with a taxi. She hugged him like a distant cousin. They went back to the hotel. Don carried one of the dolls with him.
17 January
The spirits drift, mostly without a sound, across fields and between trees and around the corners of the highest mountains. They whisper to each other. They tell stories, and re-tell those stories to strangers, other spirits, higher and lesser creatures, anyone who might listen.
The spirits drift like smoke, shifting and dissipating, ever in a state of transformation.
Sometimes, one of the spirits will take on a more substantial form, often out of boredom or curiosity, sometimes with a mind toward justice, once in an age for beauty.
Such a thing happened, the mist taking flesh, under the light of a crescent moon – a feat of unbelievable strength and will – after sensing a beautiful thing and coming closer to see the young man bathing in the river.
The mist took a feminine shape, although she never completely shed her ethereal aspect. She approached the man at the river.
“I am but a dream,” she said to him, which is as truthful as a spirit can be.
“I have had dreams,” the man said, emerging from the river, “but I have never seen one such as you.” He dried himself and dressed, never taking his eyes from her. “You must be cold,” he said.
“I do not feel the cold,” the spirit said.
“Are you hungry? Tired? Lost?”
“None of these things.”
He smiled and touched her cheek gently. “Ah, but you are not in love. I can see the spirit in you. It is not your way.”
“You know the truth of me,” the spirit admitted. “I came closer to...”
She didn’t finish what she meant to say. The man shushed her and spoke in a whisper. “I know why you’re here. To give yourself to me. And I accept.”
For the man was a magician, and recognizing the spirit, he bound her to him. “Until death,” he said, meaning hers, “or love.”
This made her afraid. She protested. “But I can know neither.”
“Then you’ll be my servant a long, long time.”
The magician was something of a wicked man, though he had no grand intentions. He made her steal for him, sometimes gold and sometimes bread. He made her open locks. He made her poison an innkeeper who had tried to cheat him. He made her hide him in shadows when others intended him harm.
He also made her feed a beggar girl. He made her protect a gypsy falsely accused of giving false prophecy. He made her learn to dance. He made her deliver justice upon the head of an unjust judge.
The magician grew old, but the spirit knew nothing of age. He told his stories of heroes and romance and trickery. She gave him stories of ancient feuds and unsolvable puzzles and sharp-tongued fiends.
They travelled frequently, walking from town to town, making friends and enemies, none of which would be for life, never staying much longer than a fortnight.
One foggy evening, between towns, as the rain came down in slow, lazy drops the size of your thumb, they were ambushed by bandits. Almost immediately, one stabbed the spirit in the back. His sword burst out between her breasts. She leaked mist into the fog. The magician, enraged, killed the lot of them, eleven in all, saving the swordsman for last. The things he did to that would-be murderer before he finally died defy description.
The magician did his best to heal the spirit, but she could not be saved. On the ground, in the magician’s arms, she shed a single ethereal tear like a diamond and said, “But I cannot die.”
“But you are dying,” the magician said. He also cried.
She lifted a weak hand to his cheek. “You are not wounded.”
“You are,” he said. “It is the same.”
She smiled and said, “I believe you.”
Two impossible things happened that night. The magician, understanding neither, and indeed understanding much less than that, took a room in the next village and locked himself inside it.
For days, the magician never emerged from his room, until finally the innkeeper had the door broken open. The magician was found dead, petrified, a statue of solid mist and diamond tears. His room became a shrine, and the innkeeper a rich man.
18 January
It was a classic romance, by some definition.
The boy met the girl in their teens. They went out a few times, ran away to different colleges, lost each other’s numbers.
Boy became an accountant for criminal enterprises, where, by necessity, he learned various means of self-defense.
Girl became a master chef and opened her own restaurant to rave reviews.
Boy’s boss ordered a hit. It went down in the girl’s restaurant, and it went ugly. The target got away.
The girl went after the assassin. She was a chef. She had knife skills. The assassin had no chance.
The target turned back and went after the boss. In the showdown, neither survived and much was destroyed.
Boy went out to get drunk and consider his future employment. The girl went out to get drunk and figure some way to re-build her restaurant.
Boy and girl got drunk together. Recognized each other. Explored their individual pasts, the present, the future.
As I said, it was a classic romance, and there should’ve been nothing to get in their way. He had money. She had skills. They had dreams, big dreams, and their love was real.
Did I mention the time travelling aliens? Popped into our time in the newly opened restaurant. Critics ran screaming. The aliens had ray guns, after all.
But that wasn’t enough to get in the way of their love.
Did I mention the radioactive monster tearing up the streets? The National Guard had to take it down.
What about the supernatural circus made up of ghouls, magicians, creeps, freaks, murderers, and pickpockets?
The mad arsonist blowing up everything he could blow up, buildings and limousines and finally himself?
The ghost with her head on backwards?
There was a ninja.
None of these things did any damage to the love shared by the boy and the girl. The trust between them was unshakable. The love unprecedented. They laughed together and cried together and ate the most exquisite meals.
No, the thing that stuck a wedge between them was a photographer with a 600mm telephoto lens.
Is there a moral to this story? Don’t get caught. It’s not a good moral, but it’s honest. How about this, then: don’t do something you wouldn’t want to see captured in full color and painful detail on the front page of a supermarket tabloid.
19 January
A light skips across the edge of the woods – a reflection perhaps, nothing grand or bright.
These are no great or fabled wood, not an ancient forest. There are no dark stories or forbidding tales, no suggestion that anything has ever gone awry. And it borders the back of a condominium complex.
Any other day, Martin might not have noticed the light. But tonight, half a bottle of wine deep, sitting on his back porch in the light of a crescent moon, he notices.
There’s a small pond behind his condo, woods on one side of it and behind it, a line of condos coming around the other edge. There’s nothing magical in a place like this. Every home is like every other, the cars lined up outside nearly carbon copies of each other.
So when Martin sees the light, he reaches no mystical conclusion. He doesn’t comment on it; he’s drinking alone tonight. He doesn’t rise from his chair. He merely watches the light.
It’s a small light, but constant, neither fickle nor flickering, and it knows it’s been noticed, so the light dances and leaps and skirts dangerously close to the pond’s shore.
In another time, at another place, when magic might have been something to believe in – and even something to expect – the light would have played. It might have been called a fairy by someone who didn’t know better, a fairy light, an elf light, a will-o-the-wisp. It might have lured Martin into the woods when all woodland was filled with danger and mystery and
romance.
Instead, Martin pours himself another glass of wine and dwells on his sorrows, whatever they might be, however unimportant.
Eventually, Martin gathers himself, which is quite a chore, and goes inside. He falls asleep – or passes out – on the couch with the television on.
The light creeps in through a window. It explores the corners and edges of the inside and finds them constrictive. Reaching the living room, the light hovers over Martin as he snores.
The light sighs.
The light fades and leaves.
Martin, at the last moment, opens his eyes. He’s almost seen something. He still feels the wine in him, and the sorrows he meant to drown. Next time, he tells himself: whiskey.
He goes upstairs and sleeps properly, in his bed and under covers.
The light, meanwhile, drifts to a place where condominiums have not yet invaded.
The light is not alone. Creatures of all types gather in groups or wander or simply stare into the sky. Here, the moon is closer, and she is warmer, and she is almost always kind.
The light finds a shadow it recognizes, and together the two lament the loss of humanity in silence.
Martin sleeps dreamlessly and wakes with a hangover, but he doesn’t care. He isn’t going to do anything, anyhow. He swallows aspirin and a great deal of water and sits outside on his porch. He doesn’t touch the wine, but he stares at the pond and the woods.
He stares for a long time, struggling to get his head working. Finally, he says, “I received a visitor last night.”
Without a will-o-the-wisp to guide him in his folly, Martin ventures into the woods and is lost.
20 January
Trumpets sound in the