Obscurely Obvious

by Robin Lythgoe

  Obscurely Obvious

  A Collection of Short Stories

  Robin Lythgoe

  Contents

  Description

  Copyright

  1. In the Mirror

  2. The High Roads

  3. Tourist Trap

  4. Deliver Me

  5. Elran’s Journey

  — Bonus Selection —

  6. Not Me

  Hello, Awesome Reader!

  Blood and Shadow

  Also by Robin Lythgoe

  MIRRORS, MAGES, MUSES…

  These fantasy elements weave through an eclectic collection of short tales, exploring the extraordinary, inspiring the imagination. This new short story collection, Obscurely Obvious, includes the popular 'In the Mirror,' 'The High Road,' and four all-new tales.

  Copyright © 2016 Robin Lythgoe

  Cover art by Robin Lythgoe

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system or data system, or transmitted in any form without prior permission from the author. All rights are reserved.

  First Electronic Edition

  Obscurely Obvious is a work of fiction. Any similarity between real names, characters, places and events is purely coincidental.

  DISCLAIMER: No actual humans were harmed in the writing of this novel!

  Please visit the author’s official website:

  http://robinlythgoe.com

  The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

  - Edward R. Murrow

  In the Mirror

  They said it was magical.

  They said it was dangerous.

  An ordinary-looking mirror, it was tall and fitted at its middle to an upright frame that allowed it to tilt. A cheval it was called. The glass was old, clouded in some places, streaked in others. The most marvelous carvings of plants and animals adorned the dark mahogany frame that cradled it. Peeking from behind bits of foliage were glimpses of what were surely people. They had very human eyes.

  It had stood for years in his father’s office. Even after all this time Ethan remembered his juvenile fascination with the figures. He would trace them with one stubby forefinger, only half aware of the pungent scent of his father’s pipe smoke and the clackety-clack of the old Underwood typewriter. Sometimes he imagined he saw things in the mirror: landscapes, usually, but once in a while he caught sight of a something or a someone.

  “Come away from there, son,” his father would say around the pipe clamped between his teeth. He was adept at devising reasons for Ethan to be otherwise engaged. “Will you ask your mother to bring me another cup of coffee?” he would ask, or “Has the mail arrived yet?”

  When he was small, distracting him was not particularly difficult, but then he learned to ask why.

  “It’s not safe for you to play around,” came the reply.

  “But why, Daddy?”

  “Because you are a little boy, and the mirror is special.”

  “Why?”

  A tender, tolerant smile touched the older man’s mouth. “Because it is magic,” he said gentle and serious. “Magical things are rare and often tricky. They must be treated very carefully.”

  When Ethan got a little older and a little more devious, his father began locking the door to his office on those occasions he went out, which wasn’t often. A writer, he worked at home and could be found bent over the old typewriter at all hours of the day. When Ethan was twelve or thirteen years old, he snuck into the office a few times, but the mirror was just a mirror and produced none of the wonderful images he’d thought he’d once seen. It certainly didn’t do anything that might be interpreted as dangerous.

  So the years passed… Ethan’s father continued to write. He won a few discreet awards for his talent but never became rich or famous. Ethan’s mother got a job in a beauty parlor to help pay the bills. Ethan grew up and, more by accident than by plan, he too took up a profession in the writing industry. Sometimes when he was plodding through the details of copy-editing, he would find himself thinking about his father and wondering what it would be like to find one of his manuscripts in the stack on his desk.

  Father had disappeared one day–just up and vanished. The police investigated, of course. There’d been more news coverage than he’d ever received when he’d been–well, one didn’t want to say ‘alive,’ because that presumed he was now dead. Which he might be, but who knew? He tidied his office and set his business affairs in order before his exit from their lives. A strange letter addressed to Ethan had been taped to the frame of the old mirror.

  “It is old. It could be dangerous if you are not careful. I would tell you to proceed with caution, but caution got you where you are today. Proceed with life, my son, and perhaps we will meet again on the other side. I finished my latest project. It is for you. Read it.

  Love, your father...”

  The project was a book about a mirror. The mirror. It was without a doubt the best thing Ethan’s father had ever written. Full of magic and secrets, it described battles among the faeries and a fanciful twist about how these wars affected the daily lives of innocent and ignorant humans. Ethan loved it. He cried when he finished it, not because the end was particularly emotional or moving, but because it had ended. There should be more to it. Surely there was more.

  He read the manuscript twice, then he put it away. Perhaps his father would return again and publish it, or Ethan would one day have it published in his father’s name.

  Only neither of those things happened.

  Ethan grew older and more tired. He married and had four children, bought a nice little house in the suburbs, and drove a minivan for a deplorable number of years. He attended all the soccer games, piano recitals, and school plays that every good father attended. The children grew up and two of them married and produced grandchildren. There were family gatherings. Family newsletters. Family vacations. His mother died, the old house was sold, and the mirror came to live at his own home. And all along, Ethan loved his wife, loved his family, and struggled with a frustrating sense of dissatisfaction. How could perfection be so unutterably mundane?

  The years passed, and technology grew right along with Ethan’s waistline and the thickness of his glasses. His mother had given him the old Underwood. It now held a place of honor on a shelf while an ultra-slick laptop occupied prime real estate on his desk. He had absolutely no use for with all its bells and whistles. He had an office in his house, just like his father had once had. And the mirror was there. It had to be, didn’t it?

  A beautiful piece of furniture, his wife wanted to move it to the bedroom, but Ethan refused. There was tradition. There was the sense of comfort he got from knowing it had been his father’s. There was the fact, too, that its imperfect surface was wonderfully perfect for staring at when words escaped him, for Ethan, too, had given in to the invisible muse that whispered stories in his ears. He often wondered if his father had had the same muse, or if hundreds—thousands—of different ones existed.

  He wrote a story about that, and it sold to a nondescript little Atlantic anthology. Sometimes he would swivel his office chair around and, feet outstretched and arms folded over his chest, he would gaze at the mirror until an idea finally came to him. He made jokes with himself that his muse lived in the mirror and showed him things within it, visions for him to turn into words. A few more tales were bought by e-zines online, and the companies went out of business and left no trace of his small successes. He should have taken pictures of the tiny checks. Framed them, or put them in a scrapbook, maybe.

  Creeping insomnia contributed to the free time available to spend on his own
writing. Ethan spent longer and longer looking at that old mirror. In its clouded surface—or perhaps just in his mind’s eye—scenery unfolded, characters appeared, plots presented themselves. He was quietly satisfied with the results, but oh, how he wished he’d started earlier! How he wished he’d had a speck of the courage his father had devoted to his craft instead of selling out to a regular paycheck! He wished he was younger, too, better looking, smarter, bolder. It was all well and good to write about the adventures he saw on the private little movie screen inside his head, but what would it be like to live them? What would it be like to race through the woods with a centaur on your heels? Or to steal a fabulous jewel from a tyrannical king? Drive a custom-made Aston Martin? Single-handedly defeat an entire outlaw gang and still keep the smoke-spewing train from going off the ruined bridge?

  It was a funny thing, but sometimes when he looked in that mirror, Ethan could swear he was losing weight. The lines in his face faded and the gray in his hair became less. Much less. The other mirrors in the house rudely kept right on showing him his sixty-something appearance. The one in the downstairs hall had the nerve to exaggerate. He stopped looking in that one entirely and put to paper a story about mirrors. It didn’t even compare to his father’s work, but it was entertaining enough that Satyr dot com bought it for thirty whole dollars.

  Ethan took out his father’s manuscript and read it again. He read the strange letter, too, and taped it back to the top of the mirror, even though it covered up a particularly mischievous-looking someone and he would probably be scolded for sullying the lovely mahogany. He stood looking at the letter for a long time. Yellowed now, it bore the distinctive scent of old paper and the lingering fragrance of pipe smoke. Or maybe that was just his imagination. Either way, a sense of wistfulness stole over him. He wished he could see the crazy old man again, learn what had happened to him. The questions were decades old now, but he still wondered. Had his father deserted the family? Been kidnapped? Abducted by aliens?

  Leaning his head against the mirror’s frame, Ethan let his fingers wander over the figures carved on the opposite side. They were so smooth and so... fascinating. His thoughts drifted. The absent knowledge that he needed to pay the cable bill intertwined with the memory of tobacco smoke and a foggy vision of a trio of bandits lying in wait for—someone. Who?

  Ethan squinted and looked into the vision more carefully. A man was walking down a road. Tunic, boots, cloak, sword at his side, faithful wolf trotting along at his heels–all the typical, hackneyed fantasy fare. Ethan wanted something more, something special. Still, the fellow walked along, ignorant as you please to the fate in store for him. Whistling, even. The bandits shifted and prepared themselves for the attack, and the whistler’s music stopped as he took a long draw on his pipe.

  A pipe? Talk about association...

  “Watch out!” Ethan shouted. “There are bandits in the ditch and they’re going to rob you blind! Stars and garters, don’t you watch television? Read fiction? You couldn’t ask for a more stereotypical scene!”

  To his complete and utter surprise, the whistler paused and looked about. The faithful wolf lifted his predictable nose into the air and howled. And just like that, the bandits’ plot was foiled, a spoof was born, and this time it sold to a real market. Four-and-a-half cents per word.

  Ethan thought that there ought to be a way to market mirrors to writers to hone their focus, and lo! another check found its way into his bank account.

  The mirror inspired a score of fantastic stories. A hundred! Curiously, the scent of pipe smoke accompanied many of them. The characters became increasingly real. Sometimes they even responded to Ethan’s coaching from his omniscient point of view.

  Then one day the whistler reappeared. He stopped when he came to the ditch that had nearly been his undoing and, pipe in one hand and his sheathed sword balanced on his shoulder with the other, he turned and looked directly at Ethan. “Well?” he said, and Ethan drew back in astonishment. The man was not particularly young, perhaps in his late forties, though he had a sturdy timelessness about him. “You read the book, didn’t you?”

  “I—The book?”

  The whistler nodded. “The one I left for you.”

  Ethan glanced behind him, but saw only his ordinary, rather uninspired office. Turning back, he had to suck in a breath. His reflection looked thirty if he was a day, and not nearly as unremarkable as Ethan had always imagined. Cautiously, his attention returned to the whistler. “The one about the mirror? This mirror?”

  Whistler smiled, and the familiar expression sent another jolt of surprise through Ethan. “That’d be the one. Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To believe. To join me. It’s a true story, you know.”

  Insomnia, disillusion, and regret affected him more than he had ever imagined they could. “You aren’t real.”

  Whistler laughed. “Of course I am, Ethan. As real as you are.”

  “Father?” It was a whisper of pure, unadulterated hope with a generous dose of insanity tossed in for good measure. He was talking to a mirror, for crying out loud.

  The man gave him an elaborate bow. “S’truth,” he said, and waved his pipe at the scenery around him as he straightened. “It’s all truth.”

  Ethan closed his eyes and thought he should probably call his wife. Or a doctor. But when curiosity made him open his eyes again, his bleary reflection was still compellingly young, and the whistler bore an undeniable resemblance to his father. “How?”

  “Didn’t you read the book?”

  “I did! I did, but...”

  Disappointment shaded Whistler’s face. “You still don’t believe. All the places and people you’ve seen, the testament I left you... Ethan, time is growing short. You’re not young any more. Not in your world.”

  Ethan’s eyes went back to his own image, and he very nearly whimpered. That Ethan was slim and his face unlined. He looked fit enough to run for miles instead of having to stop at the top of the stairs to catch his breath.

  “Trust me for one minute, son. Reach through the mirror.”

  What a crazy suggestion. It was even crazier that it worked. His hand slipped through the glass as easily as it might go through water. A chill pricked his skin, but the temperature on the other side was warm and it came with the scent of green things and pipe smoke and adventure. Even more unbelievable was the feel of skin against skin as Whistler stuck his pipe between his teeth and clasped Ethan’s hand.

  “Now do you believe me?”

  How could any sane man believe this? “No,” Ethan said, but he didn’t pull away from the man’s grasp.

  Whistler smiled again, understanding brightening his eyes. “Will you come?”

  “Yes.” It was astounding, but he knew he had to. Over there his father awaited him. And stories! Oh, the stories! “How?”

  Whistler pointed upward, and Ethan glanced up to see the note taped to the frame. “Got someone you can address that to?”

  “Yes...” Ethan thought quickly to his youngest daughter. A dancer, she was, a storyteller of another sort. He hurried to the desk for an envelope and a pen.

  “Don’t forget to leave the manual.”

  “Manual?” he echoed, feeling like a cross between a parrot and an excited little boy.

  “The book about the mirror and the truth.”

  “Oh. Right.” He was amazed that seeing through the mirror worked both ways, though he should have suspected. What did all the writing teachers say? Write what you know. It only made sense that somehow, somewhere, people really knew magic was no fantasy at all.

  Book on the desk and letter taped once again to the frame, Ethan peered into the mirror at his father. His father! “Now what?”

  “Duck.”

  Was it that simple? Sucking in a breath, Ethan lowered his head and stepped slowly through the beautiful mahogany frame. A shiver passed through him, cold, a brief sense of disorientation and then the heart-pounding thrill of exc
itement. He was in the mirror—and a whole new life awaited him.

  The High Roads

  Shifting shadows beneath the giant greenwood trees gave the forest an eerie appearance. Dense strands of mist from the sea intensified a sense of the ethereal. Telic Ruan waited against a tree trunk, gazing up at the branches that hung some hundred feet above his head. He refused to let the capricious ghosts of the coming night intimidate him. Fear attracted them, he knew from experience. They weren’t something he could afford to let bother him, now or any other time. Only through control could he achieve success. He’d learned that early on and used it time and again to improve his station. From paltry foot soldier in the People’s Police to his present position as Third Rank Prefect, he always planned ahead. Always controlled himself and his emotions. The prey tended to be different nowadays, but the same rules of survival applied at the top as they did at the bottom. And he wasn’t far from the top.

  This case was different, though. It offered little if any possibility for notice or advancement. He could count on one hand the number of personal cases he had taken over the years; they were so rarely profitable.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Ashkar Dathan appeared on the path in front of him, whistling as he went. Now and then he kicked at the haze of soft light surrounding his feet and lighting his way.

  “Been with the Luzzil Ones again, Ashkar?” Telic asked, stepping away from the shadow of the tree.

  Ashkar gave a grunt of surprise and the light winked out. “What are you doing here?” he asked, frowning. He was a big man with a set of shoulders that would have done credit to a blacksmith.

  “Waiting for you.”

  The mage grunted again and continued walking. “I don’t want to argue with you.”