Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Brother Mac, You Are Healed!

  I’ll pay you a hundred bucks if you can raise this computer from the dead . . .

  St. Ailbe’s Hall

  There was a Siberian husky in the last pew of Father Andrew’s church, standing on her hind legs, holding a hymnal, and singing.

  Gift of the Winter King

  The Winter King came to bring order.

  Magefire

  The first thing I noticed about Mira was the candle she was holding.

  Masks

  On Mascherata, I could be who I was, without fear.

  Kin

  Mages don’t have babies; you’re a mage. You’ll get used to the idea soon enough.

  The Price

  I am a murderer, but I don’t remember who I murdered, or why.

  In the Witch’s Garden

  There are no other Gerdas here. We don’t need numbers.

  Darknight

  Don’t scream; if you do, they’ll all scream.

  The Manual

  Jesus: A dynamic speaker, someone who might have been to Franklin-Covey training.

  Kitchen Magic, With Recipes

  Light candles, call the quarters, and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

  BROTHER MAC, YOU ARE HEALED!

  WHEN I WAS a freshman in college, all the geeks gathered weekly in a dorm lounge to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation as it aired. The dorm didn’t have cable, so the TV reception was always dodgy. One night I hopped up to fiddle with the antenna, for some reason the second I touched it the reception completely cleared. Even more impressively, it stayed clear even after I sat down, and was unusually crisp all evening. Of course, this inspired jokes about my ability to Lay On Hands and Heal the TV Reception, and requests for a repeat performance the following week. It didn’t work the second time, but it did give me a fun idea for a story . . .

  ***

  THE IRONY IS, I was always fascinated by faith healers. Whenever I was home sick from school and my mother let me watch TV in bed, I’d flip around channels to find the televangelists slapping people across the forehead and shouting, “you are HEALED.” I loved the idea of miracles, but eventually I realized that I loved the idea of healing even more, and a career in medicine seemed a little more practical. I found a college with minimal distractions and started slogging through the pre-med requirements. Life was pretty boring, until my sophomore year.

  That was when my college opened up the new computer lab, full of shiny Mac Pluses. Within a month, everyone had lost at least one paper to a system crash, except for the diehard luddites who’d continued to use their typewriters—and me.

  So, my friends started claiming I had a “magic aura.” One particularly late night at the computer lab, the Mac my friend Becca was using crashed in the middle of her unsaved paper, and she demanded that I come over and leak some of my aura onto her computer. “Fine, fine, fine,” I said, stomping across the lab. Raising my hands to the fluorescents, I shouted “Brother Mac, you are HEALED,” and slapped it across the top.

  It beeped once, and the system bomb message vanished from the screen. Her paper reassembled itself.

  Becca saved her paper. I stared at the Mac. Computers don’t do that. We’d all figured that out by then.

  The story spread fast, although no one—not even me, by the next day—actually believed the story the way Becca told it. After that, all of my friends would bug me to faith heal their computers when they crashed, although I always refused. Well, until that December, when one of my other friends called me in tears. Her senior thesis was gone. It was on a disk, and the computer was refusing to read it. The lab assistants had tried the disk-rescue programs, and I was her only hope, would I please try to fix her disk, she’d even bring it down the hill to my dorm, please. She agreed, when I insisted, that I’d probably just had one stroke of ridiculous luck but it couldn’t hurt and this was her thesis, please.

  What could I do? I told her I’d meet her outside the computer lab, since if my roommate saw me trying to faith heal a Mac disk, I’d never hear the end of it.

  She met me at the door, shivering in the slush. “Fork it over,” I said, and she blushed and handed me the disk.

  I figured I’d better work myself up to the act. “Do you believe?” I asked her. “Do you believe in the power of God to heal this disk?”

  She cringed, “yeah, I think so,” and I sighed, wishing I’d refused to try this ridiculous task. I closed my eyes. “In the name of THOR, I command this disk to be HEALED.” I handed it back to her.

  “Thanks,” she said, still cringing, and ducked back into the lab. Out of curiosity, I peered in through the window. I couldn’t see her computer screen, but I could see her eyes widen with delight and relief, and I could see her glance upwards and mouth “thank you.”

  After that, it would’ve taken more than a miracle from God—or Odin—to shake my reputation. My friends quickly went from irritating to awful—not only crashed computers and sick disks but Walkmans, desk lamps on the blink, a broken-down car; I even got asked once to heal poor television reception. I refused, and refused, and refused, but every now and then, my pity, or my curiosity, or something would get the better of me. I healed the TV reception, although it went flaky again the next day; the car didn’t work, and I concluded it was with electronics, not mechanics, that my talents worked.

  My friends were bad enough, but when strangers started in on me, that was nearly too much. I knew my reputation had hit ridiculous proportions on the day midway through registration when Roger the System Administrator—a huge bearded guy known for wearing Bermuda shorts in January, whom I recognized only because he’s so difficult to miss—stalked into the Chemistry lab.

  “You’re Jessie, right? The computer healer?”

  “No. I have to work on a lab.” I tried to turn away, but he grabbed the back of my chair.

  “Hold on. The mainframe’s crashed, and we’re at the absolutely most hectic part of registration. I know what’s wrong, and it’s going to take at least three days to get the DEC guy in to service it. Now, I don’t believe in faith healers, but I’m willing to give you a shot.”

  “Well, thank you very much . . . ”

  “And I’ll pay you a hundred bucks if you can fix it.”

  I paused.

  “And I’ll take you out for pizza even if it doesn’t work.”

  ***

  I FOLLOWED ROGER through a locked door and into a room with six oversized computers. “This one has the malfunctioning component,” he said, pointing.

  “Do you have a preferred deity?” I asked.

  “I’m an atheist, actually,” Roger said. “But I’ve always been fond of Ganesh, the Hindu God with the elephant head. He’s the ‘Remover of Obstacles,’ which is useful in this line of work.”

  I took a deep breath, cracked my knuckles for inspiration, laid my hands on the computer and closed my eyes. “By the power of Ganesh, be HEALED”—I raised my voice up to a shout, then opened my eyes and put my hands in my pockets.

  “That’s it?” Roger asked.

  “Well, I could’ve given a longer spiel, but it’s never mattered before.”

  Roger went over to a computer screen and keyboard marked “Operator Terminal” and hit a few keys. “Wow!” he said with frank surprise. “It worked.”

  “I’d still get the repairman in, if I were you,” I said, thinking of the TV reception.

  “Oh, I will.” He pulled out his wallet and counted out five rumpled twenty-dollar bills. “Would you like to go for pizza?”

  “Who’s buying?” I asked.

  “You’re the one with the mon
ey,” he said.

  ***

  ROGER WANTED THE Computer Center to give me a permanent job. I kept telling him that I didn’t know the first thing about a computer’s innards, and for God’s sake what would the profs think when I did my faith-healer routine in their offices? He insisted that they’d get over their horror once they discovered that their computers had been fixed promptly, for once. The Assistant Dean of Computing Services vehemently vetoed the idea, so Roger kept me on as an independent contractor, paying me in cash and billing the college for “expenses.”

  “You’re never going to be able to be a doctor,” he warned me when I went off for my summer internship. “Wait—don’t get offended, I’m not saying that because I think you wouldn’t make a fantastic doctor. You should get to be a doctor. But you won’t be able to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when people find out that you can fix their computers, they’ll never leave you alone. Fixing bodies—any schmoe with a prescription pad can do that. But fixing computers? That defy the guys with digital watches and screwdrivers? Instantly? That’s something special.”

  ***

  THUS WARNED, I kept my secret carefully during the first part of the summer. I had landed a job as an assistant in the Pathology department of Mercy Hospital in my home town, and no one from my college had any connection there. I spent most of my time sorting labels and avoiding electronic devices as much as possible.

  It worked for a while. “Jessie, do you have any idea what’s wrong with this thing?” The computer terminal was on the blink, as usual.

  “No idea, Cathy, I don’t do computers.”

  It would’ve worked if it hadn’t been for the manual. We had one of those 400-page stacks of verbiage, the kind where half the pages aren’t numbered and you know it was written by trained chimps wearing nerd glasses. We had called Tech Support and they’d get to us soon—in the next week or so—and in the meantime, we might check section 23-4a.56 of the manual, as that had exactly the information we needed.

  Maybe if we’d been trained chimps wearing nerd glasses. Cathy decided that she’d read the instructions out loud, and I’d type them in. We’d been at it for forty-five minutes, and had made no progress whatsoever when I closed my eyes, fingers on the keyboard, and whispered for Chrissakes just work, you stupid thing. It beeped once, and abruptly started cooperating.

  Just once, I might’ve gotten away with it. But I think Cathy started to suspect. She started always making me try to fix the terminal when it broke. Sooner or later, I’d get so frustrated I’d just fix it the easy way. After a while, I’d barely wait five minutes. Then I’d just hit a key, and look, Cathy, you had the screen held, see?

  So then Cathy started telling her friends over in Ear, Nose and Throat that I was a miracle worker with computers. At least she didn’t call me a faith healer, but she did tell them I could fix anything in five minutes, and the next week, I was summoned up to Ear, Nose, and Throat to fix their computer. And of course Jill in Ear, Nose and Throat told Lucy in Cardiology . . . and Lucy told Marge in Psychiatry . . . and it was sometime after that that Marge slipped and yelled at the Tech Support people, demanding to know why it took THEM a month to fix problems, when the summer intern down in Pathology could fix anything in five minutes?

  Sally in Tech Support couldn’t understand why I was so averse to moving into their group, given that it would still be an internship at the hospital, I was only a bottle-washer anyway, and besides, they’d raise my hourly pay. I kept shaking my head, but my insistence that I didn’t know the first thing about computers didn’t convince her much after the glowing report of me she’d heard from Marge, once Marge got done yelling at her.

  I finally lowered my voice and leveled with her. “Sally, I don’t fix computers, I faith heal them. Really—I tell them to be healed, and they start working again.”

  “You make it sound like you think this is a bad thing.” Sally put a sisterly hand on my shoulder. “We fix Mac SE’s by dropping them off the desk. I once fixed a computer by hitting it with a rubber chicken. If it works, it works; you’re starting with us on Monday.”

  ***

  ROGER WASN’T SURPRISED to hear that he’d been right. He took me out for pizza to tell me I had a job if I wanted it—the Dean of the College had heard the story of how the computer got fixed during registration, and was very unimpressed with the Assistant Dean’s close-minded attitude.

  “No, Roger, hell no,” I said. “As of today, I have mysteriously lost my miraculous powers. I am breaking my magic staff, drowning my magic book, dousing my magic aura, and decapitating anyone who tries to talk me into faith-healing anything. I even bought myself a typewriter. No more computers.”

  “Okay,” Roger nodded. “Okay, Jessie, you got it. I’ll do my best to keep people off your back, and I hope you stick to your guns.” He grinned. “You may just about need guns to keep people off your doorstep.”

  ***

  NO ONE ASKS plumbers for free medical advice; if people believed that I couldn’t help them, they would leave me alone. That meant that I couldn’t help anyone. So I gritted my teeth, ignored the sob stories, and held firm. By the end of October, it was starting to work.

  It was in early November that Roger came to my dorm room. I was surprised; I had barely seen him since lunch last fall. “Come with me,” he said.

  He drove me over to his apartment. I had never been there before, but he did seem like someone who’d have a cat. And that, as it turned out, was why he had brought me here.

  A large grey cat lay curled up in a tangle of fur and blanket. She was curled in a strange position, and her breathing was shallow. “The vet said there was nothing to do but put her down. But I wanted to try you first.”

  “Roger—”

  “Just try! Please. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

  I sat down and touched the cat. She tried to stir and I could feel a faint, faint rumble against my hand—she was purring. I took a deep breath and put both hands on the cat. I closed my eyes and tried to believe.

  “Please, God,” I whispered. “Heal this cat.”

  I felt a surge of power. I had never felt anything like it before; when I healed computers, I felt nothing, I only knew that they were healed because I could see them start working again.

  As the power ebbed, I felt the rumbling under my hand grow stronger. I opened my eyes to find the cat licking my hand.

  Roger crouched down to pick up his cat. He held her close for a long time, while she rubbed her head against his beard. His voice caught when he said, “Thank you.”

  He drove me back to the dorm. As I turned to get out of the car, he stopped me briefly. “Not a word. I promise.”

  “It’s okay, Roger.” I thought of the cat’s purr and the warm, living body under my hand. “I think this is a gift I can live with.”

  ST. AILBE’S HALL

  I JOINED THE Wyrdsmiths writing group in 1998. One of the first stories I handed out was called “St. Ailbe’s Day,” about a genetically modified, fully sentient dog who wanted to convert to Catholicism. I’d been coming to the group for a month or two by then, but we were less chatty in those days, so I didn’t feel like I really knew anyone (and honestly, I still felt like a very tentative not-really-real member). After “St. Ailbe’s Day” was critiqued, Lyda Morehouse e-mailed me to talk about the story some more. I e-mailed her back. She e-mailed me again. We went on to exchange daily e-mail messages for four years.

  “St. Ailbe’s Day” never sold, though it garnered a bunch of “we almost accepted this, but . . . ” rejections. A few years later, I picked it up, looked at it again, though, “well, of course it didn’t sell, “ and started over.

  Father Andrew has a close friend he e-mails with daily. This was a deliberate homage to my friendship with Lyda, but I can’t remember now whether I put it in this story because it was with the story of Jasper the sentient Siberian husky that Lyda’s and my friendship really started.

  **
*

  THERE WAS A Siberian husky in the last pew of St. Mary’s. It was standing on its hind legs, holding a hymnal and singing, so Father Andrew knew that it must be an enhanced dog—but in church, for heaven’s sake. There were parishioners who owned enhanced dogs, but today was not the Blessing of the Animals, so what was it doing here? Father Andrew realized abruptly that the hymn had ended several seconds ago, and he’d been staring at the dog. He hastily opened the missal and started the opening prayer.

  During the first reading, he looked at the back pew again. After a few minutes of covert study, he recognized the young woman beside the dog—Lisa Erickson. Lisa had been confirmed during Father Andrew’s first year at St. Mary’s; she’d left Willmar for college six years earlier. Her parents had complained to Father Andrew that Lisa had drifted away from the church while at college. Now she was back, apparently. With a dog?

  The rest of the church noticed the dog during the Sign of Peace; Father Andrew stifled a smile as he watched people saying “Peace be with you” while craning their necks to stare. It took longer than usual for everyone to sit back down.

  After the Mass, Father Andrew stood just inside the shade of the door to greet his parishioners. Lisa came out with the dog. “Remember me, Father?” she asked. She had a button saying “AWARE” pinned to her sundress.

  “I sure do, Lisa,” he said.

  “This is Jasper,” Lisa said, and prodded the dog towards him. “She’d like to meet you.”

  Father Andrew was uncomfortable with the idea of enhanced animals—the Pope had condemned the manipulation of God’s creation, and the results of the manipulation made Andrew nervous. Still, he forced himself to make eye contact with the dog, wondering what exactly Lisa expected from him. Jasper’s eyes looked neither like the eyes of Caramel, Andrew’s emphatically unenhanced pet mutt, nor like human eyes. She ducked her head slightly; behind her, he could see that her tail was waving, very gently, like a fan.