Once There Was: Chapters 29–36

There were things that could be weaponized: the paperweight; a pair of scissors; a small, abstract sculpture in marbled black stone that stood as a bookend.

But I couldn’t see myself stabbing or bludgeoning anyone.

“Five cash payments,” she said, “corresponding to the arrivals here, soon after each, of five animals—a Chinese rain bird, a mer-lion from Singapore, an ignis fatuus from the Great Dismal Swamp, a wyvern from a village in the Dolomites, and some kind of dog-tree thing from I’m not sure where.”

It wasn’t my fault, or anyone’s fault, that I happened to be the last living vestige of something that had once been magical.

So it came as a great surprise to me when Malloryn suddenly jumped up and began marching down the hill with a bright and unflappable stride.

We marched past workers pushing pallets of food into the cellar.

Malloryn led the way out of the elevator, disarming the sentries with blithe flourishes, tossing their guns aside gleefully, and skipping along to the rhythm.

“How do we free the unicorn?” she sang.
“You need to get to the operations room,” sang the guard. “That’s where the cages are controlled.” It was an odd-sounding rejoinder that missed the beat and almost derailed the whole song.

I was aware, faintly, of the song coming to a moment of inflection. The music was about to end.

The song seemed to find an extra coda, and lingered on longer than it should have as I was twirled round and round, farther and farther away from the manticore.

The animals—the ones we could see on the screens, anyway, stood at the thresholds of their paddocks in stunned silence.

A sound began to swell on the other side of the door, a cacophony of whines and roars and snarls that bled together into a single, vengeful note.

The animal sounds continued, though. They rolled past us in thundering waves. The flapping of wings; the shuffling and stomping of feet, small and large; the shattering of glass; the rending of metal.

“Are you sure there isn’t another way?” asked Malloryn, looking with apprehension down the lighted pathway.

Its mouth made the hissing, grating sound of rock sliding against rock.

Behind me was the moonlit foyer. Ahead of me, around a corner, maybe farther, was the light of the fire. The space between felt interminable, unfamiliar.

A terrified bird with radiant golden plumage flapped madly around the ceiling.

I turned away, and found myself looking down at a small figure standing in the doorway, unperturbed by the approaching fire or the horrors taking place over my shoulder.

But no one came, and nothing rose to the level of public newsworthiness other than a spate of missing cats that seemed only slightly higher than average.

“So this is me, selling off his legacy,” I said.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he said. He clasped his hands together. “But maybe I can give you another one. These last few months, everything you’ve done, that’s you honoring his legacy.”

They were taller, more possessed of distinct energies and spirits—Ramsey, thoughtful, almost brooding; Cole, wild, messy, and exuberant.

They were taller, more possessed of distinct energies and spirits—Ramsey, thoughtful, almost brooding; Cole, wild, messy, and exuberant.

I’d hire Malloryn on retainer—you never knew when a witch would come in handy.

The lamb roast sat trussed up and glistening in its juices on a white serving dish.

“Should I call the police?” asked Elizabeth. She had her cell phone out.
“Don’t,” he said, both hands out in front of him now, conciliatory, reasonable.

“Would that your first taste of freedom were a more auspicious place,” he said. “I am but a poor nightman, and this hut is all I have. But you are welcome to anything you see.”

“But it is I who owe you. Thrice may you ask of me, and thrice I shall oblige, be it in my power.”

“You are owed three askings, in your time,” said the djinn.
“It is an imposition,” said the poor man.
“They were given freely,” said the djinn.

Those syllables had slipped past my ears and into a deep and impregnable memory vault, where they had remained, untouched and waiting, and so even though it came out thin and strangled, the djinn’s name, when I spoke it, rang true.

“Your father saved my life,” he said, in a quiet, contemplative voice.

“One can only imagine,” said the djinn, “that his wishes would have been sordid, dull, and predictable.”

“The process was arduous,” said David. “Every inch came with new crushing pains. But your father was kind and patient. After each little bit of progress, he would stop to let me catch my breath.”

I had a hundred incredulous questions, but none of them mattered, because I knew that what David was telling me was true.

I felt very small, like a tiny chess piece, being lifted through space and moved across the board by large, dispassionate hands. My own feelings didn’t even belong to me.

“But he knew that if he did not stop your father immediately, something terrible would happen. He didn’t care what happened to him—he’d never thought himself anything special. But his children were more precious to him than life itself, and so when this terrible foreboding rose in him, he dug deep into himself, and drew forth a power he did not know he possessed. He summoned the wind and the fire, and thus your father died before he could speak my name.”

We shaved a patch of feathers and fur away and marked the spot with a Sharpie. All the while, Kipling looked on with rheumy disinterest.

Starlings chittered from the trees.

Even stronger than before, the sorrow came, like the people gathered around him were reflecting it back onto him, amplifying it, until it tumbled in walloping, disjointed waves. I let its swells roll into every part of me. It was ferocious and incandescent.

Even up close, even with the rays of a weak, distant sun falling over it, the water had the color and opacity of obsidian.

A Chopin nocturne started to pipe from the manor, and the family shuffled back down the hill toward the house, where canapés and sandwiches were waiting.