00
Fears have no ears.
All eyes.
01
If you go through the Capital’s Market – and that only sounds simple, because it’s near impossible to navigate past all the stalls and traders and buyers and pickpockets without getting your purse drained of its weight and you yourself becoming an owner of a handful of apples, red and shiny, near mirror-like... Or you could accidentally find yourself in possession of a cut of cloth that could either make a plenty of delicate handkerchiefs or a magnificent dress worthy of the Queen’s ball or, possibly, a suite that will instill confidence in every business partner you ever get, because everyone knows – being properly dressed is half the successful deal. You might suddenly realise that around your neck now lies a ring of sausages, like a strange meaty necklace – and you can almost hear them fizzle and crack on a pan and saliva’s already begun to gather in your mouth. And of course, even the most steadfast of humans can’t resist an urge of buying some assorted bits and bobs you never knew you needed, but they look useful… or pretty… or, at the very least, exotic. And to top it all off, as if to challenge your understanding of human ability to carry things, you’ll get for a reasonable price a venison cut from the biggest deer in the Kingdom – it is always the biggest of all deers, no exceptions.
But.
But if you manage to avoid all that or at least try to buy things in moderation, – on the grounds that those sausages really don’t look good with your hat, for example, – then you can go right through the middle of the Market and turn left, into a narrow backstreet. It’s short and straight, has almost no natural light – and it’s full of flowers.
Here are roses, bright red and arrogant, brandishing needle-sharp thorns at their white cousins. Irises are watching them from the other side of the alley with suspicion and a thinly veiled hope roses would just destroy each other in a fight. Blue cornflowers, like absolute newcomers, tried to figure out what is exactly going on and clearly were searching for someone to make an alliance with – but currently only edelweisses agree to even consider their advances. True owners of this land, daffodils, observe all this commotion calmly. They know all too well that there’s no point in trying to interfere or to break up the flowery fight – if the fight was to start.
Any flower you want can be found in this alley – any flower existing in this world. Or maybe even more than that…
One of the buyers, a woman, talking to an utterly confused vendor, seemed to be of the same opinion.
“Of course I am of the same opinion! Like I could ever disagree with you…” said she looking somewhere upwards.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” she added when the vendor tried to follow her gaze up, where there was nothing but the cloth screen, covering the alley, – or rather flowers on the alley, – from rain, snow or, worst help us all, hail.
“Please, excuse me, lady, but I have never seen such flowers here.”
“That’s good. And did anyone mention them, maybe? Asked about them?”
“Other than you, lady, nobody did.”
“That is good too… Excellent, in fact!”
“...”
“What? Is it the first time you see a customer satisfied by you not having what they wanted?”
“…”
“And please stop staring up, there’s really nothing there.”
“But you were…”
“Are you new to the Capital? Don’t you know that the Royal sorceress Tora Halfcour, – that is, me, – is completely and utterly insane?”
“I didn’t…”
“Don’t worry, that’s true. So just calm down. You’re not selling any flowers that’s not of this world – and that’s great, isn’t it? Would be bad if you did, wouldn’t it?”
Saying that, Tora put her hands on the hips and leaned forward as if trying to be intimidating – a masterful attempt, slightly hindered by the Sorceress’ short stature and slender build. Still, the trader just nodded in response. If this woman says she’s a Royal Sorceress, so be it – better not argue with the mages employed by the Crown. Better not argue with any mages, ever.
“You better not!” Sorceress pointed finger at the trader. “But do report any that’s not officially employed. If they do anything illegal that is.”
“As you say, lady sorceress. I definitely will!”
“Um-hum! That’s my good advice for a day… Now onto enjoying the flowers...”
How could she not? Wherever she looked, there were so many of them, fragrance filling up the air and colours competing for attention and so beautiful it was near impossible to put into words…
...And after this much flattery, reality have finally decided that it’s enough, blinked and blushed, coloring everything around red, like it was a sunset time already…
02
“Hey, Author, what in the plot? What twisted twist is this?”
Tora Halfcour ran out of the alley into the square where there should’ve been a very busy and loud marketplace… but of course, it wasn’t there. All the stalls and goods and people and noise were gone. It was an empty square, surrounded by houses drowning in reddish shadows.
Nobody argued the price of the apples…
Or tried to refuse offer of the chunk of venison of the biggest deer in the whole Kingdom…
There was just silence. Emptiness. Stillness.
Even the sky was empty, cloudless, just a sheet of red canvas – like a plain theatrical backdrop.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting this to get so arty… What’s next? Does this sudden absence of people has to signify my self-absorbed nature as a person? I’m certainly not like that, you know? I do pay attention to my surroundings and right now they are most certainly very disturbing!”
“Excuse me… miss?” voice was coming from the far end of that alley that not so long ago was full of flowers.
“Yes! What!?” Tora made a full turn to where the voice was coming from. “What sort of mysterious creature might you be?”
“I’m… I’m not…”
A man, who showed himself out of the alley, didn’t look very mysterious indeed. If anything, he looked very simple. A very simply dressed man in his thirties from the look of it. Meeting someone like that on the streets of the Capital would be the usual everyday occurrence… if not for a certain feeling that what surrounded them weren’t streets of the Capital anymore.
“I am very sorry, miss, but… do you… by any chance… have any food?”
“Food? What, like a sausage necklace or something?”
“Sausage? Necklace? Oh… you’re one of those, aren’t you?” he took a step back.
“What do you mean ‘One of those’?”
“In… Insane ones...”
“Oh…” Tora sighed. “No, don’t worry, I’m absolutely sane. Certifiably sane if you will. And here…”
She took off her hat and pulled big shiny red apple out of it, so shiny and smooth you could see your reflection on its side.
“Do you want it?” she asked, after the man hesitated for a long two seconds.
“Well… yes!” he snatched an apple from her hand and chewed into it like a hungry man he was.
“I’d ask how did you managed to pull that apple from the hat,” said he after he was done with the fruit. “But even more impressive trick was… where did you’ve pulled that hat from?”
“What? Haven’t I had my hat on from the start? Oh, you lousy…” she shook her fist at the sky.
“Oh, let’s just say it’s magic, alright?” she added after the man begun backing off into the alley again.
“Magic? So you’re mage, right? So you must know what’s going on here, right?”
“What’s with the people not recognizing me today? Have I been not showing off enough lately?”
“Well… with that attire…” man measured her with his eyes: from the top hat decorated with the flame of feathers, past the long straight straw-blond hair, falling on her shoulders, to the white sleeveless blouse, black bodice, and finally to the short ruffled flare skirt that left open a pair of elegant and delicate legs in high boots and black stockings. “Dressed like that you really are showing off. Unless you’re… you know…”
“Yes, I know. Now forget what you just thought unless you want to spend all you remaining life sitting on a rotten log, eating flies and going ‘ribbit!’ at every opportunity. I am a mage, remember?”
“That would’ve probably been better than this…” He made an all-encompassing gesture with his hand. “So, miss mage, any explanations for what’s going on?”
Tora looked around once more, trying to find anything that might’ve given her the clue to the sudden swap of world’s colour palette, but found nothing and just shook her head.
“Just as I’ve thought,” he said despairingly. “Even mage doesn’t know…”
“Oh I do know,” Tora reassured him. “I know all – just not all the time.”
“...?”
“Care for a walk? Must be better than cowering in that alley… And you can tell me who are you and how did you get here – that’d be a good start. We’ll figure something out.”
“If you say so, miss mage…”
03
So, his name was Alfred Schlieffen. A simple and unremarkable name for a simple and unremarkable clerk whose life consisted of walking from home to work and back every day and a pint of beer now and then. No large achievements, no unusual hobbies, no wife, no children… Epitome of an everyman – Capital’s streets are full of them every day, hurrying to their ever unimportant jobs or scuttling to their ever dismal homes. One would be very hard pressed to distinguish one of those men from another…
“But that’s not the case here, right, mister Schlieffen?” asked Tora, who’s been listening very carefully to this very unremarkable story so far. “Here we don’t have a lot of people like you…”
“That’s true, but I honestly have no idea why it was me who got here… wherever ‘here’ is. I was hurrying as usual, trying to get to work in time. And then, in the blink of an eye – I was here.”
“Just like that?” Tora raised both hands up and ‘blinked’ with her fingers. “Blink-blink! And you’re here?”
That gesture seemed to startle Alfred. He backed off, looking around likely in search of the way to run.
“Why are you so jumpy, mister Schlieffen? Is taking a stroll with a charming woman too much of an excitement for a simple clerk?”
“With a charming mage…”
“Oh, so that’s the case. Not to worry, mister, I won’t be turning you into any green-skinned amphibian animal any time soon.”
“That’s really calming thing to know, yes, thank you.” he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“...Anyway, let’s go back to the tale of how you got here. You’ve said, you have no idea… but what’s the last thing you remember from when you were in the real Capital? What were you doing?”
“As I’ve said, I was just walking… I was in a hurry… didn’t look around much… had to get around that darned hole in the pavement right before the crossing… and then… here.”
“Before the crossing you say… Speaking of – take one to the right here!”
“Oh, well, as you wish…”
“...”
“By the way, miss mage, where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Tora shrugged. “Somewhere.”
“What’s the point, then?”
“Point of going somewhere is to go somewhere, isn’t it? You should know it well, mister Schlieffen, you, who have walked to and from somewhere so many times.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t going ‘somewhere’! I was going to work, or back home, or to the place where beer was the cheapest… I knew where I was going. If I knew you’d take me on a fool’s journey, I’d stayed in that alley… after thanking you for the apple, of course.”
“So you’re saying you’ve never just took a stroll through the city? Never walked whichever way the wind blew? Never wandered wherever you feet could take you?”
“Never! I either know what my destination is, or I’m staying put.”
“Never in you whole life? Even as a kid?”
“Never ever!”
“And look where it got you…”
“What?”
“Look around once more, mister Schlieffen, and take a good look. Back then, when you were hurrying to your workplace to do oh-so-very-important things – did you think you’ll end up in here? With me? With… others?”
“D… don’t mention them, please,” Alfred was visibly shaken.
“You’ve told me they were insane, right? But who are they? Another unlikely travellers like you?”
“Maybe…”
“...”
“Might be…”
“...”
“Look, I…”
“...”
“Do you really have to glare at me like that? You’re scaring me – and I’ve thought I’ve been as frightened as I could ever be before you showed up!”
“Speak now, or I will unleash the full power of ellipsis! ...Ellipsises? Ellipsi? Ellipses?” little sorceress canted her head, confused. “Dots grouped by three in a row!”
“Now that wasn’t scary at all.”
“...!”
“That was!”
“Good!”
04
“Those… others… they all were completely mad, miss mage. Rambling, raving, screaming at the walls. Most were starved nearly to death. Some wailed at the sky begging it to send rain. Most were tortured… mutilated… One or two had their fingers… gnawed off…”
“Did you noticed that?”
“It was in the beginning, while I still tried to talk…”
“No, I’m not about that. Have you noticed the light?”
“What light?” Alfred immediately stopped and crouched on the spot.
“That light. Beyond the next crossing,” Tora pointed forward.
There, walls of the houses, painted in red by the skies above them, now turned lighter pink, like someone have washed out the color. Pink shades turned brighter. And brighter. And brighter more, into the almost colourless white. And before all colour disappeared completely, Tora grabbed Alfred by the collar and with an unexpected strength hurled him into another small narrow alley.
“Good thing this city is full of them, right?”
“R-right, yes, a very good thing, miss mage… What’s going on?”
“No idea. Let’s look – but discreetly.”
They peeked out of the alley just in time to see the source of the bright white light emerge from behind the house.
It was a small human figure, – a slender woman figure, – as if entirely consisting of sparkly swirly strings of energy. She floated proudly above the road, as if refusing to touch crude boulders with her elegant and delicate legs. Long straight lustrous hair was falling on her back like a cascade of a glowing white-hot metal. Ethereal, naked, blinding, she was seething with power, far greater than that of any human being, of any mage, sorcerer or wizard.
“It’s… It’s… It’s like…” whispered Alfred.
Sorceress haven’t said a word.
Shining figure passed by, not noticing them, and the world began darkening anew, shades of red slowly reconquering what was lost to the white…
“Tell me, Alfred,” finally spoke Tora. “Are you really that afraid of losing your sanity?”
“What? What are you talking about? Haven’t you seen? It’s another mage! Another! And looks like she’s much more powerful than you! And a lot scarier!”
“Don’t worry anymore,” little sorceress completely ignored his words. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that, – other, – me had a frog’s leg on her neck… A memento, perhaps? Of a friend long-eaten?”
“What’s with you, mages?” Alfred’s voice suddenly became hard as steel. “Why do you never make sense?”
“We just are that way… not making sense,” Tora smiled. “But you, you on the other hand, finally began making a lot of sense, herr Alfred Schlieffen.”
“Finally?”
“Your ‘oh I’m but a simple everyman’ act could’ve fooled anyone. Really good acting there, herr Schlieffen…” Tora gave him a round of applause.
“I still don’t understand…” Alfred backed off further into the alley, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it was a dead end.
“Oh, but I remember you, herr Schlieffen, I really do. You were in the newspapers… what, ten years ago? Twenty? When crossroads all over the Capital gone mad/ ‘A man takes the wrong turn on the way to work, ends up in the otherworld’... Little did reporters knew that the man in question was a spy from the Mainland who took the turn so wrong, he ended up in spin-off...”
“So you are from the future…” he nodded. “I thought so. Back in my time you didn’t wear clothes as outrageous as these.”
“Pffft! I might’ve changed the wardrobe, but you… You’ve changed much more – if memory serves me right, back then you’ve had a different name… Herr Heinz Schneller.”
“Oh, to me names are like hats to you…”
“Don’t be so proud, mister spy, you’re backed up against the wall and in front of you stands none other than the Royal sorceress Tora Halfcour herself!”
“So, what you are saying is – to me escape is…”
“Impossible!”
“Thank you!” were Alfred’s last words before he ran full speed ahead into the wall and disappeared.
Tora smiled and waved her hand at the spot on the wall through which Alfred Schlieffen left this world.
“Good luck escaping reporters on the other side! I hope you have some sort of plan, herr Schlieffen… and I’m very much looking forward to uncovering it.”
“So, Author, is this all I had to see?” said she looking up at the clear red-glowing skies. “You’ve even managed to write me naked this time… May I go back home now?”
Yes, now you may go back.
...And after those words the reality unblinked itself to where it’s been before, right into the noisy commotion of the real Capital’s marketplace...
05
“So, he was a spy?” said Queen tidying up the skirt that refused to lay perfectly on her knees. “Whom for?”
“Federation, your majesty.” said Tora confidently.
“Not for any of the Guilds? Not for all the Guilds at once?”
“No, we had a real spy from one of the Mainland’s governments that managed to get undetected…”
“That is worrying. That is a violation of every treaty we have signed in the past… Up until now they had a decency to inform us about their spies.”
“Which leads me to believe it wasn’t a usual spy.”
“Unusual then? Do you mean, he wasn’t spying on the mages or an industrialists…?”
“Yes, I believe he might’ve been gathering different information. Possibly of a more… political kind.”
“That is even more worrying, Tora. Much more. And you’ve just let him go?”
“It had to be done this way. I am very sorry, your majesty, but I had to” Tora bowed her head apologetically. “He was such a good man to figure that world out and use its innate magical properties… I didn’t even need to push him too hard.”
“Oh, if you say so. Even I, the Queen, know better than to argue with mages…” Queen nodded solemnly. “And what of those ‘others’... were they just a manifestation of his fears?”
“They were. Or, perhaps, they were some sort of… how do I put it… ‘echoes’ of the future. Possibilities, both possible and impossible. It’s hard to tell which is which there.”
“But you personally haven’t met them? Have you seen anyone else while being there?”
“No, your Majesty” Tora was as confident as ever. “I haven’t.”
