by J. M. Frey
The truth of it is that, even though it’s through Elgar’s imagination and pen that the inhabitants of The Tales of Kintyre Turn have gained sentience and access to this realm—what Bevel Dom has dubbed the Overrealm—no one actually really knows how or why the Deal-Maker magic works here. Especially when no other magics do. Forsyth’s potions are just herb soups, his runes nothing more than lifeless scratches in the dirt, his Words of Power nothing but blurred mumbles.
Which means that, no matter how hard Elgar tries to work at their relationship—and he does try, despite any accusations anyone might level at him about his being narcissistic, self-important, and high-handed—there is always an unavoidable undercurrent of tense animosity on Lucy’s end. A fearful wariness.
And he can’t blame her. After all, what Elgar thought up had hurt her.
“How was your flight?” Lucy says after a quick breath. “You must have just got in.”
“I did. It was fine. Same as always. Listen, uh . . . I have a strange question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“When you were, um, there . . . Forsyth said that the Deal-Maker was destroying totems, right?”
“. . .yeah,” Lucy says, and Elgar can hear the worry creeping into her voice just as clearly as the squeak of her office chair as she sits up. “Why?”
“Was . . . was there ever any attempt on a totem from The Tales of Kintyre Turn?”
Lucy is silent for another moment, and it’s just long enough that the chills return.
“Lucy?”
“I didn’t really see it, myself,” she answers slowly, her voice low and scared. “I didn’t get much chance. I was, uh, unconscious for a lot of this bit, but . . . Forsyth said he saw your typewriter.”
“The red De Luxe?”
“Yeah. Blasted apart. Like, by lightning. The Deal-Maker was a weather witch.”
Elgar’s stomach drops out. He’d only ever written one weather witch into the books; he knew exactly who Pip was referring to. “Shit,” he says, and even to his own ears it sounds strangled. “Solinde?”
“I never learned her name.”
“It’s Solinde,” Elgar says firmly.
“Elgar, what’s happened?”
“I . . . the Smithsonian called. Apparently, my typewriter vanished. Back in December.”
Lucy goes silent again. “I see,” she says at length.
This is why Elgar likes his pseudo daughter-in-law so much. She’s clever. Cleverer than him, at any rate. She catches on to things faster, understands the depths of things more. She even found things in his own writing he hadn’t realized he’d put there in the first place. She’d written a whole PhD thesis about it. (It had been a bit horrifying to read, if he was honest—made him feel naked in ways he hadn’t experienced since his first weeks as an MFA student.) But she’s smart, and he doesn’t have to spell things out for her, which he likes.
“And it didn’t come back when the books returned?” she prompts.
“No.”
“And the rest of your . . . your stuff?”
“Right where it should be. Thank god.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, huh.”
There’s a shuffle and a thump from the other end of the line, and the sound of papers being moved around. “Okay, well, I guess there’s nothing else to really worry about. Nothing else is missing, nothing’s happened. It’s been quiet.”
Another silence, telling and tense, echoes down the figurative line from Canada.
“Do you ever worry it won’t be?” Elgar asks, the confession blurting out.
“Do you?”
Another telling pause. It sounds like she’s waiting for him to confess more. And, to be honest, there is more to confess. For all that Lucy is cleverer than him, Elgar is also not stupid. He knows that she doesn’t have a very high opinion of his social graces. And for all that he likes her, Lucy Piper, quite frankly, intimidates him.
She’s exactly the kind of woman that had made him a sweaty, nervous mess when he was a young geek. She’s self-assured, intelligent, speaks two languages, and sometimes seems to be sneering down her pert nose at him. He’d been frustrated and angry when women like Lucy overlooked him in favor of asshole jocks who treated them like garbage. He told himself that “nice guys finish last,” that women only wanted jerks, and then wrote a world where people like him, people who didn’t fit in, people like Kintyre Turn—who didn’t want to conform to what other people told him he should want—won the day. Where people like that got to be the hero, were free to behave however they liked, and got whatever they were entitled to have, because they strove for it. A world where women threw themselves at the Good Guys, and rewarded them with the sex, the servitude, the wifely submission that they deserved, simply by virtue of being Good Guys.
A world, Lucy had told him in the strongest language, and more than once, where being a woman completely sucked.
In the end, it turned out that Elgar had written the perfect romantic lead . . . he just hadn’t made him the main character. Women like Lucy Piper were looking for men like Lucy Piper: confident, generous, thoughtful, self-assured, compassionate. People who treated women like people instead of rewards for leveling up. People like Forsyth Turn.
Elgar knew this. Well, he knew it now. But it was sometimes difficult to relinquish old habits and prejudices. And if he was honest with himself, he’d admit that Forsyth Turn, his own creation, intimidated him, too.
Sometimes, it was hard not to feel like a slow child while trying to follow their rapid-fire, jargon-filled conversations. Sometimes, it even made him feel resentful. They did their best to explain when they caught him staring down into his cup—tea, wine, beer, or the strange liquors Forsyth kept bringing home, trying to find replacements for the nonsense ones Elgar had made up, which Forsyth missed terribly. But even that made Elgar feel stupid. No, not just stupid . . . puerile.
He was glad he’d already written all three books of the Shuttleborn trilogy, because there were days when just thinking about Lucy’s pursed frown of distaste made him snap his laptop closed and waste his work-time watching junk TV.
It makes it hard to write when you know that there are people in another world who literally suffered because of what you did, that there are people in this world who are disappointed with your every attempt. And as excited as Elgar is that Flageolet Entertainment has picked up the Kintyre Turn series and is in the midst of pre-production for the big television adaptation, he also secretly fears that if he has any hand at all in writing the scripts, those changes will affect Hain, Kintyre and Bevel, Wyndam and Pointe, Forsyth and Alis.
Initially, he’d asked to be present in the Writers’ Room, to work as the story consultant and maybe write an episode or two. Now, the most his agent has managed to get him to consent to is an agreement that he’ll read the scripts from home. He’ll send in notes and suggestions to keep the characters recognizable and the setting accurate, and otherwise remain hands-off.
He doesn’t dare do anything more.
And Lucy’s question—a simple, loaded “do you?”—makes all of this old self-loathing, resentment, and worry swirl into a hard ball behind his larynx. He swallows, trying to banish it back.
“Maybe I worry a little,” he says. “But I . . . I don’t want to waste every minute worrying, you know?”
Lucy sighs. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I get it. Look, I . . . I don’t think there’s anything more to this. I hope there isn’t, anyway. And you’re right. There’s no point in getting worked up if it’s nothing. It happened months ago. I mean, years might have passed over in Hain by now.”
“Is that how it works?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah?”
Lucy snorts. “I have no fucking clue.”
Elgar catches himself chortling, and presses his palm against the rain-cooled windowpane in front of him. The laughter feels good. Feels like it’s pummeling the fear, cracking it apart piece by piece, pounding it into silky ash.
<
br /> “The first time I went, I was there for nearly a year, but only a few weeks had passed here. The second time, we were there for well over a month, and it was only eight hours. And yet, time had passed in Hain at the same rate it had here—it had been about two years for them since Forsyth and I left, too. It’s a weird sort of slipstream thing, I think. Time passes at the same rate, unless a Reader is present? I don’t know.”
“It’s something to think about.”
“To be fair, I try not to,” Lucy admits.
“Sure,” Elgar allows. “Okay.”
“Listen, I’ll bring it up with Forsyth, and if he thinks it’s something to be concerned with, he’ll call, okay? Otherwise, I think you’re travel-tired, and worn out, and this hit you harder than you thought it would. I think you’re good.”
“I’m going to back up everything I’ve ever written by emailing it to myself, anyway,” Elgar says.
“If that makes you feel better, then do it.”
“Okay.”
“But I think you’re fine. I think this was a one-off.”
“But . . .” Elgar says, and then hesitates. There’s a corner of clear tape on the window, from when he and Juan had plastered his living room with the concept sketches Flageolet sent over, and he picks at it now with his fingernail. “What if . . . what if it actually isn’t nothing?” Elgar asks again, voice small and doltish in that way that Lucy’s confidence and insight always makes him feel.
“Then something else will happen. And then it will be a pattern. We can decipher a pattern.”
The tiny triangle of tape comes away from the glass, sticking to the pad of his finger. “That’s true. Though, I thought two was ‘a coincidence’ and three was ‘a pattern.’”
Lucy chuckles. “You have the best spymaster in the known world on your side here, Reed. Two’s enough for him to find the pattern. If there is one. There might not be. But if there is, we’ll figure it out. Trust us.”
“I do.”
“Okay, then.”
“Okay.”
They both linger on the phone, listening to each other breathe. It’s cowardly. Elgar’s too afraid of his own fear, of being alone with his admittedly vast imagination, to want to sever the call and, with it, his only connection to someone who understands.
“Elgar. You’re fine,” Lucy says eventually, and her voice is warm, comforting. She’s lost the haughty distance she sometimes has when he’s surprised her. “I promise.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Go get some sleep, all right?”
“All right. Bye.”
“Bye,” she says, and ends the call. Outside, the perpetually gray clouds open up again, and the world is pummeled in earnest by the rain.
Forsyth
Pip comes home smelling of her time after school at the gym. The look on her face and the fact that she did not shower before she came home says clearly that she is bursting to inform me of something. She crooks her finger at me, bidding me follow even as she entreats me verbally to go in the opposite direction.
“Hey, Freckles,” she says as she drops her satchel and coat on the bottom stair in a heap, a practice she knows I find frustratingly slobby. “Pour me a glass? Then come up?”
Both confused and intrigued, I rise from where I was reading the newspaper on the sofa and head into the kitchen to provide Pip with her requested libation. While I’m there, I pour a second glass for myself.
“Bao bei,” I call through the door of our en suite when I have the requested after-work wine in hand. “Why did you not shower at the school?”
“Come in,” Pip says. “I want to have this conversation face-to-face.”
I oblige, and my wife sticks her hand out around our shower curtain for her glass. Amused, I pass it to her and sit on the closed lid of the toilet. The shower wall has a small window in it that looks out over our backyard, and the light of the sunset behind Pip throws an extremely enticing silhouette against the curtain.
“Mmm, shower-wine,” she says. “Way better than shower-coffee.”
“I know it is ‘date night,’ but surely you can’t be this eager, can you?” I chide.
Pip pokes her head around the curtain, her hair a froth of suds, and waggles her eyebrows at me. “I wasn’t before, but you did bring me shower-wine. Wanna climb in?”
“Absolutely.”
Pip quaffs her wine and hands her empty glass to me, a Malbec mustache painting her upper lip. I lean forward to kiss it away, then quaff my own wine. Pip leers at me as I strip off my day-wear—a pair of warm, stretchy yoga pants and a freshly cleaned hoodie.
“Oh, you spent the day commando. Such thoughtful foresight,” Pip comments as I step into the spray. She slides her soapy hands over my shoulders and down my back to grab a double handful of her most favorite part of my physical assets.
“Alis was with her grandparents all day,” I say, grinning at her eagerness. “And I didn’t have to step out to the store, so I thought there was no point in making extra laundry for myself.”
Pip gives my backside a firm squeeze to show me just how much she appreciates my thoughtfulness. I return the favor, and soon things are slippery, and soapy, and lovely.
“What conversation did you want to have face-to-face?” I ask between kisses, and Pip makes a face.
“No, no, I’ll tell you after. Not while we’re naked.”
“Pip,” I say, backing off a little. “Whatever it was, you thought it urgent enough that you chose to come straight home instead of showering at the university.”
“It’ll keep,” Pip promises, pursuing my lips again.
But now I am curious, and curiosity has always been a more potent addiction than desire. “Then why the initial rush?”
“I didn’t want it going around and around in my brain while I was showering there.” Pip steps into me.
I step back again. Pip pouts. “What is it?”
“It will keep,” she insists, and makes up the lost space between us. This time, I do not back up. Instead, I let her have her way. Her delightful, delightful way.
Soon we are dressed in naught but our bathrobes and cuddled into one another on the sofa before the electric fireplace, our wine glasses and the bottle both waiting on the coffee table. We doze until Pip jerks in my arms and nuzzles her nose deeper into my naked chest.
“Umf?” I ask softly, running my palms down the texture of her back. Pip says nothing, but cringes and wriggles again. I’ve never known her to be jittery in bed—normally, she flops into her preferred position, on her back with one hand over her head, and stays there until morning.
My wife is a deep sleeper. If Alis cries, it’s generally I who hears the crackle from the baby monitor first. I wouldn’t say I’m an especially light sleeper myself, but the noise of an Overrealm city at night is more than I’m used to. I’m not entirely comfortable with trying to sleep in a soundscape that doesn’t resemble a wide, dark countryside dotted with moonflowers and barrow lights, the tinkling bell-laughter of fairies, and the plaintive songs of lonely Kiss-Me Frogs at twilight.
I don’t think I sleep as deeply as I used to, at any rate.
Perhaps Pip’s uncomfortable. The sofa is narrow, and I suppose using me as a mattress isn’t ideal. I don’t think I’ve grown any sharper—rather the opposite. The delicious foods and lack of sparring partners in the Overrealm has served to make me doughier, certainly, but Pip says much more comfortable for a cuddle, too. Perhaps she pulled a muscle during her workout. Perhaps her back hurts.
Still, the curiosity pulls at me, and I run my palms down her scars a second time. Pip huffs and tenses up, eyes screwing shut and fingers clenching in the fabric of my robe. How intriguing. She is waking now, making little noises that I remember from her time at Turn Hall, when she fought the return to wakefulness and pain.
Seeking to soothe, I run an appreciative, comforting hand along the exposed skin at her shoulder, and snuggle forward to kiss my favorite little leaf on her nape. Pip sighs in h
er sleep, uncoiling, and wedges herself on her side against the back of the sofa. This serves to turn her back away, protecting it, and I wonder if she even knows she has done so. She pulls my arm around her waist, clutching my hand like Alis clutches her stuffed lion, Library. I resist the urge to prod at her scars again. If she is genuinely hurt, she will tell me. Otherwise, I will not torment her for my own interest.
Our legs tangled together, ankles knocking, I watch as she drifts toward wakefulness.
“Mmmm. That was a nice appetizer,” Pip says, grinning up at me cheekily.
“And for the main course, you will tell me what had you so upset today?” I ask, sitting us both up.
Pip heaves a sigh, flopping back so her head is in my lap, her legs akimbo on the sofa, theatrically petulant. She looks up at me through the fringe sticking to her forehead with residual dampness, and I cannot help the chuckle that such a sight presents.
“You sure know how to spoil a mood, bao bei,” she complains. But then she goes still. “Elgar called me.”
“Oh?” I ask, wondering what it is my Writer could have said that was important enough he had to call my wife as soon as he got home. Or, for that matter, that hadn’t occurred to him while he was here. He’d only left this morning. I haven’t even washed the sheets in the spare room yet.
“What about?” I ask. “Something to distress you, obviously. No, not distress. It wasn’t that urgent. Concern, then?”
“It’s not anything really hinky,” she says, stretching and getting more comfortable on my thighs. Any discomfort in her back seems to have vanished, or at least, she now finds it ignorable. “Just . . . well, his old typewriter has vanished.”
I frown, throwing my mind back to where Pip said the typewriter was located. Yes, a museum. Or, it appears, not the museum. “Ah, so it was not a totem, but the actual machine? Interesting.”
“Yeah,” Pip says. “And he called me because he didn’t want to worry you. But I promised I’d tell you about it anyway. And that we would look into it, if there was anything worth looking into.”
