Gift

I should return this where I found it, Xamander thought. The Gift was heavy in his pocket. His boot-heels clacked along the cobblestone inlays of the street as he stared at the moonlit facades forming the skyline of Skaztown. Late nights, when he had exhausted himself from reading, writing, and theorizing incantations, he often enjoyed strolling through the aristocratic district. Floating glowlamps bobbed idly along the walkways, illuminating laughing couples dressed in their evening garb: the women were electric in their flouncy dresses, their arms were entwined with the jacketed velvet of their severe, restrained men, themselves clad in dark vests embroidered with golden tassles and swishing epaulets. Xamander looked upon these couples with vicarious longing — he was conjured ugly. Not a single woman, nor man for that matter, had ever deigned to look at him with any interest beyond the practical. Such was his role in society. But these were pointless worries. He would always be alone. And, there was a particular freedom found in the anonymity of the undesired. It gestated within the bleak egg of loneliness and despair. This was a new realization, born from when he stood at the parapet of the university’s clock tower two nights ago; born from Nora’s death.

How best to fall fatally from a great height: Head first? Backwards? Certainly not feet-first — he may survive such an impact, in fact — and at the thought of survive, a cloud uncovered the moon and the courtyard below suddenly brimmed with watery light, as though it were a giant tear mourning the inevitable. Xamander felt tears run down his cheeks. I don’t want to be alone anymore, he thought, wavering at the stony edge, one toe protruding slightly, as though measuring the fall. He beheld the devastated world beyond Skaztown: gray, uninhabitable land that undulated into the horizon. In the shadow of night, it was blacker than an abyss. He made a final desperate plea for guidance to the Moon Goddess. She gave no reply. Xamander lost his breath, and his footing.

A giant tear dropped upward from the eye, Xamander saw not water but solid earth rushing toward his skull. In the moment before impact, he had a vision: a golden needle, piercing through a purple egg shell, wriggling its way out through a near-perfect incision, then sailing off into a bejeweled sky. He immediately understood a pain deeper than despair, starker even than loneliness: he felt regret. He wished he’d spent one more day in the world. A star slashed the sky.

I should return this where I found it.

Xamander awoke basked in the cold warmth of the crimson morning sun. In a few hours the bell would ring atop the clock tower, and students and professors alike would course through the campus. But right then, Xamander was alone; the Moon had retired beneath the horizon, though her vision remained. A golden needle, piercing an egg; infinity. He sat up, a strange warmth coursing through him. Not a broken bone; hardly a scratch. And beside him, gleaming between blades of grass, was a golden needle. One more day. She had heard his prayer, and answered. This was a rare occurrence indeed. He picked up the needle.

The Archmage sat at his desk, surrounded by stacked tomes, furled scrolls, quills, bottles of ink. Xamander had always felt favored by the Archmage, ever since he impressed him with a collating incantation that scanned his vast collection of tomes and organized them according to any thematic key word he chose. The Archmage’s eyes had flickered with delight; what a wonderful, orderly incantation, he had remarked. Xamander had beamed with pride then.

Now, he approached hesitantly. The Archmage looked up from his scrawling, noting Xamander’s presence.

“I’ve received a vision, sire.”

“Of what caliber?”

“Great caliber, I believe. And also, a Divine Gift…” Xamander produced the golden needle from his coat pocket.

“This is…the Golden Needle! How have you obtained this?”

“I… found it on my morning walk.”

“Indeed?” The Archmage frowned.

“I spied its glinting gold amidst the dew. I thought it banal; perhaps a brooch or fountain pen dropped by a careless student. But as I approached it, I…I had a vision.”

“A vision?” The Archmage lifted his brows, his wrinkled, wizened face indicating deep intrigue.

“Yes, sire, a vision.”

“Of? Go on, then.”

But something deep in Xamander held him from divulging the vision. Like sharing the deepest secret of a dear friend with a stranger, it seemed a jagged thing to do.

“I saw the needle float down from the moon, light as a feather. It alighted upon the grass, and immediately I was certain it was the Golden Needle from the Lunar Scrolls. The vision seemed to speak to me, to tell me so.”

The Archmage measured Xamander’s words.

“Great visions and gifts are not proffered so lightly, Xamander. You know this, of course? They often come at a price.”

“Indeed, sire.”

“Whatever the price, I hope you are happy to have paid it. We must deliver this artifact and news of your vision to the Augurs immediately. They will be able to tell whether it portends great or terrible things — perhaps both.”

The Archmage rounded his desk, motioning for Xamander to step back. He then knelt, muttered an incantation, and began tracing his finger along the floor, leaving a trail of golden light wherever his finger passed. When he had finished, the outline of a large rectangle glowed upon the ground. He made a firm swiping motion, and the floor slid away to reveal a spiraling stairwell, lit with blue-flame torches.

“The Undercellar, sire?”

“Come, we mustn’t waste time.”

“But I haven’t attained the necessary magicks, I am not permitted to enter — ”

“Circumstances permit you. Follow me.”

The Undercellar was a place fiercely protected by the university, for it housed the most sacred bodies of knowledge: lost histories, metaphysical contemplations, magical proofs of the divine origin of Skaztown. Only the Archmage and a chosen few professors were permitted access to it, and that was after years of rigorous study and practice. Xamander did not belong there. He’d always imagined the Undercellar as a dark, moody cavern of knowledge, illuminated by floating glowlamps, labyrinthine due to the masses of enormous bookshelves that filled the space.

He was underwhelmed. Instead, there was only a narrow spiral staircase. White, worn stairs, dull and lifeless in the blue torchlight, and identical closed doors made of a heavy wood on the occasional landing they passed, adorned only with a large ring-shaped knocker and a keyhole. They descended for some time, until finally the Archmage held up his hand.

“We’ve arrived.” They stood at a landing that looked no different from any other. The Archmage materialized a key, and unlocked the door before them, its latches metallic and weighty. They stepped into a large circular room, dimly lit by large censers spilling over thin veils of gray smoke, suffused with navy light from the encased blue flame. Bound in chains, near the center of the room, were three collapsed figures covered in shrouds. They appeared lifeless.

“Arise, noble Augurs! It is I, Archmage Gastoc. I come bearing a Gift.” The Augurs jerked in their chains; Xamander heard bones cracking, realigning, and the Augur in the center held out an emaciated hand.

“Present your Gift,” it whispered, its voice like falling ash.

“Hand them the Golden Needle,” Archmage Gastoc instructed.

Xamander obeyed; he placed the needle into the Augur’s palm. It was brilliant against the being’s mottled gray skin. The Augur brought the needle low, into the shadow of its cowled face.

“The Moon’s Gift. Stitcher of Worlds. It comes at a grave price,” it rasped. “But it is also a great Gift. It portends much. Let us see.”

The Augur reached a hand into its layered shroud. Xamander heard small, hollow objects knocking within the folds. The Augur paused — then with surprising speed, it cast the objects, sending them skittering like broken sticks across the glyph-engraved floor. Xamander recognized the objects from his mandatory studies of human anatomy: they were the bones of human fingers; but exceptionally small. He’d never seen small humans before…where had these bones come from?

The mottled Augur snaked around the bones, holding an uncomfortably long silence.

“Well?” Archmage Gastoc asked impatiently.

“Gifts from the Gods often are married to a vision. What did you see?” The Augur raised its cowled face to Xamander, and Xamander nearly lost his tongue with horror: he was met with a blank visage. Where there should have been eyes, nose, mouth, there was only a smooth layer of bleach white skin.

“A great turning is upon us.”

“Not a word of what you’ve seen or heard to anyone, boy.”

“I’m telling you Nora, there’s something deeply wrong with Skaztown. With our world. The Augurs…they’re not human, like we’ve been told. They’re something else.” Nora listened patiently, her lids half drooped over her eyes in contemplation. She understood the import of this heretical statement; from the first day of university, all pages are taught that the Augurs were the root of divine knowledge from which Skaztown sprang into existence. To speak against the Augur’s was to speak against the foundation of reality itself.

Xamander paced anxiously around Nora’s study; he’d walked straight there after he and Archmage Gastoc returned from their audience with the Augurs. Xamander hated himself; such childish notions. He had imagined such vast, hidden troves of Knowledge in the Undercellar; yet instead, he found only those decrepit creatures.

“And they let you keep the needle?” Nora asked softly. She was unmoved by Xamander’s agitation; she always had been. During his time as a page, when he was studying for the First Mage’s exam, she had kept him grounded when he was sure he would fail. She continued this through the Second, the Third. Her mind was exquisite; pristine and sharp as an ice crystal, and she was a favorite pupil of the Archmage. She had offered Xamander mentorship after he impressed the Archmage with his collation incantation, and from there a loving friendship had blossomed.

“ ‘A God’s gift bears fruit from the hands of its chosen, in accordance with true steps.’ ”

“The Augur’s words?”

“No, the Archmage. Though he seemed…reluctant to allow me to leave his presence.”

“Perhaps for this exact reason.”

“You’re taking his side?”

“Not at all. Just imagining Old Gastoc pulling out his beard hairs imagining you revealing the secret of the Augurs, of all things.”

“You think he regrets it?”

“Perhaps. But he had no choice. Divine Gifts are rare; you’re exceedingly fortunate to have received one. Which begs the question…how did you obtain such a gift? They oft come at a great price.”

“I’m not sure.” Xamander avoided Nora’s deceptively sharp, lidded gaze. He focused his attention instead on the grounds outside the window. Two pages were dueling playfully with materialization incantations.

Nora stood, her azure Magus robes swishing about her legs. She walked to the window, behind Xamander. She was a head shorter than him. She placed her chin upon his shoulder.

“In every scroll I’ve read regarding Divine Gifts, a great personal sacrifice was required of the recipient.”

“The Augurs were casting bones, Nora. Human bones.”

“What of it?” she said, removing her chin with a sigh. “Necromancy is not forbidden, as long as it is performed ethically, with cleansed bodies. We have the Augurs to thank for that art at all — it comes as no surprise they should utilize it.”

“Don’t lecture me on the history of necromancy, Nora, I’m well aware of it.” A loud crack echoed from outside as one of the pages accidentally combusted their materialization. “I’m also familiar with anatomy. Those bones were tiny. Unlike any I’ve ever seen.”

Nora stood rigid.

“And you’re sure those bones were human?” she whispered.

Xamander nodded. Nora returned to her desk, began lifting and rearranging scrolls and tomes, searching for something. Xamander drew near, watched her search. Finally, she discovered her goal: an ancient, faded scroll, hardly more than a few paragraphs.

“This is old Knowledge, Xamander. Granted only to a very few. In the world before ours, people came about by…different means. They weren’t conjured to fit a precise societal need as they are today. And they didn’t begin in their mature state, as we have. They grew.”

“Grew? Like plants?”

“Very akin. In the old world, there was a chance the union of man and woman would bring about a new life; the mother carried this new life inside her, and when it was born, it was called a child. One of the first fruits of Knowledge was the removal of this inefficiency from our existence. Children were fragile; they took exorbitant time and energy to rear. And they were exceedingly precious to people.”

Xamander felt something inside of him tilting over, spilling. He was reminded of the ground rushing toward him.

“Then those bones…how did they get them?”

Nora placed her head in her hands.

“They’ve robbed us of everything…our lives, our world. Our children.”

“Everything has a use, Xamander. Society is no different. And don’t you forget that it was the people of old who robbed themselves of their world; we are left to pick up the pieces. And thanks to the appearance of the Augurs, we have done just that. Who are you to question the divine order of Knowledge? What can you offer the world that has given you so much? You’d spit in the face of the Augurs. Pitiful, hideous, ungrateful man. How dare you. How dare you question the very hands from which you were molded. Were it not for the Knowledge of the Augurs, you wouldn’t exist to even question them!”

Xamander pondered this.

“Perhaps Knowledge has grown weary of itself.”

Archmage Gastoc shuddered with rage.

“I know you killed Nora. For what I told her.” The needle was heavy in his clenched hand.

Xamander stood in the courtyard, alone, beneath the Moon. The needle dripped with Gastoc’s blood; it thrummed in his hand. He held it up, then released it; the needle remained suspended in air. A thin, red, crystalline thread had materialized at its base, looped through the eye. It was only a few inches long, its open end taut, fading into space like candlelight illuminating a deep, dark cavern. Xamander grasped the needle once more; it thrummed powerfully, and he began to stitch the air before him. Red thread pulled endlessly from the ether; the needle glowed, grew hot, searing Xamander’s hand. But Xamander knew only the thrumming needle and its beautiful thread, pure joy radiating through his body with every stitch laid upon the air.

Eventually, Xamander ended up where he began, and knew he was finished. He beheld his work: a glowing crimson circle floating in the air, the size of a plate. The circle was perfect; it began to pulse gently, sending faint golden light ebbing through the crimson. A cool breeze blew through Xamander’s fingers, and he realized the needle had disappeared, a thin burn on his palm the only evidence of its existence. Xamander reached into his pocket, and grasped the grotesque thing he’d found beside the needle.

Xamander noticed something else resting in the grass: a misshapen creature, palm-sized and slick, covered in silvery scales. Small slits underscored its unblinking eyes, and little fins lined its vertebrae, culminating in a finned tail. He’d never seen or read of anything like it. He cast a quick stasis incantation upon it, then placed it in his pocket for later research.

Xamander removed stasis from the creature. It began to wriggle, the slits on its neck opening and closing. It was weak; near death. He remembered the vision of the Moon: a golden needle, piercing through the immaculate hole of an egg.

He extended his arm through the glowing circle, creature in hand; but nothing happened. The circle thrummed, the creature wriggled, and desolation remained where it had always been. Xamander looked up at the Moon. He was lost.

“I’ve done it!” he cried out at her. “I’ve sewn your circle, I’ve protected your Gifts! I fulfilled the vision…I lost Nora…what more must I do?”

Where I found it.

Xamander retracted his arm. He looked at the creature; its scaly, unfit body shuddering in his palm; mouth gasping; his face reflected in the creature’s glassy eye. He began to cry. It was begging for life, but was doomed to die. Was the Moon so cruel? He held the creature to his chest, and his knees gave way: he fell.

The golden circle expanded, swirling around his crumpled body, becoming a tempest of whirring light. Xamander was afraid; it would engulf him. The Moon had laid a trap; he was a fool, an utter fool — then, he was floating. The creature floated from his hand, and after a moment righted itself, then darted away. It swam.

Xamander’s eyes widened. Surrounding him was a profusion of water, light, and life unlike anything he’d ever imagined. Colorful spires of rock arched playfully across the watery bed. Impossible creatures swam in vast numbers, shimmering in shafts of sunlight, turning and twisting like a single organism; he recognized them to be the same as the one he had held only moments before. Water snakes coiled in and out of the variegated ocean rocks, large green creatures with great shells lumbered past him, some with smaller version of themselves — children. Above him, the surface of the water glimmered; he needed air.

Breaching the surface, the brightness of the world blinded him. He treaded water, catching his breath, letting his eyes adjust. Slowly, they beheld a vast body of water, as endless as the desolation surrounding Skaztown, and punctuated with mounds of earth; green, verdant earth, watched over by white clouds lazing within a serene blue sky, winged, feathered creatures looping in smooth circles, and the unending brightness of the shining sun.