A Maze of Glass, Chapter Nine, Pt. 1
You practice.
The grimoire begins with a small selection of ‘test’ spells, ritualized cantrips subtextually meant to strengthen and inoculate your sixth sense against the physical, psychological, and spiritual trauma associated with witnessing supernatural or paranormal events as-they-really-happen. Within a few months, you can get these spells to work an average of seven out of ten castings. You do not know that this is not impressive, that this is considered ‘normal’ by the People In the Know. You also do not know that the practitioners for whom this is ‘normal’ have all received structured, formal training. The People In the Know do not afford training to unknown nobodies such as yourself.
In this way, your expertise is quite ab-normal.
You practice. Even though every story ends the same way, you practice.
(we’re/they’re/it’s sorry, but they do)
Nobody knew how dreamer worked. Least of all Omar. It buzzed beehive in the honeycomb of his cortex. It sang cosmic lullabies along the sinewy chords of his synaptic instrument. He vibrated at the frequency that dissolved him. He dissolved. The trillion disparate fractals of Omar splintered and danced through the no-place every-place. Zoe was in him, he was in her, she was him, he was her—they were the Summoner and so are you, practicing.
How did dreamer work?
Maybe some things are unknowable. The myriad layered infinity needs some mystery, after all.
You try to show other people. “No, you don’t understand, I can prove it.” The flare sizzles in the air, blinding-bright, and you’ve strengthened your sixth sense so much you don’t even flinch at the sight. You gesture. “What?” your friend asks, clueless. “You didn’t see it?” you ask. “See what?” You play it off as nothing, just a joke. Sometimes a joke is an important thing wearing the mask of unimportance.
It happens by accident. Some of that growing frustration and buried pain seeps into the spell and the flare flies into your colleague’s face. She screams, flailing at it. It does no harm, unable to, and fizzles out. For seconds she stares at the wisps of silver-white smoke still illuminated even as they vanish. “What was that?” she asks. You do not know what a sixth sense is and you do not understand what lets her see it. You smile, happy to answer. She is not happy to know.
You run out of friends and colleagues to run the test on. You seek people out online.
One person seizes and foams at the mouth at the sight of the flare. It seems to you that everyone at least notices the spell when you fire it directly at them. You aim it at them on purpose. All of them witness it, if only for a moment. Seconds later, some remember nothing. Some take a few deep breaths and blink and simply forget, others seize and sputter, twitch and tic. During the second such incident, you try to help the woman spasming and spittle-hissing on the floor. But she doesn’t need help. None of them do. Their minds reject or replace the stimuli. It just takes time.
One man starts screaming and hitting you after witnessing the flare. You push him off and throw him into the wall and when he rebounds wide-eyed he sprints back upstairs and out of the building. He screams the whole time. You don’t know this, but he eventually undergoes sixty days of inpatient psychotherapy before returning to his almost-normal life. You don’t know this, either: he doesn’t remember you at all.
You find only two people who seem able to see and recall the flare—your colleague from weeks ago and another woman you discover through an occult forum. You don’t know why. Why would you, poor thing? But you know that magic can change the world.
Turning pages deeper into the grimoire, you begin building small constructs. The magic drains you, leaves you sweat-puddled and panting, aching from head to toe, but it works. You build a rat Construct, attaching extra tails between its forelegs and giving them prehensile flexibility. As all sometimes-capitalized Constructs, it obeys. It gathers tools and supplies from around the apartment and surrounding area while you work. The ritual that gave it life took nine hours and the rat-minion survives for six days. When it dies, the added tails slowly unravel. Minutes after its death, no trace of them remains. The rat rots faster than it ought to.
You make two more.
The fourth Construct you make isn’t a rat. You show it to the woman from the occult forum. She’s stunned and impressed, at first. Then nervous. Her nervousness itches at you. What’s to be afraid of? This is magic. This is animate flesh. Something like this could change everything. “Where did you get the cat?” she asks.
“Where did I get the fucking cat!?”
What a minuscule concern.
Everyone knew that magic had a cost. Everyone.
What is it worth to change the world? A person might as well ask what it might be worth it to save the world—everything. A utopia is a priceless thing. Do the ends justify the means? A question for second-generation utopians.
You can do this. Can you? You certainly believe you can.
“How?” Omar and Zoe and Sung-ho ask. “How?”
They slingshot out of your history. They drift and spin in the no-place every-place.
Fade in. EXT. ALLEYWAY, SLATE RAINY EVENING MELTING INTO NIGHT.
Behold, a pale horse, white paint scrawled on concrete. Leaking garbage bags drooled bio-color. Behind a restaurant, a sigil hummed with magic. A number of rats roved the alley, not-quite-right. They attended the sign.
Fade out.
Omar smashcut Zoe smashcut Omar smashcut—
—and where did Sung-ho go?—
(every story)
Jill smashed the mirror, screaming. Microsplinters chewed her knuckles red. A shard already cracked into other shards fractal-fell into the basin. Jill grabbed it. Elsewhere in the maze-like and magic-twisted house, she heard gunfire. Clutching the fractal-glass so hard it drew blood, Jill howled out of the bathroom. Would she ever be free of this? Would Zoe?
—s m a s h c u t—
What does it cost to change the world? It costs the story a different ending, and
—we’re/they’re/it’s sorry, but—
—the story might read differently if—
(if)
In your dreams, a saw of teeth tore reality open. All sorts of magic spilled out, Prometheus-Pandora, undeniable and unreturnable. No take-backsies. You put your arm in the wound just to feel it. Its tongue sandpapered your skin, the scab a maw, the wound, lips. This is the thing that eats the veil.
You wondered the cost of changing the world?
Someone has to rewrite the book.
Zoe jerked awake, momentarily lost in the lunatic sensation of being and having been multiple people and things and places and times during the dreamer vision. She yelped from the overwhelm and rolled onto her side, panting. Vague commotion dopplered around her but she couldn’t understand it through the vision’s dissipation. Still heaving for sweet blessed air, she pulled her notebook toward her and started writing. The commotion crescendo’d, voices joining noise. She couldn’t understand it, yet. Words appeared on the page. She didn’t stop to read. Every good agent knew that the important thing was recording everything. Interpretation came later.
The noise sharpened, her mind-brain-soul-ego catching up to her waking body.
Her writing slowed, her tethers to the vision unraveled by urgent sound. Droplets of sweat splatted the page, blurring some of the ink. The pen hesitated. She recognized Seo-yeon shouting something in Korean. She stopped writing. Turning, she saw Sung-ho standing up, his own notebook abandoned. He wiped sweat from his face backhanded. At the foot of the basement stairs, they’d left their sidearms in a plastic container just in case the Summoner somehow knew powerful psychic and dream arcana. Sung-ho rushed over to it speechless, grabbed his gun from inside, and started up the steps.
Dropping her pen, Zoe followed.
“Dad!” Hyun-jung called out, above. “What the fuck is that!?”
Zoe grabbed her pistol from the bin. Paused. Looked back.
Omar laid out on top of his sleeping bag, eyes roving behind their lids. His lips moved in rapid-fire syllables but Zoe couldn’t hear anything he whispered—if he whispered anything at all—over the cavalcade clattering from upstairs. He seized, back arching, and strained against some unpleasant span of vision. A groan stretched out of him.
How strong had his sixth sense really become? How long could he stay inside a dreamer vision and safely make it back out again?
Zoe stood frozen, one foot on the basement landing and the other on the next step up. Omar’s lips pressed into a line. A plaintive whine bobbed his Adam’s apple.
Upstairs, something crashed to the floor. Inhuman vocal chords snarled.
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