Word Taker's Home

I have many places where I live, but only one that I call home. Past the Grey Lands, beyond the Dreaming and the Wasting. Even the fae do not come here. There is no void, not even silence. There is the universe, stranger than even magicians will ever know, the wild places Outside. And there is here. It is not a between place since there is no between. It lies between cracks, between moments, a splinter outside of time and space. It took me a very long time to find it, and even then it was an accident.

I keep things here. A harp. A song. A bowl. Items, ideas, tricks too dangerous for even me to let them loose again. There are mementos. Memories. I don’t have friends, but I have enemies that were close to that. None of them know about this space. There is a fire here, but even the heart of the first dragon barely warms my home. I keep no weapons here, not that I would ever need any. I keep the door open, because there is less than nothing to come in.

Outside there is only – outside. It is too empty to be so empty, and that is all I will ever say about it.

“Excuse me?”

I spin, and say a curse word that, in the dreaming lands, would have made mountains and uprooted empires. There is a boy standing in the doorway. He is eleven, and has a very serious face on.

“What – who – what?” I get out. Me, rendered inarticulate.

“Hi! I’m Jay and I’m here because a coyote stole stories from cruxymox and they kind of want them back you know!”

“Jay. That Jay; you cannot be here. The Grey Lands are too fragile for you to be in; this is far more fragile.”

“Oh! I know and! you were almost hard to find,” the boy says, and offers a huge grin. “It was almost two whole adventures you know!”

I stare at him. “Leave,” I say, in a tongue even Raven does not know. It is not words, the First Speech. Nothing like words at all.

Jay pouts. “That was pretty rude! You take away someone’s writing ability and then try and banish a Jay?!”

I am far from the dreaming my kind were born in. But even so. I stand, and snarl, eyes bright and lunge.

“Wow! Your teeth are sharp enough to hurt me,” he says, and is behind me. I spin, and my tail twitches against my will at something in his scent.

“You should not be here; my kind are hidden even from magicians,” I growl.

“Uh-huh! But Honcho is different,” Jay says. “And I bet he’d love to meet Coyote too!”

I change back into my human seeming. It almost hurts; I have not cast aside everything including my shadow from me in a long time. I had almost forgotten what I was, but Jay isn’t worried at all. “No one can come here.”

“Honcho is Honcho,” Jay says, and there is only truth in that. And a door. In the wall that isn’t a wall.

I stop. I am very old, so old other tricksters trick themselves into thinking they are older. I stare at the boy, and stare again. “How are you able to do this?” I ask, very softly.

“Uhm! Cuz I maybe made this place only I haven’t yet!”

“You make this place?”

“Uh-huh! Because sometimes you have to put a sadness somewhere and there is nowhere to put it I bet!” He beams, and there is nothing beyond it other than innocent pride.

“I have done many tricks.” It is not words I offer. “But I have never tricked myself into believing I was innocent.”

“Jaysome is never a trick,” Jay says, sticking his tongue out.

I draw back, shudder. The making of the universe was a trick, and to speak in that, to be it. Jay does that without thinking, without effort. Without cost.

“What you are looking for is here.” I reach into a sadness of shadow, hold up a string. “It was going to be for a violin.”

Jay takes it, grins and is gone a moment later. The outside, this place – nothing of it reacts to his coming or going. I stare at the door he made. I do not open it.

“A trick beyond even Coyote.” I shiver all over. I could take my things and leave, but part of Jay might be hurt if I do. And I am very old, and very tricky, but even I am not about to hurt Jay. I warm myself by the fire, and weep softly for the stories that are now lost, and the violin I will never make to howl so sweet a song.

There would have been coyotes until the End. Now there will not be. And I too sad even to howl, and too old by far to mourn.