Radiance

The witch-who-wasn’t-really-a-witch and the boy-who-was-really-a-boy sat without talking or moving for quite a while. Anchises didn’t know how to explain his life to her. It sounded silly when he tried to make words out of it. He had become very good at figuring things out without asking adults about anything, and he found it hard—painful, even—to change his ways now. He was eight years old, and that, he thought, was a long time to get used to living a certain way.

Hesiod coughed and pulled a cigarette (which was not really a cigarette, but a shag made of black, bilious, brackish callowkelp, more expensive than beer from Home, wrapped up in newsprint) out of her deep bosom. She lit it, and the room filled with a scent like sumac and ozone and coffee and possibilities. “You have to ask a question, you know.” She chuckled. “It costs a lot more than fish for the kind of fortune where you don’t say anything.”

Anchises took a breath as big as his eight years. “I think that I have a curse, Miss Hesiod. Maybe it’s not a curse—maybe it’s no different than being born with yellow hair, or something. But I don’t have yellow hair; I have this. I think I’ve had it since I was little—littler than I am now, I mean. This is what I think the curse is, ma’am: Anything I wish for doesn’t come true.”

Before Doctor Callow’s words came out of his mouth, they felt as heavy and swirling and important and salty as the Qadesh. But with every word he said to Hesiod, he hated the sound of his voice in the smoky hut and the words it was making even more. These words were small and they only meant what they said, not how they felt before he said them. He nearly wept with the frustration of it.

“Oh, you silly little turtle. All children think that. Hell, I think that, sometimes.” Witches, even those who aren’t really witches, like to swear, and their customers like it, too. As a rule, Hesiod tried to keep to no fewer than four profanities per visit.

The boy gritted his teeth. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’ve had a long time to go over it—and I did go over it, carefully, like the men from Prithvi testing callowmilk for alkalinity. I do have a curse! Listen to me, I brought you fish!” Anchises calmed himself down, which was not easy for him, then or later. “These are things I know about it so far: It doesn’t matter if I want it very much or not much at all. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big thing or a little thing. I have to say the wish out loud or it doesn’t count—if I just think about it, nothing happens—but I don’t have to say any particular magic words. It’s enough to say I’d like rice-suckers for supper tonight, or I really want…” But he couldn’t say anything he really wanted, because he was so afraid the curse wouldn’t know the difference between wishing and an example of a wish he might make, and already he wouldn’t be getting rice-suckers for dinner, which he loved. He said the next part as quickly as he could, in case saying it at a normal speed would make it all come undone. “And if I am very careful and wish for the exact opposite of the thing I want, I get what I wanted in the first place, which I guess is called a loophole.”

Hesiod smoked her cigarette-that-wasn’t-really-a-cigarette thoughtfully. “How big can you do? If you wished for the sun to come up tomorrow, would the world end?”

“I don’t know, I’d never dare!”

“You never know unless you try.” The crone shrugged.

“I think…I think it’s just things to do with me. Or, at least, people I know,” he added hastily, thinking of the girl with the black ponytail. “It’s localized phenomena,” he whispered, lifting a phrase from one of his textbooks.

“Big words from a little man. If you’ve got this all figured out, what do you need me for? Have you got a question, or haven’t you?”

“Yes! Hold on! Jeez!” It was all getting away from him, skidding out from under his feet like red sand. Anchises shoved his hand in his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, on which he had written his question in neat, round letters, in case he got confused or upset. “What Is Going to Happen to Me?” he read slowly, evenly. “Is This Going to Happen Forever? Is It a Real Loophole? What Can I Do So It Goes Away?” He looked up at the fleshy lilac flowers in Hesiod’s hair and her big cataracted eyes. “Am I gonna be okay?”

Hesiod thought of fortune cards no differently than she thought of casino cards: each had a value, which changed according to its position on the table, and when it was laid down near other cards, their combined values made a winning or a losing hand. She dealt three cards from her deck as quick as breathing.

The House. The Eye. The Whale.