One
Papers carefully clutched to her chest to protect them from the weather as well as prying eyes, Kim stopped for a moment in the doorway of the pub and waited for her eyes to adjust to the change in light from outside to in. As she did so she made a visual sweep of the space, automatically assessing for danger. Not that there usually was any at this particular pub, separate from the occasional fist fight over some disagreement or someone taking an issue with the way someone else looked at their girl/guy/purse/beer/boots or just sheer boredom. Between the two large ‘doormen’ and the wards buried in the stones at each corner of the building not much with ill-intent made it past the door she leaned back against.
Her gaze travelled over the familiar without pause. Dark wood walls. Scarred wood tables. Mismatched chairs whose main virtue seemed to be “sturdy enough to hold a drunk’s ass”. A few windows set back in heavy, stone sills that could double as seats were covered in heavy tapestries that filtered the light of day and the din of night and provided some scant protection from the cold.
The lighting was low. Whether that was to hide the condition of the furniture or the condition of the patrons it made no real difference. The bar on the other hand was well lit, with candles in a mix of chasers set every few feet, making it clear the patrons cared far more for the quality of their drink than of their surroundings.
It was a Magicker pub, lit by candles and braziers and any other device that could be employed to consume natural resources and emit light. There were electric outlets and lighting fixtures but they mostly acted as a modern art exhibit during business hours. Late at night when the only person there was Leo, the Null owner, the electric lights would glow, their energy no longer drained by his Magicker custom.
Nulls like Leo, individuals with no capacity to draw magic, made up the majority of the populace – estimates indicated seventy percent of the populace were nulls while others leaned closer to seventy-five. Some theorized the low occurrence of Magickers was a form of natural population control – that a population higher than twenty-five (or thirty) percent would drain the energy from a location before it could naturally refill itself and Magickers would begin to cannibalize themselves or others for the natural wells of energy that existed inside them until eventually they would all waste away from lack of energy input.
People born Magickers, like Kim, understood that they were by nature the equivalent of energy vampires. It was solely the fact that they only had the potential to feed on each other than kept the Nulls from isolating them in their own communities. Or, Kim thought, “camps” with all the connotations inherent in that word.
In truth Magickers sort of did that to themselves, without the negative implications, settling together in areas with strong ley lines or natural sources of energy such as rapidly running water where they could live without having to turn on generators when they slept, the better to not cause brownouts when their subconscious minds got the munchies at 2 in the morning. Windy areas were also popular though air energy was less consistent than water and therefore less desirable. Some of the most desirable areas were where multiple ley lines crossed and created a delta-effect causing energy to pool beneath the land like aquifers or Magick-ifers, if you would. Kim and the majority of the people she was here to meet lived over one such Magickifer.
It wasn’t that Magick and technology couldn’t exist in tandem or Magickers couldn’t be around technology, otherwise not a single Magicker could receive medical care at a hospital or ride in an ambulance or hold down jobs in a tech heavy world, but it did mean that a business that catered to Magickers or hired them spent considerable amounts on generators and even more exorbitant amounts to build dampeners like Faraday cages into them. Or embraced “ye olde golden times” as Leo did.
In a corner that seemed darker for being the farthest from the bar a group sat around a large round table. A weird trick of the light made the table seem to spin, like a zoetrope, the people seated around it blending into an amalgam from which it was impossible to isolate a single face as if magic dictated that they be seen as a group instead of individuals.
The flick|flick|flick|flick|flick|flick|flick of the spinning, a belabored heart’s beat, slowed to the flick… flick… flick of relaxation and the group-illusion resolved to single images of each member positioned around the table. The motion was still such that individual details of each were indistinct but the gist, the essence, of each coalesced for the viewer as the heart processed faster than the mind which processed faster than the eye.
Flick. Siobhan was the woman at the PTA meeting with the clipboard and the five notebooks and seven handwritten schedules that always Just Knew what was needed, with an air of competence like a curse that dictated that any group she joined would eventually turn to her for tell them what to do; a mother wearing lipstick to remind herself she is more than just kids and laundry and 50 cupcakes needed for snack time tomorrow and ‘no pink frosting because pink is GROSS’; who wreathed her head with flowers to remind herself of the mischievous adventurer in her heart that given a chance would drop All This, dive into the Cave of Wonders at a sorcerer’s prompt, and snatch up a djinn’s lamp.
Flick. Flick. Though Ivan had about him the look of a djinn fresh folded from the spout of a lamp with his dark skin, dark eyes lit from within by the sparking promise of intelligence and humor, and dark goatee framing a mouth that could as easily snarl, smile or purse to deliver a quip, it was his companion with his quick hands, quick wits, and quick smile a will-of-the-wisp leading you from the safe path that had the heart of a djinn who always won when a deal was struck. His parents named him Ben, but they would have been wiser to pick Wicked.
Flick. Where Ben had the heart of a djinn and a Pied Pier’s grin, Gwen had a smile like a warm blanket on a cold night and mom is cradling a mug of cocoa with marshmallows while your dog waits to lie his head in your lap as you gaze into a fire. Gwen was having spent your life in a world that gave you cheap champagne, effervescent vinegar, that you are told is luxury and celebration which you’ve either sipped while suppressing your gag reflex or knocked back bravely to give the pourer a tentative encouraging smile to show how much you appreciated their gift only to have your first sip of Dom with those tiny, tight bubbles of encapsulated joy that tripped over your tongue and you spontaneously smiled that smile that has all the delight of a six year old running from the house into the promise of a Summer morning, lofted along on the promise of the day.
Flick. If Gwen was fine champagne Dan was more a beer, a porter or a stout; heavy, stolid, reliable sip-to-sip but with subtle nuances most missed while a small few nodded in appreciation of, that manly bare movement of the chin downward that all manly man-types used, which made sense as Dan was very much a manly man-type, the kind of man whose feet you might think grew like roots from the earth into legs so firmly tied to that ground it would take a tornado to move him.
Flick. A soft breeze on a summer day when you didn’t event realize you needed one, light brown hair and light blue eyes and a touch on your senses so light and delicate, like the kiss of a butterfly, you weren’t sure you felt it; Prairie was that girl who sat quietly, smiled quietly from a face like an Ever After High doll, and had secrets in her big eyes that made you want to know more.. But, oh, if they saw! If they lifted the single translucent layer of the mask she donned to protect those around her they’d be pulled into the void at her core where the dark hunger of somebody starved for someone to know her – not the ideal her she put on the display for those who liked a nice light skimming read, who she was down deep where the essence of her swirled, words of poetry like a swirl of ash and sparks dancing in a night sky over a roaring fire that offered heat but would consume you in a second, given its release from the tight reins she choked it with.
The chimeric zoetrope’s spin ticked to a stop as Kim slid into the empty seat next to Gwen with the sheaf of papers clutched protectively against her chest. She felt her shoulders curving inwards and forced them to relax. No need to broadcast “I’m waiting for a blow,” though, in truth, yeah… the crew might have just a response when she revealed what she was holding.
Siobhan made a point of looking at the papers in Kim’s hands, “Did you get the information on the house?”
“No. Or… ish?”
“That was all our money!”
Kim ignored Ben’s outburst from long practice, “The guy said this was what we really wanted. ‘Something something those who know where they want to go will never get there but those who are lost will find the way something something.’” She pressed the papers harder to her chest, “Look he was vague. There was winking and nodding and I’m fairly certain there was subtext but he didn’t really give me a roadmap. He just gave me this.”
“What is it?”
Kim straightened at Ivan’s attention, bit her lower lip, looked down and then slanted a glance Ivan’s way. “It’s a story. About a guy named Mal.”
Ben threw himself dramatically back into his seat. “Why did we send you?!”
Prairie smiled sweetly. “Because she asked.”
“We might as well have sent Gwen.”
“Yeah, we might as well have…” Gwen stopped abruptly and gave Ben the stink eye.
Siobhan sighed. “Let me see it. Maybe there is a code or hidden writing.”
Kim unclenched her fingers from the edge of the paper, then laid the pile on the table and gently pushed it over to their de facto leader. Siobhan picked up the papers. Fanned them. Held them up to the light in the center of the table. Brought them back down and tilted them this way and that.
Meanwhile Ben picked up the trail of his snark, “Getting into this house better be worth it.”
“There are people trapped in there.” Dan leaned back and folded his hands over his belly.
“Spirits.” Ivan’s tone suggested this was an old argument.
“People.” Dan’s tone remained calm, low and measured, with a ring of confidence that dared anyone listening to not back his play. “Who I am going to help. You can back out if you want.”
“After dropping 20g? Not happening.” Ivan leaned in, stabbing his index finger at the tabletop. “Besides as a member of the Board of Selectmen it’s my duty to protect the members of the community from the threat of what trapped those spirits in that house.”
“And there could be magic items.” A whack to the back of the head from Gwen had Ben hastening to add, “keeping the people trapped. It’s our duty to save them.”
Ivan flashed a grin . “You’re a giver. You give.”
“You know I do.”
Gwen rolled her eyes at Ben’s Pied Piper smile. She’d seen it a few times before. Just a few. “Puke.”
Ivan leaned towards Siobhan and without looking up from her perusal of a page she handed him two pieces of paper. He accepted them with a nod and made a similar project of examining them against the light, against the dark background of the table, and then overlapped the two pieces and subjected them both to the light and the table routine.
In a tone too casual to be casual, Ivan asked, “You think its like that other thing?”
Siobhan looked up quickly. If you weren’t watching her closely you wouldn’t have seen the look of alarm that she quickly smoothed into one of quiet confidence.
“I doubt anything would be like that other thing,” she demurred in an even tone. Gave nothing away, that one, unless you were looking at the hand she balled into a fist in her lap, but who was?
For several minutes the only sounds coming from the corner were the passing of paper, the flick of tools opened and closed as they were applied in various ways to the mystery of the text, and an occasional quiet murmur as one or the other would turn to their neighbor and offer a suggestion only to dismiss it a moment later.
After a while Ben and Ivan stepped away to the bar, returning a few moments later with several pitchers and mugs. They plunked them in the middle of the table, making sure to avoid the papers, and then each returned to his chair in his own way, which was to say Ivan sat like a normal freaking man while Ben collapsed into his like a puppet whose strings had been cut, only to pop-up to grab a piece of paper from Gwen and then settle back once more. Gwen, so engrossed in something she was doing with a second piece of paper and a pencil, barely made protest at his thievery. You’d think he did it all the time. Oh wait, he did.
With the same loose grace he’d fallen into the chair, Ben rose and made a quick circuit of the pub. First he returned with two lanterns, which he placed on the table. Then five candles, which he braced between his spread fingers in an act of agility which bordered on prestidigitation. Finally he delivered a lantern, a candle, and a bowl with burning incense in it, shrugging at the last as if to say ‘hey, it burns’, then plopped back into his seat and grabbed one of the pieces of paper Ivan was studying.
A hollered “Hey? Where’d my damned lantern go?” was met by Ivan rising slowly from his chair to his full height and was quickly followed with a “never mind!” to which Ivan nodded and sat back down and started back on the paper before him. Eyes focused downward he casually rolled a pencil to Prairie.
“Thank you,” she mouthed quickly before averting her gaze.
Ivan, clearly “not watching her”, smiled down at the table.
The quiet intensity with which each of the members applied themselves to the puzzle of the pages spoke to the common threads that tied them all together – curiosity, intensity, and a drive toward solving the (theoretically) unsolvable. They were each as different as could be in some ways, but in this they were cut from the same cloth. Give them a secret to explore, a puzzle to solve, and they each immersed themselves until the air they breathed was mystery. Given enough time there wasn’t much this team couldn’t crack. They each had their reasons.
For Ben it was the possibility of plunder – the man loved his plunder. For Gwen it was proving that she was not a Hufflepuff – not that there was anything wrong with Hufflepuffs she’d insist if asked but why the fuck didn’t people see she was a freaking Ravenclaw? Ugh. Gross. Dan’s draw seemed to be the conclusion of the thing, the uncovering of the injustice that was being hidden – because it was always some injustice being hidden under the shadow of secrecy.
And Prairie? Well, Prairie felt a certain affinity towards that shadow. The secret shadow could hide a different world, just sitting there like a veil that subtly changed the things it touched.
Since she was too young to really even remember how old she’d been Prairie had heard whispers. Her family had feared for her. Heck, once she got old enough to understand that hearing “invisible friends” could as easily be seen as “girl be crazy” she’d kind of feared for herself. There’d been doctors and treatments and medicine that had made her dizzy and fuzzy and feel like she was tilted at an angle to the rest of the world and the voices had kept coming, until she’d eventually just made sure that when she was driven to talk back to those voices, when their incessant battering at her like waves against a jetty hammered on her last nerve, she made sure she was alone, behind locked doors, with a towel at the crack of the door so no one could hear.
The voices would tell her stories – dripping with betrayal and blood and death and shadows so thick that they would drown her beneath their velvet weight. Then one day she overheard someone talking about a family friend whose daughter had been brutally murdered and Prairie recognized details from the description of the girl and the tortures she’d gone through before she finally died. And she realized those stories were true. She wasn’t hearing voices. Or rather “voices” – she was hearing voices, of the dead. And mostly the betrayed. The screwed over. Which was to say female. Some people called what she did being a “medium” or a “spiritualist”; Prairie preferred to not to box in the gift by calling it one thing or another. Except sometimes, in her heart, in the quiet unvoiced center of her secretly shadowed heart, she called herself an avenger.
They each had their story and they each had their reasons and they each had skills the others didn’t have. Prairie heard shadowed voices, Dan had a canny way of cutting through bullshit and seeing the truth, Kim had a ridiculous amount of ‘useless information’ stuffed in her brain that often proved really useful plus she saw patterns where others didn’t (maybe it was autism, maybe it was a super power, maybe autism was her super power; she didn’t really dwell on it).
Ben knew people who knew things but that was really the surface people saw – in fact his strongest skill, his super power, was being on the soft side of bad because he got it. He got what made the bad guys tick. He saw the angles they saw and could anticipate the moves they’d make – before they made them. Puzzles bored the shit out of him, but problems? Oh, problems he sure did like to solve. There was nothing better than being cannier than someone who saw themselves as canny. He was a thief. He was a scoundrel. And he ate other thieves and scoundrels for breakfast. With a side of bacon.
Siobhan was the leader, the organized one that kept all the balls in the air; Gwen just “got stuff” that no one else did – they’d have all given up on a challenge and she’d wander over, take a quick look, and spew out the answer; and Ivan showed a dogged determination, refusing to give up when everyone else fell asleep or faked a cramp (it happened; more than once) or actually had a cramp (though that was rarer).
And with all those skills and all those smarts they pretty much all came to the conclusion at the same time that they were not finding anything hidden or encoded or whatever in the pages of the story. They each expressed this in their own way.
Ben cursed and tossed the page he was squinting at in Ivan’s face. Ivan, who had been just about to do the same thing to Ben, with perhaps more style, snatched the paper out of the air with a glower and a growled, “Dude!”. Gwen crumbled up the page she was looking at, uncrumbled it, smoothed out the lines it made, gave due consideration to the possibility this would reveal something new, then rolled her eyes to the heavens.
Kim neatly placed her page on the table then proceeded to bounce her forehead off it until Siobhan reached over and gently pulled it away, admonishing, “no tears on the paper.” Kim grumbled something about, “she’d cry on the damned paper if she wanted to”, then threw herself back in her chair with her gaze riveted on a stain on the ceiling. Dan was circumspect, merely handing his page over to Siobhan and Prairie did the same, though she did so with an unfocused look in her eyes that suggested she was calling on a higher power or a spirit or a combination thereof for further guidance though clearly her surrender of the paper suggested she wasn’t placing much hope in either.
Siobhan reorganized the pages in the correct order, which thankfully she’d marked in her neat hand before the pages had shuffled and reshuffled and re-reshuffled through everyone else’s grubby mitts. She pulled the candles and lanterns towards her, sensibly leaving the smoldering bowl of incense in the center of the table where it sort of covered the scent of their disgruntlement, and then set her gaze on the first word on the first page of the story.
“Let’s see what we’re working with.” With that Siobhan started to read…
Enter The Woods 