Street Spells: Seven Urban Fantasy Shorts

by Aimee Easterling

  A run of the mill Binding spell compelled a manifestation to follow an order, to act in a certain way, etc. Lower the gun, or put down the kid, that sort of thing. The binding invoked the Laws of the Magical Compact. It didn’t involve pain. But these prisoners had broken the Laws. Compelling them to obey an instruction took something more direct. Such as pain delivered by guardian manifestations.

  I’d never seen anything like this on the outside, not in the nearly three years I’d worked for R.U.N.E. I’d only heard whispers about what went on in the silos. Tomlinson warned me off asking questions. “You really don’t want to know,” he had told me, which made me ask again, because if there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to keep asking questions, it’s not getting a decent answer.

  But Tomlinson was the proverbial immovable object when he clammed up. He just lit up another cigarette and changed the subject.

  I climbed down the rest of the way to the uppermost prison level and stepped onto the top of the spiral. I looked around the silo. The spiral wound down seven levels, with thirteen cells on each level, one level blending into the next below, like a parking garage.

  Inside the nearest cell an ogre leaned against the transparent door. The door was crafted of a super-quartz like material, something the Artificers at R.U.N.E.’s labs had cooked up decades ago.

  To an ordinary person’s eyes, the ogre would look like a power lifter with a mono-brow. Only sorcerers like myself could see the ogre’s true form.

  The ogre stared at me dully, eyes narrowed in obvious pain. He wore the bright purple coveralls that were standard Silo issue. His jaws were massive, like an early ancestor of humanity. He was seven feet tall, easy.

  His cell, like all the rest, was a studio apartment, with a simple conjure window on the back wall. His showed a dark city street, empty, rain-swept. Not the place I’d want to be looking at, but it must mean something to him.

  My gaze flicked back to the Ogre. His eyes were accusing.

  I looked away. The prisoners had all broken the Law in some fashion or other, and thus were imprisoned here. But they were each confined to an individual cell. As much of a hassle as having an area for them to roam in would be, it would have to be better than this. Except containing a manifestation wasn’t as easy as it sounds. For instance, the ogre had incredible strength, and could go berserk and become even stronger. How do you contain that?

  But it was the accusing look that got to me.

  Now I had to begin the backwards walk. It wasn’t just an irritating exercise. I was tracing the enchantment cast into the floor itself when the Silo had been built. At least, that’s how Taylor had explained it to me after I arrived.

  Above each cell door was an ancient filament 40-watt light bulb glowing yellow, the source of the soft light that didn’t hinder my magic sight.

  I walked past cells with goblins, one that was a specially-fitted tank with a merman inside, another with a gnome, long beard and all, and a shimmering form of a neo-sprite in another.

  Wham! Metal flexed and boomed like the Devil’s own taiko drum from below. “Prisoners are supposed to be fed two times a day!” The bellow echoed up the silo, then trailed off into a harsh cough that sounded like two boulders smashing together.

  Ulvonous. Only I called him Cosmo. When I first arrived as a guard, Margery made me visit with every prisoner here. Ulvonous was an old-timer, far and away the oldest here. He was centuries old. A kobold originally from Germany, he had manifested during the Middle Ages. He’d survived the Great Mana Drought that lasted from 1400 until the 1960s. He was the first prisoner in the Silo, according to Margery. It had taken weeks for him to speak to me, and even then, it was grudging, maddeningly slow to get him to open up, especially since you could cut steel with his gruffness and attitude.

  It wasn’t required that I had to keep talking to him, but it had become a challenge.

  Now he was complaining about not being fed enough.

  I swallowed. Taylor said he had fed the manifestations before he went off shift at eight. Cosmo got potatoes and sausages, others ate plant matter, a few flesh; the techno-elf was served microwaved burritos and nachos smothered in melted Velveeta. Each manifestation also received undivided attention as part of their nourishment, one minute apiece. Which meant a feeding session took over ninety minutes, counting prep and transport, twice a day. It wasn’t as fun as it sounded.

  I’d never known Cosmo to lie but then again, he and I didn’t get along. He was a prickly S.O.B. It would be just like him to screw with me.

  “Dinner!” His bellow rang in my ears. Damn it.

  I resumed walking the spiral backwards, swearing under my breath. The rules were the rules. Walking backwards meant just that.

  So, I backwards walked to Cosmo’s cell, still following the enchantment all the way down the spiral. The kobold banged away inside on the metal walls. I did a quick scan of the other two occupied cells when I reached the bottom level of the silo.

  “Eliz-a-beth,” Desiderata sang at me from the level above. I ignored her. I had to keep doing the backwards walk. It was a kind of spell. It was training. And it was Margery being all bitchy witchy if I didn’t do it right. No doubt she was watching me on the scrying mirrors right now.

  “Sorry, Des, I’m working.”

  “Taylor is gone,” Desiderata sang. “Gone from us, us, us.”

  “Yeah, I know.” We worked sixteen hours on, eight hours off, in overlapping shifts. Yeah, it sucked. Taylor was in his quarters catching Zs like a good little guard.

  A wolf whistle from above and behind me, in the direction of the techno-elf’s cell. “Hey babe, how about taking a break with me?” The techno elf’s tone was classic velvet lounge lizard. I ignored him and kept back-stepping, until I finally reached Cosmo’s cell.

  “You look like an idiot.” The kobold’s voice was a rocky rumble.

  “All part of the service.” I pivoted two hundred and seventy degrees, towards the middle of the silo, and looked up, scanning the cell doors above. All the crusties surrounding the light bulbs still glowed emerald. They’d been green on the way down, but you always double checked. If there was a disturbance with the manifestation in a cell the crustie sentinel would go amber. If it went ruby it meant the manifestation had escaped. Which had never happened in this silo. I’d heard stories about the others, but it was rare.

  I finished my pivot and faced Cosmo.

  The bank vault-thick steel door was made of that special super-strong artificed glass. The kobold was five eight, maybe not tall for a lot of people, but tall for a kobold. Short human me, even in my thick-heeled Docs, had to look up.

  Cosmo leaned against a wall, his chest rising and falling, sweat dripping from his craggy forehead. His wide-set yellow eyes fixed on me. I expected him to roar DINNER! again.

  “About time you checked in,” he said, his voice pitched low, like the first stirrings of an earthquake.

  Like I said, Cosmo was an old-time manifestation, from before the Reawakening in the 1960s. His limbs were knotty muscle, his chest barrel shaped, not like one of those chiseled neo-kobolds that belonged in a video game.

  “What’s up, Cosmo?”

  “Ulvonus. My name is Ulvonus. You could even call me Ulvo, just do not call me Cosmo.”

  “I could, Cosmo.” I grinned. “Now, what’s with the dinner bit?”

  He brushed away sweat with his claw-like hands. “I haven’t been fed in two days.”

  I leaned forward so that, on tippy toe, my nose just reached the open window space. “I gave you breakfast, and Taylor gave you dinner.”

  “I didn’t get to keep breakfast, and Taylor never came by.”

  “Lying isn’t your thing, Cosmo.”

  He ground his stubby teeth. “It is the truth,” he gritted.

  I rapped my knuckles on the door. “BZZT! Wrong! One, Taylor’s a tight-ass but he never misses his rounds. Two, I know I fed you breakfast.” I leaned forward until my nose pressed against the base of the window
cavity. “And no one could ever take food away from you.” I mean, just look at the kobold. His ropey, knotted muscles had ropey knotted muscles.

  Cosmo’s jaw worked like he was trying to say something. Sweat drizzled off him.

  He was normally more like a granite wall. Nothing seemed to get to him. But, now it seemed like he was fighting something. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  His eyes narrowed, and his mouth closed, lips pressing into a thin line.

  He’d pulled that act the other week, after months of seeming like he was finally opening up. He’d started laughing at the Cosmo name, and then, he stopped. This was like that.

  “Come on, don’t be like that,” I said, crossing my arms. “It’s not like I’m Taylor.”

  That normally would have gotten a laugh out of him, but he simply closed his eyes.

  “You’re annoying,” he said, finally.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’m being serious,” he said, his voice pitched so low now I could barely hear it.

  “DINNER!” His thunderous bellow made me jump and I fell and landed on my backside. Ouch! That hurt like Hades.

  I frowned.

  Cosmo was a bad-ass, unrepentant, imprisoned in this god-forsaken hole in the ground since it opened for business. Before that he was stuck in the old prison at Fort Rock. R.U.N.E. had imprisoned Cosmo because he wouldn’t pledge to follow the Rules and the Laws. Quote, “Especially not to a gang of self-appointed bureaucratic sorcerers,” or words to that effect.

  But lying wasn’t his thing. Nor was letting imprisonment get to him. Maybe not being able to feel and taste rock had finally gotten to him.

  I glanced at my wristwatch. Whoops—time was passing and Margery watched the clock like the bitch witch she was.

  “No dinner.” The words came from Cosmo’s cell in a low rasp.

  Something was definitely very wrong with the old timer. I needed to ask Margery about dinner and roust Taylor if need be.

  I resumed my backwards walk up the spiral. The other cells were quiescent, the crustie guardians still all on green.

  I sighed as I neared Desiderata’s cell. Yeah, I know, why not Desdemona, that was a name fit for a sylph, right? Thing was, Des came into being after the Age of Aquarius began, when mana flooded back into the wide world, and the hippy wizard who “got involved” with her (yes, YUCK) decided that was a better name. Being a neo-manifestation, Des wouldn’t argue.

  “Hello, Eliz-a-beth,” Des sang as I stopped and did the whole two-seventy thing. Once at each of the seven levels.

  “Des.”

  She floated in her cell, smiling beguilingly at me, beckoned with one long fingertip.

  I fought to not shiver. “Now, Des, you know I have a strict ‘no doing the incarcerated’ policy.”

  “Taylor’s gone,” Des sang. “Gone, gone, gone.” She hit a high note just like a pop superstar on the last note.

  “Yeah, back to his room.”

  “Soon he will be gone to the far fields of Elysium, to cavort with nymphs.”

  “That the same Taylor we both know and detest?”

  “Tay-lor.”

  “Not in a million years,” I replied.

  “He’ll be released, and free at last.” She smiled sweetly.

  Des was batshit crazy, but in a nice sort of way.

  “And the birds will be on the wing.” She hummed a few bars from Stairway to Heaven. “Flying free.”

  Nothing like a manifestation that knew its Led Zeppelin.

  Again, her crustie door watch shone green. Everything a-okay, except for her mind and that was outside my bailiwick.

  I resumed my backwards walk up the spiral. The manifestations were quieter than usual. Even the Techno-elf sat quietly reading a video game magazine, didn’t leer, hells, the elf didn’t even look up. His long, blonde romance novel cover worthy hair fell over one side of his face, hiding his expression. Meanwhile in cell number seventeen the electro troll slept, skin crackly and popping.

  I reached the hatch. Below me Cosmo struck his cell wall, not as hard this time, and the boom echoed weakly through the silo. “No dinner,” I thought I heard him say. It was not like him to act like this. He was stubborn, but he was also proud.

  “No dinner,” he repeated.

  MARGERY DEFIED EXPECTATIONS and didn’t say a word about my tardiness—seven minutes slow by my watch. Normally she’d give me a royal dressing down. She didn’t even push another game of Changeup on me.

  I asked her about Cosmo. She said she’d think about what the problem could be. I tried asking her again, but she gave me the brush off and returned to her work.

  She was bent over a project on her workbench in the corner of the watch room. Something writhed in the silver kettle. I caught a flash of purple tentacle encrusted with jewels and heard a high-pitched whistling. Her “secret” charm project, which she’d started working on even before I’d shown up to join the Silo Guards.

  I had asked Taylor about it a week after I’d arrived.

  “Don’t ask,” he had replied, in what turned out to be typical laconic Taylor fashion.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s senior and with rank comes the privilege. Which includes not having to explain herself.”

  I’d been too scared to ask Margery outright, and by the time I’d gotten used to her witchy-ness, it just felt wrong to bring it up. Margery could control manifestations, in her case by spelling fresh charms. My binding cost me more.

  I could have sworn that the first time I got a good glimpse of what was in her silver kettle, the thing was furry, with a big (yes) hairy eyeball.

  A polymorphic manifestation? I’d heard of such things, but they were super-rare. The sort of supernatural a conjurer would create. Margery was a sorcerer, not a wizard.

  Wizards had more than one talent, but we silo guards were all sorcerers, meaning one path, only. Wizardry led to madness and death.

  Margery must have been given the polymorphic manifestation.

  But, it wasn’t like I could call out to ask. We were isolated here. Food was delivered above, and brought down by laconic types in glowing armor, who looked like they belonged in a science fiction film.

  “All in order,” I said as I went to my chair. Wait for it, I told myself. Margery’s scorn always stung.

  “Fine. Well done.”

  I swear the hairs on the back of my neck rose at this response. Relax, I told myself. I breathed in a lungful of air. Margery not complaining was not a bad thing. But praise, that was just plain weird.

  I put on my headphones. The pickup from the silo came through loud and clear, switching between levels like the scrying mirrors, only this was a first-rate audio monitoring system. Sometimes you had to go with technology. Des hummed loudly on the second lowest level pickup, Cosmo must have settled down, there was no banging or shouting from his level. The techno-elf sang what sounded like a boy band ballad, “we wear our hearts on the outside for you” stuff. Shudder.

  I glanced at the cycling scrying mirrors. All the crustie watch wards still glowed green.

  I turned on some Apocalyptica. I couldn’t get away with metal vocals, but I could listen to metal-infused orchestral music, as long as I kept the input on that down and programmed the listening system to increase volume and cut out my music input if volume picked up from the silo. Plus, there was an indicator screen. Margery was busy. I was safe. Anything to wash out the boy band ballad still echoing in my head.

  After setting everything up, I began doodling on a sketchpad, letting my pencil find its own image and losing myself in the drawing.

  I stopped and glanced up at my monitoring station. Over an hour and a half had passed. I rubbed my eyes. Apocalyptica still played in the background, on loop. I rubbed my eyes, glanced down at my artwork and did a double-take.

  I’d sketched Cosmo, squatting in his corner, claw-like hands held up, as if warding off a blow. His face was set in determination, chin up.
The whole thing said “unbowed and unbroken.”

  I’d drawn this? Normals didn’t think all that much about the subconscious, but when it came to the supernatural, the subconscious was King and Queen. It interacted with mana to bring the manifestations into being (manifestations were called manifestations for that reason). But none of my doodles had ever taken over before. Margery would flip when she saw this. In fact, why hadn’t she snatched it out of my hands already?

  I looked around the watch room.

  Margery was gone. I was alone.

  You were supposed to let your partner know if you left the watch room. Didn’t matter if you were in charge or a rookie like me, the rules were the rules.

  Before she left Margery would have broken my doodle fugue even if I were channeling Picasso.

  She hadn’t.

  I picked up the wide-world-only-knew-how-old land line phone and dialed (yes, DIALED) Taylor’s quarters. He was grumpy when his beauty sleep was interrupted, but he’d be nastier if I didn’t call him. I braced myself for him yelling into the receiver when he picked up.

  Except he didn’t.

  The call rang and rang and rang but Taylor didn’t answer.

  Damn it, now what?

  The hatch to the silo below swung up and open. Thank the wide world, it must be Margery returning. I rolled up the sketch and shoved it under the desk. She wouldn’t ask what it was if she didn’t see it.

  A head topped with long blonde hair appeared. The techno-elf sprang up into the watch room in one fluid motion, snapped his fingers and my music stopped playing. I yanked off my headphones. He no longer wore his prison purple. He wore a black t-shirt with a silicon chip logo and skinny jeans and cross trainers.