Once Upon Another Time, page 10
Which meant the footsteps were either a guard or the owner of the castle, neither of which Jin found particularly comforting, especially given his condition and the lack of teleporting. What was he going to do if a giant showed up? Faceless were one thing, but he doubted even Lena could handle a giant.
But she did seem familiar with the place, or at least whatever she was climbing to get. Was the girl working with the giants? Stealing from them? This added new uncertainty to a plan that already was filled with it.
Maybe he could get some information while he waited, at least. “Is Lena a friend of the giants?” he asked the cat, having no idea what else to do.
“Lena is a giant,” the cat said, and Jin rolled his eyes. Well, that was pointless: clearly the animal had no idea what it was talking about and therefore was useless. Fortunately, the girl waved from the top of the column now and looked like she had something in her hands, a dish of some kind, around the size of a serving bowl. All she’d need to do was climb down.…
Except instead of doing the safe, normal thing, the girl just leapt straight off the top.
“No!” Jin shouted, pushing the cat aside to try to do something, but it was way too late to stop her, and he had nowhere near enough magic to catch her. Instead, he watched helplessly as she came crashing to the floor, hitting much more quietly than the approaching giant’s footsteps, but still hard enough to break every bone in her body.
And then, in what was just another incomprehensible part of the day, the girl shook it off, then sprinted over to them, holding a bowl of fire in her hands like nothing impossible had just happened.
“What… how?” Jin sputtered as she neared.
“Oh, that?” she said, sounding sincerely like she hadn’t given it a thought. “Don’t worry, I’m stronger than I look.”
That he knew, after the fight against the Faceless. But still, what kind of human could do things like this?
And why do you care so much? Because of her “magic spell,” right?
You be quiet.
“We don’t have much time,” she said, carefully setting the bowl of fire down next to Jin. “We have to get out of here before the king arrives, or… well, bad things.”
Jin raised an eyebrow at what those bad things might be, but he was more curious about the flame. Oddly, the fire didn’t give off heat, like he’d expect. And weirdly, it almost felt… familiar, filled with a kind of magic that Jin recognized somehow.
What is this stuff? he asked the cosmic knowledge.
It paused for a moment. Jin, be careful, it said finally, a note of worry he’d rarely heard in its voice. There’s something about that flame.…
But Lena helped him to a sitting position before he could respond. “I know this sounds odd, but let me touch the Spark to your shoulder. It can heal you.” She paused, like she wanted to add, I hope. Or maybe that was just Jin thinking it.
“Won’t it burn me?” Jin asked, both trying to pretend to be a normal human and honestly not sure what this fire was. The little the cosmic knowledge had said didn’t exactly fill him with confidence.
She shook her head. “It’ll all be okay. Watch.” She took a deep breath, then pushed her own hand into the flame without even flinching. She stared at her hand in the fire for a moment, her face unreadable to Jin, before pulling her hand back out, unburned. “See?” she said, her voice now full of emotion. “Won’t hurt at all.”
He nodded, wondering what had just happened, as well as still not entirely convinced as she slowly helped him closer to the flame. He leaned over, wincing from the pain, and she guided his shoulder toward the flame, or the Spark, whatever she’d called it.
Well, this was going to be interesting, either way.
Wait! the cosmic knowledge said. Don’t touch it. I don’t know what—
And then Lena pushed the fire into his shoulder. “Please, make him whole again,” she whispered, just as the flame touched his skin.
Every molecule in Jin’s body instantly exploded with magical power, and his mind opened like never before. He tried to speak, or even to think, but the power was too intense. It was like being blasted with hurricane winds and trying to keep your footing.
From what felt like miles away, he felt the floor drop away from his feet, like he was flying, and part of him knew that shouldn’t be happening, but the rest of him was too enraptured by the magic to care.
“What?” shouted a voice loud enough to shake the floor below Jin, though he felt like he only heard it from a great distance. “What is going on here?”
“It’s the king!” he heard Lena hiss from miles away. “We need to run, now!”
CHAPTER 19
Touching the Spark had been bad enough for Lena. As she’d put her hand into its flame, all she could think about was how she hadn’t been allowed to do this at the ritual, in front of her family and the other giants. She hadn’t been allowed to be given a name by the Sparktender.
She hadn’t been allowed to be declared a true giant.
But then the Spark had made the boy float and explode with light, something she’d never heard of happening before. And before she could even tell if he was okay, King Denir, the last giant she ever wanted to see again, entered the room and saw everything.
There was no going back from this. All her dreams of living in the giant village, being accepted at her true size, having her own epithet… those were all gone now. She knew this, even as she knew she couldn’t afford to feel any of that at the moment, not while the king could still catch them.
“It’s the king!” she hissed at the boy, hoping he could hear in spite of him still glowing brightly. “We need to run, now!”
He didn’t respond, but his light was getting brighter. She quickly pulled the Spark away from him, hoping that would help, and it seemed to, as the boy slowly floated back to the floor and collapsed in a heap.
“YOU!” King Denir roared, clenching his enormous hands into fists. “You dare touch the Spark, you monster?” And then his gaze fell upon the boy, and if anything, he grew even more enraged. “A human? You let a human touch the sacred flame?”
Trying desperately not to think about what was coming, Lena picked the boy up and threw him on Rufus’s back. The king seemed to figure out that she meant to run and slammed the doors to the great hall shut behind him, then grabbed a spear from the wall next to the doors and aimed it directly at Lena.
“Rufus, take him to Treats Lady!” she shouted, and gave her cat a push. But as he looked back at her in confusion and fear, the king slammed his foot down on the floor, sending a shock wave straight at them.
It hit before either Lena or Rufus could move out of its way, throwing them into the air. Rufus meowed in fright, his feet scrambling uselessly, while Lena grabbed for the Spark, desperate to make sure the bowl didn’t break if it hit the floor.
The group crashed down a moment later as the king ran to them, his footsteps shaking the floor enough to make it hard to even keep their feet. But they had no choice: there was only one way out of the great hall, and that was right through the doors on the other side of the king.
“I knew you were secretly one of them!” he roared as he neared, almost close enough to stab them with his spear. “You always meant to steal the Spark, didn’t you? Betrayer!”
Two guards entered the room behind the king and shut the doors again, blocking the open space beneath the doors with their feet as best they could. Lena wanted to scream, cry, or both, having no idea what to do. Even Rufus with his boots was stuck now, and there was no other exit, or even a place to hide.
And then she looked down at the Spark in her hand.
“You will pay for defiling the Spark with your touch!” the king roared, aiming his spear. The enormous blade would be too large to dodge, and Lena knew her tiny little compass arrow would have no effect on something so big and with so much force behind it.
Not knowing what else to do, she hugged Rufus tightly, the Spark’s flame touching her hand as she tried to keep ahold of it. “It’s going to be okay, little man,” she whispered to him, feeling him shaking beneath her. “It’s all going to be okay.”
“Thieves!” the king shouted, and stabbed at them with the spear.
Lena scrunched her eyes closed, and without any other options, prayed to anyone who was listening.
Please, she thought, at least let the boy get home safely. He doesn’t deserve any of this.
And then she waited for the spear to hit.
But it never did. Instead, she heard the king roar “NO—” before being cut off suddenly. And then just as abruptly, there were voices all around them, quieter voices, sounding more surprised than anything.
Lena opened one eye, then the other, gasping at what she saw before her.
They were no longer in the giant king’s great hall, nor in his castle, the giant village, or even probably in the clouds.
Instead, they were surrounded by people in very fancy clothes, all accented with silver and bronze, eating what looked like a great feast. Lena looked down and found that she and Rufus were standing on a table a dozen yards long, filled with foods of all kinds.
But weirdest of all, everything besides the fancy clothes people wore was made of gold, from the napkins on the table to the drapes over the windows, from the rugs on the floor to the crown on the very angry-looking man at the head of the table.
“More rebels?” the man in the crown, a king, shouted, leaping to his feet. He reached for Lena with a hand wearing a golden glove, looking like he meant to threaten her, though she didn’t understand how.
“We’re not rebels!” Lena shouted quickly, throwing up her hands in surrender. “We were… we, uh… we were running for our lives, and something brought us here, I guess? I’m not entirely sure how, honestly.”
“The boy is gone,” Rufus pointed out, which sent a wave of terror down Lena’s spine. She looked over to see what he meant and discovered that yes, the boy was gone, completely disappeared from where he’d been lying on her cat’s back.
Had she left him behind in the great hall? But no, she couldn’t have, not if Rufus was here too… could she?
“A boy?” the king said, his glove still aimed in her direction, which seemed odd. What was he planning on doing with it? “What boy?”
“I don’t know his name,” Lena said, shaking her head. “But he helped me against the Faceless, and was wounded, so I just… I wanted him to get home safely.”
“The Faceless?” one of the diners whispered, and winced as Lena glanced at her. “Uh-oh.”
The king frowned at this, looking her and her cat over. “This boy… what did he look like?”
“Brown hair, brown eyes, fairly ordinary,” Lena said quickly, just glad the man seemed less angry and wasn’t going to glove them, at least not at the moment. But even as she described the boy, she wondered why that was all she’d noticed. It was almost as if the boy’s appearance was designed to be forgettable. “A bit cranky-looking, if that makes sense?”
The man glanced down at his non-gloved hand, where he wore a large ring. He paused for a moment, then his gaze went to the floor. “And that?” he asked, pointing down at her hand.
Lena followed his finger, only for her heart to stop as she saw what he was asking about. “That… is the Spark,” she said in horror, as the giants’ most precious treasure burned away in its bowl in her grasp, the treasure that she’d just stolen, in spite of all her denials that she was doing just that. “And I’m in very, very big trouble.”
CHAPTER 20
Magic was everywhere. He could see it, feel it, manipulate it. Anything he wanted to do, he could, from the smallest of spells to the ultimate creation or destruction of entire universes.
Part of him was terrified by it all. At the slightest twitch of his pinkie, he could flick an entire city out of existence. Or if he blinked, he might accidentally change it so that the land had tides, and the sea stood still. He might breathe out and unleash hurricanes across the world, or sigh and create a sadness that overwhelmed every living thing, making it feel useless to even go on.
But the other part of Jin knew that this was who he was. This was the power of a genie unleashed, an ifrit. And someday it would be his.
SOMEDAY? said a voice from somewhere around him. It sounded a bit like the cosmic knowledge, but different enough that he knew they weren’t the same. WHY NOT TODAY?
A rush of power flowed through Jin, and he found it hard to remember why he was afraid. Any mistake he made, he could just unmake. There were no limits to what he could do!
“How?” he asked, not sure where the voice was coming from. “I’m still bound to the Golden King. I have more wishes to fulfill. And even after that, the elder genies want me to show humility.”
HUMILITY? GENIES ARE ALL-POWERFUL. WHY WOULD YOU NEED TO BE HUMBLE?
“Right?” Jin said, feeling another rush just that someone finally agreed with him. “I never did understand the point of that!”
YOU’VE BEEN HELD BACK FOR TOO LONG, JIN, the voice said, and now he could sense its location: it was coming from the magic inside him, all around him. It was the magic itself!
Hey, cosmic knowledge, Jin thought. Are you seeing this? The magic is talking to me! It says I deserve to have my power back. What do you say to that?
But there was no response from the cosmic knowledge, and he wondered if it was being blocked somehow by all the power he now felt. Who needed it, though, if he could do whatever he wanted, find out anything he needed to know?
YOU CAN DO ALL THAT AND MORE, the voice said. THE SCRAPS OF KNOWLEDGE ALLOWED YOU ARE ONLY THERE TO CONFUSE YOU, TO HOLD YOU BACK. THEY DON’T WANT YOU GAINING YOUR RIGHTFUL POWER, THREATENING THEIR CONTROL.
He’d never really considered it that way. Why did they want to hold back all the knowledge of the universe from him, if not to control him in some way? What could be wrong with knowing everything?
EMBRACE ME, the voice said. FREE ME FROM THIS FIRE, THIS SPARK, AND YOU WILL HAVE ALL THE POWER YOU WERE ALWAYS MEANT TO, THE POWER THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE HAD FROM THE START.
Jin’s eyes lit up. “Permanently? I can go back to my home dimension and leave this horrible human world for good?”
YOU’LL BE ABLE TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. IF YOU WISHED IT, YOU COULD SHAPE THIS WORLD INTO YOUR IDEAL HOME. MAKE THE HUMANS FULFILL YOUR WISHES.
Jin laughed. “Now that’s an interesting idea. I’d love to see the Golden King waiting on my wishes for a change.” But as he said this, the magic around him began to disappear. “Wait, where are you going? Come back!”
YOU ARE NO LONGER IN CONTACT WITH MY SPARK. YOU MUST TAKE IT BACK AND FREE ME IF YOU WISH TO HAVE THE MAGIC YOU’RE OWED. FIND ME, FREE ME, YOUNG GENIE.
“Not in contact with your Spark?” Jin said, confused. “But what happened? Where did it go? I thought Lena…” He trailed off as an image of the girl filled his head, trying to heal him with the power of the Spark, all because she thought he had been trying to protect her.
THE GIRL IS OF NO IMPORTANCE. NO HUMAN OR GIANT IS. THEY ARE ANTS BENEATH THE FEET OF THE TRULY POWERFUL, LIKE YOU.
Jin couldn’t really deny that. Humans and giants both seemed equally annoying, and having to serve someone like the Golden King really was the worst. But still, Lena seemed different somehow.…
FIND ME, AND THE POWER YOU DESERVE SHALL BE YOURS, the voice said one last time before disappearing along with the rest of the magic.
As the voice faded, so did Jin’s energy, leaving him sapped and tired, though not anywhere close to as bad as he felt after getting stabbed by the shadow-magic sword. Still, doubts began to form, and he wondered exactly what the Spark really was as the world around him came back into view, looking far more purple than he’d expected. But he was too tired to worry about that at the moment.
A few minutes of resting on something soft and comfortable helped quite a bit, and Jin’s energy slowly began to return. As it did, he looked around, realizing he was no longer in the giant’s castle and instead was somewhere far more familiar: his ring, the one that the Golden King used to control him.
Inside the jewel were luxurious, well-furnished chambers, which was good, because Jin had spent years inside here already. It had been lonely at times, but at least he hadn’t had to listen to wishes from selfish humans.
He let himself relax on one of the purple sofas and let out a huge sigh, content not to think about any of this until the Golden King called him again. All the pain from being stabbed had somehow disappeared, healed along with the wound itself, which meant he could just lie back and rest.
As he closed his eyes, something irritating flitted around his mind, something he couldn’t quite remember. He opened one eye, just to look around. Everything looked normal, here in the ring, so it wasn’t that.
What had he been doing before the Spark, though? He cast his memory back and seemed to recall there was something important, something he wasn’t doing.
You were fulfilling a wish, the cosmic knowledge said in his head.
The wish! Jin sat up too quickly, and his head began to pound. Ow. And hey, where did you go? I had questions about something, and you were gone. I could feel it.
Questions about what? The cosmic knowledge sounded confused, of all things. That shouldn’t have been possible. What do you mean?
It… doesn’t matter, Jin said, finding himself not wanting to discuss it for some reason. The Spark had left him with too many questions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answers.
But how had he gotten back to the ring? Had the Golden King recalled him for some reason? And Lena would have…
Wait, where was Lena?
“What happened?” Jin shouted, leaping to his feet. “How did I get back here? Last I remember, Lena was healing me with that flame. Where is she?”
