[https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7bdf6c7-8c71-4929-bb13-f5e54b47bd1d_2550x1687.png]
> “The journey through the blackness took a toll on me. I do not know if I will be able to go back that way in my current state, but I must press on to the south.”
The redhead with the sparkling green eyes, brown freckles, and the deep, raspy voice walked into the lobby of the posh Upper East Side hotel, plopped down the no-annual-fee credit card made of cheap plastic, and then took the elevator up to her suite overlooking Central Park for the night. She tapped her room key against the sensor, walked through the spacious sitting room and into the marble bathroom, where a floor-to-ceiling mirror proudly reflected her smiling features.
But then the smile wavered, slightly, and the woman brought her hand up slowly to the small green stone hanging around her neck over a silver locket. She squeezed it gently between her thumb and index figure, and then vanished.
In her place, was me.
I looked at myself in the mirror for a brief second, before squeezing the stone again and closing my eyes. When I opened them, the reflection of the redhead once more stared back. I gazed at the glamour in the mirror for nearly ten minutes, trying to spot some trace of me underneath the alchemy, but the illusion was impenetrable, just as Ty said it would be.
I had grabbed the necklace from her hand like a child being offered a piece of candy after a day spent eating nothing but broccoli. She had explained how to activate it and then watched as I placed it slowly around my neck and pinched the stone. The sensation was like nothing I had ever felt before, as if someone had dumped a never-emptying bucket of water on me.
“Hello, my name is Jade,” I had said with someone else’s voice, extending someone else’s hand, and Ty had rolled her eyes, before shaking it. “Nice to meet you.”
I had repeated the vocal exercise until I could utter more than those simple phrases without the cognitive dissonance threatening to overwhelm my already overtaxed mind.
“Don’t overdo it,” she had warned me.
“What do you mean?” I had asked, still marveling at my new appearance.
“Spend too much time as the glamour and you begin to lose sense of yourself. At least, that’s what my mom told me when she gave it to me. I’ve only used that one sparingly. There was something thrilling about walking around as a fully-fledged woman, but maybe it won’t affect you as much, since you’re old.”
“Hey, I’m only 28!” I had said. “And I’ll only use it when I’m out in public.”
“Even so, try to take a break every so often. And don’t get caught up in your own reflection.”
I had ignored Ty’s advice and instead had spent the entire day as “Jade.” After getting used to the feeling of having an invisible sheet of fluid draped around my entire body, the experience was oddly freeing.
Jade didn’t have two friends whose memories she had accidentally erased. She didn’t have a long-distance boyfriend who was about to dump her. She didn’t have a soul-crushing job or a partner who at any moment could betray her to save herself. Most of all, Jade didn’t have a Guild summons hanging around her neck like an anchor.
As I had meandered through the Village before finally making my way uptown, I had seriously contemplated getting on a train at Penn Station and not coming back. But then the dull throbbing in my wrist had snapped me back to reality, and I had ducked into Macy’s and deactivated the glamour in a dressing room. I had sat there for almost an hour in front of the mirror, resisting the urge to transform back into Jade, until finally a saleswoman had banged on the door and demanded that I come out. A tweak of the stone and Jade had returned. I had resisted the mirror’s final siren song and walked out, but now found myself unable to break free from the current lure.
It was then that Ty’s last warning finally reverberated in my mind and I pulled myself away from the bathroom mirror, walked into the bedroom and collapsed backward onto the bed. My phone buzzed after a few minutes, and I pulled it out to see a response from Beatrice to my warning earlier in the day that we were being followed.
“K” was all it read and I tossed the phone aside in exasperation.
Fine, I thought. She can take care of herself.
I closed my green eyes and moved my injured hand slowly up to the green stone. It was only for a split second, but I could swear I felt the glamour tighten around me, as if Jade didn’t want to disappear. Except that was ridiculous. As much as I had lived as Jade when I played Warriors of Olympus, or when I began the Quests, there was no Jade. It had always been just me.
But before I could send her back into the stone, my hand suddenly fell slack against my stomach and my mind drifted away into the abyss of sleep.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
[https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe20fb8e0-6173-4095-835a-183cbfb1af4b_2550x202.png]
The market stirred with a raucous energy, even though it was Sunday night. Everywhere I looked, crates of fruits or vegetables were being pushed on hand trucks and forklifts with such velocity that several times I nearly found myself knocked to the ground. The woman who had sold me my pass into the market had regarded me with suspicion and now I understood why.
This was not a quaint farmer’s market where you could leisurely browse for organic fruits and vegetables while sipping an oat milk latte. No, this was one of the way stations responsible for feeding millions of New Yorkers and 99% of them probably had no idea that it even existed. Just as the City Hall station had, the market reminded me of magic and alchemy, this important, fundamental truth of the world that remained just out of sight.
I picked up my pace as I searched the rows for the aisle number that Ty had given me. Somehow half an hour had already passed since I had entered Hunts Point, and yet I still hadn’t even made it halfway across the massive expanse. The speed buff hidden deep in my bag would have made all this running unnecessary, but Beatrice had made me promise when she had restocked me before I left the office yesterday morning to only use the buffs in an absolute emergency going forward.
Finally, with only a few minutes to spare, I reached the designated aisle and pulled the glamour free from under my sweater, activating it without breaking stride. The now-familiar weight settled around me, but I ignored it and pressed on, until I saw a sign with large black letters taped above several columns of wooden crates.
“Mackinaw Brothers Produce,” it said and peaches peeked out through the slats of the dozen columns of crates stacked end to end and I looked at my watch to see the clock strike 10:04 p.m.
“Hello?” I called out in Jade’s voice, but no one answered. “Anyone here?”
I walked the length of the crates several times looking for the vendor, but to no avail. Had this whole thing been some sort of practical joke by Ty? Or worse, had she lured me into the bowels of this urban monstrosity so I would be easy prey for the Guild tracker?
Fortunately for me, the answer was neither, as one stack of the crates suddenly lurched forward to reveal a small gap and a small man with grey hair and half-moon spectacles peeked his head out.
“You Jade?” he asked, his hunched back making it difficult for him to look at me through the glasses.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re late,” the man said.
I began to argue that there was no way for me to know that he was hiding behind the crates, but he waved away my protestations and beckoned me through. As my host pulled the crates back into place to seal us away from the rest of the market, I looked around the small interior.
At one end sat a small card table with a green shade lamp that dimly illuminated the space and two folding chairs on either side. On the backs of the crates hung rolled-up pieces of tarp. I wondered what sorts of objects were hidden beneath and whether there was something here that would free Frankie from her stone prison.
“So,” said the man, sitting down slowly in the far chair, “now that we’re alone, would you mind taking off that ridiculous disguise? It’s hurting my eyes.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?” I said, the weight of the glamour suddenly feeling even more constricting around my body.
“That glamour. Deactivate it, please. As much as I like it when a pretty woman comes to see me, I prefer to see who I’m actually dealing with.”
I complied and then cringed as the old man looked me up and down before I crossed my arms against my chest and sat down across from him.
“Don’t know why you’re using that anyway, you’re almost as pretty as she was.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment? Because I really don’t need to-”
“Calm down, calm down. Didn’t mean anything by it. Forget I said anything.”
“Fine. Can we just get on with it then? I’m kind of in a hurry.”
“No, you’re not,” the man said. “Those people out there, hauling produce around at all hours of the night? They’re in a hurry.”
“I didn’t mean-”
“No, of course you didn’t. Now, what is it you think that I can assist you with?”
“I need a curative. My friend, she … she was hurt by a Relic.”
The old man’s eyebrows rose at the mention of Relic and he muttered softly to himself before slowly standing up and walking over to one of the rolled-up tarps. He began to untie the knot but then stopped and returned to the table.
“Your friend, what happened to her?”
The vision of that night flashed in my head, and for a moment I was back there, the fire raging all around me and Beatrice and Frankie unconscious on the lighthouse floor.
“She … she was turned to stone.”
The old man stared at me in silence and I waited for him to unfurl his wares and offer me a vial of silvery liquid that would undo the curse. But he just sat there, as if he too had been petrified.
“Sir?” I said after several more minutes had passed.
“Thinking,” he said. “Shh.”
“Sorry,” I replied, looking at my watch. I had hoped to make it back to the hotel in time to get a decent night’s sleep before reuniting with Beatrice, but at this rate, that wasn’t going to happen.
Finally, he clapped his hands and stood up again.
“OK,” he said.
“What?”
“I have something special for your friend.”
“You do?” I practically shouted.
“Yes. It’s a serum distilled from the needles of a golden porcupine. Very rare creature. Lives in one particular part of one particular jungle in Indonesia. Half of its needles are venomous and half are curative.”
“Fascinating. Can I have it?”
“No, that’s not how it works. Come back by 5 a.m. with your payment and you’ll get your cure.”
“You must be joking! My friend, she can’t-”
The old man shook his head back and forth.
“This market has existed, in one form or another, since 1812. And since that time, we alchemists have plied our wares according to a simple set of rules, number one of which is payment before goods. So go bring me something of equal value and then you’ll get the help you need. I’m sure your friend can manage in her state a little while longer, no?”
“What the hell does that mean, equal value? You didn’t even name your price!”
I dug my hand into my bag to retrieve the Medoblad only to pull out a large but very ordinary chef’s knife.
The man gave me a smirk before pulling the chain of the lamp down to extinguish the light as if he was packing it in for the night.
“Wait a minute,” I cried. “We’re not done here, I have something else!”
I pulled the chain and the light flickered on again, only to find myself surrounded by nothing but peaches.
Next: A cure of sorts.