Bones

Working out how I want the magic in a book I’ve been plotting for 10 years to work. Shut up and write the book already. I know, I know. I’m working on it. 

Bones

I started digging at nine something, call it 9:30. Enough time for the sun to go down, traffic to thin out, but not enough to keep me from sweating my ass off.

It’d been an hour, and I’d dug at least three feet, maybe three-and-a-half if I were being generous, which I’m not. I hoped the head was actually at the end near the tombstone, because I wasn’t digging a coffin-shaped hole. Should’ve rented a backhoe, but then that’d be obvious.

Kept digging. Time passed. I was down to about my waist. I said outloud, “I wonder if I should leave a block to stand on so I can climb out easier.”

“What, like Minecraft?”

I straightened my back, tightened my grip on the shovel, then looked up. A dude wearing a black suit, white shirt, skinny black tie and a Bowler hat stood a few feet from the edge of the hole. He had, I kid you not, mutton chops. His posture was loose, a matte black automatic dangled from the fingers of his right hand.

I went back to digging. “Yeah, like Minecraft.”

I chucked a scoopful of dirt over my shoulder, hoped it got on his shoes and did my best to ignore him.

“You think this is the one?”

I stopped digging, looked up at him, shrugged my shoulders, went back to digging.

“Sil thinks you’re onto something. He’s been having me keep up with you. Not just you, but still.”

Back to digging. After another decent span of time, Bowler Hat said, “Reckon you got about another foot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to help?”

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t be right, you helping me or me helping you. Might create some sort of debt between us. Wouldn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.”

“Right.”

I tried to find my rhythm again, he kept talking. “Balls. It’s hot. Why’d you pick now to be diggin?”

“You’d rather I do it at noon, maybe advertise a bit?”

“Nah, I mean in the summer.”

“You find things when you find them.”

“I suppose.”

I stopped after the next scoop, propped my hands on the end of the handle, placed my chin on my hands.

“You know what I’m looking for?”

“Bones.”

“Yes, Bones. But do you know whose bones?”

“It’s my professional policy not to ask too many questions.”

“Really? I think I’d want to know as much as I could in this business.”

He shrugged again. I’ll bet he could have a whole conversation with his mom with all his different shrugs. The gun in his hand shrugged with him, which made a nice sort of subtext. I thought I should make mine.

“If this is the guy, he was a bad dude. Ritual magic practioner. You know ritual magic, right? The kind with the pentagrams and candles, goat horns and virgins. You know, stuff your pedo boss is into.” No shrug at that last bit. Hmmm.

I moved back to digging, but kept talking. “This guy, he didn’t stop there. He fancied himself another Rasputin. And maybe he right to, if all the stories are to be believed.”

I leaned down, picked up a chunk of something, moved it to the side.

“They even say he was descended from Merlin.”

I moved another chunk, lifted off a bigger piece of coffin, leaned it against the side of the hole. A skull glowed up at me in the moonlight.

“You know, you do enough magic, it gets into your bones. Good magic, they say, strengthens you. Bad magic, it’s caustic.”

“You gonna talk all night?”

“Hey, I asked if you wanted to help.”

I shoveled a bit more, moving the dirt around more than anything, but heaved out another scoop. I made like I was getting more, used the shovel to pry back more of the lid, and there it was: a small black leather pouch (okay, it could’ve been blue or gray or brown, but it was dark in the hole, so I’m going with black). I scooped up the skull and flicked it up to Bowler Hat. His eyes tracked as it spun toward him. He caught it left handed.

I knelt down, took the pouch, opened it and dumped a fine amount of what looked like tiny pewter beads into my left palm. I pulled the left humerus looks with my right hand, stood and pointed it at him. He pointed the gun at me. I smiled.

“Tense?”

“You’re a bit daft, aren’t you?”

“It’s been said before.”

I tossed the bone toward him, like you would for someone hoping they’d make an easy catch of it. He juggled the skull and the gun as he tried to nab the bone from the air. I blew the beads toward him. They coalesced into a cloud that looked like agitated gnats, then sped toward his head, flowing into his nose, open mouth, eyes, ears. He dropped all the things, clutched at his head, then toppled to the ground.

I waited a full minute, then pulled the beads back to me and let them cascade from the air back into the pouch. I could feel their high metal content, but it felt weird, meaning the stuff was probably from a meteorite, but it’d been arcanically imbued with traces of some really weird shit, which was sort of the point of this whole thing. I dropped the pouch into my pocket. And before you ask, no, I am not Magneto. It doesn’t work that way, though it can look the same from time to time.

I kicked the skull and bone back into the open grave, as well as Bowler’s gun, and then after a minute and a glance around the graveyard, Bowler himself. It took me another hour to fill the hole back in, arrange the grass I’d carefully set aside so that the whole place looked like it should. It wouldn’t trick a thorough inspection, but … no one was going to be looking anyway.

Probably.