“Oh, sure!” Crocker was saying. “You just send out a—Whaddaya call it, Cluny? A wave pulse form?”

  “Pulse waveform,” she corrected before she could stop herself.

  “That’s it!” Crocker snapped his fingers, the sound and the motion drawing Tzusy’s and Jian’s and Polaris’s attention back to him. “See, it reads the lay of the land before you get there and automatically corrects the spell matrix so you end up on a solid horizontal surface instead of, y’know, halfway inside something.” He gave a big grin. “Cluny’s really good at rooting out these neat spells for me. You just wait, Tzusy, till Jian starts bringing you stuff he’s found!” He flapped the sleeves of his robes. “So c’mon! Cluny, Shtasith, mount up! Tzusy, Jian, Polaris, gather ’round here, and we’ll be off!”

  Shtasith had been sitting quietly on one of the upper bookshelves this whole time, his magic hovering around Cluny’s with a simmering watchfulness. But now he spread his wings and glided down to Crocker’s shoulders, his wings flapping with a little flourish as he landed. “Fear not,” he said, and while he was looking at the other three in the room, Cluny could practically feel the warmth of his words stroking the fur between her ears. “All will be well.”

  Cluny wasn’t so sure, scampering forward to hook her claws into the front of Crocker’s robes. Because yes, she’d been lying to nearly everyone for almost a year, but with Tzu Yin and Jian and Polaris standing right there looking at her, for the first time, she thought she understood what Crocker had been saying yesterday. How could she really be friends with these folks if she couldn’t be truthful with them?

  “Right,” Crocker said, raising his arms, and Cluny shook herself, huddled down into her pocket, let her whiskers bristle into the misdirection spell she used so often. She spread her claws, plucked the strings of power that lay under reality itself to send vibrations northeast, and when the waveform pulsed back to her, she squinted at Tzusy’s map, matched the pattern there to the one she was picking up from the physical world on the other side of town, and nudged a hind foot into Crocker’s chest to let him know she was ready.

  “Here we go!” he called out, and Cluny triggered the spell, wrapped its energy around all six of them, and popped them through the spaces between space to the corner of Tyler and Tamarack, her whiskers shivering as the air where they appeared rushed back to fill the void they’d left behind in their dorm room. This sort of spell was all about balance, after all.

  Tzusy gasped. “Crocker! That was...that was amazing! How did you—?!”

  “I’ll lend you the book.” Crocker’s heart was hammering in his chest like a bird trying to escape; Cluny leaned back and sent soothing waves over him as well as she could, her own jangled mental state not helping at all. Still, his voice came out more or less normally. “Remind me when we get back, Cluny.”

  She nodded, took her first breath in what seemed like minutes, and glanced at the neighborhood: single-family homes with well-tended yards under a crisp blue October morning. “The house is 413?” she asked, looking down at Polaris.

  The cat twitched and blinked like he was coming awake. “Yes.” He lifted his nose and sniffed, his ears springing to attention. “He’s there! Please! Quickly!” And he took off up the sidewalk.

  Cluny looked over at Tzusy and Jian, and they were looking back at Crocker. A gust of steam, and Shtasith said, “I sense no threats, but I would still recommend caution.”

  Crocker gave a little laugh. “Yeah, thanks, Teakettle.” He started after Polaris, Cluny clinging to the edge of her pocket, her whiskers spread for any hint of magic more intense than she would expect in a nice part of town like this.

  “Weird,” Tzusy murmured, moving right alongside Crocker, her head swiveling from side to side. “I half expected Goulet to live in some dank and run-down old mansion.”

  “Tzu Yin?” Jian chirped quietly. “Polaris has stopped.”

  Focusing forward, Cluny saw the cat sitting on the sidewalk in front of one of the many little houses that lined the street, his tail lashing the sidewalk. “Polaris?” she asked as they came up to him. “Is this it?”

  Polaris didn’t answer, but it was fear Cluny sensed in the air around him, not anger. “What...what if the master renounces me?” he whispered, his dark eyes wide on the front door at the end of its brick walkway. “What if he tells me he doesn’t want me, tells me to go away and not return, tells me to—?”

  “He won’t.” Crocker brushed his fingertips over Polaris’s ears, stepped up to the front door and knocked.

  Cluny sucked in a breath, Shtasith’s magic humming soundlessly around her, and readied her whiskers to unleash as many defensive spells as she knew—

  But after nothing happened for several long, long seconds, she forced herself to blow the breath out and take another. Wouldn’t do anyone any good if she passed out, after all...

  Sighing, Crocker knocked on the door again, and this time it opened to reveal a tall, older man in a button-down shirt and slacks, his aura barely flickering even to Cluny’s amped-up perceptions. “Yeah?” the man asked.

  “Ummm,” was all Crocker said.

  With an effort, Cluny kept herself from lashing the claws of her hind paws into his chest, put on her ‘small woodland creature’ face, and gestured toward the street. “Good morning, sir. We brought Polaris by.”

  “Polaris?” a voice from deeper in the house called out, and Fitzwilliam Goulet himself slid from a door behind the older man, everything about him even more pale and drawn than Cluny remembered from that day last spring.

  “Master!” Hearing joy in the cat’s voice for the first time made Cluny grin, something dark flashing past Crocker’s shins and leaping into Goulet’s arms.

  The moment floated, Cluny thought, like a soap bubble, Goulet gasping, pulling Polaris close, pressing his face into the cat’s black fur, Polaris’s eyes curling shut, his body going limp, his purr as loud as a lawnmower to Cluny’s ears.

  Then the older man cleared his throat. “Come in, then.”

  Goulet’s head snapped up. “What are you doing here?” he asked, but the way his eyes skittered around under his brows like leaves in a windstorm, Cluny couldn’t tell if he was looking at Crocker or Tzu Yin or all of them when he said it.

  “William,” the older man growled. “They brought your familiar home. Say ‘thank you.’”

  “Father, these are—” Goulet stopped, a twitch pulling at his cheek, and held Polaris a little closer. “These are two of the students I tried to kill.” His lips curled, and Cluny had no doubt that his glare then was aimed directly at Crocker. “That one’s the wizard who tore my soul out and destroyed any possibility that I might ever lead a normal life.”

  “I’m not a wizard,” Crocker said quietly, and Cluny nearly froze. “Remember? You tested me when we were sitting there in the library, and I didn’t have any more magic than a baby.”

  “I—” Goulet’s eyes widened. “I did. You...you registered a few points above null.”

  “Impossible!” Tzu Yin stepped around Crocker, her brow wrinkled. “The things I’ve seen you do—”

  “I didn’t do any of them.” His magic tugged at Cluny, made her look up to meet his gaze. “Did I, Cluny?”

  Again, the pressure of their attention—Tzusy, Jian, Goulet, his father, Polaris, all of them turning their various wondering or confused expressions toward her—made her want to chitter, want to scream, want to leap over Crocker’s shoulder and run, run, run till her legs gave out. What was Crocker doing?! He knew as well as she did that everyone who’d come to suspect the truth since last spring had tried to kill them!

  OK, so maybe Master Gollantz hadn’t tried to kill them. And Hesper, she’d actually helped them put together their current cover story after she’d found out. But—

  Their cover story. Cluny blinked as the thought blossomed inside her. It wasn’t really a story, was it?

  “It’s true,” she heard herself say, and she swiveled herself around in her pocket to look from Tzusy to Goulet. “Crocker isn’t a wizard. I’m not a wizard. Shtasith isn’t a wizard. It’s only when we’re together, trusting each other and helping each other, that we become a wizard.” She fixed on Tzusy’s startled eyes. “You told me last night how much better you and Jian are getting things done now that you’re treating him like a partner instead of a pet, right?”

  Perched on Tzusy’s shoulder, Jian gave a little chirp, and Tzusy reached up, touched his claws, the air practically glowing around them. Cluny turned quickly to Goulet and Polaris, still clinging to each other. “And even though that flayer sucked out every drop of the abilities you used to possess, Goulet, now that you and Polaris are together again—” Cluny swallowed, everything she’d learned about the way magic flowed through the mind, the heart, the soul, and the body telling her she was right. “I know you can feel something. I know it.”

  The young man was panting like he’d been running in place the whole time; he clenched his eyes and shuddered, and a shower of light green sparks clattered down from his hair.

  Polaris gave a joyful yowl. “Master!”

  “But—!” Goulet’s voice choked off. He buried his face in Polaris’s fur for a moment, and when his head came back up, tears shimmered on his cheeks. “How?”

  And as much as Cluny wanted to shrink back into her pocket, she was pretty sure that wasn’t an option any longer. “Humans have one sort of magic, animals have another, and it’s only when we come together that we make a wizard.” She took a breath, blew it out. “I think maybe they’ve forgotten that up at Huxley.” She reached for the warmth of Crocker’s magic, once again smooth and comfortable around her, and for the fire of Shtasith’s magic, banked for now but always ready.

  “And maybe,” Cluny muttered, her whiskers shivering, “maybe it’s time somebody reminded them.”

  Amma's Wishes

  by M.E. Garber

  There are a lot of stories about people who are granted three wishes. Very few of them feature people who manage to use the wishes sensibly.

  M. E. Garber grew up reading about hobbits, space-travel, and dragons, so it’s no wonder that she now enjoys writing speculative fiction, and dreams of traveling the world(s). She used to live near the home of Duck Tape, then near the home of Nylabone. Now she lives near the home of Gatorade. She’s a 2013 graduate of the Viable Paradise Writers’ Workshop. See her blog, megarber.wordpress.com, for more information.

  The door to the Dragon’s Beard Tavern slammed open and wintry winds gusted within, twisting Amma’s skirts about her legs like the arms of a drunken hero. Amma stumbled, sloshing ale from the tankards on her tray onto her skirts. She glared towards the door, where three men dressed in crimson-edged blacks let the door bang shut behind them.

  Damn these fighters. Couldn’t they just once enter like human beings?

  They swaggered to the far table, ignoring everyone in the crowded tavern. “Stew!” one yelled over his shoulder.

  “Wench! Hurry with that ale. We’re thirsty men!” a helmed man at the table before her demanded. Those around him roared their agreement.

  She slapped the tankards onto their table, careful that the ale didn’t slosh over so much as dance within the cups. What would their mothers think of them, acting like this? She glared at each man in turn, daring any to speak out. None did.

  She turned to stomp back to the kitchen when a great hand seized her buttock. Anger and frustration engulfed her. She whirled, lifting the serving tray high and crashed it onto the helm of the damned dwarf, who sat stunned but grinning like the idiot he was. Amma fled for the kitchen’s safety, her heart beating in her throat and her arms shaking, as raucous laughter rang in her ears.

  Once through the kitchen doors, she slumped against the wall, letting her breathing drop its ragged edge. The rage that had fed her strength fled, and exhaustion weakened her limbs.

  “What’s wrong now?” Marda asked, her voice sharp. The innkeeper’s wife and tavern cook scooped three bowls of stew and handed them over.

  “The same. Grown men acting like boys.” Amma loaded the bowls onto her dented tray, pausing as her anger bloomed again. “My six year old nephew behaves better, Marda! What’s wrong with them?”

  The older woman wiped her hands in her stained apron as a tired smile creased her face. Her eyes clouded with memories. “Amma. Child. They’re not bad men. My Grumps was one of them for years, you know. We met at a tavern just like this one, and the men back then, they were just the same. They’re only showing off for each other. It’s what adventurers do.”

  “I wish they’d do it someplace else, then. I’m tired of it.” She turned to leave the kitchen.

  “You think it’s better at The House of Flowers?” Marda’s laugh pealed out into the front room as Amma shoved open the swinging door with her hip. No, servers at the only other bar in Milldale had it worse. At least here she didn’t have to turn tricks, as they did. She carried the stew to the newcomers. They tried to impress her, flexing their mighty thews, but she ignored them.

  Instead she made her way to the drafty corner table where Forgettable Fillmorr hunched alone over his tankard. The spectacled mage was the only one who treated her like a human, probably because she could snap him like a twig if she’d wanted. On the bench beside him rested a brownish lump: his long-empty loot sack. Now it sported a tiny bulge. The mage sighed as Amma neared.

  “Another ale, Formidable?” she asked, using the name he called himself instead of what others called him.

  He startled, then blinked up at her. “Why yes, that would be nice. Thank you, Anna.”

  Amma smiled as she went for his drink. He always forgot her name. But he said “thank you,” and he never slammed the door.

  Her smile was wiped away as the door was flung open again, crashing against the inside wall with a reverberating boom.

  The night eventually ran itself down. The bard in the corner went from stomping tunes to mellow ones, then slid into melancholy ballads that salted everyone’s ale with tears. When he slipped out the front door, Amma assessed the nearly empty common room: cider made a slow splat-splat-splat as it dripped onto the floor while Fillmorr nodded his head in time, his eyes owlish and unblinking.

  Behind the bar, Grumps rattled the crockery as he wiped at dirty mugs with an equally dirty rag. Amma set to moving the filth around, working her way to Fillmorr’s table.

  “Formidable, it’s time to leave.”

  He tilted his neck up at her and blinked rapidly. “So soon?”

  She nodded.

  He gave a little sigh. “Well, I suppose so.” He placed a hand on the tabletop and started to rise, but shivered, stopped and sank back down. “Oh! But first, I need to do this.” His hand went below the table, and an odd expression crossed his face, as if he concentrated hard on his actions.

  Amma leapt aside, afraid he was going to urinate right there. But no. His hand reappeared holding his loot sack, which thumped when he placed it on the table. Still staring at the bag, he spoke slowly. “Tonight, Ennie, I celebrated my last day as an adventurer. I’ve had enough. I’m going back to Immonsville, to run the candle works there for my aged mother.” He raised his eyes to meet Amma’s, and they were surprisingly clear. “No one will miss me, and most probably won’t remember me. I know they called me “Forgettable,” and I am. But you, Essi, you always treated me kindly. To you, I’m giving the last of my adventuring treasures. I bequeath you my padded loot sack, and the last trinket within. It’s not much, but its the only way I can express my thanks to you, kind lady.”

  With that, he rose onto unsteady feet and bowed. She backed away, afraid he might topple over, but he turned and left the inn, shutting the door silently behind him.

  Amma looked from the door, back to the brownish lump of sack he’d left for her. It was padded, to mute the sounds of things clinking within. At the very least, it would make a good pillow. Once she’d washed it.

  “What’s wrong then?” Grumps’ voice cut through her thoughts.

  She shoved the bag beneath her apron, looping it through the strings to hold it in place. “Nothing. Fillmorr just told me he’s leaving.”

  “Hunh. No surprise there. He never was the right type. Didn’t have enough bravado, enough flair. His name fits. ‘Forgettable,’ indeed.”

  Gritting her teeth, Amma continued washing up.

  ~o0o~

  By the time cleanup ended and Amma was safely locked within her tiny room, she was exhausted. She didn’t care what the sad loot sack contained. She was tucking it away in her clothing box when something heavy bruised her knuckles. Frowning, she upended the bag. A tiny oil lamp of some foreign sort fell out, its brass tarnished and stained.

  No wonder Fillmorr didn’t want it. He’s going into the candle business.

  She berated herself for the unkind thought. It wasn’t a bad gift, not at all. With a bit of cleaning, it would be fine. To prove it, she wiped vigorously with her sleeve, trying hard to bring forth the gleam of the metal.

  With a hiss like sand in an hourglass, whitish smoke billowed from the spout. Amma flung it onto her bed, backing away from the cloud that formed between her and the door. She ran for the window and tried to fling it open, but the old frame was warped, and it wedged after opening only an inch.

  Maybe it’ll be enough to let the poison gasses out. Turning, she put a hand over her mouth and nose and stared at the shape that had formed.

  From floor to ceiling, the mist congealed into the form of a burly red-skinned man. He wore outlandish purple-striped pants, and a tiny brimless hat perched on his bald head. Gold winked from both ears, and thick bands of it encircled his wrists, as well. His eyes gleamed like hot brass, not kindly at all. Amma gasped, and shrank to the floor.

  “Mistress.” His voice was deep, but soft. Gentlemanly, even. The genie bowed.

  Amma scrambled to her feet, but remained pressed against the window.

  “I come to your call. I am the genie of the lamp, bound to your service.”