July

The inspector was an ordinary man with an ordinary job: the detection of all things arcane, mystical, or otherwise supernatural hiding in the otherwise everyday world of his city right on the border where the closed territories of the North met the— well, it was sometimes called the untamed wilds of the fringes, but it was the same as everywhere else. It was just home to some unusual people. The inspector, by contrast, was a usual people: not too handsome or ugly, not too tall or short, and just the right level of outgoing. His hair was plain brown and his shirt was plain white (minus the stains). His skin was of a light complexion and moisturized well without being especially radiant. His family name carried no weight at all. In short: he was boring, but not so boring that it became an interesting trait in itself. He sardonically viewed his job as just that: to prevent interesting things from intruding into the lives of the well-to-do.

Not that the city was a magic-free zone, but enough residents wished it were. The inspector knew it was an impossible dream. You couldn’t just pretend that half the world didn’t exist. What you could do— what he did— was find it and catalogue it and make his living humoring said dream. A few years back he’d found a worm in an apple tree— Not the apple itself, and not a normal worm. It was the offshoot of some nature spirit or somesuch. Didn’t even affect the taste, but they’d tried to cut down the tree and only succeeded in making the thing angry. Well, since then his company had been hired to regularly inspect the town’s produce for any sign of magical contamination. Today, it was turnips. The inspector was staying late, just to make sure the turnips were finished. He had 13 of them, a sampling from various parts of the field, location written on the rough skin of the vegetables with a marker of all things.

There hadn’t been a trace of magic in any of it. All the instruments were in agreement on that, and they were all magical themselves, sourced from the Artificers Association— and no, the hypocrisy wasn’t lost on him. Running every single possible test on each individual turnip was an exacting, but boring, process, but he was just weighing out the very last one to make sure nothing had added mass during the last few tests. That would be a sure sign of magical parasites if it had happened, which it did not.

The testing room had no windows, but the clock told him that the sun would be setting outside right around then, tinting everything a lovely shade of orange. He’d have some time to enjoy it as soon as he just checked off a few boxes on a form.

“Hey,”

A sudden, unfamiliar voice, up here on the second floor testing room of a building that was supposed to be locked up. This could only mean one thing: something exhausting was about to happen.

The door had opened without a sound, and some animal woman he’d never seen in his life was just standing there, leaning against an expensive testing oven like she was lounging around at home.

She was what he might call medium weird. He didn’t really know what she was, actually. Something fluffy, probably a rodent based on her whiskers and nose. Her fur wasn’t a natural colour, though. It was dark blue like the midnight sky, long nails painted starry yellow. A shoulderless green dress hung over her tall, rounded frame and a metal rod dangled loosely from the fingers of her left hand, topped by a big glass bulb that swirled with some sort of dust or powder inside. The whole animal thing was something you could get done fairly easily across the border, apparently, so that wasn’t especially intimidating, but the staff was something else.

This whole thing was trouble. There was nothing illegal about someone with these kinds of modifications being in town, but if she’d walked all the way here looking like that, then everyone must have given her strange looks. And it’s not like she had no choice! That stuff could be turned off. He’d seen it on television. So this was a person who either didn’t find funny looks, or actively appreciated them. In either case, he would be socially out of his depth.

“Sorry, are you lost?” He asked hopefully. Maybe the door’d been left unlocked. Maybe she just came on in because she was brazen and wanted directions. He could take care of that pretty easily.

The rodent woman spoke again in the same deep voice. “I’m looking for a man named Daniel Wells. I hear he works here.”

Well, that had been too much to hope for. The inspector was the one named Daniel Wells, and there wasn’t anyone else in the area sharing his name. For some reason, this woman was specifically looking to talk to him! He wasn’t the kind of person who would lie about his identity to get out of it, either. He would carry on with the burden of conversation because he lacked the kind of courage one needed to avoid it.

“That’s me.”

The night-sky woman’s expression brightened up just a tad. “I know. I just figured it was better to say I was looking.” She tapped the wicker basket full of turnips with the bottom of her staff. Why? Turnips were easily the least magical vegetable and these were certified ordinary. The basket, though. He hadn’t tested the basket. Was that it?

“This is yours, right?” she asked.

“I have custody of it, but it’s not mine.” Daniel worked his brain as hard as he could this late in the day, trying to come up with a way to at least get her out the building. For that matter, he could get himself out of it at the same time. “We’re actually supposed to be locked up, so if you’ll give me a moment, I can finish up here and walk you out. Then we can continue this conversation outside.” That was what Daniel was intending to say, more or less. He only got two or three words in before she slipped her staff into the basket and waved it in a circle like she was stirring a pot, and then the turnips were gone.

Gone. Not there. Maybe they’d been turned invisible, or maybe they’d been teleported to a waiting getaway vehicle. There was nothing giving any clue. No puff of smoke or flash of light, even. Magic should be flashy. It should signpost itself, so you know what not to worry about. What you could safely avoid trying to puzzle out. There should be some pomp to it. That was Daniel’s opinion.

This was before one got to the point of asking for the why of the situation, which was almost too much to even fathom. He wasn’t so unimaginative that he couldn’t conceive of a situation where stealing some turnips made sense, but this simply wasn’t one of them. And she’d asked for him by name, which wouldn’t be important at all if you were just looking for food. And if you were looking for food, surely you could do better than turnips.

“Sorry. Had to send those back,” the woman offered as her only explanation. She reached up and brushed her dark hair to the side with one dainty hand. Every one of Daniel’s brain cells pulled together to pry open his mouth and at least lodge a protest.

“Back where? Into the ground?”

She glowered at him like he was some buffoon. “Do you know your family history?”

“What?”

“One hundred twenty-six years ago, your great-grandparents were starving in the tundra. They prayed for salvation, and my patron happened to be the one to answer. As a time god, it can’t make food, but it can pull some from the future. A baker’s dozen turnips, it was.” The last bit was muffled by a yawn.

Daniel was aware of this story, but only second-hand, since he’d never met his great-grandparents personally. He’d never once assumed it was true, even as a child. The idea that it could actually be true was interesting enough, but it didn’t change his life. It didn’t make him view his family any differently. It did, however, awaken the pedantry that his grandparents had instilled in him from a young age. After all, this story was family property, and he didn’t completely lack a sense of family honour.

“It wasn’t just turnips. It was a feast.”

“I’m sure they made it sound better in the retelling,” the woman responded curtly.

“It was the harvest gods.”

“They’d have assumed so, yes.”

He opened his mouth to complain more, but she cut him off.

“Look. It’s done! My job was to complete the loop, and I did.” She leaned on her staff casually. Always leaning, this one. Daniel noticed at last that the insides were curved like an hourglass, but sideways. It was sand that swirled noncommittally between one side and the other.

“But,” Daniel started and then ran out of steam immediately. There was a lot to take in, and he lacked the fortitude to sort it all out in his head quickly. The whole thing had the stench of a done deal. If this lady was telling the truth, then… okay, that’s what he wanted to ask.

“You work for a god of time, who took the turnips from my office right now to feed to my great-grandparents more than a century ago.”

“That’s about right. I won’t hold you to the minor details.” She seemed perfectly relaxed. She must be enjoying watching him struggle.

“No, it doesn’t make any sense! If they’d starved to death, I’d have never been born. You needed to save my ancestors first, or there would be anything to steal from me— Not from me. The company, I mean. ” He was working it out as he went. Something about this whole situation was off.

“So?”

“So! So I didn’t have anything in the future to steal until they were stolen. Not that they were mine anyway. Isn’t that a paradox or something?”

The rodent’s head tilted about ten degrees to the left. “The loop could have been closed with any thirteen turnips, as long as they were sent back. You’d be surprised at how much wiggle room you can get on the shape, too. I could have just bought them at the supermarket.”

“Then why didn’t you?” He even would have been willing to pay for them, for the sake of his own existence. It wasn’t too steep a cost.

“Because, you just said it yourself: you wouldn’t have been born without them. It made the most sense for you to pay it back. Anyway, I’ve got to get going.” She shrugged and turned around, apparently now bored with the conversation. Her fluffy tail swished behind her as she left.

“That wasn’t an answer,” he said to the empty room.

He didn’t have to follow her. Explaining why his charge had vanished would be complicated, but it could be done. It’s not like he’d be accused of eating up a basket of turnips for fun. In fact, he could just buy some fresh ones. No big deal. Nobody would even know the difference, and nobody would be hurt. Nine days out of ten, that’s what he would have done. Today was day number ten.

Daniel took the stairs two at a time. He arrived at the deserted lobby in time to see the invader strolling out of the door, which he discovered was just as locked as it was supposed to be. For just a second, he became like his clients, wishing that all this magic would go away. What was the point of having locks if you could just magic your way through them? Still, he followed. He burst out the front door in a way that would have attracted some looks from the scattered passerby if they weren’t already busy having their looks attracted by the fluffy blue woman who was strolling down the road without a care in the world.

“Wait wait wait wait hold on,” he babbled. “You can’t just walk off.”

“I’m just walking off,” she replied.

“I needed those!”

“Already done. Need doesn’t come into it.” She waved him off

“Okay, but” He jogged a little faster to cut in front of her. She stared at him with a certain combination of boredom and amusement. “You have to fix it. You’ve got, you know,” he mimed swishing a magic wand. “Magic!”

“If I could just make the things I wouldn’t have needed to go to you in the first place.”

“Okay, yes, that makes sense, I admit, but still!”

She gave the sort of sigh that implied both her exhaustion and her deep desire for him to know he was the cause. “Look, I sympathize. You didn’t choose this. Your grandparents didn’t choose this. My patron just took pity on them and I’m on cleanup duty. Nobody’s fault.”

“It’s your fault.”

“Nope,” she said flatly. “I was following orders.”

“Without knowing the reason?”

“Sure did. You’d have done the same, I bet.”

“That’s not the point.”

His heart was straining at his chest, or so it felt. What was he even arguing? He wasn’t sure. It wasn’t clear what he intended to prove, or even who he was arguing with in the first place. The rodent woman? This supposed god of hers? He was a big barrel of indignation that had sprung a leak, but instead of air rushing in to fill the space, it was confusion. A single truth animated him: he disliked having his day upended by anyone. Divinity was no excuse; Even gods should be held to some kind of standard.

In his head, he thought to himself: tell me, you stupid god. Why me?

“Dammit,” the rodent woman muttered. “Did you just pray?”

“What?”

No longer amused, her expression had turned dead serious. “Look at your right hand.”

He looked. There was a gold chain wrapped around his wrist, and in his palm was an pocket watch. An ordinary, if archaic, object that was notable only in that he had never seen one in person and certainly had no memory of picking one up. The face was simple, with tall Roman numerals marking the hours on a white face, silver hands pointing the way. He flipped it over and saw an interesting engraving on the back: a broken circle with one end forming a point that fit snugly into the other at the bottom. On the top there was a turn. It was almost a mobius strip, but not quite. If it wasn’t connected, then all you had was a twisty ribbon.

“You did. You prayed for something.”

“I did not!” Daniel protested. “I don’t want a watch, I want to understand what’s going on.” Oh. He had, hadn’t he? He’d asked. Was there any difference between asking and praying? Surely there must be.

“Well, thanks to that, you’re my problem.” She grabbed him by the hand and started pulling him along with her like a little kid. He became extremely aware that there were still onlookers, who still stared at them. That was admittedly partly his own fault for all the yelling he’d been doing.

She was strong, but he managed to disentangle himself with only about half a minute of effort. She’d pulled him around the side of the building now, away from most of the crowd. “Could you please just explain yourself for once instead of treating me like luggage?”

“Fine,” she said, but with a little impatient puff of breath, “What do you need explained?”

“Where we’re going, for one thing.” He realized he should have said ‘where you’re going’ instead of implying he was going with her.

“You said you wanted understanding.”

It didn’t feel like she was listening to him. “Yes?”

“Then we’re going wherever we need to go. My patron wants us to find where and when that watch comes from so I can close the loop on it.”

“The loop?”

A deep sigh. “Have you not paid attention to even a single thing I’ve said?”

“No.” He lied. He didn’t feel like being easy to get along with.

“The watch came from the future. We have to find it and send it back to you.”

“What does that have to do with me? Just undo it or whatever.”

“Use your brain! It’s not closing the loop if I send the same thing back!”

“Well, it’s got nothing to do with me! You take the damn thing and fix this.”

“The whole point is that you get your answer. Without that, I won’t be able to find the original, which would mean I can’t close the loop.”

Oh, this was good, actually. He was being difficult. He could be difficult! Get a little revenge for how she was treating him. Arguing could be fun, after all.

“Or what?”

She stopped. Breathed more easily. It seemed as if she was catching herself acting foolishly and realized she should stop. Collecting herself, she spoke more softly. “Or else it’s a paradox. You’ll die. Maybe not just you, either. Actually it’ll be worse than dying. Anyone caught in a paradox ceases to move with the flow of time. They’re like a cyst, isolated from the body of existence and purged. You’ll be caught in one moment for all of eternity.”

Daniel was discovering that he wasn’t very good at being difficult after all.

“Oh. Well… how long will it take? And, uh, how long do we have?”

“I have no idea. Could be months. Years. Days.”

“I’d have to quit my job entirely to go that long. I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Why not?”

He felt like he’d run into a brick wall painted like tunnel. His job paid enough, but useless to society. He was easy to replace. He had no family left in town, and not so much as a pet waiting for him at home. A houseplant, sure, but that wasn’t really enough of an excuse. Basically, if he up and vanished like the turnips had, then the strongest emotion anyone would feel about it was annoyance. The woman in front of him, at that moment, probably cared more about his existence than anyone for miles.

Like a cyst. Isolated from the world around him.

“I still don’t know about this,” he said to save face. “I don’t even know who you are. You’re just some rat-woman who broke into my office ten minutes ago.”

Life flowed into her features once again. Life in the form of anger.

“First, I didn’t break anything. Second, does this look like a rat tail to you?” She swished it around to punctuate the point. She was right, admittedly. Her tail was covered in fur that floofed upwards at the end. Rat tails are furless. Even Daniel knew that.

“My soul is the long-tailed domestic chinchilla. We have some of the softest, silkiest fur in the world. My name is Bella July. Some people call me the Tolling Witch. I’m not picky what name you use, but you will not call me a rat. Is that understood?”

Daniel felt certain she would kill him if he didn’t comply. “Okay.”

That was how he ended up following her.