“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
The parking attendant paused by the double-length bay. Intended for mobile homes and cars with trailers, it was currently occupied by a sleeping dragon.
No parts of it extended beyond the lines, and the paper ticket was clearly displayed, impaled on a horn.
A group of far-future linguists and archeologists suddenly *poof* into existence in front of me. One is holding a tablet. "What is the difference between 'red sauce' and 'tomato sauce?'" they ask me. "The distinction is not clear in extant texts from this time and place."
"Uh, they're the same thing," I tell them. "Who are you?"
"Yes!" the being with the tablet exclaims.
One of the other researchers groans. "No! My thesis...months of writing wasted..." One of the others comforts them.
"Now, what is this object for?" The first researcher holds up a discolored, dinged-up plastic object. It's clearly been buried in the ground for quite some time, but the two holes and the scuffed plastic window are distinctive.
"That's a cassette tape. You record music with it."
"Interesting, interesting." The being enters something on the tablet.
"How are you speaking English?"
"Sophisticated translation technology," one of the researchers confides. "We are students of your society. From the future."
"What does this pictogram represent?" The researcher with the tablet turns it around so that the screen faces me.
It's the eggplant emoji.
"Sex," I say. "Why do you need to ask me this if you can time travel or whatever? Can't you just go wherever you want to go and look around and see how these things are being used?"
The beings shift guiltily and look at each other. "Technically, travel to times and places prior the advent of time travel is strictly prohibited. Paradoxes, you know."
"Oh."
"We must get back before our advisor returns to the lab. Just don't tell anyone you saw us, alright? The space-time continuity depends on it. Can you do that?"
"Uh, sure, I guess?"
One of them pats me on the head. "And don't go to Mars."
"Okay. Wait, why? Is it dangerous?"
"No. Just not worth it."
The group disappears in a shimmering light.
The cassette clatters to the sidewalk behind them.
Out of befuddlement, mainly, I pick it up. It's clearly old, discolored and scuffed, but it still has tape in it.
I carry the tape around in my pocket for a while. The curiosity builds. I want to know what's on that tape. I don't have a cassette player anymore, so I go to Goodwill and pick up the first one I can find, praying that it still works. I plug it in. It turns on.
I slide the tape inside. It's dirty, but it still seems to be in decent shape. I snap the player closed and hit play. The wheels begin to turn. I hold my breath.
A familiar tune starts up. A wobbly voice comes out of the machine.
Thousands of starfish had washed up on the beach, and a little girl was diligently throwing them back into the water, one at a time.
A man came up to the girl and said, "You'll never save all of them. What you're doing is pointless. It doesn't matter."
The girl threw another starfish into the water. "It mattered to that one."
The man snorted and walked away.
The girl kept throwing starfish, one after another.
To throw one starfish back into the ocean takes a trivial amount of effort, but to throw ten, or fifty, is much less so. The girl had not learned much of biomechanics, but she began to feel the strain in her back. Her skin had softened from the seawater, and the starfish themselves were abrasive. Her fingers had pruned. Her shoulder hurt. She was cut, twice, on her fingers, as the same storm that had stranded the starfish had also brought up broken shells and crab carapaces. The skin of a starfish was like sandpaper.
She tried switching hands, and could throw the starfish less well, and it wasn't long before she had mirrored all her injuries. She was bleeding, though the blood wept rather than flowing, briefly staining the starfish pink before they were tossed into the ocean.
It seemed as though there were just as many dying starfish as when she'd started.
After three hours, the girl was sunburnt. A passing man had told her that she should stop what she was doing, and had offered her some water, which she took, but he hadn't helped to throw the starfish back.
The girl's hands were cracked, scraped, and raw. Saltwater found the wounds, but she'd gone numb, and her motions became more mechanical.
"It mattered to that one," she thought to herself, "It mattered to that one," over and over, like a mantra. Her muscles ached, but the ache became familiar. When she'd started, her throws had been beautiful things, guided by purpose, but now they were sloppy and threatened to pull her off balance.
She did fall, more than once, landing on sand that was filled with jagged debris, and sometimes she was slow to get up. But she did get up, because there were more starfish to save, tens of thousands of them.
Night fell, and it was harder to see the starfish, but they were still in need of help. She was tired, and the cuts on her fingers had multiplied. The skin had been wet for too long, and in one place, on her palm, where she had gripped a thousand starfish to throw them, a piece of white skin had come off.
Still, she kept throwing starfish.
Her mother didn't find her until after midnight.
"Hi mom," said the girl. Her voice croaked. She had been saying, "It mattered to that one" under her breath for long enough that her vocal cords had strained. She threw another starfish into the ocean.
"You need to come home," her mother said.
"These starfish will die without me," said the girl.
"I know," said her mother. "But you need to come home, because if you keep doing this, you'll collapse on the beach, and like a starfish, you'll need to be rescued too."
The girl stooped down, back aching, and picked up another starfish. Many of them had died by this point, but there were still uncountably many that lived. The rough skin of the starfish grated at her tender skin, but she rose and threw it, arm protesting, and watched it fall down into the water.
Her mother grabbed her gently by the shoulders. "I'm bringing you home," she said. "It would be better if I didn't have to carry you, but I will if I have to."
"I don't want to be the sort of person who leaves starfish to die," said the girl, shrugging off her mother. But a part of her did want to be carried, because she'd walked for miles along this beach, one stooping step at a time.
"I know," said her mother. "But to survive, you have to be. Save as many as you can, but take breaks, get good sleep, eat well. Then go back and save more."
The girl swayed where she was. She was close to passing out, though maybe it was because her rhythm had been interrupted.
Her mother held out a hand, so they could walk together, like they'd done when she was smaller.
And it was then that she noticed the scars on her mother's hands, the calluses and rough spots, the places where cuts had healed. She had seen her mother's hands many times before, but had never asked why they were that way.
The girl slipped her hand into her mother's and began to cry as they walked back home.
The wizard down the street got sick of rivals dropping giant rocks on them to circumvent their Anti-Magic Field, and decided to invent an Anti-Physics Field instead. We're not sure what happened next, on account of nobody who looks at the affected area can remember what they saw, but there's probably a research paper in it if anyone figures it out.
The Witch of Stolen Tomorrows had begun to notice an odd trend amongst her petitioners.
The latest was a farmer. He had braved the journey through the Testing Woods and arrived with his convictions mostly intact. He now sat on a tree stump by the Witch’s thornbush cottage, drinking a cup of bitter tea, and asking for a fairly standard boon.
"Oh yes," said the Witch, "I can make you a spell for a bountiful harvest, but what will you give me in return?"
The farmer gulped. "My firstborn child?"
"By the dick-shattered sky.” The Witch exclaimed. “What?"
"Oh. You don't take firstborn children?"
"I am a witch of ancient promises, timeless dreams, and fresh blood.” The Witch announced. “Of course I take firstborn children. It's just a bit weird that it was your first offer."
"I'm sorry, mistress. I don't know how this works. Was I supposed to start smaller and work my way up to the firstborn? I’ve always been hopeless at haggling." The man seemed on the verge of tears. "My wife passed a few years ago. She used to do all the business at market."
"If your wife passed a few years ago, how exactly do you plan to offer me your firstborn?" The witch swirled her tea and the steam made foul omens in the air. "I mean, sure, you don't have to be married to have kids, but it does usually help if you're not obviously still in mourning."
"Oh, my little Jackie is already born. They're five. My firstborn and, well, my only-born."
"Okay. If the kid has already been born, you don't have to say firstborn. You can just say 'my child, whose name is...' What's the kid's name again?"
“Jackie.”
“Well, you’ve gone and put Jackie in a bit of a precarious spot. You see, now that you’ve offered the child, the fatespring will hate it if I accept a lesser deal. So either I have to talk you into a bargain that’s technically worse for you, or little Jackie comes to live with me. Now, I could-”
“That’s fine mistress. I accept the bargain.” The man sniffled and wiped his tears. He looked weirdly relieved. “So, do I bring Jackie here to you, or will you come to the farm to collect? Or is it one of those ‘leave them in a clearing at the full moon’ kind of-”
“My guy. What is up? What is your deal, exactly? I’ve had, like, five different firstborn deals this week. That’s weird, right? You get that? That’s normally the worst case scenario for y’all. But at least they hadn’t had the kids yet, so they could still fool themselves that they could wriggle out of the compact somehow. And they didn’t lead with ‘oh yeah, take my first child, that’s a strong opening bargaining position!” The canopy around them began to darken and the trees began to grow thorns. “And if there’s one thing that really gets on my flat-ass witch tits, it’s when there’s something going on I don’t understand. So what in the ever-boiling piss is up?”
The trembling farmer forced out the words, “It’s, uh, it’s the levy, mistress.”
“The levy? What levy?”
“The king, mistress. He’s put a levy out. He needs troops.”
“Why would he want a child to be pressed into military service?”
“It’s the prophecy, mistress. A great foretelling came down from the Speaker of the Fates, or so the criers say. In 18 years, a great darkness will come. It will bring war and ruin to the kingdom. It will shatter the crown. So the king is demanding we send every child who’ll be over 16 when the omens come due. They’ll get raised as warriors and heroes, so they say.” The farmer looked up at the Witch, a hint of hope shining through the desperation that had cracked him. “Only, none of us want to pay the king’s fateprice with our kids. And Mrs Goodwhistle, she said that you’d probably give them a good life.
“Or, at least… you’d give them some kind of life.”
The Witch said nothing for a long while.
Then she stood up.
“I guess I’d better get a shift on then.” The briar-bound cottage behind them pricked up its leaves like they were ears.
“You’re… you’re leaving?”
“Oh, don’t fret. I’ll take little Jackie with me. I’ll take all of them.” The witch’s home unravelled, all its branches and brambles writhing down to follow its roots into the ground. “If my hearth is going to become a daycare for all the poor little prophecy-pocked bairns of this land, I’m going to need more space. And I’ll need to take them somewhere harder to find…”
“Oh, thank you, mistress!”
The Witch flicked something to the farmer, who caught it instinctively. In his sweaty palm was a seed - though it was older, darker and heavier than normal.
“There’s your harvest spell. Appropriate payment, as the scalekeepers demand. Each morning, when you go to bring in the harvest - look to the sky. When the sun is just tickling the horizon, reap a single ear of corn and put it aside. Whisper into it as if you’re talking to your child. Jackie will hear you. In the deepest part of winter, roast and eat that corn - then you’ll get your reply.”
“I… I have no words…” The farmer’s eyes and throat burned.
“No need for them. The deal must be made and the price must be paid.” The Witch held out a hand and a nearby tree bent its limbs down to meet her, offering a branch. “Now, I have much to prepare, so I will take my leave. The woods will see you home.”
And the witch took the living branch from the tree and sat upon it like a broom, then rose into the sky like a sunrise.
---
18 years later, the Witch of Stolen Tomorrows returned to the kingdom. The earth trembled as her thorned fortress - a living wilderness - bore her onwards on a thousand root-wrought feet.
Standing atop the briar parapets was the Witch’s cadre of apprentices. They were all teens and twenty-somethings, clad in the colours of autumn skies and wielding the instruments of fate.
The king, far away in his keep, felt a strange shiver through the gold of his crown. An echo of its coming shattering.
The Witch hung from a giant thorn like a sailor from a bowsprit. In her free hand, she cradled a cup of tea.
“Here is a lesson about prophecies.” She said it softly, but the rushing winds carried the words to her students. “If you fight them, they’ll put you on like a jacket and wear you as a costume as they dance ruin through your life. But if you grab them by the scruff, then you can be the one wearing destiny as your cloak.
“And then you get to be the one writing the story.”
My conduct this year landed me on Santa Claus's fabled and controversial "Kill-at-all-Costs" List. Turns out the reason the big man and his people don't exercise that option more often is that they really aren't good at following through on it. Well outside their core competency. He's delegated to the elves, and they've got this ingrained assembly-line mindset that doesn't translate at all to the adaptable and fluid mindset needed for siege breaking. They just haven't adjusted their playbook at all from when they're doing rote deliveries. Armed Elves have been rappelling down my chimney one at a time into the roaring fire I've kept going nonstop for the last week. They haven't even thought to try my front door yet. Whole house smells like peppermint, which it turns out is what burnt elf meat smells like. Thought I was being super clever putting cyanide-laced almond milk out with the cookies as a last line of defense, but none of them have made it even the scant few feet to the side table where that's sitting. At the rate things are going the real danger is that I'm gonna forget what I did with that and accidentally drink it myself while I'm watching the show
