“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” said the woman, smiling broadly.  Herford looked up at the bright sun — unusual for gloomy Geneva, even in early March — and grunted.  He decided to get right to the point.  “What’s this nonsense about resigning?”

The woman sighed.  “All business, eh, Dr. Herford?  Or should it be Sir Burt now?  Congratulations on the knighthood.”

Herford softened his expression.  “That’s not until the Queen’s New Year’s orders, Dr. Lowenstein.  And don’t try to change the subject.  Why am I losing my most talented theoretical particle physicist?”

The woman took a sip of her coffee.  “Because I decided that I wanted to do something else with the time I had left.  But that’s not why I asked you to meet me here.”

Herford was puzzled.  “Time left?  Cassie, is something wrong — ”

“I’m not ill, if that’s what you mean Burt.”  Cassie leaned forward and took his hand into hers.  “I’m worried about watching you kill yourself in this project, Burt.  Ever since you were my adviser at MIT you’ve been like a father to me, and this thing is sapping the life right out of you.”

“Oh, nonsense, Cassie.”  Herford tried to laugh off the young woman’s concerns.  “I’m the director of the largest public science project ever.  Of course it’s a little tiring.”

“Have you told the Board about the cracked accelerator cooler yet?”

“What?”  His eyes narrowed.  “How did you know about that?”

“I didn’t, for sure, until you just told me.”  Cassie leaned back and took another sip of her coffee.

Herford’s eyes narrowed, but the corner of his mouth curled up at his former student’s wiliness.  “So we’ve had some bad luck…”

“The bird last November?  With the baguette?”

Herford scowled some more.  “Yes, yes — the ribbing we took from that Parisian paper.  A bird drops a bit of bread in a capacitor — ”

“Which breaks down the coolant unit and raises the temperature above superconducting level.  Which shuts down a four billion pound project.  Odd, huh?”  Cassie’s smile dazzled in the sunlight.

“Oh my god,” Herford said suddenly.  “You’ve started listening to that maniac Ninomiya!”

“Dr. Masao Ninomiya is a Fellow at the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Burt.  Hardly a maniac,” Cassie responded quietly.

“His theory is crackpottery.  Ripples from the future are shutting down the LHC?  Time Travel?”

“The math in his paper with Nielsen holds up, Burt.”

“Let me get this straight.  You believe that sometime in the future, we succeed and find the Higgs boson.  Because the universe, or God, or my Aunt Patty doesn’t want us to find the ‘God Particle’, that event reaches backwards in time and disables the machine today.”  He snorted.  “Grandfather Paradox, my hindquarters.”

“Don’t,” Cassie simply said.

“What?”

“Don’t,” she repeated.

“Don’t make fun of nutty mathematicians who have gone off the deep end?  Theoreticists!  Bah!”

Cassie shook her head.  “You misunderstand me.”  She leaned forward again, eyes burning.  “I’ve been reading a lot of Ninomiya’s work lately, and I’ve found valuable algorithmic tools in it.”

Hereford frowned.  Cassie’s mathematical ability was unparalleled at CERN — or perhaps the world.  But this –

“Maybe future-me knows I’m susceptible to persuasion because of this.  Maybe that’s why I was picked.”

“Picked?”  Herford’s mouth went dry.  “Picked for what?”

“I went home last night from the lab,” Cassie said, her gaze far away, “got home and found my home computer shut down.”

“….so?”

“I had it running a Feynman diagram analysis that morning when I left.  Something had crashed it.  I turned it back on, and it booted fine.  Even gave me my desktop image back.  But…”  She hesitated.

“But?”

“My hard drive had been wiped.  All 120 gigabytes gone.”

“The drive was blank?”

“Not blank, no.  There was a message on there.”

“A message?  What was it?  Who was it from?”

Cassie stood suddenly, leaning forward.  She kissed Herford gently on the cheek, and put on her sunglasses.  “I can see in your eyes I’ll never convince you, Burt.  Listen, I have to go.  Please stay in touch.”

“Cassie, wait!  What was the message?”

“Don’t,” she said.  “Just… don’t.  One word, four letters written over and over again billions of times on my hard-drive in ODF format.  Doors and windows locked, security system engaged, computer disconnected from the internet and someone reached back in time, wiped the hard drive and replaced it with one word:  Don’t.”

Cassie smiled again and strode away with the crowd.

Herford looked around at the sidewalk as if it would open up to swallow him, then took another drink of his tea.

She stops for a moment to get her bearings.  She doesn’t want to be too conspicuous.  She could probably circle the fair a dozen times without attracting undue attention, but prefers not to risk it.  It would be disastrous if one of the handlers from the Winged Predators show were to notice her.  She’ll only have one chance at this, one chance to get it right.

She intends to get it right.

She saw Robert approaching the fair entrance an hour earlier — Robert, so tall and lean and breathtaking in his jeans and button-down shirt.  As he paused at the ticket booth, a gust of wind tugged at his dark hair and she felt a pain so crushing that for a moment all she could think about was locking herself away from it by carving hieroglyphics into the pale skin of her thighs.  (Focus! she scolds her weaker self.)  With the wind in his hair, he had leaned down and said something to the small woman by his side.  The other woman laughed and touched his chest.

There might have been some doubt about her plan until then.  She could have changed her mind at any time up until that moment.  Now, nothing could dissuade her.

It was the scars, Robert told her when he ended it between them.  She pointed out that falconry was not without risks.  Not those scars, he’d responded.  It wasn’t the thin lines on her forearms or the one on her shoulder.  It was the scars on her thighs, those silvery Rorschach patterns by which he judged and pronounced her damaged.

She suddenly spies Robert by a refreshment stand, a head taller than the crowd around him.  His date is still glued to his side, naturally.  Sluts do that.  They find men who don’t belong to them and coax them away with their flawless thighs and untested hearts, and then they lean on those stolen men in public like the small brunette was doing to Robert at that very moment.

Stepping partially behind a vendor tent that seems to breathe, she unhoods the Harris hawk on her wrist.  The bird blinks rapidly a number of times before settling its expectant gaze on the woman.

She pulls the hawk to her chest and strokes its mahogany pinions.   The large bird is the same color as Robert’s eyes, fiercely dark and shot with amber.   She turns so the hawk is looking in her lover’s direction.  The hawk knows him.  The hawk witnessed the woman’s love for him, was there to hear the sounds of ecstasy they made together and was there to hear the woman’s sobs after he left her forever.

Lowering her lips to the bird’s auditory meatus, she sighs an endearment.  For a moment there is nothing else, just the communion between them before she unclips the tether.  She holds out her arm and turns to walk away as soon as the bird’s mercilessly powerful legs launch from her glove.

The screams begin almost immediately.  Random cries of bystanders, the shrill screech of what can only be Robert’s slut and Robert’s own screams.  Above it all she hears the beating of the hawk’s wings, the hushed shwap, shwap, shwap of a four-foot wingspan.  She lowers her head to hide her smile as she walks casually against the throng of fair-goers who rush to the scene of confusion.

Sirens fill the air by the time the woman reaches the parking lot.  She leans against the side of her car, feeling the sun-heated metal burn the back of her thighs.  Her smile doesn’t falter.  She understands real pain and by now so do Robert and his woman.

The emergency vehicles come to a stop outside the fair entrance, vomiting personnel and equipment while the wheels are still rolling.  Before the gurney is able to force a path into the wailing crowd, she sees the hawk rise overhead.  It wings away from her, toward a line of trees surrounding the grounds. It disappears for a moment, then reappears, banking left on unseen currents and unerringly finding its way.

The hawk is waiting in the branches of the acacia outside her window.  She pulls her car into the garage and lets herself into the house.  The bird, its talons sticky and hung with grotesque ribbons (Trophies, she thinks happily.), flutters into the living room as soon as she opens the French doors.

The hawk drops an orb into her palm, a small, reddened orb with a faintly pink banner dangling from it.  The woman turns it over and smiles.

The iris is the color of a Harris hawk pinion, fiercely dark and shot with amber.

Jack was sitting at the piano, his fingers dancing over the keys, playing the most beautiful melody Sara had ever heard. Her heart soared and for a moment she pretended that Jack loved her back and he was playing for her.

There was a crescendo and a series of arpeggios that gave the song a story. A hero was mounting his horse, riding off into battle. The song sped up; the hero was fighting off his opponents. A thunderous pound on the keys; had the hero won? The song slowed and became melodic once again. The cheery notes let Sara know that the hero of the song was the victor.

Suddenly the song took a romantic tone. Sara recognized it as being inexplicably romantic. She envisioned the hero being reunited with his love, who he had fought valiantly for. And just like that, the song became passionate.

The song painted such a beautiful picture that Sara’s eyes filled with tears. Caught up in her fantasy, she did not notice that Jack had stopped playing and walked over to her.

“Sara?” Jack’s deep baritone shook her from her reverie. “Why are you crying??”

His hand reached out to touch her face, and his deep green eyes were filled with warm emotion. Sara opened her mouth, utterly determined to murmur those three words.

A shout of Jack’s name interrupted their moment. Jack smiled and shrugged. “Your father needs me.”

Sara nodded dumbly and watched him go. She made her way over to the piano and grazed her fingertips over the keys. She liked to believe they were still warm from Jack’s touch.

Glancing at the sheet music, she saw that it was handwritten; Jack must have composed it himself.

Curious, she turned to the title page. Letting out a half-laugh, half-sob, she ran her fingers over his untidy scrawl.

Sara’s Song.

I pointed out that I barely knew Uncle Eric. “Don’t worry about that,” said my mother. “It’s already written. You simply have to read the thing.”

I protested but even Mum and Dad didn’t help — they didn’t want to read it either. I’d have argued more if I’d known the reason why everyone was so reluctant.

You see, my Uncle Eric used to be a ventriloquist. Which meant it wasn’t going to be me reading the eulogy, not quite. Instead, I would be operating the person who’d known him best, his stage partner of forty years, Mr. Featherdrop, a tatty puppet of a dog wearing a bowler hat. My father passed me the puppet and the notes, written by Uncle Eric before he died. “You should go to the church and practise,” said my mother.

The building was empty when I arrived, and small enough that I wasn’t too intimidated. I walked to the lectern passing the front row, which was all reserved: little cards reading ‘Mr. Smith and guest’, ‘Mr. Arrowright and guest’, a line of men and their companions.

Ventriloquism takes years to master. I didn’t want to dishonour Uncle Eric’s memory by ‘gottle-of-geer’ing my way through the service. No, I would let my lips move. As long as I kept Mr. Featherdrop’s lips moving too, people would understand. Nobody could expect him to be at his best under the circumstances.

I was in the middle of my second read-through when a man entered with a giraffe on his arm. He walked over to clap me on the shoulder, introducing himself as Mr. Arrowright. He said he was pleased they’d found a speaker. “We’ll set up a glass of water for you,” he said. “It’s a trick glass,” said the giraffe. I didn’t bother explaining I had no intention of trying to be something I wasn’t.

I will never forget Uncle Eric’s service. I’m a nervous reader at the best of times, but the horror of that day is unsurpassed. I sat to one side waiting for things to get going, greeting relatives, most of whom smirked when they spoke to me. Among the faces I knew and those I’d seen at the pub were others I didn’t recognise, including a series of men with a guest each, tattered old puppets on their right arms.

The wait for my big moment was too short, as I knew it would be. Standing at the lectern, Mr. Featherdrop on my right arm, I was terrified. I kept looking at the front row with the line of old men, their puppets staring back with little beady eyes. The puppet’s expressions reminded me of an ex-girlfriend who, after two months of what I considered passionate sex, described me as ‘adequate’ in bed. I read the piece, pausing in all the right places for Mr. Featherdrop to lap up laughter. Featherdrop seemed to take on his own personality, enjoying performing, and I found by the end I wasn’t nervous. It was more comfortable than I had expected.

Afterwards I didn’t linger in church but went to the graveyard for a cigarette, which was where Mr. Arrowright found me — fag in one hand, puppet on the other.

“You did well,” said the man. But it was the giraffe’s mouth that moved.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Shut up,” said the man, this time moving his own lips. “Sebastian was talking to Mr. Featherdrop, not to you.”

I crushed the cigarette under my heel, even though it was only half smoked, and excused myself. I’d had enough of old men with puppets, and told everyone I had to get home and couldn’t attend the wake.

I tried to return the puppet to Uncle Chas, but everyone insisted I keep him, promising to send Mr. Featherdrop’s possessions once the will was settled. I carried the puppet in a bag, telling myself not to be stupid when this gave me a twinge of guilt.

I unpacked Mr Featherdrop onto the bed when I got home and he lay there, flaccid and empty. I considered putting him on, but didn’t, housing him on top of the wardrobe instead. Sometimes, at night, even when it was dead dark, I could feel him looking at me, and my arm would itch. I don’t know why I left him alone. What could be wrong about trying on my uncle’s puppet?

The first night a new girlfriend stayed over, she saw Mr. Featherdrop watching from the wardrobe. She blushed: “Can you, um, ‘perform’ with him?” she asked. And I knew I was doomed.

Podcast EDF033: OLD SPARKY written by Nick Allen read by Bob Eccles

Nick Allen is a 47-year-old mental health nurse from Manchester, England. He has been writing short stories for around 2 years.

Robert C. Eccles is a radio news reporter and anchor who enjoys writing short stories, mainly horror and sci-fi.  He has also narrated podcasts for Pseudopd, Transmissions from Beyond and PodCastle.

I always saw myself as a man who had a Warhol. I would often tell Michael that I am a man with a Warhol and Michael would roll his eyes and say, “I have lived here for nigh on four years and I have never seen a Warhol, dear.” So I would correct myself and tell him I am a man with a Warhol in absentia.  But now, I could be the man I always saw myself as.

A dealer let me know one of his collectors was moving and willing to let his Warhol Fright Wig go. Yes, the fright wigs. Later works, I know. I am also aware that many of them were actually screen printed by assistants and not by Warhol. And I know that the image of Warhol in that ridiculous bedhead wig is not attractive to say the least. But it is a Warhol.

Compared to all the work I gave up to get it, it was quite small, two by two feet. The piece had a weak green tint and the frame looked horrible. I told Michael not to judge until it was properly presented. I said, “How can you judge a handsome young man if he was dressed in flannel or corduroy?”

Michael said, “Take it out of the frame then. Everyone looks better naked.” I spent a second fortune to get a good frame. But it still didn’t work on any of the walls. It was swallowed in the living room. The dining room was just not hospitable. The kitchen? Please. Even I was disturbed when Warhol was hung in the bedroom. With his leering blankness and that exclamation mark of hair, no one could sleep.

Michael came to the wrong conclusion. “Hang it in the closet,” he said, “Show it to dinner guests and then cover it with their coats.” As if art is but a conversation piece or a prop.

I told him, “Michael, it isn’t the art that’s the problem. It’s the house. We need to get another house.”

All Michael said was that he wished I hadn’t sold the Pearlstein nude that used to be in the bedroom. He said, “I thought that was beautiful.”  This was his way of telling me that he would not participate in the house hunting.

I engaged a real estate agent. I’d bring the Warhol with me. I tried it on all the available spaces. None worked. I widened my search.

I stay in hotel rooms. I look at houses during the day. I even try the Warhol on the hotel room walls. I remove all the hideous seaside watercolors and try my prize.

I feel like the assistant to the Prince carrying the glass slipper searching for any foot that fits. I know when I find the right wall in the right room, I will be home.

I haven’t talked to Michael in weeks. I wonder if he’s still at the house. I can see him there, slouched in his robe, sitting on the sofa. Sipping coffee from his mug, reading the Week in Review, looking at ease and perfectly placed.

“These things happen, sir.” That’s what one of the paramedics told me when he arrived that night. The words came in a tired sigh. His partners didn’t speak. They slid Millie’s gurney into the ambulance and climbed in the back with her.

“She died peacefully. You can take comfort in that.”

He told me this as he stared into Millie’s Koi pond, bored, searching for another condolence from the approved list, knowing nothing of peace or conflict or the depths of human depravity. Then he spat into the water, into the sky reflected on its surface, and cleared his throat. The stars there trembled and broke apart, their destruction casual and dull.

“She didn’t feel any pain.” That’s what the medic decided on.

He may have been right. Millie looked at peace when I found her slumped in the garden chair that day, the shears resting on her lap, stems scattered at her feet, petals strewn to the soft breeze. Her wedding ring floundering in a pile of potting soil. It had always been too big for her fingers, but then it was minted for a different stock of woman, of a different time.

Papa had given the ring to Mutti on her nineteenth birthday. Those were happier times for my father, long before the lean years, the harsh years, when raising children and arms for war would fill in the remaining moments of his life. Mutti wore it proudly until the day two soldiers came to tell us how the British Navy had destroyed Papa’s ship near the Falkland Islands. After they left, she put all Papa’s things, all the moments of his life, in little boxes. Then she stopped wearing the ring. I found it some years later when I went down to the cellar to chase out a rat. It was in a cigar box pushed behind a heater in the corner.

I’ve forgotten their faces. I’ve forgotten so many faces. Funny, isn’t it, how our gardens grow? We plant daisies and rosebuds just to find them replaced with bittersweet and forget-me-nots and rue.

Millie’s garden is gone now. I covered the life that flourished there with a shroud of concrete. I entombed the ring inside the old roll-top. Maybe Jakob will find it when I’m gone. I imagine he’ll sell it. I don’t blame him. It wouldn’t fit the fingers of the girls he meets. It was minted for a different stock of woman.

Where has the time gone? I’ve become old. The moments dash away. Visions of my past appear now as jaundiced photographs. The conquest of Poland. A line of thin men frowning in uniforms of umber. A faded snapshot of women shuddering and sobbing, captured through the slats of a boxcar, that develops nightly in the darkroom of my sleep. And somewhere among these faceless mannequins is Millie. Her face buried in her hands. Frozen in time.

I remember the day the war ended. The moment pollutes my mind, flickering like a grainy newsreel. I met Millie at the camp gates. The Americans brought her to me. She looked the same. Still frozen in that pose. Her face in her hands, her body shuddering. As though the moments had never passed.

But these dreams, too, are abandoning me. I find it harder to sleep every night. Sometimes it’s the baby crying next door. A strange sort of noise. Not what you’d expect from a hungry child or a sleepy child or a needy child. But I’ve heard it before. Long ago in Germany, on the platform of a railway station in winter. It’s a stuttered bleating, like the protests of lambs being led to the killing floor.

Sometimes I squander sleep trying to reach Millie, dialing random numbers into the phone, into frequencies I’m sure only the dead can hear. I keep thinking I can connect with her if I just dial the right combination. It’s crazy, I know. I told Jakob about it months ago. He refuses to see me now. My only child. He said I should consider moving into a senior care facility. He meant old folk’s home. It will be easier for the universe to yawn at my dying than for Jakob to deal with my living. I don’t blame him.

There I go crying again. I’ve had too much to drink. I thought it would help. It doesn’t. I still hear the dreadful moments approaching, sloshing toward me through a sea of scotch. Nothing seems to work. I’ve called a thousand numbers, but no one answers. I’ve offered a thousand prayers, but nothing responds. There will be no peace, only memories. No eternities, only moments.

And this, the moment I’ve avoided my whole life, the moment when I must admit that things happen without any reason, that they’re merely what they appear to be, this moment too has passed. And its passing matters not. Not to Millie, not to Jakob, not to friends left behind, not to the men who wage and fight wars, not even to me. It’s very late now, and I’m almost done.

I wince, dripping sweat, as the blade tears deeper into the tattoo on my forearm — into those five numbers, violet-streaked. Each stroke casual and dull. Each cut erasing a moment of pain, loss, disregard.

Below his waist, he wore black leather trousers with shining black winkle-picker boots. Above his shoulders, he wore his hair in asymmetric grandeur with the left back-combed and hair-sprayed into rigid straight edges while the right was dyed red and allowed to cascade over his shoulders like the fresh flowing blood of a sacrificial virgin. His heavily made up eyes were darkened to look like the empty sockets of a skull.

Rarely had any man lacked sartorial imagination so entirely, for this was all he ever wore and all he ever wanted to wear. His name was Alexei and Alexei was cool… for a preacher. He savoured the rush of adrenalin as he marched into the chapel then lifted his arms high above his head as he called out “I feel Jesus!”

“PRAISE THE LORD!” came the fervent response.

“Does anyone else think it’s cold in here?” Alexei asked, shivering bodily as he closed the zip on his jacket, even though the sun was scorching the pavement outside. He raised his eyes to address them with the sincerity of a devoted friend. “It’s the cold, cold wind of intolerance that makes me shiver. But we are all one in His eyes. The tall, the short, the plain… the colourful…”

He winked and indicated himself with a flowing sweep of his hands, then allowed them time to chuckle at his self-mocking before he continued.

“God is bigger than this town. He sees further than the end of the road. They may be strangers to us, but they are somebody’s family. They are God’s children too! Why would He care if they call him by a different name or pray to him in a different language? He is all-knowing, all-seeing, almighty God. Praise him!”

The enthusiastic response from the congregation made it all worthwhile and justified his little white lie about the God thing. Alexei could not describe himself as agnostic because he had no doubts. Neither could he describe himself as atheist; nobody could define the God he was meant to deny in sufficient detail for him to make such a bold statement.

Instead, Alexei was ignostic. He knew that the correct answer to any part of his belief was wholly dependent on his personal interpretation of the terms at the exact moment that the answer was composed. This allowed for the utmost subtlety in theological discussions and enabled him to communicate his message with confidence in each of the seventeen small towns he had visited this year.

That is not to say he had no belief. Alexei believed very strongly in the value of religion and the importance of free speech. His sermon was heartfelt, and he hoped they would hear his message. He hoped also that he was right to trust the aim of the white-robed man who had just entered the chapel, and who was holding a worryingly large handgun that was now pointing at Alexei’s chest. The man’s face was hidden beneath a white-pointed hat.

“Can I help you, my son?” Alexei asked.

“You preach lies and welcome scum. You defile His church.”

Alexei allowed time for his congregation to turn to see the intruder before replying; “I welcome all God’s children and my love for them is an exultation of His church.”

Alexei saw the smoke before he heard the deafening explosion as the man fired. The impact dazed him as it threw him back against the altar. By the time he opened his eyes, a crowd had formed around him and the man, he knew, had fled.

“Our lord has saved me!” Alexei called out. “Praise the miracle, praise Him!”

“HALLELUJAH!”

Alexei didn’t much believe in miracles, which was why his leather jacket was built around a bulletproof vest. Although the bruising from the gunshot made it difficult to continue preaching, the enthusiastic rain of cash into the collection plate at the end made it seem like a fair exchange. They had paid for his, and his assailant’s, accommodation for the next two weeks. In return, they had benefitted from a sermon on tolerance that they were unlikely ever to forget.

“Mister Henry,” the voice on the phone had said, with a peculiar European accent. “Don’t say anything, just listen.  If you want to see your girlfriend alive, you will bring the X-99 plasma prototype to the railway station in three hours. Get off the train and walk to the south entrance. Someone will collect you. Do you understand what I am telling you, Mister Henry?”

“Yes,” he had replied, not thinking of anything but Donna’s safety.  And now a hundred thoughts clouded his judgment.  I should’ve asked questions.  I should’ve tried to talk to Donna.  There were a dozen things I should’ve done, but all I could come up with was, ‘Yes.’ Real Smart, he thought.

In the confines of the mental third degree, Mack failed to notice a man slip up behind him and push the barrel of a gun into the small of his back.

“Keep walking and don’t look back. Don’t try anything funny or I’ll plug you right here,” he said.

They walked a few feet when Mack Henry asked, “That wasn’t you on the phone, was it?”

“To be so stupid, you’re pretty smart, kid, now shut up.”

They turned into a narrow corridor leading to an exit. About halfway down the hall, the gunman pushed the pistol harder into Mack’s backbone and said, “At the next door to the right, I want you to open it and go in.”

Mack Henry swallowed hard and approached the door. He reached out for the knob and gave it a tentative twist. He walked into the storage room, his captor close behind.

Standing in the middle of the room was a man looking like he’d just stepped off the pages of a bad spy novel. He wore a pencil thin mustache and a black leather coat with a black hat to match. Leaned against the shelving along the back wall, Donna Smith puffed on a cigarette, her red lipstick shining on the brown filter. Mack felt the gunman behind him tug on the bag holding the X-99.

Mack clinched the bag tighter and said, “What about me and Donna?”

The little man laughed and looked at Donna.

The woman dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it with the sole of her shoe. She walked over to Mack Henry, pulled his lips to hers and gave him a deep kiss, as she’d done on a hundred times before. When she pulled away, she said in that same peculiar European accent, “My name’s not Donna, dahlink.”

Mack began to tremble inside; like a biological earthquake, rage began to grip him completely. Her eyes never left his as she removed the bag from his shoulder and handed it to the little spy. “It was fun, Mack, but now I will go back to my country a hero and you will go to prison for stealing such a valuable military secret.”

He felt the pinch of a needle slipping into his neck and instantly began to feel the effects of the drug.  “Hurry, Victor,” the woman pleaded as she handed the bag containing their prize to the little man.  “We must go before someone comes in.”

The small spy verified the bag held the secret weapon before grabbing his partner by the arm and saying, “It’s here, Natalya. Let’s go.”

Mack struggled to stay awake.  He fought the drug long enough to hear the distinct click of the detonator as the bag left the protective perimeter of the radio transmitter taped to his leg. He smiled when he heard the explosive roar of two pounds of C4 doing its job at the end of the corridor.

“I’ll take one in four any day,” he mumbled before drifting off to sleep.

“Go away,” Georich growled. He tugged up one of the offenders, a spiny thing thrusting through the block of round green heads. The other offender fidgeted nervously in her embroidered robes. Her eyes were fixed on his forehead, on the Mark there that proved he was a Chosen One.

The Mark that left him unable to enjoy his garden in peace.

“Go away,” he repeated.

“Sir — ” she began.

“Is it go or away you don’t understand?”

She blushed at his rebuke, but pressed on. He should admire her for that. “The Calthraxyn army draws closer to the King’s Seat every day, Georich of the Circle. We need you to throw them back.”

He should admire her persistence. He didn’t.

“If I’m throwing anyone anywhere, it’ll be you out of my garden. I’ve told you people before, just because I’m born with the Circle of the Gods on me, doesn’t mean I can help you. Go away.”

“I can’t go,” she said. “Without one of the Chosen Ones, we are lost.”

“What about the other Chosen Ones? Have you asked them?”

She fussed with her signet ring. “The ones I went to… have all refused.”

He started chuckling. The tickle grew in his belly, and the chuckle grew, until it became a full-fledged laugh. His face grew hot with mirth, except for the circle of flesh on his forehead that was marked by the Gods. He felt it, cool as if traced in ice.

It was good to see the rest of them had finally put their feet down. His rash words to that other Chosen One in the tavern of the capitol last autumn hadn’t gone unnoticed, it seemed. All the stares and gossip around the fire had turned into something.

Or maybe he was taking too much credit. It was a common trap for someone marked by the Gods to fall into.

“Look,” he said when his breath returned, beginning to pity her, “I think the King’s Seat has someone better than me, or any of those other old Circle fogies, in its service.”

“Who?”

“You.” His smile turned softer. “Look at you. You’re determined, courageous — perhaps you even have a good head on your shoulders, if anyone cares about that in the King’s Seat.”

“But — but I’m not a Chosen One!”

Georich reached down and pinched a smear of earth between his fingers. He rose, pulled the messenger in front of him, and traced a circle on her forehead.

“Now you are. Chosen by me — a Chosen One myself — so that’s as if you were chosen by the Gods once removed, isn’t it?”

“But… I can’t stand against the Calthraxyn — ”

“But you think an old farmer can?” He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Relax, girl. The Gods find a way, don’t they?”

The corners of her mouth slowly turned up, from a frown to an uncertain smile.

“That’s it. Go on — and don’t trample my petunias on the way out!”

She went, a look of half-finished wonder on her face. Somewhere past the gate her shoulders began to straighten out. Good shoulders, broad and strong, able to carry much more than shriveled old Georich’s ever had. The petunias were left untrampled.

Georich turned back to his garden, humming quietly beneath his breath.