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Fantasy Stories

Hourglass

Written by Alma Alexander

Illustrated by Jessica Douglas

I could get RICH in Ghulkit!

Prove it . . .

Aris cursed the potent ale that had made him utter that boast. Wyn and Allyc, the two fellow gleemen who had provoked his words, were at this moment no doubt ensconced beside another warm fire in some congenial hostelry, nursing mulled wine and laughing quietly over Aris’s stubborn insistence to honor his words.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit, come back with wealth, and he could return and spend many a satisfying evening telling avid listeners across the length and breadth of all the Kingdoms how one gleeman had dared to defy almost impossible odds. No other gleeman could compete. . . .

Aris allowed himself a grim smile as he struggled through the snowdrifts on the lonely back road. Spend a winter in Ghulkit. He should have known there was a good reason people did not do this. He had already found out—the hard way—that if he was not totally focused on the road he was traveling he could find himself mired in innocent-looking snowbanks that were hip deep or worse. At least once he nearly lost his harp in the drifts; and even without that, he could almost feel the effects of the killing cold on the fragile instrument. Whenever he gained some sort of sanctuary and obtained a spot to ply his trade, he would have to thaw the harp for half an hour or more before he could use it to assist him in the simplest of songs.

Today was worse than many a day before it. Often the cold would be ameliorated by a thin and watery kind of sunlight, which would even manage, weak and etiolated as it was, to render the muffled, frost-sparkling landscape beautiful in Aris’s sight. That, at least, had been a sort of gift—he had composed several songs about the beauty of the snow country—but after a while even that had not been enough to make him forget how cold he was. And this morning—this morning it had started snowing. By the time he had hit the road, it was not just snowing, it was snowing heavily. He should have stayed another day at the village where he had been given adequate if not lavish hospitality. But he had thought it a flurry. The locals might have told him it was not, had he thought to ask—but he had not asked. The blizzard had grown steadily worse. Aris lost all track of time and could not tell if the sun was meant to be overhead or setting. He only knew that he had been walking for hours, that he was on the verge of losing all feeling in his feet, that he could see no farther in front of him than the length of his outstretched hand, and that he was in real trouble.

Spend a winter in Ghulkit.

If he wasn't careful, he was in real danger of spending eternity here.

He could have missed the house by the roadside altogether, so camouflaged was it in the snowdrifts. Aris had been focused for so long on just putting one foot in front of another that he would have had considerable trouble recognizing even familiar things, let alone something that barely differentiated itself from his frigid environment. He retained enough wit to pause briefly when he smelled what he thought was smoke. Even so, he almost didn't see what lay right before him, but a black hole suddenly yawned in the nearest snowdrift. It took Aris precious moments to realize that someone had just opened a door.

“Whuh . . .” he muttered, in a cold-cracked voice, through lips that seemed to have stiffened into icicles.

“You walk to your death, stranger,” said another, lighter voice. It sounded very young. “This is not a day for traveling. I have a fire inside. Come.”

“Whuhuh . . . thhhan . . . thank you,” Aris managed to force through chattering teeth.

He allowed himself to be guided through the doorway. When it closed behind him, he found himself in close darkness and fought a rising panic—but then, a moment later, what appeared to be a heavy curtain was lifted at the far end of the hall and beyond it Aris could see the inviting red glow of a fire. A sigh escaped him at the sight, and his host chuckled softly at this.

“Come inside,” he said. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

By the time he was fully in command of his senses, Aris was a little startled to find himself wearing a fur-edged woollen robe, sitting beside a hearth whose sheer size made it look as though it belonged in a king’s hall and not some lost and snowbound cottage in the wilds of Ghulkit. It was the mug that made him snap back to himself because the scalding heat from its contents had made him jerk his hands away. He very nearly spilled the whole mug into his lap, only saved by a steadying hand on his own.

“Easy,” murmured his host. “That is better inside you.”

Aris remembered his manners. “I think,” he said, “you saved my life.”

And at that he looked up and finally saw the face of his companion.

Standing beside him was a very young man, almost a boy. His untidy shoulder-length fair hair and the engaging dimples he produced when he smiled, together with the small hands and the narrow hips, made Aris initially guess his host’s age as fifteen, maybe sixteen at most. But then he met the eyes of blue fire that sat in that young, unlined face, and felt his stomach knot. The eyes were ancient beyond measure, all-knowing, all-seeing, old. This was someone of no age at all, or perhaps all the ages of the world. Beneath the intensity of those eyes Aris dropped his own, utterly confounded, feeling as though all the sins that he carried in his soul—the pride, the arrogance, the ambition, the selfishness—were open to their scrutiny.

“Who are you?” he asked after a moment of silence.

The other laughed softly. “You may call me Bek. Now drink that. Slowly.”

He raised an eloquent eyebrow when Aris hesitated, and Aris, feeling obscurely shamed, lifted the mug to his lips and drank. The scalding liquid burned its way down his throat, and tears came to his eyes as he swallowed. He coughed.

“Sorry,” said Bek. “It needs to be hot. You were on the verge of snowsleep.”

“Snowsleep?” repeated Aris blankly. He suddenly roused. “My harp! My harp!”

“Rest easy.” Bek rested one hand on Aris’s shoulder. “It is here. I took the liberty of unwrapping it and wiping it down. It is a fine instrument. You are a gleeman?”

“Yes,” Aris said, subsiding, his eyes on the harp he now saw glinting on the far side of the enormous hearth.

“Well, then,” said Bek. “Perhaps you could honor me with a tale later. Perhaps even the one of how a solitary gleeman came to be trudging the Ghulkit roads in midwinter.”

“Foolishness,” muttered Aris under his breath.

Bek laughed out loud. “Ah, a longer tale than that, I think. But there is no hurry. First we get you warm. It is certain that you will be going nowhere for a while. It is only getting worse outside.”

Aris sipped his drink and stole an appraising glance around the room as he did so. The room was larger than it first appeared, with the far corners lost in dark shadows. Aside from the firelight, it was lit by candles—groups of them, placed on any flat surface with enough space to bear them. There was a desk in a nook beside the fireplace, overflowing with parchment, ink bottles, quill pens, and a quantity of leather-bound books. It also bore a stuffed owl and an hourglass, which looked about to spill the last of its sand into the lower chamber. Farther out, there was an armchair, which presently served as sleeping quarters for three black-and-white cats who were tangled in a knot of paws and whiskers on the cushioned seat. More books lay in piles on the floor beyond that. Whoever the owner of this cottage was he was no humble tiller of land—the books were riches, even had their bindings not gleamed with subtle inlays of silver and gold.

Feeling Bek’s somewhat sardonic gaze upon him, Aris finally turned back to his host.

“I would,” said Bek, his voice hiding a suspicion of a smile, “be happy to answer questions. Within reason.”

Aris gestured. “There is a king’s ransom in books here,” he said, and it was not a question. Quite.

Bek inclined his head. “Some of them,” he said, “probably were. I am a collector. Of books, amongst other things. For example . . .” He rose, and fetched a wooden case from a shelf, opening it up on a hinged edge to reveal rows of meticulously displayed butterflies. “This one,” he said conversationally, pointing to a midnight-blue specimen with silver flecks on his wings, “I had to travel far to find. Very far. You might say it was worth more than any two of those books.”

Aris had gulped down the last of the fiery liquid in the pewter mug, and it dangled from his hand as he examined the butterflies with interest. Bek took the cup from him.

“Good. Another, I think.”

“What is it?” Aris, who was feeling quite ridiculously invigorated, asked.

“Secret recipe,” Bek said. “Amongst other things, I am a healer.”

Aris cast his eyes around the room again. “There are no windows.”

Bek, who was pouring more steaming liquid into Aris’s mug from a kettle hanging in the hearth, nodded without turning. “This is so.”

“Then how do you know that it is getting worse outside? And how did you know that I was there?”

“One does not,” Bek said, “necessarily need to see with one’s physical sight in order to observe one’s world.” He walked the few steps back to Aris with the steaming mug in his hand. “And there is no need to look quite so alarmed. It is a gift, much like your own with the harp.”

“Magic,” said Aris, and could not keep his distaste out of his voice. Aris and enchantment had a relationship akin to that of a cat-hater and any kind of cat—magic pursued Aris, flattered him, cajoled him, tried to climb up to his lap to be petted, while he spent all his energies trying to shoo it away and keep it at arm’s length. Using his experiences, he had composed a number of songs and tales, and the irony was that he was becoming known for his tales of magic even while fleeing it with all his might.

All Aris had ever wanted to be was a singer of songs, a teller of tales. He knew he was good enough to achieve this with no magical intervention. He was just having an inordinately hard time proving it to himself.

“If you wish,” Bek said equably, “then yes, magic. None that will harm you. You yourself just said I saved your life. This is no less than the truth. I could show you what it is like outside now, and it is considerably worse than when I called you in here. But I suspect you would think that I was just showing off . . . and you would probably be right.” He held out the mug. “Drink it. I promise you there is nothing harmful in it at all. If you have to know, it isn’t even magic.” The word was emphasized, lightly, with something akin to amusement. “It is herbal knowledge, no more.”

Aris accepted the drink after a brief hesitation. Bek inclined his head in an acknowledgment of this acceptance, put away his butterfly collection, and bent over to inspect Aris’s harp.

“I think it has taken no harm,” he said. “I would be very grateful if you would play for me later. If there is something here that I miss, it would have to be music.”

“I owe you my life,” said Aris. “A song or a tale is small enough price for this.”

“We all place our own value upon things,” said Bek cryptically. “I may not even choose to count it as payment. I may consider your offering something to place me in your debt.”

Aris looked at him for a long moment, then put down the mug he still cradled in his hands. “If you would pass me the harp,” he said courteously.

Bek did so, with infinite care and gentleness, and Aris spent a few moments