Augraman’s Frenetic Hop was only five syllables and a gesture. Masquelayne spoke the sounds, moved his left hand. Again, nothing happened.
“I’ll show you,” Poddlebrim said. He made his hands visible and rippled their fingers as if playing a complex instrument. Immediately, the space between him and Masquelayne was crossed at about waist height by something that resembled a thick cable of scintillating silver, horizontal to the floor. Poddlebrim’s fingers waggled again, and the argent fluxion was intersected at an acute angle by a similar hawser of deepest black.
“Once they’ve been called up,” the small man said, “they simply absorb the energy of any red, blue, green, or yellow fluxions in the vicinity. Especially at an intersection.”
Masquelayne felt a sudden concatenation of emotions, all of them unwelcome. First came the certainty that he had been shown up as a fool. Then came a wave of helplessness, followed by an unbearable shame that this Poddlebrim must surely be looking down on him—when the positions ought to have been reversed. By now, this mudhen of a hedge sorcerer should have been begging for mercy while itching and executing spastic saltations. Instead, he was prattling on about convergences and coherences.
And then through the welter of hateful feelings came a revelation. Masquelayne knew himself to be an accomplished thaumaturge. He had wrought powerful incantations and slung spells against wizards who had more training than he, but lacked the intensity of will that he brought to his work.
And now, here in this ridiculous mud-walled cottage, was an intersection of fluxions whose power was orders of magnitude greater than Masquelayne had ever been able to draw on before. He had but to reach out and touch…
With the thought came the action. Masquelayne focused his will and sent it down into his right hand, spread his fingers in the basic configuration for accessing any fluxion, and touched the silver. He saw Poddlebrim break off his monologue and raise a warning hand, and had just time to think, He doesn’t want me doing this. Well, I’ll show—
At which point a shock of energy went up his arm and flashed throughout his body. He felt his feet leave the floor and had a sense of being pulled into the argent fluxion. He was instantly submerged, as if he were a clod of earth fallen from a cutaway bank into a storm-fed river in full flood. And then like a clod, he dissolved.
All further sense fled from him. Masquelayne was no longer Masquelayne, just a nameless, will-less nothing, being borne along by energies beyond all reckoning, traveling at impossible speed from nowhere to nowhere, never arriving, in constant flow.
It went on forever. And then, as quickly as he had been devoured by the silver fluxion, he was back in his own form again. He found himself standing, naked and shivering, in Poddlebrim’s cottage, his mind empty, his body chilled at its core. Slowly, awareness returned, and he saw signs that some considerable time had passed: the small wizard’s robe was stained and wrinkled, his face was drawn with fatigue, and several days’ worth of stubble had sprouted along his jaw.
“There you are,” Poddlebrim said, “at last.” He came closer and patted the air around Masquelayne, peered into his eyes, and snapped his fingers close to the porches of Masquelayne’s ears. “At least some portion of you. Can you speak?”
“I…I was…” It was a struggle to remember what words were and how to employ them. The effort made him immensely tired.
“Never mind,” said Poddlebrim, “it will come back to you.” He studied Masquelayne a few moments more, then gently led him to a chair and showed him how to sit in it. Masquelayne was still shivering, so Poddlebrim brought a blanket and wrapped him in it.
“I made some leek and fennel soup,” the little man said. “You’d better have some.”
“Soup,” said Masquelayne. The concept eluded him at first, but when he smelled the odor from the wooden bowl Poddlebrim brought him, he remembered what soup was. As the first spoonful of warm broth was brought to his mouth, he rediscovered how to swallow.
“Hmm,” said Poddlebrim, after a few repetitions, “I think you’ll have to stay here for a while.”
“Stay,” Masquelayne repeated. He had a sense that “stay” had something to do with time and lack of motion.
“Yes,” said Poddlebrim. “Until you’re…yourself again.”
“Soup,” said Masquelayne, and opened his mouth.
When the bowl was finished, Poddlebrim took it away, then came back and patted the air around Masquelayne again. “That’s better,” he said. “There’s more of you now. I’m sure the rest will find its way back in a day or so.”
He went to his workbench and flipped through a book that was open there, read a page, then another. “There will be changes, though. If what it says here is correct,” he said, tapping the book, “your being absorbed into the fluxion will have had an omnitemporal effect. That is, every spell you’ve ever cast will have been canceled—it will all be as if it had never happened.”
“Spell,” Masquelayne said. He felt he ought to know that word and struggled to put a meaning to it.
“Rather unfortunate for a wizard,” Poddlebrim was saying. “Still, I’m sure your friends will rally round and help you over the bumps. Several of them have been asking after you.”
“Friends,” Masquelayne said, but found he couldn’t put a meaning to that word at all.
◆ ◆ ◆
Ysabeau S. Wilce was born in California and has followed the drum through Spain and most of its North American colonies. She became a lapsed historian when facts no longer compared favorably to the shining lies of her imagination. Prior to this capitulation, she researched arcane military subjects and presented educational programs on how to boil laundry at several frontier army forts. She is a graduate of Clarion West and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the James Tiptree Award, and won the Andre Norton Award. Her novels include Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog; Flora’s Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room); and Flora’s Fury: How a Girl of Spirit and a Red Dog Confound Their Friends, Astound Their Enemies, and Learn the Importance of Packing Light. Her most recent work, a collection of short stories called Prophecies, Libels & Dreams, was published in 2014. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is very fond of mules.
Here she returns to the fabulous, enchanted city of Califa, for a story about what happens when that famous thief and Bouncing Boy Terror, Jumping Jack, decides that what he needs to steal next is love—a decision with unforeseen consequences that will land him over his head in trouble. And in cake.
◆ ◆ ◆
YSABEAU S. WILCE
Now, my little waffles, you know the story of wee Jack and how his Rapture for Red led him to his heart’s desire: a pair of sparkly sangyn boots, each tipped with a slithery snake’s head. How after buying those boots with the last of his family’s flash, he found that a bargain can be hard indeed when the purchase has a Will of its own. But in his regret Jack realized that lofty leaping can be lucrative and that windows on high are rarely guarded. So Jacko, deciding it better to steal than starve, snatched his family from the jaws of Hunger and together they cozied up to a life of thievery and yummy chow.
Once our Jack started jumping up up up he went, until he reached the very pinnacle of perfidy. In the twilight world of the Prime Coves, among the footpads, flashers, mashers, buncos, sporters, swaddlers, ginglers, ganglers, foodpads, and fencers, Jack was King. His red sparkly heels towered over all the rest, the colossus of crime, the emperor of embezzlement, the…FANCIEST LAD OF THEM ALL. Jack was happy, footloose, fancy-free, and richer than the richest butter, the fattiest cream, the swirl of sugar on top of the birthday donut, the crispest edge of the smokiest bacon.
> And yet…
Here is where what happens next begins.
* * *
—
One tawny morn, my darling dolls, Jacko wakes up with a rustling restless tum. He lies in his five-fathom featherbed and drums his sparkly red heels upon the velvet counterpane (for even in sleep Jack and his boots cannot be parted) trying to reason why. His tummy gurgles but not for grub, despite the splendid smell of sizzling swine, which hangs on the morning air. Ruminating for some time upon this gurgle, Jack finally allows it comes not from his tum, but slightly up and over, another organ entirely. The rest of Jack is toasty warm—his toes snug in sparkles, his ears wrapped in fuzzy flannel, his bod cocooned in softy wool, warm as the spring sun. But his heart—poor throbbing organ—his heart is oh, so very cold.
But why the freeze? Did he not have all there was to be had? Fancy lad and full of boodle. Respect of the other janglers, a lair chock full of fizz and sup, the bestest kind, splendiferous threads, and his name ablaze in all the papers. What more could his greedy heart desire? Don’t be silly, boyo! Casting chill away, Jack lofts from his bed, and heads for bacon, singing, “Tra la, I am the Boy with the Most Cake.”
But the tune is cracked, and so is his voice. Still, he warbles through his toilette, and as he ties his brocade cravat, slings shoulderwise a splendid red leather duster. Dances down the stairs and toward the breakfast room, stopping to snuggle the basket of corgi pups on the stairs. The sun shines through the gauzy curtains, the butterflies on the painted wallpaper flutter in the warmth. A little coffee, a little bacon, some kedgeree will do him the trick.
But looking down the long length of table at the enormous breakfast awaiting him, he realizes what he lacks. Before him is spread a splendiferous feast of delectable viands—the aforementioned bacon, cheefles, dragonfruit galantine, kale smoothie, salmon omasubis, buttered popcorn, toast, and he alone to eat it all.
He is lonely.
The family he saved from hunger had blossomed in Jack’s hothouse thievery and have all gone their own ways. Mamma married a banger from Sacto and opened a bagnio on Joyce Street where she reigns like an empress over red velvet portieres and beveled glass mirrors. The baby what coughed grew into a sharp and lively lass who wears a hat with a cockade and a vivandiere’s uniform with bright gold buttons while she prances the boards of the Palace Theater, smoking a stogie and singing “Once I Was Callow, but Now I Am Gay, Since My Little Sweetheart Stole Your Heart Away” to the roar of smitten stagedoor johnnies. The other mice children, too, have grown up up and away. Now brawny rather than scrawny, they have scattered from their brother’s patronage to make their own ways in the waking World.
So all alone, Jacko sits in his ill-begotten splendor and the morning silence, the thick-cut bacon in his mouth choking him.
If only he had a companion to share his secret sorrows and his secret joys, his hopes and desires, his huge soft bed, his long polished table, and his yummy yummy bacon. If only he had love to keep the dark at bay. But how to find a companion? He chews on this problem along with his cheefle, rolls it around in his mouth with the last swallow of coffee, and continues cogitation while he goes about his day: jumping into the boudoir of the chief justice of Califa and relieving her of such trinkets that keep her dresser top askew, riffling her sock drawer and kipping the silver collar off her snuffling pug-dog while dog and justice snore through the entire caper. A wild rousting bounce over the roofs of Califa filling his boodle sack like a sort of reverse Man in Pink Blooms, stealing gifts instead of leaving them.
He’s still considering the conundrum as he counts the day’s take in his hidden snuggery, and while he distributes his largesse to his constituents that night at the Baile de Zarandeo, held every five days in a place I dare not disclose to you little poodles upon pain of death. (The City jail—what better place to collect felons, and the last place the law would ever consider to look?) No answers come to him at the Baile, but on the bounce home, a sudden solution is jolted loose by the warbling cries of a newspaper boy, shouting out an advertisement for Madam Twanky’s Sel-R-Salt, in between the call of the headlines.
How does one find anything—a plumber, a lost dog, a new dog?
An advertisement, of course.
So Jack constructs a compelling advertisement and places it in the SEEKING section of the Califa Police Gazette and Fancy Pantaloon Quarterly. “A gent of passion seeks real tomato for long walks on the beach, moonlight dining, Scrabble, and happily ever after. No cranks, bubblers, mechanics, or flash coves.”
Overnight, his numbered mailbox overflows with eager answers, scented papers, envelopes thick with promises and paste-board portraits, a plethora of choices, all of which prove most unsatisfying. Viz: the Hurdy Gurdy Girl Long Past Girlhood, the Piano Player with the Mossy Teeth, the Rubbler Who Won’t Shut Up about His Mother, the Hostler That Chews Too Loud, and The Lawyer Obsessed with Cats, to name just a few.
The most promising letter of the bunch turns out to have been penned by an infernal daemon. (He should have known by the scorched stationery.) Jack doesn’t gainsay against infernal daemons per se, but finds the avid praterhuman’s embraces to be ardent in a manner a bit too third-degree for comfort.
So, having gotten no closer to his heart’s desire, Jack gives in, scotches the advertisement, and drowns his sorrows in bouncing and Bounce, letting loose a full-throated warble of despair to the barkeep of the Hubba Time Roadhouse while he drinks. This barkeep, who herself has a jade-eye view of love, advises him, bitterly:
“Love comes to those who take it; those who wait, wait forever. You must take what you want.”
Jack draws up from his lean and bangs his fist upon the bar, bouncing all the bottles. Of course, the barkeep is right, of course! He had leapt to fortune and leapt to fame. He had leapt to leisure and leapt to…and so he would leap to love.
If love will not come willingly, then he will steal it!
This resolution proves easier in resolve than it does in practice. Unlike jewels and coin, or paintings and statues, Love does not lie about on dressers, on tables, hang on walls, sit snug in safes, awaiting for the taking. Love does not fit in bags, or at least not willingly, and without scratching. And while it’s easy to recognize value in coins, pearls, jewels, silver, Love is harder to spot. Still, Jack gives it his best.
Now instead of waiting for all’s quiet and all to bed to do his leaping, Jack waits until the householders are at home to bounce on in. This way, he meets surprised lads and lassies, whom he woos with syrupy words, and strings of pearls, and gracious manners. But none are favorably inclined toward a gent who vaulted through their window in the middle of the night, no matter how sweet this gent’s words, or how flourishing the bouquet he proffers. His ardor is met with shrieks, screams, flailing pokers, flinging shoes, and the foamy teeth of a particularly ferocious corgi.
Now, let us leave Jack, exiting left pursued by a corgi, and switch scenes for a minute, little poodles. While Jack is determined to get love, someone else is determined to get Jack. A hero to the hoi polloi, Jack’s name raises huzzahs to the lips of those below him, the forlorn and the poor, whose cheer and good luck came from the spoils that Jack steals in their names. But not everyone finds Jack so cheerful; those who wake to discover their dresser scarves torn and tossed; their safes gaping and empty; their silver plate decamped and their jam jars licked clean—they do not admire Jack at all. These luminaries, the best citizens of Califa, they call for Jack’s boots, they call for Jack’s person, they call for Jack to be caught, and tried, and displayed on a hurdle, preferably in pieces. Handsome bloodstained pieces, but pieces nonetheless.
In those olden days, my sweeties, Califa had a sheriff, and this sheriff had deputies, but these coppers were inoffensive dudes, well suited to break up bar-fights or help a gaffer across the street, to recover lost cats, lost lollies, lost hats, and unsnarl horse-traffic jams. But in the snat
ching of a world-class criminal they are useless. Not only did Jack have those springy boots that could soar him out of the deputies’ grasp, but he’d stolen other useful apparel as well, and now he was cap-a-pie with roguish garments, including a holocaust cloak, a compass feather, and a jackdaw that could smell the bouncers coming and give the alert. Jack in his leaping never even notices the sheriffs snatching at his heels, always too low and too late.
So, the Duque de Grandsellos wakes up one morning to find his favorite dressing gown, gold-embroidered dragons on a celestial spun silk, gone. Princess Nadege Naproxine, the famed soubrette and tamale maker, loses a rare red polar bear mantle to Jack’s boodle sack. Cheddar La Roque, the famous harpist, discovers the strings on her bow—made of twisted unicorn mane and a thread of hair from the Goddess Califa herself—missing. Jack kips a rare Norge Azul parrot from the Holy Whore of Heaven and the Pontifexina’s favorite coffee cup, made from the gold-and-pearl-crusted skull cap of Albany Bilskinir himself.
The furious cries of these luminaries grow deafening. While waggish editorials crying Attaboy appear in the pages of The Rogue’s Gazette & Gazetter, the letters published in The Alta Califa have a grimmer tone. An editorial in The Alta Califa calls for a curfew, roadblocks, road-checks, and door-to-door searches. Bounties are posted on posters about town, and Luscious Fyrdraaca, whose loss of a very valuable ice elemental means he is now drinking his cocktails warm, quite pointedly has a large meat hook placed on the front gate of Crackpot Hall, ready to receive, if not all of Jack, at least the tenderest parts of him.
When real order is called for in Califa, it is bestowed upon grateful citizens by the largesse of the Pontifexa’s personal bodyguards, the awful Alacráns, sangyn-coated scorpions, whose sting is so dreaded that threat alone keeps discipline. Rarely is action on the Alacráns’ part required, but when it is, the Alacráns are steady, deadly, and quick. As long as Jack remained aloof from her, the Pontifexa remained aloof from Jack. But the coffee cup was a step too far. The Pontifexa, faced with the stormy tantrum of her daughter, is forced to act.
The Book of Magic Page 15