Arcana 99: Stage One

Sheri Hoy Parfit couldn’t sleep. This insomnia was not brought on by ill health or an uncomfortable bed. She had long been taking medication for it, and the rooms provided to her and her team by the race had the softest mattress she had ever laid upon. No, Sheri was fully capable of falling asleep; she was just far too angry to do so.

She had shown her teleportation technology to the entire world on a live radio broadcast. By all accounts, she should have spent her day giving interviews and selling her technology. Instead, she had spent it in an empty conference room until Charles had the day’s newspaper translated.

“G-M Marathon Victory Fraudulent; Grenfell Claims Otherwise” was the front page headline. Continuing down it read, “Yesterday the world watched as the Grenfell Maxwell Marathon began the first leg of its worldwide course. The race is a one-way journey from the Great Salt Lake in Utah to the city of Flores in Guatemala. But those four-thousand kilometers did not stop one team from claiming victory less than fifteen minutes from the start of the race. Race officials rewarded each member of the team, Charles Tepper, Sheri Parfit, and Hank (no last name provided) with fifty-thousand dollars. When asked for an explanation of their decision, Mr. Grenfell stood by it, claiming that they had investigated the claim and found no wrongdoing. Mr. Maxwell could not be reached for comment. Mr. Grenfell declined our offer for a further interview and directed us to the race’s public affairs liaison, Karin Bernays. Bernays was hired by the G-M Marathon as a chief advertiser, gaining notoriety for her skill and effectiveness. She was slated to start work with the Coca-Cola Company but has terminated that contract and started a new tenure as the public face of the G-M Marathon. When asked about her decision, Bernays declined to comment.” The rest of the article was a lengthy interview discussing the repercussions of the cheating allegation against Grenfell and Maxwell.

Figures , Sheri thought, accuse a woman of cheating, and the entire damn article is about how it affected the men around her.

She had spent the rest of the day angry and was planning on spending the rest of her life that way. At least, until it was keeping her awake at three in the morning. Sheri slowly rolled out of bed; she took care to ensure Charles remained asleep. Hank was sleeping in the truck, paranoid after he caught Maxwell snooping around there last night. She stepped towards the window and opened it. The night air and breeze from the lake surrounding the island of Flores cooled her off. Only in the physical sense though; mentally, she remained furious. She needed something to replace her enraged thoughts, and in the lamplight of the street below her, she found it.

On the corner of the street below her, inside a picturesque circle of yellow light, sat an empty bench looking out to the void of the nighttime lake. It looked comfortable enough, and Sheri always did her best thinking staring at a blank canvas. She put on her shoes, walked down the stairs, out of the building, and sat on the bench. The large incandescent bulb made the area within its glow much warmer than the night air. She stared at the black nothing before her. The night was silent, not even the waves made so much as a splash.

She spent a dozen minutes formulating plans to show her technology to the world. Public demonstrations to prove its real, painting Charles as the inventor to make it important by way of penis, or using it to commit a massive crime spree.

That last one doesn’t seem too bad. The British Museum should be large enough to fit the truck. Or go after the Louvre; that’d definitely fit us.

“-you came.” A quiet voice, amplified by the silence of the night, cut through Sheri’s plans for super-villainy.

“You expected me to stand you up?” A second, more familiar, male voice echoed out of the alleyway next to the bench. Sheri, overcome with curiosity, snuck toward the corner of the wall. She peeked around the corner and saw the source of the second voice, Mr. Maxwell. He looked smaller than he was yesterday like he had lost thirty pounds. The man Maxwell was speaking to was hidden behind a bend in the alley.

“I expect a man promising a wish to be a liar.” The man said, refusing to move the inch forward Sheri needed to see his face.

“Then you expect correctly. However, I am not promising; I am offering.” Maxwell reached into a bag on his belt and pulled out a small box. He put his thumb against it and the lid popped open, “And, like all offers, this one comes with terms. He then pulled a crown from the box. It was dozens of golden tubes twisted and interlaced with each other, forming an open circle. On the outside sat countless sparkling gemstones and on the inside the jagged ends of the tubes forming it aimed for the wearer’s head.

“Terms?”

“First, you will wish for what I ask for. Do not worry, it will benefit you greatly. Second, to have your wish granted, you must be willing to die for it.”

“Die?! You said I’d be able to feed my family for generations!”

“And they will be fed. But only if you are willing to sacrifice yourself to do so.”

The man hesitated, “What wish is it?”

“A simple one. With all the participants of my race arriving soon, they will need somewhere to rest while we get through the paperwork, and Flores is too small to house them and its residents. Just wish that there are enough houses for everyone in Flores on the mainland and that your family owns them. Your children won’t have to worry about working for a roof and neither will their children. You can even throw in a mansion or two for your friends.”

The man reached for the crown, “I put this on and think that and it happens? No more hardships?”

“Yes. Think it, and accept you shall never see it. If you refuse I understand; it is the same choice I continue to make. However, this town has hundreds of people like you. Another will accept and their family will reap the benefits of their sacrifice.”

“Will you tell them?” The man asked, putting the crown upon his head.

“If you so wish.”

Sheri couldn’t see the man nod, but she heard him take a breath and saw his body hit the ground. Maxwell took a step back to avoid the man’s head lying inches from his boot. Sheri could see the man’s face now. It was worn and wrinkled from decades spent under the Sun. Small flows of blood made their way down his head and to the pavement. His brown eyes were open, staring directly at her. Sheri had spent some time with a biologist. She was used to bodies, to decay. But this shook her more than any rotting body ever could. This wasn’t a body on an autopsy table. A being whose life was far removed from her mind. This was a corpse. A corpse of a man she had heard talk, cry, and take his last breath.

In an act of empathy or fear, Sheri forced as much air into her lungs as she could and swallowed. A normal person would leave, tell someone what they had seen. Sheri had too much love of discovery to do that. She needed to know what Maxwell would do with the crown and the corpse; she needed to know what the hell had happened.

Maxwell emotionlessly slid the crown off the man’s head, placed it back into the box, and put the box into the bag on his belt. He paused a moment to look at the bloodied head before him. Was it guilt? Sorrow? Contemplation on how to hide it? How to tell the man’s family?

No. Sheri could tell by how quickly and easily he had reached for the crown. Maxwell didn’t struggle to pull it off the man’s head even with the barbs embedded into his flesh. He had done this countless times before. So, what was he thinking? Sheri didn’t have the experience in psychology that Charles did, but she didn’t need it here. Maxwell stared at the warm corpse before him and licked his lips. He put his bag on the ground behind him, knelt over the corpse, and. . .

Sheri reeled back from the corner. She shakily made her way to the bench in the warm lamplight. Any noises she made were masked by Maxwell’s own. She planned to crawl out of earshot of the alleyway and run to her room, but what she saw across the inky waters of Lake Petén Itzá gave her pause. There were dozens, hundreds of lights dotting the previously barren shoreline. They were silhouettes rising against a black sky, but she could make out houses and streets. An entire town had sprung up from nothing; in defiance of everything Sheri knew, Maxwell’s wish-granting crown was real.

“A beautiful sight, yes?” Sheri stifled her instinct to jump upon hearing Maxwell’s voice.

Had I been staring that long? She thought, or did he hear me and finish early?

Sheri slowly turned to face him. He was standing outside of the yellow lamplight, leaving his face shrouded in shades of grey. Even then, Sheri could make out a small dark line running down his chin, “I will not insult a mind of your caliber with the lie of building it overnight. Nor will I insult myself by bringing threats for your silence. I am not a brute, nor are you a fool.” He circled the edge of the ring of light until he stood between Sheri and the town on the shore, “I saw the look in your eyes as you watched my conversation. Like me you long for knowledge, a goal you have readily achieved. But there is far more to this world than even you are privy to.” Maxwell pulled something from the bag on his belt and stretched his hand toward me. He stopped it just beyond the edge of the light and opened his palm to the sky. In the center of it sat a small silver ring, “My offer is knowledge for ignorance. Study this item and those like it; tell me everything you learn. So long as you keep silent about this incident I will offer whatever you need for your research.”

“And you won’t kill me,” Sheri added, refusing to reach for the ring.

“I don’t kill people, madame. I give them choices. If that man refused, someone else would own the town behind me, but I would have done nothing to him. If you refuse, I will not harm you, but you will lose out on solving a mystery whose very existence has eluded the world at large,” His voice was like honey on barbed wire, treacherous and sweet, barely hiding his malcontent. Sheri saw the blades within his words and ignored them. She knew he didn’t need threats because he made people want to take his offer. But knowing she was being manipulated didn’t stop her curiosity. It didn’t stop her from reaching for the ring. Maxwell smiled and started back towards the alley, pacing the light’s edge, “I look forward to seeing the results of your study Ms. Parfit.”