The crash from the front room made Alice wince. She set her tea cup down and hurried into the shop, hoping that it wasn’t another box of singing vases that had bit the dust. Maya was standing in front of the desk with her hands over her mouth. There were no shards of glass this time, but Gabrielle was sitting on the floor. His blonde hair was tousled and his eyes were wide with shock.
“What happened?” Alice tried to keep the amused look off of her face. Gabriel looked completely stunned and didn’t answer, and Maya was biting very hard on one of her knuckles now. Altair, who was sitting by the fire with his boots kicked up on the stone hearth, was clutching his stomach and laughing.
“She was trying to weave a spell…” he wheezed. “It didn’t…it didn’t…”
“It didn’t go well.” Azura folded her arms over the green sweater she was wearing. She reached up to adjust her spectacles, and Alice noticed there was a smudge of green on one of the lenses.
She looked around at the others severely. “Was there another accident before this one? Perhaps one involving the lucky charm potion?”
Maya winced. “We thought you hadn’t heard that one. You were up in your room.”
“I didn’t hear it,” Alice pointed at Azura’s glasses and tried to keep her serious face on. “It’s just that Azura’s glasses are looking very lucky today.”
Azura took her spectacles off and polished them with her sleeve. “Ah, yes. There’ll be two bottles of lucky charm potion off dear Maya’s pay check this week.”
Alice shrugged. “It’s all part of the learning process.”
Maya grinned. “I can make a floating spell now! Want to see?”
“No!” Gabriel hauled himself off the floor, waving his hands wildly. “No, no. That’s okay. We don’t need another demonstration.” His face was glowing bright red now.
Altair’s face was nearly as red as the elf’s, but it was because the thief was howling with laughter. He kept gasping out, “Do it again! This time float him to the other side of the room! Come on!”
“Alright, fine.” Maya settled herself on the edge of the desk. “Next time I’ll use an inanimate object.”
“And something that isn’t breakable.” Azura replaced the glasses on her nose.
They looked up as the bell over the door jangled, and Shakra came in, her arms filled with colorful packages. Her dark skin was damp from the heat, and her silver hair was caught up in a loose bun on the top of her head. “It’s smokin’ hot out there…”
“Mexico will do that.” Alice moved to take some of the packages, shifting through the labels on the tops. “Ooh, dancing coffee beans, silver Mayan charms, Mexican blankets. What do these do?”
“They fly, apparently.” Shakra narrowed her dark eyes at the package. “Though I wasn’t sure about the vendor that sold those to me. Shady guy, just wanted them gone.”
“We’ll test for curses.” Azura took the package from Alice. “Come on, Maya. Maybe you’ll learn about dealing with cursed objects now.”
Maya followed her into the backroom, voice high with nerves. “Who would curse a blanket? Why would anyone do that?”
Alice adjusted the sign on the half empty “international” display. She’d figured they might as well start collecting magical items from the towns they stopped in, just to keep the product they carried interesting and ever -changing. Of course, occasionally you ran into something with a nasty curse on it. Last week they had picked up a biting sock puppet in Florida, and she still had a little crescent shaped red mark on her ring finger from that one.
There was a shout from the back room, Azura’s voice. “Rip the threads off it!”
Shakra's voice was high-pitched with panic. “It’s trying to smother him!”
Gabriel’s muffled, angry cries could be heard after that, and then another loud thump.
“There, you’re alright. It was just a bit of a curse…”
“Just a bit!” he said indignantly. “It jumped on my head!”
Alice sighed. The shop was at times, stressful, exciting and even scary. But it was never boring.
There was a brown paper package waiting on the patchwork bedspread when Alice went up to her suite that night. She stopped in the doorway, heart pounding in her ears when she saw it. Where had it come from?
Memories of packages left at the shop doorstep rose back to the surface of her mind. Roses and expensive shoes, unwanted gifts.
There was no way he was back, was there? Seven years, Styx had said. Hadn’t she said seven? Or maybe it was less…
Shuffling from behind made Alice spin around, ready to reach up and seize a handful of threads.
“Woah,” Altair stumbled backwards, blue eyes wide. “Easy there, don’t magic me, okay?”
“Sorry,” Alice relaxed, feeling slightly foolish. “Is that from you? The package I mean?”
“Why don’t you open it and see?” He grinned impishly, and Alice rolled her eyes and climbed onto the bed, pulling the flat brown package onto her lap.
“Is it something to make up for totally bailing on me the other night?”
He sighed. “Haven’t I groveled enough?”
“No, we had dinner plans.” Alice stuck her lower lip out at him. “I’ll never forgive you.”
“It was a very important meeting I had to go to. A man has to find some honest work, in order to buy his lady pretty things, doesn’t he?”
“Honest work.” Alice snorted. “I’ll believe that when I see it. You won’t tell me what the meeting was about, so I seriously doubt it’s honest.”
Altair shrugged. “You told me very clearly what happens if you catch me stealing…”
“Pain,” Alice agreed. “Lots of pain.” She tugged at the corner of the box, peeling the flap back to reveal and swath of silvery blue fabric. “Wow.”
Altair sat down on the bed. “Wow will be when you put it on.”
Alice picked up the fabric carefully, and it unfurled into a long evening gown with glittering diamond straps. “And how did you afford this, hmmm? Through your honest work?”
Altair looked wounded. “I saved up all my pennies, and you accuse me of thievery? Don’t you like it?”
“I love it,” she placed the dress to one side and curled her arm around his waist, tugging him closer. Altair leaned down and kissed her softly.
After a minute she drew away and said, “it’s beautiful, but where am I going to wear it? There aren’t any balls here that I know of.”
“I’ll take you out somewhere fancy, when we move the shop again.”
Alice pressed her lips together firmly to stop herself from asking how he was going to be able to afford that either. Suspicions were nagging at the back of her mind. There was a roaring black market trade here for magical artifacts, and the last time Altair had gotten himself in trouble, it had been over one of those artifacts. He seemed to be drawn to trouble.
What if he was taking on another job? What if he was going back to thievery? Would he tell her? She could answer her own question easily enough. She’d made it very clear that he’d be in huge trouble if he started stealing again. Obviously he wouldn’t tell her.
But she couldn’t accuse him over nothing, or throw his gift back in his face and tell him he was lying to her….
Altair leaned down for another kiss, and this time she just shut her eyes and lost herself in it.
Later:
There comes a point in each dream, where you realize you’re dreaming. Where the fuzzy, pastel shapes and places of the dream world become a little sharper and your mind clears. After that, many people just forget and slip back into the certainty that they’re living real lives.
Alice knew it was a dream. She remembered climbed between the sheets, nudging Altair playfully with her feet and poking one another before falling to sleep.
Still, her surroundings seemed real.
The forest floor was solid beneath her feet, and she could hear branches crackling as she moved. Tall green ferns brushed past the skin of her arms, tickling and scratching. The air was alive with jungle music, the sounds of hundreds of different birds calling to one another.
There were people there too. Others moving around her, walking with her in the same direction. They were all girls about her age, at least fifty of them spread through the trees as far as she could see, all dressed in long white gowns that shifted and flowed freely about their legs.
She looked down at herself, and found she was neither surprised nor alarmed to discover she was in the same white dress. Dreams were funny that way.
Alice kept walking, unsure where she was going. There was something inside her that flared to life as she moved, burning in the pit of her belly, a warmth that grew hotter and drove her onwards.
Something was calling her forward.
There was a clearing in the jungle, and the other girls stopped at the tree line. The jungle made a wide open circle, and the girls formed a ring around the tall black rock in the center. They stood waiting, eyes on the rock. Nobody moved or spoke, and Alice looked from face to face, feeling nervous for the first time.
The girl next to her was slightly taller and skinny as a twig. Her full red mouth hung open, and her eyes were fixed on the rock, pale face tilted upwards. Alice leaned over and whispered to her, “What’s going on?”
The girl didn’t move. It was as if she hadn’t even heard Alice.
The nervous feeling got worse, and Alice was seriously considering trying to wake herself up. This was a dream, it had to be. Yet, it felt real somehow. Was there magic involved?
It was impossible. Azura had put even more protection spells over top of Aunt Ruby’s old spells. No one intending harm could get in while they were sleeping.
Movement from the rock made her pause.
A figure had climbed up one side of the rock, a man. Alice tilted her head back, unconsciously mimicking the other girls around her.
The man was like a wild animal, a jungle beast. He had on a pair of torn black jeans, and his chest and torso were bare. He moved forward and muscles flexed under tanned skin. Alice was reminded of a great cat moving in on its pray. A predator on the hunt.
There was a black mask over his eyes, and his jaw was smooth and strong. The man tilted his head back and laughed, lifting his arms up towards the sun like he was worshiping the morning sky. His laugh was deep and intoxicating, and the other girls watched him, completely enraptured.
Alice felt a mixture of fear and fascination when the man’s gaze swept over them and locked on her. His eyes were dark brown, and there was something in them that burned with an intensity that made her want to back up a step. Under the mask his lips curled in a smile, revealing white teeth. “And you will be reborn with me…”
Blazing light glared in her eyes, and Alice sat up with a gasp. Her feet were tangled in the bed sheets. Altair, who was standing at the window tugging aside one of the curtains, turned to look at her in alarm.
“You okay?”
She blinked at him, feeling confused and groggy. Parts of the dream seemed to have stuck in her waking memory. How the man had moved, the light in his eyes.
…you’ll be reborn with me.
What on earth did that mean?
“Seriously.” Altair frowned, dropping the curtain he went to sit on the bed beside her. “Are you okay, you look a bit freaked out.”
“I’m fine.” Alice kicked the sheets off her legs, feeling sweat trickle between her breasts. “Just a freaky dream. I’m sweaty and gross, so I reserve the shower first.”
She half expected Altair to make some crack about the shower, or about her being sweaty, as he was prone to do, but he just followed her into the bathroom and looked over her shoulder while she brushed her teeth.
“Dreaming about one of those damn gods again?” Altair rubbed at his face, which was covered in a few days worth of stubble. “Which one was it this time?”
“Neither.” Alice shoved her toothbrush into her mouth, hoping that would end the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about the dream. It was true that it had freaked her out a little bit, but when she thought about the shirtless man on the rock it wasn’t just fear making her stomach twist. Her dream man had been very attractive.
She stared down into the sink and tried not to think about it. Could you cheat by dreaming about a hot guy? That probably didn’t count, but it didn’t make her feel a lot better. If Altair had been dreaming about hot, half naked women, she wouldn’t want to know about it. It was probably better not to tell him about the dream at all.
She spat the toothpaste in the sink and said, “It’s fine.” If only to get rid of him long enough so she could get a shower.
Altair shrugged. “Alright, well you know what Azura said. If you get bad dreams you can always use a spell before you go to sleep.”
“That feels like cheating,” Alice said. “That’s weird. I don’t like relying on magic for absolutely everything. I’m not like Samantha from Bewitched.”
“What from what?” Altair shook his head. “Man, I don’t know why you watch those ancient shows. They’re so lame…”
“Out!” Alice shoved him in the back, propelling him towards the door. “You insult my show you get no shower.”
She locked the door and shed her sticky pajamas, still hearing Altair laughing as she climbed into the shower.