Mulberry Wands (24 page)

“You’d better not be messing with me,” he
said.

“I’m not. I swear, I’m not.” She scampered
off into the darkness.

Paul waited. And waited.

And then he waited some more.

He felt tempted to leave several times. He
didn’t know how much time had passed, as he didn’t have a watch,
but it felt like hours. He grew irritated. It wasn’t like he had
that many nights where he wasn’t working, and he would rather have
been at home watching television than here on some fool’s
errand.

He waited some more. The translator woman was
making a fool of him, playing on his desperation to see Susan
again. Ten more minutes, and then he was going to go.

He heard a faint rustling in the juniper
boughs and saw a translator woman walk under the tree.

“There you are! Where is she? What took you
so long?”

“Paul?”

It was Susan’s voice. Higher pitched, but
Susan’s voice.

He leaned down close.

What he thought was the translator woman was
Susan. He couldn’t see her face, just the silhouette of her body,
but she had Susan’s curves too.

“What happened to you?”

“They made me tiny. They thought I killed the
translator I found in the garden. I’ve been living with them while
I’m waiting for my trial.”

“Are you okay? She said you were sick.”

“Yeah, well, I was, but I’m getting better.”
She glanced over her shoulder, but Paul couldn’t see what she was
looking at. “That’s so sweet that you came to see me. Did I tell
you where I was? I can’t remember. That was a few weeks ago, and I
was kind of messed up. Are Zoë and Darius worried about me?”

“I was worried about you,” he said, not
wanting to admit that he didn’t even know she was gone. “But I can
take you back home now, and you can make yourself big.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” He knelt, resting his hands on his
knees.

“I need to wait for the trial, to prove my
innocence,” she said.

He shoved his feet backwards under the brush
and leaned on his elbows so his face was closer to her. “You don’t
have to prove anything to them.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You’re a human. They don’t have authority
over you.”

“Power is its own authority. You’re a
Sunward, you should know,” she said.

He held out his hand. “I’ll take you home
now. No one will stop me.”

“Hastuur was able to get into my room, even
with Zoë’s cat prowling around. If he could do it once, he could do
it again, him or someone else. I’m not safe unless I’m big again,
and maybe not even then, if they think I’m guilty.”

“How are they going to make you big
again?”

“Same way they made me little. They bargained
for magic from someone called the ‘Encanto’ mage. I think they call
her that because it’s where she lives.” She cleared her throat
roughly, like she was trying not to cough. She didn’t look over her
shoulder again, but her body was angled that way, like she was
pitching her voice to more than just him. “Tell Zoë and Maggie and
Darius I’m okay and that I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Are they treating you well?”

“Yes. They’re very nice to me, and the food
is great.” She rubbed her shoulders with her hands.

He pulled his lighter out of his pocket and
flicked it. The flame made a warm sphere of light under the
branches. “You’re naked!”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I am.” She looked thinner,
like she’d recently lost weight, and her lips were blue. “They
don’t wear clothes, except diapers for kids. I got so used to it I
stopped noticing. It is a little cold though.”

He held up the lighter with the other hand
and picked her up, holding her gently, like a hurt bird. She leaned
against his fingers, warming up quickly. He moved the lighter to
see her better. Man, she had a nice figure. Curvy in all the right
places.

“I’m glad you found me,” she said. “I’ve been
trying to figure out a way to get a message to Zoë, but she’s not
psychic at all. Is she very worried?”

“I haven’t talked to her. I um, I didn’t know
you were missing. I thought you weren’t returning my phone calls
because you were mad at me.”

“What for?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I was ready to apologize
though, whatever it was.”

She laughed. Her laugh did wonderful things
to her breasts. Then her laugh turned into a cough and she curled
over, hacking into her hands.

Another translator stepped out of the
shadows. He was scarred and fierce looking, except for being small.
He had a spear that was taller than he was, dark at the point end
like it had been fire-hardened.

“Susan, you ought to be inside where it’s
warmer. You’re not well yet,” the translator said. He glared at
Paul.

Paul disliked him immediately.

“I’d better go,” Susan said. “I wish we could
hug.”

He closed his hand, trying to gently squeeze
her. She squeaked.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, opening his hand.
Paul glanced at the translator, who had his spear hoisted as though
he were going to stab Paul with it. He suddenly realized how low to
the ground his eyes were, and wanted to stand.

“No,” she said. “It’s okay, Tuusit, he just
scared me.”

Susan hugged his index finger and kissed it,
on the tip near the nail. He hadn’t realized how sensitive his
fingertips were until she pressed her lips on it. Her breasts were
warm against his knuckle. He wanted to trail his other finger down
the curve of her back, but he was afraid he couldn’t be gentle
enough.

“I can’t wait until you’re big again,” he
murmured.

She winked in saucy agreement, and hopped off
his palm.

Tuusit, the translator warrior, slid his arm
around Susan’s lower back as she passed, and gently led her towards
the wall. Susan smiled and waved goodbye, but she didn’t tell the
translator not to touch her.

The translator glanced back over his shoulder
at Paul. He gripped his spear and glared with dagger-eyes, then
slung his arm around Susan’s shoulder.

Paul resented the treaty, because he really
wanted to kill that little man.

Griff picked out a deep purple for his
bedroom, glossy like an eggplant. He thought Zoë would suggest a
beige, or maybe tease him about how it was feminine to like real
color instead of white, but she didn’t say anything except to
suggest that they use a primer coat. She was like that: deeply
practical, but unique and creative at the same time. Even in the
few weeks he had been there, you could see traces of her in the
house. The switchplates, for example. She’d covered them with
photocopies of art that she’d tattooed on client’s bodies. Her
tattoos were beautiful, organically abstracted and with a subtle
use of color. He’d always been leery about getting a tattoo, but if
she did it, he might reconsider. Of course, that may have had more
to do with the idea of her touching his naked body than in just his
admiration of her art.

He was going to fall for her. No, he had
fallen for her already, though he was at the easy, comfortable
early days of being in love where every day with the one you adore
was a blessing. Later he’d have to agonize over whether to tell her
or not, but for now he was content just to be with her.

He’d been helping her around the house with
small tasks; installing lights under the cabinets, painting, and
fixing all the small broken parts that an older house gathered. She
was a fairly competent handyman. She could usually figure out how
to do something on her own, and when she couldn’t, she looked up an
instructional video on the web. She was part owner of her own
business too. At first he’d been torn between envy and admiration,
but the more he got to know her, the more admiration won out.

His parents would hate her. They’d see her
piercings and her tattoos and her dyed hair and assume she was a
loose druggie who drowned kittens for fun. The knowledge that his
parents wouldn’t approve of her made her, if anything, even more
attractive.

When he heard that her birthday was in two
days, he went back to see Maggie again, to get his one remaining
wand back.

Maggie was sitting outside on her folding
picnic table, wearing a day-glo orange caftan and eating microwave
popcorn that smelled burned. The bottom of the bag was black, and a
glistening stain on her thigh showed where she’d been wiping her
hand off between bites. On the white plastic surface of the table
lay four wands, one of which he recognized as the one Alex had
made.

“How’s it going?” Griff asked, hoping she’d
had enough pot to make her coherent. “Do you have the last wand I
lent you?”

“Nope. Used it,” she said. “But I got another
one.”

“You what?” It took Griff a moment to process
what she’d said, because he was sure it would take her a month or
more to finish them, if she finished them at all. “You did it?”

“Give it a try,” she said, handing him one of
the sticks. “I’d do it, but if it works for me we won’t know if it
really works or if I’m just doing it myself.

Griff took the wand. It felt the same as the
other wands, heavier, maybe, though that could have been his
imagination. She’d used the wand blanks he gave her, and it looked
like she’d rubbed them with a dark oil, so they were smudged like
the post of a balustrade that a lot of hands touched. He gripped it
and stepped off the patio, scanning the trailer park.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked.

“I have something in mind,” he said. “Give me
a few minutes.”

He walked around the perimeter of the trailer
park, looking for a specific kind of plant. He found some stones
and trash, and debated breaking a branch off an olive tree (which
was covered in purplish black fruit, falling off and staining the
pavement below) when he found what he was hoping for: a little
pomegranate tree in a chipped terracotta planter. The tree was kind
of spindly, and the fruits were undersized (like a racquetball
rather than a baseball) but they’d do for his purposes. He picked
one of the hard fruits and carried it back to the trailer.

He set it on the plastic table top, pointed
the wand at it, and concentrated. Gold, he thought, as he squeezed
the wand.

Nothing happened. He shook it, though of
course that wouldn’t do anything.

“Squeeze harder,” Maggie suggested.

Griff squeezed harder, and when that didn’t
work, he dug his fingernails in to the bark. The pomegranate
shimmered, and a moment later, it rolled over as the new weight
distribution unbalanced it.

He picked it up. The spell hadn’t worked
perfectly, though he couldn’t tell if that was because of the wand
or a user error. The pomegranate was mostly gold, but it didn’t
shine. He rubbed it. It felt rough. It looked etched. Also, mottled
burgundy dots encircled it, denser near the stem end, and fainter
on the blossom end, where the thick sepals had become a crown of
soft, pure metal.

He’d been thinking of the prize that Paris
gave to Aphrodite, how some scholars suggested the prize had been
an apricot or perhaps a pomegranate, but that it got changed to
apple when those of colder climes got a hold of the myth. He had
meant to give it to Zoë, hoping she would be nerd enough to get the
reference and be flattered by it. Now he wasn’t sure if she’d want
it or not. It wasn’t totally gold, so the part that hadn’t been
transmuted would eventually rot, leaving a bizarre abstract
sculpture.

Well, that would still be cool. He’d still
give it to her.

“Aim’s a little off. Don’t know if that’s me
or you.” Maggie scratched the table with her fingernail. An
amorphous patch of table, about as large as a baby’s hand, had
transmuted. It looked like someone had spilled gold paint.

“Did you try it yourself?” Griff asked.

“Yeah. I had to squeeze pretty hard to get it
to go.” She got her fingernail underneath the edge of the
transmuted patch and lifted it up, revealing a rough-bottomed piece
of metal not much thicker than a coin. “Groovy. It’s even stronger
than the last batch. Try something else, see if it’s got any juice
left,” she said.

“I just transmuted a piece of fruit into
gold,” he said. “It’s probably empty.” He waved his wand anyway,
pinching it with his nails while he thought of an illusion.

If he had known it was going to work, he
would have thought of something more manly than a dancing penguin.
Worse than that, the penguin sang the theme song from ‘My Little
Pony’, repeating it when it got to the end, looping for what felt
like a full five minutes until it finally petered out, growing
silent as the illusion disappeared in a puff of blue smoke.

“You’re a Bronie, huh?” Maggie laughed.

“I only saw it once, by accident,” Griff
said, which had an element of truth in it, though he would have
sounded more convincing if he hadn’t protested so strenuously. “I
just had it in my head, that’s all.”

“Yeah, whatever floats your boat, man,”
Maggie said. She leaned back to pull her cigar box out of the
trailer, then opened it and started making a cigarette. “I got
twelve wands left, eleven now that you used one. They’re in the
Wal-Mart bag next to the bananas. You said fifty-fifty, right?”

“Um, yeah,” he said. If he had known that it
was going to be that easy to raise his commission, he would have
bargained Alex up to fifty-fifty too. He gathered up the sticks,
then held his breath as he dashed into the trailer to get the
Wal-Mart bag containing the rest of them. “I’ll sell these in the
next week and bring you the money as soon as they’re all gone.”

“Cool.” Maggie puffed out rings of smoke.

“Just out of curiosity,” Griff said. He’d
been convincing himself that he didn’t really care. “You didn’t
have to kill those hedgehogs, did you?”

“Nah.