A Paean to Summer

Have you come to ask me about how my love swallowed the sun? That's why you've cast Truthspeaker on me and why I'm blathering on like a drunken bard in a brothel, isn't it? You doubt what I say about Nura? Then you doubt your own spells! I cannot but speak truth, and you will hear it from the beginning, for that is how you will understand.

Come closer to my fire, friends! Aren't we all friends in times like these, sharing warmth before the end? You deserve no less for your trouble. I suppose the king regards your skills as a mage very highly, but never in your deepest studies have you worked magic of the kind I am about to tell you of. You will shed tears at the tale of Nura's gift to me that condemned her, and condemned us all.

But I must go back further. My tale starts with the gentle hands which carried the Sands of Milonius into my possession. What are the Sands? Of course, being a mere royal mage and not a sorcerer such as myself you wouldn't know about the remnants of the legendary city destroyed ages ago by jinn. But let me educate you in so much more than the dull mechanics of magic.

After a year-long search, I arrived at the faraway city of Al Kyar. I found Nura's father through agents who told me of priceless artifacts he had acquired.

It was still the Season of Fragrance, and the desert birds rose and fell like the waves of a faraway sea. There she stood, surrounded by rare pottery, golden trinkets, and suspicious-looking bottles, a vision more blinding than her father's finest wares. Though Nura's face was hidden by her desert hijab, her eyes were the color of the deepest ebony, and shafts of sunlight pierced the awning of her father's tent and fired them like priceless jewels set in porcelain, a picture painted in summer warmth. The hands which passed the priceless linen bag to me were exquisite in their grace. Though I could not see her mouth, I felt her smile, and the sands rose around me in response, my own magic fueled by burning within my heart. What I would give to feel that again! But it is gone, and only the shadow of what once was haunts me in these last frigid hours.

I did not see her again until the Season of Salt, and the pepiti birds darkened the sky with their migration. The moaning northeastern winds announced the arrival of the souls of Wanderers from the deep desert to yearn the birds' freedom. You know the sound. You have lived here in Ash Hakkena longer than I have, the jewel of the Goa Desert for millenia. It shone like a beacon still as I installed the last lens I had cast from the Milonius sands into my telescope. I had planned to observe the heavens and see what I could never see before - the face of the wandering star Mushtarij. It is said the face of Mushtarij changes like the shifting sands of the Goa.

Across the square, the souk was still bustling with the day's trading, and from its depths, lit by the dying rays of the sun like a golden minaret she approached my house. Nura's ebony eyes caressed me where I stood on the balcony. I marveled at the boldness of a woman who would walk the streets of Ash Hakkena without a male relative escort and hurried downstairs to the door.

"How did you find me?" I asked when she was inside.

She unwound her hijab and I saw her smile this time, a string of pearls more beautiful than I had imagined.

"My father is in town for trade," she said. "An abode of the most famous sorcerer in the southern Goa is hardly a secret. I hope I am not intruding."

"Not at all!" I exclaimed. "You more than honor me with your visit."

Nura's eyes took in my workshop and I was instantly ashamed at its state. Beakers, tinctures, and flasks littered the workbenches. You cannot smell it now due to the cold, but there were odors would rival a rotting corpse. I hurried to tidy up, then stopped upon recognizing the futility.

Nura laughed, a sound like the bells before prayer.

"You need not trouble yourself," she said. "Your place is fascinating! So much knowledge acquired here. I wonder where the Sands I gave you fit into the picture."

"Then come with me!" I said.

I led her to the balcony, where the bronze tube rested upon its tripod.

"I melted the sands down and cast them into a lens for this-"

"A telescope!" she exclaimed. "I have heard of such things! In addition to a mighty sorcerer, you are also an astronomer!"

"I seek to do far more than any astronomer," I puffed up. "I wish to look into the very soul of the heavens! The lens I made from the Sands will help me."

What does a lens made from the Sands of Milonius do you ask? You are about to find out how much I misunderstood the power of this cursed relic.

I examined the sky, noting how quickly it darkened as it always did this time of year. The last flocks of pepiti had vanished, leaving the sky clear, and the stars shone as twinkling jewels on black velvet. My first subject of the telescope - Mushtarij - was just making an appearance in the east.

"I think it's fitting that you should be the first to see the face of the wandering star, Mushtarij," I said, gesturing grandly at the telescope.

The delight which radiated from Nura's face made the whole endeavor worthwhile. I rotated the tube to align with the shimmering planet and stepped back to let Nura look. She peered into the eyepiece, and her eyes widened.

"Mushtarij wears a pearl necklace!" she said. "I have not seen anything so beautiful!"

She stepped aside and gestured, and I looked for myself. Never before had any man beheld the face of Mushtarij in such detail. Bands of incandescent color swirled across his face. The finest artist could not have painted something more beautiful. But nothing could have prepared me for the sight of Mushtarij's children, tiny orbs carried in the embrace of their father, a pearl necklace as Nura said. I felt Nura's hand on my arm then, and if there had been any sand on the balcony, it would have risen in a cloud.

"We must celebrate," she said.

Her eyes shone in the starlight as she reached into the folds of her dress and produced a suspicious bottle, a sibling of those I had seen months ago at her father's tent. She confirmed my suspicions when she removed the wax plug, and a fruity, but acrid scent invaded my nostrils.

"Fermented drink!" I said, and I tried to push the bottle back into her dress. The motion brought me to within finger's width of her face and I smelled lilies, frankincense, and musk.

"You could lose your head over this bottle," I muttered weakly, my head thick with her fragrance.

She only smiled at me and wiggled the bottle.

"You could lose your head over half the items I saw in your workshop," she replied. "Shall we toast the first glimpse of a god's face and his children?"

We shared the wine, looked at the stars, and laughed through the night. It seemed that the heavens spun past with barely a notice as I showed Nura one celestial wonder after another, and her eyes sparkling with delight at every revelation.

Then she showed me something which I did not know that infernal lens could do. She aimed the telescope at Mushtarij one last time, just before he sunk below the western horizon. With a mischievous smile, she placed the quarter-full wine bottle behind the telescope's eyepiece and whispered a word that sounded eerily like the moans of the Wanderers.

At first, I didn't know what happened until she gestured at the bottle. I peered into the black liquid and saw the banded features and string of pearls. Mushtarij was shining from within the bottle! I searched the sky where he used to be, but he was gone! Now you must know what happened next, how the seeds of our destruction were sown! Nura laughed and picked up the bottle.

"What sorcery is this?" I said. "How have you managed to imprison a star within a bottle of wine?"

"Don't be afraid!" she said. "Watch."

She upended the bottle and poured a some of the wine onto the balcony. Light erupted from the liquid with a flash and disappeared, and Mushtarij appeared on the horizon, exactly where he was before.

"The Sands you crafted your seeing glass from can capture the essence of any heavenly body," she said. "An old merchant with whom my father had dealings told me about this power. What do you think?"

"Please don't do that again," I said.

As the sky paled in the east, I realized that Nura knew far more about sorcery than she had let on. We had stood outside the whole of the night, and oh, royal mage, how could I know that first light would herald our doom?

Nura swung the telescope around to the east.

"Would you want to see the face of the sun?" she asked. "No man has ever beheld the face of the lifegiver."

"But, won't the light burn out our eyes?"

"Not through your special glass," she said, so sure of herself.

Despite misgivings, I aimed the telescope exactly where I knew the sun would rise. Unbeknownst to me, Nura took another drink and set the wine bottle down behind the eyepiece again. We waited as the sky turned to scarlet, then orange. Finally, the sun peeked above the edge of the world and shone into the glass. At that moment, the lonely voices of the Wanderers blew in from off the Goa, and in a heartbeat the yellow eye of the sun winked out.

In the sudden darkness, Nura picked up the wine bottle, now glowing with golden light in her hand.

"Let us drink!" she said, holding it up. "You and I can take the essence of the sun into ourselves."

"You don't know what you are saying!" I cried. "You have taken the sun from the world!"

"We must not live as ordinary people," she said. "We are sorcerers, and we could live as two suns! All the world would look upon our faces and pray to us!"

"That is blasphemy! Don't-"

Nura tipped the bottle and drank.

At first, she stood still, bottle in hand. Her eyes shone, no longer black but blazing forth like searchlights, too bright for me to behold. Then she collapsed, and her eyes closed. The golden glow spread to her skin, making her a golden statue in repose, lost forever.

Now you know why day has not come, and deep winter is upon us. She sleeps on the balcony still, a golden goddess fit for worship, just as she desired. The only way to undo this curse is to spill the liquid that traps essence of the sun.

The liquid is her blood! I cannot bring myself to do it, so you must. Do it, king's mage, and destroy that infernal telescope while you are at it. Release the sun, so the world may live again.

I suspect that my punishment will be to join the Wanderers in the desert, to cry in torment for eternity. But will Nura be forgiven for her hubris? I don't know which I would desire more, for Nura to escape the Wanderers, or for her to cry with me among the shifting desert sands. Wherever we go, at least it will be warm, and I pray the birds survive the winter.

Word count: 1991