“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”
–Sir Terry Pratchett

“Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli….”
–George RR Martin

“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.”
― Sir Terry Pratchett

“A story without fantasy is a holiday without fireworks.”
– Me

Don’t hoard your favorite quote. Share why you love fantasy in a comment. If you wish, include the title and artist of your favorite fantasy art (not url), and I’ll delve for it.

An earthworm tickled my ear and woke me.

I pawed at the worm, thinking someone dangled wet yarn on me. My skin felt hot, and stones dug into my back. I lay, but not on my pallet, not in our home, and not at night. The sun burned overhead, stinging me for every glance. My eyes blinked shut and refused to open. I had no idea where I was. Sleep must’ve overcome me again, and the shame of it hurt my belly and prickled my eyes with tears.

Something dribbled over my neck. I smelled earth, and clots of dirt broke apart between my fingers. Voices giggled [/snickered] above me.

“Sleepy, sleepy Resha. Shovel her a dirt blanket.”

“Look! She smashed the worm on her cheek. Drop another, see if she eats it.”

A shovel! I’d been shoveling beside a river. Sleep had pried the shovel from my hand and crushed me to the ground. I’d promised myself to only rest my head for a moment, just long enough to take off some of its weight.

I squinted upward, trying to see the figures standing over me. They were far and small, all in a world of light, and I struggled to find my way out of a cave of sleep. Flashes of the outside reached me in the cave, but I doubted I would escape soon. Maybe it wasn’t worth the trouble to fully wake, I’d only fall asleep again.

I closed my eyes.

“Midmorning seemed a good time for bed, Resha?”

“When better? So we’d do her work for her.”

“She must stay up every night with a different man. Bet they pass her around.”

“Resha, where’s your doll? Where is your baby?”

My arms snapped across my chest, feeling for the sling that held my marriage doll. When shoveling dirt I’d fretted the wood handle would shatter his beautiful porcelain face. So precious, so dear to me, I could never lose him.

I found the sling empty, my marriage doll gone.

The cave of sleep turned upside down, flipping me over and dropping me into a shivering coldness. I flopped my arms around in the dirt but couldn’t find the doll. I must’ve dropped him somewhere. I had to find him. Pushing myself up in the darkness, I staggered to my feet and looked through the cave mouth. The distant opening swung to views of a stone in dirt, a foot in a sandal, then a grin on a woman’s face.

“Resha, could your baby have toddled to the river? Could it have drowned?”

Please not that! Oh, I hoped I hadn’t left my baby doll too close to the riverbank. My head rolled as I listened for the rush of water, and I stumbled forward.

“Not that way, brick head, to your right.”

“Look at her! She’s like a drunk monkey.”

I glimpsed men standing in the river, sloshing dirt in pans and sifting it. My focus flickered from them to along the riverbank, but I lost my balance in the darkness of day.

“Haha! You can push her and she’ll fall.”

“I want to try it.”

When I stood again, someone shoved me back down. Crawling, I spotted my doll at the river’s edge. Mud stained his orange pants and green shirt, his hair tangled, his face down in the water.

“Ahhh!” I hurled myself to him, lifting him to within an inch of my face so I could see him from deep within my cave.

My marriage doll, my boy, had been painted with red lips and rosy cheeks and bright eyes and long eyelashes. The river had washed them all away.

A blank face stared up at me, dead with its whiteness.

Poison thumped from my heart into my shaking arms and legs, and I plummeted out of the cave. The porcelain face grew in my sight, until it pushed away all the blackness and took up my whole world.

White eyes and white lips. My doll had drowned.

My parents would never forgive me for losing a second one, and I’d have to wait another year before the doll crafter could sell me my next. Then another year of striving to keep the doll safe while the rest of the women my age had already married.

My life was over.

“At least it was just a doll. Any real baby of yours would’ve died.”

I whirled to face the woman who said it. The cleft in her square chin aimed down at me as she cradled her own marriage doll. The four women beside her had dolls too, their porcelain faces all smiling with paint.

“You stole my doll.” I lunged toward the woman with the manly chin. “Faliti, you killed him!”

I wanted to grab Faliti’s doll, to break it and ruin it like she’d ruined my life. Her long arms held me away, shoving me back into the mud.

“Resha, you don’t deserve to be a mother. You’d smother your children by falling asleep on them.”

The women left me sobbing at the riverbank. The men had stopped panning for stones to gather around me, and I hid my doll’s dead face from them and ran.

Away from the river, across rice paddies, I splashed and tripped and cried my way to the road. It would take me back to the city and my parents, and I couldn’t face them. But I didn’t know where else to go. Not back to shoveling dirt for the men panning for stones. Not beside the women who’d murdered my doll.

Darkness crept around me, and sleep began to push down on my back. I wanted to lie on the ground and cry and rest, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t. What could I look forward to but sleep?

“Resha, is that you?”

I blinked at the sound of a familiar voice. The handsome Harend Chandur strode down the road. My father polished diamonds for his rich gemcutter father. For some reason, Harend always liked talking to me.

The women had teased that he and I did frightful things together at night, but we didn’t. Sleep imprisoned me all night, and in the evening and morning, too, if mother tired of kicking me and let me lie.

Harend asked, “You work this river? Found any stones yourself?”

My hand had clamped over my doll’s face. Seeing that white face would make him never want to speak to me again.

His eyes rose from the mud on my clothes to the tears on my face. “Say, is something wrong?”

“It . . .it doesn’t matter now.”

“Good, then what I came out here to say, what I wanted is to ask you something. Would you like to go to the dance on the Day of Return? With me, I mean.”

I looked up at Harend, at his broad shoulders and sweet eyes and how he leaned to the left with his nervousness, something I found so darling. And I knew I didn’t deserve him.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Oh. Someone asked you before me.”

“No, I just can’t.” I couldn’t do anything but sleep.

“She may not dance,” Faliti said from the rice paddy behind me. She sauntered onto the road. “But she’s great at sleeping anywhere. Ask her what happened today while she napped in the dirt.”

“Faliti,” I said, “please don’t.”

“Ask her why she holds her doll’s face.”

“Resha?”

My fingers trembled with my anger as I picked a rock from the road and threw it at Faliti. I wanted to smash that square chin of hers right off that smug face, but I missed.

“Resha!”

I ran from Harend and Faliti, but soon I had to stop, and when I did, I began to slip into the cave. Everything softened and darkened. The world slid farther and farther away.

I fought the sleep, staring ahead at the city because its ziggurat pained my eyes with its gleam, and pain could help sometimes. Even so, I began to stagger. I dropped to my knees. Lying down at the side of the road would let all the weariness wash past. Most people didn’t sleep on the road, but I wanted to. I had to.

Tears flowed down my chin. Something was wrong with me. I was flawed.

From inside my cave, I didn’t hear the hooves until the horses had almost trampled me. Four white steeds danced past, kicking mud from the road. They pulled a carriage, its golden wheels slowing to a stop. A lady with grey hair stuck her head from a curtained window and shouted to an armored man with the horses’ reins.

“Your reckless driving spilled my new diamonds, I will have you know.” Her eyes snapped down to me. “By star and sapphire! Did you hit her?”

“No, enchantress. She were just kneeling in the road.”

The lady asked, “Are you quite certain? Then, my dear girl, why are you crying?”

“I’m always sleepy,” I said, too tired to pretend. “I’m not fit for anything but sleep.”

“But this is marvelous, my dear.”

“What?”

“How many hours a day do you have the capacity to sleep, on average?”

Pushing myself up on one leg then another, I wondered if the lady teased me. The horses and gilded carriage told me she came from a distant land. My thoughts began to drift off, and with a jolt I realized my eyes had closed and I still had to answer her.

“I sleep more than I live.”

“Astonishing!”

The woman swept out of the carriage, her dress sparkling with blue gems and silver thread. I had never seen a dress like that before.

“What is your name, my dear?”

“Resha.” Saying it reminded me of Faliti’s words. Resha, you don’t deserve to be a mother. I no longer liked its sound. “They call me that, but my name is Hiresha.”

“What a, hmm, a distinctive name you have.” She took my hand, and her glove flowed over my fingers with a fabric soft as a breeze. “Hiresha, would you permit me to convince you to study enchantment? The magic is improving to young ladies and fashionable among the best society.”

“I can’t go to any schools. We don’t have the coin to pay.”

“With your aptitude, I would be delighted to act as your sponsor.”

The lady guided me toward her carriage. I had a sense that I dreamed, that I’d fallen asleep on the road while I had kneeled.

“My ‘aptitude?’ Why do you want me?”

“Of that I am forbidden to speak. However, I judge you will flourish in the Mindvault Academy, and you may someday even possess gowns fit for a princess.”

“I don’t care about dresses, I just want to stop being tired.” I stood before the carriage doors, facing the lady. “Can your magic help me?”

“We expand our horizons each year in the study of enchantment and its worldly applications. Perhaps you will discover a way to cure yourself, although I am at a loss as to why you would wish to alter your gift.”

I had to be dreaming. The lady acted like she envied my sleepiness, like laziness was a virtue. None of this was real, so I didn’t see why I should say no.

“I’ll go learn your magic, but soon as I have myself well, I’ll be leaving to come back to the city. Morimound is my home.”

“Of course, my dear.”

The lady beckoned me into the carriage and locked the door behind us. We glided over the road, and the gloom lulled me deeper into the cave.

I’d often had nightmares of falling asleep, of dozing in an embarrassing place like in the privy or while bathing and ending up drowned. But I was enjoying this dream. I would travel to a distant land to learn a magic that would rescue me from sleep, then I’d return to marry Harend and raise a family of beautiful children. Everything would be perfect.

I hoped never to wake.

To celebrate my Kickstarter reaching 70% funded, I listed Brood of Bones as free. Download the dark fantasy here with my blessing.

I’m as happy a djinn freed from his bottle to include multiple internal illustrations in this first act of my upcoming novel. I hope to garnish this section with three to four more internal illustrations, pending the successful funding of the Kickstarter.

Chapter 1

Half Bridge

Enchantress Hiresha thought the day rather brisk for walking up cliffs. A path of blue marble ascended from the valley floor in a vertical line. The straight-up-and-down road climbed a horizon of stone, cutting through sediment bands of yellow, grey, and white rock. The Skyway’s destination lay too high for glimpses, among the snowbound peaks of the Skiarri Mountains.

The chill air that sluiced from those heights prickled Hiresha’s face. She stepped out of her carriage, resting her hand on her maid’s offered arm. Enchantress Hiresha walked with her dress hems rippling ahead of her on the cobblestones, layer upon layer of silks and velvets of every color swirling about her feet. The maid beside her wore a stark grey, the dress a somber veneer for a woman who was anything but.

Today the servant and mistress walked arm in arm toward a girl waiting for them at the base of the Skyway. Hiresha squeezed her maid’s hand to reassure the woman that her daughter would succeed at her trial. She would make her journey up the cliff. The enchantress knew Maid Janny had to be frightened. She had waited over a decade for this day.

A pet fox in Hiresha’s other arm squeaked. The enchantress held him with care because the desert fox was small as a kitten and fragile. The fennec fox shivered, made a sound close to a mew, and burrowed deeper into the layers of fabric under Hiresha’s arm until only his tail was visible.

Maid Janny narrowed her eyes at the fennec’s tail then turned an adoring gaze to the veiled girl at the base of the cliff. Janny fluttered her free hand above her chest.

“It’s finally happening, isn’t it?” Janny asked. “My heart hasn’t beat this fast since that time with the two men in the hot springs, and would you look at her? My Minna, walking her way to higher learning. Any mother would be dripping with pride, but we won’t have that. Tears of joy can’t be harder to hold down than soured rye beer. Not frightened for her at all.”

By the gallop of Janny’s words, Hiresha could that tell her friend was not frightened. She was terrified.

“She’ll make it to the top,” Janny said. “But do you think you should leave that fox down here? With the guards. Minna is a skittish girl, and I don’t see a call for that beast frightening her while she’s scared walking up a cliff besides.”

“You mustn’t call him a beast.” Hiresha stroked two purple-gloved fingers along the gold fur of the tail to its black tip. “It’s sacrilegious.”

Janny snorted at that.

The two women and the fox passed several men in ornate armor, jeweled swords strapped to their backs. They kneeled before the enchantress. A guard tower shadowed the town lane, the structure a tiny thing beside the cliff.

The maid called out to the girl who waited at the base of a bridge leading up to the mountainous wall. “Oh, Minna, you mustn’t wear that veil. You haven’t a thing to be ashamed of, and not a one in the Academy will poke fun at you. Couldn’t, with this walking jewel parade for a patron.”

Janny elbowed Hiresha, the maid’s arm sinking without harm into the myriad folds of fabrics sparkling with gold lace and gems. To Hiresha, the jab had felt less than a poke.

The girl gripped the yellow strip of cotton covering her face, her frost-nipped knuckles standing out like red berries on her pale hand. Hiresha noticed the girl was trembling.

“Told you I was w-wearing it,” she said.

“Nonsense.” Janny scurried to her daughter, shooing the girl’s hands away from her face. “Today’s your fresh start. Just let me take it for you.”

“Mother!”

“No daughter of mine is going to skulk about behind a mask. There!”

Hiresha itched with discomfort to see her maid and best friend rip away her daughter’s veil. Minna gasped, one hand groping after the stolen fabric, the other reaching up to try to shield her face. Hiresha could not help but see the redness of the birthmark that spilled over the bone white of the girl’s nose and cheeks like a wine stain. Tears spurted from her eyes.

“Janny, let her wear it if she wishes.” Hiresha touched the maid’s shoulder. “It is only sensible in this chill. The Skyway is prone to gusts.”

The maid yielded the veil with a grumble. “She doesn’t need to be sorry for who she is.”

“This face isn’t who I am.” The yellow cloth soon covered all the girl’s features but her eyes, with only a trace of the birthmark visible between them. Darker blotches discolored the skin beneath her lashes, either from frequent weeping or sleeplessness. Her eyes themselves were beautiful, a light pureness with a corona of green around the pupil.

The girl gazed up at the enchantress with the same glistening gratitude as if she had witnessed Hiresha slay a sea monster. Hiresha supposed she had felt much the same way about her own mother when she had been that age. A pang of half-remembered bitterness lurched in Hiresha’s chest. She knew all too well the feeling of being uncomfortable in her own skin.

Hiresha straightened the girl’s veil and said, “Someone once told me only the flawed can be flawless.”

The girl asked, “Was she an enchantress, too?”

“He.” Hiresha could say no more, since magic users of his sort were not a subject for polite conversation. Even now she could remember the tingling heat of his hands on her waist as they danced.

A deep clearing of a throat drew attention to a guard. He knelt holding out an amulet. “Will Elder Enchantress Hiresha, Provost of Applied Enchantment, guide this woman, Minna Barrows, on her journey to become a novice of The Mindvault Academy?”

Hiresha said she would and took the amulet. The bronze disk bore the school motto “Nothing not first imagined,” inscribed in seven languages, from the box lettering of her homeland to the hieroglyphs of the empire’s capital. The words wove around the pattern of four concentric circles.

As the enchantress clasped the amulet around the girl’s neck, Minna tilted back her head to try to see the top of the Skyway and the Academy. The skin exposed below the veil looked waxy and bloodless. The girl swayed backward as if in a faint, and by the time Hiresha thought to catch the swooning girl, Maid Janny had already nudged her daughter upright. The girl jerked away from her mother’s touch.

The spellsword said, “Will you, Minna Barrows—”

Hiresha interrupted the guard. “Of course she’ll train as a novice. She’s here, is she not? Now let us be about our business before someone freezes.”

The spellsword frowned as he touched the amulet. Hiresha sensed him use his power to activate an enchantment of Attraction in the bronze chain, and the links tightened about the girl’s throat to turn the necklace into a choker that could not be removed without violence. The girl’s fingers ran along the length of metal.

“It’s necessary,” Janny said, thumbing down her grey collar to reveal her own gold amulet. “Without it you won’t go far, except downward.”

The girl’s eyes climbed halfway up the cliff again before she gave up. “Anything else horrible you’d like to remind me of? Monkey bites? Bee stings?”

“My little minnow,” Janny said, “I know you’ll pass the test. You won’t fall. You won’t run from the Skyway. No matter how much you want to. You’ll get through it.”

The girl shuddered.

Hiresha extended her hand. Minna took it, twining the enchantress’s purple glove with trembling fingers as white as snow. Enchantress and novice walked together at arm’s length, the girl apologizing every time she stepped on the flood of glittering skirts.

They ascended a bridge that curved up to the cliff in such a way that allowed horse teams, lords, court ladies, and others with skittish constitutions to believe they would soon step on level ground. Only a rocky plain. A craggy field of stone. Certainly not a vertical cliff and road leading straight up half a mile of empty air.

The girl was not fooled. She stopped at the end of Half Bridge, her pose rigid and brittle, her grip tight on the enchantress’s hand to the point of pain.

Hiresha worried for her. If Minna lacked the discipline to walk up the Skyway, she could never be trained as an enchantress. Janny will be devastated, Hiresha thought. The enchantress wanted the girl to find both her calling and acceptance in the Academy, in spite of her flaws. As I once did.

Minna clawed her fingers at the bronze choker, but not so much as a pinkie slipped beneath it. “What if the magic doesn’t work?”

“The amulets are all tested in controlled environments.”

The girl did not look reassured.

Hiresha’s brows furrowed. She lectured on the finer points of magic more often than she reassured twelve-year-olds. The enchantress cleared her throat.

“Your amulet is already working. Look down and see the proof. You are standing at a slant in relation to the ground. See how the cliff now appears to be a slope, not a wall? Half Bridge contains transition enchantments to attempt to convince the more delicate organs that you walked across a true semicircle.”

“You—you can’t fall partway up the cliff?”

“Gravity, like many things, is a matter of societal agreement,” Hiresha said. “Through enchantments we may command gravity, and we have decided that here it should pull to the side, into the Skyway.”

“What if gravity fights back?”

“It is people who fight,” Hiresha said. “Gravity is a constant, on which enchantment adds exceptions.”

The girl remained petrified, not moving, not speaking, only making a clicking noise under her veil. It sounded like pebbles plinking onto each other. Her teeth are chattering, Hiresha realized, poor dear.

A muffled chirp came from the fox nestled at Hiresha’s side. The girl’s eyes widened at the sight of his gold tail swishing over the jeweled gowns.

“It’s alive?”

The enchantress lifted the fennec, and he yawned, pink tongue curving upward toward his black whiskers. An idea came to Hiresha. “Hold him for me.”

“Those ears are huge.” The girl cradled the fennec. A collar of purple amethysts glittered around the fox’s throat.

Hiresha checked a matching bracelet of gems around her own arm and found it still there. “He is most dear to me, and I’d only allow you to carry him on the Skyway if I was confident in the Academy’s enchantments and your safety. Which I am.”

“Oh,” the girl said. The furry cones of the fox’s ears shifted upward to point at her face. The corners of Minna’s eyes pinched together in mirth, and Hiresha thought the girl’s veil must hide a grin. “Hope you don’t mind me stealing him forever.”

While the girl was acquainting herself with the fennec’s furriness, Hiresha glanced back, past the green tendrils of her headdress, to the guard tower. Four men were carrying a boat out from its reinforced doorway. Bronze discs ran down its hull, each similar to the amulet given to Minna. The men rolled the boat upright and plopped it into a town waterway.

Hiresha watched with apprehension as her maid loaded the boat with a chest. The cedar box contained vials of mercury. The enchantress’ magic had extracted the quicksilver from the smiths in the town’s asylum, poisoned from years of metalwork. She would not care to see her healing efforts undone by the mercury falling into the river, no matter how watertight the chest was purported to be. When Janny stepped aboard, the boat rocked.

The men rowed the vessel to the cliff side. Then upward. The Waterfly River flowed calmly vertical in a channel carved in enchanted rock. Ice frosted the edges.

Alongside the Waterfly River, a blue walkway lead into the sky. Hiresha clasped the girl’s arm, guiding her to the upright path. “Are you ready to proceed?”

“If you think it’s safe….” The girl pulled the fennec closer to her chest.

“The enchantments that alter gravity around the Academy were designed by the Goddess of the Opal Mind herself.”

Hiresha swung a foot over the smooth stones of the Skyway. Swaths of red and orange silk fluttered ahead of her leg. Minna lifted her foot as well, her boot bound in leather with grey yak fur poking up from the inside. Their feet cast no shadow because they faced the noonday sun.

The enchantress said, “Nothing can go wrong.”

Next chapter…

Have the word yet? If so, skip down to the comments and enter it. Do not let the words of others influence you.

In Worldcon in Reno, I pounced on many an unsuspecting person and asked, “What makes fantasy a great genre? And can you answer that in one word?” Most of these heroes found their word, from fantasy author luminaries, to Indie writers, to—–the most important–—readers.

Only one person refused to answer the question. With a jolly laugh and a twinkle in his eye, the merry ol’ Patrick Rothfuss explained that he could not pick one word, that fantasy enchanted people for different reasons, that each person took a different treasure from a novel’s pages. This is, in fact, why I like asking this question. The fantasy genre is like a jewel, and I am asking you to pick just one of its sparkling facets. Only by knowing each of the gem’s faces can we better understand the gemstone itself, appreciate its breadth, and understand the diversity of its connoisseurs.

Have your word now? I suggest going with the first that came to mind. Let me know and I’ll add your contribution to the hoard.

Breakaway:

The following are earlier concoctions of words. Drink them in with your eyes. With your eyes, I say!

Starlight:

City Lights of Fantasy:

Fantasy Pond:

Happy Fantasy Holidays 2011:

The Tree of Life:

Flag of Fantasy:

Fantasy Number Four:

Credits for which dreamer picked what verbal jewel. And if you’d like to hear wax poetic on the top ten choices seen in these images, read my article on Fantasy Book Critic.

What’s your word? I will create a new Wordle image for each ten new entrants, so tell your friends. Do it for Fantasy, and for Science!

First, delight in the earlier entries: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5.

~~~

“Indubitably, we are hunting an imposter.” Forcing in an uncertain breath, the lawyer stepped between the elf and his intended target. The lawyer was nearly certain the sheen of sweat on his own brow should be considered a mark of professional intensity, not a giveaway of knee-loosening terror. “But Mrs. Snulgrithn is now lawfully summoned and under protection of the court. Any injury caused to—”

“I said back!” The short-bow creaked as it was pulled to full draw. Red sweat dripped down the elf’s brow, evidence of his health-potion addiction. “She’s an imposter and a liar.”

“Then she’ll be among like minds at court,” the android said with lights flashing merrily across its chest displays, “and may be reasonably expected to cooperate.”

“Mrs. Snulgrithn’s testimony might be crucial. She may have been the last…” The lawyer glanced behind him to the beast-tender and reconsidered his word choice. “…individual to see Princess Zyx alive.”

The lawyer turned back to the elf before continuing.

“Witnesses report that you expressed fondness for the princess. Your interests would be best served by holding to your contract and keeping Mrs. Snulgrithn alive.”

The elf blinked the red sweat away from bloodshot eyes. His fingers trembled from the strain of holding back the bowstring. “What about best serving vengeance? Princess Zyx was murdered.”

“She wasn’t murdered.” The beast-tender spat on the floor, causing a hissing sound as the spittle ate at the grime in the planks. Her single eye seared yellow as it narrowed at the elf. “And you know it.”

“Liar!” The elf lunged to the side, re-aimed his bow, and fired.

With a precision born of calculated vectors, the android caught the arrow out of the air.

“You are under—under arrest, Elf.” The lawyer worked to keep the tremor out of his voice. This was his first important case, and a misstep where royalty was concerned would ruin his resume. “You are forthwith detained for unlawful use of magical items acquired by trespassing into temples, royal dungeons, and other private properties. And as a suspect in the disappearance of Princess Zyx.”

“You can’t arrest me.” The elf lifted the cube with the imprisoned troll, as if to throw it at the lawyer’s feet. “I’m under contract.”

“A contract that stipulates the removal of free will, should orders be ignored.” The lawyer opened his portfolio and yanked out a tablet glowing with words. He slid his finger over the display, and three beams of blue lashed around the elf with the sound of a cracking whip.

The elf stiffened, his gaping eyes turning from veined red to electric blue. Without a word, he lowered the troll cube back into his belt pouch. He stood at attention before the lawyer.

The android swiveled its spherical head from side to side. “Fine print: the cruelest weapon in the galaxy.”

The lawyer replaced the tablet. In turning to look around he was saved by luck. A tankard spun past his head, thrown at dismembering speed.

The beast-tender threw another vessel, which was snatched out of the air by a chrome hand, and then she lumbered toward the back of the inn. Over her scraggly shoulder, she called, “A year of free drinking to any of ya’s who bash them three.”

Benches screeched as a dozen patrons lurched to their feet.

~~~

The next post will soon appear on Francis Pauli’s blog.

I encourage everyone to participate in this celebration and view the YouTube channel of my dancing by clicking here or on one of the images. I also do dance reviews, triumphantly.

The Skyway

The girl let loose a hissing gasp. The fox squeaked. Hiresha felt her own insides shift forward and down as the magic reoriented her to the side of the cliff. To her, the moment of disorientation felt like coming home.

More concerning to her was the cold. She felt it at once, more of a tingling numbness than she would expect at this elevation. Brutal, snow-cooled gusts would hit them closer to the clifftop. Beside her, the desert fox chirped in conversational tones, less distressed from the chill. Why, I can scarcely see the mist of my breath. It cannot be so very cold. Regardless, she shivered.

To the side came the shouts of Maid Janny. Minna’s mother waved at them, tipping the boat and causing the men inside to gesture at her with anger. She ignored them to call out suggestions. “Don’t look down. Or to the sides. Or above you.” And, “Stay at the center of the Skyway.” And, “It’s walking down that’s the hard part.” As she bobbed ahead of them on the Waterfly River, she called back once more. “Don’t let Hiresha fall asleep on her feet and wander off the road.”

The girl glanced at the enchantress with a brow lifted in silent question. She no doubt wondered if her mother had jested about Hiresha falling unconscious on the side of a cliff. The enchantress tried to give an encouraging smile, but her efforts were sabotaged by a yawn.

In truth, Hiresha never worried about falling asleep while walking, certainly not in this piercing chill. Her peculiar condition was not one to bludgeon her unconscious. Rather, the rare disease poisoned her with a lingering death of fatigue. Lethargy dragged on her legs, but she forced herself to keep up speed, kicking her skirts ahead of her with each stride. She hoped to collapse into her bed as soon as convenient after reaching the summit.

“Your first lesson,” Hiresha said, to keep herself alert and to distract the girl from their increasing distance from the ground. “Two enchantments are actively affecting us. The first is one of Lightening, reducing your weight to the negligible by severing the ties of gravity.”

The girl did not walk so much as slide one foot forward after another across the blocks of the Skyway. She hunched over the fennec, blinking rapidly. “Then, if I don’t weigh much, will I blow away? Like a baby spider caught in the wind?”

Minna’s eyes strayed from the blue of the path to the surrounding wrinkles of rock. Layers of yellow gave way to tracts of grey, to dark outcrops, to tan creases, to roughs of brown, to orange lines, to white bumps. When walking up cliffs had still scared Hiresha, she had tried to convince herself she was not moving upward but on a flatland with a hard soil of a variety of colors.

The girl began to look over her shoulder toward the plummet. Hiresha knew what she would see. The point of the gatehouse tower, the square tops of the town roofs as small as patches below.

“Eyes forward, Minna,” Hiresha said, “We don’t float away because of the second enchantment. Magic in the stone Attracts us to the Skyway. We perceive that our weight is reestablished in a new—”

Hiresha gasped as coldness flowed over her skin like a slurry of ice water. She faltered, stepped on an airiness—it had to be her skirts—and felt herself falling. Not to the side, no, worse. She began to tip backward, downward, to the true ground now distant behind them. Her insides churned, angling down, straight down, down to death.

Then her fright passed. The next moment found her standing safely on the side of the cliff, as magic intended.

Minna stared at her, flecks of tears twitching at the ends of the girl’s lashes. “W-what’s wrong?”

Irritation and embarrassment were all that heated Hiresha. She could only guess that she had begun to fall asleep and jerked back awake with a moment of nightmarish disorientation. That has never happened before, not while walking and talking. Hiresha doubted the explanation would reassure the girl, and even the enchantress found it less than satisfying.

The girl felt nothing of the sort, Hiresha thought, or she would’ve screamed. I must be more tired than I thought.

“Nothing is wrong.” Hiresha forced the words from lips that had lost all sensation. “I—I merely was observing those two spellswords sparring. There, in the College of Active Enchantment. Your fellow novices may call the building the Blade.”

At the halfway point of the Skyway, a side road split off in a path leading to a structure that seemed to jut upward from the rocky ground in a triangular tower of glass. From Hiresha’s perspective, two men appeared to be dodging forward and back over a wall within the Blade, striking at each other with bamboo weapons.

“It looks like a sword. A giant glass sword.” Minna’s eyes shifted from the building to the side, toward the ground. “Magic must keep it from falling—Ahhh! We’re so high.”

“No need to look, if it upsets you.”

“The town, they all look like toy houses.”

“Everyone says that,” Hiresha said.

“And the lake is a blue cloud, almost. Oh, no! What if I fall? What if I—”

“Mind the fennec. Minna!”

The girl had lifted her hands, clutching beneath her veil. Her upraised arms pressed against the fox’s head, flattening his ears against her chest. He snuffled a growl.

“You’re squeezing him.” Hiresha reached to take the fennec.

He wriggled from the girl’s grasp and sprang away from the enchantress’s gloves. The fox landed on the blue marble with a chatter of squeaks. He bolted across the Skyway.

“Don’t let him leave the path.” Hiresha tumbled after him, floundering in her ceremonial gowns. The fox’s collar held multiple enchantments, but once he left the Skyway he would fall. “Catch him, Minna.”

Neither woman stood a chance. By the time the girl began to move, the tail and pair of upright ears bounded off the path’s border of black stone and onto what would appear to the fox like a craggy rockland with a horizon of sky.

The fennec flew to the side and downward, and his scream was high and trilling like a songbird with a broken wing.

“I didn’t mean….” The girl’s voice splintered into shrill notes. “Didn’t know he’d….”

Anxiety gouged Hiresha and boiled up in her stomach. She had to watch the fennec tumble between the jags of rock, fearing every moment his tiny head would strike the side of the cliff.

She lifted her arm with the amethyst bracelet in time to see purple light flash from its jewels. The same hue sparkled from the fennec’s collar. He shifted direction mid air and was hurled toward Hiresha, upward, and back into her arms. He shivered as she cupped him between her hands, ears turned down, whiskers twitching, squeaking out short mews.

The girl reached halfway to touch him but stopped. “You saved him.”

“With a contingency enchantment.” Hiresha stroked the frightened creature. “If his collar moves too far from my bracelet, an Attraction spell pulls him to me. Come, Minna, and consider this a lesson of the advantages of Applied Enchantment.”

The girl shuffled after the enchantress. “Can I hold him again? I won’t let go this time.”

“I believe I’ll carry him the rest of the way. Here, take my hand. Soon the gusts will come.”

The girl’s brows angled down in savage anger, or so the enchantress thought. In the next blink, the girl’s eyes had returned to their open fright, and she shrank against Hiresha as they walked on. I must have mistaken the look, Hiresha thought, interpreted it wrong under her veil. All the same, Hiresha grew more aware that the girl was not much shorter than herself. The enchantress had the unaccountable thought that Minna might try to steal the fox and shove her toward the edge of the Skyway.

They passed a layer of red rock, a bright band that stretched across the pale cliff and blue Skyway. Hiresha held her breath while walking over it. The girl cringed at the slash of red and tiptoed past. “What is that?”

“A band of travertine. The Academy also powers an enchantment in that stone to Repulse anyone without an amulet.”

Minna clutched hers. “But no one could get so high without one. I thought you said—”

“A climber of skill might try.”

An intake of breath. “You mean a Feaster might? To get the enchantresses?”

In Hiresha’s experience, the man-hunting illusionists—The Feasters—would not have the physical strength. Their magic wastes them away.

“Thieves might,” Hiresha said. “Many covet the Academy jewels. Every few years the spellswords find a man splattered on the valley floor. Oh! Forgive me for saying that. Not to worry, though. You’ll be safe momentarily.”

The horizon above them grew closer. The painful blue of winter sky seemed to eat at the land, and they looked to reach the end of the world, the cliff summit, as it were. The wind picked up, lashing the enchantress’s gowns, cutting into her face, filling her sleeves with coldness.

The girl clung to her. Between the blasts of wind, Hiresha thought she heard Minna whimper. The girl had clamped her eyes shut. Hiresha could not blame her.

The enchantress grimaced with each buffeting, feeling as if every push of frigid air might loft her and fling her thousands of feet to her bone-splintering end. What am I, reminiscing over my fears as a novice? I’ve trod the Skyway hundreds of times. Hiresha had not felt so afraid on the cliff path for years, so vulnerable, so unbalanced. So cold.

Minna’s own worries are making me afraid, Hiresha thought. Or I’ve contracted an illness. She resolved to examine herself in her laboratory and use her specialized magic to cure her budding sickness.

Hiresha squinted into the afternoon sun, hoping to see the end of the Skyway close. A blot spun into view, a whirling shape that she at first thought had to be a bird caught in a gust. But instead of wings it had arms and a fan of brown hair tangled with wind. Instead of feathers it had skirts of green and a fluff of white undergarments.

A pink and yellow trail of ribbons streamed after the figure in her descent. A lost slipper tumbled behind through the air. An enchantress was falling.

Next chapter…

Mind’s Gate

Hiresha locked eyes with the woman dropping to her death. Her brows arched up a narrow forehead, pale lips puckered in a circle, eyes popping, the tip of her nose nipped red. She looked surprised but also questioning, as if begging Hiresha to know why, for what reason she had come to be flying against her will, how Hiresha could walk safely up a cliff while she plummeted.

The shock of the moment burned the image into Hiresha’s memory. All sound of wind dropped away, and the rest of the world vanished, leaving the two enchantresses isolated in silence. Numb and disbelieving, Hiresha felt detached as if trapped in a childhood dream. The lack of noise most jarred the enchantress. If the falling figure would only scream, Hiresha felt she could believe her eyes. The doomed woman never did, only whisked past in a streak of bright fabrics.

Hiresha cracked open her own mouth. Chill air pushed into her throat, but she forced out a few words.

“Minna, did…did you see someone….”

The girl opened one eye, took a cautious glance, then squeezed it shut again. “What’s frightened you?”

She saw nothing. She heard nothing. Was there anything to see and hear? Hiresha wondered if she could have imagined the falling woman. Hiresha was afflicted with drowsiness, not delusions, but just then she found it in herself to doubt. A sense of sickness curdled within her from toes to eyes. I am unwell.

Looking over her shoulder, Hiresha wanted to see if she could spot the falling woman again. Green frills from her own headdress blew into her eyes. With one hand clutching the fox, the other the girl, Hiresha could not push away the cloth tendrils to clear her vision.

No matter, she thought. I had to have imagined her anyway. No enchantress would dawdle close enough to a precipice to fall.

Even so, Hiresha found herself stopping. Her knees wobbled as she turned to gaze down at the valley floor. From her perspective the horizon was of foothills, a clutter of town homes, wisps of smoke from chimneys and furnaces, a blue strip of river, and a puzzle of stone walls dividing farm plots. She saw no trace of a falling woman.

“Are we there?” Minna opened her eyes, saw the drop, and cringed.

Hiresha could not help but again ask. “Do you see someone?”

“Ugh! Why’d they build the Academy so far up?” She buried her face in the multicolored drifts of Hiresha’s clothing.

“Why, for protection. And the Mindvault architecture is designed to inspire.”

The enchantress guided Minna back toward the summit, mind roiling with what she had or had not seen. Buildings of the Academy poked out from the clifftop, a glassy dome and a thin tower that appeared bent in half like a folded stalk of a rice reed. By the time Hiresha heard the whistling that would be the wind scraping over the summit, she was mulling over a theory.

If a woman truly had fallen—if she was real—then she had jumped. She had wanted an end. It happened sometimes in the Academy, Hiresha knew. The stress could mount, the sleepless hours build, the family expectations soar, the tuition debts escalate until there seemed no way but to leap.

At least Minna had not been fated to see it. Hiresha was sorry she had. The shivering unease had not left her, and another thought nibbled at the back of her mind. The woman didn’t look like she wanted to be falling.

Hiresha shook her head, feeling foggy with fatigue and not trusting herself to know what a woman who desired death should look like. Soon Hiresha would sleep and put her thoughts straight.

The Skyway curved onto the lip of the cliff. The sun slid behind them as the enchantress and the girl stepped onto the mountain ledge on which perched the Academy. Hiresha expected to see enchantresses flocked close to the cliff side and murmuring about the woman who had jumped.

She saw the Academy at peace. Enchantresses dressed in medleys of color took their exercise together in last night’s snow. One novice in plainer garb threw a baton straight up, and, thanks to anticipating the wind, the wooden instrument fell into the waiting arms of another girl. Laughter tinkled over the Academy grounds. The lack of rampant distress made Hiresha tend to think she had imagined the falling woman. It was cold comfort.

Minna had stopped, and her intake of breath tugged her veil into the hole of her gaping mouth. Hiresha could relate to what she had to be feeling, the exploding sense of wonder. A dreamland of buildings confronted them, all painted with bright colors. One structure turned on a wheel, a procession of windows. A spire spun in flashes of prismatic glass. One tower twisted about itself. Another building seemed to claw at the sky with pink tentacles, and the girl shrank away from it.

“You are right to be leery of the Somnarium.” Hiresha guided Minna farther from the cliff ledge and toward a stone arch crowned by snow. “The enchantresses who study there waste their time with pointless questions rather than seeking practical applications for their magic. Now, this is the—”

“Mind’s Gate.” Minna finished for her, her voice a whisper.

The blue-marble path led them under a sweeping arch with the word “Imagination” emblazoned with gold in the stone in every conceivable language and a few Hiresha suspected had been made up to fill the last stretches of stone.

“I’ve never seen a fountain like that.” Minna was staring beneath the arch. “Wait, is it the goddess?”

“You are right on both counts. It is a water statue of the Opal Mind.”

The figure of a woman rippled, and with a cloudy hand she beckoned them toward the Academy. Chunks of ice floated within the liquid likeness of the goddess. The water statue’s head contained floating stones that sparkled with orange, pink, and blue.

“Opals, of course.” Admiration rang in Hiresha’s voice. Not only had the Opal Mind’s magic kept her namesake jewels from cracking in the cold or whitening in the sun, but she had also coordinated hundreds of Attraction enchantments within the arch and surrounding flagstone to maintain the water statue. Hiresha hoped Minna would ask so the enchantress could talk about their precision and selectivity.

The girl reached toward the statue’s misty knee but stopped herself. “It looks like a ghost.”

“It looks like genius.”

Hiresha knelt and touched the goddess’ feet. The finger pads of her glove came away wet and dark. Seeing the falling enchantress had touched Hiresha with the hand of mortality. She did not ask her goddess for understanding, or relief from the ache inside her. Rather, the enchantress renewed her promise to use her own life to the fullest in pursuit of knowledge and innovation.

“Uh.” Minna pushed some stray snow with her quilted boot. She glanced around the colorful buildings and enchantresses and licked her lips. “I…that is, thank you for bringing me here, Elder Enchantress.”

“‘Hiresha’ will do. You can call me ‘elder’ in a decade or three.”

As soon as they left the statue, a woman in a grey dress and turban crept out from behind the arch and assaulted the girl with a hug.

“Mother!” Minna pushed at Maid Janny, trying to free herself from the crush of bosom.

“Look at you! The first Barrows apprenticed to a higher trade,” Janny said. “When you’re lousy with jewels, remember your hardworking mother. In her old age she’ll have her needs. Warmth, a warmer drink, and lots of young, strapping men to distract her from her backache.”

Hiresha spotted a tall novice cloaked in teal and with strips of dyed cotton crisscrossing her arms and legs against the temperature. The woman had a broad chin but timid eyes, and she flickered a smile at the sight of Hiresha.

“Minna,” Hiresha said over her shoulder, “I should like you to meet Novice Alyla.”

Janny’s daughter did not seem to hear her, was in fact shouting with her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me the Skyway was so windy?”

The maid said, “Now will you forgive me for not walking home most days after work?”

Novice Alyla shuffled forward, her hands crossed and held stiff over her abdomen. She peeked at the new girl then dropped her gaze. Hiresha expected Alyla would approach Minna as soon as the taller novice gathered her courage. Hiresha considered Alyla about as outgoing as a three-legged mouse, but the enchantress cared for her, had brought her to the Academy from their homeland and hoped to see her soon wear an enchantress’s dress of color. Amid the teal of her robes and wrappings, Alyla’s face and hands stood out with a skin tone of dark amber.

A man ran toward Alyla. Even taller than she, he had a greatsword strapped to his back, and wore a purple jacket over a broad chest, with silver greaves covering his legs like ornate ankle-shields. Grinning, he leaped toward Alyla and spread his arms.

“Catch me, Aly!”

He had thrown himself forward with such force that Hiresha had to worry he would injure his sister. Alyla turned in time to see the big man falling toward her wearing no gentle amount of arms and armor.

He slowed in midair, and Hiresha sensed him using his spellsword powers to activate an enchantment in his greaves. He was Lightened. He landed in his sister’s arms with about the weight of a hound, pushing her back but not flooring her.

His full weight returned the next second, and he dropped from Alyla’s hands. His laughter boomed. Alyla stayed silent but beamed, looking up at him with an expression Hiresha most often saw in enchantresses kneeling to the Opal Mind’s statue in devotion.

Hiresha had to wonder if her own face betrayed a hint of the same toward him. What Fos Chandur lacked in experience as a spellsword he made up for with confidence and vigor. She was more than relieved that her own innovations in jewel enchantments had once saved his life. Sometimes she thought of that as her greatest accomplishment.

The smile he cast Hiresha over his sister’s shoulder made the enchantress believe he felt something of the same toward her. Spellswords were tasked with protecting enchantresses, and he had risked his life for her sake.

The mountain air seemed at once warm, a soothing breeze on her cheek.

A voice of command yanked her from the reverie. “Provost Hiresha, do you condone this negligence?”

Next chapter…

Academy Plateau

“Chancellor?” Hiresha turned to regard the elder enchantress.

With a long neck and a narrow face, the approaching woman resembled a worm wearing a wig. The chancellor’s lavish black braids were decked with gold beads, and kohl paint shaded her eyes after the fashion of the Oasis Empire’s capital.

The chancellor’s gaze slid past Fos. “Provost Hiresha, your spellsword is cavorting with novices while on duty.”

“Alyla is his sister,” Hiresha said.

Fos said, “I was protecting her against frowns, Chancellor. There’s nothing more dangerous up here.”

“A professional distance must always be maintained between spellsword and enchantress.” The chancellor spoke this too at Hiresha.

“Studies show that pupils of good cheer learn faster,” Hiresha said, with a glance to Alyla. She’ll pass her practicals next time, poor girl, and earn her first enchantress gown.

“A mien of humility in students better befits the Academy of the Opal Mind, may the goddess’ wisdom ring through the centuries,” the chancellor said.

She stepped closer with a click of the beads in her wig. Her small eyes flicked over Hiresha’s shoulder to where Janny chatted with her daughter. The chancellor lowered her voice.

“Why do you seek to demean the Mindvault Academy at every turn? The waifs you submit as novices bring neither wealth nor prestige.”

Hiresha stiffened, and between her fatigue and chill it took a few deep breaths before she could thaw a response. “Perhaps you have forgotten that I too arrived at the Academy without resource.”

“You had talent, your unnatural propensity for the magic of dreams. Have your protégés shown similar aptitude?”

“Spellsword Fos has proven himself remarkably—”

“Novice Alyla has shown no talent, no aptitude, and no potential as an enchantress.”

Hiresha thought the chancellor’s critical remarks concerning Alyla most unfair, considering the chancellor herself had less magical skill than the average snail. She had not enchanted so much as a copper coin in all the time Hiresha had studied at the Academy.

This is what comes of electing a bureaucrat, Hiresha thought. Her hand strayed beneath two of her layers to the hard point of a pocketed jewel. With it, she could crumple the chancellor against the snowy rock. Hiresha never would so assault an enchantress, but knowing that she could granted her the resolve to stand up for Alyla and Minna.

“Princesses of less skill are admitted every season.”

“Exactly. Room must be reserved for the nobility.”

“Alyla is intelligent and imaginative. Testing merely makes her nervous.”

The chancellor might as well not have heard her. “And you insist on bringing a new girl of the same social strata? Who will you enter into the novice registry next to offend the goddess? That animal?”

She sniffed at the fennec scuffling in Hiresha’s arms. The fox buried himself in her layers.

The chancellor asked, “Or perhaps open the Academy to men?”

“In point of fact,” Hiresha said, her breath misting out from between her clenched teeth, “I believe the Academy would benefit if we considered admitting male novices of great potential skill.”

The noise of distaste made by the chancellor reminded Hiresha very much of a fox’s sneeze. “What would one even call male enchantresses? Enchanting men? Enchantmen?”

“Enchanters,” Hiresha said.

“‘En-chan-teers.’” After saying the word, the chancellor’s yellowish tongue curled toward the back of her mouth.

Hiresha glanced to Fos. She said, “And some women might make exceptional spellswords. In some ways, a female guard would be more—”

“Enough. Being Provost of Applied Enchantment in no manner gives you the right to question rules enacted by the Opal Mind.”

“You mean the goddess of imaginative thought? She would want us to honor her by looking for new methods and practices to enrich the Academy.”

The chancellor swiveled in a snap of blue lace to face Alyla and her brother. “Spellsword Fosapam, inform Spellsword Trakis that you will be serving as the Academy’s night watchman. For the entirety of this month.”

To have Fos stand each watch was a punishment that enraged Hiresha. Spellswords alternated shifts so no one man would suffer exposure in the freezing night air. The injustice of it caused heat to smolder under Hiresha’s gown, and she felt hot and sick.

Fos was blinking wide-eyed at the chancellor. Hiresha imagined him thinking of all those nights, so inclement that his lips froze to his teeth. She took some comfort in knowing she could cure any frostbite. Even so, she had to wonder if Fos would yell at the chancellor in outrage, or complain.

The spellsword grinned. “Then I’ll have all the time to practice my long jump. And the stars won’t judge me if I get it wrong. Well, they may smirk a twinkle.”

His brows furled in focus as he lowered himself. A pinging noise sounded in Hiresha’s inner ear as he Lightened his greaves and himself. Weighing no more than a fox but with the muscles of a grown man, he launched himself into the air.

The wind swatted him to his knees.

The chancellor nodded at his failure and stalked off, her train of gowns leaving a path in the snow.

Hiresha winced for Fos. “You’re brave to even attempt the long jump. Most spellswords delay learning the technique years for fear of embarrassment.”

“It’s the timing.” He brushed the white from the scale vest beneath his coat. “Have to Lighten myself then drop the spell before my feet leave the ground. Too soon and I only hop. Too late and I’m an overlarge leaf in the wind.”

Hiresha refolded his right lapel. “It is my fault, about the night duty. The chancellor knows she cannot reprimand me directly. The Ceiling of Elders wouldn’t have it.”

Fos shrugged it off.

Maid Janny sauntered up, her arm around her daughter. The maid’s rather shapeless body jiggled with happiness. Minna gazed at Spellsword Fos then adjusted her veil and squirmed out of her mother’s grasp.

Hiresha pinched the bridge of her nose and glared after the chancellor. “Janny, was I ever so disagreeable as that?”

“You’re only a headache away from being so again.” Janny winked at the enchantress. Next she knuckled Fos’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I’ll bring you some mulled ale so you won’t freeze outside. Just so long as you promise to keep the place free of Feasters.”

Beside her, Minna winced at the mention of the dangerous illusionists. The girl gazed up at the building above and mouthed, The Recurve Tower. The spire twisted about itself like a knotted serpent. It shadowed them, except for a patch of light between Hiresha and Janny from where the sun fitted between the structure’s coils.

Janny elbowed her daughter and chuckled. “Told you so.”

“Mother! Ew!” Minna turned to Hiresha and asked, “What’s the real reason they built it so wrapped around?”

“For practical reasons, of course.” The enchantress would have winked then, had she ever learned the knack of it. “The Recurve Tower is the longest tower in the Lands of Loam, yet it couldn’t have been taller than the observatory. How then could the Minister of Orbiting Bodies observe the stars?”

Minna asked, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to build the observatory higher up?”

Fos swept a hand up to the Recurve Tower. “What? And have a plain old tower? Who’d want that?”

Hiresha tapped her lips and smiled. A clever girl. The enchantress said, “Alyla, would you be so good as to show Minna around the Academy?”

Alyla had hung behind her brother in her novice robes like a teal shadow. She murmured something.

Minna tore her eyes from Fos. “What’d you say?”

In a tiny voice, Alyla said, “I have a class now. I can’t—”

“Minna may join you,” Hiresha said. The enchantress turned to Janny. “Are her quarters prepared?”

“Already stowed her basket of personables on the owl’s floor,” Janny said. “She’s no lark. Never can seem to settle herself to sleep before the throbbing hours of the morning. Aww! Would you look at those two young things together?”

Minna only came up to Alyla’s shoulder, but the taller woman walked stooped forward, arms held over her chest as if shielding herself from unseen aggressors. Hiresha hoped the two would become friends. The Opal Mind knows that Alyla needs one.

Hiresha shivered, feeling a sheen of sweat freezing to her inner gown. Battered by shock and insult, she wanted to recover in her dream laboratory. There she could determine who the falling woman had been. If she truly had been. Fatigue made Hiresha’s face feel tight, and her eyelids twitched.

“Fos, would you escort me to my chambers?”

He extended an elbow. She clasped him under the thickness of his arm. The two strode toward the serpentine tower at the center of the Academy. Hiresha’s sense of unease redoubled. She felt unbalanced and vulnerable, as if the curving tower was tipping toward her in a collapse.

With the next breath, the enchantress reassured herself the spire was stationary. Despite its twisting design, a mortar of magic held it stable. Yet the feeling remained that she must do something, soon.

“Fos,” Hiresha asked, “while on patrol, you didn’t see an enchantress approach the edge did you?”

“The cliff edge?”

“Yes. A younger woman, wearing a green dress perhaps?” Hiresha had not recognized her, but Hiresha only taught advanced courses in Applied Enchantment. If the other enchantress had been more than a figment, she must have been a student of dream exploration.

Fos stopped and faced her. “Should I have seen something?”

I must be ailing. Hiresha prided herself on her logical thinking. She would not rile herself into a frenzy over something she may or may not have seen. And if the unfortunate woman was real, she is beyond my help now.

Before Hiresha could speak further to Fos, the chancellor ambushed them with a cursory curtsey. “Provost Hiresha, you are required to teach Introduction to Magic Theory this afternoon. Enchantress Symera has made herself unavailable.”

Hiresha frowned, and her fatigued mind dredged up Symera’s fine-featured face, not the same as the falling woman’s. Compared to her deadly fall, Hiresha reasoned that encountering the chancellor twice in one hour was not so terrible a trial. Some blissful months, she need not see the Chancellor of Precious Enchantables at all while the bureaucrat was out collecting funds.

“Has Enchantress Symera fallen…” Hiresha caught herself. “…that is, has she fallen ill?”

“She is running about searching for her teaching assistant.”

Hiresha felt as if an icicle had lodged in her throat. “Her assistant, she’s not to be found?”

“Sadly, you are not the only undependable enchantress in the faculty,” the chancellor said.

Fos angled his jaw and head away from the chancellor at this, muscles flexing along his neck.

The chancellor adjusted her sleeves. So many frills of fabric branched from her wrist that the layers resembled an artichoke. “A pity you lack the time to make yourself more presentable. You are wearing, what, only half of your honorary gowns?”

“Eight dresses,” Hiresha said, “plus or minus one depending on Janny’s mood. Now about that assistant—”

“Only eight? At this rate, you will soon be traipsing about the halls wholly denuded.”

Hiresha could not flex her drowsy mind to respond to that ridiculous statement. “The assistant wouldn’t have worn a green gown, would she? With copious ribbons?”

“Why ever should I know that?” The chancellor’s lip curled upward.

“I regret that I am too out of sorts to lecture. The Skyway climb fatigued me more than expected.”

“If you feel yourself inadequate to perform your duties, Provost, you could always resign. No one would blame a woman of your relative youth from buckling under the weight of an office beyond her capacities,” the chancellor said. “Barring that, you have a classroom waiting for you.”

Next chapter…

The Grindstone

Hiresha opened the door of the lecture room to find Minna already close to tears. Another novice was taunting the girl. The heckler seemed too engrossed in her sport to notice the inrush of the enchantress’s gowns through the doorway.

“…nomad men all wear veils. Are you a shiftless nomad? Are you a man? The Minister of Orbiting Bodies is a man, too, but you’ll have to hide it or they’ll expel you. The nomad’s blue veils stain their faces. Did yours stain your face yellow, Yellow Face?”

The enchantress was pleased to see Alyla holding Minna’s hand in support. Hiresha waited in the doorway, hoping Minna would stand up for herself. Or at least feign disinterest. Hiresha had learned the power of ignoring bullies after an adolescence of being called “lazy idiot” and “sleep for brains.”

Minna pressed a hand over her veil, cowering over herself. She drew her legs to her chest, sitting on the carpet among the other novices.

Hiresha sighed. She thought Minna might have more in common with the timid Alyla than the enchantress had hoped.

The enchantress strode to the front of the room where a window opened on a view of a glass-domed building. The structure slid out of sight to be replaced by sky.

The hems of Hiresha’s gowns fluttered over the sitting women and girls. As the enchantress carried the fennec past the bully, the fox flattened his ears and gave a muffled bark.

The heckler had a narrow jaw and compact mouth so that her front teeth resembled an ivory beak. She was seemingly undaunted by the presence of the enchantress and continued speaking to Minna.

“You should love to meet Emesea. She’s a prude, too. Won’t even bathe with the rest of us. I think she’s scarred under her cotton, that her matron beat her for getting into trouble too often and left her hideous. Is that right, Emesea?”

The bully cocked her chin at a woman of squat build who wore her novice wrappings all the way up her neck. She shifted and fidgeted though she held her chin high. She was gazing out the window that now displayed the Skiarri Mountain Range. The white peaks pointed downward in relation to the classroom. By then all the rest in the class were looking to Hiresha.

The enchantress had stared down embalmed horrors in tombs and defeated soul-trapping sorcerers, but she still felt a twinge of nerves when confronted with a new class. All but one of the students were younger than she, some prettier, most more wakeful, and the bully looked down her nose at Hiresha even from her sitting position.

“You must be a princess,” Hiresha said.

“My father is King of Nagra and—”

“Where is not important,” Hiresha said. “What does matter is today’s topic of applied magics. We call this ‘hard enchantment’ because it requires a physical vector of jewel, precious metal, or stone. In addition, its study requires more dedication than the average princess can scrape out of her royal husk.”

The princess bared her beak-like teeth. She opened her mouth, but Hiresha spoke over her.

“Princesses most often study ‘soft enchantment,’ the practice of self exploration through lucid dreaming. In this way they may better accept the frilly concavity of their squandered lives.”

Startled noises hissed and spluttered from the class. Hiresha was relieved to see she had captured their attention. Though the novice with the high collar still stared out the window, her lips curved into a secret smirk. She crossed and recrossed her legs and flicked her hands open and closed. Hiresha now thought she did not fidget out of nervousness but an inability to sit still. Like a leopard with an ever-flicking tail. Behind her, the princess appeared to be trying to light Hiresha’s gowns on fire with her glare.

“The majority of applied magic can be understood with two principles.” Hiresha stroked the fennec’s golden fur as she paced in front of the window. The panes now shone white, sliding through snow on the Academy Plateau. “Although this room is angled downward, we can sit and stand on what would be the wall because of Attraction forces enchanted in the stone. Attraction is a First Sphere ability and primary power of enchantresses.”

Alyla’s head bobbed with understanding of the concept. Her dark eyes still skirted away from Hiresha’s when the enchantress cast her an encouraging smile.

The fennec yipped, and the novices grinned.

“The Second Sphere, or secondary power, of enchantresses is Lightening. By cutting gravity’s hold on this structure, the Grindstone can turn on its axle with the ease of a watermill. The same enchantment allows us to feel right-side up, even sitting on a wall.”

Hiresha delved next into the cavernous theory behind why Lightening spells also decreased an object’s inertia, an advanced subject that tended to baffle students less bright than Alyla. The following topics strayed to the teetering edge of impracticality, concerning the little-used tertiary and quaternary powers of enchantment. As Hiresha neared the conclusion of her lecture, the window to her side once again displayed the Crystal Ballroom.

“Using but the first two spheres, a student of hard enchantment can create wonders. The blocks of pyramids are Lightened by our magic. The empire’s merchant ships are enchanted to weigh so little they can sail over the desert dunes. Some say the Mindvault Academy holds the empire’s greatest treasures, not in jewels or gold but in the women who dedicate themselves to the study of magic.”

Hiresha had some difficulty saying the last part, knowing that many present would never attain even a single enchantress gown. They would go back to their respective palaces and lounge away their lives.

Today, though, the girls and women were showing remarkable attentiveness. Hiresha made a mental note to reprimand princesses at the start of more lectures. “You may now ask your questions.”

She rather hoped few would, though most times she enjoyed discussing magic theory. After the chilling Skyway climb, she felt she needed to sleep. She disdained soft enchantment as a rule, but a little lucid dreaming would help her sort through the onslaught of emotions of seeing a woman leap to her death.

Several novices bowed, more than Hiresha expected from an introductory class. The enchantress called on the first, and she lifted her head to ask her question.

“Is that a fennec fox? From Oasis City?”

“Yes.” Hiresha scratched between the fox’s ears. The tuft of his tail stuck up from the crook of her arm. He made chirping noises, along with an occasional breath of a purr. “Next question.”

“Is that fox the Golden Scoundrel?”

“Absolutely not. The sacred animal is in the capital, and it’s inconceivable for the Incarnate of the Golden Scoundrel to be on a remote clifftop of the Skiarri Mountains.” Hiresha frowned over the novices who remained bowed. “Any questions concerning applied magics?”

A girl who had half lifted herself sucked her cheeks in with embarrassment. She still asked, “What’s the fennec’s name?”

“‘Fennec’ serves well enough when he is the only one in a hundred miles. Now, I will only answer questions pertaining to hard enchantment.”

Hiresha gazed with desperation at the novices. One of them has to care enough about magic to have a real question. Alyla tapped her fingers against her lips in a thoughtful expression.

“Novice Alyla, do you have a question?”

The tall woman blushed and crouched lower on the ornate rug. Beside her, Minna had a withdrawn look. Likely still reeling from the heckling, poor dear. On the other side of the room, the novice wrapped in teal to her chin had a spark of intelligence in her eye. When she changed sitting position, which was every second, she did so with grace, and she met the enchantress’s eye with boldness. Hiresha hoped Alyla and Minna would grow up to be like her.

“What was your name, novice?”

“Emesea, Elder Enchantress.”

“Novice Emesea, I judge you have a question.”

“Some say the Mindvault is a prison for enchantresses.” Her voice filled the room. “That once trained in hard enchantment, a woman may never leave.”

Hiresha took a step back onto her skirts. “Nonsense. Enchantresses often leave the Academy, with spellswords to guard them. That is, to be their bodyguards. The Oasis Empire goes to great lengths to secure our safety because of our importance to the stability of its mercantile alliance.”

Novice Emesea held her expression firm, but her eyes seemed to smile in a manner Hiresha did not find entirely comforting.

The enchantress rested a hand on one side of her face, feeling at once too tired. She mumbled something she hoped would be taken for dismissal then stumbled from the room. For a gut-twisting moment, she felt she was indeed walking on a wall and would fall and break a bone.

The moment passed, and she was soon outside the Grindstone, holding Spellsword Fos’s arm as to not suffer the indignity of tripping in her jungle of gowns. She also handed him the fennec. Fos scratched his white belly, and the animal yipped in delight. The spellsword’s face had a pensive appearance, eyes alive with kindness. His lips were bright in the air’s nip.

A pack of novices passed them, and a few tittered at Fos. The voice of the princess rose in a loud whisper.

“It’s not allowed for an enchantress to trade kisses with a spellsword, but the Provost of Applied Enchantment never needs her maid’s help to remove her gowns.”

The skin of Fos’s neck darkened to a mahogany, but his blushes never reached his face.

It suited Hiresha for the faculty and novices to speculate about her relationship with the handsome spellsword. A few times a week, it suited her splendidly to take him up the Recurve Tower, around it, and down again to her chambers. There, behind locked doors, it suited her to sleep while he played with the fennec.

The enchantress remembered little from that day’s walk. At some point Hiresha must have sat down and fallen asleep because her head jerked upright from a doze. She was being held in front of her doorway. The spellsword had carried her through the tower, no small feat considering the girth of her gowns. He also lugged a sword on his back gilt with scrollwork for the express purpose of increasing the blade’s weight with gold.

Now it was Hiresha’s turn to blush. Even after decades living with her condition, her sleepiness still could alarm her.

“Thank you, Fos.”

He squeezed the gowns enclosing her arm hard enough for her to feel his touch. “Thanks for getting Alyla to meet the new girl. They seem right for each other.”

The enchantress nodded, her eyelids drooping.

A portrait of Hiresha above the door had her eyes closed in an expression of contemplation. The living enchantress wished she too could be sleeping as peacefully as she had through the painting sessions. She motioned Fos to hold her to the right of the ebony door. When he did, the portal opened, an enchanted bolt within the door Attracted to Hiresha’s access amulet. Before Fos could take her inside, they heard a sound like a goose choking on a pebble.

The chancellor was clearing her throat, shielding her eyes with a gilt fan of ostrich feathers from the sight of Fos carrying Hiresha. “Provost Hiresha, one can deduce you have other matters on your mind than the welfare of the Academy.”

Gritting her teeth, Hiresha pushed herself from Fos to stand on her own feet. She could infer that the only reason the chancellor would speak to her again would be to point out a new perceived failing.

“Once again, Provost, you have neglected to inform the spellswords of your guest. I understand he suffered some delay while convincing the gate wardens to give him an access amulet.”

“My guest? I saw to Minna’s amulet myself, and she—”

“He arrived this morning and has been waiting all day for your attention. Illuminate me. Is it beyond you to even recall the lord’s name?”

Hiresha dug a palm into her brow, felt points of hardness from within her gloves. “I can’t remember scheduling any treatments for—”

“He had a writ of admittance for today with your sign.” The chancellor’s smile was barbed by the downward wrinkles from accustomed frowning. “You might possibly remember him by name. Lord Tethiel.”

The Lord of the Feast. Hiresha’s drooping eyelids popped open. A bolt of tension tingled its way up her legs and spine, and she hid her anxious fingers in her draping sleeves.

“So you retain some fraction of memories,” the chancellor said. “One hopes you will recall what treatment the lord requires. It would not do to have the deficiencies of an Academy elder become the scandal of the courts.”

Before leaving, the chancellor also said in superior tones that the late hour would prevent Hiresha from treating the lord today. Arrangements had been made for him to stay overnight in a locked room in the tower. Hiresha hardly listened.

“‘Lord Tethiel’ sounds familiar.” Fos shut the door behind them and let down the fennec. The animal bounded across the purple rug in a streak of fur. “Was he at the last ball?”

Hiresha slumped against a bookshelf, relieved for the moment that Fos did not remember him as the Lord of the Feast. I’m the only one in the Academy who knows who he is, what he is. Hearing he would be under lock and key gave her a measure of assurance. A small one. With nightfall, the Lord of the Feast would come into his full power as an illusionist. False or not, his magic had scared men to death in front of her eyes.

The fennec hopped as he barked at a window, which shone with the sunset. From Hiresha’s perspective in the Recurve Tower, the horizon was upside down. A ripple of glaring red lifted into the snowcapped stalactites of the mountain range.

Hiresha knew she must confront the Lord of the Feast. He will not harm anyone at the Academy. I’ll not allow it. She worried, though, that he already had.

Lord Tethiel had arrived this morning. In the afternoon, she had seen an enchantress fall from the Academy. Provost Hiresha was no friend to coincidence.

Next chapter…