SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“That’s private. I’d rather you didn’t read it.”

The djinn let it go. He opened up a thick book to a page. There was an illustration done in inks. A water bird wading in a river, wings spread before flight.

“The bennu. That’s what you’re looking for? Well I can’t say I have any idea how to kill it, but if anything has power of life and death, it would be an immortal. How are you going to kill it, exactly?” The djinn handed over the lodestone. “Clever,” the alchemist said, “Very clever. But it won’t be enough.” Very intuitive.

“Can you enhance it?”

“I don’t know. This is not my area of expertise. But have a seat and I’ll see what I can do.”

He did, and waited while the alchemist chipped a piece off the lodestone with a stone knife. He poured and distilled, mixed and dissolved and separated and heated various reagents over the fire so the room was filled with odd vapors and unusual flames. The sun dipped and golden light flooded the room while the hours ticked by. Eventually the alchemist said he could not do anything. When the djinn complained of the time he had lost, the alchemist snorted. “What did you think? I could clap my hands and turn lead into gold? Alchemy is a devilishly complex process. It requires time.

“As far as I can tell, there is nothing extraordinary about this lodestone, except where it came from. I don’t know how to enhance it, I’m sorry. But here, take this, it may be of some use to you.” The object he was handed was a cuff of stone, meant to be worn on the wrist. It was made of three broken sections spanned by chains so the girth could be adjusted, and there was a large red bead set into it. “This little bracelet will absorb heat that would otherwise damage your body. But it has a limit, so use it wisely.” When he saw the questioning look the djinn was giving him, he chewed his lip and mumbled, “Maybe I know a little magic.”

They laughed at that.

“What was it like?” the alchemist asked. “Living in the capital?”

“Enjoyable,” the djinn found himself answering.

“The castle was a thing of beauty,” he went on, “all graceful spires and marbled floors. Silken tapestries on the ceilings, huge windows that fed the breezes that came from the lush gardens on the terraces; flowers of so many colours and fragrances. Carpets and silver engravings and geometric patterns of lapis lazuli, jade and blue amber on the ceilings of the domes. It was beautiful at night, with the hundreds of lanterns glowing all over the city, and the sounds of laughter coming from the plazas with their fountains and gardens fed by winding aqueducts. The king always kept the castle smelling nice, with perfumed satin and heady incenses. To cover up the stink of the city, he said. The fruits in the market were bursting with juice and grapes were so rich and so dark that if you got the stain on your clothes, you’d never get it out.

“There were crystals the king had me design so that you could see other places in them. He’d keep them absolutely everywhere, so even the servants could see visions from steaming dense jungles and beautiful pristine islands, barely a scrap of sand in oceans that were the bluest things you’d ever seen. Storytellers used to come from all over, begging to tell the king their latest yarn for a few coppers. And traders, with all their goods, coffee and tea and furs and cotton, His Majesty wrung heavy taxes from all of them.

“It was a place of knowledge, all the scholars came to the great library to study and learn. It was a place of discipline—you should have seen the soldiers, in their polished armor and shields like sunbursts…Do you remember the rains two years past?”

“Yes, they were the heaviest in decades.”

“That was His Majesty’s idea. I told him I could only gather the clouds, not make them, so he told me to start three years earlier. There was so much water, the streets were muddy and flooded and the people distraught. ‘Our wares are ruined!’ the merchants said, but when the sun came out, all the dust was gone, and the city was cleaner than it had ever been. There was still muck in the gutters, mind you, and it stank worse than ever wet. But, there were all these seeds he’d had planted, you see, and there were seeds already in the ground. And they were green! So much green! Crops springing from the soil faster than they could be harvested, and flowers everywhere! In the streets and walkways. Every man, young and old, was picking flowers, for their mothers and wives and sisters and for the girl with the pretty hair, because she looked so lovely with the white ones in her hair, they said.”

“You miss it.”

The djinn realized he did: “Yes, I do.” It was a queer thing.

He let the alchemist walk him back to the tent, where the lad was asleep with his head in the alchemist’s daughter’s lap. The remnants of a meal for two were on the table.

“Can I leave our things with you? I’ll collect them on the way back.”

“Can I ride the carpet?”

He chuckled. “Of course.”

“What of the boy, will you take him with you?”

“I…” It would be safer. But…

“No. You should both go together. You’ll need the company.”

He took the boy in his arms and asked the alchemist where he might buy a camel. The alchemist said they should take the flying carpet instead. “I thought you wanted to ride it?”

“They’ll be time enough for that when you get back. You’ll need speed on your side; it’s a long journey. Don’t worry, I’ve got some spare rooms. Your things should fit.”

They transferred all the items into the rooms and the djinn lay the boy down on the carpet with some blankets and pillows the alchemist provided. He also gave them food and water and a change of clothing. “How will you find the bird?” the alchemist asked.

“By following the desert.”

His daughter said, “Come back swiftly, Uncle. He’s such a sweet boy.” The djinn nodded, thinking sadly that she even sounded like his wife. He bid goodbye to their hosts and gave them his gratitude, and cast a spell of invisibility around both of them. The alchemist was still gaping when they left them.

He waited till they were well beyond the town’s walls and dispelled the magic. He reclined on the pillows and looked up at the night sky streaking past. She might have been old enough to be our daughter. If we’d had a daughter. He looked sidelong at the young prince. If I hadn’t killed her in my folly.

Those who came from afar, or spent their entire lives within the walls of the city, thought that the desert was mostly sand. This is false. The sandsea the djinn and the boy had crossed on their way to the oasis was only a minute portion of the desert that spanned the civilized world.

Rocks. Rocks were what made up the desert. Big ones and small ones, everywhere you looked. Even the dunes were built on foundations of stone.

Follow the desert. It was an old magic, but powerful. The phoenix was the bird of the sun, and who knew the sun better than the desert? Keep your mind blank, the ifreet had said, and look for the signs. He doesn’t want to be found, but he leaves a trail. Look for…

It wasn’t easy, or one simple path. It wound its ways through different deserts, which were in different worlds. The gates to these realms were open, he realized, but only because they weren’t gates at all, but the connections between the two. Like the pages of a book, they were jumping from page to page along the bindings that held them together.

There were deserts of black, lifeless sands under skies of green and blue clouds. There were plateaus that seemed to circle the globe, long bridges of crumbling sandstone that spanned two cliffs over an empty chasm, on and on and on. And there was sand.