Month: May 2017

The Generous Patron

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“Damn.”

Alan sighed and dropped his hands. A moment later, the half formed construction of fire that hovered before him vanished. Without its flickering light, the market stall was cold and dark.

He’d tried to make a Phoenix. Not an actual living creature that could take to the sky, but a forging of elemental magic, a work of art, a tribute to nature’s greatest and most breathtaking creatures.

But nobody had come to visit. Nobody had come to see his spectacular figures of ice and fire, so what did it matter that he hadn’t gotten this last one right?

His big brother’s words came back to him.

There’s no money in magic. Go out and find a real job.

But Alan had been young and idealistic. He believed the world needed magic, that without its beauty, the awe that it inspired, life wasn’t worth living. Now, Alan thought maybe his brother had been right all along. Maybe there was no place for his kind of talent.

Cold and alone, Alan started packing up for the night.

He was about to unravel the cord that anchored his tent to the ground when a soft female voice startled him.

“I’d like to see what you have to offer.”

Alan spun, almost knocking into a nearby table, and spied a young woman dressed in a dark coat, eyes catching the light of distant lanterns so they seemed to glow.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he said, catching his breath. “I’m closing.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You wouldn’t be interested, anyway,” said Alan, years of bitterness rising to the fore. “Just worthless avatars, nothing of actual value.”

“I’d like to be the judge of what I find interesting.”

A breeze swept through the dwindling market, kicking up dried leaves, yet the fabric of her coat remained untouched. There was something about her stately presence that unnerved him, and he felt suddenly as if he were dreaming.

“I only dabble in magic,” he found himself saying, averting his gaze. “Surely you’d prefer something of more practical value.”

“I happen to like magic.”

He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. Fine, he could cycle through a few forms. When she tired of his art he could send her on her way and be that much closer to going home.

“All right,” he said, and he sat down before the broad oak table he’d almost toppled a moment before.

What should he make for her? He tried to think of something captivating, but found he was too self conscious to think clearly.

As if sensing his vulnerability, she sat down in an empty chair across from him and took one of his hands into her own.

“Go on,” she insisted. “Form whatever’s in your heart.”

Now, the light in her eyes radiated patience and kindness, and he found a comfort so unexpectedly powerful that the walls inside his head began to weaken.

Whatever was in his heart. Yes, he supposed he could do that. He didn’t know this woman, but in this intimate moment that passed between them he was certain he could trust her, that he would be safe expressing a piece of his truest self.

Alan closed his eyes.

The form that leaped to mind nearly arrested him with heart stopping wonder. An expression of vulnerability and longing, of an age old passion, once dusty and dry, its dying flames stoked at last.

His hands started to move, animated by a force not entirely his own. The woman, the tent, the other stalls, they all fell away, burned to ash before a blinding interior vision. The form he beheld was a soul without a body, an essence in need of life. Alan was the vessel through which it could achieve that life, and he was eager to fulfill its need. He reached beyond himself, beyond the world, into the vast, limitless universe and its roiling sea of unrealized power and potential.

He channeled that boundless reservoir of energy, dividing what he took into its constituent parts. From one, he drew scintillating fibers of bright, orange fire, serpentine tongues that lashed through the air in bright, sparkling flashes. From another, he drew frosty tendrils of ice, subliming into the wind in gentle, billowing wisps like smoke.

Then, like an artisan weaver, he wound these two elemental threads together into a single, seamless fabric, a bold, exotic material of contrast and extremes. When he’d spun enough, he tied it off, holding it suspended in the air, now a lump of clay to be molded, shaped and refined with each pass of his deft and dexterous hands.

The basic form complete, he reached out once more, spinning invisible threads of wind and air. These became the life force that would bind the whole together.

Finished at last.

Alan opened his eyes. The world came back into focus, and he almost jumped when he saw the woman sitting close. He’d been so lost in what he was doing he’d forgotten she was there.

Above both their heads, there now hovered a bright, fiery dragon, shot through with strands of icy blue, broad wings flapping in the air, sending down heavy gusts of frigid winter wind as well as hot, baking heat. A masterpiece.

The woman clapped her hands.

“It’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. “The best I’ve ever seen.”

Alan blushed. “Thank you. It’s not much, but it’s the best I can do.”

Alan let the elemental form persist until he felt the fibers begin to buckle, eager to be released. Sadly, regretfully, he let the cord that anchored him to his creation go. The dragon above their heads vanished in a puff of smoke.

“It is everything,” she said, with such gravity that he was taken aback. “There are those who do practical things, and they are important, because without them the world cannot function. There are also those who do beautiful things, and they too are important, because without them the world cannot remember why it functions.”

Tears sprung to Alan’s eyes as the idealist of his youth burst from its hard, cynical shell.

“You are a maker of beautiful things,” she continued. “You are important and necessary, and I would like to be your patron, if you would have me.”

“My— What?” Alan’s heart seemed to stop.

She wanted to be his patron. He nearly trembled with shock.

“Your magic must live on. You won’t survive here, in this world of practical things. You were made for a different life, and I would like to be the one who makes that life possible.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice suddenly husky and hoarse. “Thank you.”

“Come on,” she said, “I’ll help you tear down. We have a lot to discuss.”

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Finding the Light

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Mary peered down at the murky, gray-green water, pondering the cities and bodies that had slipped beneath its sallow, rippling surface during the night. All around her, a fetid wind whipped and whistled, mocking whispers in the faltering light.

“You failed,” those sneering voices seemed to say. “Before you even realized anything was wrong, you failed.”

She looked up at the sun, low in the sky, bloated and red. It gave off a pale, sickly illumination that reminded her of congealed blood.

Just yesterday, the water had been a bright, electric blue, the sun a blinding ball of white hot fire. So much had changed, it was staggering to think how the corruption could have swept through the world so fast.

My ancestors defended it for tens of thousands of years, she thought, and I couldn’t even defend it for one.

The wind became dry, rasping laughter, like shriveled snake’s skin rattling across hot, desert sand.

“The world has always been mine,” the wind seemed to say, and it sent its rotten, moldering stench to her nose. “Since the time before time.”

No, Mary couldn’t accept that. Corruption had always been a part of the world—evil was an ever-present danger to be guarded against at all times—but there was also love, and this could not belong to evil any more than darkness could belong to the sun.

“I reject you,” she said, stepping forward toward the water’s edge. “You hold no claim over these lands.”

More laughter.

Mary held her ground.

Dig deep, her father had told her once, his last lesson before taking up his mantle in the second life. In times of distress, dig deep. Cling to what’s right, find the light and let it out into the world.

Dig deep.

Mary closed her eyes.

She reached far into Earth’s heart, into the only place the corruption hadn’t been able to reach. She could see that the light inside had faded, diminished some by the relentless onslaught of the evil that forced it into hiding. But it was pure, strong and true.

The Earth shuddered as Mary let out thick, gnarled roots. They surged through the ground, beneath soil and stone, down into the red hot regions beneath, plunging into the very core.

“What are you doing?” asked the wind, picking up in intensity, transforming into a hurricane-like gale.

With all the force she could muster, Mary pierced the white-hot center, making contact with the life force inside.

A bolt like an electric shock plowed through her, shooting up into the roots. With her as a conduit to lend it strength, it flowered into a radiance and a love so strong no corruption could survive its searing power. It flowed through her, out of her, out into the world.

“No!” cried that fetid wind, burning to cinders in the blinding luminescence. It boiled off like water, dispersing in a cloud like super-heated steam.

When at last she opened her eyes, the world was as she remembered it.

“You’ve done well,” said the light, once more free to sustain the world.

Mary could no longer move, for her roots had run deep and there was no disentangling herself. She was one with Earth now, just as her father had been, just as she would be for as long as the light allowed her to live.

“Take care of this world, so that I might always shine.”

“I will,” she whispered.

Now, she gazed down at water that was a clear, crystal blue, the sun blazing overhead just as it had for thousands of years before. There would always be evil, lurking in the shadows, but as long as there was light, redemption would be close at hand.

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