cathedral close. They had glass windows made up of small,
sparkling, diamond-shaped panes. Her house, adjacent to the
bakery in the small lanes beyond the market, wasn’t big or grand.
She had to share a small attic room with her two little sisters. The
blue marble could change that! Da would like it if they suddenly
owned a mansion with lots of land and gardens. Then, she
wouldn’t wake up to the acrid smell of dung and rotten food on
the middens at the street corners.
“Maybe I’ll just get rid of the stink,” Abigail said aloud. A
sharp itch erupted just under her wet bodice. She wriggled her
free hand underneath the stiffened fabric to scratch. Her struggle
elicited ripe chuckles from the lads watching her from the shop
doors and barrows. She made a face at them. The itch moved
upward between her breasts. She plunged her fingers in and drew
out a wriggling black spot, which she cracked with her nails and
cast down into the reeking gutter. “Or fleas. I’ll get rid of every
flea in England!” Oh, the bliss of never rolling over in bed to
scratch! That would be better than any riches.
But why not have all? she mused, as she wove her way in
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among the crowd of shoppers and the trestle tables set out for
market day. To be able to buy anything she chose, with no
pestilence or stink anywhere, would be bliss. Could this little
stone bring her everything she asked for?
It was so hard to choose. The good Lord knew that she had
trouble keeping to one idea. Her best friend Madeline Prout, the
dyer’s daughter, was much better at thinking. Abigail’s father
would be looking for her to make more deliveries, but if she
surprised him at the end of the day with a grand estate and
servants, he wouldn’t mind if she was a bit late returning.
On such a fine day, Madeline was out in the busy courtyard
of the dyer’s shop with her brothers and her father’s apprentices,
a kerchief over her curly brown hair. They were hanging up
swathes of freshly-dyed colored fabric on the ropes that stretched
across the space like a giant spider’s web. The colorful cloth
smelled of hot cow’s piss. Abigail grasped her friend around the
waist and pulled her toward a bench in the corner of the yard
where no one else could hear. Madeline lifted sad eyes to her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Abigail said, with a wide grin, showing
her the blue marble on the palm of her hand. “I’ve got a wish. I
rescued a fairy godmother from the river, and she gave it to me
as a reward! I need you to help me work out how to say what I
wish for.”
“A wish? That’s just dreaming,” Madeline said, with a sharp
wave of her hand. “I’ll tell you what’s real …!”
“No, but listen,” Abigail interrupted. Her plans spilled out in
a torrent of words. “… So, I’m going to make my father the
richest man in Salisbury. I thought about a lot of things first, like
I might have wished that I could fly. Then I could go see London.
A girl such as me is never likely to get farther than Amesbury.
Or I might have asked for a carriage and horses, but I’d have to
be careful to ask for the stable to keep them and the oats to feed
them. I think I can say that all in one breath. So, I’ve decided.
My wish will be for a mansion with fifty acres and all the
servants I’d need to run it, and fine bedchambers for my Mam
and Da and me. You could come to stay in your own special
room. Wouldn’t that be grand? We could ride out on my horses
–” She nodded sharply. “I’ll have to remember to say horses, and
stable, and an ostler. It will be hard to get that all in.” The marble
caught silver lights from the sun. “You’re the smartest person I
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know. Can you help me get all that into one breath?”
She beamed at Madeline. Instead of sharing her excitement,
Madeline stared at the ground, her hands listless on her lap.
Abigail finally broke out of her dream and focused upon her
friend’s face. In between the usual odd dye streaks, this time
ochre yellow and bittersweet orange, Madeline’s eyes and nose
were red. She squeezed the other girl’s hand.
“What’s the matter, Maddy?”
Madeline fetched in a deep breath. A sob caught in her throat.
“It’s my ma. You know she’s been poorly since winter.”
Abigail nodded. “Three days ago she started coughing up blood.
The healer says it’s the crab. It’s eaten up her whole insides.
She’s just waiting now for the angels. And that’s just a marble,”
she said bitterly, knocking Abigail’s hand back with a scornful
gesture. “Not magic. There’s no magic in this world, for lords or
anyone else.”
Abigail was too shocked to protest.
“I thought it was just spring ague.” She loved Mistress Prout
like a second mother. Half her life had been spent running in and
out of the dyer’s shop and home, with Maddy’s mother cuffing
or cuddling them both as needed. “Oh, my poor dear. I’m so
sorry.” She put her arms around Madeline and drew her head to
her shoulder. Madeline burst into tears.
“I’ve got to be the woman of the house. Ma is counting on
me to care for everyone.”
She wasn’t ready. Abigail knew that, just as she knew she
didn’t know all the ins and outs of her own home. If her mother
was taken from her—what a horrible thing that would be. She
would add a learned doctor to live in her mansion, so nobody
would die of the crab. The marble would see to it.
Abigail rocked Madeline. No sparkling glint of fantasy was
enough to dispel the reality of losing her mother so soon. All
Madeline’s own plans would be put to one side, for who knew
how long? She had six younger brothers and sisters. Two of them
were tearaways whom only her mother could control. Her
father’s business was thriving, but he needed a secure and well-
run household behind him. How terrible to pile all that on
Maddy’s slender young shoulders.
Abigail let out the deep breath she’d been holding, and drew
in another one. If it would do any good, she’d gladly sacrifice her
own dreams.
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“I wish your Mam was well and healthy, and would go on
living many more years,” Abigail said, with all her heart in her
words, “so she’ll see you married and in a house with your own
children one day.”
The hard, cold marble in her fist popped like a snapdragon’s
jaw. She opened her hand to see the blueness dissipate in the air
like a puff of flour. Ah, well. Easy come, easy go.
“Thanks, Abby,” Madeline said, hugging her best friend. “I
love you for saying that. I wish it would come true, too. We both
know it can’t. Bu
t, come say goodbye to her.” She rose to her
feet and held out a hand to help Abigail up. “God alone knows
how long it will be until He calls to her.”
“Maddy!” a voice shrieked. “Maddy, come up quick!
Hurry!”
The girls looked up at the high, narrow windows of the
second story. Gillian, Madeline’s seven-year-old sister, waved to
them. Without a word, they made for the stairs.
*
“It’s a miracle,” the stout little herbwoman said, piling her
muslin bags of leaves and roots into her wicker basket on the foot
of the bed with her neat little hands. “I would I could credit my
potions and tinctures, but before God I cannot. Not a trace of the
fever, and her chest is clear and sound as a bell. One moment
there’s blood coming out with every breath, and the next, she’s
asking for soup!”
Propped up with feather-stuffed pillows against the head of
the bed and wrapped in woolen blankets and eiderdowns,
Mistress Prout smiled. Her narrow face was pale, but color was
returning to it.
“It was a simple request,” she said, looking around at her
children and her terrified husband, who had been summoned to
his wife’s bedside from his dye pots. Master Prout clutched her
hand as if he couldn’t believe that it was still warm. “Why is
everyone so excited about it?”
Madeline laughed for pure joy, and hugged her mother.
“I’ll get some soup for you, Ma,” she said. She headed for
the kitchen stairs. Abigail followed her. “Oh, thank God! Thank
God in all the highest for sparing her! I’ll spend all evening on
my knees in church.”
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Abigail thought it was better not to say anything more about
her wish as they filled a crockery bowl with hot soup from the
stove and added the softest of the new bread spread with honey
alongside the spoon on a wooden tray.
“Take it up, will you?” Madeline asked. Her face was flushed
with joy as she bustled around the big work table in the center of
the small kitchen. “I’ll warm some bits of meat to see if she can
manage them.”
“Gladly,” Abigail said. She took up the heavy tray and began
to edge her way up to the bedchamber.
“Well!” a voice said, at her elbow. Abigail jumped, nearly
spilling the soup. The fairy godmother stood in the turn of the
stairwell, glowing like a taper. “That wasn’t at all what I
expected of you. You had such big dreams!”
“Yes, well,” Abigail said, blushing. “It just slipped out.”
“I don’t think so,” the fairy said, opening her enormous green
eyes wider. “You’ve a kind heart. This is the second life you’ve
saved in a single day, though you wasted your wish. Just think
what you could have done if you’d been able to exercise your
imagination. I was waiting to see!”
“It wasn’t wasted!” Abigail exclaimed, glaring at the little
woman. “Maddy’s my best friend. Her mother’s always been
good to me!”
“I was teasing,” the fairy said, in a kinder voice. “You’re a
generous soul. It just tells me that perhaps I should have granted
your request when you asked for more wishes.” She held out her
dainty palm, and another blue marble appeared on it. She set it
down on the tray next to the bread and patted Abigail’s cheek.
“Try to do something more interesting with this one, will you?
I’ll be looking forward to what you come up with next.”
Abigail looked at her, and mischief and joy rose in her soul.
“Then, I wish …”
The fairy put her finger over her mouth.
“Later,” she said. “Don’t let the soup get cold.”
Abigail sprang up the stairs, grand plans already swirling in
her mind.
Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.”
She lives northwest of Chicago with one of the above and her
husband, author and packager, Bill Fawcett. She has written
over forty books, including The Ship Who Won with Anne
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McCaffrey, eight books with Robert Asprin, a humorous
anthology about mothers, Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear! ,
and over 140 short stories. Her latest books are Rhythm of the
Imperium (Baen Books), and Wishing on a Star (Arc Manor
Publishing).
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277
One of my favorite science fiction novels ever, Ender’s Game ,
gave birth to a whole series of which our final story is apart.
Originally published in slightly longer novella form as a
chapbook by Tor Books, we present it here in its first anthology
appearance, slightly abridged by the author, Orson Scott Card.
Set in the same Battle School where Ender’s Game is set, this
series follows students as the come to term with cultural and
religiou differences surrounding the celebration of Christmas
in …
A W A R O F G I F T S
( A n E n d e r S t o r y )
By Orson Scott Card
Zeck Morgan sat attentively on the front row of the little
sanctuary of the Church of the Pure Christ in Eden, North
Carolina. He did not fidget, though he had two itches, one on his
foot and one on his eyebrow. He knew the eyebrow itch was from
a fly that had landed there. The foot itch, too, probably, though
he did not look down to see whether anything was crawling there.
He did not look out the windows at the falling snow. He did
not glance to left or right, not even to glare at parents of the
crying baby in the row behind him—it was for others to judge
whether it was more important for the parents to stay and hear
Decision Points
the sermon, or leave and preserve the stillness of the meeting.
Zeck was the minister’s son, and he knew his duty.
Reverend Habit Morgan stood at the small pulpit—really an
old dictionary stand picked up at a library sale. No doubt the
dictionary that had once rested on it had been replaced by a
computer, just one more sign of the degradation of the human
race, to worship the False God of Tamed Lightning. “They think
because they have pulled the lightning from the sky and
contained it in their machines they are gods now, or the friends
of gods. Do they not know that the only thing written by lightning
is fire? Yea, I say unto you, it is the fire of hell, and the gods they
have befriended are devils!”
It had been one of Father’s best sermons. He gave it when
Zeck was three, but Zeck had not forgotten a word of it. Zeck did
not forget a word of anything. As soon as he knew what words
were, he remembered them.
But he did not tell Father that he remembered. Because when
Mother realized that he could repeat whole sermons word for
word, she told him, very quietly but very intensely, “This is a
great gift that God has given you, Zeck. But you must not show
it to anyone, because some might think it comes from Satan.”
“Does it?” Zeck had asked. “Come from Satan?”
“Satan does not give good gifts,” said Mother. “So it comes
from God.”
“Then why would anyone think it comes from Satan?”
She frowned her forehead, though her lips kept their smile.
Her lips always smiled when she knew anyone was looking. It
was her duty as the minister’s wife to show that the pure
Christian lift made one happy.
“Some people are looking so hard to find Satan,” she finally
said, “that they see him even where he isn’t.”
Naturally, Zeck remembered this conversation word for
word. So it was there in his mind when he was four, and Father
said, “There are those who will tell you that a thing is from God,
when it’s really from the devil.”
“Why, Father?”
“They are deceived,” said Father, “by their own desire. They
wish the world were a better place, so they pretend that polluted
things are pure, so they don’t have to fear them.”
Ever since then, Zeck had balanced these two conversations,
for he knew that Mother was warning him about Father, and
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Father was warning him about Mother.
It was impossible to choose between them. He did not want
to choose.
Still … he never let Father see his perfect memory. It was not
a lie, however. If Father ever asked him to repeat a conversation
or a sermon or anything at all, Zeck would do it, and honestly,
showing that he knew it word for word. But Father did not ask
anybody anything, except when he asked God.
Which he had just done. Standing there at the pulpit, glaring
out at the congregation, Father said, “What about Santa Claus!
Saint Nick! Is he the same thing as ‘Old Nick’? Does he have
anything to do with Christ? Is our worship pure, when we have
this ‘Old Saint Nick’ in our hearts? Is he really jolly? Does he
laugh because he knows he is leading our children down to hell?”
He glared around the congregation as if waiting for an
answer. And finally someone gave the only answer that was
appropriate for this point in the sermon:
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