They Day They Came For Doggy

Doggy always keeps me safe when mummy and daddy fight. They don’t know about doggy. Daddy says pets are too expensive, and mummy says she is a lergic, but I think maybe she doesn’t like a doggy in the way she sometimes doesn’t like daddy. Doggy curls up close to me and sometimes I get a little cold when Doggy is hungry but I have blankets so I’m OK even if it makes Doggy all puppy-sad when I’m cold.

Doggy tells me things, sometimes when I’m sleeping. Doggy paces our bedroom at night, even all over the ceiling, but mummy and daddy never yell about noise. Doggy says they’re like turtles and turned each other into a shell for them, but I’m not sure I get that? I don’t get a lot of what Doggy say, but sometimes I think Doggy doesn’t really get people either.

Sometimes Doggy says things that make me cry, because Doggy knows truths hat are all adult and hurt. They are always sad after, but not for long because Doggy doesn’t understand being sad. Doggy is Doggy, and I’m not me like that so I think it makes Doggy sad in a mad way. But not a mad way that goes bad like mummy and daddy.

Most days are good ways with Doggy around. Mummy and Daddy don’t shout at me, and no one at school bugs me because Doggy. But sometimes Doggy has to go away, and says they need to hide. And when they do, I have to think about Doggy really hard so Doggy can come back.

Doggy has been going away a lot this week, and it makes me scared. I think their might be a pound for Doggies, even if it’s not ours at all, because Doggy only looks like a Doggy, and then only sometimes.

I’m going home from school where no one bugs me anymore and thinking about Doggy when the woman says hello. She’s not mummy at all, and her eyes remind me of Doggy only they don’t at all because she keeps a bad Doggy inside them. I don’t know how to even do that – Doggy would be safer inside me, but likely really mad as well!

“My name is Charlie,” she says. “I imagine you know why I’m hear to talk to you?”

“Doggy is busy hiding,” I say sharp as mummy. I didn’t even want to mention Doggy, but she feels safe like a babysitter who gets rid of monsters under beds, even if Doggy isn’t that kind of monster at all.

“We know. But, ah, Doggy isn’t a real dog.”

“I know that. Doggy is better,” I say.

“Perhaps sometimes.” She crouches down, and I yelp as a finger brushes my left arm. “But you bruise easier than you used to, and you’re tired often. Doggy needs energy from you to stay in the world.”

“Doggy doesn’t meant to hurt me.” I cross my arms and glare like mummy does at daddy.

“And yet you’re still hurt.” She smiles, and the smile is soft and sad and like nothing mummy ever smiles at me. “Doggy is scared, and we do things we know we shouldn't when we’re afraid. Sometimes we fight, and sometimes we hide. A Doggy can make mistakes just like people do.”

“I’m not!” I’m moving, and Charlie is too because she’s quick like Doggy is. “I’m not a mistake even if mummy and daddy say so!”

“Oh.” And I stop, not just because Charlie is in front of me but because she reminds me of Doggy for a moment, only Doggy doesn’t understand mistakes and what it means but Charlie does. “No. No, you are not,” she says softly, and a small part of me is almost scared for mummy and daddy. Charlie lets out a breath. “But Doggy –.”

“Doggy is special.”

“Yes, but Doggy doesn’t make you special. You do that,” she says, and it would be all funny coming from a teacher but from Charlie it sounds just like a fact. “And you’re very brave to be friends with Doggy and to help them – I was never that brave when I was young age.”

“But you have a Doggy in you!”

And Charlie laughs. “What is inside me isn’t the same, and scared me for many years. I had help to get free of my fears; you didn’t need anyone to help you. And that’s very brave, but it doesn’t mean you don’t need people.”

“It’s better at school when everyone leaves me alone.”

“I imagine so. But it’s not better for you if everyone does that. Some people, yes, but not all the people.” And Charlie moves beside me. “Doggy has been hiding from a friend of mine who – deals with entities like Doggy.”

“Like the pound?”

“Ah. Yes, like a pound, only he’s not a bad one. He can help Doggy stay and not hurt you.”

“Really?”

“He’s waiting by the house, so you can ask him about the pound yourself,” she says.

I make it around the corner and the man standing by the house is ordinary, except he’s not at all. He nods to Charlie and walks over, and he is – safe. Nice, in the way Doggy tries to be nice. I don’t remember all the words he says, but his voice is powerful and gentle and Doggy is scared but the man offers to help.

Doggy speaks in a tone too close to daddy about magicians, and Charlie’s friend just smiles. “Not all magicians see Outsiders the same way.” And I think he does something like Spock does on the TV because Doggy relaxes and they both vanish and no one notices that at all.

“People are good at not seeing what they don’t want to see,” Charlie says as I stare about. “Do you want me to talk to your parents?”

And I want that almost as much as I want Doggy to stay, but I think it over as hard as I can. “Would you hurt them?”

“I don’t know,” Charlie says. “That would be up to them.”

“Then, no? Doggy can help me and we’ll be okay. But Doggy can find you, if I change my mind, please?” I ask.

Charlie laughs softly. “Of course,” she says, and I head inside to my room and I wait for Doggy to come back. It doesn’t take long at all, and I think Doggy is a bit smaller, and they jump into my lap and I listen to mummy and daddy fight come home and fight, but Doggy is warm and protective and I know everything is going to be all right now. Because Doggy told me it’s going to be all okay once I’m the Prime Minister.

Observable Jay

There are costs to magic that everyone knows. A magician can be defined as someone wishing to perform but lacking any charisma – I read somewhere that Houdini was one of those. The skills they develop are honed for hours and hours alone in bedrooms and in secret. While being able to do card tricks is impressive, people are left wondering why you bring the cards to a party at all, and especially to a funeral. The tricks becomes all they have, a performance they can never turn off that leaves them ostracized from other people.

Real magic is not like that at all. A magician is in the world, a part of it, acted and acted upon. You are given the gift to make the world a poem, and the cost of it is helping hold the prose that is the universe together. Standing against what lies Outside the universe, knowing and seeing what can never be unknown and unseen. There are no old magicians, for so many reasons. Some die, others find ways to give the magic up; some find things that matter to them more than power, even if magic is not about power at all.

We tell stories, but we are not outside them. Nothing can be changed from the outside, not in any way that lasts. The magician must be part of the weaving, part of the cloth, or they can’t make changes that matter. The magic is only a small part of that. It is not something I forget, being perhaps the most powerful magician in the world. But it is something others forget.

“You know things,” Charlie snaps to me as we walk through the woods. It’s more a military pace, her burning off energy, the god within her visible in her eyes as she marches along beside me. My pace is more sedate but I keep up without trying. She doesn’t notice: people can’t see what they don’t known how to see, even if they’re part of the deeper patterns of the world. Charlie is a god-eater, but she is Charlie first. I am the wandering magician, and before that – I’m not sure if I am anything before that, when I am being honest with myself. Which is as often as I can be. It is another reason magicians do not last.

“Jay told you that he talked to dark energy and matter, which scientists think is actually most of the universe?”

“He did, and it spoke to him in his voice, using his full name Jay is always boasting about how good he is at hiding, and how big he secretly is. We’ve always known he wasn’t really eleven and he is from very far Outside the universe.”

“And we forget that. As he does as well. Your point?”

“How can Jay be that, magician?” She hurls the word almost as an insult. Jay is made up of unknowns, but all too often it is terribly easy to forget that. To believe the story of the goofy kid who lives for adventures that he tells himself as much as us.

“I don’t know. I have always wondered how Jay was able to enter the universe at all, given how powerful he can be. No matter that he can hide his nature completely, it was always a puzzle. Now it is less of one.”

“Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds?”

“This is Jay we are talking about,” I say gently. “Time and space don’t mean to him what they to us, not really.”

“But –.”

“Charlie. He’s still Jay. Even if he is a little more confusing, it at least explains why he likes to eat so much.”

“Not funny,” she snarls.

“It has to be. If it wasn’t, we’d be terrified of him, Charlie.” I stop and turn before she speaks, pressing a finger to her lips. “I know you are, sometimes. As am I. As is Jay. But he doesn’t understand why anyone would be scared of him, since he’s jaysome. Among other things.”

“You hide the fear better than I do.”

“I have had a lot more practise at not showing creatures that I’m afraid of them. Jay is our friend: nothing is going to change that if he can avoid that.” I leave unsaid that Jay could avoid that: he can do things with bindings I try my best not to think about at all.

“And you don’t want to know how Jay is somehow himself, and billions-of-years-old dark energy and matter and whatever else?” Charlie says, but there is no force behind the question.

I smile in the way of magicians. “I would always rather not know.”

“Since when does a magician want to do that?” she says, but at least smiles in return.

“It is an important skill to know what questions you should never ask. It applies rather well in the subtle realms of magic as well as in the real world,” I say quietly. “And I value the friendship we have with Jay too much to go about seeking answers I should not. There’s an old saying about people turning over stones, and people forget that the danger of it is that the stone which is turned over can never be put back the way it was. Once you start down certain paths it’s almost impossible not to follow them to the end, and that is one I don’t want to move down.”

“You’re scared of Jay.”

“Not as scared as I am for him,” I say simply, and to that Charlie makes no reply at all.

We head back to the motel, and Jay arrives an hour later having been quite busy catching Pokemon on his phone. Or at least I hope he was, since his trying to capture one led to him discovering the dark energy/matter was him and talking to it. Happily, of course, since it is Jay and he loves making new friends. Even if the new friend he made today was himself.

“Honcho, I was totally trying to catch a Pokemon only Guutaley the Devouring is being really insistent they aren’t a Pokemon at all and want to devour the world and lots of unborn people, but! I have them in a really good binding and I thought I’d get you,” he says, radiating innocent pride as only kids can.

“You can’t banish it?” I ask.

“Oh, I could, but I thought I should make sure it really isn’t a Pokemon because it would be really rude to banish a Pokemon from the universe,” he says, and being Jay is quite, quite serious.

Charlie buries her face in her hands and I head outside to find what Jay has bound, and to help him deal with it. Everything is as it always is, and isn’t like that at all.

“Honcho?” Jay asks.

“Kiddo.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I say.

Jay opens his mouth, closes it, blinks. “Uhm. Lots of reasons, because Guutaley the Devouring is definitely an oops and Charlie is being really weirdy.”

“I imagine that’s because you are,” I say dryly.

“Oh! But I’m jaysome,” he says, and fortunately Guutaley attempts to break free of Jay’s binding and devour the world before I need to think up a reply to that.

Which is, even for a magician, a very worrying use of the word fortunately.

Open and Shut Case

 “You’re telling me this is an open and shut case? There is a mob outside baying for the head of Constable Parrish, social media sites are up in arms –.”

“They do so love their false outrage in the morning.” The Detective didn’t move from his chair. “The public does not get to eclipse fact, Ms. Brown. Nor should their arrogance assume they can judge what they do not understand. You cannot sum pages of police reports into a twitter feed, and I am not throwing a constable under the bus for political expediency. You can tell the mayor this however you like, of course.”

“Constable Parrish shot an unarmed man!”

“An unarmed white man, yes. And the good constable is Indian, if you wish to spin that into your narrative as well.”

“Detective –.”

“Call the mayor, Emily. Ask him about October 30^th 1997.”

Ms. Brown marched out of the room, returned in under four minutes. Her expression was made of nothing save shock as the Detective handed her over a folder without a single word.

“There are people who can do impossible things,” the Detective said quietly. “Terrible, impossible and grotesque things. It is not well understood, but Constable Parrish recognized the signs. And killed the target before he could kill a great many people with his power.”

“Telekinesis.” Ms. Brown let out a small laugh. “How do you expect me to spin this to the press, Detective?”

“I have no idea. But it is your job. Let’s see if you’re as good as spinning truth as you are at the rest of it.”

“That is uncalled for,” she snapped, but the Detective held her gaze until she looked away. After a time, she stood and walked to the door.

“Open and shut,” the Detective said softly, and closed the filing cabinet beside the desk with a glance.

Jay Games

Magician

Jay marches out of the spare bedroom a house that let us stay in it while the owners are away. He’s eleven. He’s also from far Outside the universe. Sometimes these aspects of him are in a terrifying cohesion as he scowls up at me.

“Kiddo?” I say calmly in the way of magicians.

“The cake is not a lie! That’s really rude and GLaDOS is really mean and not jaysome at all,” he announces.

“Pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

His jaw drops. “But you’re Honcho! You always know,” he informs me, and at least some of his anger drains away. “And and and it’s a computer game Charlie was playing and now I am too cuz she said it was funny and it’s not!”

He flings the last word out. I hear the tv screen crack in the spare bedroom.

“Jay.” I say it carefully. Jay can do things with bindings that even magicians can’t attempt. That he hasn’t even noticed doing this unbinding isn’t a good sign. “Breathe. Focus.”

“I am all kinds of focusable. I know!” He gestures, a tear opening neatly in the world. “I’m going to use this portal and visit Valve and get my cake!”

I blink, stare as Jay bounds through happily and the portal closes behind him. And then I go looking for Charlie to try and find out what is going on.

Charlie

The wandering magician has gone for a walk. As he tends to when he feels the need, or he needs to be doing something else. I tried to explain why I’d tried to get Jay not playing Portal, but he’s never been one for computer games much at all and just listens a bit, stares in disbelief at the end, but we both known Jay.

“A computer game declared that cake was a lie, so Jay is going to find the cake,” he’d said with awesome calm, considering.

I told him that was why I’d tried to keep the game away from Jay. He didn’t ask what other games I was trying to keep away from Jay. Probably because he doesn’t want to know how long that list is, if I’m being honest. So I’m left along in the house to wait when Jay comes through another portal he’s made in space with a huge, beaming grin on his face.

“Kidlet?”

“I went to Valve and asked about stuff and I got my cake,” he says, radiating pride. “And met the light of gaben!”

I pause. It’s an internet joke, but … this is Jay. “Ah. How was it?” I say, since that’s the safest bet.

“It was really nummy, but abe said that the cake was really expensivey since GLaDOS didn’t want to give it up and it was going to delay something called Half-Life 3 a lot?”

I blink. I stare at him.

“Charlie?” Jay says, his face as pale as his voice at whatever he sees in my face.

“You have ten seconds to get the hell away before I try and do something we’ll both regret,” I snarl, and Jay vanishes with a loud ‘eep!’ He has no idea what he’s done. None at all. And I’m definitely not going to try and explain this to the wandering magician. Or anyone at all. Ever.

Jay

“Jay. What are you doing?”

“I’m doing a helping so you’re not mad at me, Charlie!”

“I am trying to play Super Mario. You are on the screen. In place of Mario.”

“Uh-huh! This way I can help and be all kinds of jaysome so nothing tries to attack or hurt you at all in the game.” And I grin like a jayboss, which is hard to do when you don’t have many pixels!

“Jay. I am trying to play a game,” Charlie snaps.

“Oh!” And I fixify it entirely. “See? See? Now you’re Mario and I’m all the creatures he stomps on and I bet that fixes lots of you can stomp on me, right?”

Charlie blinks. “You might be onto something.”

And then she plays over six levels and stomps on me a lot when I’m lots and lots of monsters she stomps on and beats up and even a boss fight! Which I totally lose cuz sometimes it’s jaysome to lose when you’re being smart as a Jay!

Secret Lies

Everything magic buys is paid for. I know this, better than most other magicians. Some day the magic in a magician becomes prose rather than poetry, and soon after they die, and pay after that for a long, long time. Paying back the universe the gifts that were given to them one deed at a time. But some bills come due far too early, and I am considering food in the kitchen of a house that let Charlie, Jay and I stay in it when I feel a shift in energies. The house is scared, and it was empty and let us stay in it, but no longer.

I sigh. Charlie has a god inside her, and they both have a temper. One Jay sometimes presses without knowing, for all that he’s from far Outside the universe he is also a boy of eleven and his innocence is a terrifying armour against the reality of his own power. Most of the time.

The living room isn’t quiet. The TV is on, to C-SPAN, the screen blurring as facts move at speeds faster than they should, flickering to Fox, then to news channels in a stuttering blur. There are channels I block Jay from seeing in every place we visit, websites I bind with magic so he can’t visit them. But he is young, and curious in his wondering, and the bindings he can make and unmake go far beyond what magicians can do. It was only a matter of time before he decided to undo mine. And watch the news.

He turns his head toward me from the couch. His face is even paler than normal, and those so-ordinary eyes are dark and cold, his body rigid. He doesn’t move otherwise, doesn’t get off the couch. Jay is eleven. He was never eleven at all. “Honcho,” he says, his name for me from back when he first came into the universe and had a lisp, “I am watching the newth.”

And the lisp hasn’t been in his voice in a long time. Not unless he’s pressed beyond bearing, scared or terrified both.

“I noticed.”

He gestures, impossibly fast for anything human, the remote punching through the TV screen and out the back to impact with the wall. Jay is tough and quick, and he can make and break and shift bindings on levels so deep I’m not sure even the universe is aware of most of them. “There have been four mass shootings this week,” he begins in a calm, serene tone, and begins listing political issues, sociological issues, economic ones, one after another like bullets fired from a gun.

“I know,” I say.

He jerks his head up at my gentleness, eyes bright and fierce, fists clenching tight. “You know and you let it happen?” he demands.

“You know magic is only a small part of being a magican. There are balances –.”

“Shut up.” I do; Jay looks as shocked as I am for a moment, and then he is standing. Pacing, fury radiating from every line in his body. “I know you have limits, Honcho. I know Charlie does too. I don’t,” he says, with a terrible certainty that contains nothing human at all. “I could fix this, and you hid it from me.” His voice isn’t a magicians, to bind and force truth, but there is a terrible emptiness, a crushing purpose behind the words.

If I was anyone else, the words would have forced me back out the door. Sometimes, so rarely I half-forget he can, Jay stops hiding from himself, has some awareness of what he is capable of.

“I did.”

“Why?” His voice is very soft, something breaking in the word.

“Because there are things you can’t do.”

“I can do anything,” he screams, and the world about us shudders under his will.

“Jay.” He just glares, panting heavily. “I know what you can do.”

“You don’t –,” he begins.

“Jayseltosche.” Jay jerks at his full name, eyes wide and shocked almost back to himself. “I am the wandering magician. I have cost you dearly, restored what was lost at a deeper cost. I have broken the skin of the universe and knit it, slept with a Walker of the Far Reaches and survived, become fae and let that power go. You do not get to tell me what I do and do not know.”

He opens his mouth, closes it. Stares.

“People are mean, and cruel, and ugly. This is a fact that no amount of huggings or jaysome or friendship will change. Not if they are to remain people.”

“Then maybe they shouldn’t!”

“Charlie gets angry often, yes?” He nods warily. “The anger is what drives her, in part. She wouldn’t be Charlie without it, Jay. People wouldn’t be people without their darkness. We aren’t whole unless we have our shadows, and sometimes they aren’t dark at all. People are angry, and foolish, and often cause for despair, but one must love them anyway.” I’m trying to recall words I read once, paradoxical commandments for a time such as this, but they fall apart under the furious hurt in his face.

“I do, only people are mean and I can fix that, Honcho.”

“I know. But they wouldn’t be people.”

“And maybe that would be better!”

The word hang in the air, half-threat and almost promise. He can do that. Change everyone in the world in a moment. Make humanity something – not more, not less, but wholly different.

“I can’t argue against that,” I say softly. “We live in a fucked up world, Jay. But the only way to make it better is small, slow steps. We are getting better. Some days it doesn’t feel like that, and there is a lot of hurt and pain in the world – but birth is hard, and change is even harder. No one wants enlightenment, Jay. It is neither sought not welcomed, but it comes. In shifting beliefs, in altered systems, spasms toward the future that end up with at least one step forward in the end.”

Jay doesn’t move. I can’t eat his expression for the first time since I’ve known him. I don’t think even Jay knew he could hide what he was feeling from showing on his face. Maybe even he doesn’t know, not in this.

“People are jaysome, kiddo,” I say, and he flinches visibly as if struck. “Maybe not as jaysome as you, or for as long a time as you’d like. I help the world, the world pays me back for it. You help people, Jay. And they pay you back in kindness, and it takes courage to be kind, a type many people might never find in themselves if they don’t make friends with you, if they never meet you. It can’t be forever, but nothing is that.

“Everything I do will be forgotten, Jay, no matter that I am Honcho, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. That the sun will burn out some day is what keeps it shining. Thay jaysome exists is enough to shift the world in small, small steps toward something better. People have to change themselves or the binding isn’t as real.”

“But ... but – it hurts,” he cries out, and slams into me, trembling violently into the hug I offer.

“I know. Charlie and I didn’t want you to hurt like this, not if we could avoid it.” I hug him as tightly as I can. “And you can’t be Jay, not the Jay you have to be, and truly remember this.”

He sniffs. Looks up. The knowledge in his eyes hurts so, so much. “Honcho? Has this happened before?”

“No.” I am very good at this lie, so good he doesn’t question it.

He reaches inside, binding his own memories from himself. Forgetting, because the fact that we can forget is sometimes all we know of bliss. It’s not perfect. It’s as far from perfect as anything I know, but Jay can’t – he can’t be Jay, not as he is now, and not be compelled to fix things, no matter how much he would break in the process.

“Sleep,” I say, and he does so without a word. I put him into a bed, call Charlie and tell her to pick up a TV. I don’t say why. She knows by the tone in my voice.

Everything is paid for, but sometimes – sometimes some prices are so high that all you can do is pay and pay again and know nothing will balance the books in the end. I go outside. I am a power in the world. There is so much I hold back from doing, and some days it is so, so hard to do so. I don’t have Jay’s innocent arrogance as armour. I have nothing at all beyond a bitter understanding of how hard change is and how much the world fights against the future to cling to ugly pasts.

Such a messed up world. But setting that to right would only cause a bigger mess. I believe that. I have to, or everything I am has been for nothing at all.

Charlie brings me a latte, and we just drink, and say nothing, the pain Jay buried from himself in our eyes. Neither of us say a word, but we each hide it in our own way before we go back inside. There is a TV to fix, and Jay to wake up, and new adventures to have. And a world to help in steps so small that only the ripples will ever be felt, like faint breath on the back of the neck. I have to hope it helps. That what we do is enough of a push toward a better world. But deep inside I wish I had the courage to let Jay loose the depths of his power upon the entire world.

But I am not that brave. And I am not jaysome at all.

Epic Adventuring!

“Two months ago, I chained the Hollow God under the corner of Fifth and Main in order to stop him from gaining more power, because humans aren’t meant to learn how to absorb gods and eat them like candy. The Loa aren’t snack food, in other words. I did not expect to find anyone coming to visit him and bringing the latest James Patterson novel. Especially not when I made the strongest wards I could about this, so you will explain yourself,” and the magician’s voice gets all not-friendy and harsh, like how Dentist’s really sound like inside themselves.

“Well, he’s all kinds of lonely,” I explainify like a jayboss does. “And I heard that, so I decided to come say hi. Plus. I bet Charlie could help him if we visit and I bet it was just an oops!”

The magician stares at me. She isn’t as good at staring as Honcho, but she tries really hard. “You think Andrew McMike – which I known isn’t his real name – ate gods by accident?”

“I’ve done lots of accidents, and most of them I didn’t mean to do. Plus chaining people instead of doing a helping isn’t good for any magician, you know.”

She isn’t as old as Honcho, but there is a hardness to her eyes he hasn’t had since I’ve known him and she does magic stuff around me in the sewers that I’m willing to bet is really mean. “What are you, that my power cannot touch you?”

“I’m Jay. That’s a who and a what and sometimes even a why I bet.” I grin like a Jay, all sorts of jaysomely, but she doesn’t return it at all because sometimes magicians are really kinda focused and not good at grinning at all. Which is pretty sad-face.

She gestures, and the sewer water tries to drown me before I talk it into being nice, and then I have to do bindings to stop her from doing stuff that would damage her own city, and that’s not jaysome at all. I informify her of that, and she speaks a Word that humans definitely aren’t meant to know and the world gets colours humans don’t normally see for a few moments.

I say hi to Dave, who isn’t really a Dave even if he looks like one because of the tie, and Dave vanishes back outside the universe because I’m really good at saying hello.

The magician stares at me almost like Charlie does. “How can you do that? There is no Outsider than can seem so human.”

“Oh! I’m really good at it,” I kinda boast a little. “Most days I don’t even have extra fingers!”

The Hollow God reads the James Patterson novel and pretends to ignore us, but I think maybe he’s laughing a little. But I bet that’s totally because I made a JayJoke.

“Why are you here?” the magician asks.

“Well, you kinda tried to push me and I’m making a new friend and –.”

The magician does another magic thing, this one making me tingle all over.

“And I’m still here even if you’re being pretty rude,” I say, because she is.

“This is my city. You are not welcome here.”

“Huh? But I’m having an epic adventure cuz all adventures are epic and the pavement likes me a lot because I drew some funny faces on it plus you’re just scared cuz you can’t bully me and that’s a really sad thing since a magician isn’t meant to be a bully and and and you never even tried to make friends with me or your Hollow God at all and just put people into chains and lock them in the dark and that isn’t any kind of jaysome at all – also, locking people away like that isn’t being a magician at all but maybe a politician and magicians aren’t meant to be that but I bet you’re just really stressed and we can be friends anyway because friendships are really important!”

And then she tries to banish me again, so I just leave and promise the Hollow God to bring another novel in a couple of months and I bet the magician of that city is gonna have even more traps and tricks to try and stop a Jay. But maybe she’ll learn to see this as a fun adventure too, because it’s definitely going to be pretty epic I bet!

Epic Adventuring!

“Two months ago, I chained the Hollow God under the corner of Fifth and Main in order to stop him from gaining more power, because humans aren’t meant to learn how to absorb gods and eat them like candy. The Loa aren’t snack food, in other words. I did not expect to find anyone coming to visit him and bringing the latest James Patterson novel. Especially not when I made the strongest wards I could about this, so you will explain yourself,” and the magician’s voice gets all not-friendy and harsh, like how Dentist’s really sound like inside themselves.

“Well, he’s all kinds of lonely,” I explainify like a jayboss does. “And I heard that, so I decided to come say hi. Plus. I bet Charlie could help him if we visit and I bet it was just an oops!”

The magician stares at me. She isn’t as good at staring as Honcho, but she tries really hard. “You think Andrew McMike – which I known isn’t his real name – ate gods by accident?”

“I’ve done lots of accidents, and most of them I didn’t mean to do. Plus chaining people instead of doing a helping isn’t good for any magician, you know.”

She isn’t as old as Honcho, but there is a hardness to her eyes he hasn’t had since I’ve known him and she does magic stuff around me in the sewers that I’m willing to bet is really mean. “What are you, that my power cannot touch you?”

“I’m Jay. That’s a who and a what and sometimes even a why I bet.” I grin like a Jay, all sorts of jaysomely, but she doesn’t return it at all because sometimes magicians are really kinda focused and not good at grinning at all. Which is pretty sad-face.

She gestures, and the sewer water tries to drown me before I talk it into being nice, and then I have to do bindings to stop her from doing stuff that would damage her own city, and that’s not jaysome at all. I informify her of that, and she speaks a Word that humans definitely aren’t meant to know and the world gets colours humans don’t normally see for a few moments.

I say hi to Dave, who isn’t really a Dave even if he looks like one because of the tie, and Dave vanishes back outside the universe because I’m really good at saying hello.

The magician stares at me almost like Charlie does. “How can you do that? There is no Outsider than can seem so human.”

“Oh! I’m really good at it,” I kinda boast a little. “Most days I don’t even have extra fingers!”

The Hollow God reads the James Patterson novel and pretends to ignore us, but I think maybe he’s laughing a little. But I bet that’s totally because I made a JayJoke.

“Why are you here?” the magician asks.

“Well, you kinda tried to push me and I’m making a new friend and –.”

The magician does another magic thing, this one making me tingle all over.

“And I’m still here even if you’re being pretty rude,” I say, because she is.

“This is my city. You are not welcome here.”

“Huh? But I’m having an epic adventure cuz all adventures are epic and the pavement likes me a lot because I drew some funny faces on it plus you’re just scared cuz you can’t bully me and that’s a really sad thing since a magician isn’t meant to be a bully and and and you never even tried to make friends with me or your Hollow God at all and just put people into chains and lock them in the dark and that isn’t any kind of jaysome at all – also, locking people away like that isn’t being a magician at all but maybe a politician and magicians aren’t meant to be that but I bet you’re just really stressed and we can be friends anyway because friendships are really important!”

And then she tries to banish me again, so I just leave and promise the Hollow God to bring another novel in a couple of months and I bet the magician of that city is gonna have even more traps and tricks to try and stop a Jay. But maybe she’ll learn to see this as a fun adventure too, because it’s definitely going to be pretty epic I bet!