Category: Writing

“It’s a mirror,” Berkley scoffed. “What could a mirror possibly do?”

Jenkins was sitting on the edge of Berkley’s desk, leaning over his partner as he inspected the ornate artifact. It was old, but well cared for. “I have the faintest. But the guy took a tumble and this was left behind. Maybe it is a family heirloom? His mother’s?”

“Or he liked looking at his hair,” Berkley sighed. “I don’t think this will lead us anywhere, Jenks.”

Jenkins took the mirror and flipped it over to look at the back of it again. It was an antique for certain. The wrought metal handle twisted itself into the frame that held the mirror itself, with a engraved rear cover that depicted a ship of strange design. The sails were drawn and yet it appeared to be moving quickly through water… the artist had made some critical mistakes or had never been on a boat.

Berkley watched his partner with scrutiny. Jenkins had a way about hunches, and they usually proved right. “What are you thinking?”

Jenkins shook his head slowly as if he was pondering two different answers. “This is such a specific item… and such specific items have specific histories. Think about it, Berk, when was the last time we encountered a serial killer with an affinity for something like this?”

“Well… never. This is my first serial killer.”

“You know what I mean. Serial killers have their MO, right? They have their rituals, their behaviors… they usually stick to a pattern. It may appear to be different, but it usually isn’t. Human beings are creatures of habit, even the broken ones,” Jenkins held the back of the mirror up to his spectacled eyes, studying the minute detail of the scrollwork at the edge of the mirror backing. “Something as, unusual, as this is definitely a clue, my friend. This is not a smoking gun about the murders themselves, but it is a very real clue about our murderer.”

“Why was he carrying it?” Berkley tried.

“Exactly. Why was he carrying it? Why have a woman’s styling mirror from the Victorian era in hand while you commit such crimes?”

Berkley frowned and leaned back in his chair. The drop ceiling was yellowed and stained, each layer of color overlapping the others from the years of a leaking district building. He stretched his arms over his head and groaned. “It’s been a day. I need a drink and my bed.”

Jenkins continued to stare at the scrollwork along the edge. “Berk, I think there is writing here.”

“What kind of writing?”

“It’s hard to read,” Jenkins pulled out his phone and swiped his flashlight on. “Morta de-spenza nost… no… morta despencia nocti vert.”

The office lights all went off, and the only light in the room was from the e-lights down the hallway and Jenkin’s phone.

“What the hell? Power outage?” Berkley said.

“That’s not even Latin. It’s nonsense,” Jenkins said mostly to himself. He glanced up and slowly lowered his phone. “Uh, Berks?”

“Yeah?”

“It was just us in here right? Michele left a while ago?” Jenkins’ voice was trembling slightly. Just a tinge of fear… Berkley had heard that voice once before when a gunman had committed suicide in front of the station, it was subtle, but Berkley definitely understood it.

“Yeah.”

Jenkins raised a finger. “Then who is that standing against the wall?”

Berkley turned his head to see a dark figure starkly outlined against the far wall, opposite of the door to the hallway. Berkley jumped from his seat and pulled his sidearm in a frantic rush. “JESUS CHRIST!”

The dark figure did not move, just stood there, watching the two detectives react. The outline was indistinct, like a shadow on the water, moving and shifting with the invisible currents around it. It appeared the being was looking downwards, with its long black hair occluding its face like a shadow.

Jenkins stood slowly, lowering the mirror to his side, and set the phone down in order to pull his sidearm free from it’s holster, carefully keeping the muzzle lowered.

“Do not move!” Berkley commanded. The figure was absolutely still, lacking the movement most people made involuntarily. There was no swaying or subtle glances, the shape was an absence of movement. Berkley thought that the figure was not even breathing, as impossible as that could have been.

“Who are you?” Jenkins followed, attempting to keep his voice level.

“ENGLISH, I HATE THE ENGLISH,” the figure muttered at the end of the dark room. “YOU SUMMONED ME, BRITONS. YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT POWERS YOU INVOKE.”

“Who are you?” Berkley reiterated, taking a step closer. He tried to ignore the pressing need to tell the creature that he and Jenkins were Americans.

Yet the figure was quiet and still as a statue in a serene garden.

“Answer the man,” Jenkins said.

“ONLY BECAUSE THE HOLDER OF MY MIRROR COMMANDS,” the figure replied, it’s voice a frosted breeze. “I AM MORNIVCH.”

Berkley looked at Jenkins and shrugged, keeping his Glock trained towards the end of the room.

Jenkins swallowed heavily. “Where are you from Mornivch?”

“MY MIRROR.”

“Uh… what is your purpose?” Jenkins tried instead.

“TO REFLECT THE DEAD AND TELL THEIR SECRETS.”

“What the hell d-d-does that mean?” Berkley stammered.

Mornivch raised his face towards the feeble light of the forgotten phone with its flashlight app shining forlornly from the desk. The creatures eyes were like mirrored silver, glinting brightly within the frame of blackness of its long black hair. “IT MEANS DEAD MEN CAN TELL ALL THE TALES THAT THEY MUST.”

“Can you tell us who used this mirror last?” Jenkins asked calmly.

“ONLY IF HE IS DEAD AND THE CORPSE IS LAYING AT MY FEET. I DO NOT SEE A CORPSE,” Mornivch observed with a sardonic tilt of his head. As if it was obvious, and also as if it was a question.

“Uh… morta despencia nocti vert,” Jenkins blurted, holding the mirror up to his glasses again. The lights of the office flickered to life, and the end of the room was empty again.

“Whiskey TANGO foxtrot, Jenks… What the ever-living-fuck just happened?” Berkley spun quickly in a circle, the barrel of his gun swinging in a swaying pattern at his crotch.

“Put it away, Berk,” Jenkins holstered his own weapon and picked up his cell phone, finally flicking the flashlight app off. “It seems we just acquired a very special hand mirror. And something tells me the rounds in your magazine are not nearly big enough to do anything about it.”

“So I am not hallucinating?”

“I never said that,” Jenkins rattled, petering out into a rough chuckle. “Although that explanation would make me feel better.”

Berkley holstered his sidearm and collapsed back into his old chair. “Now I definitely need that drink…”

“After that, I don’t blame you,” Jenkins saved him the trouble and pulled the handle of whiskey and a couple of mugs from the back of Berkley’s bottom drawer. He sloshed a couple fingers into both mugs, corked the bottle again, handing one of the mugs to his partner. “Although drinking this crap is an absolute last resort.”

“I would keep good stuff in my drawer, but it has a habit of disappearing,” Berkley said as he knocked back the mug. He grimaced as it went down.

Jenkins picked up the mirror again, inspecting the rest of it carefully. “You think we should take this over to Jenni?”

“I am not going to use a creepy mirror as an excuse to see my ex-wife, Jenks.”

“Oh come on. She is one of best researchers with access to some of the best knowledge bases in the world. She could make short work of this I bet.”

Berkley shrugged and poured another drink from the bottle. “Let’s just think this through… we have a serial killer who was finally cornered…”

“Off an anonymous tip no less,” Jenkins interjected.

“We chase the tip down… and sure enough a body, our guy, and all the evidence we need to nail the son of bitch, and he runs.”

“I go left, you go right, he goes over those trashcans, he drops this, and then he hits that alley…”

“And disappears,” Berkley finished. “Leaving us with a mirror, a body, and not much else.”

“You know…” Jenkins tapped his finger against the mirror.

“Actually use that thing? Are you serious?!” Berkley nearly spit out his whiskey.

“Why not? We have a body… and supposedly this mirror allows the dead to tell their story. I mean if it works, we could solve ANY murder!”

“Going out on a limb don’t you think?” Berkley asked. “Shouldn’t we just do our jobs? The way they are meant to be done? By performing actual detective work?”

Jenkins made a face. “I think…”

“You think what? A blimey fucking ghost is going to tell us who dun it? I admit, having it happen right in front of me was shocking… but it is a bad idea to play with things you don’t understand, Jenks.”

“Berk, it’s not a Ouija board.”

“I know! It’s a goddamn silver mirror with a spirit living inside of it. My mother, God rest her, would have contacted the Vatican at the sight of this thing, and the next moment had it in a ring of salt with a bible on top of it.”

There was a light knock at the door frame. “Gentlemen, I heard you might need some help?”

“Who the hell are you?” Berkley exclaimed. No one had walked down the hall. There were windows on either side of the doorway, the length of the hallway, and no tall blonde had walked in.

The woman walked into the office as if she owned the place in a glance. She was wearing faded black jeans, a bit tighter than what made Berkley comfortable, and a white V-neck t-shirt under a crimson leather jacket. Surprisingly, she was wearing a pair of Converse that looked like they had been fished out of a high school lost and found. The woman ran her finger along the edge of the other desks, and sat on the edge of one after inspecting her finger.

“My name is Laura Samson. And that mirror you have right there… that is bad juju, my friends.”

Jenkins pointed to himself and then the other detective. “I am Detective Jenkins, this is Detective Berkley. How did you get in here?”

Laura hooked a thumb over her shoulder, “The door.”

Jenkins licked his lips and ran a finger over the mirror absentmindedly. “And just how is this mirror bad juju, Ms. Samson?”

Laura tilted her head, and her ponytail cascaded over her right ear. “That is the Creakswood Mirror, crafted in 1871 from a broken mirror fragment found in the wreckage of the Blood’s Bounty off the coast of Scotland in 1804. The mirror itself was probably made near the Black Sea sometime before that. How the mirror got to the ship and then to the Scottish coast, and then to the Creakswood family is all a bit of mystery. What is not a mystery is that Mornivch’s essence is contained within it.”

Jenkins eyes had gone as wide as his face would allow. “How did you know the mirror was here?”

“The better question is how did I know that you used it? The answer is…” Laura leaned back with a smile. “A little demon told me.”

Berkley snorted. “Yeah sure, lady. Why don’t you find your way out of the station before I escort you out?”

“Sweetheart, you couldn’t do it if you tried,” Laura crooned. “But I am not here to measure dicks. I am here to help you with that mirror.”

Berkley shook his head, “Measure dicks?” he muttered.

Jenkins stood up with the mirror in hand, but he nestled it against his leg tightly.

Laura watched the detective called Jenkins holding the mirror carefully. The invocation was designed to be addictive. The addiction would let Mornivch loose more often, and that was the whole point of his existence now. The smaller mousy detective with the glasses must have been the one that released Mornivch, the overweight grumpy one named Berkley was just along for the ride at this point. Laura felt a smug need to punch the grumpy detective right across the jaw. “Just so you know, I happen to know who your killer is… and I will be glad to share that information if you hand that mirror over.”

Jenkins rolled his eyes and put his hand on his service revolver. “Yeah. It’s probably you, Ms. Samson.”

“I know this is the first time we have ever met, but trust me, you need my help on this one. That mirror is tied to very bad things,” Laura smiled tightly.

“We already know that. The serial killer,” Berkley sighed.

“That junkie is just the last in a long line of them. You should not be too worried about him committing more. Without the mirror, he will go into withdrawal, and the killings will stop. However, other powers that operate in this city will come for the mirror once it is known that it is without a sacrificial owner. Mornivch was a powerful summoner in the Urals in the 18th century, and his experiences are dearly sought after. Some would string out a bunch of innocents, night after night, in order to use the mirror, just like the pirate Black Brian. You see, the dead do tell tales alright, and Mornivch is deader than most, so of course, he has the best ones to share.”

“And that is why you want it?” Berkley scratched his head in confusion. Laura thought he was probably still chewing on the dick measuring comment.

“No. I have no business with the ancient cretin in the mirror, but I do have an interest to keep it out of certain hands.” Laura tapped her finger on the desk in time, flicking the fingers of her other hand between the sigils on her wrist beads. She built a containment spell, just in case. She folded her hand around the fount of energy as it coalesced in her palm. She did not want to call Mornivch from his silver mirror, but she would, if she had to. The containment would cause a lot of damage, of course. The building would probably cave in as the mirror was severed from it’s owner and the hundreds of souls that it took to make it were released in a very explosive fashion, but if the small mousy detective insisted on making this messy, Laura was prepared to go all in.

In for penny, in for a pound.

“So… how do you want to do this, boys?” Laura asked. She stood straight, ready for the one called Jenkins to do something stupid. He was holding the mirror next to his leg like he wanted to hump it. Destroying the mirror was probably for the best, but then she would have to figure out what to do with it’s inhabitant. Having Mornivch out and about was a problem in and of itself.

Jenkins turned subtly, moving the mirror out of sight. Berkley leaned back in his chair and sighed again.

“Lady, we are the cops here. You have this backwards. We tell you how it is going to be, and you deal with it,” Berkley said.

“I… uh…” Laura felt the trip of her trespassing charm spell at the back door of the station. She had dropped it out of an abundance of caution on her way in. Something wicked this way comes. “Shit.”

“That is what I thought,” Berkley grinned like he had just re-established his manhood.

“Not you, Detective. Someone else just walked into your back entrance. Just like I did,” Laura shot back. She quickly dissipated her containment spell back into her sigil bracelet, and pulled a standard #2 pencil from her inside chest pocket as she calmly backed up against the wall. Facing the door, waiting for the worst to happen with her only weapon held delicately between her fingers.

“What are you doing?” Jenkins asked worryingly. “Why are you holding a pencil?”

“I, uh… am waiting for whatever is coming after that mirror, Jenkins. Berkley, you might want to stand up.” Laura kept her eyes on the door, readying herself. She regretted leaving her snappers and the .38 at home. The wyvern wood was a powerful wand, and as soon as she used her trigger word, the actual relic would come crashing back into reality. And it was a relic that happened to release dragonfire upon command. A messy weapon, but wholly undetectable until she triggered it. The .38 would be way better, but what kind of idiot walks into a police station with a gun under their jacket?

A young woman floated down the hallway as if she was on rails. The reinforced glass outside their pen offices made it look all the more otherworldly, and Jenkins sounded like he was about to hyperventilate at the sight. Laura smiled at the reaction. The Maevens had this affect on people the first time they were seen. Imagine a young woman who died of heartbreak, something that was part ghost, part zombie, and part ghoul all at once. A Maeven was a heavy hitter in magic realm too, able to weave spells like the witches they would have become if they had not passed on. In the modern world, the Maevens were assassins of the highest order. They were able to phase through walls, shift magical boundaries, and blend into any crowd. This one was an out-of-towner for certain. They were extremely rare in the world, so having one show up in the same building that the Mirror was in was not a coincidence.

The young woman stopped before nearing the door and looked through the window at the three of them. The Maeven shook her head at the sight of Laura.

“Come on, sweetheart. Come on through the door,” Laura said under her breath and she added her best Pacino impression. “Say hello to my little friend!”

The Maeven stayed in place, floating up and down as if bobbing in a lake. “Release the Mirror to me and you may live.”

Berkley and Jenkins both had their guns out now, and Berkley shook his head. “The freaks come out at night, man.”

“This mirror is evidence,” Jenkins said matter-of-factly. He still clutched it tightly in his other fist. “You need to leave before you give us an excuse to arrest you.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “You two are dense, you know that?”

The Maeven shook her head again in mock sorrow. “I was not talking to you. The offer was for the Witch. Both of you will certianly die.”

“Now, now, little Maeven, let’s not make this a bigger problem,” Laura said.

The Maeven looked like she had died when she was only sixteen or seventeen, and had eyeliner streaked down her face as if she had died crying. She commanded, “Witch, give me the mirror!”

“Uh, Ms. Samson, can we shoot it?” Jenkins asked timidly. Something was finally getting through to him.

“You can try. Won’t do much besides piss her off.”

Berkley cursed. “What do we do?”

“You either come in or you leave, little Maeven,” Laura commanded back, ignoring the detective. “You are not getting the mirror. I laid claim first.”

Even for the supernatural races, there were shared rules that governed behavior and interactions. One of the oldest was the Rule of the Claim. It was one of the few ways property was established in a world without courts, police, or laws. Vampires and Werewolves did not get along, but at least they could interact with Claims without everyone killing everyone else in order to get what they wanted.

“You cannot claim what is ours.” The Maeven replied, her voice muffled by the glass. “The Creakswood Mirror is under claim with my sisters.”

“Then we take it outside and talk about it,” Laura tried.

“IT’S MINE!” Jenkins screamed, and fired rounds at the glass with his revolver. In the enclosed pen, the noise was deafening. The slugs went through the glass, fracturing it and sending spiderwebbed lines in every direction. In moments the glass was nearly opaque.

The Maeven was nowhere to be seen. Laura’s ears were ringing.

“And that is how people get tinnitus,” Laura exclaimed. “I think you made the situation much worse. So if anyone is keeping track, you are two for two.”

“Where is she?” Jenkins said shakily.

A ghost of white appeared from behind another desk on the opposite side of the pen, and crossed the distance to Jenkins in a heartbeat. The Maeven grabbed Jenkins head from behind and twisted it so hard the sound of breaking bones was nearly as loud as the gunshots that had come before it.

Laura grimaced and released her trigger word, “Woosh!”

The wyvern wood coalesced into reality, the pencil evaporating into a much larger piece of smooth wood, with a crest glowing branches at the tip covered in small double pointed leaves made of glowing fire. The length of the wood was like a bunch of ropes coiled together, each coil a small dragonlet in hand, their mouths opened wide and ready to spew flame. The leaves made it appear each cord of wood was licking its lips with a multitude of fiery tongues. Laura pointed it squarely at the Maeven and poured energy into the wand.

The result was immediate and dramatic. Thin spirals of flame turned into a massive gust of roaring fire, catching the Maeven in the side and encasing her thin white form in ethereal flame. The flame was so hot that paint on the wall next to her immediately bubbled and peeled away as if hit with God’s own blowtorch. The Maeven let out a horrific scream, pitched many octaves higher than a human voice should be able to go, and attempted to phase away to flee. Unfortunately for her, ethereal flame was just as supernatural as she was, so as she faded from sight, the flame went with her.

“Where did she go?” Berkley yelled, his hand still partially covering his eyes.

“Probably outside the building. She may be able to survive, but that blast would kill nearly anything,” Laura said breathlessly. The air smelled of burnt everything. “Sorry about your partner.”

Jenkins was laying on the ground face down, but that unfortunately meant he was lying on his back. The mirror was still clutched in his hand. Laura walked over, pulled the mirror free and looked at Berkley squarely in the eyes.

“You will need to handle this. I will go after the Maeven to make sure she doesn’t come back. When you are ready to handle your serial killer, call me.”

Laura handed the oversized detective a business card, he took it feebly, his mind still reeling from the encounter. He could only grunt in response. She turned on her heel and headed for the door.

“Wait… how, do I explain all this? My partner is dead in the station, man.”

“Blame your serial killer? He came after the mirror, strung out on drugs. Its not too far from the truth. Just don’t mention me.”

“Why is that?” Berkley numbly dropped his Glock on the desk and picked up the phone.

“Because, then I won’t help. And trust me, Detective Berkley, you need all the help that I can offer,” Laura walked out the door and was gone. And again, the windows of the hallway had no tall blonde walking away beyond them.

Berkley looked down at his partner, then the wall, then the shattered pen window. “Shit.”

Down the hallway he could hear uniforms running his way, typically late once again. The detective dialed the Chief and collapsed into his chair listening to the ringing as if it was miles away.

“Welcome, welcome, come in, come in,” Magi Ooma said as she waved Tress into her small thatched home. “Sit by the fire, stay warm. Long walk from your tribe, your feet must be cold.”

“Thank you, Magi.” Tress ducked her head in bow, her braids tumbling over her shoulders. Her feet were cold actually, something she was not aware of until the old witch mentioned it. Tress sat on a woven mat near the fire, and pulled her tattered gloves from her hands, the last struggling stowaways of snow that hugged her body started to melt in the warmth of the witch’s home.

“None of that, Tress. I am Ooma to you now. Ooma Fallingdrifts was my name when I came to my master all those years ago. His name was Magi Cobem. What you feel now, I felt. I understand how strange this is. A building of wood? With a roof? And it is always in one palce? It does not get rolled with its supports and loaded on a wagon or an beast? It is strange.”

“It is,” Tress nodded. “I don’t understand it all. How do you get your food? Water?”

“All that in time. Tea?” Ooma smiled graciously.

Tress shook her head, and continued to shed her layers. It was cold in the passes this time of year, and the fact that she could only come to the Magi’s hut in the dead of winter made all this even stranger. Ooma walked shakily to a rack of dried leaves and herbs on one wall, gathering leaves and flowers from different plants. She spoke a magic word and the dust from the ground at her feet and in the air around her coalesced into a pot. She dropped the miscellaneous ingredients into the pot, poured water in from the basin at the wall, and with a wave, the pot floated gently over to the fire to rest itself near the hottest coals. Tress noticed the pot turned black before it even settled into the fire. Ooma pulled a some cheese and bread from her larder and sat back down in front of Tress stiffly.

“Hungry?”

Tress shook her head. “Not yet. Still shaking off the cold.”

“It is fierce this year. My measurements so far are making it a record year indeed.”

“Why make me come in the middle of it?” Tress asked as politely as she could. She kept her tone inquisitive, trying not to stray into accusation. Her smart mouth and quick mind had often gotten her in trouble with the elders.

Ooma smiled knowingly at the near miss. “The snow is the best time for an apprentice to join the master. The magic sleeps in the winter. Makes it easier to control in just this small space.”

“What?” Tress said, confused.

“I suppose we can start with the first lesson while our tea steeps,” Ooma shrugged. “A question for you, first. Do you think our kind has always been nomads, following the herds, making our way across these wide lands generation after generation?”

Tress put a finger to her chin, scratching lightly in thought. “I guess I have never thought about it. The ruins are there for a reason, I know. But I guess my ancestors always roamed, and another people made the big places. We avoid them for a reason.”

“No, my child. It was our ancestors that built the big places… tens of generations ago, our kind lived in those big places as a single people. They were called cities. The one closest to here was called Denver.”

“Den-ver? What does that mean?” Tress smiled.

Ooma made a face. “I honestly don’t know. It is just a name.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“You will. In time. That is why you are an apprentice, because you are smart, capable, and most importantly, malleable. That is why you were selected among the tribes, at the last summer gathering. You are here to change your mind.” Ooma said another magic word, and two cups formed in the dust between them. She waved at the pot and it hovered its way from the fire to pour itself into the cups. “Your tea, my child.”

“Thank you, Ma… I mean Ooma. Thank you Ooma.”

“Of course. You will learn all this. You have to. The traditions must continue. You must learn everything so that you can pass it on in your own time…” Ooma took a sip of her tea and grinned. “Ah perfect temperature. Marvelous.”

Tress took a deep breath over the mug and sipped with relish. “This is good.”

“A herb called peppermint. It grows wild in the fields around here. I will show you how to gather it in the summer. The Dust will help of course, but you should always have the knowledge, even if you do not have to do it yourself.”

“Dust?”

“The magic. It only works because of the Dust. It is everywhere, saturating everything. It lives in our clothes, the wilds, even our own bodies. It is everywhere… we are suffused by it. Dust is the beginning, the middle, and the end of our existence.”

“Is it a god?” Tress asked breathlessly.

Ooma laughed. “No more than a spear is a god or a torch is a god. Is your travel sack there a god?”

Tress looked confused. “Uh… no. It is just a bag.”

“Likewise, the Dust is just the Dust. It may seem wondrous what I do with my little movements and uttered commands, but it is all but simple tools. Back to my first question. Why do you suppose our people are nomads of the great plains? Let me lead you further, and assume we were not this way a long time ago, and now we are. Why do you suppose that is?”

Tress furrowed her brow and thought it over. “We were forced to be?”

“Partly correct. We made the choice to be this way. The world was falling apart and the human race was dying. Our ancestors had a couple options. They could secure themselves against the madness, fighting the hordes of starving and sick, and attempted to keep an island of society amongst it all. Or they could dissolve into the hordes, and try to right the horrors from within. Or they could accept the failure of the human race and die.”

“They obviously did not die…”

Ooma tilted her head in agreement. “They did not.”

“They made an island then? The big place called Denver?”

“Ha! Not at all. They chose a great diaspora, teams empowered with advanced technology that would guide the survivors to the next stage in human survival. Our people started as engineers, doctors, scientists. Some of the smartest in the world. They met in a nearby city called Boulder and designed the end and beginning of our species. Some of them came to the city in the last metal birds that carried people, in large sky carts called airplanes.”

Tress’s eyes were wide in both surprise and disbelief. Ooma could see the danger of Tress rejecting the truth. Ooma stretched her hand out and laid a palm on Tress’s arm.

“Do not worry yourself in understanding everything. Small steps. You will understand as you learn. You did not learn to create a water-tight basket in a single day?”

Tress shook her head and let out a rough rattling laugh. “Of course not. It took many tries. Months of them.”

“This is no different. Small steps, many tries. At the end of my life as a Magi, you will be the same as I. You will be the Magi, and you will be able to control the Dust.”

---

Tress shoved the spade of her shovel into the black earth while Ooma scrabbled on her hands and knees, poking fingers in the trench and dropping seeds in each hole. The spring had come with the winds, and afternoon sun was warm.

“We could use the Dust for this,” Tress sighed in exertion.

“We could. We could do the a lot of things with the Dust. Blot out the sun, create great monsters to kill all living things, poison all the water on the planet. But just because we could do something, does not mean we should. There is something human in the work, it makes us remember that we are a part of this place as it is a part of us in turn. It cares for us, and we have to care for it.”

“The Dust is a tool, no different than this shovel. You said so my first day here. Months ago,” Tress pointed out.

“True.”

“But…”

“But we forgot that we are of this place. When the human race forgot that, we lost ourselves. Did you know that Earth once had over ten billion people on it?”

“What?”

“Take your ten fingers, multiply by ten fingers, and do that seven more times. Then take ten of those. That is ten billion.”

“Impossible number. The plains would be filled with people from horizon to horizon,” Tress said in awe.

Ooma laughed. “I have seen the records myself. It was not as crowded as you would think. Most people lived in the big places… all over the Earth. That was also a part of the problem when the famines began… and then the diseases spread… it was a waterfall of consequences that killed almost all of them. All those children that did not know why or how. Very sad. But our ancestors knew this would happen. They made themselves all powerful.”

“With the Dust,” Tress was starting to understand the diaspora now. It had taken months to dissect the reasons why, but now she was witnessing the truth for what it was. The Earth was sick, it’s people were sick, and the people of the great schools knew that they were the ones that had to save the human race. The human race would never be able to generate the kind of power that they would need to go through the previous history of technological advancement again. There would be no way for the same steps to happen again. The human race was at the end. So they could falter, die, and eke out a survival, or they could create a path for the human race to follow to the next step. That was the purpose of the Magi.

“And that is our biggest secret. Everything is possible with the Dust. Imagine tiny machines, everywhere. Self creating, self fixing, self monitoring in our air, our earth, our water. Healing the planet by tiny degrees over millennia, waiting for the human race to catch up. And in the meantime, we use it to perform miracles and transfer knowledge. Like so.” Ooma waved a hand, and spoke her magic words. “Open Interface. Audible output, range ten feet from my location.”

A murmuring woman’s voice rose from the dirt and air around Tress and Ooma. “Understood, User Ooma.”

“Create new user,” Ooma said, poking another hole in the dirt mound, dropping a seed. Meanwhile, Tress stood stock still as if a bear stood downwind.

“New user created. Name profile,” the voice whispered.

“Profile name; Tress,” Ooma answered.

“Tress created. Welcome User Tress.”

Ooma turned her head to look at Tress with a shrewd eye. “You have stopped digging.”

Tress startled and pushed her shovel back into the earth, turning the next spot, stepping forward to do it again.

“Voiceprint needed, User Tress,” the voice continued. “Please say ‘Hello Interface, my name is Tress.'”

Ooma slapped Tress’s leg. “Repeat the command, you silly girl.”

“Uh… Hello Inter-face, my name is Tress?”

“Voiceprint failure. Please say ‘Hello Interface, my name is Tress.'”

“Hello Interface, my name is Tress.”

“Voiceprint success. Please repeat with ‘Hello Interface, my name is Tress.'”

“Hello Interface, my name is Tress,” Tress said again, more confident in her response.

“Voiceprint success. User Tress, you can request an Interface by stating ‘Open Interface.’ Session closed.”

“Go ahead and try it,” Ooma grinned, slapping her hands together to shake the wet dirt from her fingers.

Tress pushed the shovel in again, and pulled the next spadeful out of the ground. “Open Interface.”

The same voice whispered, but it was in her ear and only her ear. “Interface.”

“Did you hear it?” Ooma asked devilishly at seeing the young woman’s discomfort.

“It’s in my ear!?” Tress clapped a hand over the right side of her head.

“Of course it is. The Dust is everywhere. It is all over you. Me. It’s inside our bodies. In the air around us. Dust is everywhere.”

“Interface,” the voice whispered again.

“It is saying Interface in my ear,” Tress relayed.

“Say ‘Close Interface.'” Ooma laughed.

“Close Interface.”

“Session closed,” and the voice was gone.

“Those are magic words to others, but you will understand what they do,” Ooma nodded respectively. “In time, you will learn how to encode your own language into movement so you don’t have to say words at all. Like my tricks with the teapot and cups.”

“Really?” Tress wondered aloud.

“Just wait until I show you how to access the Histories. These tiny machines have among themselves all of the records of our ancestors and their ancestors. They have all the knowledge that it will take to elevate the human race back to the stars. When we are ready.”

Tress let the thoughts wash over her as she worked the soil. “When will we be ready?”

Ooma tittered her laugh at the thought left unspoken. “That we are ready now? Absurd. We will not see in our lifetimes, or over the next ten generations. The planet has to reach a new equilibrium, and the Dust must finish their remediations. So we wait.”

“But why?” Tress pushed.

“The Dust is correcting about five hundred years of human mistakes. It is having to process the atmosphere of old pollution, it is working its way through the soil, consuming vast wastelands of trash and waste, and it is having to consume and transmute similar messes in the oceans. The big places will all but disappear by the time the Dust has finished their jobs,” Ooma waved at the wide garden space around them, nestled in the trees. “This paradise that we live in is because the Dust has already been at work for a thousand years, but it will take another thousand before the human race is ready. It will take an entire age for the animals, birds, and fish to recover. Right now, the Magi across the world are prepping the people… sharing a common myth and religion system, building a shared foundational belief in human nature.”

“I still don’t understand.” Tress kicked another shovelful over, taking another step to the side.

“In time, you will. In the ancient times, people were separated by many things. Race, language, belief, sex, age, wealth… and all these things compounded the failures of the people. Every tribe was only for themselves, and every tribe ended up paying the cost of such closed-off thought. The Magi are the fix. While the Dust heals the Earth, the Magi heal the people. We guide them all, everywhere, across all the lands and seas, under a shared set of beliefs and morals. We correct behavior, guide leaders, allow life to take its course. And the people do not know it, and will never know it, but the Magi are their rulers. Secret rulers, but rulers never the less. Strange world, is it not?”

Tress reached the end of the row and leaned against the shovel. Beads of sweat were collecting at her forehead from the toil. “Why was belief so different? Why so fractured?”

Ooma shrugged. “I do not know. But my guess is simple. I believe it was a lack of hope.”

“Hope?”

“When you fail to hope for a common future, and fail to hope for the generations that will come, and do not hope for your neighbors and their neighbors… when all that hope fails, doom is inevitable,” Ooma stood shakily, her knees making small cracking noises as she rose from the ground. “It is simple, Tress. We Magi are Hope.”

The shaman coughed into his hand, and laid his udanta stick to the side of the fire. He rubbed the spittle between his blackened palms, flicking a bit of ash from the ring of stones to absorb it all before he use the pestle to scrape his palms clean. Mata sat, his hands folded carefully in his lap, watching with great interest as the old man worked his magic. Mata’s question still lingered in his mouth, even after asking it, as if the question was a bird that needed to be freed at the next opportunity. The shaman pulled a leaf from his dream satchel and crushed it with the pestle against the mortar. Nodding with a grunt, he lifted the mortar to his brow and prayed under his breath to the great sky gods for guidance for his spirit self. Hoping his prayer was lifted on the smoke of the fire, the shaman dumped his mortar into the fire, inhaling the flash and thick gray fumes before they left the cave.

Mata sat very still, like a rock on a beach, wondering what the answer to his question would be.

The shaman held his breath, and exhaled with a grimace. As his eyes opened, Mata saw the shaman’s pupils had consumed his eyes, with nothing but endless black beneath his lids. The darkness was fathomless, ending in the whirling sparkles of galaxies undiscovered and stars unseen. In the shaman’s eyes laid a window to the depths of creation, and the old gods looked back at Mata, constraining themselves to this old man in a dark cave on a planet they had never seen.

“SPEAK, CHILD.” The shaman’s voice was not his own, it was the voice of a god.

Mata let his question fly again, finally releasing the flurry of words from it’s prison within himself. “Where do the spirits of the dead go?”

“SPIRITS OF THE DEAD ARE SPIRITS NO MORE.” The shaman’s head tilted like a bird’s, a sudden movement with a sudden stop.

“They live again?” Mata asked. The shaman had warned about multiple questions, but Mata felt he had to know. He had to find his Seka again.

“THEY LIVE ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE OURS.”

“Can I go Elsewhere?” Mata tried. He felt panic in his stomach at the question. It was bordering insult for a god.

The shaman’s head tilted the other way, and the shaman’s lidless eyes flashed with a dark energy. “PERHAPS. WHAT CAN YOU GIVE US?”

Mata looked at his thin, yet strong hands, thinking of the little he had to offer. He had nothing… an orphan, barely a man now, with only his leather skins, his axe, and his hunting gear. He could survive in this world, but he had nothing to offer, and his heart had nothing to feel since Seka had fallen ill.

“I can only offer myself,” the young man answered.

“WE DO NOT PROMISE YOU WILL FIND THE SOUL YOU SEEK.” The shaman’s face almost was one of conciliatory worry. As if the god felt pity for Mata.

“I am willing to take that chance. I have nothing here,” Mata answered.

“SHE WILL NOT KNOW YOU.”

Mata’s eyes flicked upwards and he felt the connection with the god. He felt like the god had reached into his heart and pulled it open. He saw strange things as the god whipped its tendrils of dark energy over his mind, shoving knowledge and experiences in the folds of his brain. His eyes rolled up into his head as he started to convulse, the madness of the god’s touch on Mata was unavoidable. He felt his bladder release, and the warmth spread across his thigh.

A flash in his inner eye. A young woman laughing with her friends. She had red hair, not the jet black of Seka, but Mata knew it was her. He could see her delicate fingers wrapped around a strange white bowl, in the shape like a small vase, a white spout that Seka drank from. He heard her friends laugh with strange words, a language he had never heard before. Another flash, and his different-but-same Seka was sitting in a dark cave, a fire brightly lighting her face, booming noises coming from all around, rows and rows of people behind her, their faces alighted the same. The fire that must have been in front of them must have been huge. Another flash, and his Seka-that-was-not-Seka was dressed strangely, in a second skin that was not animal leather, on boards strapped to her feet, flying down a snowy mountain, her breath escaped her lips in a cloud, being left behind in the snow as it drifted down. Her face was covered in a see through water that did not move, her eyes flicking left and right, her body shifting on the boards at her feet, plowing the snow upwards in the opposite direction. Mata’s confusion only grew, the changes flashed in his vision, and he saw Seka again, her hair tied on her head, straining on a strange thing that moved the ground underneath her feet. She ran, but did not move forward, sweat poured down her face as she smiled in her exertion.

The god removed his fingers from Mata’s mind, and Mata felt both empty and full after this strangeness retreated. “EVEN NOW? DO YOU WISH IT?”

Mata smelled his urine in the cave, mixing with the strong smell of the wood smoke, and the shaman’s body stink as he strained under the force of a god pushing itself into the shaman’s shell. He felt naked and disconnected from himself. Mata the Hunter of the Long-Tooth smelled the place of the first Seka-that-was-not-Seka, felt the noise of the other memory, heard the rhythmic pounding of her feet on the strange machine, all these things were his memories now. Mata knew his answer as it was already leaving his lips, “I wish it.”

“MATA, YOU WILL SERVE OUR DESIRES AND YOU WILL BE OURS FOR YOUR LIFETIME IN SEEKING HER. WISH IT.”

Mata swallowed. “I wish it still.”

The shaman’s neck broke as his head swung around backwards and the corpse fell forwards into the fire, the shaman’s lifeless eyes looking at the ceiling as the fire took to the hair and necklaces. If the shaman had been present at his own death, he would have been surprised to see that his cave was empty, and Mata was not sitting in front of him. Only the skins, the spears, the ax, and the bag remained, but Mata was no more.

---

Mata’s eyes snapped open in shock, and he stood up suddenly, scaring the people around him. He reached out for a pole nearby to steady himself as his mind reasserted itself in a panic. An elderly lady on the bench across from Mata smiled at his reaction.

“Are you alright, young man?”

Mata felt the strangeness of the words in his ears, hearing a language that he felt that he should not understand, yet he did. It was English. What language had he spoke before? It almost escaped him. It was El-am. He spoke El-am. Not English.

“Bad dream?” Mata-that-was-not-Mata replied, his mouth forming strange words, he ran his hand down his front in embarrassment, feeling strange clothes and fabrics under his fingers.

“I thought so. Sit down, you dropped your backpack, by the way,” the old woman smiled. She lifted a crooked finger and pointed underneath the metal bench.

“Thanks,” Mata returned, ducking his head thankfully, his senses finally returning to normal. He released the swaying metal bar and sat down, grabbing his backpack and setting it on his lap. He was on the metro. A tunnel deep underground that had a metal cart travel through it, a subway? The words filled his mind as he unlocked the knowledge as he needed it.

The old woman leaned forward, and her eyes blinked to a deep black void, unending, unknown stars wheeling in the depths. In a whisper that only Mata could hear, she uttered, “YOU KNOW ALL THAT YOU DID AND ALL THAT YOU WILL NEED AS YOU WILL SERVE US HERE AS YOU WISHED IT.”

With another blink, the old lady’s eyes returned to normal and she leaned back to read her magazine(?).

Mata felt it all. The strangeness and the familiar fighting each other viciously. A short faced cave bear and long tooth (sabretooth tiger?) fighting each other on the moor slopes above his village, the growling and high pitched scream of the great ones seeking dominance as the village burned their fires high to keep the beasts away. He had lost Seka not long after, the fires could not keep illness away, and the spirit of death had found her. He felt the subway rock and tilt as it took a slight curve, heading for midtown. He felt his letter jacket on his arms, the backpack full of coursework and textbooks in his lap. His name…

His name was Matt Johnson, and he was a junior in high school. Mata closed his eyes tightly, and he saw Seka-that-was-not-Seka in his memory, a hand holding a Starbucks(?) coffee, her red hair framing her face. She took a drink from her latte, and he saw her name.

“Sarah,” Mata said under his breath. He grinned. He had to find Sarah.

Down at the other end of the train car, a blond man in a suit grimaced behind his newspaper. He felt the presence of an Emissary nearby… which was strange, because a competitor would not just appear without warning. Something had changed. He lowered his hand to the small caliber handgun under his jacket for reassurance. He adjusted it and lowered the newspaper. The train car was typically full for this time of day, and nothing looked out of place. He felt the whisper in his ear, the light touch of his Sponsor.

“ITS THE BOY IN RED AND WHITE, UTU HAS CHANGED THE GAME,” it said and then his Sponsor was gone.

The man leaned forward looking down the train car, and saw an young black man in a letter jacket holding a backpack, looking at the crowd around him in awe. He was definitely new, and an easy kill.

Detective Ethan Ness leaned back in his seat, deciding he would follow the young man for now… and see how the gods laid it out. It was their will after all, who was he to contest it? An Emissary had a place, a part to play, and the Game was the only thing that mattered. He would follow his Sponsor and do his part.

Kids got shot all the time. He would be careful.

As Jaskueli had in every lifetime so far.