by T. A. Pratt
“Did you take my son?” He clenched his hands into fists and took a step toward her, but she seemed to somehow recede without moving, and the space between them didn’t narrow at all.
“Hector’s a sweet boy. I was pretty surprised by how he turned out.” The spotlight went out, and she held out her hands, cupping a glowing ball of light in her hands. The object sparkled, spines of light radiating, like Christmas lights made blurry when gazed at through nearly-closed eyes. “This is magic. A piece of my power. Take it, and my power will infuse you. It won’t turn you into me, or even a lesser version of me. It will mingle with whatever you are, and make something new, bound to me, empowered by me, elevated by me. It’s a pretty great deal, but I can’t make you take it.”
Marco rushed her, but she continued to recede, so he stopped, frustrated and furious. “Give me back my son.”
“Get him back yourself. Take this, and you get all kinds of options. Or I can leave you. In this hole. That’s the choice before you.”
“If I take that, whatever that is, I’ll get Hector back?”
“You’ll be reunited.”
“If you’re lying....”
“I only lie when it’s funny. You want this?”
Marco hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
“Catch.” She threw the light at him, and he caught it instinctively, and then his vision blurred and filled up with lattices and beams and spirals all glowing silver and white.
“Weird,” he heard Elsie say.
Sophia
“No.” Sophia crossed her arms and frowned. She sat in a throne of living wood, high up in a an elaborate treehouse, where tiny winged women the size of hummingbirds buzzed all around, and moonlight streamed in through open windows and skylights.
Elsie glared. “No? That’s it? Just no?” She tossed the ball of glowing light from one hand to another. “What kind of girl doesn’t want magic? I conjured this whole fairy treehouse thing for you.”
“I don’t like fairies. I like computers.”
“Who do I look like, the guy who made Tron? Listen: with the magic I’m offering, you can turn the world into a computer game, all right? You like killing zombies? We’ll make some zombies and kill them together! Or we can turn downtown Houston into a giant Pac-Man level, how about that?”
“No.”
Elsie rolled her eyes, and then her whole body seemed to fade, flickering, becoming translucent for a moment.
Sophia shivered at the sight. “Are you—are you a ghost?”
“What? Oh. No. I’m just dealing with your parents right now, and it’s hard to be in more than one place at once, that’s kind of the whole reason I’m doing this. Listen: I am offering you an extraordinary life. A life of power. A life of—”
“No.”
“You’re barely even a pre-teen yet, how are you already so insufferable?”
“I don’t take candy from strangers.” Sophia matched the old lady’s glare with her own. “Take me back to my family now.”
“Ha, little girl, you’ll never see your family again if you don’t—”
Something huge glided toward the nearest window. The creature landed in the opening with a thump, and Sophia had trouble focusing on it: it looked like an owl, but it was bigger than a man, and wholly featureless, as if made entirely of shadows. Looking at it, Sophia felt a fear so overwhelming it was like a giant hand pressing her back into the chair. When had she last felt like this? Lying in her bed, before Hector was born, sure that if she moved a muscle the things that lived in the closet, under the bed, in the shadowy corners of her room would notice, and pounce on her, and tear her apart? Just like that.
The thing’s head turned, slowly, and Sophia could tell it was staring at the weird old white lady who called herself Elsie.
“Don’t look at me that way,” Elsie said, apparently unafraid. “This is none of your business.” The owl-thing seemed to rustle its feathers—or whatever it had instead of feathers—and let out a sound that wasn’t birdlike at all: it was the warning growl of a big dog or a wolf.
“Are you trying to threaten me, Heck?” Elsie stalked toward the window. “You can’t hurt me, any more than I could bite out my own throat.” She cocked her head, as if listening to an unheard voice, then sighed. “Fine. I believe in fostering peace and harmony and good fellowship, and I’d rather have a willing servant than a foot-dragging slave. Threes are good, too, anyway. Three Furies, three Fates, three Stooges.” Elsie spun and pointed her finger at Sophia. “No magic for you. But you might wish you had some when you’re in the foster care system, ha.”
The owl thing rustled again, and Elsie sniffed. “Heck here says he’ll look after you. When he’s not doing things for me, I guess he can. You could do worse than to have a nightstalking shadow-monster on your side.”
Sophia gasped, because the silhouette of the thing in the window was familiar now: it looked just like Owly, Hector’s favorite stuffie, only black instead of white. Was that—was he? “Hector? Is that you, little brother? Don’t worry, I, I’ll get mom and dad and—”
“No take-backsies.” Elsie clapped her hands, and the treehouse vanished. Sophia fell through empty air, arms and legs flailing, but before she could draw breath to scream she landed with a thump back on her own bed at home.
She stared up at the dark ceiling. Just a dream. She tried out the thought, tentatively, to see if she could make herself believe it. Maybe? Given time? But what if she got out of bed, and went down the hall, and her parents’ room was empty? If Hector wasn’t in his room either? If the garage was empty of car and camping gear? What if it wasn’t a dream?
She lay in the dark, afraid to find out. Afraid to venture in the shadows all around.
Alisa
Alisa attacked, but she didn’t hit anything. Somehow the woman, Elsie, was sitting on the log behind her now. “Ooh, a fighter. That could be fun. Listen, your kids are fine. Okay? Your husband too. Better than fine. You could be, too.”
“What are you talking about? Who are you?”
“You liked Cinderella when you were a little girl, right?” The woman held out her arms like she wanted a hug. “I’m your fairy godmother. Here.” She snapped her fingers, and a wand appeared in her hand, a long slender shaft with something like a palm-sized snowflake made of pulsing light on the end. “Say the word, and I’ll boop you with this, and you’ll be a princess. I’ll be the queen, but hey, princess isn’t bad.”
“If you don’t give me back my baby, I will kill you.”
“Hmm. I think you would kill for your kids, but I get the feeling you’d hesitate to die for them, and that is interesting.” The wand sparkled and traced little glitter trails in the air as Elsie waved it slowly back and forth. “Let me give you a touch of my magic, and you’ll be with your kids, and with Marco, too, all right? I know you, Alisa. I looked into you when I arrived, and you... you’re already mine. Hell, we even have the same name, if you squint. You feel stifled by life and expectations. The walls are closing in on you. You want disruption. Some change, for a change. That’s me. That’s this. Otherwise, let me tell you your future. There’s no such thing as fate, but there are things so likely they might as well be destined. In a couple of years you’ll get so bored you’ll have an affair with someone, a guy from the office, a dad at your kid’s school, whatever. You might even convince yourself you’re in love. You’ll end up in a bitter divorce. Your kids will be shell-shocked. Marco will hate you, because that man holds a grudge and believes in true love and thinks marriage is a sacrament, which is a terrible combo, and you’ll never be shut of him because you have kids together. That’s one pathway, spiraling down, but I’m offering you another.”
Alisa stood up. You couldn’t control what the world perpetrated against you: you could only control how you faced it. “What are you offering me?”
“Power. Opportunity. You’re a physician’s assistant, yeah? How would you like to be a fairy godmother’s assistant? I change people’s lives. You co
uld help.”
“You’re not a fairy godmother.”
“Sure I am. Sometimes. On alternate days. Curse with one hand, bless with the other. I’m a trickster god.”
Alisa frowned, thinking of stories her grandfather had told about the forgotten gods of Mexico, before it was Mexico. “Like Old Coyote? The Ancient Drum?”
“Never met the man, but I admire his work. Throwing parties and starting wars, what’s not to love? Listen. I can appear and disappear. I can be in more than one place at once. I can change the world. I’m offering you a piece of me. Power.”
“What’s the price?” Alisa knew: there was always a price.
“That piece of me would be inside you, and in a way, that would make you part of me. I’d require service. But you’re already in service to husband, children, job, bills, appointments, errands, schedules... believe me, my hand would be a lot less heavy than the hand of life.”
“If I refuse?”
Elsie shrugged. “Enjoy being in the woods and explaining to the cops how a weird lady stole your whole family.”
Alisa almost attacked her again... then bowed her head. It was probably all lies. A trick. But what choice did she have? “Fine,” she said.
“Poof.” Elsie touched her on the forehead with the wand. “You’re a fairy princess.”
The earth trembled.
“Ho, shit,” Elsie said.
Marco
The shapes in his vision faded, and he was alone in a dark hole again. He didn’t want to be in a hole anymore. He wanted to be somewhere else, somewhere he felt less helpless—
Everything blurred, and suddenly Marco was standing in the middle of his closed auto shop, everything just as he’d left it. Mrs. Cahaine’s ancient Mercedes was up on the lift, and the vintage Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle Marco was restoring for himself in his downtime still had the parts of its engine laid out neatly on a cloth. The place should have been dark, but Marco could see fine: better than fine. He could see what things had looked like before they were broken, and how they would look once they weren’t broken anymore. His gaze fell on the motorcycle’s disgorged engine again and the pieces jostled, then rolled toward one another, then lifted into the air in a spinning and shifting cloud, piecing themselves back together again. Broken components healed themselves, almost organically, and the whole thing reassembled before his eyes, in seconds, before slotting into the right place on the bike. He touched the handlebars in wonderment, and the motorcycle turned itself on purred beautifully. He waved his hand again, and the motorcycle went quiet.
The woman, Elsie, the god—she’d been telling the truth. He was changed. He had power now. He could fix broken things, with a thought.
The idea gave him a sudden pang. Where was the joy of losing an afternoon in the careful assembly and disassembly of a mechanism, then? The frustration of the challenge only made the feeling of triumph sweeter when you figured it out. If you could wave your hand and fix things, where was the sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment? How would he teach his kids the value of hard work when—
His kids. Everything blurred again, and he was back in the woods, at the campsite. Elsie sat on a log by the fire... and his wife Alisa was there, too, but she was changed. Her hair, so long and black and beautiful, glowed the orange of coals now. Her clothing smoked and singed. When she looked toward him, her face was blank, and her eyes were gone, replaced by black jewels like faceted obsidian.
“Marco!” Elsie said. “You are... wow. I don’t know what to do with you. You reverse entropy, man. What is that about? I didn’t even know I had that in me—it’s like a sun god barfing up the moon. But I guess if there’s too much entropy, everything is all level and flattened and boring.... you can increase complexity and I can bring it all crashing down again.”
Marco stomped toward her. “Where are my children?”
“Sophia’s safe in bed. Hector is... up there.” She gestured, and something spiraled down from the sky, a great bird the size of a man. It landed in the shadows. Or, wait—it was shadows.
Somehow, Marco knew the creature was his son, transformed into a thing of darkness.
“He’s not afraid of the dark anymore,” Elsie said. “So, score one for Tia Elsie, huh?”
“What have you done to him?” Marco said. “And to Alisa?”
“I’m all right,” Alisa said.
“She’s still your little love potato,” Elsie said. “Just a baked potato now, ha. Or roasted. She’s got earthquakes and volcanoes in her, and now she can let them out. We’re gonna have so much fun. What a team! You set them up, Marco, and she’ll knock them down, and little Heck will chase the survivors through the night! We’ll set up a college fund or something for Sophia, she’ll be fine, maybe we’ll make it to her quinceañera.”
Marco clenched his fists. “You’ve ruined us. This trip—it was supposed to fix my family. Get Sophia to look away from screens for a minute. Make Hector more brave, show him the world isn’t just scary, it’s also amazing. Make Alisa—” He broke off. His wife stared at him with her inhuman eyes. “Remind her that she loves me. That she loves us. That life can be good. I could feel her slipping away from me.” He opened and closed his hands, squeezing tight, going loose, squeezing tight. “I just wanted to fix us.”
“I see why you got the power you did, anyway,” Elsie said. “Fixity fixity fix-it man.”
Alisa spoke, and though tendrils of smoke emerged from her mouth, she sounded the same as always. “Not everything can be fixed, Marco. Or, sometimes, putting things back the way they were isn’t the same as fixing them.” Alisa looked at Hector, and tears shimmered on her cheeks briefly before flashing into steam. She could still cry, then. “But my son. Oh, my son. I didn’t want him to grow up this way.”
Elsie said, “Pish. What kid doesn’t want to be a terrifying owl monster?” She rubbed her hands together. “Okay, minions. Ever been to, I don’t know, Honduras? Let’s go mess with Honduras.”
“I will never help you,” Marco said. “I will oppose you at every turn. I won’t stop until I’m sure you’ll never hurt anyone else again—”
“What about terrorists?”
“What?”
“What if I want to hurt terrorists? Ooh, or pedophiles, you’re a parent, can I still hurt pedophiles?” Elsie grinned. “Also, I didn’t hurt you, I gave you magical powers. So unappreciative. Anyway, think of all the good you can do. I won’t need you all the time. Even butlers in English mansions in the past get a half day off a week or whatever. You can run around fixing everything on your own time. You—”
Marco looked at the trajectories of objects in space and time, all so clear before him, and put Elsie in a time and place that wasn’t here and now. She vanished—only to reappear a moment later, soaking wet, sputtering. Her voice, however, was full of delight: “You absolute shit, you surprised me, this is going to be fun! Should we fight?”
Marco knew he couldn’t beat her. His power was just a fraction of hers; a piece of hers. But maybe... He looked at his son, now a beast of shadow, and thought That isn’t right. That is broken.
Marco fixed it.
Hector
Hector woke in his bed, blinking at the nightlight, burning bright. Owly was still in his arms, but different: his snowy white fuzz was all black now. That was okay. The black owl reminded him, somehow, of feeling safe, of being strong, of flying. He rolled out of bed, not worried at all about under-bed monsters or dangerous shadows. He padded down the hall, into the next room. “Sophia?” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
“Hector? Little brother?”
“Can I sleep with you?”
Usually Sophia got mad at him when he bothered her, but this time she didn’t sound mad: she sounded happy, but also like she was crying. “Yes, come in, come here, come on, come to me.”
Alisa
“Oh hell no.” Elsie seemed to get taller with every step as she stomped toward Marco, and the water soaking her hair and clothes boiled off
, wreathing her in clouds of vapor. “That wasn’t your wineglass to unshatter, buddy. You and me are going to have words, and by words, I mean me hitting you and you begging for mercy that will not—”
“Stop.” Alisa put a hand on Elsie’s shoulder, and, amazingly, the god stopped. “He did what he needed to do.”
Marco looked at her. “I’ll fix you, too, baby—”
“Don’t you dare. I’m not broken. I’m... Go home, Marco. Go take care of our children.”
“I did not dismiss him, Mount Saint Alisa,” Elsie said.
Alisa nodded. “I know. But you should. Let him go, let him stay with our children, and I will serve you willingly, and with devotion.”
Elsie hmmed. “It’s pretty out of character for me to show mercy and be reasonable and stuff. But since my power depends on unpredictability... screw it. Okay. Hector gets to grow up, but we’re going to revisit this issue in fifteen years or so, and he can make an informed choice about whether he wants to be a magical murder owl. As for Marco... fine. Who wants a guy who fixes things anyway? He’d probably trail along after me and undo all my good and bad and indifferent works when I got distracted. But you... you and me are gonna get geothermal, princess.”
Alisa stepped to Marco. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek, somehow knowing it wouldn’t burn him. “I love you. I’ll go with her. You take care of our children. That’s the bargain here.”
“I’m the one who’s supposed to sacrifice himself for his family.” Marco’s voice was all misery. “I’m your husband, their father—I’m supposed to give myself up to save you.”
It’s better to let him think I’m making a sacrifice, Alisa thought. “It’s all right. I’ll visit, when I can.”
Elsie said, “Hmph. We’ll see. You’ll be doing the work of four people.”
Alisa shrugged. “I was a wife and mother. I’m used to it.”
“Marco can’t keep all that power though. Can’t leave that much of me walking around unsupervised.” Elsie flickered, suddenly standing next to Hector, and pressed her palms flat against either side of his head. He cried out and fell to his knees, white light pouring from his mouth and nostrils and eyes and flowing into Elsie.
