Facebook status updates part XXXI (Jan 2015)

Once upon a time, in a kingdom of magical dwarves, enchanted slippers and castles that could cause people to sleep a hundred years, a prince was informed that he could never be a princess.

“They say that if you want peace, you must prepare for war. What if you want war? What do you do then?”

“You tell everyone they are living in the best country in the world. And then you sit back, and you wait.”

What the word needs in 2015: Chat and/or quiz tv shows hosted by Daleks.

We are sometimes more than our hashtags.

"I don’t need the instruction manual for our son, doctor. I just want to find the cheat codes."

Once upon a time, there was a very hungry caterpillar who grew up to become a very hungry butterfly – and that, child, is where the first dragon came from.

I am your terms, you my conditions. We are each other’s privacy statement, and we both accept cookies.

Sometimes I suspect my life is a one-man play where I'm not even the best part.

"I know you wanted a brainbox dear, but the company is sold out so we bought you a breadbox. We can store your brain in that, right? It has its own twitter account and everything."

“I love you,” he said, just when I thought he couldn’t hurt me anymore.

“Don’t you understand yet that hatred is just love with it’s back turned away?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is with us.”

"That’s the problem. What if it really is true that toddlers killed more people in this country than terrorists last year?" And we both stared down at the crib and wondered what we had brought into the world.

"I want to be you when I grow up."

"That’s nice, dear, but you should try to be yourself —."

"No, I said I want to be you." And she smiled and held up the scissors. "Mommy said you have way too much skin, Granny, so I’m going to wear some of it now."

You used to be a poem I wanted to write

Before we fell in love; now you’re only prose

'You’ve spent your time counting the stars; I spent it wanting to compare our scars.'

That’s what I told you when really all I wanted was to kiss you until our smiles matched our eyes. - post

Bobby-Joe knew that the Conspiracy was deeper than he’d ever imagined when he realized that everyone else in the organization was really a plant by the Conspiracy.

Pro-tip: when you are giddy with exhaustion and sleeping is just making you even MORE tired, do not explain it to the doctor at the clinic by saying you blame the aliens for abducting you for the past four nights.

After his sister was put in the hospital for being schitzo – the doctors used other terms, that’s the one his mom stuck with when she described her ‘failure’ to friends – William snuck into his father’s wood shop and made fake bluetooth headsets for every crazy person he could find, in the hopes that everyone would think they were talking on a phone and not lock them away.

"Only one in every hundred people is a psychopath, which means the odds are pretty good our children won't turn out like me."

You don’t buy Alpha-Getti anymore, not after it began spelling out awful secrets about your parents. You’re terrified it might reveal yours to you next time.

"The love letter you found in my suit pocket wasn't for you."

You alone know that there hasn't been a human boy born in the last five years.

You are the fire in which I burn.

Six Word Story:

I’d write six words for you.

I love the weird times when you just blank on words.

I wrote 'nest of bees' and spent almost ten seconds trying to recall the right word to use instead of nest :p

Sometimes all that is left are the things we leave behind.

"I'm sorry, but we can't enter into a relationship. I found your writing blog, and I will do many things in my life. But I'm not going to become a poem for you. Never that."

They say that you become the thing you pretend to be. And so I loved you until it worked. I swear it worked.

Do creationists believe the world is only 6000 years old because it means there is less for them to study in history class?

Christians tend to name kids after Jesus (as Joshua, sometimes, depending on country) and after Mary, various saints etc. as protection against evil spirits and so forth, historically.

I wonder if Satanists did the same thing? Luke as short for Lucifer, and so forth.

"Well, we know Beelzebub isn’t a common name, but we were going for classics…"

Today loving you feels like an act of terrorism.

Imprisoned Doorways

It’s not my fault even though it is: sometimes that’s how magic happens. I’d left Dana to pull off some CSIS hoodoo on a city bureaucracy in order to get some information she needs on possible monsters hiding here the fae need to check in on. She wanted to use her glamour or I to use magic until I pointed out that her current body did have high government clearance and she could use that. I imagine a fae glamour would work as well, but she’s not healed from near-death well enough enough two months later to waste energy.

It’s a failing of magicians that we never pass up opportunities for lessons. Which is why I ended up stopping two boys from chasing a cat by making them understand exactly how the cat felt. One ran home and told his mother, who spent half an hour hunting me down in order to bring me into their home. Despite my protests that magicians weren’t exorcists. There was desperate need in her eyes, and magic answers need.

Louisa Croix was at her wits end. She’d had two priests come by and a self-styled exorcist. Neither had helped her daughter Bethany, but it went some way to explaining why her youngest, Roger, had been tormenting a cat. Sometimes we have to lash out or be consumed by ourselves. And sometimes the only way to lash out is to make others feel the pain one feels. He was six. It didn’t excuse, even if it did explain.

Roger is hiding in his bedroom under the bed. He’s been crying from his experience of being a wounded cat, but his mom hasn’t noticed. Bethany is locked in their attic, as if this is a bad horror film, and she is screaming insults in a dozen languages and lies about her parents, her brother, herself, all of it broken up by harsh truths she has no way of knowing. The next door neighbours divorced over things she screamed; people have moved away.

“I had a man here,” Louisa whispers. She’s not the sort to whisper, or wasn’t until four months ago when everything in her life went wrong. “He said he was of the city, claimed to be a magician, and she said things – terrible things that drove him out the door.”

“And he never returned?”

“They were very terrible things.”

“Yes. Magicians often do terrible things, and so does everyone else in the world.” I square my shoulders and begin walking up the stairs to the attic.

There is a pause, and then Bethany’s hoarse voice is low and cruel. “Magician, wanderer, seeker after nothing because you are too scared to be sought. All you do is run away, magician, so fast and far, from love or friendship.”

“I am the wandering magician of this era; it would be foolish not to wander away from myself at times, and yet I always find my way back. Is this the best you can do?”

“Magician!” Louisa says, and somehow manages a whispered scream. “Do not do this.”

The girl upstairs laughs then. “Oh, that was just saying hello, magician. Who taught you such things, who taught you the forms of the world if not your father? Your father, who was also a magician. Your father, whom you burned to death in fire. Magic answers need, and what was your need? Could you find no other solution, or were you too scared to look for one?”

“Already at my father. I thought you would start with my mother.”

“I have wounded you,” the girl cackles.

“It is no wound I was not aware of.” I hold out a hand, and open the door. Beyond it is a small room that seems even smaller than it is, little more than a cot and trays passed through a slit in the door each morning, returned each evening. Bethany is thin, burning with energy, eyes wide and wild, hair a tangle of assumed madness.

“Magic man, charlatan, who destroys more than he can ever save –,” she taunts from the bed, legs swinging as if it was a swing.

“Be quiet.” I don’t thread power into my voice, but I draw the magic up about me, the air humming like a hive in response as I step into the room. “A doorway can lead to many places, perhaps even whatever place you are from.”

“I am from the place all monsters come from: humanity.”

I snort at that. “I can call a fae through this door, and I believe the fae take very dim views of the reputation changelings like yourself try to leave on their doorstep. I could call forth a god-eater to strip you of your power. And I can call a boy named Jay, who could bind you until there is nothing of the changeling and only the child whose life you stole away. I could destroy you,” I say quietly, and it is in my nature to speak truths that cannot be dismissed.

Bethany is still, eyes narrow and sharp. “But you have not.”

“Doing monstrous things does not have to make you into a monster. Even being monstrous things does not: imagine what you could do to destroy the hypocrisies of the mighty or heal the wounded minds of other folk? You have power only in your voice, and it would so easy to silence. Easier, still, to kill you, which is why you mingle lie and truth so others will not murder you. Because if they do, everyone else will assume the lies were true as well. You can use your power to other ends.”

The changeling blinks. “I have consumed Bethany and taken her over, and you will let this stand?”

“I could destroy you, but I cannot restore her. And yes, I tried that once before.” I step back into the doorway. “I am offering you a chance to make this mean something, Bethany.”

She considers that. “You made Roger cry.”

“I did. I am hardly perfect.” I smile, almost. “Believing such things about oneself is what makes monsters.”

“I must continue Bethany’s life, even though I consumed her.” The changeling lets out a very human bark of laughter. “Nothing is ever finished.”

“No,” I say, and I turn and leave the monster to its choice. Because nothing with my father was ever finished, even though I killed him. Because a changeling sees the past as it clings to others, and I cannot wander far enough to let mine go.

I leave her to her choice, because I cannot trust what I might do it I stayed much longer. I go down the stairs, and tell Louisa it is over, one way or another, and she has no idea what to make of that. The boy is still crying in his bedroom. I say nothing as I pass it, because there is nothing I can say that will undo my actions.

I walk out of the house, and I am almost certain the changeling is not staring down at me and smiling, knowing she won the war even though she lost every battle with me. I do not look back. I am not a boy who takes his anger out on kittens. Nor a magician who abuses the world with power. I turn my anger inward until it burns itself away.

It takes long enough to hurt, but not long enough to ever touch the deeper hurts below.

Guarding Doorways

Until recently, I thought I understood the world. I thought I understood my job. Security isn’t an easy gig at the best of times: drunken idiots, homeless people high on shit, teenagers doing their petty vandalism and all it takes is one bad night and one lax moment and you lose your job to the kind of scum that want to break into buildings after dark. The Old Budapest Hotel in Fairview had been closed for six years but there was still a liquor store until 10 pm on the property.

Way I was told, the owner kept it there for tax reasons and possibly to annoy the city. Hotel proper was closed, gutted, nothing more than brickwork and rot. It didn’t stop people from trying to break into the liquor store through it, or just try and break in at all. Owner would only pay for one guard, so it wasn’t the kind of posting anyone wanted too often. I’d got used to it on the routine after six years: where people would go, how they tried to get in.

Four attempts in one night was a bit much and I got cranky at the fourth. Old man trying to get the padlock open to the electrical room, probably looking for copper. Didn’t recognize him, wouldn’t matter if I did. I yelled at him to get away and he didn’t, or he didn’t move fast enough, and I had my truncheon out and in my hand as I moved forward. He looked old, but old meant crazy half the time and this close he’d stab me before I had a chance to stop him. Truth told, I wanted him to move. I wanted an excuse.

“No,” came, beside me, and the hand that grabbed my right arm from beside me was a surprise. I spun and swung without even thinking. Drove the nightstick into the side of a kid’s head. He couldn’t have been more than eleven. All I saw as I dropped it was his white cane hit the ground and glasses go off his head. It was like something out of a novel: my bones were like ice and I couldn’t move at all. The kid staggered back. Somehow, somehow there was no blood and he glared up at me.

“I was just asking you to stop,” the kid snapped, as if blind kids do that all the time. Close up, his eyes weren’t right at all but that wasn’t a surprise given the cane.

I made a sound. Somehow he wasn’t dead. Wasn’t screaming. I could have sworn I’d connected with his head but I wasn’t about to press it, grabbing onto the miracle with both hands, terrified everything in my life would fall apart if I so much as spoke.

“He just wanted in from the cold,” the boy snapped, grabbing glasses off the ground on his second try, the cane a few moments after. It never occurred to me to try and find the truncheon. I just stood in frozen silence. The old man looked as shocked as I felt as the kid marched over and did something to the lock.

I guess blind kids are good with sound and tumblers? I don’t know, because it opened really fast and he whispered something I didn’t catch to the old man, who froze in place and then asked in a shaking voice if the kid was an angel. The kid giggled at that, sounding like any kid who had ever lived.

“Nope! Just helping,” he said, and there was so much pride in his voice I thought maybe my truncheon had bounced off of that. Honestly. He helped the old man into the room, closed the door and came back over to inform me that the old man would just be spending the night and leaving after and ‘just because bindings go bad it doesn’t mean you have to’, which made no sense at all.

I wasn’t about to ask. The kid just nodded and walked back out of the alley using the cane. Seeing it made me remember my truncheon. I dug out my flashlight and found it: if it’s stolen, you can spend upward of a week on paperwork alone. I picked it up and there was a dent in it. I sweat, a dent shaped like a kid’s head a little bit. I didn’t hurry after that, and the kid was long gone by the time I reached the street. I didn’t even finish the shift; went to the office, handed in truncheon and everything and left.

The old man was in the paper this morning. Turns out his family had been looking for him for going on two years: some issue with inheritance and insurance; he’d been wrongfully kicked out of a hospital, off-meds and wandering streets while they tried to find him. He went to their home, claiming he’d been told to go to that address, and his life was turning around again.

I haven’t been able to even get a phone interview with any employer all week and I get no call backs for jobs at all when I arrice in person. I keep saying I’m sorry, as if somehow that kid – whatever he is – can hear me, but it doesn’t fix anything at all. I don’t know what to do, so I came here with my last ten bucks to get drunk and hope I’d wake up somewhere new. That’s my story, anyhow. What’s yours?

Watered Paths

The magician hasn’t answered his phone. I have no idea what he is doing, no clue if this is a good thing or not. I’ve been calling him at least once every ten minute s for five hours. I imagine I can hear waves crashing on the shore from the hotel room I rented for Jay and me. Me and Jay. Jay and I; I can’t be bothered to care what it is. I’m six blocks from the ocean, I’ve got the window open and I’ve gone through three packs of cigarettes in as many hours and I can’t rest for trying. The god inside me is a roiling mass of barely contained fury. I have no idea where its anger ends and mine begins, not until the door to our room opens.

It was locked, but Jay tends to unbind locks without thinking. “Charlie,” he burbles as he comes into the room. He’s not even went, with his cane in one hand and a bag in the other, dark glasses not even slightly askew on his face despite him having dove into the ocean seven hours ago.

“What time do you call this?” I snarl, and Jay goes still at that, colour draining from his face.

“Charlie?”

“You were going for a swim,” I say, and he rocks back at the anger I’m not even trying to hide. “You went under water, Jay. That was seven hours ago!”

Jay blinks, holding up the bag in a shaking hand. “I was touching nice coral and helping it, unbinding plastic from fish and I wath just going for a walk,” he whispers. “I brought you some shells?”

I haven’t heard him lisp in weeks. “Shells. Seven. Hours.” He drops the bag and just stands, frozen. “You’re not even wet!”

“I bound the water away from me, and I bound air in my lungs but I didn’t need it,” he whispers. “I was fine. I’m tough and –.”

“You don’t need to breathe?”

Jay shakes his head, not moving, trembling all over.

“And you didn’t know this before you decided to walk under water for seven hours?”

“No, I –.”

“Four hours I was waiting at the shore. I shouted your name until I was hoarse, Jay. You didn’t show up, didn’t find a way to call me or anything at all.”

“I – I didn’t mean –.” He bites into his lower lip. “I was exploring, because the mermaid on tumblr told me all about how cool the oceans were and I can’t see them but I could feel them and – and – and –.” His breath hitches and he falls silent.

“For all I knew you were dead,” I say, and my voice isn’t remotely even at all.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Jay says, the words coming out in a wail.

“You could have drowned or been eaten by a giant squid for all I knew!”

Jay lets out a whine and flings himself toward me for a hug; I backhand him into a wall without thinking. His glasses go sailing, and sightless eyes filled with fractured light and falling stars widen in shock.

“Charlie?” He doesn’t move at all.

“You were trusted into my care,” I say, and my voice is thick even to my ears. “Mine. And you could have died or been eaten or worse and you didn’t even think to find a way to let me know you were fine?”

Someone pounds on the door of the hotel room; I snarl back and hear them run away.

“I was having an adventure,” Jay says, so soft I barely hear him. “I was looking for the mermaid and the ocean feels different and has lots of bindings I got to know and others I got to fix and time doethn’t pass in the oceans like it does on land.” He sniffs loudly. “I didn’t even – I didn’t – I –.”

This time I manage not to strike out when he flings himself, wrapping trembling arms about me in a hug and saying the word sorry over and over. I manage to ruffle his hair and return the hug.

“You had me terrified, Jay.”

“I didn’t feel it. In the – the bindings, because I was all having an adventure,” he says, the words muffled.

“I know, I just –.” I take a deep breath, another, push him away. “Jay?”

He looks up, still trembling violently. I reach out; he doesn’t flinch as I gently pull his bottom lip out from his teeth.

“You trust me, after I hit you?”

“You’re my friend,” he says. “And – and sometimes friends hurt friends and – and – and –.”

I press a finger to his lips and hug him tight, and this time I tell him I’m sorry and ignore his confused asking of what I’m sorry for. I hold him tight until he’s not shaking and let go slowly after. “Shells?”

“I found a lot,” he says hesitantly.

“One bag in seven hours?”

“Uhm. I might have more outside? I kind of bound them into the air and pulled them beside me to the shore?”

I pause. “How many more?”

“Lots,” he says proudly, but still makes it a nervous question.

“Let’s go see them?” I pause. “Even though you can’t see?”

Jay blinks, then giggles at that and grabs my right hand, pulling me out of the hotel room and down the stairs.

Half the parking lot is overflowing with sea shells and bone in a riot of colours and shapes. It’s past midnight, but even so people are circling the pile in confusing, some taking pictures on cell phones. I take a deep breath, letting go of everything I can. “First off, unbind the pictures from their phones. Secondly, won’t the ocean want all this back?”

“I might have said I was only borrowing it. The water thinks long thoughts, so they’ll be okay with a few years,” he says happily.

I let go of his hand and stare down at Jay. “Where do you plan to keep a small mountain of shells for two years?”

“I can keep them in a hiding hole and give them to nice people?”

“Okay. You mind hiding them now before people get really confused?”

“But –.”

“They are very pretty, and I do like them, but people will wonder how they got here and get worried.”

“Oh! Okay,” Jay says, and must bind them somewhere wholly other because each shell is gone a moent later. “I kept the bag upstairs for us!”

“All right.” I grab his hand and pull him back toward the hotel room. “We can look at them now. I can tell you what each one looks like if you want?”

“Really?” Jay grins hugely and pulls his hand free to bounce up the stairs.

I follow him into the hotel room, closing the door behind us. “Kiddo? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know that,” Jay says. “Everyone gets mad at stuff, and I all scared you and I’m really sorry but!” I try not to flinch at the but. “But now it’s okay,” he continues, “and you can tell me all about the shells and make up for maybe being mean by getting us lots of pizza later?”

I remind myself Jay isn’t human at all, even if he does appear to be a human boy of about 11. I remind myself I am human. I take a deep breath and sit on one of the beds, and Jay plops down on it beside me and pulls shells out the bag and listens as I describe each one he runs his fingers over. I order pizza later, and he spends the rest of the time until dawn telling me about the sand under his feet and all the fish around him and how awesome it was.

“You want me to come with you next time?” I say finally, mentally smacking myself upside the head.

“Could you? We could go mermaid hunting!”

“I don’t think mermaids might want you using the term hunting,” I say dryly, fighting back a yawn. “But yes, we will. And I’m sorry.”

Jay frowns slightly. “I know; you already told me that. And I said I was sorry, so everythng is okay.” The grins hugely at that and bounces off to go sleep in the other bed, and for him everything is entirely okay.

I remember my anger, and the blow I struck. I don’t sleep for several hours, staring up at the ceiling. I think Jay might be awake when I start crying, but he just keeps quiet and pretends to sleep.

In which Jay fails to make friends

Okay! I bet you know this, but there are no bindings between people and stars. For all sorts of reasons, but mostly because stars are really busy and humans work at different levels of time than they do. Like how bindings connect stuff, but it doesn’t mean everything is bound together because there are layers and warps to everything and not all bindings operate at the same speed or in the same place!

And I got all slapped by an old lady for explaining that to her when she was telling someone else how being a Taurus was all a thing and would Do Stuff. But! but but I was all happy because most humans don’t hit me when they realize I can’t see, even if Charlie says I am being annoying and she did and I was all happy for that but she wasn’t and it got all weird.

Charlie says that sometimes people can’t hear what they need to, or they find comfort in things that aren’t there. Kind of like how I think about Honcho tons even if he’s not around us, I guess, so that’s all okay. And it is kind of funny-sad that the first time a human hit me since I lost my sight is cuz they were mad when I’d rather they hugged me because they were happy :)

But Charlie says I have to work on making people happy, which might mean not being Jay. Only she’s just joking! :D

Level Up

“I think I’m level four,” a voice shouts in joy as the owner lands beside me on my bed.

“Jay.” I don’t open my eyes. “The hotel manager already talked to you once about bouncing about and shouting at six in the morning.”

“But he was joking!”

I crank my eyes open at that and turn my head. Jay has on his dark glasses covering broken eyes, his smile wide and huge like an espresso kick at 4 am. “He was joking?”

“Beds are made for bouncing,” he explains. “Because they go boing!”

“And the shouting?” I ask because I can’t help myself. Sometimes Jay is like a trainwreck, or at least like Thomas the Tank Engine on speed and laughing gas at once.

“I’m all happy, so you need to know that,” he says.

“And you’re grinning like a fool wouldn’t tell me that?”

“I grin all the time. Except when I don’t,” he explains, then pauses and holds out a hand, his shoes snapping through the air to his grip as he binds them together. “See?”

“You have shoes. I knew this,” I growl.

“But I’m level four now!”

“Please tell me this is a new reason to keep you off of tumblr?”

“Charlie!” Jay sits up and shoves the shoes onto his feet. “See? See? They won’t fit! That means I’m level four!”

“Jay. Calm down,” I snap, and he deflates a little at that as I push him off the bed. “Clothing. Now.”

He blinks, then goes and puts on his jeans and a sweater after rummaging through clothing. The sweater is on backwards; I’m almost positive that’s because he can’t see.

I get out of the one bed and walk over, checking his ankles and wrists. “Huh. Hold still.”

He does, and yelps anyway when I smack him upside the head.

“Notice anything different?”

“That I’m not holding still next – oh!” Jay reaches up, rubbing his head. “You hit me lower than you usually do?”

“I did. You’ve grown at least an inch.” I don’t point out that human children don’t grow an entire inch overnight; I have no idea what it means that he has now. “Now you can train for level five before we go shopping for new clothing?”

“I can?”

“By sleeping for five more hours,” I say, and head back to bed.  

Fairy Gold

It takes time to find a fae, even for a Jay! There aren’t many fae in the world and they like to hide real good – maybe like a vacation, but I’m not sure. I go looking, and slipping into and through places, following bindings and finally finally the closest one hiding in the echo of a binding, disguised really small in a secret place inside a hill.

“Hi!”

The fae’s voice is a whisper of power, so soft I’m not sure anyone else would even notice the binding. “What?”

“I said hi, because that’s what friends do.” I crouch down to the earth; the huge rock the fae is inside is way deep but I can bind my voice into rock as easily as eating pie. “My name’s Jay!”

“You are not fae. I do not know what you are; why are you here?”

I explain like an explaining machine, how Charlie and I are doing favours for the fae in helping made sure the tons of bindings they have with monsters and Outsiders are all working ands we get money for it and I kind of broke my tablet and need money.

The fae feels about in my head to figure out some of the words and its silence is deep and shocked. “I am the Great Betrayer, bound as deep as fae could bind for my crimes and I will not be released even if the universe itself should fail and you have found me in order to get money?”

“Oh! The fae bound you into the rock? I wasn’t sure, because it doesn’t feel like a fae binding at all.”

“The fae have changed over millions of years,” the fae says dryly. “You should seek another, and do not tell them you know where I am or they will destroy you and all you care about.”

I blink; the fae doesn’t use power in their voice, but some kind of truth like Honcho does. “But we’re friends!”

“Friends?”

“Well, we’re all talking and you must be lots of kinds of lonely so that makes us friends, right?” Sometimes even fae are kind of slow!

“My solitude is part of my punishment. I did a terrible thing long ago out of arrogance and greed. You have it in you to do such things as well, if you could find me.”

“Charlie and Honcho would get really mad if I did bad stuff.”

“And they could stop you?” the fae asks.

“Honcho is really scary.”

“I see. I must return to my silence; do not disturb the wards about me again. Were I to get free, this world might not survive it.”

I scratch my head at that. “You don’t want to be free?”

“The price I would have to pay would be too high. You cannot see, Outsider – I imagine there are prices you would not pay in order to be able to see again.”

“Oh. Okay,” and I let go of talking to the hidden rock and stretch and go looking for another fae; I’m still not sure where I was even talking to or how I found it, but I think it might involve what Charlie calls quantum and I am pretty happy because I did make a friend even if we’re not friends yet. And I bind myself up good so I don’t think too hard about the fae’s voice and why it seemed familiar because sometimes forgetting is even more important than a new tablet.

Sometimes forgetting things is all that helps hold bindings together, which is all weird kinds of true but makes sense anyway.

Kahn's Corner: Judging Books By Their Covers

Kahn's Corner: Judging Books By Their Covers: People say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but good cover design can tell you a lot about a book's premise, themes, and tone.  Bad cover design can be confusing.  And no one has been consistently worse than Tutis Publishing with its "Great Classics Series."  Basically, Tutis decided to print a bunch of old classics whose copyrights had expired.  They then slapped on covers that range from bland to hilarious

*

This one alone is too much fun. Somewhere out there, there is somebody who must write OZ stories set in the world the classics series depicts. 

Hungry Truths

I spend the morning with Jay finding an entire nest of fairies for the fae; the fae just want to make sure the fairies aren’t doing anything untoward, as they put it. Which, when I asked for details, apparently means that creatures the size of an index finger have a tendency to gang up on people and eat them. I’m half-tempted to see if they could eat more than Jay in one sitting when he’s feeling hungry, but just settle for using the GPS the fae provide and running into the fairies in the woods – who prove they are not eating people by defending their territory with snowballs.

Jay and I have got really good at snowball fights lately. Between the both of us we win against the fairies and they’re so happy they decide to be our friends – which Jay spends most of the walk back to the motel we’re staying on going on about. I suspect this means he’s lost another follower on tumblr, but decide not to ask. I just walk, let his words wash over me as he tosses snowballs at trees to show his aim is improving when not binding snow to a tree and he even does two forward flips on ice to impress me. Thankfully, no one is around to see a blind kid of about ten doing that, though Jay is good at sensing if other people are paying attention to us; it has to do with bindings. With Jay, most things do.

“So,” I say as we reach the parking lot across from the motel, “you were going to show me something yesterday?”

He looks at me, eyes wide under dark glasses. “Charlie?”

“Jay. Don’t ‘Charlie’ me.” I stop, and he reluctantly stops as well, squirming in place. “Twenty minutes talking all about having made friends with fairies and how friendship is awesome. What do you think that is?”

He blinks. “Me talking?” warily.

“You’re trying to hard. To be funny, and goofy, and probably Jay as well.” I mean the last as a joke, but Jay flinches back from it.

“But –,” he protests.

“Jay.”

“But you can’t see bindings!”

“I don’t need to see bindings to know something is wrong. Talk to me, kiddo.”

“I don’t want to,” Jay mumbles.

“You don’t want to talk,” I say as calmly as I can manage.

“Oh, no! I like that, but! I don’t want to show you the thing I’d show you,” he explains.

I let out a sigh of relief, and nod back into the wood behind us. “A little way back and then you can, all right?”

Jay hesitates, then nods and takes the lead, trudging slowly through snow. It’s hard to tell with the winter clothing I’ve made him wear, but I’d swear he’s trembling in fear. “It wath in the house,” he says, and I start at hearing the lisp in his voice as much as him not looking back at me as he talks. “The one with the evil ghost and the kid I couldn’t help with bindings and he was going to go downstairs and I had to stop him.”

“The boy is fine; the family as well.”

“I showed him parts of me I didn’t know I had,” Jay says as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “Honcho says I have before sometimes but this was by choice and that changes everything. I can feel it, like a set of clothing under the skin? A little like the god inside you but not like that at all,” and he sounds so miserable I want to hug him until he turns and faces me, his entire body taut with strain. The snow under him vanishes between one moment and the next, pushed back or away and

the god inside me rising out without my bidding, throwing its back up like a wall against the sky

a wall against seeing, a barrier against understanding, its fear mirroring my own will for will

beyond it are shadow made of quasars and movement I feel more than see, perception made

of smells the brain cannot process – there is height, width, length, depth, breadth – and

there are other things as well movements scraping places inside me, things a god-eater

could not eat for they are too alien to even be alien and then there is Jay, and his cane

Dark glasses under an almost-noon sky, his clothing the same as always, the boy’s face so pale I see veins under it and he’s shaking all over as the god flows back inside me like some wounded beast.

I don’t say his name. I walk over, and Jay doesn’t move at all beyond a taut tremble that dissolves as he collapses into me when I hug him. He seems heavier than he did before, his sobs shuddering through him. “Honcho said I should show you,” he manages, the words cracking wildly. “So you’d know, but you’re scared!”

“I am.” I hug him tighter. “But I’m more scared for you than I am of you, Jay.”

He makes a keening noise and is just curled up into my hug bonelessly, relief coming off of him in waves of desperation. I don’t try and process what I saw. I think I might in nightmares, but I don’t know. Is it what Jay really is, what he might become? I don’t know; I don’t think Jay does either.

“You shared this with me,” I whisper as I push him away slowly. “And with a human boy to save his life.”

Jay nods unsteadily, eyes locked on my face.

“You are the bravest person I know, to do that knowing what I might do.”

“I am not,” Jay says hotly, almost sounding like himself in that. “I was scared all the time, Charlie! Even when I wasn’t me, and I don’t – I don’t think that Jay is suppossed to be scared at all.”

“Being unafraid isn’t bravery or courage,” I offer, and stand slowly, holding his left hand gently in mine. “The question I have is can you avoid doing that in a snowball fight?”

Jay blinks, gaping at me.

“If you did that during a snowball fight, I would have to call it cheating.”

Jay says nothing at all as I let go of his hand and turn back toward the motel. “You mean that,” he whispers, as he walks up beside me after a few steps, meaning so many things with those words that it hurts.

“We are friends, and friendship-bindings are important,” I say.

“Charlie!”

“What? You didn’t think I’d make fun of you?”

“Not after that,” he snaps crossly.

“Well, tough.” And Jay giggles in fits and starts at that the rest of the way back to the motel.

I try and pretend this is the Jay I know. I try and pretend it is enough.

And he wants it to be enough so much that we almost trick ourselves along with each other. 

Mental catch-up

Sometimes the brain just needs a break. I've been meaning to do the second-half of a novel (well, really two novellas) but will probably give my brain until closer to Feb. to drop back into that. Finishing up a nicely dark story about screwed-up magic this weekend (I hope); I know how it ends, just working on the beats leading up to it. After that it's a couple of story ideas for the magician series and there's something odd niggling at the back of my head involving a comment that was made to be in HS and my going "what if?" on it.

Also occupying myself by reading a fiction series I'm not really enjoying thus far -- there are over seven books in it, so obviously others do. Using it as an interesting example in how NOT to world-build, for the most part.