by Luke Arnold
Scared that I might tip Graham off to my desertion, I gave no hint of goodbye. On one of my regular tours, checking for damage, I found myself alone just inside the outer gate. I cranked open the thick bolts, slipped through the doorway and ran.
There was no attempt to stop me. I knew that there were weapons up there on the wall, but nobody called out or even fired a warning shot in my direction. They let me go.
Perhaps they were as relieved as I was.
It took me two days to find a friendly face. In a small shack by the river, I met a Satyr with mottled red fur, sparkling eyes and a short-cropped beard. He was the first non-Human I’d seen since I was a child, and I practically fell into hysterics when he welcomed me in. He shared his fish and laughed at my story and my non-stop staring. He let me touch the little horns that sprouted from his forehead and told me the directions to the city of Sunder. It was not the place for him, apparently, but he thought I might find some luck there. He packed me a satchel of dried meat and bread and gave me a few coins for the train that would pass through the valley that night.
I thanked him for his help and he thanked me for the company. I took the train north and arrived in Sunder City the next day.
It was dusk as I stepped out of Main Street train station. The sun was setting between the taller buildings to the west, so two of the city’s little lamplighters were doing their rounds. They were a couple of Goblins in top-and-tails, and their smiles were the happiest things I’d ever seen. Their beards were meticulously trimmed, their mustaches waxed and molded and their nocturnal eyes were shielded behind blue-tinted glasses. Around their necks, they wore shining ropes of gold, each threaded through the bow of a large bronze key.
One Goblin walked on either side of the street and their polished boots hit the footpath with perfect timing. At each copper lamppost, they slid their keys into a hole in the base and turned them together. The locks clicked as the switches inside opened up the pipeline to the pits below.
With the crackling sound of fast-frying insects and an eye-watering smell of sulfur, the flames filled the posts and shot up into the sky.
My dumb-struck face was shining as bright as the fire, and even the rude stares from the masses pushing by did nothing to dampen my spirits. There was work and there was food and there were interesting friends with powers unlike anything I’d ever seen. It was the real world. The world I’d always known was there.
And it was magic.
5
I missed the morning by half an hour and woke to the afternoon sun hitting my window. Nobody was supposed to live in 108 Main Street, Sunder City. It was a place of business. But, the previous tenant had installed a bed that could come down from the wall at night and then slide back into place during business hours. My landlord, Reggie, was happy to look the other way as long as he could call in the occasional favor.
I had a desk, two mismatched chairs and a table that had become a bar. There was an eternally hatless hat-stand in the corner and a trash can sprinkled with dried-up Clayfields. There was a sink and mirror in the corner but the commode was down the hall. The old carpet was as brown as the woodwork and almost as hard.
Facing back into the building (through the first exit), the office on my left belonged to a Werewolf with her own family-law business. She worked weekday mornings, and the only guests she ever had were groups of squabbling offspring fighting over the meager finances of their passed-on parents.
The office on the right had been empty since Janice died. She was an elderly Satyr who’d trained warriors back in the Hallowed War, when her species attempted to retake their land from the Centaurs. Her post-Coda business was a kind of physiotherapy, helping ex-magic creatures adjust to their new bodies.
Most of her work was house calls. When she passed away last summer, I was away on a job and she wasn’t found for weeks. When the wind blows from the south, I can still smell her through the walls. Reggie tried to clean it up, hoping he could rent the room out again. We ripped up the carpet, washed the walls, fumigated the whole floor and burned a forest of sage but that stubborn old gal wasn’t going anywhere.
I lugged myself from the creaking bed to the telephone and made another appointment with the Principal. He was eager to receive me when the school closed that day. In the meantime, I’d see if I could find him something more than a handful of sand.
The sole of my left boot was hanging open like a panting dog. It was no surprise. I’d scraped myself over too many miles of this city. There was nothing to do but tape it up and make a mental note to spend some of my new money on a cobbler before I pissed it all away.
Fully dressed, I splashed some water on my face and made my way downstairs.
Oh no. It’s Tuesday.
The silver-haired fellow had spent all week clearing out the laundromat at the base of my building. He would have been close to seven feet tall without the painful-looking hunch in his back. He’d had little help from his easily distracted grandson who groaned every time he was given an instruction. The aspiring cafe opened on to the street right by the entrance to the building, so the old man managed to catch my eye every single day.
“Opening Tuesday!” he would call.
“I’ll be there,” I’d reply, skirting inside with fabricated haste to wait for clients that never came.
Despite my usual aversion to social interaction, the old fellow had spiked my curiosity. Most people were still trying to patch their former lives together – Goblins out in Aaron Valley were attempting to run old inventions with electricity instead of magic, the Gnomish crime organizations had brought their underground activities to the surface, and I’d heard that a whole tribe of Giants had teamed up with Mortales, hoping that the Human engineers would find a way to reinforce their bodies with machinery. All over Archetellos, folks were doing their best to go back to their old ways. This was the first guy I’d seen who had the balls to start something new.
There he was, standing outside his empty restaurant with a five-year-old’s smile on a thousand-year-old face.
“Just the man I was looking for,” I said.
He directed me inside with a practiced gesture, and I slid on to a creaking seat to peruse the handwritten menu.
“Breakfast special. Soft boiled eggs.”
The silver-haired man checked his watch.
“Sir, it is one in the afternoon.”
I checked my watch as well.
“You’re quite right. I’ll also have a whiskey. Neat and double.”
The elderly face kept the broad smile as I handed him back the menu. With a graceful nod, he made his way back to the kitchen.
The floor of the restaurant was bare cement, mostly. Three tiles had been laid in the corner but it was impossible to tell whether they were a new addition waiting to be completed or a remnant of its past life. A dozen small tables had each been assigned two chairs, a white tablecloth and a fresh, unlit candle. Years of chemical burns and flooding had painted the red bricks in a distinctive pattern as if an orgy of sick rainbows were climbing up the wall. Still, he’d set the tables nicely, and it looked clean.
The old fellow got me thinking about Edmund Rye, who had turned his hand to teaching after three hundred years of life. While others were wallowing in what was lost or crawling back towards their past, he was hoping to pass things on.
How was Rye so happy to accept what had happened? Maybe it was just his nature. If he was really one of the rare ones who knew that his time was over but still wanted to make things better for the rest of us, then I needed to find him soon; dead, undead or alive.
It took twenty minutes for the old man to return with my meal and he did a little bow as he placed it down in front of me.
“And the whiskey?” I asked.
“Of course. Francis!”
The lazy grandson appeared from the kitchen with a low-ball and a surprisingly decent bottle of hooch. He handed it to the silver-haired man and disappeared back into the nether regions of the restaurant.
“Neat and double,” he said with a pride that felt unfitting for the situation. That’s when the pressure of my role revealed itself in his eyes.
I was the first customer. Shit. In his mind, the hopes and dreams of his establishment rested on my upcoming review. I reluctantly turned my attention to the plate.
The first things I noticed were the mushrooms. It was hard not to. They were the size of coasters and cooked in sauce so watery you could call it soup. I had to use my spoon to clear them out the way to get a look at the rest of the meal. It wasn’t much better.
Cutting open the eggs revealed a spoonful of chalk where the yolk had once been. The tomatoes had liquefied, gone rogue and attacked the toast, creating a red paste that looked like something left over after surgery. There was a black thing in the corner of the plate which was maybe a sausage or perhaps some kind of fruit. I let it be.
When I took a sip of whiskey instead of a bite, he seemed to get the message.
“You not like?”
I offered feeble protest.
“No, it looks marvelous. I just think maybe it’s a bit late for breakfast.”
He leaned over and re-examined my plate.
“Ah, yes. I overcooked the eggs.”
“A little.”
“You wanted them runny.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“I am sorry. I will try again.”
“No, that’s fine. I have to be going anyway.”
“Next time?”
“Okay.”
“I will make them runny.”
“Fantastic. I’ll be sure to bring my appetite.”
He lifted the plate and walked back towards the kitchen, holding it under his nose and muttering to himself.
“Ah, yes. Tomatoes, too soft.”
A heated discussion rang out from the kitchen as I threw some cash on the table and finished my drink. I wasn’t mad, just happy to be out of there. You had to admire the guy. He was three times my age and starting over. I don’t think I ever got started in the first place.
I had time to kill before my meeting with Principal Burbage so I headed north up Riley Street to Jimmy’s, the place the librarian had told me was Rye’s favorite bar. The entrance was a narrow stairwell between the tanners and a little butcher that closed long ago – faded signs still advertised roast rabbits (a favorite among Werewolves) and controversial cuts of meat like Gryphon steak. A little red sticker on the door read, “Blood donations – on request”. Whether the butcher placed an order with a supplier or opened a vein of his own was unclear. Both options made me uneasy.
I climbed the stairs to an intimidating black door that opened into a small moody room with no windows.
It was something out of another, better, era. The bar was polished to perfection and reflected the glow of the overhanging chandelier. The stools were covered in red velvet and five freshly upholstered booths lined the back wall. There were even little bowls of roasted nuts on all the tables. I strolled in, took a sample from one of the bowls and waited for heads to turn. It didn’t take long.
There were two patrons: a long-haired Wizard with bloated cheeks and a Gnome in a white suit and matching feathered, pork-pie hat. The barman was a six-foot slab of steak with one large eye in the center of his head. I sat my cheap ass down on one of the fancy stools and dropped some coins on to the bar.
“Burnt milkwood.”
Old one-eye didn’t move an inch.
“None o’ that syrupy shite here,” he gurgled.
I glanced over the wine racks behind him: all rare and expensive vintages, similar to the bottles I saw at Rye’s, and all well outside my price range.
“Just give me something with a kick to it.”
The Cyclops snorted and came over to my part of the counter. He used one thick sausage of a finger to shift the coins around, counting them in his head. Then he went over to the sink.
He picked a glass out of the dirty pile and wiped it on his apron. He turned the tap, filled it with water, came back and placed it in front of me. Then he sniffed, leaned forward and spat into the glass.
“There’s the kick.”
I didn’t bother guessing what had so swiftly placed me on the brute’s bad side. It could have been my clothes and my taped-up boots. It could have been my asking-for-trouble attitude. It could have been the fact that I was Human. Or, it could be that I just have one of those faces people dream about pushing into a beehive.
Well, there was no point bothering with the niceties.
“I’m here about a Vampire.”
One-eye flared his nostrils but didn’t say a thing. Instead, he picked up the coins, one by one, leaving the last piece lonely on the deck. Then he put his index finger on it and pushed it back towards me.
“Your change,” he growled, and it sounded like the broken choker of a ride-on lawn-mower. I reached out for the coin.
“Thanks.”
SLAM!
He dropped a meaty fist onto the back of my palm. I reached up with my other hand, expecting the second fist to find my face, but instead, he reached over, grabbed the sleeve of my jacket and ripped it back.
He found what he was looking for: the four tattoos.
“Allo. What’s this then?”
He pointed to the thick black band closest to my wrist.
“A recluse.”
Next, the detailed pattern with an olive-green shine.
“A recruit.”
The solid mark from the military.
“A soldier.”
The barcode.
“And a criminal.”
I gave him my sweetest smile.
“Almost. The second one is for jazz ballet. Don’t worry, it’s a common mistake.”
Then the second hand came. A punch across the side of my face that could have been the hind leg of a plow horse.
I took it and liked it. I had to. I’d walked into his place and started throwing my mouth off and if I drew my knife, I’d probably have to pull my teeth out of the counter with pliers.
His single, caterpillar of an eyebrow furrowed down at me, saying that it was time to scram. Once the feeling returned to my fingers, I slowly unrolled my sleeve.
I wobbled for a moment, till the room stopped spinning, then I grabbed the glass of water and downed the contents. It was a stupid move that proved nothing, but I always tried to provide some entertainment.
“Thanks for the drink.”
I pocketed my change and tried to find my feet. With some pride, I located them at the end of my legs. The little Gnome in the white suit muttered something in my direction. My ears were ringing too loudly to hear him but I didn’t care. I floated past him, down the stairs, and back out under the gray sky. If Edmund Albert Rye was memories and dust, I didn’t need to lose my head over him just yet.
Punch drunk, I wandered the streets letting my mind catch up. I told myself I had no destination. I was aimless. Adrift. But I wasn’t a great liar, even to myself. It was no mistake I ended up where I did.
The abandoned mansion looked darker than the rest of the city, even in the early afternoon. Sunder’s last Governor was an Ogre named Lark, who spent five years and a fortune of taxpayers’ money building himself this home. It wasn’t all a waste, though. A constant stream of foreign dignitaries had been lured up the steps to be filled with food and wine before being coerced into some deal by our boisterous leader.
Lark was out riding atop a resilient Centaur when the magic cracked. The Centaur’s spine followed suit, and Governor Lark tumbled down on top of him. The story made it back to the city, but never their bodies. Sunder City moved on from Governors after that, and the mansion was left unoccupied. Almost.
The rusted gates were wrenched closed and falling off their hinges. I dragged them apart with a teeth-grinding screech and slipped between the gap.
The thick, knotted spider-webs
that lined the pathway to the front door settled my heart. No one had been through there in some time, maybe since my last visit. Just as I always hoped. I lived with the ever-present fear that some vandal or careless vagrant would stumble up the steps and disturb what was inside. What could I do if they did? I had no way to preserve this place or to keep watch night and day. Oh, I thought about it. Too often. But that’s not what she would have wanted.
The front of the mansion sagged like the face of an ancient grandmother, worn and weathered and abandoned. A clay pot on the porch held a long-dead shrub and as I lifted it up, the branches crumbled into sawdust. Beneath the pot was a key. I could have forced the lock on the rotten door with one hand if I’d wanted to, but I turned it gently, as if the brass itself might crack.
The air inside was rich with mulch and wet grass. Light came through the cracked roof, hitting pollen and dust that swirled through the pillars of the once grand entrance hall. Walls, once spotless white, were now carpeted with thick moss. The seemingly indestructible marble staircase had been pulled to pieces by wild roots and weeds.
Vines, thick and intertwining, traced the floor and climbed the fixtures. They burrowed between the floorboards or rolled in through doorways, joining together in the center of the room where they wrapped themselves around what appeared to be a carefully placed centerpiece.
I often wondered what it would be like to walk into that house without knowing what I knew. I would probably think I was looking at the most finely carved wooden sculpture ever created.
I would be sure that the face of the girl, shaped in pale timber, was an artist’s dream, if I hadn’t seen those cheeks full of color.
I would imagine that the hair, flaked in strips of curled bark, was an unreal creation if I’d never let it run through my fingers.
I would look at those perfect lips and marvel at the skilled hand that had shaped them out of cold, dead wood if I was spared the memory of the warmth that once poured out of them onto mine.
Her arms were wrapped around her stomach like she had a belly-ache. She did, when it all ended. Her soul was being torn from her body like a page from a book as her shattering hands struggled to hold herself together.