All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault

by James Alan Gardner

  “How can I contact you?”

  “I’m sure we’ll bump into each other. Soon.” Dakini smiled. Her tendrils retracted from Nicholas’s brain and slithered out of sight.

  “All right,” Nicholas said. He sounded wary but couldn’t figure out why Dakini seemed so smug. “Thank you,” he said. “Good night.”

  He sank through the floor. The brochure went with him, turning as insubstantial as he was. Apparently, Nicholas had an omnimorphic field. Or, since he was a Darkling, it likely had a magicky name: “sympathetic evanescence” or “phantasmal contagion.”

  Losing solidity from being right next to a ghost. I could empathize.

  WE WAITED IN SILENCE FOR AT LEAST TEN SECONDS

  Finally, Aria turned to Dakini. “Well?”

  “He wasn’t easy to read,” Dakini replied. “As if he was barely there.”

  “He was barely there,” Ninety-Nine said. “But I assume you got something, or you wouldn’t have been so cooperative.”

  “I got surface thoughts,” Dakini said. “That brochure was an auction catalog for the Goblin Market.”

  Ninety-Nine said, “Aha!” She tapped the business card, still stapled to the corkboard. The name on the card had reverted to C. G. Rossetti. “Christina Georgina Rossetti,” Ninety-Nine said, “1830 to 1894. English writer who wrote a children’s poem called ‘The Goblin Market.’ Want me to recite it?”

  “Absolutely not,” Aria said.

  “But,” added Dakini, “I’d like to know what the poem was about.”

  “A girl buys magical fruit from a bunch of goblins,” Ninety-Nine said. “She wastes away from eating it and nearly dies, but she’s saved by her sister. The power of love over magic.”

  “Are goblins real?” Aria asked.

  “Probably,” Ninety-Nine said. “The Dark Conversion loves making creatures from myth and folklore. Considering all the stories about goblins, there are bound to be some out there.”

  “But running a market?” Aria said. “Selling fruit? Remember who Darklings are. If they were selling financial derivatives, okay. But fruit?”

  “What about GMO fruit that costs five times as much as normal and gratuitously kills bees?”

  “Better,” Aria said, “but still a stretch. Imagine you’re rich. You spend years learning sorcery to become a hotshot wizard. Are you going to waste your time making apples? Which you sell at a grungy fruit stand tucked between a woman who butchers pigs and a guy who churns his own butter?”

  She had a point. A modern-day goblin would have been a multimillionaire before joining the Dark. Multimillionaires don’t get their hands dirty for small change. They might enjoy making things as a hobby—plenty of wealthy people paint landscapes in their spare time. But that’s only to relax and feel creative, not as a serious career.

  Then again, what about dot-com Darklings? Many techies made fortunes, bought themselves fangs, then wondered what to do next.

  Some refused to change their lifestyles: They still stayed up all night pumping out code. But others had shifted from C++ to sorcery. Magic demanded the same mental gymnastics, but it was even more demanding than high-level hackery.

  Being a wizard made you elite. Whipping up complex magic creations was a way of proving your intellectual superiority. I could imagine a community of sorcerous hackers who made glamours for the glamour. Like the group Anonymous, except with necromancy.

  I grew to Max Zirc size so I could join the conversation. “Look,” I said, “there are plenty of reasons that goblin Darklings might start a magical market. Maybe goblins need to make fruit the same way vampires need blood. Maybe they even do it for the cash; no matter how much they have, some people never can have enough.”

  “If goblins can make wondrous things,” Dakini said, “like Aladdin’s Lamp or the Dagger of Time, that would surely be worth their while. They’d gain status in the eyes of their fellow Darklings, and they could make a great deal of money selling their wares.”

  “Fine,” Aria said, “let’s say there’s a Goblin Market. Why would Popigai have their brochure?”

  Ninety-Nine said, “Because he wants to buy something?”

  “Like what?”

  “How should I know? But if he’s a bad guy, we should stop him getting it.”

  “So we should go to this market?” Dakini asked.

  “Sure,” Ninety-Nine said. “When you were pillaging Wraith’s mind, did you see where it was?”

  “He didn’t know,” Dakini said. “The market is held irregularly, and only for a single night from dusk to dawn. It’s taken place in dozens of sites around the world. However, Wraith suspected that tonight it would be set up in some location where the lunar eclipse reaches totality. An eclipse that occurs on the winter solstice has great occult significance; many Darkling festivities are being held where the eclipse will be seen.”

  “The totality region is a thousand kilometers wide,” Aria said. “A shit-ton of people can see this eclipse—the whole eastern sections of North and South America. There’s no reason to believe this Goblin Market is anywhere near Waterloo. Why not New York? Miami? Rio de Janeiro?”

  “Actually,” Ninety-Nine said, “Rio is too far to the east. They aren’t in the totality region.”

  “Shut up,” Aria explained.

  “Wraith believed the market would be nearby,” Dakini said. “He intended to phone an acquaintance to find the exact location, but he thought it wouldn’t be far.”

  “It’ll be close,” I said. “That’s how this works. Now that we’re entangled in the situation, we won’t discover that the trouble is actually going down in Argentina. This is our problem, and the shit will hit the fan in our backyard.”

  “Why?” Aria demanded. She sounded genuinely angry. “Why assume this will stay in a neat little package? This isn’t a story. There’s nothing that says, ‘It would be convenient if our heroines don’t have to go too far, so that’s how it’s going to be.’ It makes no sense! And don’t give me crap about, ‘That’s how it works.’ If there is some force of Fate trying to pull our strings, the smartest move is to jump off the merry-go-round. Sleeping Beauty should get a shotgun and blast the damned spinning wheel. When something wants you to play its game, you win by saying no.”

  She glared at us all. Silence. Then Ninety-Nine said, “If someone builds a Death Star, you don’t win by saying Death Stars are a stupid waste of resources. You win by blowing the damned thing up. And we’re the only Jedis in town.” She put her hand on Aria’s arm. “If we walk away, the Death Star doesn’t collapse from its own ridiculousness. It does its Death Star thing.”

  “Well, it shouldn’t,” Aria said.

  “I know.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know.”

  “And I hate that we’ll probably end up storming some trumped-up evil stronghold and having a mega-damage fight, as if that’s the only way to solve problems.”

  Ninety-Nine gave Aria’s arm a squeeze. “Picture yourself as Sleeping Beauty. We’re blasting the spinning wheel. Now let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “To the Goblin Market.”

  “You know where it is?”

  Ninety-Nine tapped the side of her head. “I know things.”

  She pried the goblin-faced business card off the corkboard, then headed outside.

  THE UNNATURAL SNOW WAS STILL FALLING

  It was wet aggregate snow: the fluffy kind that sticks on surfaces. It was slowly, gently burying the campus under a stratum of white. Hard edges were vanishing; even though I saw the world lit brightly, I couldn’t tell the exact line of separation between the ring road and its curb. Snow feathered the boundary into a delicate blur.

  The campus and city were being erased. Police would soon be dealing with dozens of accidents. Anyone who had planned to watch the eclipse would have given up and gone to bed.

  The phrase “No witnesses” popped into my mind. Curtains of snow would reduce visibility and muffle sounds. Wh
atever anyone did, no one else would see or hear. It was Canada’s version of a pea-soup fog—silently, it said, “You’re on your own.”

  “WHERE ARE WE GOING?” ARIA ASKED

  “To the Market,” Ninety-Nine replied.

  “I know,” Aria said, “but where?”

  “To. The. Market,” Ninety-Nine repeated.

  “But … oh.” Aria smacked her forehead. “Duh. I can fly there in less than a minute.”

  “No,” Ninety-Nine said. I can’t describe how she said it. Not loud, not commanding, but Aria had been about to zip off and Ninety-Nine’s single word stopped her. The voice of leadership. “You’re faster than the rest of us,” Ninety-Nine told Aria, “but let’s not get in the habit of you zooming ahead on your own without backup.”

  “I can be Aria’s backup,” I said. “I’ll piggyback on her. I’ll be so light, Aria can fly full speed and not even feel I’m there.”

  “We’ll all piggyback,” Dakini said. “I have this figured out.” She gestured to Aria. “Would you hover, please?”

  Aria gave her a look.

  “Please,” Dakini said.

  Looking sour, Aria rose a meter off the ground. “Now what?”

  “Now we hitch a ride.”

  A violet cord reached out from Dakini’s forehead, looping around Aria’s shoulders and under her armpits, rapidly weaving a harness. Another strand emerged, spreading out into a sheet that wrapped Ninety-Nine in a cocoon from chest to knees. “Hey!” Ninety-Nine protested. Clearly, she could feel something enveloping her, but couldn’t see it; apparently, “normal” people didn’t see Dakini’s violet emanations.

  Dakini’s cocoon left Ninety-Nine’s hands free. Ninety-Nine pulled at the rubbery invisible violet, trying to get free. “Stop,” Dakini said. “Don’t make a fuss.” Violet light shimmered down Dakini’s own body, forming a cocoon much like Ninety-Nine’s. Before Dakini tried to wrap me too, I shrank to wasp size and flew to Aria. I crawled into her hair. Somehow that felt less intrusive than clinging to her gown.

  “Are we set?” Dakini asked. I wasn’t going to answer, since my voice would be hypersonic. Then I remembered the rings Grandfather had given us. I focused my thoughts and projected, «I’m good.»

  Ninety-Nine and Dakini looked startled. Ninety-Nine said, “Whoa!”

  “Whoa what?” Aria asked.

  Dakini said, “Zircon is using her communication ring. She was speaking inside our heads.”

  «I have to,» I said. «When I’m small, you can’t hear my real voice.»

  “Aria, stop being paranoid and put on your ring,” Ninety-Nine said. “It’s the only way you’ll hear Zircon. She’s, like, ultra-ultrasonic when she’s shrunk.”

  “I can hear ultra-ultrasonic,” Aria said. “Sound powers, remember?”

  “Oooh,” I said aloud, “nice grab.”

  Aria smiled, so she must have heard me. “I can hear any acoustic frequency,” she announced, just to make sure the Light knew what new power she was claiming.

  “LET’S JET!” NINETY-NINE SAID

  “But please be careful with acceleration,” Dakini put in quickly. “Your powers, dear Aria, no doubt protect you during high-G maneuvers. We may be more vulnerable.”

  “I hope so,” Aria said. “I’m desperate to believe that something still obeys Newton.”

  She headed skyward. The violet strands attached to Dakini and Ninety-Nine snapped taut, but held solid. I caught my breath, wondering if Aria could lift the weight of two additional people. She did it easily. I wondered just how strong Aria was. She probably couldn’t juggle SUVs, but I suspected she was well beyond normal human limits.

  We slowly gained altitude through the falling snow. We gained speed too; within seconds, all I could see was a hurtling blizzard of white. “Dude!” Ninety-Nine yelled over the wind. “Can you even see where you’re going?”

  “Sonar,” Aria said. “And a sense of magnetic direction. Like carrier pigeons.”

  I said, “So your motifs are birds and sounds?”

  “I fly. I have a bird mask. It’s a no-brainer.”

  Aria put on a burst of speed. Ninety-Nine and Dakini clapped their hands over their ears. In the shelter of Aria’s hair I couldn’t feel the wind, but out in the open, the gale must have lashed my teammates like a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  Oh well, I thought, Dakini has a force field. And Ninety-Nine regenerates. They’ll be fine.

  11

  Rifting

  WE FLEW NORTH

  Waterloo’s city limits can be hard or soft. At the hard limits, stores and houses can sit directly across the road from active farmland. At the soft, the city boundaries are only visible when modest three-floor office buildings for tech start-ups give way to hotels and big-box stores. Along Weber and King Streets (which supposedly run parallel, but actually interweave like the snakes on a caduceus), the city’s edge is populated with shops that will fix your motorboat engine or sell you cedar fencing, until suddenly, you get Outside and there’s an eruption of factory outlet stores.

  Then the Market.

  St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market bills itself as Canada’s largest year-round market. Every Thursday and Saturday, it’s full of farmers selling produce, fresh meat, and homemade knickknacks. It’s big, it’s busy, and it smells. New UW students are told it’s an important rite of passage to drag yourself out of bed at 6:30 AM and drive to St. Jacobs “before all the good stuff gets bought.” This is hazing, pure and simple; unsuspecting frosh end up squashed in with hundreds if not thousands of other people, lining up to get preservative-free zucchinis. Through such experiences, they learn the Market’s business plan: three times the price and ten times the hassle for food that goes bad twice as fast.

  (Grandma Lam once came for a visit, so I took her to the Market—it is Waterloo’s foremost tourist attraction. After a glimpse of the hubbub, she dragged me out of the building and said, “Kim, dear, we left China to get away from this sort of thing.”)

  “THIS SORT OF THING” IS INTENTIONALLY RUSTIC

  The Market consists of a big two-story main building, with half a dozen smaller ones surrounding it, plus rows of outdoor stands selling everything from schnitzel to death metal T-shirts. The small buildings were cheaply slapped together with tin roofs and siding, making them ovens in the summer and frighteningly loud in rainstorms. The main building, however, is wood, built from heavy fir timbers specially shipped from British Columbia. After decades of service, the wood is permanently imbued with the scent of raw meat, accented by fresh-grown lavender, onions, and extra old unrefrigerated cheddar.

  Sorry for being so negative. I’ll admit that some vendors have really good pastries; however, I’ve found other sources of pies, and they don’t get you out of bed at zero-dark-thirty, or make you jostle with people who demand that their kale still be flecked with manure.

  Still, the Market might not have been so bad if you could shop at a decent hour without the madding crowd. That made it ideal for the Goblin version.

  AS WE FLEW, I SENT MY SPARK-O-VISION TO SCOUT AHEAD

  My perception didn’t have a hard-and-fast range, but the farther away I projected my viewpoint, the less bright-as-day it got. The focus also went blurry, the way my eyesight used to when I took off my glasses. Beyond a kilometer, my Spark-o-Vision dwindled to nothing; even at half that distance, when I tried to center my sight a long way from where I actually was, I stopped seeing with bright midday clarity. My vision was reduced to true night darkness and I could only discern big things like cars and buildings.

  Speaking of cars, I was surprised by the number in the Market’s parking lot. There were fewer than on a bustling market day, but more than I expected. Did Waterloo really have that many Darklings? Or did the Goblin Market draw shoppers from farther afield? From Toronto … maybe from Michigan and New York state … maybe from all over the world.

  I was about to march into a hive of deadly powerful people while dressed like a blindfolded tap dancer. I thought, My costum
e should be black instead of white. That way, it wouldn’t show as much if I pee myself.

  ARIA SET US DOWN IN THE PARKING LOT

  We landed in the lot’s outermost corner, as far as possible from the buildings. In what she likely thought was a low voice, Aria said, “What now? Just walk in?”

  Ninety-nine held up the goblin business card she’d taken from Popigai’s office. “Let’s show this at the door and see what happens.”

  “They’ll know we’re with the Light,” Aria said. “We’re wearing masks and costumes. And we have”—she lowered her voice for real, as if uttering a dirty word—“Halos. We’re unmistakable.”

  “So what?” Ninety-Nine said. “The Dark won’t be happy to see us, but they’ll think twice about hassling us.”

  “Look at all these cars,” Aria said. “Dozens of Darklings, and only four of us.”

  “This needn’t get adversarial,” Dakini said. “We have an admission ticket.” She plucked the business card from Ninety-nine’s hand. “We don’t have to go in expecting a fight.”

  “Of course we do,” Aria said. “Four Sparks plus a mass of Darklings equals disaster just waiting to happen. We have to be prepared for the worst.”

  I grew to full size so I could join the discussion. “Let me go in first. I can shrink so small they can’t see me, then use my comm ring to tell you what I see. Maybe there won’t be a need for any of you to go inside. I can get in and out without being noticed.”

  Ninety-Nine laughed. “Nice plan. But I bet we end up going in anyway, and eventually, fists’ll fly.” She held up her hands to forestall Aria from protesting. “No, I don’t plan on provoking a fight. Yes, I’ll behave myself: Olympic-level behaving. No, I don’t know what will fuck up our good intentions. But yes, I believe it’ll all end in bruises because the Light and Dark get along like nitro and glycerin.”

  Aria sighed. “So noted. But we can try.” She looked at me. “Nothing but reconnaissance, as small as you can get away with. Do not get into trouble while you’re in there alone.”

  Through my ring, I said, «I’ll stay in contact the whole time.»