The Tales of Two Seers

by R. Cooper

  That nursery made Rennet think of his childhood and smile, most of the time. But not tonight. The little face regarding him was far too serious.

  “Yes. A new story.” La princesse nodded her head regally and settled against her pillows with her pastel pink blanket pulled up to her chin. “Daddy says you have been alive longer than anyone. So you must know some.”

  Lots of fairies were older than Rennet, but he didn’t point that out, since his little queen delighted in informing him that imps were fairies. Instead, he settled in against the foot of her bed and put his hands on his knees to think.

  “I know a great many stories,” Rennet told her, while silently admitting that most of them were not for a child to hear. Even the ones he had heard as a child, that, years later, he had realized had been heavily edited for a child’s ears, were still not entirely appropriate for this child. Eleanor was not a forgotten imp. She was a firebird, with a glow so soft and bright that she needed no nightlight. A firebird would have a destiny, unlike Rennet, who was an agent of fate at best. A firebird was there to witness, and inspire, and live. She would have to be prepared. “I know an innumerable number of stories,” Rennet murmured, considering this fact as he had never considered it before while also doing his best to keep his focus on his imperious charge. “Innumerable means so many they cannot be counted.”

  “I know,” Eleanor insisted, lying to save face or perhaps telling the truth. The books were not in this room to simply look pretty, after all. Her parents were aware of her destiny, naturally, and were doing their best to arm her. Rennet had not realized he was meant to do the same. But the muse asked, and he had to answer. “How do you know so many?”

  “Because every story you hear isn’t the only version of that story.” Rennet pulled his tail into his lap to stop it from flicking with agitation. For a moment, his heart beat faster, and he was young and curled up on a couch during a boring adult party while a human with shiny curls and the start of a scruffy beard whispered tales of adventure and romance to him. Fairy tales, like a human child might be told before bedtime.

  Rennet shook himself out of the memory and focused on the dark, curious eyes of the songbird in front of him.

  “Stories do not come from nowhere, mishka. We tell them to each other, and we take them with us, and we add our own meanings to them…” Rennet had spent too much time in a historian’s house if he was talking this way. “And storytellers deliberately change them. Have you ever met a storyteller? A real one?” Her papa had the sight, or a form of it, as humans sometimes did, but he was no seer.

  Eleanor frowned at Rennet and lifted her chin, unwilling to admit she did not understand.

  Rennet clucked his tongue. “A storyteller, a weaver, a poet, an artist. Words for the same thing. A seer. Someone who sees—not always with the eyes. There was a famous blind proph… I have spent too much time in this house. John will find that funny.” Rennet absently rubbed the ring on his finger with his thumb before continuing. “I knew a storyteller when I was young, and he told me all these stories, the same stories, but with different endings, if he wanted, or set in different places. Some are familiar, but with changes each time, like… like many different paths. That is what seers do, they look down the paths. And some of them choose to describe those journeys to us. Like how in your movie, the mermaid lives and marries the prince, but in your book, she doesn’t.”

  “Papa says beings have souls and I should ignore that story,” his princess recited dutifully, then suddenly straightened with excitement. “You can make the endings whatever you want?”

  “Yes.” Rennet thought about it. “No. You can try, but sometimes things are not in someone’s nature, or are not meant to be.” He thought seers must wish for the happy endings, for their own peace of mind, but the world did not always listen. But Eleanor MacArthur-Jones was not going to learn that from him.

  “But I want the happy ones,” Eleanor insisted with all the confidence of a spoiled and well-loved child. She was quite different from her predecessor. Her predecessor would have approved. “Will you tell me a happy one? One from your storyteller?”

  Ah, and now she turned the big eyes on him, as though Rennet needed to be convinced, as though Rennet had ever refused her anything.

  Nonetheless, he tried to appear reluctant, if only for a moment. “If you insist, philomele.” Of course, finding stories that were appropriate, or could be made appropriate, took some thinking.

  Rennet brightened a few moments later. “Ah. I have one about a dancer and an inventor! Will that do?” It was a story that had been heavily edited for a child’s consumption. Rennet had realized that rather abruptly, some time in the 1970s, when he had remembered the story and become uncomfortably aware of what it had really been about. The existence of a cruel king was a fact a child digested without question. The nature of the king’s offenses, however, had not occurred to Rennet until well into adulthood, as Jacob had no doubt intended.

  Fairy tales were often like that. The lesson stuck, even when the child did not know why.

  What possible lessons had Jacob expected Rennet to need with those stories? That he could be loved? That bravery existed? That wearing a mask and hiding away would only lead to more loneliness?

  Rennet nearly closed his eyes.

  “I want to be an inventor!” Eleanor decided boldly, oblivious to Rennet’s moment of realization, and it was a struggle for Rennet to not look around her room to spot the tap and toe shoes on the floor, the tutus hanging from hooks outside her closet, and the ballerina lamp on her tiny desk.

  “Of course, mishka,” he managed. “I will tell you a version of that one, so you can learn the other versions later, if you want. And for you, for me, this version will have a happy ending.” He found himself clutching his tail and took a deep, steadying breath. “But first, perhaps some other stories. That way you will appreciate it more.” Or fall asleep and forget he had mentioned it, if Rennet was lucky for once in his ridiculous life. “Or you will decide you do not want to hear it until later.” Much later. Rennet already had a feeling that the real story, not the one Jacob had told him, but the one hiding behind the one Jacob had told him, would haunt him tonight. Maybe for a few nights. Jacob’s stories left aches. If Rennet had not been so distracted by his darling princess, he would have remembered that before mentioning them.

  His darling princess looked unconvinced by Rennet’s logic, but did not argue, because she trusted him. She trusted her Uncle Rennet as much as she trusted her beloved fairy godfather, and Rennet would strive to never disappoint her.

  “If you still want the story later, I will tell it.” A safe, happy version. “I could even write it down so that you can learn it and then retell it in your own way.”

  Rennet froze, breathing harder for one moment at the revelation that he really could. Some of those stories might already be tucked away along with Jacob’s serious writings—those stories meant for Kaz and Kaz alone, the papers kept locked in a satchel that Rennet had never dared open. Papers to make Rennet weep to think of, and that the owners of this very house, the fathers of this very songbird, might murder him to possess.

  Fairy tales were not all that interesting to most adults. But the tales told by a seer were hardly ordinary. If two historians wouldn’t kill Rennet for them, that friend of theirs, the other scholarly one with the pretty eyes and the dimples, most certainly would. Or, at least, he would ask Rennet for them so sweetly that Rennet would struggle to say no.

  “Your face looks funny,” Eleanor informed him.

  “Fairy tales are meant to entertain and educate us.” Rennet blinked. “And his did. But I didn’t realize…” He wasn’t sure he wanted to read those stories as an adult and see what Jacob had seen. He was afraid of what he might find in them for Eleanor. But she would need them. Rennet was suddenly certain of that.

  “Is this the story?” his princess asked doubtfully, giving Rennet a look of scorn that he did not think had come from her parents.
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  It would not do to disappoint a firebird. Not this one or any other. They would not allow it. They were muses, and their powers worked even on imps who told crude jokes better than elegant stories.

  Rennet shook his head and swallowed dryly at this glimpse of his future, of old, faded pages, and sharply happy memories, and work. All to please one little girl. And her parents. And the other children. And himself, and Miki, and one long-gone diva.

  And Jacob.

  If this would please him. Rennet couldn’t say for sure.

  “Of course, mishka. I will tell you so many stories.” Rennet cleared his throat twice and clamped down on his tail to keep it from twitching. He thought again of Jacob telling tales before bedtime, and tried to keep his voice like Jacob’s, calm if a bit rough, full of a soothing, whiskey-like warmth. He looked at Eleanor and remembered himself at that age, curious and bright and always so different. Alone, even with others.

  But Jacob had given him stories about the cost of ugliness and the price of beauty, and never quite belonging. And love.

  He had also given Rennet tales of about duty and choice, patience and kindnesses, bargains and compromise. Rennet had no duties, needed no patience, and had no trouble compromising. But a certain songbird most definitely would, and would need such stories to guide her.

  Had Jacob known that, all those decades ago? Had he seen it like he’d seen everything else?

  Damn it. Rennet was going to do this. He could not even completely blame it on la princesse, firebird though she was.

  “There is no better way to know him than through his words. But,” Rennet informed her gravely, “you may also see yourself in them, as I did when I was younger than you.”

  He imagined he would have regarded Jacob with the same expression of confused doubt after a statement like that.

  “Did this storyteller know me?” Eleanor seemed torn between outrage and delight. She did love being the center of attention. It was a common attitude among firebirds, apparently.

  “Yes and no.” Rennet leaned across to take her hand and kiss it. “Now get comfortable, in case you fall asleep.”

  “I won’t,” she protested, but wriggled against her pillows.

  Rennet smiled despite the lump in his throat. “Ready?” He waited for her nod, then braced himself and began with something simple that an imp child had once loved. “Once upon a time, in a small village near a mountain, a young, fearsome witch lived alone…”

  A Charm for Confidence

  ZEKI PASSED through the village on his way home. The middle of the day meant more people outside shops and in the streets to see him, but Zeki’s long, black kaftan had a deep hood which he rarely lowered, even in the heat of summer. The words and symbols embroidered on the back marked his status as a healer and a witch, and since Zeki was the only healer around until one crossed the mountains, all would know him and avoid him if they wished to.

  Which most did.

  He adjusted the bags hanging from his shoulders and kept walking with his head down, his gaze on his leather boots and the faded purple linen of his pants. Early spring was too cold for linen, but Zeki did not like to wear dark colors at the bed of a newborn. His vest and wide sash were green with yellow stitching, his loose tunic shirt white. The baby had been eased into the world to the sight of its mother’s smile and color enough for a field of flowers. Zeki had made a blessing for health and then taken his leave before his face could make the young one cry.

  Even distracted by the new love in their lives, the girl’s parents had been careful to not look at Zeki directly. Zeki was never certain if people could not stand his face or did not wish to offend him with their shocked expressions at the sight of him, but word of Zeki had traveled, and even those from other villages who came to consult him would keep their eyes turned away from him.

  Zeki’s smile for that was helpless and more than a little bitter. Zeki, the hideous witch who lived alone outside of the village, who had cursed more than one fool with his sharp tongue. Or so it was said, and that made it true.

  It did not matter. The lives of healers were often lonely. They held power over life and death, and spent much time in intense study and sometimes danger. It was to be expected, and Zeki had made his choice. The injuries to his face and neck had made some of it for him, true, but the outcome likely would have been the same. Especially as a newcomer, as these villagers accounted him, despite being born here. His father had been new, and that was enough to make Zeki forever an outsider even before the old witch had discovered his talent for magic and trained him in those arts as well.

  The center of the village called to him despite his tired steps. Up all night to help bring a baby into the world, with work to be done today besides, but Zeki let the standing stone draw him close, as it always did. Perhaps because the connection made him feel less of a newcomer, less alone.

  The yellow stone was taller than a man standing on another’s shoulders, and wider than an eagle’s outstretched wings. Carvings reached to the top, though the markings were long since worn down by wind and rain and left unreadable, even to Zeki. But he could still sense the hum of the magic. So could the villagers, though he imagined it did not feel the same to them.

  It was around the stone where the people of this village held their festivals and feasts, the stone where some aired grievances or begged ancient gods for mercy. And in the spring, it was where the unmarried, old or young, placed marks and signs to announce they were open to being courted.

  Usually, though not always, the marks were left and the announcement was made with a particular person in mind for the courting. Not every unattached person did it, either. Some had no need, with a sweetheart already, and others had no interest. Still others were pursued by so many that they saw no point in announcing it.

  Zeki had been safe, happy to ignore the signs in front of the standing stone for yet another season.

  But next to a bundle of sewing with neat, precise stitches that was likely from the dressmaker’s daughter, and a page of detailed copying from a manuscript that might have come from the scholar Shimizu, was a perfect ring of bread dotted with sesame seeds, and several lightly buttered, vaguely rose-shaped pieces of flatbread, no doubt bursting with pistachio or some sweet flavor.

  Zeki stopped. No matter how delicious their offerings, no other cook or baker in town rivaled the one who had made those treats.

  Theo had come out of hiding, then.

  Zeki reached up to rub the scarring at his cheek, though he could not feel much more than a light pressure through the thick tissue. Theo could have put his gifts at the standing stone years ago but never had. Zeki had often wondered at the reasons. Now, he wondered what had changed.

  Perhaps Theo had grown tired of the world insisting he ought to marry. Maybe he wanted a loving partner to help at the inn his parents owned, or someone to hold close at night the way many did, especially in winter when the nights were longest.

  If Theo was lonely, had been lonely, it was none of Zeki’s business, and it mattered little that Theo had never mentioned it to him. Why should he speak of it to Zeki? No one would come to the witch Zeki for romantic advice. At least, not advice that was not some disguised attempt to bribe Zeki into casting a love spell, which he did not do, because if people felt love the way they said they did, they would know that coerced love was no love at all.

  But, of course, no one asked for Zeki’s opinion, and it was simple to frighten away any would-be possessors of a love spell. Most especially when they spoke of getting Theodore Greenleaf to love them, which so many did.

  Limbs heavier than before, Zeki turned from the standing stone and its coaxing whispers to continue on his path home. In all this time, no one had reached Theo’s heart, or so Zeki had thought. But he did not believe that careful, quiet Theo would put his mark before the stone without purpose. Not Theo, who had admirers already.

  Despite his empty stomach, Zeki did not linger in town or stop at any inns. He stomped into h
is small house with a scowl on his mottled, scarred face and a headache behind his eyes. He unpacked his bags then stoked the fire to boil water for tea and to heat leftover porridge from the night before. He went to and from the gardens, and checked the herbs drying around the hearth, and sat down on his bed to eat without tasting a single spoonful.

  Normally, if he went into town, he would have stopped at the Greenleaf’s inn. It was a treat for a lonely man to eat someone else’s cooking, he would have said, if anyone had asked. But Zeki wasn’t in the habit of lying to himself. The real reason was because he was like everyone else, and took pleasure in Theo Greenleaf’s company.

  At least Zeki had never tried to push a courtship on Theo as others did, although his reasons for that were selfish and obvious with his wasted face. Zeki was not in the habit of making a fool of himself, either.

  Zeki had been an unsuitable match for someone like Theo long before he had been an overeager witch’s apprentice who had carelessly let a potion explode in his face. Theo was so handsome he could have been called beautiful. His family were established and wealthy. Theo himself was kind and talented, with kitchen skills to make anyone want him in their home.

  Zeki was small and thin, with a mouth made bitter over time, and no family, now. He had wild black hair, and skin that would have been the color of cassia if only he spent more time outdoors, and ordinary brown eyes that got lost in his extraordinarily hard-to-look-at face. He recognized the gods of this village but did not worship them. And he was a witch.

  He would have said yesterday that he had no hopes in that area, but one glance at the standing stone had made it clear that he had, despite himself. He had dreamed of Theo, and wished to kiss him, and now his heart ached because he had to accept that he had wanted those things, and that he would never have them. To allow hope to linger was reckless and painful, and would only become moreso in the coming days, because Zeki couldn’t imagine anyone hesitating to step forward for Theo. It should not take long for the inn to be filled with bright-eyed suitors, and even less time for Theo to choose one.