“And what happens when I open the box?” I had a sudden vision of Pandora’s box, which loosed horrible things into the world when she opened it.
The Mender chuckled. “Nothing so dramatic. Go ahead, you can try it now.”
Saying I was unsure would have been an understatement, but if this tied into the debt I owed him, I’d have to do it eventually anyway. Might as well get it over with.
There was no lock on the box, but when I tried to flip open the lid, it didn’t move. I tried to pull the lid. Nothing. I flipped the box over, looking for a latch or release.
Nothing.
I looked up, frowning at the Mender. He smiled back at me, content to watch me fumble with the box.
“It doesn’t open?” I asked, feeling like an idiot.
“It’s not really a box, is it?”
My frown deepened. “Next you’ll hand me a spoon, I suppose.”
He didn’t get the joke. I wasn’t going to explain.
“Okay, so then what do I do with the box that isn’t a box and can’t be opened?”
“Take it to Faerie. Let the reality in it naturally unfurl and spread.”
My jaw dropped, and I shook my head. I couldn’t take death and decay into Faerie. The land of the dead didn’t belong there.
The Mender’s face shifted to the businessman again. “This is the debt you owe me. I’m calling it in. What I want you to do is take it to Faerie. The souls of the dead are stuck in Faerie. I want to collect them.”
I shook my head again, clenching my jaw. He was right, I couldn’t refuse. But there had to be another way. “There is more than just the collectors’ plane here. This ball of reality contains the land of the dead. If I take it to Faerie, well, I don’t know exactly what would happen, but it would definitely introduce decay.”
“Much as the courts of Faerie balance each other, certain planes of reality balance each other. One cannot exist without the other, so you must release both.”
“The very nature of Faerie might change. This could destroy it.”
The Mender’s lips pressed out as he gave a nodding shrug. “That’s true.”
“Don’t make me do this.” I couldn’t do this. My own life wasn’t worth destroying an entire plane and the people on it.
“Well then, I suggest you learn to open and close that box.” The smile the Mender flashed me suggested that he’d played me. He’d offered me the worst option, to make what he really wanted sound better. I couldn’t refuse either way, but if there was another way, I’d jump on it. And he knew it. He continued by saying, “You don’t have to leave the reality to spread unattended if you can control it. Open the box, release reality, collect the souls, and then trap the realities foreign to Faerie back away again.”
I glared at him. Oh, that is all, is it? And how did he expect me to do that? “The box doesn’t open.”
“You can feel the reality contained there?” he asked, and at my nod he said, “Unravel it, just a little.”
I cocked a skeptical eyebrow, but dutifully focused on the box on my palm and widened my shields so that I could gaze across the planes. The room changed. Decay encroached on the furniture and rugs in the room, the material fraying and the wood rotting. Bright wisps of raw magic danced in the air. The Mender didn’t change, and he didn’t glow like a soul, but a rosy pink light surrounded him. I wasn’t sure from which plane the light originated or what it meant, but I was guessing knowing wouldn’t help me with the task at hand. I focused on the ball of reality.
The box in my hand changed and didn’t at the same time. I could see it, and yet I could see through it. Considering it had no apparent weight, that wasn’t surprising. My magical sense of it didn’t change—the space above my palm still held a tightly compact ball of reality—but my perception of it did. I can’t actually see the planes, instead seeing what is on those planes. So I couldn’t see the ball of reality, but staring, I could catch a flash of iridescent color or splash of gray, like seeing something from the corner of one’s eye. But the planes contained in the ball were already present all around me, so there wasn’t much to differentiate them from the reality already surrounding me.