Collateral Magic

I’d never wished for anything more complex than a fat wedge of bread, soaked with bacon fat, dropped by the path to the pig sty. My thoughts (did I even have them?) began with smells. My mate in our burrow, her smell that meant safety, refuge, familiarity.) My impressions were of full belly and the kitchen door cracked open, or the treacherous sound of the dog’s claws on the wooden floor, coming out hunting us. The rush up the drainpipe to hide in the gap behind a loose brick.

It wasn’t always comfortable, but it was blessedly simple. All of life was contained in each moment. A stormy day or a sunny one, a sore paw or a human boy chasing us, a big crescent of cheese that would feed our whole nest-colony. Each new thing was huge, it filled my whole brain, there was nothing else.

Immersed in that blessed simplicity, I was in the garden nosing into a softened courgette. Soon in the falling dusk, the chickens would go to roost and I could slip into their pen and see if their food tray had anything left in it. Or maybe even a late egg in one of the nest-boxes, a rare find.

Abruptly, before I knew what was happening, my body was snatched up and wrapped in a cloth. I was held tightly, too swathed in fabric to wriggle or bite or get loose. Trapped! Moments later, I was set down on a smooth surface indoors, where my toenails couldn’t get any purchase, and I scrabbled madly, and then… a flash struck inside my eyes, raging bright light, and all four of my legs started stretching. I was thunderstruck, numb, caught up in tingles and aches and my back and head, my mouth and teeth… everything moving and wrong.

And then I was upright, on my hind legs. Wrapped in cloth stuff. The world different-looking, and so much smaller. Why was everything so small? Then I saw the two humans in front of me, two females, and I tried to escape, to dash for a hole or an open door, but my body was all wrong and I couldn’t make my front legs work right. A final tingling sensation rushed like water through my head, and then everything came clear.

The world wasn’t smaller; I was bigger. Human-sized. Human. I was a man. Hands with long, bendable thumbs. I flexed them. Then the oddest thing hit me: I wasn’t afraid of the other humans anymore.

“There you are! That big rat makes a jolly coachman for you,” said the older one. Or maybe she wasn’t quite human. I could see through her at the edges, light sparking off her skin and hair when she moved.

And I understood the words. For the first time ever in my life, human sounds meant something. They entered my brain like water falling on a million seeds, and all of them growing and intertwining into a jungle of awareness. Man, and woman. I was a coachman, I knew how to hold the reins and drive a coach, knew the moves I had to make, knew the stately way to address a lady and protect her on the high road.

But I understood much more than that. Oh, yes. I knew I was older and a little foolish-looking. Jolly. Being merry was part of my duty to the lady I was to serve. My waistcoat strained across my belly, and my back ached just a little.

“Here, Coachman, take a look at yourself!” The older woman handed me a glass … a mirror… She held it for me and there I was: grey hair curling down over my ears, and bushy white mustache, and nose like a red potato. I knew somehow that I looked slightly ridiculous.

I turned away from the sight (how had I never seen myself before?) and instead looked at the younger woman. She was reaching out toward me, with wide eyes and her mouth slightly open. Oh, that hand: perfect it was, fingers delicate as flower petals. And her eyes! Clear and blue as the sky. I had never seen anything so exquisite, even though her face was blotched with dirt and her clothing drab and torn.

More lightning-fast moves from the magical woman, and suddenly the flawless younger one was immaculate, wearing something so brilliant I could hardly bear to look at it. A ballgown woven of what? Moonbeams and starlight, threads of pure joy in the fabric, sapphires and opals. Shoes transparent as crystals.

I couldn’t breathe. Never had I known beauty, and now it broke over me like a storm. As vital as food, but you couldn’t eat it or shelter in it. Beauty that was just for the eyes, and the heart. And the soul, if I could ever glean what that is. I wanted the world to stand still, so I’d have time to feel this — to make sense of all the ways my heart was breaking — but too much was happening. The magical one pushed me outdoors, where some small round thing on the ground — a pumpkin? — puffed up into gleaming metal with big wheels and glass. And then a box of white mice in her hand, so tiny I could barely make out their faces, suddenly turned enormous in another blinding flash and became horses. I didn’t even see what the six footmen had been, before she magicked them into human form.

An unwelcome urgency yanked on me, connected with driving the coach. Hurry up. Knowledge of the horses’ needs, of the road, of how to manage the footmen. The six of them must have felt it too, because they crowded around me for instruction. I turned away, back to the dazzling vision, the young woman in her splendor. All I wanted was to exist near her. To hear her voice. To (oh, unimaginable) touch those exquisite hands. If I could do only that for the rest of my life, I’d die happy.

I’d … die?

Again, my thoughts darkened into a storm, but the unwanted line of command like a rope tugged me back. Hurry, and hurry more. I checked the horses’ harnesses, checked their feet, and the axles and the cushions inside. The footmen I divided up, telling two of them they’d need torches to run ahead with, and one on either side of the coach with sticks to ward off brigands. The last two I instructed to ride on the back of the coach, and all to keep their eyes wide open. Hurry.

One footman stepped forward to extend his hand to the lady, to assist her up into the coach, and in a hot surge I slapped his arm away. It was his job, he was only doing what was proper, in all his slim muscular red and gold. I would not allow it.

Her hand curled trustingly into mine, pressing down for balance, broke new places open in me. The rustling touch of her shining gown against my vest and breeches was like fire through my loins and up into my chest. My eyes were wet and stinging as I tucked the the filmy edge of her dress around her feet and closed the door.

On the road, the hurry-hurry command burning just behind my eyes left no room for contemplation. With all my might, I watched for the places where the route forked, and where highwaymen might be lurking in copses of willow and hemlock. I didn’t trust the footmen to keep us safe — after all, ten minutes ago they’d been mice, which everyone knows are witless — so I shouted at the ones in front to hold their torches higher. The only thought I could squeeze in about our passenger was the absolute duty to keep her safe.

At the castle’s grand entry portal, where I reined in the horses, there were more humans than I’d ever seen. Torches on the towers far above our heads shone over the scene like a hundred small suns. Other coaches, other teams of footmen and restless horses, crowded and bumped on the cobblestones. Shouts rang out over the harsh clatter of metal on metal.

My imperative to keep the lady safe aligned for one sacred moment with my desires, and I offered her my arm as she stepped down from the coach. In the mayhem of wheels and heavy hooves, she drew close against my side, and the fragrance of her filled my nostrils. Rosebuds in morning sunshine, it was, along with something rich and strange I could not name. As I walked her up the ramp to the massive double doors, held open on either side by bowing castle guards, my thoughts were lost in a labyrinth. Keep her safe, pounded the words in my head, but their rhythm felt like heat drilling into my flesh. I wanted to fall to my knees before her, or make a wall around her to hold her only as my own.

But before these wants could speak their names, her other hand was taken by a nobleman in the king’s white and gold livery, and she let go of me. For one shining moment, she turned to smile directly at me, and my very breath stopped for the wonder of it.

“Thank you so much!” she said. Four words, each a small fruit dropped into a silver pool. I couldn’t answer, and barely managed a smile, but I did return her gaze. Jollity was never even a possibility.

Once she had been taken under the protection of the king’s man, the pull on my mind abruptly ceased. I stood there dumbfounded and confused, while various nobles and servants pushed past me and snarled comments about drunken coach drivers. The six footmen, too, were standing bewildered, huddling close to each other. Probably a nest of litter-mates, I thought.

We had only one command now: to wait. Other drivers and footmen wandered down a steep alley to a tavern to pass the time, and soon the seven of us were alone. The others looked to me, but I waved them off, and soon they found their way to a shadowed place behind a stone wall to wait. I was alone, and I stepped up from the roadway into a garden, and stopped by a splashing fountain. White flowers fell in a cascade along the fountain’s edge, and their perfume mocked me. I was out of breath from climbing the little hill, and she was so young.

I would see her again. I would wait for her always, no matter where she might go. Anything for that smile. Of course I could not be wild and young and gallant, could not be one of those proud young men strutting in their red and gold, their hands on their swords. But I could bring her the finest delicacies, I could take her places in the coach, lovely fields in the moonlight, and lay bouquets of lilies and roses in her lap. Searching, reaching in my mind for a larger world I knew almost nothing of, I began to hear a sound drifting down from the castle. It flowed like water, but trilled high and low like a human voice. And yet it wasn’t. It was a sound like loons in the marshes, or peacocks calling their mates, but not from any living throat. I could only think it was the sound of beauty itself, as if moonlight were melted into a silver liquid that your ears could drink.

My throat convulsed with sudden pain, and water overflowed from my eyes. How could humans bear to be in the presence of such sounds without dying? Or was it that they needed — that we needed — such piercing awe, in order to get through each day, knowing we will inevitably die?

I stood for the longest time gazing up at the tall windows of the castle. Inside, the shapes of people moved along with the rippling sound, rising and falling. The knowledge that she was one of those shapes was enough to keep me watching. I stood while my back ached with the cold, and I even welcomed the pain. I would learn, I would find out how these sounds were made, I would bring her to places where we could hear them together. Perhaps even one day I could move with her.

When the music (that word came to my mind, unbidden) stopped, I bent over to ease my back, and took a drink from the fountain. Across the wide fields, the night wind roamed free, and I turned to face into it. Unfathomable notions crowded my mind, tantalizing, just out of reach. How long would it take in this human form before I could claim those ideas and make them my own? I had already nearly forgotten my life of narrow tunnels and dark holes.

The music started up again, and I tried to mimic the faintly moving figures. I stumbled on a rock, but kept my eyes fixed on those high windows. Dip and sway, my arms thrown wide, I imagined that the brushing fingers of wind were the edges of her rustling gown.

Running footsteps struck my ears, and an old instinct of danger flared up. I froze, listening. The steps were light, almost tinkling, but I knew the sound of fear and fleeing, and I almost turned to run away myself.

But then it was her voice, crying out in the night.

“Help! Coachman! Hurry!”

I couldn’t run fast enough, I was awkward and gasping, but I would gladly fight to the death whatever was chasing her.

She was alone, however, racing in terror towards me, and one of her feet was bare on the harsh ground. I rushed to lift and enfold her, I would be bulwark and champion and protector, it was my only reason for existing.

When my arms flew open to take her, I almost felt the shape of her body pressed against them. I still don’t know if I really did. There was one single warm rose breath, I’m sure of that. And then the shrinking seized me.

No lightning bolt this time, just a shedding, loosening, losing. This must be death, I thought, as my hands disappeared and the world around me grew huge. Then only dirt was in front of my face, dirt and darkness. My front paws were on a pile of cloth, and my tail stiff behind me, balancing.

She was huge, towering next to me, and then she let out one long wail and began to run. In the road ahead of me I listened to the sound of her bare feet fading in the distance. My heart left with her.

I’m shrunken now in other ways, and likely won’t live long. The fairy or witch or whatever she was never thought to remove my human mind when she took away the human form. I’ve tried again and again to understand why she couldn’t have just left me human. What purpose did it serve, to strip that from me? Did the world need one more rat, or one fewer man? I’ve struggled in vain to reach forgiveness.

My rat instincts are fading, and I’ve had some close calls with a large yellow-striped cat who’s been hunting me. Cravenly hungry, I’ve stayed near the castle in recent days because their garbage middens are easy to find, but other hungers are taking precedence now. Could I live, out in the open fields and forests? Will I know how to find food, or escape the hawks and owls? It seems doubtful.

And yet, I’m setting out. The distance covered by a coach is longer than I can grasp, considering my tiny feet, but I still have the route burned into my mind. I will know the forks in the road, and I’ll be fueled by one burning hope. To lay eyes on her just once, to strive for that; if I die along the way, it will at least have been with purpose.