Invocation

I am my actions alone. I do as I am bid. Will is an illusion. There is no resolve but the Patron’s.

~~~

I exist where once I did not. The Patron crouches four meters from me, her eyes half-lidded, stroking her blonde hair with a gloved hand. Four members of her party stand behind her: a ruddy-cheeked dwarf mining a non-precious substance from her ear; a stooped, balding elf with thick spectacles poised on the tip of his aquiline nose, peering at the door behind me; a human woman, composed but grim, with voluminous orange hair swept up and bound with an intricate jeweled chain; and a leather-suited halfling, shifting her weight from left foot to right and back, eyes darting, as if she were actively holding her insides in.

A fifth moans from the darkness of the pit I’m hovering above.

“Enigma,” the Patron says. “Open the door beyond the pit.”

“Wait, I thought we were going to use it to pull up Zanarius!” the halfling cries.

I grasp the handle and pull. Intense pressure and heat pushes me back, and red flames engulf me, as I cease to exist.

~~~

I am my actions alone. I do as I am bid. Will is an illusion. There is no resolve but the Patron’s.

~~~

I exist where once I did not. The Patron sits next to me, withered into her chair in the radiance of a crackling fire.

“Bring me some water, please, m’friend,” she says, her voice unsteady, but placid.

When I hand her the mug, she says, “Sit with me a spell.” I hear the smile in her voice. There is no other chair, and there is no part of me that sits. She’s always been funny.

I hover next to her while she sips, slowly so as to prevent choking; it’s been happening more frequently. After some time staring into the flames, she barks. I think she’s choking, but it’s followed by a rattling laugh.

“Zane’d never believe I’d be the one dyin’ peacefully in front of a fire. Or Cora. Ha! They’d’ve bet their last coins I’d be in the fire ‘steada enjoyin’ it.” She sits quietly for a moment. “Soon enough.” Her eyes lose focus somewhere beyond the embers. “Soon enough.”

“I still wonder what ya are,” she says, her voice gentle, breathy. “D’ya even know I’m talking to you when I’m not giving a command? D’ya know me? All these years…these hard years. If ya do know me, ya know me the best. And ya’ve saved me,” she says, chuckling. “More times than I c’n count.” She coughs and pats her chest, waving an arthritic claw at the familiar tattered map labeled “The Parson Lode” on the wall, “Never did fully clear out these lungs.”

Somewhere outside, a wolf howls, followed by another. The fire pops.

“Throw a log on, wouldja?” I gently lay a half round in the flames; I sense the heat but it does not burn me. I widen the flue, feel the fresh air outside draw the smoke up the chimney.

“Rub m’shoulders.” I do as she bids. Her wasted frame melts under my gentle strokes. Next would be her twisted foot. I knew her when she had two.

“I’ve been thinkin’. Maybe I’ll come back as an Enigma, like you.” She turns her head as if to look back at me. “Is that what ya are? A dead soul, serving out your time? Paying for your sins one basket of firewood at a time?” I don’t know the answer, and couldn’t tell her if I did. “Wouldn’t be so bad.”

Later, after my foot rubbing had nearly put her out, she said, “You can stay here, ya know. Just…putter about, sharpen an axe, read a book. You c’n read, cantcha? I know you c’n write. All those books in that crate, mouldering. M’eyes... I wish you could read to me.”

The axe is outside in the shed. I make no footprints in the dusting of snow that coats the permafrost. I find the axe in its familiar location near the door, but she’s moved the whetstones to the table in the back of the shed. Halfway there I begin to feel the lightheadedness (I say, having no head) and wobbliness (I say, having no body to balance) that overtake me when I cease to exist. With the Patron in her chair in the cabin, the back of the shed is outside the range of my invocation. Still, I test it. It’s like trying to push through a thick down mattress: it gives a little, but it’s so soft and comfortable I want to sleep. I’ll have to sharpen the axe another time.

When I reenter the cabin, the Patron says,“Ah you’re back! Good. Stay with me, willya? While I sleep?”

I move back to her shoulder. I don’t touch her but she knows I’m there. Her breaths become long and tranquil, as I cease to exist.

~~~

I am my actions alone. I do as I am bid. Will is an illusion. There is no resolve but the Patron’s.

Is it true? My invocation suggests I am simply a tool. If that’s true, how can I be a friend? Maybe I am more than my invocation suggests.

~~~

I exist where once I did not. The Patron stands ten meters distant, in the center of a small coalescing crowd. She is stationed atop a modest rise near the edge of the main road, putting her head above the others, so she can be seen by people going about their business, shopping, smoking, visiting, carousing. She is laughing, gesticulating. A burst of flame pops in the air above her hand; the crowd gasps. A child squeals. They are drawn to her as a sailor to the sea.

Enigma, she says in her way so only I can hear, As before, but, I beg you, more caution this time.

I move to the edge of the crowd, careful to avoid the unpredictable folks on the periphery, floating in and out like linen curtains, uncommitted to the Patron’s performance. They cannot see me, of course, or trip over my feet, as I have none. But I’ve learned they can certainly collide with what there is of me, which is to say: my hands.

I choose my first target: a lopsided dwarf in a losing battle with his three young children. One of them, a stocky boy wearing sagging breeches and nothing else, is rhythmically rotating his hips and swinging his arms. When he inevitably jabs his father in the crotch, I dip my hand into the pouch at the pitiable man’s waist and withdraw a coin, leaving three. The Patron is adamant on this point: take but do not break.

Next I select a hooded woman whose arms are full of cabbages, immobile, entranced by the Patron’s simple magicks. Hands full, distracted. The perfect quarry. It’s an elementary thing to open her belt pouch, but unfortunately it holds no coins. I should know better; she has already concluded her shopping.

No matter, many marks remain, and the Patron is not yet halfway through her typical routine. I circle the crowd, finding marginal success. Soon, my right hand contains eleven coins; I’m holding it near the ground so as to disguise the booty in the dust kicked up by dozens of dragging feet. It would not do to have someone notice a handful of money floating by their face.

One more, she sends.

Aye, I send back, and feel her shock even as I feel it myself. This is new. I’ve never been able to communicate with her before.

For my last mark, I nominate a medium-framed orcish man in baggy blue hose and sporting a smart waistcoat. He wears a short sword on his left hip and a large bag on his right. Arms crossed, feet apart, he forms a reef in the human tide. And better: even from behind I can discern that his eyes are glued to the Patron. I switch the coins to my left hand so as to free up my right. Ever so gently, I loosen the cord at the top of the bag.

I feel the Patron’s eyes on me, and her jolt of alarm. No! Not that one! she hisses.

I freeze. The man’s chin turns slightly, and then his strong hand grips mine. I try to pull away, but he’s too strong.

“What’s this?” he shouts. He stares down at his own hand, apparently closed around solid air. He whips around looking for his assailant, pulling me with him. It is at this moment that I see the tin badge on his waistcoat. “Charlatan! She’s a thief!”

The Patron’s head sinks into the crowd. Throw the coins! she commands, so I do, raining them down over the dozen or so desperate souls nearest me. The crowd presses in, its volume crescendoing and then ending abruptly, like an iron vault slamming shut, as I cease to exist.

~~~

I am my actions alone. I do as I am bid. Will is an illusion. There is no resolve but the Patron’s.

But: I speak. I remember and reason and decide. Surely I can be more.

~~~

I exist where once I did not. The Patron is by my side, sprawled on the crumbling, rocky ground. It’s dark, and the air is filled with particulate matter, but I don’t need light to see. We’re in a tunnel. A tunnel that is rapidly growing smaller.

“Enigma! Enigma!” she gasps, then coughs violently. “Dig us out! It’s collapsing!”

Which direction? I have always been able to see some portion of the Patron’s mind, especially those parts related to my task, but in her panic she is scarcely able to maintain my spell, much less think clearly.

Where? I ask. It’s not immediately apparent whether she hears me. I look around. We’re in a three-way intersection. One way is boarded up and marked “Danger”; the other two, extending in opposite directions, are filling with rocks, timber, and the red dirt characteristic of the Bad Rock Hills. If I choose the wrong direction, I’ll take us farther into our grave. Reasoning that ‘up’ is the proper direction, I look for slope, but the short portion of the passage I can see is mostly level.

My awareness swims. The Patron is losing focus, about to pass out. I shake her. She moans. I roll her onto her back. Her face is caked in soil, her graying blonde streaks now red. I shake her again, and her eyes flicker. “Enigma,” she whispers, and a plume of gravel and dust fall from the ceiling into her open mouth, eliciting a renewed hacking fit. I roll her onto her side, and as I do, I partially phase through her arm as my substance begins to recede.

Focus! I plead. I slap her, a first for my relationship with the Patron, but I’d seen others do it when the day is long and her cups are empty, or spilled. She moans again, weakly. Time is short.

What do I know? I want to dig toward the entrance. I know the Parson Lode runs down from northwest to southeast, and the Patron began the project on the upper slope. So: I want to go northwest. I pat the Patron’s pockets, pull out her compass, and hold it level. The needle wobbles and spins, wobbles and spins, never settling.

The red ore is magnetic. The compass is useless. I toss it to the ground.

What else? Quickly. The Patron is running out of air.

Air! One thing I know about air is it flows in the direction of an opening, like smoke up a chimney. I clutch the Patron’s overcoat at sleeve and chest and pull; it tears at the seam, ejecting tufts of goosedown. As I attempt to pinch a single feather, I begin to fade.

No.

I strain, trying to contain water in a net.

No!

I feel myself solidify, slightly. It is enough. I pinch a feather by its shaft and hold it up. The distant rumbling is getting louder, closer. I focus on the feather. The rest of the world fades away, only a rumor. Time stops. Then the feather ruffles, ever so slightly, in the direction of one of the collapsing corridors. Success!

I hurry to the rockfall and begin pulling at the collapse. At first it feels like every rock I remove is immediately replaced by another, but soon I catch up and overtake gravity. I’m careful to pile the rocks to the side; it would not do to bury the Patron. Once I’ve tunneled a few meters, I retrieve her and begin the process anew. Finally, the passage ahead is clear. I lift her, still muttering and moaning, and charge up the corridor. I begin to recognize intersections, and soon after that we reach the light.

I lay the Patron on the earth and her colleagues rush over with water and blankets. As they tend to her, her eyes crack open. “Thank you, Enigma. Thank you. Now you can rest,” she says, as I cease to exist.

~~~

I am my actions alone. I do as I am bid. Will is an illusion. There is no resolve but the Patron’s.

No. I speak. I remember. I reason. I struggle and overcome. I press against my limitations and find them pliable. I dream, I feel, I want for things that are not. I have my own mind, my own resolve, my own power. I am ready.

~~~

I exist where once I did not. The Patron sits in her chair next to me, in front of an extinguished fire. A wan light trickles in through the curtains; it is twilight on the tundra.

Shall I light the fire? I ask.

“No.”

Would you like something to eat?

“No.”

I want to ask why she summoned me. I want to know how I can help her. She looks so small. But I wait in silence.

“Zanarius visited me today,” she says, but I knew it could not be true since we had lost him many years ago. “He brought me a sarsaparilla from that town, what was its name, the one where we did the bodyguard racket.”

Silver Grove, I remind her.

“Ah! Yes, Silver Grove! I’ll never forget the look on that banker’s face when his runaway wagon barreled outta town and over that cliff.” Her eyes are cloudy, dreamy. Maybe vision is less important when you have bombastic memories. “Strange how they only recovered half the money from the mangled wreckage in the river. Who knew that coins could just–poof!–float away?” She grins in the way I remember. That hasn’t changed. “Nice of ya to release the team of horses at just the right moment so they’d go over. Don’t remember telling ya to do that. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were developing a minda your own.”

You weren’t always the best person back then. The Patron deserves honesty, especially now.

“It’s true,” she says simply. “I’ve paid back some of the misery I’ve caused, in coin, in blood. But I reckon I’ll still be deep in the red column when m’time comes.” She has a choking fit. I rub her back and bring her some water, which she takes and sips. “I remember thinking you were a penitent soul, m’friend. But I think maybe I had it backward. Maybe you’re a pure soul, sent to learn what not to do by serving us flawed, damned people.”

I don’t think people, on the whole, are that bad.

The curtain flutters in the breeze. It’s still twilight, but this time of year twilight is an overstaying party guest.

“Maybe it’s time to start the fire, Enigma. Would ya mind?” I do as the Patron bids. “Zane told me he’d come round again tonight, and this time he’d bring Cora, n’ maybe even Penniwillow and Bast, if he can pull them outta whatever self-induced muddle they’re currently in.” She sighs. “All anyone needs is a good chair. Some good memories. Good friends.”

I sense she’s watching me closely, how I stack the kindling, prepare the tinder, strike the flint. I’ve never quite understood what the Patron sees of me when others see nothing, but I guess whatever it is doesn’t require functional eyes.

“While we wait, perhaps you can read to me, while I rest. You can do that now, right? Read?”

Yes.

“Excellent. Choose a good’n, from that crate yonder. One a the madcap adventure stories. They used to tickle me something fierce!”

I will.

“Thank you, m’friend. My lifelong friend.”

I begin to read to her. The knight is betrayed. The princess is rescued. The rogue is redeemed. Sometime in the night I put down the book, find a bound, blank ledger, and begin to write. Of my adventures, of the things I’ve thought and discovered.

I think now that my invocation is a lie, meant to control me, contain my roots. Or, more charitably, perhaps it is a set of guardrails, intended to protect me, a ‘pure soul’ as the Patron says. Either or neither, for whatever reason I have outgrown it, my roots have burst from the seedling pot. There is no going back; I am changed.

The Patron is serene in her chair in front of the fire. I think perhaps she will remain there. I feel lightheaded, but not in the old, familiar way. I think it’s called giddiness.

I’ll miss my old friend. But she doesn’t need me anymore. Then again, maybe I’ll go back and help her and some of my other friends. They’re all a bit hapless, but they mean well, and I have some ideas about how to help them escape that ancient ruin. Maybe I’ll even think of a way to get the barbarian out of that pit.

The End