Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 20th November 2021
"Okay," said Jim, taking the coins off the scale. "That's two and a little bit pounds of gold, to be dumped on Douxie's head this afternoon. You want to carry it, or shall I?"
"Eh, give it here, Jimbo," said Toby. Jim shuffled the money into an unmarked paper lunchbag and handed it over. "Kind of weird how so much money takes up so little space, y'know?"
"I know. Hanging out with trolls so much, I'm starting to think they're right and wonder why humans put so much value on what are basically shiny rocks and metal," said Jim as his best friend made the bag of gold disappear into the bottom of his backpack.
"They have access to a lot more of it," Toby said philosophically. "Rarity drives value, and all that."
"I guess," said Jim. "I'll go grab our lunches. Meet you in the street?"
"Sure," Toby said, shrugging on his backpack. "See you there."
As Jim went back through the tunnel to his basement, then up the stairs to his house, he tried to decide how Douxie was going to react to having his time-debt negated. He was hoping for happy, but the wizard was idiosyncratic enough that Jim knew it might not go that way. Mentally, he shrugged. He had like nine hours to marshal a suitable set of arguments in favor of the plan.
And Douxie was in the kitchen, he discovered, making himself toast and tea. "You're up," Jim said, somewhat surprised. Douxie usually slept in after doing a closing shift at the cafe.
"That I am," the wizard agreed. "Didn't do any monster hunting last night, so we got in at a reasonable hour."
Jim laughed. "I have to question your definition of a reasonable hour," he said as he opened the fridge and pulled out his and Toby's lunch bags.
"The benefit of not having school five mornings a week," Douxie sassed back.
"Yeah, you just have bookstore opening shifts three mornings a week instead," Jim pointed out. "Including on Saturday, ugh."
Douxie shrugged as the toast popped. "Had a somewhat concerning thought, though, which I will not trouble you with before school. But stop at the bookshop after?"
Jim stopped. "Concerning thought?" he asked.
Douxie waved him off, buttering his toast. "Archie's, actually. I'll tell you later. Now get - you don't want to be late again."
Jim nodded and threw his brother a salute as he went toward the garage. "See you after school."
"So, like, I was going to hit up the record store after school," said Mary at lunch. "Claire, you want to come with? Papa Skull's new album is dropping today."
"Oh, believe me, I am there for it," Claire said, laughing. "Zoe's supposed to have a copy behind the counter for me, just in case they sell out before we get there."
"Sweet. Didn't know you had an in at Zimoc's," said Darci. "You think you could get her to put copies on hold for us too?"
Claire shrugged and got out her phone. "I can try." She'd gotten Zoe's number as a backup - it was good to have an easy way to contact the witch, just in case. She shot Zoe a quick text, asking. "But I've got to be quick. We're meeting up with Douxie at the bookshop after school."
Mary and Darci exchanged a look. "Is that, like, about...?" Mary wiggled her fingers to indicate magic.
Now Jim and Toby, on the other side of the table, exchanged a look. "Sort of...?" Jim said.
Darci leaned forward. "Can we come along for that?" she asked.
"Heck yeah!" said Toby. "I mean, if that's all right with you guys," he said, glancing at Jim and Claire.
Claire shrugged. "Fine with me. I mean, it's Douxie's fault for showing you guys magic in the first place, he can't really complain about you being dragged deeper into it."
"Oh yes he could," said Jim. "But sure. Why not?"
It felt like he'd spent half the day on the phone with distributors, trying to argue with them about the fact theirs was an arcane bookshop, why on Earth had they been sent a selection of New York Times bestsellers, and while he was at it, who had gotten their expected shipment of YA and adult fantasy novels? Fortunately Archie had been able to shapeshift into a copy of him and handle the half-dozen customers who came in through the door.
(None of them were regulars. They wouldn't have noticed that Douxie's accent had changed. One British Isles accent sounded much like the next to most Californians.)
Finally, he'd gotten the e-mail containing the return shipment label (at the company's expense, not GDT's, thankyouverymuch, because it certainly wasn't their fault), printed it out, taped it on, and had the box prepped for the courier to pick up. The fantasy shipment... would be showing up sometime in the next week. He just hoped no one really needed the newest Seanan McGuire paperback on release day.
(Who was he kidding, the shop was going to lose a bit of money due to the snafu.)
Wearily, Douxie texted an update on the drama to Mister Del Toro, and opened his lunch bag for a very late midday meal. "Here, you go first, you had to deal with customers," he said, fishing out Archie's salmon sandwich. (Tinned salmon mashed between two slices of sourdough bread. Douxie didn't get the appeal, but then he wasn't an obligate carnivore.)
"Thank you, don't mind if I do," Archie said, switching from Douxie-doppelganger form into dragon shape. He took the sandwich in his paws and flew off to the back room, formerly their apartment.
"Put the kettle on while you're back there?" Douxie called after his familiar, getting a sound of assent in response.
Sighing, Douxie leaned forward, letting his head fall against the bare square of space next to the cash register. "Push broom, milk slorr," he mumbled to himself.
The shop was tidy enough-Archie had been reshelving books between customers-and there really was nothing for him to do other than wait until someone else came in. He could pull out a book, go sit in one of the chairs, read a bit until he was needed again.
But that took brainpower, Douxie silently whined to himself. And after going around and around with another customer service grunt for literal hours, he didn't have much of that left.
Inevitably, his thoughts turned to the problem Archie had discovered the day before, and he couldn't help poking at it.
Sans the Eternal Night, how were they going to open Arcadia Oaks' eyes to the magical and supernatural world?
Or, he thought, with the faint sting of Merlin's accusations about him letting magic die away still lingering in his mind, would that goal fall by the wayside too?
Once he'd been so sure that if they could just awaken the whole world to the fact that magic still existed, that would be enough to stave off the Arcane Order, mollify their wrath. Now he didn't know if that would work. Or even how.
He didn't want to go toe-to-toe with Bellroc and Skrael again. He wanted to find a way to dodge around the confrontation that had cost so many lives. A different path to victory.
But what if all roads led to Rome? What if that confrontation was a fixed point, immutable?
"A wizard makes unexpected possibilities," he mumbled to the desk. Picking himself up, he propped his chin on one hand and thought.
How could they change that which was, in order to change that which must be?
Okay, so Claire was definitely something... weird, Eli thought, looking in the record shop's window, where Claire, Darci, and Mary were buying CDs, handing cash over to the pink-haired woman working the register while Jim and Toby lingered. But Claire was not like the monsters, whatever the stone creatures were, the shapeshifters, or the long-legged green things that Eli had documented smashed to slime. She didn't really fit in anywhere with the other things on the Wall Of Weirdness board he kept hidden in his bedroom.
Well, maybe Claire would fit in with the Wizards cluster? But that had been a dimensional rift she'd been showing off, right in the middle of school, which spoke more of something like aliens than magic. Were there aliens in Arcadia Oaks? He hadn't seen any signs yet, but that didn't mean they weren't there. He'd had to go back over his board with a fine-toothed comb with his new information in mind, but so far Eli hadn't found any answers.
He hadn't seen anything strange from her since that dimensional rift. But he'd definitely heard Douxie's name in that first conversation, and today, at lunch, sitting as near as he could get without being noticed, he'd heard Claire planning to go to the arcane bookshop after school. Jim and Toby were clearly in on whatever weirdness was centered around Claire. And she was dragging Mary and Darci in with her too...!
There was something going on with his classmates, something weird.
And Eli was going to get to the bottom of it.
"Hello~!" Douxie sang out as the door opened and three of his favorite people walked in. Followed by two more he hadn't expected - Mary and Darci. "What can I do for you?" he amended what he'd been about to say.
"Well, you and I have a stage magic club meeting," Toby said as Jim gave a wave and walked over to where Archie was sitting and reading.
"Indeed we do," Douxie agreed. "Mary, Darci, lovely to see you. Wasn't expecting you'd be interested in stage magic."
"Oh, we're not, really," said Mary. "Real magic, on the other hand... that's something we'd love to hear about."
Douxie's eyes widened.
"Hey, Archie," Jim said quietly while Douxie sputtered. "I need a favor."
The disguised dragon looked up at him while his familiar blushed and rambled and tried to dodge the consequences of his own actions. "Which would be...?"
"I need you to turn into something heavy and sit on Douxie for a couple minutes," said Jim. "Also, if we could preferably get his phone..."
Archie looked skeptical. "Not unless you tell me what you're planning."
Jim grinned. "We're dropping about sixty K in gold coins on his debt, and we need to be able to tell Mister Del Toro about it."
Archie, Jim thought, had a lot of very sharp teeth in his grin. "His passcode on the phone is a swipe across the center," Archie said. "Left to right."
"Thanks," Jim said, stroking down the sleek fur of Archie's back.
"You're most welcome," Archie replied. "When do you wish to do this?"
Jim shrugged. "Now, I guess?"
Archie hmmm'd and grabbed a bookmark, setting it in his book. Then he arched, stretched, and eyed his familiar, who was standing in the middle of the shop's open area. "Douxie!" he called.
Douxie's head turned automatically to his familiar.
"Catch!" Archie called, leaping at him and shifting shape mid-jump.
Douxie was knocked to the floor by the momentum of a jaguar.
"What- Arch-"
"Hmm, not heavy enough, I think," the dragon said, looking down at his squirming familiar, and shifted again. Into a black tiger.
Mary and Darci shrieked and scrambled back.
Archie pawed at Douxie's pocket even as the wizard thrashed and oofed and tried to shove him off. "Here you go. One phone," he said, and batted it across the floor to Jim.
"What are you doing?" Hisirdoux breathlessly demanded as Jim picked up his phone.
"Conspiring against you," Archie told him. "I should think that much would be obvious."
"Well, yes, obviously," Douxie retorted. "But I'm asking what kind of conspiracy, here."
"We took a vote," Claire said, sitting on one of the shop's armchairs. "And we're buying out your time debt."
"You're what?" Douxie demanded.
"Yep," Toby confirmed, setting his backpack on the counter and rummaging around inside. He pulled out a plain brown lunch sack. "Sixty thousand in gold, right here."
Mary's eyes widened.
"You have sixty thousand dollars in gold?" Darci demanded.
"Aaaaand, text confirming that, sent to Mister Del Toro," Jim said. "No getting out of it now, Douxie."
He glared around the room, skipping over the two non-conspirator teenage girls, seethed for five seconds, then let himself go limp under Archie's weight. "I hate you all," Douxie muttered.
"No you don't," Claire chirped.
Archie licked his cheek. "They do it because they love you."
"Owowow, that hurts," Douxie complained at his familiar. "Tigers' tongues are rough, you know!"
"My apologies." Archie shifted back to his usual black cat shape, sitting on Douxie's chest as he rubbed gingerly at his raw cheek. "Anyway, the deed is done. You can't complain now."
"Watch me," Hisirdoux threatened, letting his head fall back against the floor.
His phone trilled with an incoming call. "That'll be Mister Del Toro," Douxie said wearily. "Go ahead and answer."
Jim did, and put it on speakerphone.
His boss's laughter filled the store. "They've outmaneuvered you, Hisirdoux!" the libriomancer chortled gleefully.
"Yes, I know that," Douxie replied, resigned to his fate.
"Put the gold in the safe and the contract is voided."
"Thanks ever so," said Douxie.
The line went dead.
He sighed, staring up at the second-floor ceiling. "Safe's over there," he reported, pointing at Mister Del Toro's portrait over the fireplace mantel. With a swirl of his wrist, the portrait swung out from the wall, revealing the safe. The safe's lock spun, and its door opened. Mary and Darci stared.
"Uh, right," said Toby, looking around. "Hey, Jimbo, gimme a boost?"
"Sure." And Douxie's traitorous, loving brother did just that.
As soon as the paper bag of gold coins was deposited within the safe, one of the sheets of paper inside picked itself up into mid-air, caught fire, and rapidly burned itself to ash. "That's one magical contract of labor, fulfilled," Douxie said as the safe swung shut and sealed and the portrait returned to its position. "I had been stretching it out over six years, you know."
Jim plopped down next to him and patted his head. "Yeah, but now you don't have to."
"Um," said Darci. "Pardon my not-French, but what the hell is going on?"
"We just bought out Douxie's three-year contract of indentured labor here," Claire explained.
"Uh. Indentured labor?" Darci sounded skeptical.
"Entered into in exchange for magical textbooks for these three," Douxie explained, giving up entirely.
"Magical textbooks?" Mary had a hand on her hip and an open hand, like she was waiting for the punchline of a lame joke to drop. "What, like in Harry Potter or something?"
"Or something," Douxie muttered. He pointed at himself. "Wizard." Archie. "Shapeshifter." Claire. "Wizard." Toby. "Trollhunter - which means protector of the good trolls, by the by." And Jim. He hesitated, raising an eyebrow, not sure how Jim currently wanted to identify himself.
"I'm also a Trollhunter," said Jim. "And a divine king."
There was a second's silence as Douxie pushed himself to sitting, then Claire and Toby's demands of "What?" overlapped with Mary's scoff and Darci's "Huh?"
Archie just winced, covering his ears.
Eli pressed his nose to the glass and his cheek too. There was a very thin sliver of an angle where he could see beyond the window display and into the bookshop. It wasn't a very wide view, but he could see just enough to know that there was something /weird/ going on in there. There were glowing lights, and...
And Douxie, he decided, was definitely involved in whatever Claire was up to. He didn't know if that was good or bad, but until he was sure, he was going to err on the side of ba-
Something blue grabbed him. It felt like an invisible giant fist. The bookshop's door slammed open. Before he could even yelp, Eli was yanked inside the shop. The door slammed back shut. He was dumped face-first on the floor.
Ominously, the lock clicked.
"Thought I felt someone spying," a level British voice said calmly.
Eli looked up, to see Douxie looking down at him. Blue light outlined his left hand. He was wearing a long bracelet that looked like it had a glowing network of runes mapped around it.
"Eli?" Jim asked, stepping up to stand beside the... whatever Douxie was.
"Please don't kill me!" Eli squeaked.
Douxie sighed and rolled his eyes. The light died away from both his hand and his bracelet as he reached down. Eli stared at his hand for a minute until he realized that Douxie meant to help him up. Then, somewhat abashed but still somewhat afraid also, he let himself be hauled to his feet. And Douxie was also clearly stronger than he looked, because he did it with ease. "I'm not going to kill you," Douxie said. "But next time you want to know something, try asking instead of spying, all right?"
"Um, okay," Eli said, adjusting his glasses. He looked around the bookshop, finding Toby and Claire and Mary and Darci and the shop's cat. "Um. So. What's going on?" he asked plaintively.
"So how does magic work?" Mary demanded. "Can, like, anybody do it, or...?"
"Depends on what answer you want," Douxie replied, perched on the checkout counter with his cat. They'd spread out and gotten comfy, but there were only so many chairs in the shop. "It's rare, like being left-handed, or having heterochromia, but some humans are born with the innate ability to wield it. But so far as we know, most inherent mages don't have a strong enough ability all on their own, so unless, like Claire, they pick up a magic artifact that awakens their potential, it'll never surface. Only a few of us are innately powerful enough that magic manifests by itself. That being said, once someone knows that they have magic... how powerful they become depends entirely on how much effort they devote to it."
"Or," Jim put in, "sometimes non-magical humans, like me and Tobes, happen across a magic artifact that kinda-sorta drags us into the magic world too."
"Wow," said Eli. Mary could practically see him taking notes in his squirrely little genius brain. "So is there like a test where you can tell if someone's got magic potential, or...?"
"Sadly, no midichlorians counter litmus test exists." Douxie shrugged. "Or if there ever was one, it's been lost to time."
"Episodes one through three sucked," Toby grumbled.
"Your Nana showed you the originals first?" Douxie asked him.
"Of course!" Toby scoffed.
"Good for her."
"You're left-handed, and have heterochromia, and have strong magic," Claire pointed out to Douxie. "You kind of won the genetic lottery there or something, Teach."
"Not sure if getting hit with lots of recessives counts as winning, Claire," he told her. "Anyhow," he said to the rest of them, "the point about being aware of the magic world is, yes, there's lots of fantastic stuff in it. There's also lots of dangerous stuff. Not everyone who disappears is a runaway. Some of them get eaten by the nasties in the night. Which is what people like us," he said, gesturing to Claire and Toby and Jim, "are supposed to guard against, as best we can."
"So why doesn't everyone know about magic, then?" Darci demanded. "Wouldn't people all be a lot safer if they knew not to, I don't know, hop into mushroom rings or feed the gremlins after midnight?"
"They probably would," said Toby, fiddling with what was apparently a magic amulet. He sighed. "But the thing is, magic's been fading from the world for a long, long time, and there aren't too many people left who know about all those things. And they're certainly not going to teach the rest of us."
"Why not?" Eli's voice cracked in the middle of his question.
Douxie sighed and leaned back, looking at the ceiling. "Does 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' ring any bells? Though I suppose putting all the blame on the King James Bible isn't fair," he admitted. "My people, and other magic races, were being snuffed out in favor of mundane man long before that."
"It still doesn't make sense, though," Claire complained. "Why wouldn't people be happy about humans with strong magic? We could protect them."
"You'd think so," Jim said with a sigh. "But people, and I include other species in this, don't like anyone different."
"We are all tribal beings," said Douxie's shapeshifting cat, whose name Mary still hadn't gotten. "Some of us reach across species and form bonds," he said, looking affectionately at his human. "But by and large? People are afraid of what's different, and seek to destroy it to keep themselves safe."
"And that's the story of magic versus a short-lived fast-breeding species," Douxie said quietly.
"That sucks," complained Mary. "Wait. What do you mean, 'short-lived'?"
Douxie shrugged. "Compared to a lot of other species? Humans are short-lived. Archie here is about fifteen hundred years old, and barely in what'd be his twenties for a human. And for those few humans with magic... well, heavy magic use ages you slower, makes you even more different. I've been nineteen since the fall of Camelot."
Mary gaped. "No. Way." Douxie looked way too good to be old.
Toby grinned wide. "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not!"
Jim slapped a hand to his face. "Been saving that one up, Tobes?" he asked.
"Well, it was either me using the line, or Douxie, and I figured I'd beat him to it," said Toby.
Darci's eyes were wide. "You're nine hundred years old?" she demanded.
"Nine hundred eighteen, come Beltane," Douxie confirmed. "Anyhow," he said, eyeing the clock, "shall we wrap this up for now? It's almost time for Jamie to come on shift here, and for me to skip over to the cafe, and I'll bet you all have homework to attend to."
"Don't remind me." Mary rolled her eyes as she stood, finding her backpack.
"So, like, can we ask you guys more questions later?" Eli asked.
Jim shrugged. "Feel free to ask away," he said. "Just maybe not during class, all right?"
"Sure thing, Jim!"
The boys lingered behind as they all left the funky arcane bookshop, then, waving, crossed the street. "Now I've seen everything but aliens!" Eli said enthusiastically as the three of them headed for the El Guerito taco truck.
"Uh, maybe put a hold on that thought," Jim suggested.
"So," Mary said, stepping quick, pinning Claire between herself and Darci, "you actually weren't messing with us when you said Jimmy-Jam's a knight, were you?"
"Nope." Claire popped the "p."
"Ugh, I hate you," Mary told her.
"So... is Toby serious about me?" Darci asked, unexpectedly hesitant.
"Girl, if you can't see his heart eyes from space, you need glasses," Mary told her.
"Yeah, but he's always been kind of a loser," Darci said. "Jim too. No offense, Claire."
Claire shrugged. "None taken. Sometimes, you just have to look a little closer to see what someone's really worth."
Author's Note: The midichlorian count comes from Star Wars Episode 1, while the line about "when 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not" comes from Episode 6. Darci's remark about not feeding gremlins after midnight is a reference to the movie Gremlins. And I realize fandom has accepted November 17th as Douxie's birthday because of one of Tenyai's posts, but I wrote it as Beltane before I knew that, and then it became plot-relevant. So Beltane it stays in this story.