A Whole Hugey List of Adventures in ONE Day!!!

1. I woke Charlie up without coffee
2. AND then with coffee, which is definitely another adventuring :)
3. And before that I was waiting for Charlie and Honcho so went outside and bounces in some clouds just like a jayboss does
4. I even made friends with some owls and got to say owl noises!
5. Then then then I had breakfast, which is always an adventure and even a double one because of pancakes with bananas and chocolate chip inside them.
6. (Honcho says having two breakfasts isn’t an adventure, even if it is?!)
7. Then we left the hotel and I helped fix bindings with some other guests reservations cuz I’m pretty awesomesauce at bindings!
8. But! one guest was leaving and complanining in a not-jaysome way to the staff so I kinda roared like a jaysaurus and helped sort all that out.
9. Then Honcho insisted I have another adventure helping the scared guest to the airport since they were kinda crying a little?
10. And the airport was full of adventures cuz I got to go through a scanner that couldn’t see me and the staff for all kinds of confusled.
11. So I went through the baggage one too because it was fun!
12. And I helped two lonely airplanes make new friends.
13. And helped an airdragon keep hiding, cuz no one else knows that airplane is a dragon but people were getting suspiciousified so I fixed that too!
14. Then I helped a mom find her son when he want wandering, cuz all airports are connected but! he didn’t go to the Denver one, which is really weirdy you know, so I got him back pretty easily.
15. Also, one Outsider needed help getting through customs so I totally sorted that out.
16. Did you know that Charlie says one can’t make friends with the TSA officers? Cuz I did!!
17. Then I met Charlie and Honcho and helped with a store in a mall that had gone all communist and was trying to give things away on the owner and making people really confusled!
18. (This was mostly cuz it was forcing them to do long marches for stuff, I think, and Charlie says that’s not really communism and I ‘don’t get marx’ for being extra jaysome under communism! Which was totally a CharlieJoke :D)
19. Plus I got to help a crosswalk not be cross, which is sometimes tough even for a Jay!
20. After that, I helped one sidewalk not have many cracks in it too.
21. And then we had to find some cult and stop them from killing some gods?
22. Even if Charlie says the god maybe wanted to be destroyed but it was pretty confusing!
23. Also, Charlie says gods can’t kill themselves so euthanasia is really hard for them and the god kind of went overboard and lots of other gods were hurt too :(
24. But we fixified all that up and then had Lunch.
25. Which was TWO adventures because I had two different lunchings! :D
26. And after the lunches I helped stop someone from getting their purse stolen
27. And then helped Honcho fix some bindings so the hospital didn’t lose power.
28. Plus! I made friends with a kitten and helped teach her some really jaysome tricks! (Which Charlie says is at least not as bad the time I made pigs fly!)
29. And then I helped clean up a weird hopscotch board that had gone ‘all kabbalah’ according to Honcho and was doing really strangey things to kids.
30. I also fixed a merry-go-round that wasn’t making kids merry even if Charlie says that’s not really what they’re for?! Plus it was in disguise as a carousel but I fixed that too!

The Secret Truth

He said he’d help us find our son. That was his promise, for the 10K we re-mortgaged our home to acquire. Everyone has seen Eric Evanier in the news. He predicted an earthquake in Chile two years ago. Posted about it on facebook, twitter, all the social media outlets when the others ignored him. Before that, he’d worked in a call centre, but he said the gift had come upon him and he’d just known. Just like that: he knew how strong it would be, where it would strike first, how many would die, how many would live.

Enough listened to him that more lived that might have otherwise. Scientists looked more closely at the area to disprove him, only for the truth to fly in their faces a plane right into their their facts. Boom, and it was over. He became one of those talk show regulars, hired himself out for things. And if he wasn’t always right, if he never was that perfect again, it wasn’t much talked about.

He took our money. The fucker took our money, and sent the police on some wild goose chase. They found our son. They found Kevyn, but too late. Nothing Eric said matched up. Not a damn thing, except the colour of a car or some shit. He hadn’t been dead long. That was the worst part, knowing they might have found him if we hadn’t – but we were desperate, Maria and I. We went to churches. We prayed in mosques. We did everything we could to try and bring our son back. Our grief just attracted vultures to prey on us.

It all failed. All the hookum, all the prayers, all the money. Faith is a drink, a high that vanishes too quickly unless you buy another bottle. I’m done with those. I waited, though, waited seven long months after the funeral. I made sure to only use public computers. Found out where Eric lived, surfed parts of the web people don’t to find out how to hack his security system. It was all hard work, which faith isn’t. It was real, which faith isn’t.

He was sleeping in his bed when I entered his bedroom. Not awake. Not aware. Not prepared. I found the gun he kept beside the bed, and that it was loaded. Figured he’d be that kind. I hit him in the face with the barrel to wake him, but not hard. I wasn’t going to make it easy.

He sat up. Eric Evanier didn’t match his publicity photo. Hadn’t in over a year: he had at least fifty pounds on that, probably from eating with famous people. His eyes were pale and wide as he stared up at me. I didn’t bother with a mask. You don’t have to be psychic to work out what that means.

“Steve. Steven Brown.” He didn’t try and run, just sat up and pulled a nightgown worth more than all my clothing about him, in a bedroom worth more than our house had been.

“You remember me.” I levelled the gun at his head. “You’re why Kevyn is dead.”

And then everything went off-rails. He burst into tears, and not the made-for-tv kind. “I did,” he said when he could speak. “Not just him. So many others. I haven’t had a real vision since the earthquake, but everyone knew I was psychic. I read up on cold reading, watched interviews of some famous psychics. Learned to fake things like that did. Sometimes, I think, I got something. Whispers, but never another shout. Never – that. I saw. I knew I wasn’t real but I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t.”

I install carpeted. Installed them, before everything fell apart. I don’t know anything about cold reading or faking seances, but losing your son teaches you about people. About who they really are, and what they mean more than what they say. And I couldn’t shake the belief he was telling me the awful truth.

I could have asked. Asked for details, insisted on a confession. He kept crying, blubbering about how many he’d failed, how he’d tried, and debts he had to pay off by taking more clients. Debts. As if our son was – as if taking our money was something you did to pay for an extension on your home. I shot him. Twice, right in the head like they do on TV, not even thinking. It didn’t help.

I think I always knew it wouldn’t help. But I had to.

I left. Walked out, threw the gun in the ocean, made it to my car. Part of me wanted to burn his home down around him, but I left it. Like a church: you don’t burn them. You leave them so people can see how empty they really are. I drove for hours, found a hotel. Slept. Woke. Slept again. I’d never felt so empty in my life. The bastard was dead, and I had nothing left in me.

I woke up knowing.

There was going to be a fire in Anchorage. I knew the street name. The building number. I could see – could feel – how many would die. And maybe it was because I was so empty, or because I’d listened to Evan, but I also knew that if I told anyone then the knowledge would never come back.

So I didn’t. I didn’t, because I thought I had to be wrong. Because I needed to be wrong. Only the building burned, and everyone died. Right down to the last detail in the vision. Today I woke up knowing of another disaster, like I did the night before. I can see them now. So clearly. I know what will happen. I know what I could change to alter that.

And I know that changing anything will take this gift away from me.

I’m sorry.

I’m so sorry, but it’s all that’s keeping me going.

Facebook status updates part XLIV (Mar. - Apr. 2016)

The city loomed below us like a boil waiting to be lanced. All I could hope was that the pilot thought in different metaphors than I did.

“Good night,” the poem said.

“Is that the best you can do?” the prose replied. “You might as well tell the reader that it a dark and stormy night!”

“It is,” the poem said, cutting brevity down to the absurd.

No one realized how broken the healer was until he revealed that he could heal the wounds of others but not the simplest of his own.

Sometimes it feels as if we are all huddled in bus shelters waiting for buses that never come while those to places we are not going pull up one after another, depositing strangers oft with familiar faces who all laugh as they get on or off.

“No one talks quite enough, I find, about how much it costs to be kind.”

I used to pretend I had secrets from you, just to hide from myself how much of you was a mystery to me.

You are the one .exe file I cannot open.

I used to trust physics until I realized how often the warp drives failed on Star Trek. If the future can’t be safe, how do we expect to reach it at all?

Phil discovered that the only time he didn’t need to wear glasses was when watching porn. This was, he felt, not something he could explain to his optometrist.

“But I love you,” he protested. “All 99% of me.”

“The Occupy movement failed,” she said. “And marriage is not an occupation.”

And he explained, then, how she was Israel and he was Palestine - and the other way around as well - and he was still describing geopolitical realities when she walked out the door.

I delete the ending to every story I write because life is too messy for proper endings.

I waited for you, as scared as the last pimple on a face waiting to be popped.

I tried to explain my truth to you but you couldn’t wrap it within your own.

“I want to die knowing I’ll have been a trending hashtag on twitter.” He paused. “I’m just not sure how to go about doing that yet.”

“My father has one rule with people he speaks to: tell him truth, especially if you think he doesn’t want to hear it. A king no one disagrees with lives only in a world of mirrors. It’s one of the first things our mother taught us, to try and live in the world and not in our idea of it, or the idea that’s shaped around us.” Jasia snorted, unable to stop herself. “I know it’s not always possible: I’d be the last person to claim I can understand the lives of rural commoners and the like, but being told truths and opinions we don’t agree with helps in that.”

“‘If no one stands up to a king, they become little better than an emperor’,” she quoted.

“We can’t get rid of celebrities: they are the new nobility. Without them, who will be able to be properly eccentric in our too-rigid world?”

The last of the great meme wars was fought between Hello Kitty and the emoticon army. They had an emoticon of Hello Kitty on their side, but even so there were no survivors.

“I know you’ve broken up with me, but I’d like another chance. I won’t spoil the ending of another tv series or movie for you. I promise.”

It is the first of April, when no online news source is to be believed.

Wait. That should be most days anyway ....

Kelly’s mom never stopped claiming that a spoonful of sugar would help the medicine go down, not even after Kelly was diagnosed with diabetes.

Excerpt from this morning:

My brother told me once that the problem of being a prince is that there are limits to the amount of truth one is allowed to speak, perhaps especially to friends. I don't think I understood it until I had to thank Jasia for the clothing her House had made for me without giving away just how much it meant. It was not a gift, but even so: there are favours one can never repay and no royal should ever have those hanging over their head. I thanked her again formally as we made our way toward the gala. I'd like to think she heard the words I couldn't say, but we didn't know each other well enough for that.

The fun of writing parts of a scene on an iPhone ...:

The ballroom was large, even wider than the cavern below the castle though not nearly as tall. The gala had spread out into two other ballerinas, one of which I was certain I'd never been in before.

... Because ballerinas are clearly a special kind of ballroom.

“Everyone asks if I’m telling them the truth, as though expecting I even know myself anymore.”

Once upon a time, there were three bears that never understood why any human thought they’d actually eat porridge at all.

“There must be a villain to this piece that isn’t me,” she pleaded with the director.

“We’re doing a play about the Book of Genesis. What else did you expect?”

If it tastes good, it's bad for you. And more delicious.

- the rule of food.

"You did it," he whispered to everyone he met, and said nothing else at all.

Sometimes the words were a shout or cry, othertimes a scream or whisper.

But there was always that look in his eyes.

That look that said that there are some things we never escape from.

Because we did it, all of it, and we will never own up to it.

Once upon a time, there was a king who abdicated his throne for love. But his love turned out to love the king more than the man.

“I’m sorry. You have to leave. I said I could only be with someone I trusted and you lied to me.”

“I did? When?”

“You told me you were an atheist.”

“But I am!”

“You said ‘Oh, God!’ at the moment of climax.”

Stories I will never write: a historical fiction piece where the Catholic Church is broken up not in a protestant revolution but for being a monopoly.

I wanted to be a superhero. But when all you can do is make people’s faces explode, it seems fate has other plans.

So many people now need to visit their plastic surgeons again, and I get a commision each time.

I knew you had fallen for my fiendish trap because I understood the power of the prisons we make for ourselves. It took everything I had not to cackle that you were finally under the power of the nefarious Doctor Midnight when you said, “I do.”

“The world changes,” Princess Kisp said. “What people fear may not change, but why they fear it does.”

“Of course you’re going to become a superhero when you grow up,” Dad assured me. “We have the best insurance plan in the business.”

“You say that nothing changes save to get worse, but I refute you thus!”

“Thus? What is your thus?”

“Pictures of kittens and puppies.”

"You speak of choices as though consequences were something that happened to other people."

So. Some companies make you work OT (sans pay) for smoke breaks; one could apply that to prayer breaks as well I imagine.

Which is a fun image, since you could get people complaining about secondhand prayer.

I said every word I wrote was about you. But none of them are. You only exist between the lines of text as how nightmares lurk in all dreams, like how love is the core of loss. Everyone has to find the places where they don’t belong, the seeking not a hoping. Trying not to be the sought. What do you do, if you can’t be a home for you, if you can’t fit yourself? You wander, perhaps wishing to (become a) wonder.

It is a difficult thing, but the secret of life is that all things are difficult. That the hunter is always the hunted. There is no growth that is not hard. And we would rather have been spared the pain than grown. Because there is no truth that cannot reek of ugliness. Being hard is what makes us powerful. But we forget the bitterness coring into the apple. Stone can shatter at a single touch. We are all Medusa, also the Minotaur. The cracks we never see run deepest.

Directory Assistance

Directory Assistance

There is an office without a switchboard in it, which the few people who visit consider to be a sin. Somewhere in the basement of the building is the IT department that does everything behind the scenes, and the voice-over people who do everything else. Nothing is what it used to be. Some days that’s bad. Most days it isn’t.

The office phone rings. It shouldn’t ring, since everything is automated. They stopped the old rotary phones from getting this number years ago, and I have a cell phone for personal calls. The phone is here because someone thought it appropriate. The problem of symbols is that they must be used. The thought feels almost alien, but I have lots of strange thoughts along at work. There’s just me in the office, so sometimes there has to be a lot of me to stop the boredom.

To counter the fear.

I pick up the phone. Terrible things happen when I don’t.

It is the boy. I know that before he even speaks. He is eleven, and I have no idea how I know this. He is cheerful. He almost always is. You can feel friendship and warmth when he speaks. If there was a geiger counter for it, he would be off the charts. The last time I tried not to answer the phone, everyone I met was sad with me for days without even knowing why. I’m terrified, but at the same time I feel safe.

“411. How can I assist you?”

“I have some information to give you,” he says proudly.

“That’s not how it works. This is a directory-assistance.” I try every time, but my truth isn’t his truth.

“I give lots of assistances,” he says happily. “I bet I’d give tons of assists if I played hockey because it’s not fair to hog all the goals and! today I ate six six whole hot dogs really fast, even for a Jay, and impressed lots of dogs so they did a helping for me and we found a kitten together and make the Sphinx not be sad-face at all you know!”

“I didn’t know.” I’ve checked the internet. Often. I don’t think he’s getting these stories from other sources. I don’t know if that helps at all.

“Uh huh! And now you do, so you can be extra-jaysome and all kinds of helpfulicious in helping people!”

I want to cry, but I don’t think he’s understand I think he’d be sad, and every instinct in me screams that it wouldn’t be wise. “Are you God?” I ask. I don’t mean to. It slips out.

“I’m Jay! And I’m not a god at all for all sorts of reasons. Some of them are even really good ones, and I’m kinda hury you forgot about me me –.”

“I didn’t!”

“Cuz I called an hour ago about the –.”

“The town without a fire department because they employ fire elementals, yes. I’m not likely to forget that.”

“Oh, good, because that’s pretty important for people to know and – oh, I gotta go. Charlie says we’re going to have another adventure!”

“I don’t need to know about it,” I say, but I’m speaking to just a dial tone. No one else has ever called beside the boy. Whatever he is.

He doesn’t call back before it’s time for me to clock out. Sometimes it’s like that. Some phone calls are short, others last for almost an hour. He asks me about stuff I’d like to learn sometimes, saying that being information must be pretty lonely. I try not to respond to that. Sometimes he speaks wisdom, too, that makes up for what seems to be nonsense. And he’s so happy that I can’t – I think he’s saved my marriage, somehow. Just by making me feel larger than I am.

Our daughter insisted on getting a doberman last month. Jay’s mention of dogs makes it hard to forget that as I leave the office and turn on my cell phone. My wife has been trying to train it, the dog has failed four obedience schools – once leaving one instructor with stitches – and we’re running out of ideas. I have four texts on my phone from her about it, and arrive home to find she and Anna have left the dog outside. They’re hiding inside. From our dog.

Sometimes I think work is a way of hiding from life. I fear the phone calls. I need them. There’s something, something too important for words, and I walk up to the gate and put my hand on the latch. We named her Buttercup, or at least Anna did, and she growls fiercely upon seeing me, showing teeth. A teeth-face, like dogs do.

“Shouldn’t you be more jaysome?” The words slip out, as natural as anything I’ve said today.

And Buttercup pauses, and ceases to growl. She wags her tail, and doesn’t try and bite when I scratch behind her right ear. I open the back door, let her into the house, and Anna and Joan stare at me in an awe I’ve never seen before. Not directed at me. Buttercup curls up on her bed to gnaw on a toy, as content as any puppy that ever was.

“How did you do that?” my wife says.

“I work for 411,” I say. It’s an old joke between us, when people ask for trivia and I know it. “I informed Buttercup about something she’d forgot.”

And Joan asks Amy to call for pizza, and I say there are words that can calm even wild dogs, but it’s not safe to share them. Joan doesn’t ask questions. I don’t know what she sees in my face, but it’s enough that she doesn’t press me.

I almost want to use the word to see if Amy can improve her grades, but I don’t think I dare. I feel like I’m teetering on an abyss, and I have no desire to fall in. We have pizza, watch a movie. Joan and I have a late night, sometimes talking.

I come into work the next morning, and for once I’m waiting for the phone to ring. Because I have an adventure to tell Jay about, and I’m certain he’ll love hearing about it. Even as he tells me all of his.

For once, I’m not afraid.

I hope it lasts.

Diary Entries

#1

Mom says we’re moving to Gotham City and I might be able to see Batman some day!!!

#2

Dad found work easily since there is always new construction all over Gotham. The city is huge and filled with skyscrapers and dark buildings and you’d almost expect to see blimps in the sky sometimes. Mom is still looking for work and says there isn’t much call for psychiatrists in Gotham so she might need to intern somewhere?

School is OK and everyone talks about Batman a lot and how there’s a whole Bat Family who keep Gotham safe? Someone even says there is a bat dog, but I’m sure they’re pulling my leg.

GTG, mom is making spaghetti for supper.

#3

Mom is trying to get a job at Arkham, which is a place where criminals go for rehabilitation, which is a word that is even more complicated than it is long. Dad says all the criminals should be killed, but Mom says they aren’t evil, mostly just really confused like some arts students she knew in university only they went ‘far sideways from sanity’, which is what she said, quoting someone from Gotham University. Mom and Dad don’t agree on that at all, but they don’t talk about it much in front of me since they don’t want me to have nightmares.

As if. I’m in middle school, and even Dad admits school is a lot worse than Arkham ever is. I know two kids who had family members die to the Joker. Someone said it’s a badge of honour, but I’m not sure it is?

#4

School was closed today because some super villain fought Batman and Robin in it. Now everyone is wondering if Robin goes to our school. I don’t want to meet Robin, though: for me it’s Batman all the way even if I haven’t seen him yet. Everyone has stories about him the way other cities have stories about Superman, or my aunt tells stories about Jesus.

Everyone agrees Batman would kick Jesus’ butt.

#5

Mom got a job! She’s interning at Arkham, and Dad is furious because the crazies are there and Mom asked where else a psychiatrist should be and asked Dad why he thought she married him and he didn’t find it funny at all. Sometimes I think mom isn’t good at her job?

They’re fighting a lot about it in their bedroom. Dad is scared some nut will get out and hurt Mom in the process. I don’t understand how they get out, since the prison has guards and most of the prisoners are human? But I guess Batman is human too? James says Batman is a vampire, but everyone knows Batman wouldn’t sparkle.

#6

Mom has been acting weird. Not mom-weird, but weird-weird. She tells me she got assigned to help the Joker, but I’m not about to tell Dad. Dad would flip his lid, as Mom calls it. I think he’d shout and not stop. Mom says she if she can help the Joker, then she can help anyone and she’ll get tenure at the university and a book deal and Dad will be able to accept better jobs and I’ll get into a proper school.

I don’t tell anyone at school about Mom. I don’t think they’d believe me.

#7

Mom didn’t come home from work last night. The police came and talked to Dad, and the Commissioner was with them. I asked him about Batman and he said Batman was looking into it. Meaning Mom.

I hid in my room after that. Dad came in later. He said the Joker took Mom somewhere. He said we’ll be OK and mom will be back, because Quinn’s are strong like quills are. It’s a Mom joke, but it helps.

#8

I still haven’t met Batman. :(

#9

I saw mom on the TV.

She’s wearing makeup. She’s with the Joker. She’s calling herself Harley Quinn.

FML.

#10

I don’t think the neighbours know about Mom. I think the Commissioner made sure no one knows? Maybe cleaning up after the villains and Batman is his power. I don’t know.

Dad and I don’t talk about Batman much these days.

We don’t talk much at all.

#11

Dad. Work. Clayface.

Falling building.

Dad got someone out, and died trying to get someone else out.

Aunt Jo came, to fix things. We don’t have money. Aunt Jo doesn’t, Dad didn’t. We were barely scraping us by, though I never knew that. He hid it from me. Like Superheroes hiding their identities.

I can’t stay here. But I don’t want to. Everything hurts too much to be real.

#12

Mom never showed at the funeral. Not as her or as Harley Quinn.

I wish I could hate her. It would be easier if I could hate mom, but she looks so happy when I see her on the TV.

(I don’t think I ever want to be that happy.)

Batman wasn’t at the funeral, even though Dad was. Bruce Wayne was, and paid some money for some scholarship. I didn’t pay attention. I can’t think about schools. Schools don’t teach what matters.

#13

The orphanage is large. I’m told the Wayne Foundation pays for it, like they pay for other things. The nuns say that Wayne employs at least 10% of the city indirectly, but I don’t know why they tell us that. He’s not important. Everyone knows Batman is important.

They say each Robin was an orphan here, that Batman saved Robin from the streets. We all work out in secret, using clips off of YouTube. Hoping Batman finds us. Hoping we get to be the next Robin.

Hoping we can help save Him.

(Just like Dad tried to save me.)

Breaking silences

Ack! Been busy. Trying to finish up one novella, wrote the camp story - Wings - and it ended. I did do up a 'things I would fix' file and even put a copy on dropbox for people to read if they wished to. It turned out off, since it had no middle act at all and I deliberately cut out 'here is room for sequels' in the end. The story worked as intended, some of the characters worked, but the entire thing had a rushed feel and I don't enjoy writing that genre enough.

I might try and retry the idea for a modern story some day, though. It would take more finesse to work. but the core was that the prince was born without arms (and being born missing limbs was seen as fighting 'evil' in the womb and winning; conversely, if you were deemed mad, you'd failed and succumbed to evil), and lived out his life, having some skill with Magic, being sent on adventures and eventually, when falling off a roof, discovering that Providence had blessed him with 'wings' where his arms were. And being so very, very pissed off at the idea of being blessed/cured/fixed. It would be harder to tell in a modern story, I suspect, but I might give it a go more as a short story sometime.

Wings...

Having fought the forces of the Blight since before he was born, Prince Leos of New Dakesh enters his twelfth year to learn that being born without arms does not exempt him from certain courtly duties, nor the intrigues that come with them. Trying to find his place in a world where he is a prince who will never inherit the throne, Leos finds his growing mastery of the Art turned into a weapon to be used against enemies of the kingdom and that the kingdom has more enemies than he ever knew, both within and without. The forces of the Blight and Providence have not been idle since the last great war, and Leos finds himself both their pawn and a player of these forces as he tries to find a place for himself in a world that is far different than life in the capital would have him believe.

That's the synopsis of a YA novel that entered my head just when I got back from Africa. (Seriously: I slept 3 hours, woke up, went: 'ugh, great....' and lay in head, had the first scene come to me and began writing it. (I paused it at the 13K mark to begin doing the rest of it as a campnano deal and give myself time to make a map and flesh the world out better. Like actually name kingdoms and figure out how they ran.)  The story comes slowly, though I know the main scene now and how it ends, but it is a very formal story. Politics runs deep through it, Leos and others are constantly second-guessing themselves. It's fun to write, but definitely not a style or genre I think I'll write again. 

I like space for weirdness to happen.* And this style of story doesn't really give me the space. It's a good story. I like the characters, the plot is solid and makes sense,  but I doubt I'll ever write something like it again. Which is always fun to discover as well. 

* perhaps not as weird as pizza-popsicles, but even so.

Tired Walkings

Being a magician means many things, but less of them are important the older I get. I walk through the small town of Horseshoe Creek and no one pays any attention to me: the town is small, but not small enough that any stranger is taken as a sign or omen. No one rushes out of small tourist shops to try and get me to buy things, but that is more the ward I have drawn up about myself than anything else. Every place has energies all its own that a magician can tease into certain shapes. Not being bothered is often one of the easier ones.

I walk, reaching out with the magic within me. I pull anger from an arguing couple, give it to someone who needs the motive force to quit their job, reach out to the axle of a car and fix it as I walk past. It has been months since I was - imprisoned, since I escaped. The magic doesn’t pull me to places that need to be fixed as it used to. And won’t talk to me about why.

Not that I am worrying right now. This is what I became a magician for - not the grand and terrible gestures, but the small magics no one notices. Making places better without fanfare, without applause: doing what I can to help nudge the world toward better destinations. I ease stress on a road, help a tree dig deep into roots, open a bin for a fox as I pass an alleyway.

It doesn’t last, of course. I get almost an hour of peace before I feel a twisting in the air, a pressure mounting against the skin of the world. Outsiders prefer to sneak into the universe - when they can - in places where they hope not to be noticed. I have no idea if it trying to manifest inside the lone tourist information booth in the town is some kind of irony.

I walk over, threading a little power into my voice. “This place is not for you.”

“Magician? Here?” The voice is a low hiss in the shadows that shadows cast.

“The wandering magician, yes.” And it is one of my gifts to speak truth that can not be ignored.

Not that the Outsider doesn’t try. Sometimes I feel my reputation in certain circles has become so big that some can’t believe I am actually me. “Prove -.”

I feel it trying to gather power and reach. This isn’t magic as much as what magicians are. I bind it, toss it back Outside with no effort and walk to the edges of the town where the weave of civilization meets fields and trees. Edges are important, for all sorts of reasons.

“So,” I say to the magic with me, stepping aside and leaving it where I was. Some tricks aren’t tricks at all, but one doesn’t become a magician without mastery of the self – sometimes regardless of what your self thinks at all.

It manifests as a duplicate of me, though oddly with a British accent and eyes that I hope look more worn than mine do. “You are persistent.”

“We are. Your point?”

“You need a rest. I am giving you that rest from certain callings.”

“By having Jay and Charlie deal with them?”

“Sometimes. You - we - need time to heal. We cannot continue to put out fires if we risk burning up ourselves each time.”

I let out a breath. It hurts. “I know. I don’t know what we can do though. ”

And the magic looks away at that. “Nor do I. I am scared.”

I step close, pull the magic back into me. It trembles, then gasps as I offer up a gentle kiss and a hug I hope is jaysome. “We will figure this out. We have to. But we can’t ignore situations where we are needed. I don’t think that’s helping me heal at all.”

“Then we will break before we bend.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps we must,” I say, and walk back toward the motel Charlie and Jay are playing poker in. I know they want to help. I know they can help. But part of me is scared of being weak, even to those I trust more than anyone else in the world.

One cannot last as a magician without being strong. I try to remind myself that there are strengths that destroy more than weakness. I don’t know if it helps.

The Fictioning

Okay, so! I was asked to write a fiction story, which is one that isn’t real at all. And this is pretty tough for a Jay, since all the stories I’m in are real cuz they happened to me and Honcho and Charlie and lots of other people too! Plus plus plus when you have fiction the characters have to make sense in a world that isn’t fiction, so they gotta be believable as peoples even if they’re not people at all and that makes it even more confusling if you think it might be real when it’s not real-real but only dream-real and you end up pretty sad-face and lost.

But that means this is totally a prologue! And probably an introdictioning, but no one reads those :(

*

Oolag squithered through the vast Ionish’qua with a quasi-feeling of murphle flowing through their kyshin sacs. The Yurt was behind, althling a path all its own, seeking to Jermiaj the Oolag and achieve a result almost akin to like a Burphab but more Odeblesh than suited the Ionish’qua. Oolag kysh-althed a tunnel, the murphle unploding at the strain and almost Jermiaj’d themself with the effort. The Yurk let out a Zeriek in reply and the rfgult was on!

*

“Jay.” I look up at Charlie. “This is the start of your story.”

“Uh huh!”

“It – do you know what these terms mean?”

“Of course!”

“And the, oh, Kysh-althing of a tunnel?”

“That is quantum tunnelling, but on a hugey scale, Charlie.” I beam proudly.

“And your story doesn’t say this because?”

“I wanted to make sure everyone knew it was fiction, and not be trickified into thinking it wasn’t because that wouldn’t be jaysome at all!”

“Of course not,” Charlie says after a pause. “But the point of fiction is to trick people, to an extent, just like movies and TV do.”

“Nope! I’m not doing that because it’s totally wrong.”

“Wrong,” she repeats.

“I read about how people can only really care about two hundred people before it’s too many bindings and they can’t more than are real so! it would be all kinds of wrong-face if some of those bindings were to fictional people and not real ones.”

“Oh. I see.” And Charlie walks away at that, because sometimes I’m really clever for a Jay.

*

The rfgult led to a fdish of squithering and plkreked in hawiix, so you know! Which meant Oolag did a kwertlewertz and could only begin again the Ionish’qua rapeliv.  

Of Protectors and Maelstroms

Ingress IV-2 wasn’t much of a moon, being little more than a refuelling station circling a gas giant at the edges of the Duvellin Cluster. It wasn’t where I expected to find him, but I knew enough of my target to know that expecting anything was dangerous at the best of times. Even so, if there was a place that wasn’t important Ingress IV-2 wouldn’t even be in the running for that.

He was sitting at the only bar the station had. There were a half-dozen pirates, smugglers and traders scattered about the crude interior, all sitting at a collection of cheap tables and talking or making bets in the tones of people who had nothing else to do with their time at all. No one that would be missed if worse came to worse. Some looked up as I entered, a few looked wary. He didn’t look back at the door at all. He was twenty-one, and it was strange how I simply knew that, as though it were some sort of warning.

“Jaysel –.”

“I go by Jay.” He didn’t turn around. “I believe you go by Lady Vestra.”

“Sometimes. In some places.”

He turned. He looked young and human, but there was a calmness to him. “Are you going to try and kill me now or later?” he asked as if that was a minor thing. A few people began scrambling for windows or the back door. Jay just waited in silence, pale eyes steady and unafraid.

“I serve two masters,” I said evenly. “Only one of them wishes you dead.”

“Three.” He smiled then, and despite everything I’d seen and been told, the kindness of it staggered me almost physically. “You are also a master of yourself, I think?”

“You know of me?”

“We just met. But I am pretty jaysome at bindings,” Jay said. “You thought your name loudly enough for me to sense, and everything about you screams killer.” He paused. “And protector.”

“And if it did not?”

“We wouldn’t be here talking,” he said evenly.

The bar had emptied save for the bartender; she remained, as bartenders always do. “I have this,” I said from within my own calm, and unsheathed the Verkonis blade. Translucent metal hummed like a hungry thing, the air about the blade twisting with strange colours. There were, to my knowledge, less than twenty Verkonis blades in circulation. They cut through dimension as easily as through energy, which made them dangerous enough, but when used on a vessel in hyperspace a Verkonis blade slices through the hyperspace membrane and drops the ship back into real space. Few spacecraft or crew survive the experience, so the blades were illegal most everywhere.

I never saw Jay move. One moment I was holding the blade, the next it was sheathed in his lap as he continued to drink his beer. “I knew you did; I was stabbed with a Verkonis blade once. I would rather it never happened again, so I was aware of it.” His voice was soft, almost calm still.

“When was that?” I asked, trying to buy myself time. It’s one thing to be told how dangerous a target is, another to see them in action. Or not see them at all, in this case.

“Two days before Verkonis itself vanished from the universe.” Jay paused a beat. “In Galchwar.”

I didn’t freeze, but it was a near thing. I walked to the bar, bought a drink, gulped half of it back without tasting it. The Galchwar Cluster had been destroyed a century ago: four star systems obliterated in an instant, cause unknown. The strangest part, historically, was that none of the neighbouring systems had gone to war over who might have done that and trying to find secret weapons the other systems might have had.

“You stopped wars from happening because of it?”

“It seemed the right thing to do.” The words were still calm, but there was a coldness in his manner that made me very glad I hadn’t intended to try and use the weapon at all. “May I ask why you are here?”

“You don’t know?”

That won a grin. “It would be rude to.”

“I am here as a Protector on behalf of the world of Aldemayer in the Qwa Conglomerate,” I said.

“A single planet can afford your services?” he asked.

“This one can. A seer on the planet – Chielin – found a way to combat the bloating plague in the Conglomerate, but it requires medicines found only in the Great Maelstrom. It is said that you can make barriers that cannot be breached; I am more than adequate as a pilot, so together we’d enter the Maelstrom, find what Chielin needs, and depart.”

“A seer?”

“A historian, in point of fact. She learns things in old records and others take it as proof of prophetic powers, which irks her to no end.”

“Would you object if I asked to meet this Chielin?” he asked.

“There is a plague in Qwa. Taking the time to return would be –.”

I felt a breeze behind me, turned as my hairs rippled in the wind. I resisted base urges with an effort as I stared into the great library of Aldemayar.

“Is that the right place?” Jay asked.

I nodded. The bartender chose that moment to faint dead away as we stepped through a portal from one world to another as easily as walking out of any doorway. The Great Archives were Chielin’s domain, so I was unsurprised when she came striding through the crystal fields toward us with a weapon in hand and a look of fury on her face.

“Chielin.” I bowed. “I have brought the one who asked for to this place.”

“The famous Jay, and this soon?” she asked, not lowering the weapon.

Jay was still beside me. I glanced over; his eyes were wide, and he looked about to speak before catching himself. “I made a doorway to this place,” he sayd in the careful way people speak when concealing pain.

“I have heard of that.” Chielin studied him openly, lowering her weapon. “Can you make a door right into the Great Maelstrom?”

I bit back a curse word at not thinking of that option myself.

“I made one to this place because Lady Vestra resonated with it; I would need to know something about the Maelstrom to make one connected to it.”

Chielin gestured, and information spilled into the air in front of Jay. I almost jumped; she never opened an archive casually to anyone. “Most of this is speculation.”

Jay nodded, gestured at the air in front of him. He grunted, gestures again. “Huh.”

Something about the ‘huh’ made my ears twitch.

“It is closed to me,” Jay said quietly. “And there was very few entities in the universe who can close a place to me. The ones I know of at present would not do so.” He held out a hand to the air in front of him. His voice didn’t deepen, didn’t change in any way I could discern, but every crystal in the archive rang discordantly when he spoke to the air in front of him. “Holder of the Great Maelstrom, speak. I invoke the Cone and Grave.” Jay paused, and his voice roughened. “I invoke them in the name of Honcho that you speak.”

Nothing happened.

Jay blinked, then dropped his hand. “You have made me speak the name of the wandering magician,” he said, and his voice was terribly gentle as he stared at something only he could see. “That was not a safe thing to do at all.”

Chielin made a sound, and Jay seemed to recall himself and turned, looking at me with a flatness that almost made me step back. Almost.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

“We will need a craft, yes?”

“It might be safest,” he said, and followed me out of the Archive to the spaceport without a single look back. I think he wanted to, though I had no idea why.

*

“What do you mean, you have no idea how to fly a spacecraft?” I screamed as the hull shuddered under stresses.

“Well, I’ve never had to learn how to, now have I?” Jay said crossly.

“I can’t use flight and guidance systems and keep us on course,” I snarled as system alerts flared and screamed. “The Maelstrom is disrupting the hyperspace pathway itself from over four systems away, so do something!”

Metal screamed throughout the ship and every alarm went burgundy to my eyes before shutting down entirely, as if the very alarm system had been overloaded past capacity. Every sensor on the ship died, then shuddered back on as if our craft was waking from a dream. I turned on the long-range scanners, blinked. We’d traversed six star systems in a moment and the hull was covered in multiple fractures and what looked for all the world like vast claw marks.

I turned and stared at Jay, who actually blushed.

“We might have gone through underspace. It’s shorter than hyperspace but loads more dangerous. Mostly because of the risk of creatures in it getting out every time it is used.”

“And there was no risk of that?” I asked slowly.

“No.” He said it with a simply finality, and nothing else at all as we drifted toward the Great Maelstrom proper.

Alien energies surged in the air in front of us. Even a craft built by the finest Qwa engineers could barely make out a third of what we were witnesses, but then again the craft’s scanners claimed Jay was entirely a normal human. I picked up black holes, two supernovas, a quasar, one grey hole, at least two white holes and three aendar variables that were entirely off any scale. “Hyperspace isn’t active at all,” I said.

“Neither is underspace, which is curious,” Jay said. He didn’t move, but out craft ceased rocking and most of the warning lights went away as a shield flowed into existence over us in a shimmer of golden hues. Darkness seemed to leap out of the maelstrom, slamming into the shield like hungry blades. The shield held, though Jay took a step back.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” he said in a tone of shock that almost had me looking for a place to hide. Entities like Jay shouldn’t sound shocked. “There are almost no magicians left in the universe, and none capable of working on a scale like this.”

“Magicians?”

“It was a long time ago and the universe was different then.” Jay smiled without humour. “It may not be wise for you to continue down this path, Lady Vestra.” For a moment, I almost thought he was going to call me by a name I hadn’t used in over thirty years. “I cannot guarantee your safety; I am not entirely certain of my own.”

“I have my duties.”

“I am certain that you do.” Jay glanced toward the maelstrom; the craft rocked, then hurled forward on a straight course even as stray energies crackled against whatever shield he had made. Jay said nothing, his lips a thin line, silence a weight of its own as we finally spotted a structure.

The tower floated in a void, a metallic collection of rooms and corridors interwoven together to form a mesh that tried to hide anything important under a multitude of bland designs; it was a fashion that had gone out of of style over a century ago as scanners made it obsolete. I managed to find a docking bay out craft could fit in; the atmosphere wasn’t breathable but I had a pressure suit. Jay needed nothing at all. It was cold despite the energies that hummed in the air and I couldn’t shake a feeling that the structure itself was alive somehow, aware of us in a way that was more than just scanning us.

“Hello?” Jay called out as we walked down a narrow corridor.

“This is my home,” a voice spoke, coming from all about us.

“I know, but I thought it must be lonely here at least sometimes? We could be friends you know.”

“I have no need of that weakness,” the voice roared.

“Oh.” Jay let out a sigh. “I used to be a lot better at making friends than I am these days. I am Jayseltosche.”

“That name means nothing to me.”

“It can: you are a machine intelligence,” Jay said. “I knew the core Val in the first terran system, and your archives should contain something of that. Probably filed under jaysome, I imagine. I know you are a magician, and I know what that means. I can help you.”

“No! I will not be tricked,” the voice roared, and the corridor about us shrunk inward, though only for a moment.

“Don’t do this.” Jay didn’t move, his voice softer. “I could destroy you: depend upon it that such a thing is within my power. But also depend upon knowing that I don’t want to. You can think, friend – that means you can make another choice than this.”

“Liar!”

“You cannot destroy this creature,” I said to Jay.

“Unchecked, it could damage the universe more deeply than even it knows. Madness in magicians is a very bad thing,” Jay said.

“You misunderstand me.” And I fired the Verkonis dart that had been hidden within my right palm. The containment field it would make it hold Jay gave me a small chance of surviving; I suspected the maelstrom would survive just fine.

The dart vanished.

Jay didn’t even look over at me. “There are dimensions of me a Verkonis blade cannot reach at all. That is where I stored the blade, and now the dart as well.” He must have done something, because the maelstrom let out a roar of thwarted fury about us. “I am jaysome, and I have quite a few skills: you could have asked me to look into this plague, but you did not. Because, I imagine, I would discover that Qwa made it themselves.” He turned toward me, looking tired. “What did they hope to gain here, Lady Vestra?”

“A weapon. An edge over our enemies.”

“A better edge would be making friends rather than enemies.”

I was going to say that might be easier for him when the Great Maelstrom manifested all its energy at once as a burning ball that obliterated much of the structure as it came into existence before us. Jay made some shield about me, though I had no idea why, before he turned to face the heart of the maelstrom.

“Please,” he said, his voice breaking. “We don’t have to do this. Fear doesn’t have to be stronger.”

The core of the maelstrom collapsed inward toward us, the entire great maelstrom itself becoming a crushing weight as though to reduce us to nothing. The shield about me shuddered, and I had no words for the energies that flared up in a moment that might have been a moment, a minute, an hour or even an eternity.

Jay did not move at all, as still and distant as some terrible force far outside even this. There was a silence and then the maelstrom was unmade. The machine intelligence, whatever it had become, the core, the place it had created to hide itself from the universe – all of that was gone, unbound like a thread pulled apart with no effort at all.

I think I blinked, because a moment later we were back on the Qwa craft, and it was floating in empty space, reading no unusual energies at all.

Jay just stood, shoulders slumped. He spoke as if words were being pulled from him. “All this power, all that I am, and sometimes all I can do is destroy. Which is not jaysome, not right, not the proper thing to do at all. But forcing someone to be a friend is worse. I know this, and yet, and yet...” He trailed off.

I froze in the pressure suit, all my hair and membranes still.

“I aged a week doing that,” Jay said as he turned toward me. “Some actions make me older. Ones I am forced to, not as much. Ones done to me, not at all.”

“Galchwar didn’t,” I managed.

“It did not.” He straightened. “Where do we go from here, Lady Vestra?”

“Pardon?” I asked.

“I could use a Protector, I think. And I imagine you cannot return to Qwa since neither of your masters will be happy with you.”

“Oh,” I said, and wisely, wisely, nothing else at all as I set a course for a random galaxy. I had funds, and could easily get another ship. And if I was very lucky, I might someday atone for what I’d forced Jay to do here.