The two of them were Young and Spry. Young was a little bit spryer, and Spry was a little bit younger. A couple of some-good thieves. The kind that stole fresh fruit, hanging laundry, worshippers’ shoes, and bright red magic amulets.
“But really, we want to be the kind of thieves who steal gold and jewels,” said Young. He was balancing on the railtrack with his arms held out like a highwire artist.
“I don’t think anyone with gold and jewels would ever come to New Pagar,” said Spry, walking some paces behind. He was panting like a dog but he would never ask Young to stop to rest. It was one of the reasons Young liked him so much.
“We’re not flimflammers, nitwit. We’re thieves. Rich idiots with deep pockets are worthless targets if we’re trying to be no-good,” said Young. “We need to be thieving from mystical temples or flying castles if we’re gonna be anybody.”
“That’s not what Luke said—”
“I’m tired of listening to that wet floater,” Young said twisting backwards fast enough that he lost his balance and fell on his bony ass.
Spry rushed over to help him up. Young tried to launch into a handstand and grab Spry's helping hand by his foot. Instead, he nearly poked himself in the eye with a lunge toward a finger pointed in the direction of his chest.
“Your amulet’s glowing. There’s something magic nearby.”
He was right. A veiled pink light was shining through Young’s thin shirt. It wasn’t easy to spot in the dryland sun, but Spry had a good pair of eyes.
“Maybe one of my nipples is migrating inland,” said Young.
Spry chuckled. Young had told that joke a hundred times. The thinner boy got up and made a show of spinning around with his hand over his eyes to shade the glare.
“Not a train in sight nor a traveler. Do you think someone’s dropped a firestick we can use to burn Luke’s hair off?”
“I’m worried it might be a rogue wizard,” said Spry thoughtfully.
“Or one that’s bing-banged up a teleportation spell.”
“Don’t remind me of that,” said Spry. “It took me weeks to clean the hair out of the gutters at the guild.”
The amulet was still shining, warm against Young’s chest.
“Maybe whip it out?” said Spry.
“I wouldn’t miss a chance to do that,” laughed Young. Though he did pull the amulet out. It was a cameo of a rose on a black chain. A real cameo, where the intaglio and the relief were all carved from the same gem. Stained cerise with magic. Young had boasted about taking it from an old wizardess’s house for as long as Spry had known him. It was the most beautiful and precious thing that either of them had ever seen and Young guarded it like a three-headed dog. They had, after all, lived their whole lives amongst thieves.
“Brighter when I hold it this way,” said Young. The two of them followed the brightness until they came upon a tiny bush whose leaves might have died a century before the two of them had been born.
“Lemme guess,” said Young. “It’s enchanted for a softer wipe.”
Sweat drops were forming all over Spry’s round face. It reminded Young of the drops of water that formed on a cold round of chocolate, a delicacy Young hadn’t tasted in ages. Spry wouldn’t know what that was if he told him though.
“You can sit down, Spry,” said Young. “Sorry for getting all excited over a shrub.”
“It’s okay, Young,” said Spry as he huddled down. Young was about to lift his shirt over Spry’s head for shade when he heard his companion’s excited gasp.
Young knelt down to his level and saw the bush rise over him until it was less a bush and more a copse. The leaves turning emerald and a tunnel of roots presenting itself beneath the foliage. He looked over at Spry to make sure they were seeing the same thing. Spry was nodding his head like a hummingbird in excitement.
“Spry, my boy, you’re a charm. Luckier than the stars in the sky,” said Young as he began crawling inward.
It didn’t take long for all semblance of the unmagicked world to fade into the distance. The tunnel of roots was predictably much longer than it looked from the outside, and it went in only one direction. Young was about to suggest that it might be a puzzle of some kind when he went tumbling forward through the foliage into a much wider space. Spry stepped more carefully out of the brush some moments later.
The two of them found themselves in a bed of cotton in boll, soft tufts of white flowering from dry autumn stems. Young looked back to Spry at the top of the hill he had tumbled down and saw the horizon in strange pinks and greens that he had never before witnessed. At the hill’s summit was a topiary sculpture: an open hand reaching toward the spattered sky.
Spry made a gentle skid down the path Young’s body had cleaved through the cotton. Young took the stocky boy’s hand and they both waded across the cotton until the soles of their sandals crunched onto a path.
Soft wisps of magic light came alive in the air and the whistling of birds suddenly filled the air. Tamarind trees dotted along the path that the two boys followed, their footsteps crunching on the brown pods that had fallen to the earth. Every so often, the path would be interrupted by an agave plant tall as two men or a bush full of berries that shone just a little too sweetly. The stones marking the way forward snaked through the manicured thicket presenting each fern and each flower with the bored grandeur of those useless and venerable statues of dead generals at the great hall of New Pagar.
Eventually the shade of the trees gave way to the cool light of the sky, the path branching three ways into a most beautiful array of green shapes. An endless population of green hedges trimmed into the forms of people, animals, wizards, gods, and trains.
“It’s a garden,” said Spry, “I read about these from one of those books we stole from the library.”
“It’s clearly a magical dungeon, nitwit,” said Young. “Gimme a lift.”
Young was on Spry’s shoulders a moment later. A box of glass, tall as a public house, iridescent as crystal, shone from somewhere far within the army of hedge statues.
“In the center of the maze is a golden prize, my boy. Onward!”
And Spry with his hands on Young’s knees went barreling into the center path so quickly that Young hit his head on the topiary archway. All that time his amulet was glowing, as if his red heart was blooming right out of his chest.
* * *
“What kind of treasure do you think it is, Young?”
As they walked, Spry sometimes leaned over and put his hand softly to where Young had knocked his head, as if checking for a fever. Young muttered something along the way about how it didn’t even hurt and it didn’t.
Not even the walking hurt, though they hadn’t taken a break and had, in fact, briefly gotten turned around because of two hedge statues of goats that were identical. Young was looking at his sandaled feet as Spry removed his hand from the skinny boy’s head. He expected there to have been cuts from all those dry cotton stems.
“I bet it’s like a jewel of power or something. Like those batteries the minter at the guild uses, but also it’s solid diamond and it keeps this whole place from turning into a ratty mess like the top of Luke’s greasy head,” said Young.
“Wowza, really?” asked Spry.
“Yeah-za, really,” said Young, “And I bet we’re gonna pull it out of its pedestal and this whole place is gonna go down like when the caravan master got so drunk they kicked him out, but then he fell off his horse back in through the pub window.”
Spry laughed. He had a warm, heartfelt laugh. Young loved that sound.
“We’re gonna be kicking and jumping past haunted guard dogs and these green beasts will come to life and—”
Rustling, a scream. Young threw a fist into a vibrating hedge to his right. A swarm of color burst from every crevice of a huge topiary lizard. Young screamed louder.
“They’re only birds, Young,” said Spry.
Young looked at the flitting shadows overhead. Agitated bird chatter. He felt a scratch of embarrassment in his throat.
“But it could have been a golem,” said Spry, sensitive Spry. “You were very brave.”
“It coulda,” said Young. He did jabs in the air. “And it wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
A single odd sparrow came swooping low right over Young’s head causing a shriek. The older boy turned around to see Spry with his hands cupped together triumphantly.
“Oh no,” said Spry on approach. His hands which had been shaking to contain the little bird had gone still. “I think I might have killed him.”
He opened his hands and was surprised to find not a brown sparrow but a ball of crumpled paper. Spry didn’t recognize it at first, all the books in New Pagar had pages stained yellow brown from age and heat. He let it fall to the floor and bounce softly like tumbleweed.
Young took Spry’s hand and dashed away from the courtyard, the birds still flying above in a sky that suddenly seemed much too low. He expected to be chased, for the golem birds to launch towards them like spears through the ribs of a general’s horse. They did no such thing, just flew and flew and never once landed.
* * *
Spry didn’t say a thing about the birds. He wouldn’t, unless Young asked him, and Young didn’t. Instead, Young picked flowers, small ones with long stems and wove them together into a little crown that he threw in Spry’s general direction. Spry caught it with his head.
“It’s a little small,” said Young as Spry tilted it to sit diagonally.
“I think it’s just right,” said Spry.
* * *
If the hedge garden was a maze, then it was decidedly unmazelike. Clear paths and elegant overpasses guided the boys from one themed enclosure to the next. Here was a steel angel assembling a train all looped through with ivy. A short walk down and there would be a garden of stone cairns balanced atop sand that combed the boys’ footsteps out of itself as they walked through. The box of light soon became visible without need for Young to sit on Spry’s shoulders.
The entire area was uncommonly lovely: the way only magicked places could be. Spry looked at every new courtyard with the light of wonder shining through his dark eyes. Young might have too, if the amulet’s heated warning on the center of his chest would let him. Spry spent his time looking at the garden: the hedges of chimaera and the long mosses that danced as he stroked them with the tips of his fingers. Meanwhile, Young found himself looking more and more towards the glass box. He wondered if this place was as deserted as it seemed. Perhaps a wizard was trailing behind them, his face dark with bloodlust having seen the trampled cotton and plucked flowers. Or maybe they would come to the glass structure and find a wizardess at embroidery, ready to pluck out their eyes with the needle and sew them right into her latest thread work.
“Spry,” Young said. “Aren’t you tired at all?”
Spry blushed. “I’m okay, Young. See? I’m not even sweating.”
They came across a pretty gazebo with a couple of white chairs sitting on its deck, surrounding a table in the shape of a rose in full bloom. Creeping closer, they found at the table’s center a little brass bell with a black handle, of the kind that preachers used to cry in the streets.
“Look,” Young said, and he pulled the bell from its place and made his proclamation. “From now on, Young is the king of the Thieves’ Guild!”
Spry giggled. “Luke would thump you for that.”
“Former King Luke is a toad!” Clang clang. “Also, missionaries are con artists!”
A loud whizzing caused Young to drop the bell. It clattered across the floor of the gazebo, rolling outwards as the two boys took cover underneath the table. Two figures skated out from opposite hedges and up the steps of the gazebo towards them. Young clutched at his amulet while burying Spry’s face in his shoulder, his entire body tensing as the two sets of strange legs approached quicker than the two of them could think. They heard the sound of sound of thudding against the tabletop, clinking of metal, whistling of steam. Young was getting ready to kick a pair of white legs over when as quickly as they had arrived they stepped away.
One returned to the hedge from which it came with little notice. The other stopped some distance away. It bent over and picked up the bell. Young saw its face then, painted onto the porcelain crudely, as though a child drew it. It would have seen them if it had eyes with which to see. It made a quick return and Young felt a wetness coming off Spry’s face, whether tears or sweat he didn’t know. The younger boy was shuddering.
“Shush,” said Young. “It’s only returning the bell.”
Then it was gone.
Young crawled out from under the table and Spry followed. On the table was a teapot and a jug of milk, a miniature sponge cake with pink cream, glazed pastries filled with candied mangos, and a plate full of chocolate rounds, glossy and covered in the shreddings of tree nuts. Sitting exactly where it was when they had first arrived, was the bell.
“Chocolate!” Young whisper-shouted, afraid to summon anything else. He quickly sat at the table and poured two cups of tea, as he stuffed a whole sphere of chocolate into his mouth. He gestured to Spry to take a seat, his mouth full enough to hide the dimples formed by hunger.
“What were those things?” said Spry holding his side as he gently plopped into a white chair.
“Golem servants,” said Young. “We used to have a lot of them—”
He stopped himself and gave Spry a hard look. There was a cut, wide but not deep right beneath the rib that Spry was holding. Spry quickly covered it with his shirt, which wasn’t covering a lot of his skin to begin with. A splotch of red ate through.
“Spry!” Young said.
“The rose has thorns,” he said mousily. “The table. You were pushing me into one. Not that it’s your fault. I’m sorry.”
“What the hell, Spry? How many times do I have to tell you to speak up when something’s wrong?”
“There were dungeon monsters,” he said. “I’m sorry. Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not—” Young made an exasperated sigh. He stood up and went over to the younger boy. “Don’t tell anyone I know how to do this. Especially not that floater, that toad.”
“Know how to do what?”
Young took his amulet and pushed it into his lips. The glow faded inward as the rose on the cameo closed its petals, revealing the image of a kind-faced woman with her hair tied in a bun. A circlet of pink stars was wreathed around her head. Young separated Spry’s shirt from the wound and touched the flesh with his amulet. Where the stone warmed against his skin, the wound closed and became smooth, undamaged.
“Holy roly poly, Young,” said Spry. “You’re a wizard! You learned how to be a wizard!”
“It’s all the amulet,” said Young, surprised by Spry’s reaction.
“But if you can do magic with one of these, I can too! We can be magic thieves together!”
Young suddenly felt a great deal older than Spry.
“Yeah, Spry. I would love that. Hey, we might even find something for you at the end of this dungeon. But for now let’s just eat. Chocolate is my favorite.”
They sat down and had tea and ate cake and pastries. The chocolate was sweating. Spry gave Young a strange look. A sudden pang of fear crept over Young. Fear that Spry saw him differently now. The war had not been so long ago, after all.
“Hey, Young,” said Spry, interrupting his thoughts.
“Yeah, Spry?”
“Why is this your favorite? It doesn’t taste like anything.”
And he was right. In fact, nothing on the table seemed to have any taste at all.
* * *
When they were done, they rang the bell again a spitting distance from the gazebo and ducked into a bush, tossing the brass object close enough that they could see it from their hiding spot. The doll-like servants came out as neatly as clockwork soldiers, skating in stiff poses as if the gravel below them was ice. They arrived at the table and began fixing the plates back into themselves, through a cavity in their porcelain chests that became quite full when the table was completely clean. One zoomed back, same as before, and the other approached the bell. It bent to pick it up at an angle too severe, its chest full of plates and half eaten pastries caving inwards. And as it dashed back, the two boys followed it, running at full pelt to keep up.
The golem did not seem to move in any traditional sense. When it travelled it was completely still, the straining of musculature or machinework absent. It simply was in one place, and then in the next, and then in the next. As if it was the ground beneath it that was moving while it remained entirely motionless. The boys struggled into the thinning of greenery it came out of, and found themselves losing sight of it almost instantly.
They emerged into wet air, a fresh and cool breeze. Four pools of glittering waters, long empty rectangles whose depths were tiled with patterns like those on the carpets of rich men. The swimming pools were arranged like a window, two on top of two, with the ground around them paved in a red stone brick that the boys had never seen the likes of.
“Look, Young,” said Spry as they walked along the center beam that separated the pools from one another. “The water in this one is orange.”
“Lava!” cried Young as he pulled Spry back from the corner of the orange pool so fiercely that the two of them toppled into the pool opposite. They landed with a splash and some pain in Young’s bony behind. It was a shallow pool, water barely up to their knees if they had been standing, but the pattern of the tiles gave it an illusion of depth.
“The water is salty,” said Spry coughing, wading outwards, rubbing his eyes.
He knelt over the second pool and cupped some water in the palms of his hands, splashing it into his face. Young caught up to him, rubbing his sore end. The older boy put his hand on the younger’s shoulder only for Spry to turn a puckered face towards him. Young couldn’t help but laugh, though he had been struggling to get air back into his lungs only a few moments prior.
“This one is sour, Young.” Spry stuck his tongue out. “It’s deeper too.”
He plunged his arm into the depths to demonstrate, nearly tipping over in the process.
Young cupped a little of the pool and drank. Vinegar without bite. “Shall we try the third?”
The boys cannonballed into sweetness.
“We should play chicken,” said Young.
“Just you and me?” laughed Spry. He didn’t mention, of course, that he had already carried Young today. Spry let a lot of things slide, but Young never did.
“You can get on my shoulders, come on,” said Young.
“I’m okay, Young.” Spry said.
So instead Young started a splash fight that ended with the two of them leaning their elbows on the side of the pool, panting. The water was deep enough that their whole bodies would be submerged if they let go. Every now and again one of the two would let himself slide down, eyes open to see the blue and green lights dancing on the surface of the water, the gentle kicking of their companion who was still hanging onto the ledge. His feet would touch the smooth tiles at the bottom only for a moment before he would bound back toward the surface of the water, gasping.
There was no sound in the air, unlike in the water. The false birds had all gone and the wind was as silent as the turning world. Opposite the ledge they were leaning on was the amber pool.
“It isn’t lava,” said Spry, a moment after Young had surfaced.
“How do you know?”
“There’d be convection. We’d already be burning.”
“Kun-vek-sun?”
Spry lifted himself out of the sweet pool and waddled toward the orange one, cupping his hand to pull the amber liquid from its source.
“Spry, no,” said Young, quickly scrambling after him.
Without missing a beat Spry turned around with two handfuls of the strange water leaking through his fingers, onto the wet brick. It ran like water and shone in a way that a rust filled puddle would not.
“Do you wanna taste it?” said Spry, holding up his hands. “You gotta hurry.”
Quick to a challenge, Young dunked his head into Spry’s hands. Spry giggled.
“Savory?” asked Spry. “Bitter?”
“It tastes like… water,” said Young. Spry tried himself.
“That’s disappointing.”
Young put his fingers on the surface of the pool. He almost expected it to be honey or jam, the color it was, but ripples formed easily as his skin touched the water. Perhaps it was another illusion of space, but the pool seemed awfully deep. The bottom of it seemed far far away. He took a step back, rushed forward and leaped as far as he could into the center of the pool.
Eyes open, down he went. The water was indeed cavernously deep. Headfirst, he could see the tiles at the bottom, a dark color that in the light of Young’s amulet looked like vine fruit, like wine. Beyond the reach of his light, in the amber water, the bottom seemed black, an endless expanse of darkness. Young felt his breath running short and became afraid that the floor of the pool was indeed just a pit with no end. But before he knew it he was touching the smooth tiles with his calloused feet, pushing up back into the light.
There was a shape up above, on the surface: Spry. Outlined in honeyed light, Young’s dear boy could be mistaken for the shadow of one of those absent angels who once rose from long forgotten seas. But then something happened. The shape was writhing, the shape was splitting up like a cube of sugar in a cup of tea. Spry’s shadow was disintegrating, bit by bit, the image of him turning into light on the water.
“Spry!” Young mouthed, breathing in that tasteless amber water.
Young kicked hard with all his energy but by the time he reached the surface there was no shape, no shadow. A crown of flowers was floating on a brown pool. Young looked around and saw that he was alone.
* * *
It was there. It had been there, behind a short hedge easily jumped, just beyond the four pools. How, wondered Young, had neither of them noticed it was right there? Its light had been cast upon them. His eyes were red, his pants still dripping on the red brick which continued into the box’s courtyard. As he landed the jump he restrained a sneeze in such a way that sounded like he had cried out after biting his tongue. The garden didn’t move a muscle. The central building, the box of glass, reflected no indication of having noticed his arrival.
Young crept along rows of plants, blossomless poppies arranged in long planters. He looked at the building: its precisely angled roof, the thin white pillars holding up the sheets of glass. There was no source Young could name for the afternoon glow. Not the inside of the box, nor the sky up above. The scene of the glass house was like an elegant landscape. All that light was painted on. The wash of glare shifted ever so slightly; suddenly Young could see inside.
A bedroom, that’s what it must have been. There were clothes lying in soft disarray over the floor: a polished white material, same as the roof and the pillars. In the corner from where Young crouched, there stood a bend of bookshelves full of butterflies in glass frames, pressed flowers, and massive shells belonging to animals Young had never before seen. In between the oddities were the gaps where books were supposed to have been, Young could imagine that much. The books were at the opposite corner, stacked uneasily on a little desk that faced towards the glittering pools, towards the length of the hedge maze which Young and Spry had travelled. A person could sit at the desk and while away the hours staring at the loveliness of the greenery, if not for the piles of books that blocked the view.
In the center of it all was the bed. It was an enormous bed. Young had slept in a bed once, and it hadn’t been as big as that. As he tiptoed closer to the house, relying on a white pillar not even half as wide as his body to conceal him, he imagined Spry simply walking from the pool and into the glass house. What a comfortable looking bed, Spry would have said. And he could have fallen asleep right there in the depths of plush tapestry blankets. That’s right, Young thought. I’ll pull back the blankets and he’ll be right there.
Young reached the entrance, a rectangle missing from the bottom center pane. There was a boy in the bed, Young realized. But it wasn’t Spry.
He had hair the color of wheat gone to harvest. There would be no missing a feature like that in New Pagar, but in the midst of the jewel tone blankets and the bronze of the headboard, he could have been just another patch of color. The boy was pale, very pale. The last time Young saw a man be so pale he was bleeding out. He had a book in his hands, larger than the ones gathering dust on the desk. Pages turned over quite calmly, though the boy’s face was scrunched up as though there were something impossibly wrong, as if the contents of the book were a source of great bitterness and upset with the world.
“Hello?” said Young.
The boy didn’t look up from his book, and Young teetered between thinking that he hadn’t heard him or that he was an illusion created by the magicked garden. He stepped through the threshold and tried again.
“Hellooooo?”
The boy muttered something Young couldn’t hear clearly. His face didn’t acknowledge Young as either guest or intruder. Young walked closer, until he was right at the foot of the bed.
“Um, I already said this but hello,” said Young. “I’m looking—”
“What is your name?” said the boy, still not looking up, turning a page.
“Oh,” said Young. The boy had a hideous voice. “My name is Young. What’s yours?”
“Incorrect,” said the boy.
“Your name is Incorrect?”
“Yours. Young is not a name. It’s an adjective.”
“Oh,” said Young. “Is an adjective a kind of name?”
At this the boy finally looked up from his book with a puzzled expression. Young laughed nervously. His heart thudded against his amulet.
“You don’t know, huh?” said Young. “I bet Spry would know. Um, have you maybe—”
“I know. The names of stars. The names of dreams. The names of poisons. Animal names. Entropic names. Names of light.”
“You sound like… a wizard?” said Young. He walked around the bed and crouched down. The other boy was so much smaller than him, yet he felt as if they might be the same age. The boy in the bed seemed to recede as Young’s face came in closer. He stared at Young with eyes that were not so different from his own.
“Yes,” he said. “A wizard.”
“Wowza, bang,” said Young. “I’ve never seen a wizard my own age.”
“Your age?” said the wizard boy. Young felt bad for him.
“Is there anybody else living here?”
The boy shuffled uncomfortably. “They went out.”
“Were you left here during the war? You can’t have been more than a kid.”
He looked at his book again. “I’m waiting for them.”
“My parents died in the war. It was a long time ago now.”
“Incorrect,” he said. “The war did not end.”
Young was struck silent. He sat on the side of the bed. He pulled out his amulet which was shining so brightly that the brushed-on light of the glass house seemed more like a fog that the amulet’s glow cut through.
“Look. I’m a wizard too,” said Young. He kissed the carving and the rose closed once again to form the lady, her hair full of stars. He held her away from him and she began crying, glittering tears falling upon the bright floor. “Granted, I probably know less than you. Can’t exactly get an apprenticeship in New Pagar of all places.”
“You’re not a wizard,” said the boy. The scowl on his face had returned.
“Am too,” said Young, ever impulsive.
“You don’t look like a wizard,” said the boy. “You don’t look like me.”
“Well, that’s because—”
“You look like him,” the boy said, pages of his book flying without his touch. The book opened to an illustration of a boy lying on his side. The ink was shivering.
“Spry!” Young said, falling forwards as the other boy snatched the book away with one hand and grabbed the amulet with the other. “What are you doing? Let go!”
The other boy did not let go. He held tight with an unexpected strength, the chain of the necklace digging into Young harshly as he was forced away from the book, and the image of wet and shuddering Spry. Young saw for the first time that the boy’s hands were lined with bulging veins.
“This doesn’t belong to you,” said the boy.
Water was streaming through his fingers. Tears and pink light.
“That hurts!” screamed Young. “Let go!”
“How are you using it? How did it protect you?”
“I told you,” said Young. The boy was pulling harder, he twisted the chain to choke Young’s thin neck. “I’m a wizard. My mother was a wizardess and she passed it on to me, but my father was unmagick.”
Young made a sharp exhale. He was straining and dizzy, trying to pull away from the bed. The boy held his grip even as the amulet’s tears started pouring onto his sheets like a faucet.
“Liar,” said the boy. “Magic doesn’t belong to people like you. You stole it.”
“I’m not,” Young gasped, failing to hold back his tears. “I’m not lying.”
“The war should be over,” said the boy. “You shouldn’t be here anymore. Where are they? Where have they gone?”
The boy twisted the chain one more time. Young tried pulling away one last time but it was too late. The world was drowning in red and the pressure around his neck disappeared. Young dreamed his mother was singing. The boy of the box, his voice unmistakeable, was letting out an ear-splitting scream.
* * *
Young awoke on Spry’s belly. He wondered for a second where he was, and then looked around and realized that he hadn’t been dreaming. Though it was very dark. The boys were surrounded by pillars and glass panes. Young quickly checked Spry for a heartbeat.
“He’s fine,” said a hideous voice.
Young went into his best pretense of a combat pose and quickly tripped, unbalanced and groggy as he was. The boy who had been on the bed was sitting at the desk, staring at the spines of books. Young took a step towards him.
“Don’t,” said the voice. He sounded scared, more than threatening. “Go pick it up.”
The amulet and its shattered chain sat in a puddle on the floor by the bed. Water streamed from the pendant and quickly boiled into a white steam. The woman in the cameo was wringing her hands. Young approached and black links of chain started skittering across the floor and reassembling themselves. He knelt down and picked up the amulet by the newly reformed necklace. He put it on and kissed the woman’s forehead. The rose opened, and laid cool against his chest.
Young swiveled and saw that the whole room was dark. And the whole garden beyond it. And there wasn’t a star in the too low sky. Once again, he moved towards the desk where the boy had his back turned to him. All Young could see of him was a sliver of a twitching hand.
“Your hand is hurt. I can—”
“No. Go away.”
“But—”
“Go away.”
Young was silent. “Okay,” he said finally.
Young lifted Spry onto his shoulder with some difficulty and began dragging his way out. He stopped at the doorway and looked back at the boy, his face buried in the palm of his burnt hand. Young thought he might have fallen asleep but then suddenly heard his voice clear as light.
“You people have stolen everything from me.”
Young thought for a minute about apologizing, but for what exactly, he couldn’t figure out. Young couldn’t understand the sorrow he felt. He turned away. Even in the darkness, the garden was immensely beautiful.
He passed through a hedge and found himself and Spry back at the hill of cotton, the topiary at its peak now a closed fist. Young climbed, Spry on his back: up the hill, through the tunnel, back into the unmagicked world.
* * *
“So you didn’t nab anything good?”
“I told you, dingdong, I was busy having a magical duel to save you from a crazy wizard.”
“And you couldn’t have stolen one ring of invisibility for your boy?”
It was going to be a long way back to New Pagar. They were walking alongside the railroad again, along the wasted crater of Old Pagar that the wizards had long since burned into the earth. Spry threw his flower crown down into the pit, an offering for the dead. Young kissed Spry on the lips to shut him up. Spry laughed, blushing. Young squeezed his hand.
“Next time for sure. Then we’ll be Young and Spry, magic thieves extraordinaire.”
Reno Evangelista (he/him) is from Manila, in the Philippines. His work has been published in Guernica Magazine, Outlook Springs, and Cosmonauts Avenue, among others.