Story: Fellyans (part one)

Fellyans

(part one)

A hand removed a shoe from a foot.

The owner (of all three) undertook to perform a spell, one that asked a smooth, round stone…

Which, if held to the light (in this case, a clouded moon fighting a crane’s nest and two ceiling beams), reflected anything, the Articles, arrayed, and their incantation, might betorch it. The flame burned cold when done right, but a shoe was its only vessel.

If it were the wrong stone, the floor held many others.

“Do you see a glow at all?”

“Oh, me… I could hardly judge.”

“What,” said a third party, “has judgment got to do with it? What can’t objectively be said to glow, don’t glow. Prove me wrong.”

“What if you were an elf? They see with eldritch eyes, they say.”

“Who says? Them themselves? A canker on any elf you like! May its ankles turn!”

“Quiet the both of you. The stone glows. I say so.”

“Botheration,” said the irritable one.

The spellcaster unbagged the Articles…crystals of quartz, etched dull by their travels; a sad and smelly chicken’s foot; filings of metal, magnetized; and chalk, of a blue hue. Squinting, he drew in the dust three nested stars, outcropping these into a few ill-situated junior stars.

“Help me count. I want eleven.”

“That’s an odd number.”

Be this joke or nitpick, the spellcaster answered with some hauteur: “Eleven is the divine digit of digits. Eleven is the same rightsideup as upsidedown.”

“Eleven adds up to two, did you teach me, ay? Does that mean His Majesty should leave, so us who can sober ourselves might do a thing we set out?”

“I think it does,” said the spellcaster.

“Fie! Warts between your fingers!”

But the monarch scuttled, and the spellcaster resumed.

“Candle, candle, candle, candle, candle, candle, candle, candle.”

“That’s eight.”

“I don’t require an assistant. Candle, candle, candle, candle…”

As the neutral party, stuck speaking words of reason, the woman—having no magic and no royal blood—ventured no further remark. Her mind drifted, first to observe that day would come before the rock torched at all; second, that the country folk, whose warm fires smoked the air, might have food to spare, and heart to spare it.

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Fellyans

Fellyans (part two)

(2021, Stephanie Foster)