Archive for the ‘Rudi Dornemann’ Category
The Truant’s Tale
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
“You walked away,” said the tracker, putting his big boots and skinny ankles up on the desk. “Broke your apprentice contract with just months to go.”
“Yep,” said Eyve Aerial. “So?”
“So, I want to know why. So does the Central Square Sorceress. She says you were her best student.”
“What’s it matter? You found me. You’re going to take me back.”
He waved his hand like a leaf fluttering down. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”
She figured this was some game he was playing; she wasn’t sure she had the patience to see what it was.
“I’m good at knowing why people do what they do. That tells me what they’re going to do next.” He stared at something on the toe of his shoe. “With you, I never figured out why, so your what-nexts never made sense. So it took six months instead of six days to catch you.”
“Time flies,” said Eyve Aerial, “You know, tempus fugit…”
A year later, she came back. The timeslip spell had faded enough that he’d stood up. Another three months, he’d reached the door. He blinked his eyes slowly as sunset; he probably wouldn’t understand her if she spoke and she hadn’t found an answer yet anyway.
Another year, and Eyve Aerial, returned to the scaffolding-palace that was the Central Square Sorceress’ headquarters, made amends, did her penance, and resumed her journeywomanship.
The tracker showed up one morning, trailing cobwebs as he strode across the creaking plywood.
“Maybe you don’t know why you left anymore than I do,” he said, the drawl in his voice showing he was still a bit behind time. “Maybe that’s why you came back. To figure it out.”
“I knew exactly why,” she said. “When I figured out that the nightmares were premonitions, that I was supposed to become some grand metropolitan wizardess who did all kinds of good things, but couldn’t stop this one last, huge evil thing from happening.”
“So why risk resuming your studies?” he said. “What’s different?”
“You,” said Eyve Aerial. “If I’m going to be powerful enough to do the things I’ve seen, I should be able to keep myself from getting into impossible situations, unless some part of me wants to fail.” She tossed the tracker a gold coin. “I’m hiring you to spot that part of me, to know why it wants to destroy everything before it does.”
Eyve Aerial’s appeared a few times before, in The Courier’s Tale, The Apprentice’s Tale, and The Sorceress’s Tale.
The Lord of the Hills
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Alan had told the story himself, scared younger kids in the neighborhood when he was growing up.
Toward the crest of the hill, past the last house, a path in the woods: you had to know where it was, especially in the dark. Not the path up to the bald rock hilltop where the high school kids drank, looked down at the lights of Hartford, and smashed bottles.
A path to where ruined cellar walls marked the site of the house, where an old man had lived in the 1800’s, dabbled in witchcraft, and spelled himself not into a single bird, but a whole flock. His mind came back together at night, and then not quite enough. You could almost make out the old warlock talking to himself.
Alan hadn’t been in these woods in years. Not since dad died and mom moved away. He found what he thought was the path, a trail of matted leaves between the birches and through the raspberry canes thicket.
They said you’d hear secrets, if you came up alone, stayed very quiet. The crows would come, hundreds of them, and cover the tree. In their squawking you could hear voices. If you had questions, you’d hear answers.
The crows did come. Silhouettes against the snow-illuminated clouds, circling away and back. He listened, and, eventually heard. What the birds had seen; what they’d heard. A city day; crumbs of lives.
But not the answers he wanted. Was the first test wrong, or the second? Would the experimental treatment work? How long if it didn’t?
He kept listening, his feet soaked with melted snow. Waiting for some fragment of a sign, something he could tell himself was an answer. Nothing.
Nothing but what some he said to some her, what she did, what he thought, what someone else thought they saw, what happened after that. In the early hours, exhausted, shivering, he lost himself in the fragments; all stars and no constellations.
He half-hoped that it would ground him, give him perspective, make the rest easier. But he still had a prescription bottle in his pocket rattling near empty and a day full of appointments.
He hiked out at dawn.
Part of him stayed behind to join the story told and retold by the Lord of the Hills. This still wasn’t an answer, but it would continue, as long as there were crows to fly or trees to roost in.