A quick tale in the vicinity of Mother’s Light but, I dunno, the multi-verse is a big place.
Dearest Arthur, I send you many good wishes and joyous holiday cheer. I remain employed and thriving in that frigid faraway kingdom to the north, the one where I once sought a proper education many years ago. I have done my best in the years since, but I must confess that these people were a little unprepared for a visitor from across the mountains. They have accepted me, but their language remains an impossibly complex puzzle. There are too many overlapping and contradictory grammar rules. Vowels and consonants combine in nonsensical ways. I have grown to understand what they are saying to me, most of the time, but mutual conversation is difficult. I found easier rapport with their beasts of labor, at first. That work is plenty enough here, but that is not why I am inviting you to join me with this letter.
Though they insist on calling our country Barbaros, with a not very subtle hint of malice to that name, I might add, I have a business proposition for you, and as many others of our clan as wish to travel at this time of year. Place enough of these people together in tiered seating, you see, and you have a captive audience, ready to be enthralled by the slightest spectacle. They will pay for this. There is an entire entertainment industry for those with our abilities to conquer.
I have used our aunt’s teaching to attach a recent memory to this small gift, a candied morsel made of a local nut paste and sugar, covered in a shell made of more sugar and a different bean paste. I am told that this one is shaped like one of the northern trees. Their cuisine will require some adjustment, but I promise this place will be worth a visit once you have eaten, and witnessed what I have witnessed. Give my love to Ophelia and young Jakob.
Your cousin, Brandon.
—–
I had mucked out the stables and herded the sheep by mid-morning. Then, I stacked tree trunks to break and chop into more usable firewood, finishing my day’s chores a few hours early. The freedom to spend time behind the town library brightened my mood. People grew angry and spread odd rumors when I entered that place too often, but the librarian had started leaving dictionaries and children’s books for me, in a box in the alley. In the early dawn, while the rest of the town slept, she would draw their letters and tutor me, very patiently. The pronunciation of her actual name continued to elude me, but she always made the cutest little smile when I tried. My sweet Kay. I feared I was falling in love.
My best friend also worked the stables in this middle-sized hamlet I had grown to call home. He sauntered over like something juicy was brewing. Ed, who had gracefully explained when we first met that he preferred that nickname anyway, was a man with a firm grasp on both the local currency and gambling statistics. We made a profitable pair. In fact, Ed now owned these stables. Ed reached up and elbowed my hip. He said, “Yo, I just saw Ephestus at the market. There’s a show tonight.”
I stared down, amused. “Fight?” I asked.
“Erm, no,” said Ed, averting his eyes and pretending to inspect my wood pile. It was easy to forget that not everyone liked my smile. Kay, though, she would tell jokes just to provoke my laughter. “We watch and they do stuff,” said Ed.
“What?” I asked.
“Ephestus says it’s Machine Elves.”
“Eph know dog butt,” I said.
Ed slapped my thigh and nearly fell over laughing. Townsfolk were openly gossiping about this new group, though. The strangers had come out of the glowing west, riding carriages without horses. Some claimed they were hunting for artifacts of the Lost Fathers. There was not much of that around here, as far as I knew.
We locked up the stables and made our way to the outdoor stadium north of town. Ed wanted to stop at a few taverns on the way, too. He knew the proprietors who were willing to deliver a full keg to me on the street. Sometimes, windows were open, and I could listen to the stories, or try to sing along with their songs.
At the gate, Eph was collecting two of their square gold coins per person to enter, an astoundingly high sum. This show really must be good. His gameday face dissolved into wary friendship when he spotted our approach. The line to enter the stadium figured out that I was here and opened a path. Eph embraced Ed like a cousin and said, “Hadar, you and your large friend should head to the VIP box. Free of charge, for my best local draw!” He turned to me. “Brah, no fight today. Sorry. Good seat!”
I grunted, trying not to smile. They always got my name wrong, too. I stooped down to follow Ed through the archway. Behind us, Eph called out, “Step right up! Join me for the demonstration of a lifetime! Hellfire from the wastelands captured in the palm of your hand! Even Brah the Barbarian cannot stay away!”
Ed and I were led by security into a roped-off space at the top of wide stairs. My arrival had been anticipated. A large number of cushions were piled near one side of the balcony edge. A cluster of chairs their size were lined up to the right, where the town doctor sat with his nurse in the front row, next to the town mayor and his secretary. Eyebrows rose and the ladies whispered. I bowed with reasonably practiced skill, and said, “Evenin’.”
“Good evening, Brah!” said the mayor. He turned to his secretary and the rest of the group with an attempt at a reassuring expression. “It is a pleasure to have you join us tonight.”
I nodded and sat down on the cushions. “Yeah,” I said. Kay would have been proud of me, but she did not approve of the stadium.
Tonight, three tall men stood in the middle of the swept dirt circle where I earned spare change, once or twice a month. Wearing long dark coats of an unfamiliar fabric, they traded lines of an obviously prepared speech. The one in the center spoke at length about reviving an old tradition of the Lost Fathers. The assembled crowd was losing interest, until the man on the left held a short stick over a candle flame. The stick sizzled and suddenly threw little sparks of light in all directions. Everyone clapped as he bent down and lit a rope at his feet. This rope consumed itself rapidly, drawing a flashing line in the sand towards a box on the far side of the stadium. The box exploded with a booming crash that shook the balcony, filling half the stadium with thick black smoke. I noted the half a dozen or so men in the audience who did not flinch, before the crowd recovered and erupted into thunderous applause.
A second act was set up quickly throughout the stadium, a set of increasingly smaller targets. The leader described different applications of the same principles in the driest tone possible. The delivery mechanism in his hand married metal shaped by high temperatures with a wooden handle that fit your palm. The puffs of smoke and bangs were smaller, but these men made up for that by exploding ceramic cups and glass bottles from greater and greater distances. The magic of the Lost Fathers was pushing small iron balls with great force, and the assembled townsfolk loved it.
In order to maximize the distance to a wooden box painted with a set of concentric red circles, the leader joined us in the VIP box. The crowd fell silent as he raised his right arm and pointed. One of his acolytes stabbed one of their sizzle sticks through the hole blasted in the center circle from his shot, as they called these events.
The stadium was again filled with a level of adulation that might have triggered some jealousy. Or, this close, the smoke from his weapon smelled of sulfur and something more sinister. Regardless, I had had enough. I stood to my full height and turned to the leader. He was thin but taller than Ed, wearing a hat that extended up past my navel. I cleared my throat and said, “You. Me. Fight.”
Eph appeared at the man’s side and laughed in a fake way that confused me. “Sciencemaster, we are ready for the big finish!” He tried to catch my eye, his expression growing more and more nervous. “Bright lights in the sky, Brah!”
I shook my head slowly. “No. Fight. Me duel your thing. Your gun.”
“Brah, buddy, be reasonable,” said Eph. “These nice gentlemen have a show to finish.”
The Sciencemaster held onto his ridiculous hat as he craned his neck backward to face me, and tapped a silver circle on his lapel with his free hand as he spoke next. “And, how exactly are you planning to counter me?” Eph and Ed exchanged a look. His voice had been odd, a whisper below his normal speaking volume, but this man had just addressed me in my native language. I glanced at the mountains looming on the southern horizon, where Machine Elves had evidently also visited since I was last home.
I grinned. “Me cast fist.”
Ed stepped forward. “Scienceman, I don’t believe that my friend here always understands us very well. He says that sort of stuff, but he’s a wrestler, a fighter. That’s it. He hasn’t floated so much as a feather with any magic, in front of me.”
The Sciencemaster twirled his weapon in his hand. “You seem like a hearty fellow, but this will surely hurt very badly, if it doesn’t kill you.”
“Me. Cast. Fist.”
He stowed his weapon somewhere under his coat and shrugged at Eph. “We are not responsible, but a show is a show,” said the Sciencemaster.
In due time, I joined him in the middle of the swept arena, standing back to back. The news of my alteration to the planned proceedings spread quickly through the crowd, as broken targets were cleared out of sight. Ed wandered through the stadium seating, taking bets. Good lad.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” said the Sciencemaster. There was an edge to his machine voice. It must be rare for him to not be in full control of the situation.
“Eh,” I replied.
“Twenty paces, as agreed, and may Great Mother guide your soul home,” said the ScienceMaster.
“Who?” I lied.
The Sciencemaster stepped dramatically forwards and began to call out numbers in the local dialect. I rotated slowly in place, flexing my wrist muscles and opening and closing my right fist a few times, as a lesson long drilled into memory by my earliest training ran through my head.
I focus the power of my hand, but my hand is not alone. It is connected to my body. I focus the power of my body, but my body is not alone. It is connected to the dirt below my feet, to this building and the people inside it. I focus the power of this group, but this group is not alone. They are connected to their town, the land, the mountains. I focus the power of the mountains, but the mountains are not alone. Everything is connected to our Great Mother.
I inhaled as the Sciencemaster turned and raised his arm. I finished the mantra just as the gun flashed and a plume of dark smoke bloomed. I focus the power of our Great Mother.
I punched.
A woman screamed, and I was relieved that it was not Kay’s voice. I winced at a brief pinch, before my attention was distracted by an echo of the gun shot. The Sciencemaster’s hat blew off. I opened my fist to examine the back of my hand. A small red welt had formed where a patch of hair near a knuckle had rubbed off. I sniffed and discovered the truth. That hair had burnt off.
Ed fell on his rear while hollering, “He cast fist!”
Isolated pockets of clapping grew in volume, until the crowd was chanting what they assumed was my name. The Sciencemaster walked up with one hand shoved inside his hat, poking his index finger through a hole. He threw the hat to one side. “Son, if you are interested, let’s do that again tomorrow. Then, maybe, you, and your friend in the crowd, make this a traveling show with us, for a while.”
“Okay,” I said. I frowned and thought, Kay. There was no scenario where you would approve of this idea, is there?
The Sciencemaster walked away, addressing his two brethren in their own weird language, more vowels than consonants. I focused on my own extended family, probably bored out of their minds in our landlocked ancestral lands, as safe as they were. A few lucrative projects were coming to mind very quickly, ideas that could really reunite us all together again.
I should write to Arthur.
When cross-posting to the original source works, this was inspired by the writing prompt: Me barbar-wizard. Me win all magic duel by cast fist. But now must duel strong wizard. He cast gun.