Below is an excerpt from a brand-new story. Sort of. Some of the events of the story form a history to my Contagious Magic novels, which begin with A Sudden Outbreak of Magic. My story “Coal Ash and Sparrows” is also part of the Contagious Magic world.
The story is also part of a Chain Story called The Wanderers’ Club. Each story in this anthology is connected, in some way, though you can read the stories in any order.
It all starts with someone telling a story at a meeting of the Club. And each wanderer at the Club has a fascinating story or two to tell… For more information about the Chain Story Project, please visit chainstory.stormwolf.com.
eBook versions:
The Wanderers’ Club: The Inverted Bearded Boy of Chicago — Excerpt
“Ahem. Mister Trimble, sir. I thank you for sharing your story of the so-called Master Blaster and the Tiger of Chinatown. I wish you and your new wife An Ling all the best. I have heard much of the lovely city of San Francisco, though I have never visited it. Perhaps someday…”
Wreathed in smoke, the man who had just spoken lifted his head from where he sat at a table near the window, a handcarved wooden pipe in his hand. Curly gray hair, long muttonchops, and a jutting pink chin framed his somber expression. The fire in his eyes extinguished any attempt to talk over — much less interrupt — him.
“That locale takes me back to a day when, much like you, my entire world shifted, and the ground upon which I stood forever tilted. I would like to share with you of the time I made the acquaintance of the inverted bearded boy of Chicago.”
The man wore a dark, hooded overcoat, and his humorless brown eyes drifted once to the window before he spoke, as if looking for the above-mentioned boy from across the sea.
“I am Mister Callahan. My occupation carried me to that cold, fire-wracked city at the tail end of a bitter winter. I’d been inspecting a dozen recently razed properties in Chicago, with the intent of reporting on their potential for reconstruction to my people in New York.
“I’d spent the day out in the cold with my leather journal when I stepped into an alleyway, out of the wind to light my pipe. After I’d lit a fire in the bowl and had fragrant smoke filling my nostrils again, I looked down the alley and found a man lying in a wagon, staring up at me.
“At first I thought him a corpse, one of the many lost souls discharged from the factories or farms at his advanced age, finally at rest in this ignoble, open-air grave. His magnificent, full beard sprouted into the air like a wooly white fountain. Covered mostly in hay, he rested on his back in a small, wheel-less wagon, his gray-haired head at the edge of the wagon’s bed.
“He looked up at me from where he lay, glaring at me upside-down. I must have looked like a giant in his wide blue eyes, falling down at him from the sky.
“He couldn’t have been much more than five feet in height, and his beard was his most remarkable feature — perhaps fifteen inches in length, white but stained yellow and brown in places from food, drink, and other elements I’d prefer not to dwell upon. Underneath his blanket of loose hay, he wore what appeared to be a monk-like robe of a dark color that pooled over his frail, nearly emaciated body. Under the robe, I was surprised to see a rumpled suit, also loose and ill-fitting, with a black tie at half-mast, and a brown woolen vest that looked thicker and more substantial than the poor chap wearing it.
“And in his bony right hand, I perceived the empty shell of what looked like a battered pocket watch made of gold, which he held cupped in his palm like a seashell. All of the gears and inner workings of the clock were gone, as if they’d been scooped out.
“That was my first look at the bearded boy. Inverted.”
Continued…
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