The Necromancer's Tale

When I was born, I was no larger than a farmer’s plough-splayed thumb.

My mother was bitterly disappointed -- she and my father had waited so long for a son, and yet she had finally given birth to nothing more than a freak. My noble parents sought to sell me to every passing circus -- but the elephants stampeded and the lions took sick with palsy whenever they brought my miniature cradle near. Gypsies made the sign of the evil eye and placed small charms on our threshold in the night to ward against devils. Neither Towers nor Temples would take me -- what kind of cleric would I make, who could never hope to grip a quill? I could not till land; I could not sell goods; I could not even rightly pray.

My father began to believe that I was not only deformed, but a demon.

Every day they went into the market and offered me to anyone who would spare a coin for my wretched little body. My mother would not nurse me. She fed me on scraps of chewed meat and pauper’s gruel. She suggested to passers-by that I might be used for snake-training, to spy on relations, or as an exotic fish-bait. As for myself, I was shrunken and misshapen, but my mind was sharp and fiery as blacksmith’s tongs, and I could speak perfectly well by the time I was three days old. Before I reached a full week I also spoke the dialect of the gypsies. Before a month there was hardly a doggerel-tongue in that market I did not understand. But I held my tongue against the roof of my mouth and let no word escape -- if my mother knew it would only drive up her price, and I wished her no profit.

Finally, when I was twenty weeks of age and had not grown at all, a buyer appeared. He was very tall and thin as a length of paper. His skin and cloaks were the color of the moon -- not the romantic, lover’s moon, but the true lunar geography I had heard whispered by Sun-and-Moon Nurians come to buy glass for their strange sky-spying tools: grey and pockmarked, full of secret craters, frigid peaks, and blasted expanses. His eyes had no color in them save for a pinpoint pupil like a spindle’s wound -- the rest was pure, milky white. He passed three solid gold pieces over my mother’s palm, and she shuddered in revulsion at his touch when the money changed hands. She handed me over eagerly, examining the coins like a fat pig snuffling at its supper slop. From then on I belonged to the Man Dressed in the Moon, and my mother, no doubt, got a fine dun cow or pair of oxen out of the bargain.

The Man Dressed in the Moon held me gently in his hand as we navigated the market towards his house. His skin was cool and dry; it smelled of leather and gardenias. When we reached his doorstep, I noted that the house was colored exactly as his clothes were: grey and blistered with depressions, as though some celestial grapeshot had been fired at the façade. The door was no more than a blasted hole covered in oilcloth, and there was another smells blowing through it as we passed through, a whisper of ice and withered flesh.

The Man Dressed in the Moon set me upon a smooth tabletop in his study and peered at my tiny eyes.

"Well, young man," he said, his voice rolling like boulders down a lunar cliffside, "I know you can speak, so let us dispense with the coy little game where I pretend I do not know your worth, and you pretend that you are not glad to be rid of your family."

I shrugged amiably.

"I do not find it useful to have a homunculus about the house -- I manage to keep it clean enough, and I do not have troublesome relations to spy upon, lest they make off with my wealth. But I do find your stature valuable -- it is new, I have not seen such a thing before. Bodies are a specialty of mine. How would you like to get out of yours?"

I looked down at my hands, no bigger than acorns, my delicate fairy-feet, my tiny body which would never be able to walk through a street without danger of being gobbled up by a passing sparrow. "Such a thing cannot be, sir, much as I might wish it could."

For the first time the Man Dressed in the Moon smiled, and his face opened up like a pomegranate cracking. "On the contrary, my diminutive friend. And call me Father. I think that’s best, considering, don’t you?"

He gathered me into his cool, colorless palm again and together we passed through a thick door and down a long, winding staircase with doubled over and back upon itself, so that it seemed to ascend and descend at the same time. I could not tell where we were, except that the walls became rocky and damp, and I had the sense of being very deep underground. Finally, we emerged into a room filled with people of all shapes, sexes, and descriptions. They were leaned against the walls like rolls of carpet, blonde maiden against grey-haired grandfather against sweet-skinned child. In and among the human beauties were strange creatures; basilisks and leucrotta and monopods with their one huge, twisted foot jutting awkwardly into the freezing air -- for the room was chill as a witch’s heart, and frost spackled the ceiling. Their eyes were serenely shut.

The Man Dressed in the Moon gestured expansively at his collection.  "Choose! Every possible combination of features is represented here -- will you have breasts or a beard? Will you have the dark skin of an Eastern prince? Will you have a child’s slender arms? All you must do is give up that wretched little form and I will dress you in a new one, sewn up as tightly as a bride’s bodice! It is no more effort to me than shifting a lamp from one table to another. We must simply kill you, snuff out your little breath, and all will be well. Let me tell you how it is done..."