by Ian Fortey
“Of course, it matters,” Selena said. “You must be the biggest idiot in creation.”
“Thank you,” he said. She stood up and scowled at him.
“Primal magic is balance, Vincent. It is the power of giving and taking in all things. What can I take from you if you don’t even have it to give? What can you be punished for if you are not the man who deserves to be punished?”
She clenched her fists and walked in a small circle.
“You aggravate me!” she said finally. “Now say it. Say you don’t know what I’m talking about, I can see it on your face like a dog trying to figure out the refrigerator door.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t actually say it! Goddess, grant me patience. I can’t stand you.” She ran her hands through her hair and paced in a circle again.
“Listen. Listen to me, you... jackass! The Goddess granted me access to the primal forces of creation. This is the basis of magic. Of my power and the power of my sisters. It is the lifeblood of the Earth itself. But the Earth can only exist in a state of harmony. Primal force exists in a state of harmony. You do not upset the harmony without settling it after. You take but you give. The ledger must balance at the end of the day. Do you understand that?”
“Sure,” Vincent said.
“Putz. Yes, sure, you understand. Great actions have great consequences. You need to find balances somewhere. I cast a spell to destroy your nightmare because your nightmare is spilling blood, I’m making an imbalance even. Your nightmare Dalca was tipping the scales in one direction. I untipped them. It’s like a freebie. I can always make something balance at no cost. You follow?”
“Yes.”
“If I want to make something from nothing, that balance needs to come from elsewhere. I can cast a light in the dark, for instance. Erit lux,” she said. A sphere of light popped into being next to her head, like a soft white light bulb. It hovered in the air.
“This has a cost. I pay the cost from the power of my own body. It is small and manageable. It’s like the physical toll of running upstairs in your home. But do it one hundred times and you’ll get fatigued.”
“Okay,” Vincent said. He could feel his back skin blistering and cracking as he moved. He was not particularly in the mood for magical lessons.
“Yes, yes, it is okay. Balance equals justice in all things. It is why the darkest magic is forbidden. You do not curse people unjustly. You certainly don't take a life. Because the cost for taking a life is very high. The Goddess dictates no morality over such an act, but she does expect a balanced payment and those costs are the kinds of things that darken a soul. And it must be balanced and just. Punish the wicked, that is how it works.”
“Please,” Vincent began. She raised a hand to silence him.
“If you are not the man who killed me, not because you literally didn’t do it but because your very essence has been scrubbed clean of the entire history of who you are, then there is no balance to be had. You sit on neutral scales. To kill you would create imbalance, not rectify the imbalance of my own death.”
“Oh,” Vincent said. She offered him a tight, humorless smile.
“Oh, indeed, Vinny. Oh, indeed. You’re like a sleepwalker. You do not deserve to be here. Not now, anyway. And I certainly don’t. We need to find a way to contact my sisters. Once Abigail understands what has happened, she will free us and hopefully find a way to rid me of you.”
“Can’t you just... magic a message to them?” Vincent asked.
“No, Vincent, I cannot. This is all in your head, remember? If we can escape the nightmare long enough for you to knock on the basement door in Abigail’s house, we may have something to work with. But as you can see, we’re still in this accursed field.”
Vincent lifted his head, trying to sit up. Selena had removed nearly everything with her magic, but the field remained the way he remembered it. The trampled grass and the burned-out patch from the fire.
“Why did I do it?” Vincent asked.
“Do what?” she asked back. He looked at the ground. There was nothing there now. But he remembered. It was where she had been. The spot where her body had been.
“Why did I kill you?”
Selena stared at him. Her expression read as nothing but anger at first. Vincent swallowed hard. After a moment, her expression changed, and he was not sure what she was feeling.
“What a good question,” she said. The wound on her face had already begun to heal. Vincent tried sitting up again. His back felt tight and raw, but not as bad as it had been. Perhaps that was part of the nightmare curse’s charm. It would almost kill you, then let you heal before it started again.
“What do we do now?” he said. Selena looked around them.
“There is little to be done. The nightmare will continue, the curse just needs to reassert itself. Eventually, I will not have the power to stop it. We need someone’s help. Someone from outside.”
Chapter 3
Dezzy stood at the counter, staring wide-eyed into the display case. He had never been much of a dessert guy in life, his first life, but he had a newfound appreciation for it in this one. Not that he was not a dessert guy before. Things were just different now. And this bakery had some serious talent on display.
Crispy topped Portuguese tarts sat alongside cream-filled cannoli and Dutch chocolate brownies. Cinnamon buns slathered in thick, white frosting crowded a shelf with tiramisu squares and mille-feuille. Pecan squares cozied up to eclairs. Cheesecakes shared space with flan.
Donuts in a dozen varieties were offset with cupcakes of twice as many flavors. A rainbow of icings and toppings, from traditional to exotic, caught Dezzy’s attention.
“What can I get for you?” the girl behind the counter asked. She was short and blonde, about Dezzy’s age. The urge rose in him to ask for another phone number, but he resisted. They were here on business. Plus, he hadn’t even spoken to this girl yet.
“How much would it cost for everything?” he asked. She laughed.
“I’d be more worried about how you’d carry it all out of the store,” she said.
“Guess you’re right. Um, what do you recommend? I heard the cupcakes are good.”
“Everything’s good! But I do love our mini cheesecakes. Also, the raspberry lemon cupcakes are new and they are amazing. And I make a pretty good baklava if I do say so myself,” she said, feigning modesty. Dezzy nodded.
“Right on. Give me three of all of those then, please.” There was a tiny plate of powder blue cookies next to some ginger snaps. “And are these—?”
“Those are blue corn cookies,” the girl said. Dezzy’s mouth opened.
“No way! My grandmother made blue corn cookies when I was a kid!” He looked up at the girl. “Hey, do you think we’re related?”
“Huh? No. I’m German and Irish, I think. But Abigail, who owns this place, knows a lot of really cool recipes. Most people have never seen blue corn cookies before.”
“I’ve never seen them anywhere except in my grandmother’s kitchen. Can I get one of those too?”
“They’re really good. Hope you like them almost as much as your grandmother’s,” she said, adding one of the cookies to a box.
Dezzy dug a few crunched-up bills out of his jeans pocket and handed it to the girl, then pulled the cookie out of the box. They were crispy but still had the vibrant blue color. His grandmother always told him that if the cookie turned brown and green, it was over baked by someone who was an idiot. But these were perfect.
Dezzy bit into the cookie while the girl made change. The taste of the cornmeal brought him back to his childhood, at his grandmother’s house in Arizona. The texture was unmistakable. The sweetness, the crunch. It was perfect. And then it wasn’t.
“Good?” the girl asked, giving Dezzy his change. He smiled at her and took the money, forcing it back into his pocket.
“Yeah, man. Good stuff. I gotta go,” he said. The girl looked m
ildly confused, but nodded.
“Okay. Well, have a good evening and thanks for dropping by the Black Tree Bakery,” she said.
“Yeah, you too,” Dezzy said, walking out of the store past the crowd out front. He headed down the street toward the festival, holding a mouthful of blue corn cookie and looking at the people as he passed. The seconds ticked by and seemed to go on forever. The crowds didn’t thin out.
As casually as he could, Dezzy turned his head and spit into the gutter of the street. An older couple scowled at him, and he shrugged, continuing on his way down the street. He opened the box of desserts and pulled out a lemon raspberry cupcake. The icing was swirled high, a ripple of bright yellow and deep red. He bit into it, chewed, and spit the cupcake on the street.
“That’s disgusting,” someone said. He didn’t pay attention to who it was. Instead, he bit and spit out a mini cheesecake as well. Every single one of them tasted like dirt and mushrooms. They were all laced with primal magic.
Dezzy tossed the whole box in a trash can next to a mailbox and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The town had that earthy, primal magic feel to it all over, but this was the first time he actually tasted it. He’d never experienced someone spiking food with magic before.
The crowd continued on about their business. Dezzy turned in a circle at the end of the street. He was near the carnival. The screams of excited people on rides and playing games filled the air. He didn’t know which way Vincent had gone. If that other woman was the head baker, then she was up to some shady business in town. And that meant Vincent might be on the receiving end of that shade.
Dezzy’s understanding of magic was less than practical. He knew of it the same way he knew of koala bears—he knew of them, he could identify one, but he didn’t know much about what to do with one or if they were friendly or anything, really. He could sense magic as an affectation of his time as the Jeweled Scion.
Beyond the Veil, magic was just another expression of the forces of creation. The jumble of powers that made everything in the universe possible. Mortals gave it the name magic because, why not? Had to call it something. And the different flavors had different names. Necromancy was dead magic, biomancy was life magic, and primal magic was like a different version of both together. It was the VHS to necromancy’s Betamax. It could do all sorts of things, as far as Dezzy knew. But he didn’t know how.
So, the reason for lacing a cookie with primal magic was not something Dezzy understood. But since the entire town was swimming in it, he had to assume it was bad news. No one slipped a person a primal mickey for no reason.
If it were necromancy, at least Dezzy could hazard a guess about what was going on. Maybe baiting people to be attacked by ghouls. Or priming them to be killed and then immediately resurrected. Blood magic might enthrall a victim. Or just murder them outright. But primal magic? That was all over the map. Primal magic could curse people, enchant them, deceive them. It was a real dealer’s choice situation. Plus, it ruined perfectly good cookies.
“If I were Vincent, where would I be?” Dezzy asked himself. Screams from the carnival answered him along with music and horns and whistles and shouts. “I would be at the carnival.”
Dezzy walked the rest of the way down the street to the gates of the carnival. The fairgrounds were large and packed to the gills with people and booths and rides. The smells of one hundred different kinds of foods filled his nostrils. If Vincent had gone anywhere, this had to be the place. Why would he go anywhere else?
Dezzy paid his admission and entered the grounds. People carried huge bags of cotton candy and he saw a small girl with French fries slathered in cheese and gravy in a tub that was bigger than her own head.
There was a Ferris wheel in the center of the grounds that towered high above everything else. Next to it was a Tilt-a-Whirl and a chain of rides Dezzy had never heard of before. One thing the Prince of Nothing did not provide the Scions was carnival rides.
He bought some tickets at a booth and walked up and down crowned aisles. There were games where people popped balloons with darts, and others where they shot squirt guns at a target to make plastic horses run across a field. There were target shooting games, a haunted house ride, and bumper cars. He wished he’d spoken to Vincent more about his favorite carnival attractions. It would have made looking for him much easier.
As the Jeweled Scion, his task was to fracture illusions for the lamented and open paths through the Void. That just meant helping people find what they needed to find. And he was truly lamented at that moment. So finding Vincent should have been exceptionally easy for him. That made sense.
Dezzy smiled and walked up to a booth to order a corndog. His understanding of fate and order was about as limited as his understanding of koala bears and primal magic. But he did know that rules governed every single thing that happened in all of creation through all time. And if a person followed the rules, then they would reach a desired outcome. And sure, no one actually knew the rules or even was aware that they existed, but that didn’t stop it from being true.
The corndog crunched as Dezzy bit into it. He looked around the carnival grounds and started walking again. Mustard dripped onto his hand and he licked it off. The corn dog did not taste cursed, which was comforting. But it did not help him find Vincent. Unless it did.
He finished the corndog quickly and then flipped the stick in the air. It landed on the ground, pointing to Dezzy’s right. He picked up the stick and headed right.
The booth directly ahead of him sold fried pickles on a stick. He had never experienced such a thing in his life, but he wasn’t about to tell fate it was leading him astray. He bought a fried pickle.
Kids with stuffed toys ran about him as he walked and ate the pickle. It was sour and salty and not entirely pleasant, but not the worst thing he had ever eaten, either. He flipped the stick in the air when he was done and once again followed its direction.
The pickle led him to a candy apple, and that in turn, led him to a deep-fried Mars bar. He dropped the tiny cardboard boat the Mars Bar had been held in and headed the direction it recommended as well. This time it was straight up an aisle, not toward any particular booth.
Dezzy made his way through throngs of people as they yelled and laughed and played and ate around him. He was on the main thoroughfare through the carnival now, headed directly to the Ferris wheel.
There was a short, metal gate around the entire wheel, and a short line of people waiting their turn. As soon as Dezzy arrived at the gate, the wheel came to a stop and people from the bottom gondola got off. New people got on and the wheel turned, and the process was repeated. Dezzy got in line and handed the man at the gate his ticket.
“Anyone ever puke on this thing, man?” Dezzy asked. The operator shrugged.
“Yeah, once in a while,” he said. Dezzy nodded. This was fate in action.
He climbed onto his own gondola and the wheel started and stopped several more times to allow people on. The inside of his little space reminded Dezzy of a teacup. It was round with a support beam in the middle, and the sides were open, to allow a view all the way around.
Once everyone was on, the wheel started moving. Speed was not the name of the game with the Ferris wheel as it crept ever upward at a glacial pace. Near the top of the wheel, the ride stopped, which left everyone suspended. The teacup swung lazily and Dezzy looked over the side. He could see the entire fairgrounds, as well as the entire town of Burnham below. If Vincent were a giant, it would have been easy to spot him from such a height. But he was not.
The wheel started up again and Dezzy watched the world as he went around in a full circle, back down to ground level. Vincent was not down there either, but Dezzy did catch sight of the booth that sold buckets of French fries and made a mental note to go there when he was done.
The wheel moved, and Dezzy ascended to the heavens once more. He scanned the fairgrounds from above but saw nothing. The gondola was at its highest
point and the wheel stopped again. The breeze carried the smell of primal magic over the odors of popcorn and fried foods.
Across the grounds, and out into the town itself, the smell seemed to emanate from a single point. For Dezzy, it was like identifying a rotten potato in the pantry. There had to be a source for the magic, a base of operations for the witches that was more private than a bakery. Dezzy let his eyes scan the horizon and finally settle on one point. It smelled like someone was grilling carrots and mushrooms. There was a high concentration of magic just a few blocks away.
“Vincent,” Dezzy said. It wasn’t necromancy, but it was definitely magic. And if there was one thing Dezzy was certain of, it was that someone was probably going to try to magic Vincent to death in this town. So maybe that was him getting murdered. He hoped not.
The wheel started moving again and returned Dezzy to the ground. He got off and headed to the French fry vendor. The kind with cheese and gravy was called poutine. The guy selling it said it was Canadian. Dezzy bought some and left the fairgrounds, walking down the street eating gravy-laden French fries from a bucket.
The trail of primal magic was easy to follow. The smell had saturated the entire town, fresher than the underlying smell that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. He followed it past the cursed bakery and up the street to an intersection. The trail led him into a quiet-looking neighborhood full of those houses they had on TV shows set in the 1950s: little boxy houses with nice lawns and fancy gardens. The kind of houses where people had dogs named Spot or Jeff.
Dezzy stopped outside one house. There was an arch of flowers over the path to the door. Yellow siding made the house look like faded sunshine. The earth-stink of primal magic was all over it. He was sure this was where Vincent was.
Voices drew Dezzy’s attention back to the street. A pair of women were approaching from the same direction he had come. The blonde girl from the bakery, and the other woman who had been working there with her. If he had to hazard a guess, he’d say those women were witches. Cupcake-cursing witches. And that meant they probably weren't going to help him out.
