by Scott Duff
“I don’t know,” I said, “Are there breaks in the range of your hearing? Can you tell which words?”
“Pixies hear as well as humans,” he said, “A little higher usually. And the words seem to be those referring to Masters Kieran and Ethan. Perhaps their True Names, which I understand keeping from me as names have power, but the method of concealment is interesting. It feels as though the entirety of my being is vibrating against it. It is most peculiar.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a very good answer for that question,” I said, picking up the pizza and heading for the den.
“Are you really as young as you seem?” Shrank asked me, flying backward before me.
“I’m seventeen,” I answered, shrugging, putting the pizza on the coffee table. Ethan jumped for another slice, then laid the bolts out evenly in front of him. “In American terms, I’d be in my last year of High School or first year of college.”
Kieran added, “Two hundred years ago, he’d be having his third child and languishing in a field plowing, or fulfilling his journeyman requirements to some master of a craft.”
“Even at his power level?” Shrank asked Kieran, who nodded and took another slice off the plate.
“My power level?” I repeated, questioning the pixie.
“Yes, sir,” the pixie answered eagerly, swirling around in the air. “Your aura is quite bright.” Huh. Kieran said that earlier.
A slight breeze wafted through the den and Ethan started dropping the bolts back into the quiver. I watched as he snapped the crossbow across the top, encasing the bolts. It made a neat carrying case in dark wood and forest green. Shoveling pizza in his mouth, Ethan handed me the quiver by the strap and motioned for me to throw it over my shoulder like a backpack.
“So much for you not eating,” I said, grinning and taking the offered strap, slinging it over my shoulder. I felt its weight hit my back and slide into my chest and up my neck. Looking into the cavern, I could see the crossbow leaning against the front of the marble slab as if placed there quite casually. The quiver sat open beside it, the bolts easily seen and made of various things. Some shone green like saplings, others white as bone, one bolt was black so deep I wanted to fall into it. A crimson flash of fire announced a Sword desired my attention, the white and ebony on my left. It was in my left hand, physically thrumming and glowing red. It was telling me something.
I turned to Ethan for help. He was finishing his pizza, watching me fumble with the Sword. “Do you tell me what’s going on or do I start swinging this thing at you?”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, licking his fingers. “That is the Sword of the Night. The Twin of Magic. Born of the bone of Dragon and the concept of pure ebony Night. It can cleave through the mightiest of defenses and absorb to re-cast countless and powerful spells.” He stopped and cleaned up with a napkin, still watching me keenly. “At least, that’s its reputation,” he continued, grinning, nodding in Kieran’s direction, “you saw how easily he got past it.”
The Sword dimmed its light while I stared at it dumbly. It was telling me something. I felt different now and it had stopped making noise. I was looking at the Bolts when it started. The Sword absorbs spells. So, look at the Bolts again. There, I caught it this time. The black one was a spelled Bolt. There were several spelled Bolts in the Quiver I could see now though I couldn’t tell what they did. The Sword was telling me that magic was being cast on me. That could be very useful. I wondered how sensitive it would be.
“Was it making noise or was that in my head?” I asked, moving the Sword to my right hand. Remembering the feeling of the Sword moving up my arm, I pictured the scabbard next to the marble slab and imagined its weight moving down my arm into my hand. “This is so cool,” I said as I sheathed the Sword when the scabbard appeared in my hand. I grinned at Ethan who was still watching, head cocked to the right. I sent the Night Sword back to its place beside the marble and sat down on the couch.
“I didn’t hear anything, so I guess it was in your head,” he said, then asked, “What happened?”
“Apparently, I got hit by one of the spelled Bolts in the Quiver,” I said, leaning back on the couch, stretching, proud of myself that I figured it out on my own. And how to move them in and out of the cave in my head. Ha! “The Night Sword took affront at that.”
The washer chimed dully from the laundry room and I slowly pulled myself up off the couch. “Come on, the both of you. You’re gonna learn how to do this for yourselves.”
I picked up a pile off the floor and we made our way to the laundry room. As I explained how to set the washer, I noticed Shrank was perched on Ethan’s shoulder. Odd only because until then he’d stayed at least five feet away from Ethan, I wondered what had changed but got distracted when Kieran asked about the instructions on the laundry detergent box being different from what I’d told them. It led to a complicated discussion of septic tanks versus sewer systems and phosphorus. In the end I just looked at him and said, “Now you know how I felt when you took me for the stroll through the woods a few nights ago,” and started the washer.
Back in the den, Kieran and I started gathering the trash while Ethan sat cross-legged in the floor eating the last piece of pizza. Shrank stood directly in front of Ethan, fidgeting but not saying anything. Through the ward, my perception of Ethan had dulled considerably, though Kieran and Shrank remained the same. I took this to mean Ethan had released his connection to magic, but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to ask. Both Kieran and I kept glancing over at the two as we cleaned up. When I came back from taking the trash to the garage, the scene hadn’t changed.
Ethan looked up at me as I came through the doorway, shrugged and leaned forward toward the pixie. He twiddled his fingers a little at Shrank. I felt the pulse of his power through the ward and saw golden bands around Shrank flex and shudder in answer to him. Ethan twisted his fingers and the bands grew larger and slipped over Shrank’s head into the air. There were three of them in all. He closed his hand, letting his power ebb, and took the last bite of pizza, sitting back on his elbows. The three bands collapsed in on themselves as if they hadn’t existed.
Shrank, though, doubled in size. He was walking in circles, drunkenly, giggling. Then he took to the air, toward me. He hit the back cushion of the couch and gave another raucous chorus of high giggles as he slid down and tried to stand again. Kieran peered over the back of the couch at him, grinning.
“What would the Queen say about such behavior?” he asked mildly.
“Let her talk! The Bitch!” Shrank shouted and jumped into the air. All three of us smiled at him as he wove through the air in drunken aerobatics. After five minutes, he was much better in flight and landed on the floor in front of Ethan.
“Thank you, sir. I have never been free of geas,” he said, bowing deeply, though it was still hard to see the now four-inch pixie, “And might I add you scare the crap out of me by being able to do that so easily.”
I knew that feeling well.
“That being said,” I said, “Y’all will excuse me, but I have some work to do. Entertain yourselves. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” My office. The first time I’d said it that way, I realized. Before it was the office or Dad’s office. Now it was my office. As I walked in, I wondered if that meant I’d somehow accepted that I wouldn’t see them again. I clamped down hard on my emotions at that thought. Even if it was true, it wasn’t going to help right now. I needed intelligence, not emotion.
The desk was mostly empty so I sorted through the papers in the safe. All of it revolved around me, nothing about my parents. Turns out I’m fairly wealthy, I guess. Not that I verified any of the stocks and bond values. I could live comfortably for awhile on the stacks of cash alone. There were land deeds, too, including this property. There wasn’t anything there, though, that interested me. Curious that you can find yourself rich and not give a damn. I’m sure it’s something only the rich can feel, but money is not what I wanted or needed right
now.
Shrank flew in the room after an hour and a half, asking if I needed anything. Depressed as I surveyed the papers laid out on the desk, I glanced up at Shrank in the doorway and noticed the bookcase nearest the door glowed with a faint yellow tint. I got up and walked to the case, squinting at it closely. The top three shelves had a yellow shimmer to them that none of the others had.
“Shrank,” I asked the pixie as he hovered in the doorway, “do you see anything in the bookcase?”
“No, sir,” he said, swinging around me to inspect the shelves, “but the top is a façade so there might be something underneath.”
That threw me for a loop. A façade?
“So there might be a catch somewhere that’ll open it, right?” I asked him.
“Yep, but it’s probably a lot more complicated than that,” he squeaked, flying up to the second shelf and jumping on it repeatedly. “See? It feels real. Façade, not glamour.”
“Would you get Kieran for me please?” I hoped he would know more about these things. How Dad would hide them maybe. I pushed lightly all around on the shelf below hoping something obvious would show, gently moving books back and forth. Kieran stepped quietly into the room behind me and examined the shelves as I poked and prodded everything. I moved to the next shelf down, methodically trying every item there, pushing the sides and back, too. I turned back to Kieran to see him staring at the shelves with a glazed look.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
“I think Father does absolutely beautiful work,” he said smiling. “This is an oubliette under a façade. Most likely an even exchange of space but not necessarily. The question is how do we unlock it?”
“Can we break in?” I asked him.
“Yes, I can easily break the lock,” he said, crossing his arms resolutely, grinning broadly. “Then we would never find the opening. That’s the genius of trap doors, these oubliettes. And he hid it so well! I’ve been in here three times and didn’t see this. Are there others in the room?”
“You’re asking me?” I said in disbelief, looking around the room. “Remember? I’m Seth, the one who doesn’t know anything.”
Something must have happened on the bookcase behind me because Kieran straightened and came closer. I turned back to it again to see whatever he was seeing. It looked the same to me. “Say that again,” he said.
“Say what again?” I asked.
“Your name, say your name to the bookcase,” he said. His eyes glazed over again.
“Seth McClure,” I said tentatively, feeling a bit foolish talking to furnishings. When I did, the tint changed colors to a more solid green. I don’t know why I did it, but I reached over to the shelves and rather easily pushed them upward. The top three shelves collapsed into nothing revealing two more shelves as they rolled rather effortlessly up,. I sat down in the floor to examine the contents.
“See? Beautiful work. Your name spoken by you as the password,” Kieran said with pride as he sat down beside me. Yeah, Dad was good at everything. And I was his biggest failure, best shoved in a hole and forgotten.
“The top shelf looks like financial records,” I said, pushing those thoughts back. “I don’t know what the second shelf is at all.”
“Grimoires, mostly. Some histories, from the spines,” said Kieran, sliding a book out. “Picture albums. Is this your mother?”
“Yes,” I answered, looking at the page he held open. It was the only picture on the page: a black-and-white photograph of the two of them dancing at a formal ball somewhere in Europe. Mother’s face was bright and lively in the picture and the dress showed her figure well. Dad’s back was turned in the dance at that moment so you couldn’t see his face at all, but it was definitely him. “That was from the night they met. She talked about that night often to me. She said it was quite magical. She felt like Cinderella at the ball, very Disney-esque.”
A dark thought occurred to me. Could Dad have spelled my mother?
“Don’t even consider it,” said Kieran, turning the page in the album. “Father wouldn’t do that and your mother was quite well protected already. See here and here?” He pointed to two pictures on the next page, at a bracelet my mother wore often, a simple silver chain on her left wrist. I nodded to Kieran. “It’s the wrong style for her, a little too big, and she wears it often. I’d bet it’s a ward, like the Stone you’re holding, though considerably less powerful than that. I’d bet she could hold her own against him in the subtler arts.” There was mischief in his grin and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. They were my parents, after all.
Kieran and I spent a long time looking through the three photo albums Dad had stashed. The first one was all Mom and their courtship up to the wedding. The second was Mom after the wedding through me to about five years old. I suppose it was pretty unremarkable as family albums go with the requisite naked baby running through the sprinkler pictures and all. It was very calming and centering for me, though, introducing Kieran to my life through those pictures. Basically inviting him into my family, bonding with him.
The third album was all about me. It started with a birth announcement in calligraphy in gold ink. The next four pages appeared to be the same in different languages, at least they had the same form. Birth Certificate, newspaper announcements, then some baby pictures. When the pictures changed to instant camera pictures it got a bit more interesting.
“Precocious tot, weren’t you?” murmured Kieran looking closely at one on the ninth page, amused. The picture was of me in a diaper tipping a table, knocking a bottle off, with Dad in the background reaching toward the bottle with a panicked look on his face.
“What? I don’t see anything,” I said, looking closely.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, grinning at me and pointing at the picture.
“It’s me knocking a table to get a bottle off,” I said. It looked fairly obvious.
“So you knocked the table?” he asked. Accepting a nod from me, he asked, “Then why isn’t the lamp beside it shifted at all? And wouldn’t this magazine be moved at all? And doesn’t the bottle look more like it’s rising off the table a touch and not falling?”
“I suppose…” I hedged on that.
“Don’t like nutcrackers, I see,” he said, chuckling and tapping the next picture. It was of me in footed pajamas sitting beside Mom in front of a Christmas tree. In the background were four or five painted nutcrackers broken in several pieces lying against the wall. There were other decorations that looked untouched.
“Why are you blaming me for that?” I asked, laughing, “We have no idea what happened there. I’m what? A year, year and a half there?”
“This album is all about you,” he said stretching out on the floor. “If that’s the picture Father chose to take, then you were the cause. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left them there.”
The next picture was Dad and me standing beside a fishpond. I think it was at the Savannah house. I was just a toddler looking up at Dad with a huge grin, pointing to a small fish that looked caught on a line. Dad was in profile looking at the fish, too. He held a pole but it was slung over his shoulder. There were no visible means for support for the fish. I glanced over at Kieran. He just looked back with raised eyebrows and a smile.
There were five pages of pictures like that, where there was something just a little bit off. Either Mom or Dad were close by, so I assume the other was operating the camera. Seventeen pictures in all. When we saw the picture with the cartoon character and Mom looking very disturbed at me, Kieran sat up. I looked about three, maybe; I didn’t have anything to judge by. It was a cute picture and I wondered how they’d done it. The pictures with the puppets from children’s shows weren’t hard to figure out for me, but Kieran still examined each one closely.
We came to the last one in the album. A single picture of me holding something that resembled a stuffed teddy bear with Mom pointing to something off camera. The background looked like some kind of waterfall of oils of diff
erent colors. Kieran turned to page to find notes scrawled in Dad’s handwriting, legibly but small, in a language I didn’t know, so it wasn’t in Latin, English, or Spanish. I also knew enough of several others to at least recognize them. The writing was small enough that Kieran used a finger to keep his place on the page. When he’d gotten through half a page, he asked me to get Ethan. When I got back, he’d finished the first page of notes and was sitting cross-legged with the album in his lap. We sat down in front of him.
He flipped back in the album to the picture of the table and bottle. “Ethan, can you go back in Seth’s memory to this day?” he asked.
“I think so. Being that young, the memories are distorted and difficult to sort and change the perspective on,” he said.
“What was he doing?” Kieran asked, glancing over at me quickly.
“Reaching for his bottle. His Mom and Dad were busy,” he said, dispassionately, cocking his head slightly. He didn’t know where this was going any more than I did.
“Okay, wait here,” said Kieran, sighing and looking around the room. He set the album on the floor with the picture of me and the table showing, then got up. He went to the window and pulled the table there over to Ethan’s side then left the room. He came back a moment later with another table and stacked it on top of the first. He left again and came back with a glass from the kitchen and put it atop the two tables. He eyed the height—Ethan would have to come up off his butt to reach it.
“Get the glass like he got the bottle,” ordered Kieran. Ethan reached both hands out and the glass raised up slightly and flew into his hands. I just stared at my double with my mouth open. Kieran took the glass back and slid the tables back out of the way, leaving the glass on the top table.
“Thank you,” Kieran said, sitting back down in front of us and flipping a few pages to the puppets. “Can you recreate this one?”
Suddenly the room was filled with dancing puppets with no strings. I laughed a little as they danced around us rather aimlessly. Kieran ran his hand through one to show that they weren’t really there, then lost interest in them. Ethan dismissed them a few seconds after that and I felt kind of sad when they disappeared.