Obscurely Obvious Read online

  “There. Look!” She was breathless. Laughing. Excited.

  The hill fell away beneath them in a sharp bluff edged with a strip of white sand. Beyond that, the sea had created a curving, shallow inlet. In the midst of it a ruin rose from a small rocky island. Four snow white pillars lifted so straight and so high that Damon thought they must scrape the heavens. Graceful arches connected them, broken off on the seaward edges as though they had once continued in a full circle.

  What must it have looked like when it had been new? Even now there was something moving in its simple beauty. It spoke of age and of power.

  “What do you think?” Ilyana asked, hugging him.

  “I—it’s marvelous.” Such a paltry word. “What is it? And why haven’t I ever heard of it before today?”

  She gave him a secret smile and pulled on his hand again, moving to descend the bluff. “We don’t get many visitors here.”

  Damon laughed. “So you’ve said. All the terrible stories keep people away.”

  “And you don’t believe them.” She grinned at him as if she knew something he didn’t and skipped down the path.

  Damon trailed after, then paused on an outcropping of rock to look at the arches again. The closer they got, the more it exuded a sense of presence.

  “Hurry! We’re going to be late!” Ilyana urged, running across the sand.

  Shaking his head and smiling, Damon trotted after her. As they splashed through the shallow water, he saw that they were not alone. A handful of people gathered at the base of one of the columns. As they neared, another dozen or more rose from where they’d been sitting on the broken remains of steps.

  “Who are they?” Damon asked.

  “You’ll see. This is going to be amazing. The chance of a lifetime...”

  How could he refuse the look of anticipation on her lovely face?

  Smiles and words of welcome greeted the pair and the atmosphere took on an air of celebration. Fireflies danced through the columns. The low, throbbing sound of music came from everywhere and from nowhere.

  Ilyana dragged Damon to the center of the circle and up on what might have been a low altar. She glanced up at the sky, then at the assembling people and gave them a nod.

  Curious, Damon watched as the others drew around them, clasped hands, and began singing. Or chanting. He wasn’t sure which, for it seemed a strange combination, different from the sound he’d heard just a moment ago.

  “Is this how your people get married?” he asked, teasing.

  “No.” The fire in her eyes had grown until Damon could almost believe he saw flames flickering within them. “This is how we live forever.”

  “I could handle that.”

  “Probably not. Stand here. Hold your arms out.”

  Gamely, he complied. “Why?”

  “It opens your center.”

  Damon huffed a surprised laugh. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “To help me. You want to help me, don’t you?” she asked, her voice suddenly husky. When he would have embraced her, she steadied his arms, then drew her hands down his chest. As she walked around him, she whispered words he couldn’t quite catch.

  “What did you say?”

  She pressed against his back, her breath tickling his neck. “Listen. I’ll say the words again.”

  Damon turned toward her. She caught him and laughed. “No, stay here!”

  He did. He felt ridiculous. “This feels like a ritual.”

  “It is.”

  “For what?”

  “I told you.” She went around him again, dragging her fingers ‘round his torso.

  He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “You are so going to owe me.”

  “True.” She paused to peer into his face, suddenly serious. “Very true.”

  A trick of the night suspended every sound but the murmur of the ocean as it swept in and out, in and out… Ilyana’s uncanny eyes narrowed and she took a step back.

  Damon stood rooted to the stone, unable to follow—unable to move. “What’s going on? What have you done to me?”

  “Magic.”

  “There’s no such thing. Whatever it is, stop it. Let me go.”

  She held her arms out, mimicking him, her hands cupped.

  The fireflies all flew down to whirl among the chanters. Then, with a shift of words and drop in octave, the flickering lights streamed toward Ilyana. It gathered in her hands and grew until Damon had to squint against the brightness.

  It couldn’t be magic. No such thing existed outside of fairy tales. “That’s beautiful You’re beautiful.”

  “Yes.” A breath. A hiss.

  He shook his head against foolish alarm. “How do you do it?”

  “Hold still,” she whispered. Fireflies gleamed in her russet curls.

  Impossibly, the chanters sang with the ocean, a murmuring rustle of water, a rumbling bass of thunder. Damon strove to move, to break the spell.

  The light sprang from Ilyana’s hands and shot toward him. Through him. The pain was at once terrible and exquisite. He looked down to find shaft after shaft of light stabbing into him, illuminating him from the inside out. How was that even possible?

  He gasped as another beam struck him and drove him to his knees.

  His horrified eyes lifted to his lover. Ilyana’s hands stretched out to him. Her mouth opened in ecstasy as yet another spear thrust into him. He wanted to scream, to protest, but his body refused to respond. He looked down again to where the light—her light—entered him. Each lance stabbed him, lingered, then retreated back to Ilyana’s hands. Her face. Her eyes.

  Vaguely, he realized that his life was being siphoned away.

  This was It. The End. How could two tempestuous weeks of fairy tale romance come to this? Desperate, Damon forced one word from his lips. “Why?”

  Ilyana shuddered in rapture, then her heated eyes focused on his. “For immortality.” A wicked smile curved her beautiful mouth. “You should have listened to the stories...”

  Deliver Me

  “Deliver me...”

  Such a small whisper couldn’t even begin to penetrate the weighted air holding the room in thrall. Dust motes made timid forays into the single, narrow beam of light sidling in through a clerestory window. Books—beautiful, enchanting, influential, fabulous books—crammed the shelves from floor to ceiling. They teetered in stacks on chairs and on the floor. They balanced along the window ledge. Every one of them had assumed the tight-lipped silence of a group of curmudgeons. Traitors they, refusing to offer even the slightest, most fragile means of escape. Even the glorious maps of places far and near, real and imagined, curled away from their duties. Mute. Contrary.

  The clock, though... The clock reigned supreme, posing on the mantel like a little mechanical general. If it owned legs, it would strut. Puffed with self-importance, it shrieked out the seconds with the voice of a shrew. Tick... tick... tick... Each announcement of passing time banged on the eardrums, a frantic reminder and a jeering skeptic all at once.

  “Deliver me... Deliver me... Deliver me what? Mail? Pizza? How about a surprise package from—Oh, I don’t know. Godiva Chocolate. Barnes and Noble. No, not them. Unless they’re sending music. The last thing I need is another unhelpful book.” Leslie paced the small space behind the desk, one hand on her hip and the other rubbing the back of her neck. Deliver Me was the required title for the new short story challenge—also required. She’d like to take a baseball bat to the head of the person who’d thought that one up. “Deliver me from evil. Plenty of that going on around here,” she grumbled uncharitably. “Evil books. Evil deadlines. Evil publishers setting deadlines. Somewhere in here there has got to be inspiration.”

  Another desperate examination of the room’s contents yielded nothing whatsoever. The books, the maps, all the eclectic little odds and ends, and the clock—certainly the clock—collaborated with the muse. The muse was the most evil of all, though the conviction remained unvoiced. Muses had uncanny hearing and de
licate sensibilities. They were also easily distracted and capricious. They’d disappear at the merest whim without even a microscopic attempt at consideration. Couldn’t they at least leave a note? A little scrap of paper somewhere, anywhere, that might read: ‘Off to _____.’ No signature necessary. No polite apology tacked on.

  “Deliver me from this wasteland of words, this desert of the imagination!” she implored the sulky atmosphere. Dragging her hands down her face distorted her features into a mask of tragedy.

  “Oh, that’s good,” came a fragile voice from the corner of the desk. The fragility didn’t keep it from wielding disparagement like a lethal weapon. “Been reading the thesaurus, have we?”

  Leslie sighed and closed her eyes. Experience had taught her that the reappearance of the muse didn’t necessarily ensure cooperation. It might well be stopping in for the sole purpose of baiting her and entertaining itself. “How lovely to see you. Did you enjoy your holiday?” she asked, striving for a hint of enthusiasm.

  “Is that what you think it was?” A slight, small creature, the muse flitted about like a wisp, too quick for Leslie to make out its gender. Always in motion, it slipped in and out of view. If she watched too long, it would make her nauseous.

  “I beg your pardon,” she apologized. “Might I ask where you went?”

  “On a foray. I have to get my material from somewhere, you know.” The muse paused significantly, conveying an attitude of inspecting the surroundings. “There’s certainly not much around here.”

  “I thought you were omniscient.”

  “Well, of course.” The muse recovered its vanity with practiced ease. “But it helps if I occasionally refresh my memory.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, did you find anything refreshing we might use for the title of ‘Deliver Me’?”

  “How about a discourse on the life of a pig herder?”

  Silence.

  “The birth of an infant.”

  Leslie quirked a single critical brow.

  “All right, all right. I’ve got it. A passenger on a... train. No, a plane. With one engine afire. That could be exciting.”

  “Is there much paperwork involved in requesting a new muse, or can I do it online?” One of the common misconceptions about muses was that only nine of them existed. Leslie had yet to discover if the Greeks had been trying to control the muses or the other way around. Her question earned one of those out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye looks meant to chill the blood. It didn’t work. Instead, Leslie lifted a finger to tap against her lips.

  “What?”

  “Hush, I’m thinking.”

  “Ah, that explains the awful smell. Like something burning.”

  Funny. Oh, so funny. Leslie squeezed her eyes tight and put her hands over her ears, trying to nurture a half-formed thought into a workable tale.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ve got it!” she announced in triumph. Her chair creaked as she cast herself into it. Stabbing the space bar on her keyboard brought the computer screen back to life.

  “Do I get a ‘thank you’ this time?”

  “For what?” Her fingers danced over the keyboard. Joy banished the mocking voice of the clock and blocking out impending doom with a stream of words. Lovely, lovely words...

  “Where do you suppose your inspiration just came from?” the muse asked, puffing its chest in indignation.

  “Ummm...” Clickety clickety click the keys chattered, and Leslie’s brow furrowed in concentration. “You’re right. You’re quite right.”

  “Of course I am.” The muse’s conceit was thick enough to slice, dice, and package for resale. “Omniscience.”

  Clearly, the muse’s concept of ‘omniscient’ was a little on the weak side. “There was a deadline,” Leslie read as she typed. “There was always a deadline. But did the indifferent muse deliver inspiration? Did it give in to the desperate author’s plea for deliverance? No. The fickle creature always claimed to be a font of genius and artistry, but it was, in fact, a fraud.”

  “A what?”

  One could almost hear the blink of astonishment, but Leslie suppressed a smile and went on. “The well was empty. Of course, the muse didn’t want anyone knowing that, so it procrastinated its duty. It took frequent and extended jaunts to ‘look for new material.’ Strangely, it always managed to return just a little too late.”

  On the corner of the desk, the muse gave a horrified shriek and burst into a whirlwind of light and motion. Its temper affected nothing at all. Letters and papers remained unruffled. The pretty feathered plume pen in its pretty brass holder didn’t even ripple. “You can’t write that!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You inspired me. You said so yourself.”

  Elran’s Journey

  Elran glared first at the stunted plant on the lab table, then at the computer terminal displaying his hypothesis. He punched a key, and the computer gave him a side-by-side of the intended results of his experiment and a chemical breakdown of the misshapen reality. What had gone wrong? The hypothesis wasn’t so far-fetched, a simple DNA substitution—Ansim could have used the same idea and produced a lush garden. But then, his brother always did everything right.

  He slammed his fist down on the keyboard, ignoring the loud beep and string of commands it produced. Propping his chin on his hands, he stared at his latest disaster. It wouldn’t be so bad if this was his first, or even his second or third such failure. What was wrong with him? All through basic schooling education had been a simple matter of applying himself. But ever since he’d entered the Academy of Sciences he’d been having trouble. Maybe he should have settled on a future in astronomy or robotics. At least then he would have been dealing in absolutes instead of hypothetical hopefuls. Not that he had any more interest in them than in biotechnics. His parents, however, had insisted on a career suitable for a future Peer. Never mind that of all the careers there were to chose from, the sciences appealed to him the very least. Even that wouldn’t be so bad if he could do half as well as Ansim. He couldn’t help a niggling jealousy of his brother’s success, yet he admired his talent and his dedication.

  Looking sourly at the ruined plant, he wondered if he would be able to fabricate a new experiment to coincide with these last results. He’d done it once or twice before, but it had made him feel like a criminal.

  “What’s this?” Professor Sheel asked, peering over his shoulder.

  Elran jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching him, but the Prof was always a quiet one—quiet moving and quiet talking. There was a rumor among the students that he was a magic-user, but if it were so, the Peerage would have taken measures to control him.

  “It’s just an experiment, sir,” he answered. Too late to fake the tests now. He’d have to do the whole stupid thing over again.

  “From the look on your face, it doesn’t look as though you like it much.” The Prof reached over to the computer and recalled the test data. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Did you find anything out by staring at the plant?”

  Elran blushed. “No, sir.”

  The Prof stared for a moment at the screen. “You’d best get on it then. Do the test over. Use the accelerator and let me see what you come up with.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His teacher glided away on cat’s feet and Elran blew out a sigh of disgust that lifted a lock of red-gold hair and dropped it across his forehead and into his eyes. He brushed it away impatiently and pulled the retarded plant closer. What he needed was some of the Prof’s magic, he decided as he clipped a leaf and prepped it for the scope. He pressed his eye to the lens and triggered the focus mechanism. Never mind the Prof’s magic, he’d need to use some of his own. He looked at the magnification without seeing anything. It was a risky thing, using magic. The results were unpredictable. And if he anyone caught him, he would face the Peerage and ignominious dismissal.

  “This is a practical and scientific society dedicated to the preservation a
nd advancement of ourselves and our posterity,” he quoted, mimicking the voice of Peer Andros. “We have progressed to a technical age and magic is neither practical nor scientific. It is detrimental to everything we believe in. It is unlawful and will not be tolerated in our society.”

  He wrinkled his nose. That left the other society: the outsiders; the peasants. It was a stupid waste. Magic could be quite useful, as he’d discovered for himself.

  The first time he’d stumbled upon it was in just such a situation as he now faced; another experiment gone wrong. He’d done it over. And over. He’d ended up sitting at the lab table holding a withered, trailing vine in his hand, unable to decide whether to give it another try or throw the wretched thing in the waste bin. He’d closed his eyes and willed the whole episode to be a nightmare to forget upon waking. He’d pictured the plant in his hand green and healthy, fragrant and pliable, giving his vision the strength of desperation. Then he’d thrust the thought out of his mind with a self-deprecating snort. When he opened his eyes, the image of his vision stood on the table before him. Gone was the mutated plant that had been his experiment. In its place was the fine and healthy bush that had been his plan in the beginning.

  To say he’d been surprised would have been an understatement. He’d been appalled, embarrassed, then intrigued. Had he really done that himself? Was the forbidden magic actually a possibility? In secret, and with not a little trepidation, he’d experimented with it. With practice he’d been able to exert a tenuous control. Still, the implications of what he was attempting had restrained even his youthful enthusiasm. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught ‘employing a forbidden substance.’

  With a grimace, he brought his attention back to the slide he was supposed to be studying. He entered his findings into the computer and ordered a comparison. The parallels were marginal. He might as well have been looking at an entirely different plant. Was it possible that his had been accidentally switched with someone else’s? He checked the labels. There was no mistake. He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, then glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone else was in the room. Clear. He grasped the container and closed his eyes, concentrating on the plant inside it. Green. Healthy. Strong. He pushed the image from himself to the plant, a tingling warmth running through him with the use of the magic.