Tag: more odds than ends (Page 8 of 20)

I put Kea-not-Chloe to bed — mine, because the house hadn’t kindly obliged by sprouting another room when the Marble Witch had created her out of springtime scraps and squelched longings — and shut the door quietly.

Walked into the kitchen. Headed straight for the fridge and a beer. Opened it. And that’s when I slumped over the kitchen counter like a man who’s had his world shattered a thousand times and walked through walking dreams so strong they’d formed into jagged nightmares.

That’s what I was, after all, and it was time to stop pretending I was man enough to handle it. If the witch killed me for not pulling this job, well.

I’d deserved it since Tulsa.

The couch I’d be spending the night upon looked decided lumpy, but staring at it was better than staring at the bedroom door where I’d just read my makeshift daughter a bedtime story. Miniaturized, so I knew it must have been Geo’s, with well-worn corners.

In a day, it might be all either of us had to remember her by.

“You can’t keep her, Hayes.” Geo looked up from the thick bundle of newspaper he’d been pretending to read and pulled a frog-sized cigar and one of those snappy metal lighters from the inside of his smoking jacket. “She’s not a normal girl.”

“I know.” My voice was hoarse, barely audible in the small room. I slugged back half the beer and set it carefully down. “You’ve been quieter than usual.”

He flicked the lighter with restless familiarity. “I had kids, once upon a time.”

“A lot of tadpoles, I imagine.” The joke fell flat, but I hadn’t bothered with the right emphasis.

Geo took his time lighting the world’s smallest poison-wrapped leaf and puffed a few times. “Wasn’t always like this. Froglike. A long time ago.”

Bracing my hands on the cheap linoleum, I pushed myself up with effort. “Same.” I studied the cold bottle, watching condensation drip and pucker a poorly-adhered label. “Had a daughter, once.”

He looked at me silently, a tiny curl of smoke wafting over his head and out the open window. Twilight silhouetted the amphibian from his padded chair.

The couch I’d be sleeping on tonight would reek of it. The floor might be more comfortable after all.

“Back in Tulsa,” I started. My voice broke, and I shook my head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t it? What were you thinking?” He hopped down and headed toward me with a purpose, heading straight upward on the wall with sticky fingers in that way that made me dizzy.

“I didn’t,” I started to protest.

“You damn well did.” He blew the last of the smoke in my face and tossed the burning end of his cigar into the sink, dark eyes angry, sideways oval pupils narrow. Sticky hands gripped the collar of my shirt before I even knew he’d leapt upon my chest.

“Come on, man.” I tried to brush him off.

He wasn’t having it. “Playing with fire, that’s what you are. Racing through life like you don’t care.”

“Con man’s an excellent gig for those who prefer avoiding life,” I ventured. “And more dangerous than I’d anticipated. It’s why I went legit.”

“Right, because pentesting isn’t a nice term for the exact same thing. A con job. What kind of life is that for a daughter?”

“Low blow,” I grated out, tugging him futilely.

“You challenged the witch!” He shook my collar with surprising strength. “And you claim to have learned after Tulsa?”

I froze. “How…what d’you know about that?”

“You asked the witch for a daughter. A human being! Like you were going to the store and could just buy one!”

“Hey—”

Geo pitched his voice high. “Oh, honey, while you’re at the store, would you mind, would you pick up—”

I cut him off, a flush of anger washing over me. “Then I will damn well shoplift her if it means I get to keep my daughter!”

The smoke he’d blown into my face giggled and swirled around my nose. Once, twice, thrice. And then it zipped out the door.

“From your mouth to the fae’s ears,” Geo murmured. He looked up at me, relaxed again. “You’ll need their help to counter her magic. Dangerous, though.”

“I’ll be careful.” For her, I thought but didn’t say.

He heard it anyway, when I looked at the closed bedroom door.

“Better start planning.” He released my shirt and hopped his way toward his bedroom. “You’ll have to be careful. Or you might end up a frog.”

***

This week, Padre challenged me with “Honey, while you’re at the store, would you mind grabbing…”, plus I worked in the spare prompt of an excellent gig for those preferring to avoid life. My prompt went to Becky Jones with the case of the missing post-it note. Find these, and more, over at MOTE! Join us!

Part one is here.

Part two is here.

Frogger helped me out when I couldn’t solve the riddle. Begrudgingly, I’m sure, and I’ll owe Geo later for this. It was a surprise he bothered after I’d inadvertently left him behind.

“It’s spring,” I complained, staring out the window. “Real spring. It’s sixty degrees Fahrenheit. We don’t even get frost warnings anymore, not for weeks.” I said it with the confidence of a first-time gardener who devotedly watched local weather newscasters for reports on the safe planting time. The words weren’t even borrowed but entirely stolen from a single forecast I’d watched last night.

“Uh-huh.” He turned the page of his pint-sized newspaper. I guess those tablet readers and his frog fingers didn’t get along well, but don’t ask me where a booklet the size of a bakery roll came from every day. I just paid for it, along with everything else for my unexpected roommate.

Don’t get me started on the coupons showing up from the pet store, or the kitchen cupboard filled with his snacks. I’m never opening that one again. Not after the midnight snack fiasco.

“Too warm for snow,” I continued, banging down my coffee and leaving a circular splatter of droplets to stain the counter. “Even if I drive north. The picnic’s tomorrow. Maybe I should go with the sick kid plan.”

“Then people will avoid you,” he said, and turned another page without looking up. “The goal is to get them talking. Be friendly, not Typhoid Mary.”

“This is your fault,” I muttered. “You just had to croak where the dragon lady could hear you.”

Geo let out a long-suffering sigh and set down the paper. I’d found him a padded doll’s chair and table, and he looked for all the world like a British aristocrat of the late 1800s. Probably because he insisted on wearing a velvet smoking jacket.

“You see that tree on the edge of the property?” Geo hopped toward me, fastidiously avoiding the coffee debris, and jumped on the window, sticking to the glass with ease. He poked in the direction of an apple tree, covered in white blossoms. “Watch as the wind hits it.”

The tree in question was one of a cluster, inside a mulched garden where the previous occupant had once devoted significant effort. Green things poked through the damp wood chips, and the dew-covered grass grew long around the edges where the landlord hadn’t trimmed.

The breeze caught and spindly branches swayed. A shower of flower petals drifted sideways, floating to scatter across the garden, light covering dark in a gentle wave.

“I’ll be damned,” I said, letting out a low whistle. “Looks just like it.”

“Probably, with the company you keep,” the frog said gruffly. “Looks like you’ve got what you need to create your magical daughter out of spun snow.”

It took me a second to realize he was replying to the first part of what I’d said. “Um, thanks.”

“Don’t ever thank magical creatures,” he said, staring out at the tree. “And don’t take magic so literally. Find the loophole.”

I could have sworn he muttered, “they certainly will,” but it might have been my imagination. I didn’t push it. Something in his manner told me Geo’d had tadpoles, once, and for all his bluster, might enjoy having a kid around.

Anyone who’d handled an army of pollywogs could help me keep a human child alive for a day. I’d wanted kids, once, until my world had dissolved.

He cleared his throat and tapped the glass again. “You’d better get going if you want to collect them all. Those petals look beautiful now, but rot quickly.”

“All?”

He gave me a withering look, which was better than his previous half sympathetic state. I’d grown used to derision. “Magic has a cost.”

It wasn’t until the Marble Witch showed up—nearly at sundown, after I was smudged with dirt stuck to my face and soaked in stale sweat—that I realized how high the cost would be. And it had nothing to do with tediously sorting out the pink flowers blown in from two yards over.

“You’re learning.”

I hid my startle and carefully put another handful of petals into the enormous burlap bag, folding the rough cloth over the edge before it snagged open again on the rusted wheelbarrow it rested inside. “I try to be adaptable.”

Penetration testing depended on looking like you belonged, especially the physical component of it. No, not just looking like it, the target had to know you were meant to be there. Even my body language changed when I took a job, to match the new normal. You could say I was used to adaptability. Thrived on fast-paced change, even.

I was still bent over the bag of petals that would become the daughter I didn’t have when the Marble Witch’s breath blew across the back of my neck like an Alaskan winter in the middle of the night.

Yeah, finding out magic was real might be stretching my ability to maneuver with whatever life threw at me. I didn’t know the norms. Didn’t know how to blend.

“That’s enough for your needs.” She backed away, studying the cluster of trees that still blew petals across us both. “A clever adaptation. I wouldn’t have expected it of you.”

I gestured toward the rented house. “It’s the view from the coffeepot.” I didn’t mention the frog’s involvement. Something in my gut told me she wouldn’t like it, and never mind that she’d left him here with me intentionally.

She slammed her staff upon the ground — had she been carrying a staff a moment before? — and slashed the burlap sack with a knife that absolutely had been created out of thin air.  

My gaze snagged upon her robes as she began chanting in a language my ears refused to hear. Pressure built, and it became difficult to breathe. I fell to my knees atop shreds of mulch and yesterday’s rotted apple blossom petals, clutching my chest. My eyes were still fixed upon the cloth that looked like nothing so much as the arctic sea, rippling hypnotically, shades of icy blue, the kind of water that killed you in minutes.

Or created the daughter you thought you’d never have. The air shattered from its frozen bubble of magic as the pressure broke from inside this springtime grove.

I sucked in ragged breaths with newfound gratitude for oxygen as the Marble Witch leaned on her staff, robes rippling in the breeze. Once more the fabric masqueraded as mere clothing rather than an intoxicating ocean. Perhaps the hag had weaknesses after all.

Her eyes flashed icicles at me, and it belated occurred to me that perhaps I should learn to control my thoughts when she was in the vicinity.

“Her name is Chloe,” the witch snapped. “You have until tomorrow’s full sundown. Payment has been offered and accepted, using the snow that falls in sunlight and the daughter of your dreams.”

“Wait, what?” Had she meant that part about dreams literally? Where was that frog to interpret when I needed him?

She was already gone, leaving behind a young girl of perhaps eight at best, wearing a dress made of woven vines and holding a small crystal of indeterminate color that pulsed with the witch’s ice magic. Dark hair, dark eyes, and when I looked at her, she winked with great seriousness. She used her whole face, exactly like a child who’s discovered but not mastered winking yet.

“I’m not really Chloe,” she said with a cheeky grin. “I just let her think that.”

“I know,” I said, and felt my heart breaking already.

I’d thought this might be Tulsa redux. A simple job gone wrong, the disaster that cost everything. The city that destroyed without mercy the future of a screaming man in mourning. Now I knew.

This wouldn’t be Tulsa.

This was going to be so much worse.

***

I don’t know where this story is headed yet, but I’m having fun with it and eagerly awaiting the next prompt to continue this tale from MOTE. It’s a nice break from Peter and June (yes, I’m working on it, I swear!).

This week’s suggestion came from Cedar Sanderson: I knew immediately her name was not Chloe.

And can’t wait to see what nother Mike does with my suggestion: She followed a trail of fireflies.

Hayes’ satchel made an odd noise. The battered case looked incongruous enough against the authentic Persian rug – hand-woven, he could tell – outclassed by eons beyond the salary he hoped to make.

It might have gone unnoticed, if it hadn’t happened again. This time, a lengthy croak.

“Excuse me?” The woman behind the desk broke off her previous question with a sternness Hayes suspected she displayed most during hostile client negotiations. “I daresay your briefcase…ribbited.”

“I apologize, ma’am,” Hayes interjected with a tap to the top of the brown leather. “I silenced my phone for the interview, of course, but expect my daughter got into something that chirps. She’s a regular Houdini, hacking into things.”

“Like her father,” Celia commented. She settled back into the executive leather chair and steepled long brown fingers together. “A miniature coder. How wonderful. You’ll have to bring her to the company picnic next week. I bet she’d be an absolute terror.”

He covered his surprise and bobbed his head, nodding. “Well, of course. I’d be delighted. I’ve got the job, then?”

She extended a red-tipped hand toward him and gave him a fierce smile reminiscent of a shark that’s spotted a wounded tuna. “You do. Get with Kelly up front for the paperwork.”

“I’m so pleased.” Hayes kept babbling as he backed out of her office and into the sterile yet luxurious entryway.

Kelly turned and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Paperwork’s already hit your inbox, as long as the address you provided is still good.”

He nodded, the adrenaline pumping still. One hurdle down. “Thanks so much. The whole process has been very organized.”

“Of course. Now, when you take the elevator, head for the basement. Security might as well get you your badge ASAP. Boss lady wants you to start tomorrow.”

It wasn’t until he was alone in the elevator – as posh as the rest of the building, but as art deco in function and speed as in style – that he held the case to his chest and dared a whisper. “You’ll have to keep it down, if you want to come with me. You promised to be quiet.”

A peeved, thin voice answered him sharply. “It’s instinct, curse you. I can’t help it. Besides, she was about to ask you a question you couldn’t answer.”

“Uh-huh. Your instincts kicked in right in the dragon lady’s plush lair?” Hayes laughed. “She likes power symbols. We can use that.”

A frog leg extended nimbly from a crack and made an unmistakable gesture with long toes. “Let me out when we get to security, noodle brain.”

“Yeah, I love you too, partner. Speaking of unanswerable questions, where am I supposed to find a daughter within a week?”

The elevator doors creaked open.

***

This week, nother Mike challenged me with: There were frogs in his briefcase.

My prompt went to AC Young: The dreams of a hero frozen into stone.

Go check it (and more) out over at MOTE!

They say home is where the heart is, but it turns out it was the hart.

Let me explain.

As it turned out, it all started with the deer.

And the first victim was my sister, who couldn’t stand to see an animal hurt. The hart staggered into the garden, she slipped outside with a cheery wink, and a laugh as I warned against antlers.

“Don’t worry so much,” she said. Her last words.

The last coherent ones, anyway. I still hear her, sometimes, slamming into the basement door and moaning.

***

A very quick blurb today, inspired by AC Young: “Home is where the hart is.” I’m afraid I got a touch morbid with it!

My prompt this week went to nother Mike, who investigated killer trees.

Find this, and more, at MOTE!

“How goes the waiting?” Selahi called as she came in on the power line for a landing. “Anything die yet?”

The other vultures continued to stare into the backyard of the latest dying place, the sweet scent of rotting garbage and bones wafting upward. None of them responded.

“Guys? Hello?” She settled in and started to preen, self-conscious that her feathers might be ruffled and unsightly. “Did I offend you?”

“Just look,” Jeskor hissed without turning his head.

She craned her neck around so fast a muscle twinged. “Good thing I like my prey already gone,” Selahi muttered. “And…”

Shining, glittering red came from the dump below, where something caught the light and made it gleam like a nuclear reactor.

Her beak watered at the thought of mutated prey. “What is it? Can we have it yet? Is it dead?”

“That,” creaked the white-streaked Ensor two perches down, “is called a dragon. And they are delicious. You missed the Salt Wars, but trust me, you won’t forget the taste of rotted dragon.”

She snapped her beak twice and mantled her wings. “It’s huge. We’ll feast for days. I haven’t had something new in so long. Just rabbits.”

“Evil, red-eyed little sots,” Beccki muttered. “I enjoy their demise, and regret not being the cause.”

A golden gleam approached from the west, for all the world looking as if the great airborne fireball had spit out a smaller, less predictable version of itself onto the earth.

Selahi’s anticipation dried up as she watched the gleam approach. “I think there’s another one coming.”

“Fire!” croaked Ensor, flapping his wings in futile effort. “Fire breather! Flee!”

The roar of flame proved him correct, and Selahi mourned the loss of her babysitter’s mate.

The vultures scattered, settling into a new flight pattern…keeping an eye on the ruby scales below.

***

A snippet here, though I think I’ll come back to it sometime. This one from Becky Jones was fun, and I hope she enjoyed the trade as well.

Lots in progress, and now back to work!

**New! Update at the end!**

Fourteen Years Ago

“Here’s one.” Mala circled an ad in the folded-up local newspaper pressed against her knee and wondered how much longer they’d be able to hold on before having to close. She felt a pang of guilt. Even the magical world wasn’t immune from the progress of time and technology. Perhaps she’d have been able to help keep her father’s paper open, if she’d made different decisions, if she hadn’t moved away —

But Pops was doing fine, with his new paranormal investigations gig, and when she looked at Lars, she had no regrets for the life she’d chosen.

The man in question came into the room with a jangle of car keys, carrying her jacket. “I don’t care where it is, we’re going to see it. It’s the first one you’ve sounded excited about in a week.”

She laughed, and opened her arms, pulling him down onto the sun-warmed loveseat with her. “Silly man, we have plenty of time to find a place. This one does sound perfect, though.”

Lars smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear and settled in close, one arm protectively wrapped around her. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s a full acre of land. Four bedrooms, two and a half baths. Room for a garden, and ends on a lake. And reasonably priced to boot. I’ve no idea why it hasn’t sold before, so could be a lot of work.”

“Enough space the neighbors won’t see us using magic to fix the place up.” His beard tickled her jaw. “Hey, what’s this?”

Writing formed underneath the neatly printed typeface. Handwritten, in ink, as if one of her father’s ghosts were writing it as she and Lars watched.

Magic portal access in backyard included.

“Now we know why it hasn’t sold,” Mala breathed.

“Old-school,” Lars observed. “I haven’t seen the mundane eye-skip spell since I was a kid.”

She grimaced, turning her head against his. “A portal, though.”

“Quite grand, having one in the backyard rather than using a public transport. Convenient to get to the Department every morning.”

She held his hand over her stomach. “We have more than ourselves to think about now. What if he stumbles into the portal?”

“Oh, we’ll solve that problem by pretending it doesn’t exist.” He rubbed her belly and kissed her temple. “Or the more reasonable solution, darling.”

Mala looked at him questioningly.

“A fence, darling. We’ll put up a fence.”

***

**Keep scrolling for an update to this post**

This week, I remembered it was Tuesday, huzzah! I’ve got something in the works this dovetails with nicely, so I combined my missed prompt from AC Young last week – the problem that doesn’t exist – with this week’s, from Becky Jones, about the advertisement with a magical portal in the backyard. Cheers! Find these and more at MOTE.

Update! Just received this in the mail. My name isn’t on the cover, but my story is. 😉 Coming 24 March!