Bound by Grace

by Tim Pratt

  My necklace, with its little silver fish pendant, offered sufficient environmental protection to let me visit the surface of Venus (I’d considered painting landscapes of the place, but it turns out it’s pretty dreary: the planet is way prettier from the outside). The fiery outburst didn’t bother me personally, but I didn’t want the carpet scorched, so I gestured with my other hand, the one with a quartz crystal ring. (I read once that people used to think rock quartz was magical ice that couldn’t melt, which seems pretty dumb, but the idea was enough to create a useful magical association.) The temperature around the thing plummeted, and its white-hot skin cooled suddenly. It shrieked, this time in pain as well as outrage. I cut off the spell before we got into absolute-zero territory, and looked at the bound, shivering creature. The thing barely had any form at all anymore: it was a vague man-shape made of purple smoke, and not much of that. I let it heat itself up a bit more, and it solidified, shivering and thin, coalescing into a roughly human form. It developed a face as it looked at me, and instead of rage or hate or anger I saw something much more like despair.

  “The daughter of the beast,” it whispered, its voice no longer much like Hilly’s: more like the voice of the wind. “Am I to be enslaved, then, unto untold generations?”

  I frowned. “You’re not enslaved, pyro. You’re being restrained, because you came at me with fire, but like I said, I’m interested in a peaceable outcome.” The thing glanced at my bedroom door, and I said, “What do you want in there?”

  “I am sure you could bind and force me to answer, so there is no point in evasion.” Its voice trembled. “I want the book. I saw the beast read it, once, and vanish.”

  Ah. The book. I called it The Book of Grace. My father’s best grimoire, because it was really a sort of atlas that let you travel instantly to anywhere in the universe... and possibly other universes, though I hadn’t explored that part much, because I had Clara to take care of, and Trey would prefer it if I didn’t get lost in the multiverse, assuming that was an actual thing. I’d mostly confined myself to the solar system so far, though I had my eye on more distant stars. “Ah. Where do you want to go?”

  “I only wish to return home.”

  I shrugged. “So, dude, give me Hilly, and I’ll take you home.”

  The thing blinked at me. “You... you would set me free?”

  “I don’t do coercion. I’m happy to get you out of my house. My father bound you, huh?”

  “Did you not know?” This thing was pretty good at doing human tone of voice, and it had outraged-and-incredulous especially nailed.

  “I didn’t even know I had a basement, let alone that you were trapped in it. I didn’t really know Grace. I just got his stuff.”

  “The boy... he broke the jar that enslaved me... and I imprisoned him.”

  I blinked. “You put Hilly in a jar?”

  The creature slumped. “He is unharmed. The jar... it deadens the mind and numbs the spirit, and time passes in a sort of strange sleep. My kind... my kind are not supposed to sleep. We never sleep.”

  Poor thing. “I’m gonna un-manacle you, but behave, all right?”

  “You are a great sorcerer, like your father. I have no choice but to submit.”

  “Me and my father have more differences than alikenesses, really, but I can defend myself as well as he can, so I hope this isn’t some malevolent bullshit on your part, or you’ll regret it.” I snapped my fingers—an unnecessary gesture, but it’s fun—and the manacles opened and retracted into the shadows, disappearing. The—”What are you, anyway?” I asked.

  “A spirit of fire and air.”

  “So... a djinni?”

  “Some call my kind such things.”

  So my father was into canning the same way King Solomon had been. He’d canned djinn. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first creature I’d encountered with unwilling supernatural ties to my father. Grace had never bothered to negotiate when he could compel. “Let’s go downstairs.”

  The djinni followed placidly, floating along above the carpet, its lower body purple smoke now. “So can you grant wishes?” I said. “Is that a real thing?”

  “My kind have great power to alter reality,” it said. “When we are bound, we can be forced to use those powers in the service of others.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that here. Come on.” We went down to the basement. “Show me.”

  The djinni solidified a bit further, went to a shelf, and plucked down a jar full of... well, it was greenish and liquidy, whatever it was. I took the jar, and looked at it through the lenses of my glasses. Now I could see the invisible sigils etched on the glass, and on the top of the lid, and around the metal band that held the lid to the jar. Serious binding magic. “So I just... break it?” I said. “Seems like pretty shoddy binding work, if shattering the jar can let out what’s inside. Bump into a shelf and you’ve suddenly got a room full of pissed-off djinn.”

  The creature shook its head. “No, I was here a long time. There was a spot of rust on the jar, growing until it obscured one of the symbols, just enough to weaken the seal... but not enough for me to escape, until the jar was shattered.”

  When my father died, he stopped keeping up his magic. Who knew what other safeguards were failing out in the world? “So how do I open it and get the kid out?”

  The djinni held out its hands, and after a moment’s hesitation, I handed over the jar. “Only I can unbind what I bound.” It unscrewed the lid, turned the jar over, and... poured Hilly out.

  Just poured him right out. The whole thing was pretty trippy. I don’t know how to describe it any better. I don’t even want to visualize it again in my memory.

  Hilly wobbled around, a bit dazed. I glanced at the djinni over the rim of my glasses, and it was wearing a plausible human disguise: it looked just like Trey. (Brief thoughts of what I could do with two Treys intruded, but those were images better pondered at a later date, in my bunk.) The djinni must have seen a photo of Trey in the hallway when he was trying to break into my room to steal the book.

  I’m crap at psychic stuff—my siblings the Trips are way better at that stuff—so I bent down and looked into Hilly’s eyes, which were as clear as they ever were. “You did a great job at hiding!” I said. “Clara gave up and sent me to find you!”

  Now he smiled shyly, and his face was transformed: he actually looked damn near angelic when he smiled. Or else he was made more beautiful by my relief at finding him. Either way, sniffles aside, he was a good kid.

  Hilly looked at the djinni and frowned.

  “Hello, diminutive human,” the djinni said in Trey’s voice.

  I patted Hilly’s head. “Hey, Clara’s hiding, and I probably shouldn’t give you a hint, but....” Big stage whisper: “Check out the barn.”

  Hilly pounded up the stairs and disappeared. I turned to the djinni. “Now for you.”

  It looked down at the jar in its hands. “In here, then?”

  I took the jar and tossed it over my shoulder into a corner, where it shattered. I’d have to clean that up soon—can’t leave broken glass around for long when you have a little kid—but it was a nice dramatic gesture. “I don’t do enslavement. It’s a little personal quirk of mine. Tell me where you want to go, and I’ll take you.”

  The djinni looked at me, and tears welled in the corners of its eyes, though they flashed to steam almost instantly. “Thank you.” Then it turned toward the shelf. “But what of the others?”

  I looked at the jars on the shelves, really looked at them, through the lenses of those illusion-destroying glasses.

  “Ho shit,” I said.

  My phone buzzed: HERE! (and then two wineglass emojis)

  I turned to the djinni. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  I went outside, where Hilly’s mom Jilly was stumbling around the grassy side-yard with her eyes closed and her arms outstretched, yelling “Marco!” while the kids darted around her shouting “Polo!” That game’s slightly less
dangerous when played in a swimming pool, but you couldn’t say Jilly wasn’t an engaged parent. They all looked thoroughly occupied, so I darted back insie and returned to the basement. The djinni had selected half a dozen jars, the ones containing other members of its tribe, or family, or whatever—djinn don’t have the kind of relationships humans do, but apparently my father had captured a whole settlement, made them build him a ridiculous invisible seventy-two story tower, and then stuck the djinn in jars in the basement forever. Dick. I was glad he hadn’t raised me.

  One very clearly magical jar, full of something viscous and purple and roiling, remained. “What’s that?”

  The djinni shook its head. “Not one of my kind. Your father... collected things.”

  “Yeah. He was all about cultural appropriation. And all other kinds of appropriation.”

  The djinni carried the jars, conjuring more arms to make it easier, and I took it to my bedroom, drawing the Book of Grace down from a shelf. I flipped through the index, found the listing for “djinni homeland,” and turned to the appropriate page, 742.

  A shimmer of opaque heat obscured the room around us, and then vanished. We stood in a desert valley at night, before the ruins of a glass castle, all spires and towers and catwalks and domes. I looked over the rims of my glasses and couldn’t see the castle at all. Good illusion-work, even after all these years untended.

  The djinni bowed to me formally. “I owe you a debt.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m sorry for what my father did. You need me to open those jars?”

  It nodded. “They were bound by Grace; by a Grace they must be set free.”

  I unscrewed the lids, one after another, and smoke in purple and blue and orange and red and yellow poured forth, and resolved into creatures, which spun and flew and spiraled and wafted toward the ruined palace, which began repairing itself right before my eyes.

  “I gotta get back,” I said. “There’s a yoga teacher with a bottle of wine looking for me.”

  “The last jar,” the djinni said. “The one on the shelf. I do not know what it holds, but... be careful. My jar rested beside that one, and I heard the thing inside mutter, sometimes. It does not sleep deeply, nor easily.”

  I shivered. “Thanks. Good to know. You’ll all be okay?”

  “We are free,” it said simply, and I nodded, because I understood.

  I opened the book to the right page and flickered back home, to my bedroom, and came down to find Jilly in the kitchen with a corkscrew. I affected surprise and delight at seeing her. “Hey, sorry I didn’t let you in, I was just straightening up some stuff upstairs.” I glanced at the basement door. Jilly hadn’t noticed the new arrival. People are good at not noticing things.

  I’d have to do something about that other jar, and soon. Lock it away. Or stick it on the surface of Pluto, maybe. You don’t keep nuclear waste in your house, especially when you have a curious kid.

  “No problem, the kids kept me company,” Jilly said. “Hilly told me he met a monster and got trapped in a bottle and it was a big adventure and it was great. Any idea what he was talking about?”

  “Nope. As far as I know, Hilly didn’t spend any time inside a bottle.” Because it was a jar. I’m not above lying, but it’s nice when I don’t have to. I picked up the wine and grinned. “How about you and me spend some time inside this one, though?”

  Table of Contents

  bound by grace