once that cap starts drying out, well, animals are only gonna slake that thirst for so long.”
“I figured.” Colby slumped against the wall, shaking his head and staring off into the dirt floor.
“Well, it was about time that curse kicked in. We’ve all been waiting for that shoe to drop for an awful long time.”
Colby looked up, confused. “Ewan wasn’t cursed.”
“No, Yashar was. Ages ago.”
“Yeah, he was cursed to walk the earth or something.”
Mimring gave Colby a dark, somber look that read: you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me. “You don’t even know the curse on your own genie?”
“We don’t talk about it. That’s his cross to bear.”
“Yeah. His cross. All the wishes he grants are doomed to end badly, no matter how well intentioned they are. His cross, he says.”
Colby’s eyes smoldered. He didn’t know whether to dismiss Mimring’s dreamstuff altogether for even insinuating such a thing, or to fly into a rage looking for Yashar. The air tingled as Colby’s emotions excited the ambient dreamstuff floating nearby. Mimring raised a steady hand.
“Now, now,” he said. “Don’t go doin’ nothin’ you’re gonna regret. Hell, don’t go doin’ nothin’ I’m gonna regret.”
“I don’t understand. How could . . . how could he . . . ?”
“Not tell you that making a wish would sure as shit fuck up the rest of your life?”
“Yeah,” said Colby.
“How could you not tell your friend what his deal was until you had to?”
“It was in his best interest.”
“His or yours?” asked Mimring.
“His.”
“Are you entirely sure about that? Are you sure you didn’t want to keep your little world to yourself?”
Tears began to well up in the corners of Colby’s eyes. “I didn’t want him to end up like me.”
“Knowing more than he should?”
“Yeah.”
Mimring nodded. “How’d that turn out?”
Colby took a deep breath, chasing the glass from his eyes. “How come in all these years, you’re the only one to tell me the truth about any of this?”
Mimring thought hard for a moment, searching for the right answer to that question. Then he nodded knowingly. “Maybe ’cause not so many people know for sure. And maybe ’cause I’m the only one who never wanted nothin’ outta ya.”
Colby nodded. “What now?”
“Now you get me a few drops of blood out of that hat, a few hairs off your head, and I forge your friend a weapon that’ll give him one hell of a fighting chance against those devils.” Mimring smiled. “Only thing you can do at a time like this is channel all that anger into a serious ass whoopin’. That’s what I’d do, at least.”
“Really? That’s what you’d do?”
Mimring’s smile turned into a smirk. “Hell no. That’s what guys like you are for.”
COLBY AND EWAN milled about outside, knocking tin cans off a tree stump with stray rocks, the steady sound of a pounding hammer on metal echoing out from the workshop. They spent quite some time silently tossing pebbles at the cans, knocking them over only to set them back up again. Neither knew exactly what to say to the other, both clearly upset. Just not at each other. That, it seemed, was their only consolation.
Ewan scratched his cheek with his knuckles. “I need a shave,” he said. “I could have sworn I shaved yesterday.”
Colby looked closely at the stubble, now noticeably gray, aging Ewan a full ten years older than he was. “Yeah, you’re looking a bit ragged there.”
“So what’s our next move?” Ewan leveled a cold, serious glare at Colby. “I mean, why exactly do I need a weapon?”
“Because I have places to go where you can’t follow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have to go into fairy country to speak to the powers that be to calm this whole situation down.”
Ewan nodded sarcastically, pretending for a moment that this made any sense to him. “You think you can talk those beasts out of wanting to kill me?”
“No. But I might be able to talk the rest of the court out of wanting to kill you.”
“What? Why would they want to kill me? Didn’t they let me go?”
“Yeah,” said Colby. “But you killed a fairy.”
“I had to!”
“Doesn’t matter. You did it. Whatever truce they believed in disappeared the moment you shed fairy blood.”
Ewan rose to his feet, his eyes bloodshot and blazing. “That’s not fair. I was defending myself.”
“Fairies care little for nuance, Ewan. To them you’re a problem that won’t go away until they bury you. I need to assure them otherwise.”
“By telling them you’ll bury ten times as many of them?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“No.”
Ewan puckered his