Feral Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  It was a simple gold chain, and the pendant was an old design, a fiddlehead fern with a ruby in the center of the curve. The ruby itself was little—about the size of most diamond chips—but there was something special about it. Something that made me think of heirlooms.

  “Hello,” I muttered, “You look like you were misplaced.”

  With one more look at the pendant, I decided it would be best to give it to Mordon. Whatever reason the shop had for showing this to me, it wasn’t mine and I had a feeling Mordon would be happy to have found it. I wondered why the shop hid it in the first place. Remembering how the book had answered my questions before, I turned to touch it again.

  Mordon entered. I jumped in surprise.

  He didn’t notice, instead he dropped into the skirted chair I’d rescued the necklace from. Mordon rubbed his forehead and grumbled, “That Cole, I will never grow accustomed to dealing with him.”

  My eyes narrowed. “What did he want?”

  “Hmm?” Mordon stopped rubbing his head and looked up to me, dismissingly saying, “Nothing of importance. Just doing his maintenance check.”

  “Ah,” I said, letting the subject drop and trying to not think of them in league together. “I don’t know if I found it or if the shop showed it to me...”

  “The shop showed you,” Mordon said, yawning, “it hides items, to be found later. What was it this time?”

  I let the necklace dangle from my fingers, fiddlehead pendant catching the light like a winking flame.

  Mordon raised his eyebrows high and stared at it. He cleared his throat and said, “I see.”

  He stretched out his hand and I put the necklace in his palm, pooling the chain in a little curl. Mordon closed his fist slowly, possessively giving it a little squeeze.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, though for an instant I thought he was going to give it back to me.

  “What is it?”

  “A family trinket.”

  There was more behind it than that, but I decided to let Mordon tell me in his own time. He looked at his closed fist a minute longer, then thought of something else.

  “The book likes you.”

  I raised my shoulders and hands, confused.

  “Skills for the Thaumaturge. It’s one of the handwritten and bound copies, the first one written in English,” he said. “You will find it is not a book with an index, nor is it a thing to be read from one cover to the other. That book has not selected a reader in a very long time. Open it.”

  As before, I turned the cover over with one finger, and a heap of pages came with it. This time, it opened to a completely blank spread. A question was on my lips, but before I could speak, letters appeared as a title.

  Bogarts – by Feraline Swift

  Mordon peered over and chuckled. He stood and said, “Narrate to it. Tell it all you know about bogarts. Apparently, you’re the expert.”

  I wanted to object, but I felt the book waiting patiently for something to write. Dragging a chair over to the table, I sat down and considered what to say.

  “I thought you were supposed to be teaching me,” I lightly accused the book. It felt soft and supple in my hands, not dry and brittle like the leather appeared. I shrugged.“Sections. I want: Overview; Nature; Appearance; Common Tricks; Bogart vs Storage Ghost; Domestication; Disposal; and Environment. We will organize them later.”

  The main door crashed open and light pats of Lilly’s feet padded through King’s Ransom. I looked at Mordon, but he was back to going through his boxes as though nothing had happened; at my gaze, he motioned I should go. Confused, I found Lilly searching the rows for any sign of me. I coughed.

  Spinning to see me, she grinned, “I got today off! Come on, I’m taking you to Merlin’s Market! I told Mordon he can grab your help later!”

  I couldn’t figure out what to say to her. It didn’t matter.

  “Bye, Mordon! Come find us when you want!” Lilly cried, not even waiting to see Mordon chuckle and wave me on.

  Lilly lead me to the shadowy door, a large door with an arched top. She flung it open and swept her arm out to encompass the area. “Welcome to Merlin’s Market.”

  Voices reached me first: singsong calls of goods for sale, conversational chatter, musicians playing in the distance, rising and falling as naturally as a busy day. I smelled cooked meats on the breeze, roasted and fried strips of tender meat and shellfish, as well as spicy and woodsy ingredients. I stepped past Lilly, standing on a porch of some sort—I didn’t bother looking up just yet, amazed at what lay in front of me.

  Walkways floated in the middle of the air, acting as bridges from one vendor to another. Wooden shipping pallets docked to the walkways with a few ties of rope served as a more permanent establishment for either the wealthy or the long-term vendors. Flying carpets of all colors and patterns touched the walkway, and these vendors either laid their wares directly on the carpet or on boxes or small booths. The carpets rocked a little, their tassels swaying in the breeze. Some carpet vendors grouped together and worked as a community. One group lined all sides of a short walk branch and let the carpets become a continuous storefront.

  There were many levels, all quite similar to this one but laid out haphazard like an heirloom house with each family putting add-ons to the original. Some levels, or decks, made sense and were easy to navigate, but others followed no reason, one section of the deck being congested and overfull, other areas completely empty. Around each deck were doors like the one we’d come out of, each with its own personality. The numbers on the doors didn’t line up—there would be door 200 next to door 543 next to door 897. When I asked Mordon later, he said the doors chose their neighbors and on rare occasion, two doors would fight and one would move to less hostile territory. The occupants never knew until they next stepped into the Market. It caused some inconvenience for customers, especially since sometimes the two doors reconciled and moved back to being neighbors again.

  I walked through a short archway and down a few steps. My feet landed on cobblestones. I took a few steps forward on the walk and peered over the end, seeing only deck after deck down and down and down. I shuddered and backed up until I hit Lilly.

  “They should put a railing on that thing,” I said with a vicious jab at the edge.

  “That’s a lot of railing,” she said, and I didn’t want to admit she was right, “We’ve thought of it, but not cost effective. Besides, the taxis generally catch anyone falling. For a fee, of course.”

  “Taxis?”

  “The empty carpets. You’ve got the red carpets—they’re the fastest; the blue carpets—they carry the heaviest loads, and the green carpets—they’re the general putz around ones. Oh, and there are the black carpets. They give tours.”

  “Of course, how obvious...flying carpets as taxi cabs. I suppose flying elephants are buses?” I said, thinking that elephants could fit through some of the gaps in Merlin’s Market.

  “I don’t think anyone has had that idea yet.”

  I checked to make ensure I had adequate distance from the edge to catch myself should I fall, then turned around to see what Mordon’s storefront looked like. The door was an arch-topped double-wide wooden door with the top half wavy glass and the bottom half three burgundy inset panels. The rest of the door was yellow, and the glass had black lettering with gold and burgundy accents. In the middle of the glass was the number 921, and arched above it was ‘Magical’ and in a straight line below it was ‘Antiquities’. A short rock platform and archway tunneled out to three steps down with stone arm rails. They ended in metal and glass torches. An old glass and metal lamp hung directly under the words “King’s Ransom”.

  “It looks like a Victorian cave entrance.”

  “Huh,” Lilly squinted at it, “I could see that.”

  Lilly lead me across the cobblestone floating floors and onto a walkway. Even though the floor held just as still as any other floor, I still thought I felt it weave with our steps. I lurked in Lilly’s shadow, huddling
close to not be snared into a vendor’s sales pitch.

  We strolled past many vendors, selling everything from necklaces to mule’s ears, both the plant and the animal. Lilly stopped short and I bumped into her shoulder. The stall she was at was on a pallet on the corner of two walks; a woman sat in the middle, staffs in front of her, wands to the left, rings and things to the right. I raised my eyes at Lilly.

  “You need a focus point. This shop specializes in them,” she said.

  “I don’t have a problem with how I work right now,” I said, objecting to them spending even more money on me.

  “They keep your magic from going feral, and your wind magic is particularly prone to that,” said the elderly lady, “It will also store your power, spells to use in a pinch, and you can channel your magic through it to magnify it. Some places require all their patrons to have a focus to enter their establishment. Cast your magic over the items... The staffs first, they’re the easiest.”

  I did, and felt nothing, no sense of ownership whatsoever. Normally things had an impression of their owner, but I couldn’t detect anything. I shook my head. She pointed to the wands. My magic didn’t even bother to heed me, instead spiraling around a cluster of rings, rattling them together.

  “Your magic is quite independent,” the woman said with a nod, “that’s good, very good, but you two still don’t work in unison. Refine your focus. Tell it to put the one implement in my hand.”

  She extended her hand, palm up, fingers flat, steady and firm as one who had spent many years matching tools and sorcerers. My own eyes betrayed me, seeing curiousities I wanted to understand; my magic was swift to pick it up and look at it to appease me. I shook my head and exhaled, concentrating not on my magic but on searching for the one item Lilly wouldn’t let me walk away from here without. A couple pendants and a few rings clattered in response, but I overlooked them as attractive but not quite the one. Tendrils zipped over the artifacts, checking them a second time, then my magic scented a calling and dove after one. Soon, my all magic swept past the rejected items and encircled a small box, lifting it out from under the booth and up into the woman’s hand, setting it down lightly. My magic left like a sigh.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the box. It was chip-carved in a pattern that struck me as familiar—I recognized it as being in a set with boxes in King’s Ransom. The elderly woman bore pointed teeth at me past lips grizzled in a grin. I looked at Lilly and she shrugged, not knowing what it meant any more than I did.

  “Ahhh, you are in the circle with the Judges and the Constable, are you not?” the woman asked.

  “She is,” said Lilly.

  “...and with Mordon Meadows, Drake Lord of Kragdomen?”

  “Why?” Lilly asked, her eyes as confused as mine.

  “Then,” the woman said, “it is she.”

  I wasn’t sure which to address first—what the old witch meant in regards to me, or to ask about his title.“It is she—she what? What does this mean?”

  Lilly pursed her lips, as lost as I was, and a little frustrated.

  The woman ignored the few strands of white hair she had left dangling in front of her face as she bowed her head, opening the box. “Put it on your finger. It is yours.”

  With one last glance at Lilly, I plucked the ring from its burgundy velvet case and held it up to the light filtering through the canopy. It was a soft blue sapphire shaped like an egg with two large claws holding either side, a silver star shone wherever the light struck the polished surface. I tried it on a few fingers only to find it either much too loose or not able to fit over my knuckle. It wouldn’t squeeze down the stem of my right ring finger no matter how I tried. I finally gave up and slipped it on my left ring finger. I blushed at it for a couple seconds, then determined I would wrap string around it to make it fit on my pinky. When I tried to tug it off, it pinched me hard like the bite of an insect. Springing back, I let go and watched as something came up from the side.

  It started as an incoherent blob of rose gold, then took shape as it slid over the edge of the sapphire, two thin smears of gold encompassing the slender end of the stone. Ragged teeth formed on the stone side, making a top jaw and a bottom jaw. An eye pitted above them, a single diamond chip drawing to the surface. The entire dragon head lifted and locked eyes with me. It shuddered, casting off dust and grunge from its triangular scales, slinging its slender nose at me. A tail whipped out and spun around the base once, reinforcing the claws. The dragon head blinked. It cocked its head at me. The gold dragon hoisted up the sapphire and snuggled it against her cheek, sighing before falling back into being a ring again: a dragon gripping the bottom of the stone with claws and the top with its teeth, tongue meandering across the surface protectively.

  My breath shook. My hands trembled. I wasn’t sure why.

  “Aye, tis she, tis she,” said the old witch, standing and hobbling away from her stand with the pat-pat-pat of her cane.

  “Lilly, what is this all about?” I asked, “And why’d she walk away without payment?”

  Lilly was already back onto the walkway; I followed her. Behind me, bamboo blinds fell down around the stand, signifying that the shop was closed. While I got a few inquisitive glances, the rest of the people ebbed around Lilly and me. In the distance, I saw a familiar woman buying from a collar and restraints shop, but Eliza was gone in the next second and I wasn’t sure it was her to start with.“

  “It’s probably one of Mordon’s consignments,” said Lilly, “You’ll need to ask him about it.”

  It was then I heard the flute coming from a deck below, the sound fluttering around me, piercing through the chatter and clamor of market life, bringing children out from their places next to their adults and begging to “go see it”. Intrigued, I peered over the edge.

  There was a stage assembled about ten feet long and about as high, the props were on a small scale, and I saw an assortment of puppets hanging up by their strings. I could have sworn I saw one puppet bop a griffon puppet on the nose, but it happened so quickly I couldn’t be certain.

  Music from a flute of kinds still wound its way through the market, rounding up children and parents and a good chunk of adults who had no reason to be there other than to see the puppet show.

  “What’s this?” I asked Lilly.

  “It’s a new project we’ve been working on to help the species to understand each other, promote commerce, discourage squabbling and warfare. There’s a different spokesperson for each species, and they present an aspect of their history and culture. Yesterday we had a traditional mermaid harvest feast. It was...very seafood-y.”

  Lilly hated everything seafood. I snorted when I tried to contain a burst of laughter, imagining her reaction to a feast of fish. “As a Market Judge, I’ll bet you had to partake.”

  Her beautiful, wide eyes narrowed to slits at my tone, and she growled. “I had a seaweed salad.”

  “I take it, you are obligated to attend this show, too?”

  She lost her sour face. “Technically. But these shows are quite good and a large attraction.”

  The immediate area about the stage was already packed, so Lilly hailed a carpet for us. I stared at it. Lilly smiled, “I thought you’d be over your heights thing by now.”

  “I am,” I snarled and gingerly collapsed onto the carpet next to her. Lilly gave me a smug, disagreeing smirk and guided the carpet into a position close to the front, but behind children. Once I saw we were only eight or so feet off the deck below, I released my death grip on the carpet and gazed around at nothing in particular.

  “You must have been mortified when Mordon flew you to safety,” mused Lilly when the flute had died down to let the crowd settle.

  “Not at all.”

  “Yet you can hardly climb a ladder. Go figure.”

  “Look,” I said, “things that were supposed to fly have wings. Birds have wings; dragons have wings; planes have wings. Carpets do not have wings. End of story.”

  Lilly looked like she w
as going to object, possibly cite incidents of levitation or whatnot, but she cut off and pointed to a pebble stopping in front of the set. Too late, I realized that helicopters had blades and not wings, but I had never been fond of them so my point still stood. So there.

  Fog drifted up from it, expanding and soon filling the set. “It’s starting!” Lilly said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN