance. The man is human enough, but his female partner is arresting to the eyes. Extraordinarily beautiful, she is of mixed extraterrestrial race. Long, perfect deer legs end in elegant hooves, doe-shaped eyes skim the room, and she has a pointed head with blue hair that cascades down her back, almost to her feet.

  Tiina follows them across the floor until Egreog catches her attention. He goes to the end of the long chrome bench on which she is seated and, to her amusement, asks the four people between them to get up. He squeezes in next to her, his face shining with pleasure.

  “Hi,” he says. “How are you?”

  “Fine. You?”
r />   “A little tired. So, what did you do today?”

  “Well I bought these new dancing shoes.” She holds out her feet for his inspection.

  “I liked the sneakers you wore this morning.”

  “Sneakers? Does anyone call them that anymore?”

  “The short cut-off trousers, too.”

  “They were not cut-offs!”

  “I could see your ankles.”

  The comment feels intimate coming from him. It wasn’t as if he saw me naked. A blush rises into her cheeks, and she is embarrassed at how her thoughts race so far ahead. “Did you like what you saw?”

  “I liked that you put out your hand to feel the raindrops and then started talking to yourself.”

  Tiina is speechless, like she had been caught in the act of making love to herself.

  “I was in a transporter going down to the other end of the city. As we passed Hollywood Road, I remembered you saying that you lived there, and then there you were, walking along not four feet away.” Egreog stares into her eyes. “Do you know the odds of that happening?”

  She shrugs, trying not to show how moved she is by the coincidence. “So that’s why you laughed?”

  Just then, the music goes up a notch to the much faster salsa beat, and Egreog puts out his hand. “Shall we?”

  The unerring precision of being caught in that act by him sends goose pimples up her arms. She plays it out in her mind, examining it from different angles. Every bit of attention he gives her sends her heart racing.

  So why does it disturb me so much?

  Because I feel like I am cheating on Yudi. I don’t even know if he is still alive, and anyway I’ll probably live to be sixty. So will I only sleep with one person my entire life?

  With a shrug, she wonders why that still does not ease her conscience.

  Face it; you still have feelings for him.

  Yes, but it’s not like we promised each other anything.

  Didn’t you?

  About to burst with the war of emotions going on inside her, Tiina comes back to the present and decides to focus on the live band on the small stage at the front of the bar. The Wanch is one of the few places in the city that still hosts live bands; most of the other places prefer to play music electronically mixed by DJs. There are other places, which boast holographic bands and piped-in music, but she much prefers the real thing. It is another reason she loves this bar so much.

  The Wanch is named after Wanchai, the most hedonistic of all the suburbs on Java. It displays peepshows, nudes, and neon’s. Various bars with names like The Groovy Mule and Joe Bananas serve liquor and drinks from all over the universe. One can find women with blue eye shadow, unshaven armpits, and greasy, shiny hair. Often, shuffling intergalactic sailors fresh off the spaceships, crew-cut and clean shaven, float in groups, sniffing hopefully for one-night stands. Others from galaxies unknown shuffle in anyway, own-country rejects with fifteen-year-old nubile humans on their arms.

  She often had to remind herself that the place she calls home is also on the edge of the galaxy. It is located beyond Pluto, even beyond Ka Surya, which many think is the last planet in the solar system. It is only the more frequent intergalactic travellers who know of this small planet-city, the last outpost before one crosses over to the other systems. While the new government has very strict rules, they are pragmatic enough to encourage commerce. They play its geographical location to their advantage. It is the first inhabited space that weary travellers reached when they come in from the long galactic journeys.

  So they had constructed it as the equivalent of space Sin City. They were smart enough to limit the hedonistic activities to a few of the outer suburbs likes Wanchai, but Java is so small that Tiina can get from her apartment in Central to Wanchai in less than half an hour in her space taxi.

  The enjoyment here has a touch of desperation to it. Despite its seamier side, Java suits Tiina just fine. There is enough commerce to earn her living, yet the floating population gives her anonymity.

  The passenger ship from Ka Surya had deposited her on Java eight years earlier. Since then she had used her wits and common sense to survive on the streets. Most of her first few months on Java were spent sleeping on the streets and in the alleys. It was just her luck that she had landed in the middle of a hard winter on Java. One night, she had crawled out into the warmth of the Wanch and had begged and pleaded with the owner until he had relented. He gave her a job cleaning up the place and a small room over the bar. In a few years’ time she was bartending.

  The year she had turned thirteen, she was approached by Hector. He was in his mid-thirties, looked strong, and seemed to be a warrior of sorts, for he carried an enormous sword on his back. Yet he told her he was a magician by profession, performing at shows, fairgrounds, and gatherings for the well-to-do citizens of Java. He had been entranced by her budding beauty, her devil-may-care attitude, and she had played along. So, when he asked her to be his muse and play a leading role in his illusions, she accepted. Soon he became her mentor and her guardian. Hector taught her to use the sword, training her every day, pushing her until she was as skilled as him at using the weapon. From him she also learnt to play the crowds, to use illusion to connect with people’s emotions, to bend them to her will, to give them hope and create just enough fear to make life interesting, and help them realise their dreams. Yet it had not been enough. Nothing would fill that empty space inside her, and so she had sought comfort in the familiar and had gone back to bartending at the Wanch and to her old room.

  She had not felt guilty about Hector liking her; in fact she had even encouraged him. It seemed harmless. It was as if through me he had wanted to relive his childhood. No, she had not felt guilty in the least about leading him on. Her practical nature dictated that she do what was needed to survive. It was different with Egreog. With him, she felt a stirring of emotion that she thought was buried a long time ago. Not since Yudi had she endured this kind of emotion. The pull scared her, and she was dangerously close to finally moving on from him, too.

  12

  As the night wears on, Tiina realises that she does not want to leave him. Dancing for four hours straight is not enough. They kiss on the dance floor and walk to her apartment and make love.

  Tiina turns to look at Egreog, his head on the pillow next to hers. Perhaps I can trust again.

  He opens his eyes. “Is this real?” Then he pulls her lustrous locks away from her heart shaped face and runs his right palm over her olive brown skin.

  She gazes at him and places her hand over his.

  They are on her bed, which is so narrow that the only way they can both fit is by spooning. As they lie facing each other, their noses almost touch. The cool wind blowing in through the open windows raises goose bumps on the curve of her back.

  “Is that real?” Tiina asks back. “Your name?”

  He laughs and rolls over her, his elbows balancing on either side of her chest, the length of his legs touching hers all the way down to her feet. The smell of his skin cocoons her and she sighs, already missing him though he has not yet left.

  Exotic, he is tall, almost six feet, with well-defined chest and stomach muscles. He is much lighter in colour, almost yellow in comparison to her darker tone, with a round face and high cheekbones pointing to jet black eyes, which narrow at the sides.

  “Close your eyes.”

  His fingers flutter her eyelids down and she sleeps. In her dreams, she is pulled into a vortex of images. In another life, in another place she does not recognise, she sees Egreog with blonde hair. She has long blonde hair, too, and they live in a lush green countryside. They laugh, making love by the fire, running through the forest. And then he leaves her and dies in battle and she marries his brother.

  It doesn’t end there. The dreams take her into the lifetime after that. The place she recognises as India, near the Taj Mahal. Now she is his mistress, his secret desire in the grand Hawa Mahal palace. He lavishes turquoise jewels and rose petal silks on
her. The attraction between them becomes so strong that he could not stand it if any other person dares look at her. So he builds her a special palace where he keeps her hidden from the eyes of the world. All of it ends when she hurls herself onto his funeral pyre.

  In this lifetime, they are finally together, or perhaps not. The question echoes in her mind, the fear of losing him grips her, and Tiina’s eyes snap open.

  The place next to her is empty and she jumps out to find Egreog sitting just outside the door of the bedroom on the floor, naked, his hands around his legs and his head bent over.

  “Is it true?” She dares not touch him just yet. “All that you showed me. Is it?”

  “You saw it all. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the doubts, then?”

  She hangs her head. “It feels right. But…I belong to someone else. I met him before I came to Java. And sometimes…I can’t even see his face clearly anymore. But in my heart I know it’s not over, I know he is waiting for me. What you just showed me now, though… A part of me wants to believe it, for it is true, right?”

  “You felt it. Didn’t it seem real enough?” he snaps at her.

  Tiina’s voice breaks. “The pain.” As she remembers the gut-wrenching agony of separation lifetime after lifetime, her face twists into a grimace. It’s not time for them to be together yet.

  Egreog holds his arms open before closing them around her. “I could fall in love with you again so easily.”

  “Make love to me,” she pleads.

  “I would be lost then. I could not return.”

  “Just once more?”

  He kisses her slowly, absorbing her lips.

  “Give me this time, at least…,” she begs, swallowing her pride. Then for some reason, is compelled to ask, “Who are you?”

  “You know who I am. Just believe it.” He gets up to put on his clothes, and once dressed, walks toward the door of her apartment.

  Desperate, she casts about in her mind for something, anything that could make him stay longer. Then, “Wait!”