Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  I gave him my best skeptical look when he didn’t say anything more right away. “And…”

  “And you can’t unfamiliar me because that would also unsummon me.” He pointed over his shoulder to the place where the lantern had collapsed in on itself. All that was left was an egg-sized globe of shiny black stone like an obsidian ball. “Which would put me inside that.”

  “I don’t understand. You just stuck your head through a rock wall.” I bent and picked up the globe. It felt smooth and heavy and impossibly cold. “Why is this so different?”

  “Because that is a collapsed spirit trap. It’s specifically designed to confine creatures like me and destroy them if they attempt to escape, and setting it off, as we did with the summoning, makes it not one iota less lethal. If you release me from your service, I will return to the trap and I will die.”

  I squeezed the stone as hard as I could. I wanted to crush it, but that was far beyond any strength of mine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Sparx raised one eyebrow. “If I had, would you have summoned me?”

  “Of course not!” I flung the globe across the room.

  “That’s why.” He held up a paw to forestall my speaking further. “I also didn’t tell you that if you got the summoning the tiniest bit wrong I would have died. Or that I wasn’t completely sure that getting it right wouldn’t kill me either.”

  “Sparx, how could you?!?”

  “Kalvan, I’m sorry. But I didn’t tell you any of that because I needed you to get me out, and I needed you calm and focused to do it. That’s because there was one more thing I didn’t tell you. The lantern was unmaking me, which is a fate infinitely worse than death. Death is a doorway. Not one I want to walk through anytime soon, mind, but a doorway nonetheless. It provides a path forward. Where to, I don’t know, but it’s not an end.

  “That is.” He pointed at the fallen stone globe. “I’m not sure how long the unmaking would have taken. Hours? Days? Weeks?” He shrugged. “Certainly no more than a month, and probably much less. The lantern was designed to house a powerful spirit of fire. Me, as I am now, summoned and whole. Not me as I was two minutes ago, half one thing and half another, with most of my abilities missing in action. Not me as I have been since that day when your accident with the light switch bound me into a weak shadow of myself trapped at your side.”

  I looked down at the ground, unable to meet his eyes. “I … I didn’t know. That was never what I wanted. I didn’t … I wouldn’t…”

  “I know that you had no intention of trapping me so, and I forgive you for it now, though I was angry enough to have roasted you over a slow fire in those first few days. It’s not your fault that Fate or Luck decided we must become partners, and I don’t blame you for it. In fact, I’m not even particularly angry at whatever power arranged it anymore. I’ve come to like you far too much for that.”

  I retrieved the ball and held it out to him, still reluctant to meet his eyes. “Is there any way we can fix this?”

  “It’s worth hanging on to, but I don’t really know. Certainly not this side of whatever is to come between you and your stepfather. After that … maybe. If not, I’ve already had a very long run.”

  That made me look at him. “What do you mean?!?”

  “My life is now tied to yours. I can only remain your familiar as long as you are alive to be my sorcerer, and when you are gone I will return to the stone. Now, don’t give me that look. You’re young yet, and that door is still some way off. Besides, the horse might learn to sing.”

  “What?”

  The hare sighed. “It’s an old story. A man was sentenced to death by an angry king. When the time came for his execution, the man cried out to the king: ‘Stop! If you spare my life and give me one year, I will teach your favorite horse to sing.’ The king held up a hand to halt the executioner. ‘Let him go. I would like to see this singing horse. If he fails you may have his head one year from today.’”

  Sparx continued. “Later, the executioner went to the prisoner in the stables and asked him how he would teach the horse to sing. The prisoner just shrugged and shook his head. Surprised, the executioner asked him why he had made the promise. The prisoner’s answer: ‘A year is a long time, and much can happen. I might die, in which case it won’t matter to me. The king might die, and his successor might spare me. Or, you never know, the horse might learn to sing.’”

  “Where there’s life there’s hope?”

  The hare nodded. “More or less. Now, let’s get out of here.”

  “How?”

  Sparx chuckled. “No idea. The lantern was my executioner and you were the horse.”

  “You’re not serious?” I was aghast. “You really have no idea?”

  “Hey, I can only teach one horse to sing at a time.”

  17

  Red Rabbit Rising

  “WHAT HAVE I got in my pockets?”

  Sparx nodded. “That’s what I asked, yes.”

  “Not much.” I pulled out my wallet, a few coins, some string, a comb, and the little LED flashlight I’d tucked in there after turning the lights on in Oscar’s basement studio. “Oh, and these.” My keys landed on the pile.

  “Disappointing.” The flames dancing through Sparx’s fur dimmed slightly, making it harder to see anything.

  “You were hoping for a pickax?”

  “That would have been nice, yes. I guess we’ll just have to make do.”

  “You’re not seriously suggesting that I dig my way through a foot of sandstone with a plastic comb and my keys, are you?”

  Sparx had scouted around and found a narrow passage through the stone that passed within a foot or so of the back wall of our little cell. One that didn’t have any guards in it at the moment. He shrugged now.

  “You are suggesting that?” I asked.

  “Yes. No. Sort of.”

  “Oh, that’s very clear, Sparx.”

  He poked at the items with a paw. “I think it can be done. It will require magic, of course, and thumbs. Which is where you come in.” He held up his paws. “It’s really the main thing you folks are good for.”

  “Why do I suspect that the digging part is going to be all on the thumb-monkey, too?”

  Sparx smiled evilly. “Because you’re brighter than you look? I mean, you’d have to be, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, very funny. What do I need to do first?”

  “Do you think your key ring will fit over the shaft of the flashlight?”

  It did, but only barely—the keys stuck out from the ring at a sharp angle. “Next?”

  “You’re going to take the comb in your hand and use your heart’s fire to melt it around the flashlight where the key ring is and fuse the two together.”

  “Won’t the plastic just catch fire and burn away completely? Not to mention burning me?”

  Sparx shook his head. “Not if you do it right.”

  “So, don’t screw up?”

  “Exactly!” He grinned. “As I keep telling you: Control, my child; it’s all about control.”

  “You know, you are not one bit more helpful as a true familiar than you were as a half-summoned one.”

  “Whatever made you think it would work any other way? The k*tsathsha”—and here Sparx pointed at his chest—“are spirits of mischief every bit as much as they are of fire. Everyone knows that.”

  “I didn’t.” I gave him the hairy eyeball.

  “You’ve never heard the tale of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch?”

  I blinked. “Uh … well, actually I have heard that one.”

  He nodded. “Ever seen that movie Harvey?”

  Dim memories of watching ancient movies on cable with my mom dredged themselves up in the back of my mind. “Something about a giant invisible rabbit?”

  “He was actually a fire hare pretending at being a rabbit, but yes, that’s the one. My kind are tricksters. Capricious, changeable, occasionally malicious.” He threw himself into my lap, landing on his back wi
th his paws in the air. “And now, ALL YOURS. Aren’t you lucky?”

  “The luckiest.” I dumped him back onto the floor.

  “Was that sarcasm?” he asked. “I think that was sarcasm.”

  I touched the tip of his nose. “Not only mischievous, but perceptive as well. You are good. That makes me twice as lucky, right?”

  “Just melt the comb, kid.” So I did. “Not bad, Accursed Master mine. Not bad at all. Now for the tricky bit.”

  I resisted the urge to swear. I’d already had to blow out the burning comb twice. I was covered in sweat and soot and had a blistered thumb to match my bloody one—a bit of molten plastic had landed on the hand I wasn’t using to channel fire and stuck like red-hot glue. And we hadn’t even gotten to the tricky part?

  “Go on,” I said.

  “You know how smiths use fire to harden the steel in swords and other weapons?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded cautiously. “Or at least I’ve seen it in movies and read about it. Is that what we’re doing?”

  “Not at all, but the end result is very similar.”

  This time I did swear. Some time later my improvised tool had acquired several flame-tinged ideograms and a flickering sheen visible only to those with the second sight.

  I held it up. “That has to be the ugliest magic item I’ve ever seen.”

  “That’s because you’ve only ever seen the kind they put in video games and movies. Bangles and baubles for the rubes. Real magic makes do with what it can get. Why, I remember one Accursed Master I had back in the eighteen hundreds who turned a washboard into an enchanted shield and a half-rotten broom into a spear.”

  “Really?”

  “Would I lie to you?” Sparx blinked his big eyes innocently.

  “I’m pretty sure the answer to that is yes, but I’m not going to press the point. So, where do I dig?”

  Sparx led me to the far wall and hopped up to touch a spot about three feet off the floor. “There.”

  I gingerly pressed the tips of the keys against the sandstone, more than half expecting the whole thing to come apart in my hand the second I applied any pressure. Much to my surprise, the points sank easily into the stone, and when I levered back with the flashlight handle a piece of rock about the size of a plum fell free.

  Sparx drew a sharp breath. “Holy crap, it works.”

  “You didn’t think it would?”

  “I hoped … but, well, I didn’t expect results like that.” He looked momentarily troubled, but then shook his head and waved both paws at me. “Never mind. Keep going, but put the lanyard around your wrist; you don’t want to drop the digger when you break through into the passage.”

  It wasn’t like digging through dirt—too brittle. But neither was it anything like as hard as carving sandstone should have been. More like breaking up one of those horrible little white cookie-like monstrosities that are always the last thing anyone eats at Christmas, all powdery and chalky and friable. The ones your mother only makes because her grandmother loved them and she thinks the holidays wouldn’t be the same without them staring palely up at you from the cookie plate.

  Five minutes later, my little digger broke through into … “Are you crazy, Sparx?!”

  “What? It leads up toward the surface.”

  “STRAIGHT up! That’s not a passage, that’s…” I stuck my head into the hole again and looked down this time. “It’s a bottomless pit, is what it is.”

  Sparx shook his head. “It’s not bottomless. We’re really close to the river here; you wouldn’t fall more than forty feet before you hit water. At the most.”

  “Oh, good, so I’d drown after I went splat. That’s very reassuring.”

  “You’re not going to go splat or drown.” Sparx rolled his eyes. “The walls of the shaft are barely more than two feet apart. Just brace your back on one side and your hands and feet on the other and climb it like you would a door frame. I’ve seen you do it often enough in your closet when you wanted to get something off that top shelf.”

  “Which is less than six feet off the ground and brightly lit!”

  “The principle is exactly the same; I don’t understand what you’re whining about.”

  “The only principle that matters is that if I slip and fall in my room I’ll land on my butt and be embarrassed, and if do it here, I’ll fall to my death.”

  “Well, if you want to stay here until the delvers come in and find me loose from the lamp and you digging holes in the walls, you’re the boss. But I don’t think that Oscar will be nearly as gentle with us a second time around, do you? And he was already planning on feeding your flesh to the delvers and using your bones to make a golem if he couldn’t simply destroy your will and take over your soul.”

  I winced. “There’s no other way out?”

  “Well, there’s the way we came in, which leads past the guards and through the delver village out there. Or you could just keep digging until we’re clear. I imagine that would only take a week or three. How long did Oscar say he thought it would take to figure out whether he could break you or not? A few days?”

  Swearing again, I wedged myself into the hole and started worming my way into the vertical shaft. “Where does this go, anyway?”

  Sparx climbed onto my shoulder, providing me with a flickering red light. “Up.”

  “Very helpful. I never would have figured that part out as I was climbing.” I shifted my hand up to grope around for a new grip—as I got higher in the shaft, I was finding bits of other kinds of rock in the sandstone, making it an easier climb. “I mean after that.”

  “I imagine we’ll find out when we get there.”

  I gave him a sidewise glance. “Why do I think you know exactly where it goes, and it’s going to lead to another horse that needs to learn to sing?”

  “Because you have a nasty and suspicious mind.”

  “I didn’t used to. I used to be all sweetness and light. But then I met this flaming rabbit with an infectiously bad attitude and a very loose relationship with the truth.”

  One of my feet slipped then and I had to suppress the urge to scream as I smacked the back of my head against the wall. That helped to arrest my slide, but it hurt like nobody’s business because I’d hit one of those other bits of rock pretty hard. It felt sharp against my scalp and I wanted desperately to move my head away from the pain, but I didn’t dare until I got my feet properly braced again. Basically, the rock sticking into the back of my head was the only thing keeping me from falling.

  “How bad is it?” I asked Sparx as I finally started to move upward again.

  “You were lucky, and your hair is soaking up most of the blood.”

  “And that’s lucky?”

  “Less messy, anyway. But that’s not what I meant. I meant you were lucky to catch that rock with your head. I’m pretty sure you’d have fallen to your doom otherwise.”

  “I thought you told me I wasn’t going to go splat or drown,” I growled.

  “I also told you that I lie.”

  “You did no such thing! You said, quote, ‘Would I lie to you?’ unquote.”

  The hare laughed. “What do you think I meant by that?”

  “That, of course, you’d lie to … Oh. Fine. Have it your way.” I had to laugh, too.

  “I usually do. By the way, it’s time to teach the next horse to sing.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Meaning we’re at the top of the shaft and there’s a pretty good-sized plug of dirt overhead. You’ll need to pull it down on top of you without knocking yourself loose or suffocating.”

  I sighed. “Good thing I left the digger hanging from my wrist, then, isn’t it.”

  “Yep, that was the plan. Now, you start hacking away on this side, and I’m going to go up top and start digging down to meet you. Hares are excellent tunnelers, you know.”

  “Yeah, I read Watership Down.”

  Sparx hopped off my shoulder and vanished into the stone wall to my left. The next fe
w minutes were hellish. With the hare gone, I was in complete darkness. My legs and arms were already sore and tired from the climb, and now I had to hold myself in place entirely with my back and feet. Wedging my toes against one of the protruding rocks helped, but my calves and thighs were burning and starting to get shaky. Once I started digging into the soft soil above me, the shaft quickly filled with a cloud of dust that choked me and got in my eyes.

  It wasn’t just earth plugging the shaft above, either. Rocks and sticks bounced off my head and shoulders as I pried them free. Clods of dirt did the same, or broke up to slide into my shirt along with some of the smaller stones. I was pretty sure I was collecting a few hibernating bugs and worms as well. But I did finally break through to meet Sparx coming down from the top. Five seconds later, I was climbing again when about a cubic yard of snow from the dense cover above fell in on me. That was the point where I simply had to laugh. It was that or start crying, and I didn’t know if I’d stop if I started.

  Sparx gave me a funny look as I pushed my way out into the bright winter sunlight. “You okay, kid?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m dandy. Never better. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wanted to make sure that wasn’t the beginning of hysterics. I’ve dealt with a couple of hysterical Accursed Masters in the past, and it can be a challenge. Glad we’re not going there. Speaking of going, that’s what we should be doing now. We want to be far from here when the delvers find us missing. They don’t much like the light, but they can tolerate it, and it won’t last long at this time of year.”

  “All right.” I stood up and then almost fell over again as my right calf cramped. “Ow!” Bending, I rubbed the cramp away. Walking was going to be absolute gangs of fun. “Two questions.”

  “Fire away.” Sparx grinned. “Get it? I’m a fire hare and I said fire away. Laugh. It’s a joke, kid.”

  I snorted. “Not a very good one. First, go where? Second, why am I not freezing to death? I’m knee-deep in snow in only a T-shirt and jeans.” It was one of the first things I’d noticed once we broke through into the outdoors. In Minnesota you learn about warm clothes and not freezing to death really young if you want to get any older.