The Prison of Time
Daniel said this to declare his intention: he was going to keep speaking, and he was going to say something that probably made him look naive.
“Mhm?” July gave him the go-ahead with her usual tone of bemused anticipation. She was likely to crack a joke at his expense, but she’d help him work through the thought. That was pretty much a tacit agreement between the two of them. The witch kept a bubble around herself, keeping others out, and humor was the dish soap she used to form it.
The thought had come to him while staring into the insides of his hot dog after they’d grabbed a couple from a food cart. It had been free—this city had some kind of strange collective economy Something like the Communism of the old planet he’d read about a few times, except things mostly seemed fine here. Anyway, he’d ended up staring at the sausage for so long that July actually finished eating before he did, and she was the sort who always took the time to savor every bite.
“This city grows itself. It’s alive. So it must get its energy from somewhere, right?”
With one blue-furred finger, she played with her hair. “Conservation of mass says so, but this is magic. It might be drawing from the ground itself, or the stars. The city named itself, you know. Starlight? Maybe it named itself after its power source.”
“Does anybody know for sure?”
“I don’t think so. It’s hard to study a thing that doesn’t want to be studied and has the power to bury you in cement. Hey, maybe it eats people!” She grinned at him, but it didn’t sound completely ridiculous. Daniel took a step away from the nearest wall, moving closer to the street.
She noticed his caution. “It would need more energy than it could get that way. There are zero recorded instances of the city killing anything with a soul, by the way.”
“So, normal animals are fair game?”
“…Even normal animals have souls, you know. It’s well established.”
“Please don’t tell me any more unless you’re willing to take responsibility for me going vegetarian.”
“We just met intelligent plants a few weeks ago.”
“That’s different! Anyway, that reminds me: the sun is the power source for plants, so when you think about it, all cities get their energy from stars on some level.”
Sighing, the witch put a hand on her forehead as if totally exhausted by him. “Honestly, I would have expected you to pick up on it by now: this is magical country. The sun being a star doesn’t mean anything. The sun being close matters.”
“That’s what matters for the plants, too!”
“But this city isn’t a plant. It’s a spirit or god of some kind for sure.”
The conversation went on like that. The two of them were just killing time at the moment, waiting for July’s big appointment in front of the city’s new museum; grown only a few months ago, supposedly.
According to the witch, she had a few contacts who would sometimes find jobs for her. These were people who’s job was knowing people who could do things nobody else could. None of them lived in Starlight, but the new museum’s new curator had managed to make contact through one of them. The nature of the job was art restoration— a little bit mundane, but it made sense for a time witch. Only, the guy had messaged July’s funny magical phone to say he was running late, and they’d been waiting for half an hour in front of the museum’s locked door. The clouds in the sky were threatening rain, too. Plus he hadn’t slept well— the city had swallowed a vacant building right across from their hotel room just before he’d gone to bed. He’d laid awake, fully dressed, for most of the night, every little creak and scratch sounding like the ground coming to swallow him up. How did thousands of people tolerate living in this place?
Well, they didn’t have to put up with the sounds of construction machinery. That was pretty good.
“What do you think the appeal is?” July said from behind him. He had lost himself staring out at the street, where the only pedestrian he’d seen in the past half hour was a goat-wolf hybrid person rushing somewhere in a hurry.
“What?”
“That… thing. The casino.”
It was directly opposite the museum, which was odd. It was closed until the evening, and the lights weren’t on, but the big neon lights said it was called The Lucky Heart.
“There’s no money here, so maybe it’s more of a bartering thing? You win… prizes?”
“Could be. I suppose games are games, but… is it really a casino, then?”
“Do you want to visit later?”
July shrugged. “Maybe. I like seeing how fast I can get banned from those kinds of places.”
“You use magic to cheat?”
“That would be boring, plus they usually have measures in place to prevent it. I count cards.”
“…Anyway, it’s funny. That casino looks really plain next to this museum.”
She gave him one of her looks reserved for when he said something she thought was weird. “What’s odd about that?”
“Well, museums are more… normal. Boring. As an idea, I mean.” This particular building had some nice stone pillars supporting the front, but that made it look more venerable rather than more fun. It was a building that purported to be a place for smart people.
July walked at him, staff pointed firmly at his chest. “Museums are grand endeavors, Daniel. They can contextualize history, or imprison it. These are buildings that can either be the greatest good or the foulest evil. There’s nothing boring about them.”
Daniel shrank back, unable to understand what had set off this sudden burst of hostility. But a few seconds later, it dawned on him.
“You really like history stuff, don’t you?”
She planted the hand that wasn’t holding her staff on her hip, feigning indignation. “I’m a time witch! Of course I appreciate history. I’m looking forward to seeing the place.”
“I’m just saying, until today you’ve been all business. I’m not used to the idea of you having fun.” Between this and the gambling, that was two whole hobbies he knew she had now.
July was giving him one of her looks again, and he could tell he was in for some very snide commentary, but he was saved. Saved by the voice of someone new. Someone who must have just come up from around the corner.
"Are we talking about fun over here? Nothing more fun than the museum!”
Shameless. Charmingly so. It could only be the curator. Daniel and July looked to the clacking of hard heels on the stone and saw a man of perplexing proportions. He was animal, but a little more than most. A medley of brown and tan fur danced over his body, and all his proportions seemed stretched out, from his neck to his torso. His ears, which sat fairly low on his head, were garnished with a single small golden earring in the right one. He was wearing white slacks and a white dress shirt with a red tie that hung loose, a perfect balance of formal and negligent.
A ferret. Daniel was pretty sure he was a ferret. He could be some other mustelid, but as far as Daniel knew, the fur was ferret colours.
The ferret brushed his tie off his shoulder as he drew within actual polite conversation range. “If my instincts don’t fail me, I’d say you must be Miss July, am I right?” His eyes flicked to Daniel for just a brief second, but he didn’t verbally acknowledge him at all.
“Certainly. And you must be… my client.”
Why the pause? Daniel wondered what was slipping past him this time. What was with that pause? Neither of these strange things meant much on its own, but together they were like a rock in his shoe, making him feel a persistent discomfort. Was he missing something again?
Still not addressing him at all, the ferret swept past and to the door, which he unlocked with finesse usually unheard-of in the world of door-opening. “Step right inside,” he suggested with a wry smile. July went ahead, but Daniel stayed put. If not for that one glance in his direction, he’d think he’d become invisible. Intangible. Things like that probably happened in places like this.
But the ferret curator didn’t follow July inside right away. He paused, then pivoted the little head on his long neck.
“Coming, Daniel?”
“Oh, no. I’m not doing this again!” He marched inside ahead of the ferret in a huff. The indoor area was nicely air conditioned, and very spacious. Empty, actually. Still a work in progress.
“July, did you tell him my name beforehand? Are you doing something weird?”
The witch, hand on her chin, was barely holding back laughter. That was a good sign insofar as it meant he was only being pranked and not cursed. However, he did not much care for being pranked, either.
“I guess you could say I told him your name.”
“What?” It was a prank, then. He was having a cruel trick pulled on him. If he was smart, really on top of things, he could save face by guessing the motivations and nature of the trick. And yet, he couldn’t. It was floating just beyond his grasp. What was it? There was something about the curator. They’d never met, but he was familiar.
“She didn’t really need to tell me your name,” said the ferret as he dragged the door closed behind him. “I already knew it!”
The voice! The ferret’s voice was distantly, vaguely familiar— that’s what had been bothering him. He had never met a ferret in his life. And yet… no, it was much simpler than that. The ferret was once a human.
“Lace?”
“Imagine my surprise when I saw you standing with the witch!”
“…Crap.”
Daniel Wells was not usually a hugger, but he could make an exception for one Lawrence “Lace” Wells, his cousin on his dad’s side. The nickname had predated their association, and Daniel didn’t even know the origin, but from elementary school until shortly after graduation, the two had been close friends. Actually, it was a little more like Daniel had been Lace’s sidekick. Minion, if he was feeling less generous with himself. Fate had eventually separated them, as it tended to do, and Lace had moved away to find work. Daniel had kept up with him for a while after, sending messages every once in a while. At some point, though, he’d stopped.
He was terrible about keeping up correspondence. He was paying for it with humiliation, but he didn’t mind at all. Seeing his old friend and relative would have been nice on any day, but it was especially welcome this far from home.
“Can’t say I ever expected to see you down this way,” Daniel said as they made their way through a series of open rooms. Only a few of them were really filled out with exhibits so far. Daniel caught glimpses of many paintings, some odd carvings, and some informational displays, but didn’t have time to read any of it. All he knew is that it was an art museum dedicated to the city of Starlight specifically, and it wasn’t especially shocking to him that Lawrence would want to create such a space. He’d been a hobbiest painter even back in the day, and a much better student than Daniel.
“I could say the same to you, cousin-of-mine,” Lace bantered back. “Most people from up North only end up here if they’ve undergone some life changes, if you catch my drift.”
“You mean, being an animal.”
“Maybe not! Not everyone is an animal. You might make a good plush toy, like the ones you used to collect.”
“You’ll need to do better than that if you want to embarrass me. We’re not kids anymore.” It had worked extremely well in college, of course, but he was more mature now.
July giggled, the most girlish thing he’d ever seen her do. “Daniel’s like an entirely different person with you around, Curator Wells.”
“Oh, I have stories!”
Ah, that was a little bit scarier: imagining those two having a private conversation about him. He was going to have to avoid that at all costs. “So! You’re a ferret, right? Wouldn’t have picked that for you.”
Lace turned his head a little more than ninety degrees to look back at him. “I’m cute and energetic! What’s not to love?”
“You’ve got the right personality for it,” July observed. Well, she knew the standards better than Daniel did.
The trio reached a set of large, padlocked doors in the back of a particular display room. It had storeroom written all over it (metaphorically), and ‘Storage’ written above it (literally). Lace had to play around with his keys again to get it open.
“When did the two of you decide to embarrass me, anyway?”
“It was my idea, if you want to blame,” July said. “When I found out my new client had the last name Wells, I asked a few questions, that’s all.”
Lace talked while fiddling with his keys. “Small world, right?”
“Are you sure this isn’t some kind of destiny thing?”
“Just a coincidence,” July replied. “Those happen all the time, believe me.”
With a satisfyingly old-sounding creak, the big doors swung open. The Inside was dark, windowless, and a little bit haunted-feeling. Not that it was dusty or poorly-kept, but something about a room full of boxed artifacts carried a certain weight. Art, created for display in the past, and intended for display in the future, had been imprisoned in this darkness, awaiting rebirth.
One in particular stood out— a lumpy shape, a bit bigger than the average person, tucked away in the back and covered by a clean white cloth. It had to be a sculpture, Daniel decided.
“Under this tarp is the piece in question,” started Lace. “I came here looking for a place where I could take up painting without going hungry, and I’m certainly not the first. And yet, this isn’t just an art gallery to me. This is a museum: a record of the city’s history and culture.”
Daniel was happy to hear that his cousin was still creating, but not so much that he’d let him get by without a little gentle mockery. “So, you aren’t just showing your own stuff?”
“Nope; I’m not dead enough to be historical,” he grinned at his own self-effacement. He brought attention back to the tarp. “We found this thing sealed into an old building when the walls shifted, over in the western part of town.”
With a practiced flourish, he swept the tarp aside— it was a white marble sculpture, as predicted. Daniel didn’t know much about this kind of thing, but his uneducated eyes saw it as an impressive work: three dragon-people posed back-to-back-to-back. Big, rough horns and long snouts. They had robes that seemed to have been captured fluttering in the wind. He had no idea how that was done. It had to be really hard, right?
“Is that the brothers?” July asked.
“Right you are, right you are,” Lace said. “You know the story, then.”
“Well, I don’t.” Daniel interjected, to Lace’s delight.
“Care to explain it to your assistant then, Miss July?”
The witch smirked. “A test, is it?”
"An opportunity for you to show off!”
July pretended to scowl at him, but was very obviously pleased. “The city was first found by these three men. Second generation guys. They weren’t even related, but they’d sworn something like an oath of brotherhood, and that’s what they called themselves. They’d even constructed their souls to look like identical dragons of different coloured scales.
“Anyway, they were the first ones to happen on the city, and they tried to convince everyone they’d created it with some advanced magic they’d discovered. Worked for a while. They were sort of the kings or mayors or whatever of the city for a bit. Being vain as hell, they commissioned all kinds of art of themselves and each other. I’ve never actually seen any of it until now, though.”
Lace grinned. “It’s hard to actually find some of this stuff, right? It’s been languishing in storage and hidden chambers all over the city. I think a room full of the stuff would make a statement about their era. Starts a conversation, at least.”
July continued, “Eventually, those started competing with each other more and more, drifting apart. One day, one of them got drunk and stabbed another to death. Their popularity was already falling by then, but that really shattered the mystique. The surviving two were run out of town shortly after, and I don’t know what happened to them from there.”
“That’s very… classical,” Daniel said. He couldn’t think of anything smarter.
The witch just shrugged. “The frontier days were like that sometimes. However! One thing about this statue bothers me.”
“Oh?” Lace spoke with a tone that indicated he knew exactly what she was about to point out.
“The scar,” she pointed at the face of the middle dragon brother, which bore a very prominent scar over his cheek. It definitely made him look important. In fact, it was the only really identifying feature on any of the dragons.
“Ah, Miss July, you’ve honed in on exactly why I hired you. That anachronistic scar!” Lace was practically hopping in place, so concentrated was his energy. He’d always been like that when he was excited. It was comforting to see. There was just one problem, though: Daniel wasn’t following at all.
“Could you guys… catch me up?”
“The dragon who had a scarred face was the oldest brother. He got it when he murdered the youngest brother.”
“He stabbed his brother, but he was the one with the scar?”
She wagged a finger at him for that one. “There was a struggle. The point is, that to have all the brothers together like that, but for one of them to have a scar… it’s interesting. It suggests this thing was made after their peak years, at the very least.”
Daniel couldn’t help making a small grunt of annoyance. He disliked being treated like a buffoon just because he asked a clarifying question. At times like this, he got the ridiculous notion in his head to try and save face, which usually only made the problem worse. His eyes darted to his cousin, who’s eyes did the same back. Try it, the glance seemed to say.
“So… can you be sure that this is the right scar? Or that this was carved when the brothers were even around? All you have is a very old story. It’s not like you were there.” He probably sounded a little too annoyed. To be fair, he was annoyed.
But July didn’t get upset in turn. “Right you are,” she said. Somehow, he felt like he’d lost.
The ferret cleared his throat and continued. “I hired you to restore the art, but I’m hoping you can do a little more. I want to know when this was carved; I want to see if there are any clues hidden in the history of this rock!”
“Oh! But July always says she can’t look at the specific history of an object!”
“Well, I’m not the expert,” Lace responded with a shrug.
Daniel was a little embarrassed at how good it felt to have learned something about magic. He half expected July to mock him again, but she was looking intently at the statue, off in her own world. It was several long seconds before she opened her mouth. “He’s right that I can’t give you specifics,” she said, “But I might be able to work something out. Honestly, I don’t see any particular structural damage on this statue. When you say ‘restoration,’ would you, by chance, be thinking of colour?”
“You make quite a pair,” Lace remarked. “Based on the subject matter and apparent age, I’m guessing that this sculpture was originally dyed. Those dyes didn’t last nearly as long as the stone itself.”
“…But they still existed. This rock’s time remembers that it was dyed. I can turn it back until we see the colour again, and that will tell us when the colour was applied. I might even be able to glean some insight as to how it was carved, but don’t expect any miracles there.”
July often referred to the ‘memory’ of objects and places. Daniel was fairly certain it was a metaphor, but every time he asked, the conversation only became more confusing.
“So you’ll do this for me?”
“I’m willing, but I have a suggestion. There are two problems I can see with this plan.”
Lace hoisted himself up onto one of the big crates. “Alright, go ahead.”
“Firstly, you could just dye the thing yourself and get the same affect. Nobody will believe that you used magic, so they won’t believe in the authenticity of your conclusions. Secondly… I don’t like the idea of removing the ravages of time altogether.”
Daniel’s cousin just made a noise. A little click of the tongue. His fuzzy face betrayed no shock or disappointment, and he didn’t demand clarification, assuming that it was forthcoming. That little noise was something he’d been doing for years. It was a nostalgic sound to Daniel. He probably heard it every time he suggested some place to eat that Lace didn’t care for, or asked for advice on some difficult problem that required a little thought before answering. Hundreds of times.
But the body was different. He’d known metahumans, even back home, but they were always visitors. They’d always just come like that. Never in his entire life had be known a metahuman before they were a metahuman. His world, where magic was a nuisance, and this one, where magic was just a tool. He’d separated them in his mind, even as he moved from one to the other. But that was false; they were the same world. The same planet. This was a thing that people did. Even people he knew.
He imagined his mother. His boss. No physical reality existed that meant they couldn’t modify their souls. Just preference.
July kept talking even as Daniel had his existential crisis.
“It’s not that there’s no value to seeing the thing as it was intended, but history is a process— It’s the things that happened between then and now. If we remove all of that, then you lose something. Destruction is just as important as creation.”
Lace nodded patiently. “I understand. There’s truth to that. But in this case, it should be alright, no? You said yourself that there wasn’t much damage, and there are plenty of other bleached white sculptures to look at.”
“I have another suggestion. If you don’t like it, I’ll do as you ask.”
Lace ran one hand over the soft fur of his neck. “Sure. It’ll have to be something really cool, though.”
“I want to make a sort of lens. Or… glasses. Something you can look through and see the piece as it was originally created without actually changing it in the present. I could even make a show out of it— have it move. Oh, maybe a lenticular sort of thing!”
“Interesting!” Lace’s attempt at being hard to convince hadn’t lasted more than a sentence. He liked this idea. “What would you need? How big could you make this?”
“In theory, just about any kind of clear surface would work. A gap between two objects could do the trick in a pinch, but something permanent and solid would be best.”
“I know just the thing.”
It was on the other end of the ground floor, close to the entrance. Other than a painting or two, this room was almost empty. Running through the center, several meters long, there was a big, pointless divider. It covered about three quarters of the room’s length and reached halfway to the ceiling. Most importantly, a portion of its size was dedicated to a long window that ran the full length minus a buffer on each end.
Lace beamed. “Almost like the city knew what we’d do before we did, huh?”
July stuck up a finger at him. “It’s a coincidence. A good one, though: I can work with this.”
Still, that didn’t dampen his excitement. Lace scurried around, imagining a window that would work on any exhibit in the room. A whole collection of pieces that could be viewed through a window in time. July was willing, but apparently it would take individual work per piece, so it was decided that she’d start with just the one as a proof of concept. She pulled the little bag from her dress pocket and willed it full of soot— she borrowed from the future and would go shopping to pay the debt after everything was done. Charcoal was cheap and effective when it came to rituals, and she relied on it for so much that it was starting to lose its shine in Daniel’s eyes.
“Now then,” said Lace, “I’m going to go fetch our three guests of honor. Cousin, wanna give me a hand?” He looked at Daniel expectantly. Actually having to push the thing around sounded like a real pain, but Daniel was eager to get a moment to talk to the ferret alone. Besides, he was always terrible at saying no to anything.
“Of course.”
Those little shoes Lace wore clacked on the wood floor, echoing down the hallways. July didn’t wear shoes at all. Daniel hadn’t actually paid much attention, but he was pretty sure that most of the furry people he’d seen didn’t. But Lace had always worn loud shoes. Just one little detail connecting that past version of him that lived in Daniel’s head to the current reality.
As soon as the two of them were out of earshot, Lace started digging. “So?”
Daniel understood perfectly well what he meant, but decided to feign ignorance. “So what?”
“So what’s the story? How did you end up down here in the company of a witch?” It wasn’t accusatory or anything. It was curious. An attempt at catching up, or even a chance to ask for help. Daniel didn’t deserve good and attentive friendship from his cousin after neglecting to even keep in contact. And yet, he didn’t have it in him to say that. Instead, he deflected.
“I should be asking you.”
And the ferret just chuckled. “No need to be shy about it. I don’t expect it’s entirely by choice, right?”
“Well…” A bold guess; and absolutely correct. How did he intuit this kind of thing so easily? Or maybe July had told him?
“As for me, I left home as soon as I could and traveled as far as my money would take me. Starlight City is the place to be if you’re literally a starving artist. I started to love this city, you know? I wanted to give something back. When this place grew, I took a look inside and I knew what I wanted to do with it. Plus, nobody else volunteered.” He grinned. “Now, enough stalling from you. Talk!” He literally wagged a finger. It wasn’t possible to go against that.
Daniel sighed and fished the watch out of his jacket. It was the anchor: the thing he could point to and say ‘I had nothing to do with this.’ Except that wasn’t true any more, was it? He’d already admitted that to himself. He’d accepted that… there was room for a better life. Like the one Lace had already found. It had felt like a real commitment at the time, but now, just weeks later, it was a half-remembered dream.
“Do you recognize this watch? The symbol?” That twisted line. The broken mobius strip. He’d almost stopped thinking about it by now. It was something ingrained into his identity: he had to find this thing.
Lace took a close look. Close enough that Daniel could tell he was being genuine, but brief enough that it was clear nothing about it caught his attention. “Nope! Not ringing any bells.”
“Didn’t think so,” he sighed. “This one’s from the future, so I need to find the original.”
Lace nodded thoughtfully. “Why?”
“Well. We, uh, happened to meet each other. Me and July, I mean. She was being sort of a pain because of a thing with her patron. And I thought ‘why me?’ you know? Apparently that counted as a prayer, and the time god answered.”
“With a watch?”
He wasn’t doing a good job of explaining, he knew. “I have to find where it comes from, and I guess that’s supposed to give me answers.”
“Answers about what?”
“Uh.” He didn’t really know. He’d never known. “Maybe that’s the question? Like, why am I here? Doing this? I think it will be one of those things where I learn the lesson on the way and the destination doesn’t matter.”
The laugh started deep, at the base of Lace’s throat. He tried to hold it back, but within a few seconds he had lost that battle. He always laughed and joked for effect, but this was different: this was the genuine Lace, carried away by the absurdity of the conversation.
“I missed you, Cousin. The three of us need to get dinner after this. I’ll show you a good spot.”
That was all he said, and it made Daniel feel worse than ever. He’d missed Lace, too. He had. But, not enough, apparently. He didn’t deserve this. He felt more like a fraud dealing with a person he already knew than he ever did meeting a stranger in the magical lands.
“That’d be great,” he replied instead of telling the truth. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen a familiar face. Or… you know what I mean.”
The conversation died in the minute between there and the store room.
As it turned out, the cart upon which the sculpture rested was enchanted, made magically easy to push around as if it was weightless. In fact, Daniel wasn’t needed at all, though Lace insisted having another person around was common safety protocol. That was probably true, even if it wasn’t the real reason he’d been asked. He let Lace push the cart, and kept a safe distance in front in case it fell over. Those were his instructions, and he was usually good about following instructions.
Only, the sound of the wheels rolling over the floor, unbroken by speech, was too much for him. Every second of silence felt like an accusation.
“You do look good, by the way,” he said.
“Hm?” His cousin was peeking at him just below the armpit of the right-side dragon.
“I was being ridiculous before. The ferret thing suits you.”
“Ah.” Lace nodded. “Thinking of getting your own?”
He paused for a moment. He’d never even considered that was a thing he could do, now. Well, he could have done it before, but it was difficult to find one of those sages back home. Here, though, it was easy. If he’d wanted to, he could with very little difficulty. It would make going back a little bit trickier, but only socially— the laws had changed when he was still very young. What a strange thing to think about.
“Nope. Not my thing.”
“Hehe, it’s reversible, you know? Not just by turning them off; you can remove them entirely.”
“I just never wanted anything like that.”
“Alright!” Lace still gave him a devious look, but didn’t push anything beyond the bounds of comfort. “But it’s good for you to know that in case you get too drunk and wind up with something.”
“…Like how Uncle Wallace got that tattoo, huh?”
“Exactly!”
Daniel wondered if Lace had always wanted those changes, or if it was something he’d only decided on after going South. He didn’t have time to build up his courage and ask; It was around this point where they reached the exhibit room. July was waiting for them, just finishing up the last smears of her strange markings over the glass viewport.
Even once the mess of soot was wiped from the glass, the chanting and waving and symbols had done their job: the pointless decorative window had become a portal into the past— at least in a narrow sense. On first view, the dragon statue on the other side of the room was raw. Unbegun. It was just a big block of marble. As he watched, pieces of the block fell away and vanished, no longer part of the object’s narrative. It was an accelerated view, but to see the whole thing carved still took a good fifteen minutes, and he was surprised to find himself entranced by the entire thing. What was it like, finding the statue that lay inside the block? He didn’t have even one percent of the skill or knowledge needed to do something like that. Even watching the process didn’t hold any answers. Whoever had carved the dragons must have started with something simpler, years and years before. Bit by bit, they’d cultivated the skills needed to create this much grander work. Like the statue itself, skill was carved slowly from the raw material of one’s body and mind.
In other words, if he’d wanted to make something of himself, he should have started sooner, like his cousin.
Once every detail of the dragons had been finished, colour splashed across the marble’s surface. Reds and greens and yellows, Soft belly scales and rigid face scales. It stayed for a time, but gradually faded, the shades distorted as the dyes decayed at different rates.
One thing stood out, even to a sub-amateur like Daniel: the scar. It was never coloured in. Not the shade of the scales or the pink of flesh.
“It’s contemporary with the brothers,” July said. “And before you ask, I can’t tell when that scar was added. The surface only remembers that it was never dyed.”
Lace’s tail drooped. “That’s a little disappointing. It must have been changed years after the fact. There’s nothing mysterious about it after all.” He brushed at his neck, and bits of tan fur blew over the hall like dandelion seeds.
July shook her head. “Probably not.”
Daniel thought they were missing an obvious possibility, which meant it was probably something very stupid and he would be insulted for even bringing it up. Even so, he did. “Couldn’t it have been magic?”
“You can carve with magic, but it’s not really relevant,” July brushed it off.
“No, I mean… there’s lots of old stories like that, right? This guy gets a scar, and his statue just happens to get one at the same time, mysteriously? Like, um… not Dorian Gray… there’s someone else.” He would never remember what old-planet story he was thinking of.
July’s face softened. “You’re starting to learn how to think like a witch, Daniel.”
“Or an artist,” Lace added.
“I’m not either, but everything here is so weird, why not this? Why would someone go and add a scar to a statue a bunch of years later?”
The witch rapped her staff lightly against the glass, producing an unnaturally hollow sound. The image of the statue reset itself in the middle of its cycle. “History can be a mirror,” she said. “We see what we want in it. That’s why I want to leave the end result. The process. All of it. Destruction and decay are just types of creation, and if we ignore the creation we don’t like, then history becomes a prison.”
“…Does that mean I’m right?” Daniel asked hopefully.
“When you don’t know something for sure, then I think it’s important to own that. So… yeah. You were right to bring up another possibility.”
It felt like he’d won every gold medal in the world all at once.
Lace’s expression, however, had grown even more taut and serious. “We don’t know how people feel, either, I guess.”
“Not even while they’re alive.” July agreed. “Anyway, this is all besides the point. I’m being philosophical today is all.”
“No, it’s fine. How long will it take you to do a whole hall of pieces like this?”
July shrugged. “It gets more complex as we add more but I can’t imagine needing more than a few days. I’m in no rush to leave town, anyway.”
The ferret nodded. “That watch Daniel showed me. I’ll help you with that if I can.” He turned to Daniel. “Hey, can I talk to you in private for a moment? I want to show you something.”
There was a deep anxiety that filled up the bottom of Daniel’s gut. “Sure, why not?”
Lace took him to another room, close to the entrance. The only thing on display was information. Plaques full of words and pictures, descriptions of the performance arts of Starlight. The history of forms of dance, types of theatre, and something about martial arts. On the back wall was a stage. Nobody had performed on it yet, but the idea was clear enough: the art in this place required a living person.
“The stage came with the building,” Lace said, creeping up behind Daniel. “That’s what made me sure of what I wanted to do. We’re calling it a museum, but I want it to be more of a community center. I want everyone to understand that this city isn’t just us right now. It’s not even just the city itself. It’s everything. All of us have the past to thank for the present. Miss July was right to keep me focused on that.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know any of the history. Not even much of his own. He didn’t feel like he had a history at all. An uncomfortable silence passed between them for several minutes.
“I was pretty nervous when I found out I’d be seeing you again,” Lace admitted.
Already silent, Daniel was too stunned not to respond. “You? You’re never nervous.”
“Everyone gets nervous, Cousin.”
“Yeah, I know. I know that. Why, though?”
“I was worried you might be upset that I left and stopped writing to you.”
Daniel’s brow furrowed further than it ever had in his life. “Was it you who stopped? I thought it was me.”
Laurence Wells laughed again, but differently. Ungracefully. It lacked the deliberate nature of his normal laugh. “No, it’s was definitely me. I know because it was a very deliberate decision on my part.”
“Huh. Well, I still should have tried to get a hold of you.”
“Do you ever let anybody else take the blame for anything?”
It was a question asked in good humor, and of course Daniel blamed other people all the time. He blamed July for getting him into this mess. He blamed Lace’s family for driving him off in the first place. But July had just been doing her duty, and even Lace’s family was the product of the traditions they’d been born into. So, what was Daniel’s excuse? Why did he let himself lose contact with one of the only people he’d ever trusted without ever trying to do better?
“Daniel?” Lace was looking right at him with his dark, deep eyes. Just a little more animal than July’s, sure, but they had the same soul behind them.
“Sorry. What exactly happened?” He stalled for time to catch his breath with the obvious question— one he genuinely wanted an answer for.
“Well, um. After I got this,” Lace ran a hand through the fur of his opposite arm, indicating the modification in general, “I hid it until I didn’t, and then I wasn’t really welcome at the family functions anymore. I figured nobody would want to hear from me, including you.”
He felt a sense of nausea, and absentmindedly stepped forward to try and, if not feel better, then at least prevent Lace from noticing, which eventually put him up on the stage. Daniel Wells turned back and saw a mostly-empty room, which he could only imagine being filled with people milling about awkwardly. They’d be waiting for him to do something, and he had no skills to show them whatsoever.
He might be having a serious mental breakdown.
And then Lace was up there with him, taking him by the shoulders to steady him. Such soft fur, though. Was that why he’d gotten the changes?
“Daniel, are you working yourself up over this?”
“Yeah.”
“Deep breaths, alright?”
He was good at doing what he was told. Focusing on his own breathing just like Lace had taught him back in school, he eventually managed to get his heart, which he hadn’t noticed was racing, back to a sense of normalcy.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t trust me back then,” he finally said. That was what mattered.
“Idiot,” Lace snapped back. “You’re supposed to be upset with me.”
He blinked twice. “Why? You’re the only person I’m not mad at.”
“I should have trusted you, with how long we’d known each other.”
“I don’t even know if that was true or not. Maybe I would have abandoned you. And even if I hadn’t, you couldn’t read my mind.”
“And you couldn’t read mine. Understand?” Lace stepped off the stage with a little bounce, like he’d proven some grand point. Daniel followed him, even though it didn’t feel like the end of a scene. It was more like he’d forgotten his lines. “I’ve decided that we’re going to be friends again. We’re exchanging numbers.”
He said it as if Daniel would have a problem with that. “I don’t have a phone that works down here.”
“Well, we’ll go get you a magic one. Plenty of artificers in town. You need some universal access, and then the local boards. They’re mostly worse, but they get better reception, so it’s a wash.” He reached out to Daniel, and it was so tempting to take his hand. To let him take care of everything.
“I’m going on my own,” he said before he had a chance to change his mind.
“Sorry?”
“I’ll go pick one up on my own. I have to learn how to do something for myself or I’m never going to… learn whatever lesson the time god has for me.” He wanted to say I’m never going to amount to anything, but he thought that would just cause more argument.
“You take stands on the weirdest stuff. You know that? Remember when you suddenly wouldn’t let us take that shortcut through the woods anymore?”
“I found out about tetanus!” he huffed, “That place was full of old nails!”