Another Side of Destiny by Harper Peace - HTML preview

A look inside "My Joy Charm"

A short novel from the Lands of the Sweet Waters.

The prologue to "Charm Counter Charm"

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Chapter One: "For those you meet will have it, and they will cut you with it"

My charming man. He'll have charms to respond to my every wish. We'll fashion my joy charm together - though exactly how we'll do that would be lovely to know. Everyone's so coy about how you fashion your joy charm.

"Alia?"

I blink up at the father. He's kept his own face, but his body now has a woman's shape, and it's clad in armor. He looks about as far from a charming man as I could imagine. I hide my smile by standing and genuflecting to him.

"I trust," he says, "that your prayers are over. Now wish for me."

"Yes father. Which charm should I wish on?"

"Start with the one that you feel the easiest."

I touch True Seeing, and wish his glamour gone. His body wavers for a moment, as though caught in a heat haze, but otherwise he's unchanged.

He looks at himself in a mirror he's summoned. "Again, please, Alia. A few days ago you managed this. You've been at the Temple, what, a moon now?"

"Two moons, father."

"And so? What's different for you today? Have your charms seen this morning's sun."

"Yes, father, they have. I'm sorry, but it's… so much easier to wish for something," like wishing for my charming man. "When I was a child, I was always wishing for this or that to--" I break off, because his face says my childhood isn't over. "Father, I could wish that you were clothed like you really are."

"And, in battle, how would you know how I really was, child?"

"I… well, wouldn't."

I watch his face change. I can't get used to the fathers and their naked faces; it's a little obscene, their emotions open for everyone to read. Right now, his is exasperation. If he always needs to show his face to the sun, couldn't he sometimes try a happier one?

He's pacing, slowly. "Alia, you seem suited for neither doing nor thinking this morning…" He pauses and his face shows a moment of pain. "Where was I?" He stares at me, as though I should know the answer. "And that, child, is… that's why you have more than one charm against glamours. You must keep wishing, in case what you see is only another glamour. You stop when you've no charms left."

That had nothing to do with what he was saying before. "Yes father."

"Alia, you can tell I'm wearing a glamour, can't you?"

"Yes father."

"How can you tell, apart from the obvious?"

How can I tell, aside from his man's face, on the top of the body of a page? His glamoured body seems to wear the sword and short dagger we all wear; he even has a seal on his sword belt. His charm belt looks real. I could believe the leather scales of his armor would stop a sword edge. His bracers and leggings, his paneled skirt, and boots, all look right. Yet something is wrong.

"You repeat, don't you?" I say. "You're like a mosaic. You're not… detailed properly. The knots of your boot laces, they're exactly the same, on both boots. And you've the same knot on the collar of your mail. The ties of your charms are much too similar. I could never tie charms so evenly."

"Yes child," the father says, but I hear a sigh. "Alas, our glamours are limited by our imaginations, and mine is not what it was. When I was a younger man you would not have found such faults. But child, you will meet far better wishers than me. Look again. What else?"

I watch him pace the little cloister, moving from sunlight into the shadow. He moves like an old man in a young body, but that's not what he wants me to see, or tell him.

"Your shadow's the wrong shape," I say. "It looks more like the shadow you should have."

"Yes. That you should have noticed first. It is as you said. It's hard to imagine an absence. Darkness is the absence of God's light, it taxes even the best imaginations, and moving darkness is beyond the skill of most. But there's more about me to see. Look at the sunlight on my armor."

The leather of his armor hardly shines, but where it does the light isn't right either. I squint up at the sun. "It's like the sun is somewhere else for you?"

"And Alia, you knew before I had you put it into words. Didn't you? In battle, you must see all that, quickly, and without concentration."

"Yes father."

He gives me a look, as though my yes fathers are disrespectful, but they're not; I'm only trying to be polite. Whatever I do isn't good enough for this father.

"Child--" he begins.

"I prefer Alia."

I blush, and glamour up to hide it. He's so old, he's seen so many of us come and go. We must be like chattering children to him, not women.

"Alia," he says. The tiniest of smiles curves his mouth, which does nothing for my blush. "I know you have the right charms, but how hard do you wish on them? You must wish. Try again, for me. Wish for something, if that's what you need to do. Wish that my shadow is real."

I nod instead of answering.

"I'm your enemy, Alia." He glamours his face into the unmoving, open-mouthed, battle howl of the squires. He does look like an enemy. "See me true. Try again with the same charm. You can wish aloud if it helps you."

He means, wish aloud like a child. I stare at his armor and wish as hard as I can. "True Seeing. True Seeing!" I imagine his glamour as cobwebs, and my wish a wind to blow them to tatters. For a moment I see the folds of his cowl, but then leather scales of armor are back.

"Better," he says. "Now, again. You know the sword. Think of your wish like the edge of your sword. Cut at me."

I concentrate so hard I think something in my head will pop. A larger patch of his mail turns into white cloth. I glare at his feet where the shadows are wrong. True seeing! His knee boots waver into sandals.

The father inspects his mirrored self. "Good. Now imagine I have a counter to that charm. What was it?"

"True Seeing, father."

"I'm countering your True Seeing. Switch your charm and wish." His appearance flows back to page armor, all my wishing gone.

I touch Clear Sight, and wish so hard I feel a pull in my nose. My nose bleeds, but at least his boots are gone, and his mail shirt is fraying into a cowl.

"Finally Alia," he says. "Though you do come and go. Two steps forward and two back. Now come with me. I have something else for you to do."

"Must we, father?"

He blinks at me. "Alia, I'm told you have skills with the sword, but without charm skills you may never get the chance to use them. You can wish only the smallest woes to a foe you cannot see. You cannot cut charms from a foe you cannot see. That is how it is."

I've confused him. "That isn't what I meant. I meant about the rabbit. Please, not today."

"Your thoughts are elsewhere?"

"Yes, father." They were in the joy house. I wish they still were.

"Then Alia, this is the best day. In battle there will be distraction after distraction You have been trying this for nearly a moon, you say. Now I would like you to succeed."

He leads me out of the cloister, and I follow, meek as a rabbit, behind. We walk the length of a long corridor; turn into a second and then quickly into a third, this one mosaic patterned. At the fourth turn, I give up trying to remember the way. Two months in the Temple and I still can't find my path through the outer precincts.

I try not to think about where we're going, and that drags out an old memory.

My friend and I were nine, perhaps ten years old. She had a kitten, a beautiful, tiny thing with black and white fur. She was kneeling next to him, her hand on his chest. He'd stopped playing, and he used to play with everything.

I can't remember now why he'd passed; I'm not sure we ever knew. Perhaps that was why we did it, because he seemed in cat sleep, not harmed, not even scratched. We brought together every charm we could find, even the ones we were never supposed to touch, until he was buried in charms, and we wished on all of them: Kitten, come back to life.

I mustn't have known then that charms only wish certain things, and that none of them wish that.

Then mother found us and frightened us into never doing it again.

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I can smell our destination long before we arrive: it's the smell of lunch. The father leads me through the bustling space in front of the bread ovens and out into the kitchen-courtyard beyond. In the distance, the Temple terraces rear up, impossibly high.

He stops in front of a row of rabbit hutches. "Which one?" he asks.

I think about lying, but then he'll only fetch out some other poor rabbit. "That one." I point. "The white one. She's called… Foam. I named her after the rapids on the Swift Flow."

The father's face is again exasperation, but with a little pity - though for Foam, or for me, I can't tell. He reaches into the hutch, gently picks up the rabbit and passes her to me. "It's harder for you every time, isn't it child? You've become attached."

I don't know how he wants me to answer. It's true, yet he's still making me stand here and do this.

"But Alia," he says, "it must pass on, for us to eat. Its moment is here."

Foam is quiet in my hands, but I can feel her heart beating ever so fast, as though she understands his words.

"Heart, Alia. You must master that malevolent charm above all others. You must. If you don't succeed today, I will do it." His face spasms, and there are fresh lines around his mouth and on his forehead. "Wish hard and it will be done swiftly." His breath is very short. "That will be better for it. You won't hurt it. It'll pass on in your arms, with no pain."

I hold Foam against my chest. How can the father know there's no pain? How can anyone? I touch Heart, but Foam's heart beats faster, not slower.

"Heart," I say aloud. "Bye Foam."

God, I have tears in my eyes for a stupid rabbit! How would I ever do this to a person?

"Bye-bye, Foam." I pour my wish through my fingers into her chest.

Foam bucks in my hand, but I hold her steady. Her heart races away, but then its beat begins to slow. It slows, and slows. It's going to stop.

"Father, I can't!"

He takes Foam from me and touches his own charm.

"Heart." He said that for me to hear, he need say nothing.

Foam lies loose in his hands. It was all over, so quickly.

I clutch at the thought that he's only teaching me, that she still lives, that this is a glamour. I take her from him and wish True Seeing, then Clear Sight, but Foam doesn't change.

I'm seeing her true. She's passed.

My charm hand is shaking. If they serve rabbit in the refectory tonight, I'm going to be sick.

The father meets my gaze, with no guilt or sadness in his face. "Alia, you need a hard, bronze edge inside you. For those you meet will have it, and they will cut you with it."

He shakes his head. His face says he's given up on me, for now. There'll be tomorrow and the next day, until I learn to hurt things.

"You may go," he says.

I think about asking to bury Foam in the sand, but I know what his answer will be.

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Now available for e-readers.

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