The Majik of Spark, Chapter One Excerpt

The Majik of Spark, Chapter One Excerpt


    Innkeeper Jaundice was thinking about her contented life and the many friends she had. She hummed a tune that helped her gain calm and clarity as she went about her work, but her thoughts strayed often to the coming evening and the heart rending changes she was facing. She concentrated on her work and her inn.  She was proud of her establishment. There were many who laughed when she named her inn the Sodden Pit, and pitied her taste in decor that ran to small dark alcoves, darker corners, and hidden levels. The bright people of the Norgen that populated the Shining City would never come to such a place, they told her. They were right. The Sodden Pit never did catch on with the Norgen. She was not after the upper crust Norgen as customers, though. There was an underside to the City that was nearly as vibrant as the glittering metropolis itself, filled with Skelly travelers from Ridgeland and the even more exotic Thumps from distant Savagevista. Norgen who fell short of Norgen high expectations also found solace and company at the Sodden Pit. The Inn was her home and her life, and she feared leaving it.     Not everyone could be rich and beautiful, two conditions that all Norgen aspired to, whether by birth or assistance by majik. The Norgen as a whole acted as if the world of Spark was a Norgen invention, and that everyone and everything else was created for their own use and amusement. At least that was how Jaundice saw things, and she was Norgen herself. Her family had provided for her, sending her off with a modest stake and high expectations for their bright, industrious daughter. They were less pleased at her decision to buy the inn, but like most Norgen parents they followed tradition. Jaundice had reached adulthood and, therefore, was on her own. As for her skeptical friends, Jaundice simply smiled and kept working on her dream. Jaundice still gets the occasional groups who thought it fun to go slumming at her establishment. Admittedly, Jaundice corrected herself mentally, as she scrubbed a stubborn stain splashed across the wall of a corner table, she did not have a lot of experience with the world outside the lands of the Norgen. She loved listening to the stories of her customers, though.
    The Shining City encompassed both the city and much of the land around it. The great City itself had been carved out of the Northern Heights, a cracked landscape of sharp rock and sheer precipices. Interspersed in that unforgiving terrain, life still flourished in bubbling springs and ponds, many of which did not freeze even in the harshest of winters. Spread out to the south was the Glades with it's vast resources of fertile land and forest covering a third of the continent. Outside the direct influence of the Shining City, the land to the south grew more rural. It was a gradual transition from the higher elevations and rockier ground surrounding the bustling Shining City. There was no official boundary line, but the land gently transformed into rolling hills and pleasant valleys dotted with farms, horse land, and tamed forest. Townships small and large dotted the land as well. 
    The Norgen prospered, raised families, built roads, and settled communities. The Council of Fathers provided a light hand of governance. The real power lay with the Order of Shopkeepers, which controlled commerce. There was a City Guard to uphold the law in the Shining City, and each major township in the Glades maintained a local militia. Jaundice grew up with her parents in Split Rail Township not ten miles from the City gates, a slow day's travel north along the People's Road. She longed to see more of the world, but her inn was satisfaction enough.
    Beyond the Glades was the south/southeast border with Ridgeland. Ridgeland was blessed with verdant valleys and strong rivers flowing from a series of mountain ranges which hacked the country into four long chunks. Ridgeland is the home of the Skellys. The Seven Cauldrons of Skellys are an ancient people with ancient majiks. The valley Skellys are more open to trade and more accepting of strangers. Skelly travelers to the Shining City are universally valley skellys. The mountain Skellys largely remain insular, mistrusting of strangers even among their neighboring Skelly cauldrons. Past the eastern border of Ridgeland lay Savagevista, home of the Thumps. Thump warrior caste soldiers and Skelly Sworn often warred back and forth across that border, despite the fact that much of the land on both sides of the border were barely habitable. And of course, made even less habitable by the wars. The Shining City and the Glades, Ridgeland, and Savagevista made up the continent of the Wilderness Shelf. There was a fourth piece, one mostly avoided and rarely mentioned: The Drain. The Drain was an almost landlocked chunk of land bordered by all three countries. The name seemed to be a misnomer, since The Drain occupied the highest elevation of the mountainous shelf system and boasted the tallest, sheerest mountains on the continent. The region earned the name of The Drain because that is where the dregs of life went when there was no where else for them to go. Only one people of note called that place home or wanted any part of it, and they were most often called renegades.
    Despite Jaundice's lack of travel, she felt more worldly than most of the Norgen she knew. Jaundice's clientele did include some of the lower classes of Norgen, those who worked and scraped for a living like Jaundice did. They were a proud lower class, though, and non-Norgen found it difficult - but not impossible - to live here, if not prosper. Many of the visitors to her inn came from the lands of Ridgeland and Savagevista. Some had business here, and chose her inn for it's privacy, simple but ample fare, and the best beer in the City (in Jaundice's opinion). Some came to her inn just to avoid the uppity Norgen. It was a place where deals could be made, too. It was a place most newcomers wound up at eventually, hopefully with enough in their pocket to pay for room and board for whatever period was needed. For those others who came - those whose money had run out, or had become entangled in something worse than empty pockets, Jaundice did what she could for them.
    Jaundice finished her sweeping and cleaning, setting her cleaning supplies and tools into their accustomed corner. She dusted off her frock with her hands, and pushed stray strands of auburn hair back under her cap. Her clothing ran to the reserved, which her clientele seemed to appreciate. She was plain looking and at five foot eight, short for a Norgen, but still had the fair skin, slender build, expressive eyes, button ears, and unconscious grace common to all Norgen. Her one vanity had been her lustrous hair, which had rivaled that of the most beautiful of the Norgen. Two years ago a company of Skelly performers had taken residence in her inn for a few nights. One in particular had been entranced by Jaundice's hair. The Skelly people are thin to the point of starvation, grayish skin stretched tight across bones strong as steel arrow shafts. Skelly hair was also thin and near colorless. The long strands were pliable, however, and skelly hairdos were as many and as unique as the imagination and dyes could make them.
    One of the skelly performers, Phegga,  was also a majik. Most skellys learned at least some majiks, but this one had been trained in the arts. She told Jaundice she could illuminate her tresses beyond even it's current beauty. Jaundice, secretly pleased by the attention of a majik, said no, but the skelly persisted. Day after day the skelly made her offer. Jaundice, wary of free gifts from strangers, but privately drawn to the idea, demanded to know what the skelly majik wanted in return. Phegga’s answer was to ask for a single strand of Jaundice's hair, taken at the root, which the skelly could use for her majik craft to make fine wigs the skelly would sell. The skelly even offered to give Jaundice a percentage of the sales. On the last day of their stay, Jaundice, fearing that this was her last chance, agreed to the deal.
    Jaundice heard the door chime. She glanced toward the entrance and saw Fat Deet coming in to take her work shift. Jaundice gave a pleasant nod at Deet's "Mornin' Maam. " Deet had been Jaundice’s anchor very nearly since the day Jaundice opened the inn. Deet ruled the rest of the inn’s staff and capably handled the day-to-day management. She was a typical Norgen of six feet. Her nickname, “Fat Deet” was a fond endearment of Jaundice’s that the household staff would never use (at least to her face). Deet had twelve children, and seemed to have spent most of her life pregnant. All of Deet’s children, except the two youngest at three and five, worked at the inn. Deet had worn out four husbands, although she claimed that each new one was her last. So far there was no fifth, although jaundice had her suspicions about that.
    Deet saw through Jaundice, though, recognizing the inward look of the flashback that sometimes overtook her. "I've got it," Deet told her, taking command of the counter. "But could you check on the hops? I'm not sure we have enough on hand for the brewing I've got planned." Jaundice gave Deet a  nod of thanks and fled behind the counter. She turned and slipped through the door concealed behind a false wall.
    Jaundice took a few deep breaths, trying to calm herself. She stepped further into her small apartment and on toward the back, passing through the one room living room-dining room-kitchen and into her tidy little bedroom. In the even smaller washroom tucked into the bedroom, Jaundice stood in front of a brilliantly shined mirror over her sink. There was not a speck of dust on the mirror, which shone with an inner light despite the dim interior. Even so, Jaundice took a soft cloth and brushed the mirror clean of imaginary imperfections. Jaundice reached up and slowly removed her cap. The cap was evenly round and fit perfectly on her scalp, leaving her ears free and exposed. She held the cap at her breast, clenched in both hands. The fine auburn hair peeking out from under her cap- that customer's saw-  was all that was left of her true silken threads. Her pride and vanity was gone. The few auburn strands were just that - mere strands. The rest of her hair was a horror. No head of hair could have looked more tortured. Blackened ends, corked and spiked, twisted into painful knots,  as colorful as dark vomit, it gleamed wetly and ... twitched. Even worse was the low, ugly sounds that each slobbery twitch caused.
    Deet knew that someone had done something horrible to Jaundice's tresses. She knew the loss of Jaundice's beloved hair had left a trauma she still suffered from. Not even Deet, though, had ever seen Jaundice without her cap since. And no one would, Jaundice promised herself fiercely. She placed the cap carefully back on her head, and whispered the simple majik that kept it there. After the skelly majik had stolen her hair - for that is what had been done to her - Deet had gotten her to a reputable majik in the City. The local majik knew without needing to see what had been done to Jaundice, and sadly, told her there was no majik she knew that could undo what had been done. All the local majik could do was help her hide her shame. Jaundice's mirror was also a thing of majik. Before the skelly majik encounter, Jaundice had spent a half-year's profit to get it, to better appreciate her natural gift. She refused to remove the mirror, leaving it in place as a permanent reminder of her stupidity and folly. Jaundice, her cap firmly in place, patted her cheeks to add some life to her pallid appearance. She slipped past the counter and left to make her rounds.