“Yeah. His cross. All the wishes he grants are doomed to end badly, no matter how well intentioned they are. His cross, he says.”
Colby’s eyes smoldered. He didn’t know whether to dismiss Mimring’s dreamstuff altogether for even insinuating such a thing, or to fly into a rage looking for Yashar. The air tingled as Colby’s emotions excited the ambient dreamstuff floating nearby. Mimring raised a steady hand.
“Now, now,” he said. “Don’t go doin’ nothin’ you’re gonna regret. Hell, don’t go doin’ nothin’ I’m gonna regret.”
“I don’t understand. How could . . . how could he . . . ?”
“Not tell you that making a wish would sure as shit fuck up the rest of your life?”
“Yeah,” said Colby.
“How could you not tell your friend what his deal was until you had to?”
“It was in his best interest.”
“His or yours?” asked Mimring.
“His.”
“Are you entirely sure about that? Are you sure you didn’t want to keep your little world to yourself?”
Tears began to well up in the corners of Colby’s eyes. “I didn’t want him to end up like me.”
“Knowing more than he should?”
“Yeah.”
Mimring nodded. “How’d that turn out?”
Colby took a deep breath, chasing the glass from his eyes. “How come in all these years, you’re the only one to tell me the truth about any of this?”
Mimring thought hard for a moment, searching for the right answer to that question. Then he nodded knowingly. “Maybe ’cause not so many people know for sure. And maybe ’cause I’m the only one who never wanted nothin’ outta ya.”
Colby nodded. “What now?”
“Now you get me a few drops of blood out of that hat, a few hairs off your head, and I forge your friend a weapon that’ll give him one hell of a fighting chance against those devils.” Mimring smiled. “Only thing you can do at a time like this is channel all that anger into a serious ass whoopin’. That’s what I’d do, at least.”
“Really? That’s what you’d do?”
Mimring’s smile turned into a smirk. “Hell no. That’s what guys like you are for.”
COLBY AND EWAN milled about outside, knocking tin cans off a tree stump with stray rocks, the steady sound of a pounding hammer on metal echoing out from the workshop. They spent quite some time silently tossing pebbles at the cans, knocking them over only to set them back up again. Neither knew exactly what to say to the other, both clearly upset. Just not at each other. That, it seemed, was their only consolation.
Ewan scratched his cheek with his knuckles. “I need a shave,” he said. “I could have sworn I shaved yesterday.”
Colby looked closely at the stubble, now noticeably gray, aging Ewan a full ten years older than he was. “Yeah, you’re looking a bit ragged there.”
“So what’s our next move?” Ewan leveled a cold, serious glare at Colby. “I mean, why exactly do I need a weapon?”
“Because I have places to go where you can’t follow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have to go into fairy country to speak to the powers that be to calm this whole situation down.”
Ewan nodded sarcastically, pretending for a moment that this made any sense to him. “You think you can talk those beasts out of wanting to kill me?”
“No. But I might be able to talk the rest of the court out of wanting to kill you.”
“What? Why would they want to kill me? Didn’t they let me go?”
“Yeah,” said Colby. “But you killed a fairy.”
“I had to!”
“Doesn’t matter. You did it. Whatever truce they believed in disappeared the moment you shed fairy blood.”
Ewan rose to his feet, his eyes bloodshot and blazing. “That’s not fair. I was defending myself.”
“Fairies care little for nuance, Ewan. To them you’re a problem that won’t go away until they bury you. I need to assure them otherwise.”
“By telling them you’ll bury ten times as many of them?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“No.”
Ewan puckered his lips. “Pussy.”
“What?”
“It sounds to me like you’re pussying out. You’re going to talk to them? All that grand wizardly power and you’re just going to talk to them?”
“Yes. I’m going to talk with them. They can be reasoned with. Reason is just not what I would call their default setting. But I can get them there.”
“And you’re going to leave me at my place so you can talk them out of killing me?”
“My place, not yours. Yours is the first place they’ll look.”
“You sure about that? Last I checked they attacked me in the street outside a club that had advertised my being there. I don’t think anyone knows where I live.”
“Except your girlfriend,” said Colby coldly.
“Well, yeah,” said Ewan, not yet acknowledging the truth staring him in the face.
“Who is a fairy,” continued Colby.
Ewan calmed down a bit, his eyes softening. He took a step back and then sat down. His voice went up an octave, losing its bravado, gaining sincerity. “Do you really think she’s in on it?” he asked.
Colby sighed and shook his head. “I won’t know that until I ask her.”
“It seemed like she wanted nothing to do with it. I mean, it sure looked that way.” Ewan fidgeted while he talked. The rage burning in his gut subsided, now roiling and churning with heartbreak.
“Yeah, but you never know with the fair folk.”
“So you’re going to see her?” asked Ewan.
“I hope so,” said Colby.
“I want to stay in my own apartment. I don’t care if she knows where I am. I don’t care if they know.”
“You’ll be safer at my place.”
“Will I really? Or does everything in this godforsaken town already know where you live?”
“They . . .” Colby paused. Everything did; everything he was worried about, at least. “Shit.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The hammering stopped and the heat diminished as the furnaces inside dimmed. Mimring stepped out of the workshop, his face charred and blackened with soot. In one hand, he held a long pike—a wooden shaft nearly six feet long with a blade fashioned like a Bowie knife atop it—while his other hand rubbed a greasy rag over the blade to give it a good, final polish. He stood the pike up on its end—towering over him at nearly twice his size—motioning up toward it with a nod of his head.
“This outta do you boys up real good,” he said proudly.
Ewan’s eyes swelled large in their sockets. “What’s it do?” he asked.
“Well, the blade is so sharp that it can take a man’s head off and never lose its edge. And there is no magic in the world that can heal a wound it causes—not to a fairy, at least.”
“Whoa,” said Colby. “You don’t mess around. I heard you were good, but—”
“The best,” interrupted Mimring. “You heard I was the best.”
“I did,” said Colby with a nod.
Mimring handed the pike to Ewan, who grasped it with a grin. He stepped back, singing it a bit to test the weight. It felt natural in his hands, as if he were born with it. Politely, he gave an enthusiastic bow to the blacksmith.
“Now,” said Mimring, “let’s hope for two things. One, that you’ll never be needin’ to use this thing.”
“And two?” asked Colby.
“That I’ll never be needin’ to call in that favor you owe me.” He smiled weakly. Colby understood the gravity of what he was saying. “Now, get the hell off my property. Our business is done here.”
Colby motioned to Ewan. Their welcome had officially worn out.
CHAPTER FORTY
THE DJINN WHO CRAWLED INTO A BOTTLE
Yashar sat in his usual
seat, nestled snugly in the arms of a warm buzz as he knocked back whiskey after whiskey, faster even than Old Scraps could pour them. The Cursed and the Damned was packed, unusual for any night other than that of a fairy’s death. On the rare occasion one did die, the bar filled early and emptied late, a drunken, rambling wake celebrating their passing before the memories of them faded altogether the next morning.
But this was something else.
Few ever mourned the death of a redcap. Their vile dispositions and lack of qualities, redeeming or otherwise, kept them from making many friends. But the death of this redcap was different; this death signified the beginning of a very long day. Everyone knew the tale of Colby Stevens the Child Sorcerer, and how he had freed his young friend from the burden of serving the Tithe. However, few knew, until that night, that this young friend still walked the streets among them. He was not off in the world living out his life; he was here, in their city. And he had killed a fairy.
This death meant a coming retribution. And if fairies were coming for that young man, there was little doubt that Colby Stevens would be standing between them and his friend. Once that happened, all bets were off. The chief reason Colby was allowed to drink in the bar was because it was better to have him as a confidant than to risk offending him. They’d grown to like him, but they had never stopped fearing him.
This night the bar was full not to mourn the passing of a dead fairy, but to mourn the coming loss of their friend Colby Stevens. Either Colby was going to die at the hands of overwhelming odds or he was going to have to do something that would put him at odds with the community once and for all. And for that, they drank all the booze Old Scraps could pour.
And no one was drinking harder than Yashar.
The door squeaked open. The bar became uncomfortably quiet. Yashar didn’t bother to look up. It was the moment he’d been dreading all night; it was the moment he’d been dreading for fourteen years. While every wish he granted ended this way, there was still a surprise in the how and the when of it, and he was about to get a glimpse of both.
“Yashar,” said Colby through the thick, awkward hush. “Can I have a word? Outside?”
Yashar nodded. “Yeah, but are you sure you don’t want a drink first? Scraps, pour this man a shot of your finest.”
Old Scraps shook his head, shrugging. “I don’t think he’s here to drink, Yashar.”
“Well, pour him one anyway. It’ll take the edge off.”
“Yashar, outside.”
Yashar stared into the murky brown of the whiskey in the glass in front of him, rolling it back and forth as if there was something floating in it. He refused to look up. “Don’t get all master-of-the-lamp with me, young man. That’s not how this arrangement works.”
“You’re drunk.”
“You’re perceptive.”
“I don’t think you want to have the conversation we’re about to have in front of everyone here.”
“No,” said Yashar. “If it’s a conversation we have to have, it’s best we have it outside. There just isn’t any whiskey out there.”
“Here. Take the bottle,” said Old Scraps, offering him half a sloshing bottle of fine brown spirits. “Now take it outside, you two.”
Yashar snatched the bottle away from Old Scraps then drunkenly rose to his feet. The djinn staggered across the floor, tripping over imaginary objects, struggling with gravity like a character in a Buster Keaton routine. Friends tried to look away, but sounds of overturned chairs and breaking glass were hard to ignore in the strained silence.
The room let out a collective sigh as the door closed behind them.
Yashar stumbled out into the alley where he uncorked the bottle, taking a long drink from it.
Colby followed closely behind. “When were you going to tell me?”
Yashar finished swallowing a gulp of whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Tell you what?”
“About the curse.”
“You knew I was cursed, what kind of question . . .” He trailed off. This was new. “Who told you?”
“Does it matter?” asked Colby.
“No. But somebody did tell you?”
“I should have heard it from you,” said Colby.
“How? What was I supposed to say?” asked Yashar. “Hey, kid, make a wish. No matter what, it’ll turn out shit in the end.”
“That’s not too far off the mark, actually.”
“It’s not like that,” said Yashar.
“It’s exactly like that,” said Colby.
“You’ve seen so much, yet you still understand so little.”
“I had a lousy teacher.”
Yashar angrily poked Colby in the chest. “You fucking take that back, you little shit.”
“I won’t. You betrayed me; you sold me out for your own well-being.”
“Yeah?” asked Yashar.
“Yeah,” said Colby, turning his back on Yashar.
Yashar took another drink from the bottle. “What do you know?”
“Quite a bit.”
“No,” said Yashar. “I mean about the curse. What do you know?”
“That your wishes are doomed to end badly.”
“Right. Did you hear that all my granted wishes end in death?”
Colby spun around, shocked and angry. “No.”
“That’s because they don’t. Not all of them.” Yashar swayed a bit, then slumped down on the curb, bottle in his lap. He drunkenly waved Colby over, patting the curb beside him.
“No, not this time.”
“Get the fuck over here. I’m drunk, I’m having trouble standing up, and this is something you need to hear.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” said Colby.
“If you didn’t need to hear it, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be off getting into a fight with a bunch of fairies over a kid who should have died years ago—”
“Whoa,” interrupted Colby. “Should have died?”
“Everyone dies, Colby. For some, it is merely what happens at the end of a life well lived. For others, it is their only purpose. Ewan was born to die. It was his destiny. You robbed him of that when you made your wish. And you’ve spent every day of your life working, in some small way, to push that destiny back a little further. To give him one more miserable day before his fate catches up with him.” Yashar patted the cement next to him once more. “Now, sit down and let me tell you a story.”
“No,” said Colby. “I think I’ll stand.”
“Let me ask you something. When you made your first wish, what did I do?”
“You granted it.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Did I try to talk you out of it first?”
“Well, you . . .” Colby paused for a moment, thinking back. “I, I think we talked about it.”
“No, that’s very dangerous, I said. I forbid it, I said. Those were my words, were they not?”
“I honestly don’t remember,” said Colby, now struggling to recall the moment exactly.
“Well, I do. I remember telling you no. I remember offering you other things. And I remember you calling me on a promise and making me grant you the very wish you’ve spent years bellyaching about.”
Colby looked down at Yashar, memories tugging at him. Yashar was telling the truth.
“Now, sit down and let me tell you a story.” Colby shrugged, nodding, and silently sat down beside Yashar. “Once upon a time there was a young djinn—reckless and greedy, his heart full of wanting. He amassed a great fortune, surrounded himself with beautiful women, and lived the life of a king without bearing the responsibility of one. But he was tricked and one day found himself without his wealth, without his women, and without the life of a king, so he decided to do one good thing for the one person who showed him kindness when he hadn’t a penny to offer.
“That’s how the world gets you, you know. It rewards you for your wickedness and punishes you for your selflessness. That djinn gave that m
an everything he wanted, which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t really a whole hell of a lot. But men can be barbarous when you take something they believe is theirs, and that young man met with a bad end.”
“I know this story,” said Colby. “And I know it’s yours.”
“But you don’t know the story after, about how that young man’s last wish cursed me to always bring ruin upon all those whose wishes I granted. I wish that all your wishes would end granting all the happiness you’ve brought unto me, he said. What the story leaves out is the hours he spent begging for his young wife’s life as the soldiers ravaged her. How he swore revenge he would never get. How they dragged them behind their horses before finally having mercy enough to kill them.”
“Well, I do now.”
“Do you?” asked Yashar. “Do you know about the years I spent wandering in the desert, living out my last days as the last of the living souls who knew me passed on, to leave me starving? How I tried with all my might to make it through the last fortnight without granting a single wish to save my own life? Do you have any idea what it feels like to starve yourself half to death on principle alone? What happens to your mind and your sense of morality when all you can think about is survival and what you would give, what you would do, to keep going?
“I tried. I really intended to go through with it, but it’s like holding your breath underwater and trying to drown. At some point your instincts override your own sense of self and you fight and claw your way to the surface without even thinking about it. Even if deep in your heart you don’t want to, there you are, swimming and pounding and thrashing as hard and fast as you can for a single breath of air. And then it’s done. You’ve failed. And you have to start over.
“I’ve gotten to that point a dozen times since then, always sure that this was going to be the time it would happen—the time I would finally see death through. But come sunrise of the fourteenth day, I always fail and claw my way to the surface any way I can. Your humanity isn’t lost when you do something heinous for your own gain or enjoyment. On the contrary, that’s distinctly human; that is your humanity. No, you lose your humanity when you can’t think of anything but doing that thing, because you need to do it to survive. That’s when you turn over your soul. I’ve granted terrible wishes, brought horrible misfortunes upon good people who had nothing to do with my curse, only to save my own life. So I did the only thing I could do.”
Dreams and Shadows: A Novel Page 30
