by Jeff Wheeler
Artis returned the smile. “I couldn’t have done it without you and— Oh!” he suddenly remembered.
When they reached Annadray, she was still lying on the ground among the stones that had formed her golem warrior. She was alive, but the spell and battle had taken their toll.
“Can you walk?” asked Artis.
“Yes, but please don’t make me,” she said woozily. “What happened to the dragon?”
“Warlick gave it an attitude adjustment,” said Artis.
“But only after Arty subdued it,” said Warlick.
“Which I never could have done if Annadray hadn’t softened it up first,” said Artis. “You never told me you were a battle mage.”
“I’m not licensed,” said Annadray. “But I took the advanced combat courses in school. Didn’t you?”
Artis shook his head. “I thought they were silly and impractical.”
Annadray laughed despite the pain. “How about now?”
“Some night classes couldn’t hurt,” he replied.
* * *
The door to Warlick’s office swung open with a snap of Artis’s fingers. He walked inside and waved to the old wizard behind his desk. The office looked almost tidy since they had installed shelving for all the magical items that had previously littered it. They had also put in a second desk.
Warlick noticed the large flat package under Artis’s arm and jumped up from his seat. “Let me see it!” he begged, waggling his fingers excitedly.
Artis put the package down and tore back the brown paper. The two stood for a moment’s silence, admiring the artisan’s handiwork.
“Shall we put it up?” asked Artis.
“Of course,” said Warlick. “But, oh!” He put a finger to his temple. “First, I wanted you to see this.” Warlick reached into his robe and handed Artis a letter. “It came while you were out.”
Artis took the envelope. “It’s from Annadray,” he said.
“I waited for you to open it.”
“Why?”
Warlick rolled his eyes. In the past months, Artis had spoken of Annadray often. He first wrote to her to apologize for getting her fired, and offered to explain to S Double P that her assistance in his unsanctioned quest was done out of utmost necessity. Annadray wrote back, declining. Their correspondence continued. When Artis went back to Santibel to pack his things for the move back home, the two met for ale. Warlick had tried to pry more information about that evening from Artis, but Artis merely told him, “It was good to see her again.”
“So, how’s our girl?” asked Warlick.
“She got her battle magic certification,” said Artis, scanning the letter before he continued. “And she plans to travel in the north for a bit to hone her skills.”
“ ‘If you don’t hear from me in six months,’ ” he read, “ ‘start sifting through Yeti dung.’ ”
Warlick chuckled. “Six months,” sighed Artis, his voice tinged with disappointment.
“She’ll be back before you know it,” said Warlick. “Besides, we’ll be much too busy for distractions.”
They walked outside together and used a stool to take down Warlick’s battered old sign. The new one they hung read Jompel & Tasker: Magical Services of All Types and Descriptions .
“I see you chose not to highlight your specialty in minerals,” said Warlick.
“Yeah,” Artis replied. “I’m not that kind of wizard.”
Eugene Morgulis
Eugene was born in Ukraine and raised in Milwaukee. He's currently an attorney and writer living in Los Angeles. Eugene's short fiction has been published by McSweeney’s, Fantasy Scroll Magazine, Cirsova Magazine, Metaphorosis, and in the Adventures of Pirates Anthology.
The Dealer, the Hag, and the Boy Who Dreamed
By Clint Johnson | 2,500 words
There once was a boy in love who loved as no other boy ever did: with the whole of his heart. It is often said lovers offer their whole hearts. Few really do. Even rarer is the youth who knows what his heart truly wants. But the boy was not like other boys, or girls or adults or children. This boy was like no one else. So it was not surprising when he gathered together every kurush to his name, seventeen years worth of child labor, and skipped with it to the Meandering Market to buy his beloved a dream.
The Meandering Market crouched in the mountain above the village three days of every month. On the first day, the market was assembled within the sparkling coils of the boundary, silver thread so fine and bright it was said to be spun by spiders in the dealer’s dreams. Inside, the villagers rioted in celebration, with food and wine and music. That night, the entire village gathered within the boundary to sleep safely.
The third day was when bartered dreams were shared and interpreted. Then the market was disassembled and hauled away on huge flatbed trucks spewing black smoke.
But on the second day, just before sunset, was the auction.
The richest, most desperate villagers, with bags beneath their haunted eyes, came to the velvet tent of the Dream Dealer. At the sound of the gong, one by one, they disappeared inside to offer their greatest treasures in hopes of procuring a dream.
Always before, the boy had watched the hopefuls huddled outside the velvet tent, marveling. Now he stood as one of them.
Other hopefuls stared at him, hostile and confused. What could a poor shop boy have to offer in return for a dream?
He smiled at their dark looks. “Good fortune to all. It is my blessing to be counted one of you.”
They scowled, hunched in their coats, and stamped their thick-soled boots. The boy hugged his frayed cardboard egg box to his chest and waited for his turn to enter the tent.
He watched the others go, some arguing and shoving to be first, until all were gone but himself. It was only with the last gasp of day, when orange and red fist-fought above the mountain, that a pale hand parted the tent door, beckoning.
“You dare to dream?” a voice asked from the opening.
The boy closed his eyes and pictured his beloved. Then he walked into the velvet cavern of the Dream Dealer.
He walked along a lightless cloth corridor, guided by the breathing walls, into the central hall. Circular and small, it held nothing but a heavy wooden desk that sprawled bare but for a small incandescent lamp dumping yellow light in a circle on its surface.
The Dream Dealer sat behind the desk, hunched and wizened, with hands folded before his face.
“What will you give me for my dream?” the dealer asked.
The boy hugged his life’s treasure once before setting the box on the desk. The dealer flicked the tattered top away, exposing wadded bills and a scree of coins. He blinked.
“And?”
The boy shuffled his feet. “And what, Beyefendi?”
“And what more?”
“But . . . I have no more. This is all I’m worth.”
The dealer laughed until the velvet walls shivered, and the boy’s heart buckled and broke.
“You think this worth a dream?” the dealer mocked. “This pittance you’ve scrimped in the drudgery of your life?” The dealer shook his head, dark eyes degrading in their pity. “Fool boy, do you know what deals I have made? Hopefuls have bartered their hearts’ treasures on the altar of my desk: maidens’ virtue, men’s pride, freedom, fortunes fit for kings, and firstborn sons.” His hands arched up on grasping fingers that raked the desk like striking scorpion tails. “Souls have been offered on this desk in return for a dream.”
The dealer’s hands chittered within his sleeves, and he sat back. “What, in the whole of your life, could you offer that I want and do not have?”
The boy knew he had nothing to sacrifice—but he did have one thing to share. A secret.
“In return for a dream for my beloved,” the boy said, “I will tell you what you do not know.”
The dealer smirked, his teeth rotted by shadow. “What do you think you know, boy?”
“I know one who is safe from the Hag,” the boy said.
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The dealer’s smile dissolved in darkness as he sat back in his throne. His pale chitinous hand danced on the arm of his chair, nails clacking.
“That is a more interesting offering.”
So the boy picked up his egg box, fixing the battered lid on top, and walked out of the tent, his bid made.
* * *
That night during hagwatch, the boy’s beloved opened her family’s tent flap to see him standing there with a smile and a small plastic vial in his hand.
“You promised to buy me something from the market today,” she chided. “All your talk of a gift was a lie.”
“I’m sorry I did not see you,” he said. “But I did not lie.”
He gently squeezed the small plastic vial until a single drop fell to his fingertip. A silver honey-looking bead.
“What is it?” she asked, breathless.
“My gift,” the boy said simply. “Your dream.”
He extended his finger, offering the drop to her small mouth. She licked her lips, large eyes meeting his for one excited moment. Then she took the tip of his finger into her mouth, and the dream drop with it.
“What is this?” a gruff voice called.
The boy and his beloved quickly parted, the boy’s finger tingling in memory of her lips’ embrace. Her father loomed over them in the entryway.
“Forgive me.” The boy bowed. “I brought your daughter a gift.”
Her father’s eyes slivered. “So near night?”
“This gift could not wait, Beyefendi.” He shared an excited glance with his beloved.
“It will have to.” The man put a large hand on his daughter’s shoulder, pulling her behind him. With the other hand, he handed her a steaming mug. “Leave, boy. If you omit the Smothering, I’ll not be held accountable.”
The tent flap shut, and the boy saw three shadows drink from steaming cups.
He ran home.
* * *
“Here.” The boy sat upon his sleeping pallet in the corner of his mother’s threadbare tent as she handed him the draft. In one hand, a steaming ceramic mug. In the other, the tin of Smother. “May the Hag pass you by this night,” his mother said.
The boy took the mug and a pinch of powder from the tin, nodding respectfully. “May she pass you by as well, Mother.”
He watched her wrap herself in her too-thin blanket and in moments succumb to the relative safety of drugged sleep. Then he drank the steaming water, set the mug in the wash basin that served as their sink, and slinked into the night. In the freedom of the village’s Smother-induced slumber, he ran.
The powder slid from his fingers, gone on the wind.
* * *
The boy wrapped himself in his thin blanket next to his beloved’s tent. All the village slept Smothered, so heavily drugged it barely counted as sleep. Sleep too dead to wake, or perceive, or much rest. Too deep to tempt the Hag. Too deep to dream.
Then, as all slept in fitful fear, the boy lived his secret.
He dreamed. And he rode the dreams of others.
Every time the Meandering Market came to the village, he felt others’ dreams whispering in his sleep, distinct from his own, drawing him in. He lived them more tangibly than his waking life.
So he nodded off, contently waiting to hitch a ride on his beloved’s first-ever dream.
But before, came the Hag.
He felt her as oil on black water, unseen but palpable. She searched, hungry for a victim to ride into nightmare. So the boy closed off his mind. He didn’t know how. He just did, shutting down part of himself as the slick oozed on by and away.
Then he opened to the dream, a bubble in the dark, then a burst of light.
He is his beloved, but he is himself, standing beside a table. On the table a body, small and twitching and slick with sweat. A little girl, dying.
Something is odd.
He stretches out a hand and touches the shivering child. At the touch, she glows, radiant flushes of purple that shimmer, then dim. The child’s eyes open, showing irises of electric blue. His beloved. She has healed herself.
No. Not she. Not herself. No.
This is wrong . . .
* * *
The Meandering Market lay piecemeal, much collapsed in heaps on the back of semitrucks, when the boy entered the still-standing velvet tent. He found the dealer behind his desk, staring glittering-eyed from his cowl.
“Pay me, as you promised,” he said. “Who has escaped the Hag?”
“I will not pay,” the boy declared. “You did not give my beloved her dream.”
The dealer stood, casting an impossibly large shadow in the light of the single lamp. “Last night she dreamed—and was safe from the Hag. My part of the bargain is done.”
“No,” the boy challenged. “A physician standing beside a table. On the table, a child, a girl he loves with electric-blue eyes. He touches her and heals her. He touches her,” the boy repeated. “It was not my beloved’s dream she lived last night. It was mine.”
The dealer’s hands fell from his sleeves, fists clenched. “What are you saying, boy?”
“I was a child,” the boy said. “Too young to understand what a dream truly was, or that others did not have them as I did. Even then I loved her, and I dreamed of being a great physician and healing my beloved so that she would love me too. I have had the dream many times since; it is a dream of my heart, and so can never be stolen. But that first time, the very first dream, is missing.” He tapped his temple. “The Hag came before I knew how to defeat her and stole it.”
The boy walked around the desk to face the shrouded lump that was the dealer. “Yesterday, you gave it to my beloved. You gave what wasn’t yours.”
For a moment, the dealer’s eyes shown within baggy folds of skin, nodules of malice. Then two frail claws snatched the boy’s head.
Oil, seething as it steams, yawns wide as the boy’s consciousness plunges into the dark, which runs red with pain.
A mountain of silver, whole crags and peaks of it, flashing white-hot, then pouring into his screaming mouth, washing him away.
Five horses all sprout fangs and grab a piece of him, galloping apart, and rending.
A room full of blades, roaring with the grind of steel teeth, gnashes down on him, hungry, tearing.
The people of the village, and uncounted more, a sea of sleeping victims, all with silver straws jutting from their foreheads as the Hag, wire haired and with cheeks rotted to striated muscle around burning silver eyes, raises a claw with the same silver straw, which turns to a drill and burrows into his screaming brain.
The boy’s eyelids flared open, twitching. As the nightmares racked him, some part of his mind not completely immersed marked the snarling face of the dealer. Shock of bristling white hair free of the fallen cowl. Gaunt cheeks twitching with rage. Two eyes cratered in that face, hot burning silver.
And the boy realized: You cannot hurt me. Not me.
He felt the dealer’s peaked fingers grasping his skull, and something far more intrusive gnawing inside. But somewhere too deep for fingers to scratch or hunger to consume, he was his own. Something in that untouched area tickled as the boy switched off part of his mind, just as he did when he was asleep to escape the Hag.
The caravan of horrors rumbling through his brain became so many photos, hollow sun-scorched negatives.
The boy grabbed the snarling dealer’s brow.
“Don’t just see it,” the boy said to the Hag. “Live it.”
The boy fed him the nightmares, circling them back to the dealer’s stolen trough of dreams. As he did, he ignited the man’s brain, electrifying nerves, animating twitching fibers of muscle, recreating all he did with his own body that allowed him to live the dreams he rode, body and soul. Then he plunged the dreaming dealer into the torrent.
The dealer’s back arched near to breaking. His desiccated lips opened in a soundless scream as he fell and dragged the boy onto his chest. There, the boy watched from a distance the steaming sea o
f oil and the smoking mountain of silver and the five fanged horses galloping and the room of whirling blades and the screaming face of the Hag, a match for the screaming face of the dealer. The boy’s hands burned with silver fire as he held it all and drowned the dealer’s mind.
* * *
The next morning the Dream Dealer was found dead, his body twisted, face contorted in horror. The Hag had taken him.
No one in the village ever saw the boy again.
His beloved woke and ran to his mother’s tent to share her dream, only to find him gone. She cried for many days, and his gift dream remained special to her long after the village began to dream once more, free from the Hag and bereft of the dealer.
She cried sometimes after that, though she drew odd comfort from the dream she’d had the night after his disappearance.
She watches the boy walk the village streets at night. He comes to her as she is ridden by the Hag, a horrid intermesh of a scarred woman and the cruel leathery visage of the Dream Dealer. With his eyes flashing silver, the boy tears the Hag from her chest. He then chases the Hag through the night, but not before turning back to give her a smile and a gentle kiss. He then walks away, herding the Hag into the darkness, where she dissolves, and the boy becomes a glowing mote of silver. She watches that mote draw radiant lines across the world, and wherever it stretches, coils of silver light wrap around every home. The roof of each such home bursts off, lifted by the dreams inside. The last thing she sees is the glimmer moving town to town, stretching a web of silver over the entire dreaming world.
Clint Johnson
Clint is a writer and educator. In addition to his creative writing, he writes for ESPN's Truehoop Network Utah Jazz affiliate, Salt City Hoops, and teaches writing at Salt Lake Community College.
clintjohnsonwrites.com
facebook.com/clint.johnson
The Price of Healing
By D.K. Holmberg | 8,600 words
Kira felt a cough building as she looked around the familiar streets of Amon. The town had changed little in the years since she’d left—not nearly as much as she had changed, especially as the wasting sickness had taken hold the past year—but enough that she didn’t know the square like she once would have. Maybe that would help Father make a few sales; local merchants never got the same price as those from out of town. And the gods knew they needed the extra income before reaching Annendel.
