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Twice a Year

Esther M. Friesner

Esther M. Friesner is the author of thirty-three novels and over one hundred fifty short stories and other works. She won the Nebula Award twice as well as the Skylark and the Romantic Times Award. Best known for creating and editing the wildly popular Chicks In Chainmail anthology series (Baen Books), recent publications include the Young Adult novels Temping Fate, Nobody's Princess, and Nobody's Prize. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, is the mother of two grown children, and harbors cats.

 

It hadn't been the best of days. Come to think of it, as far as Lois' professional life was concerned there were no best of days. She knew that when she'd decided to go into the glamorous (snicker) and high-paying (bwahahaha!) field of dental hygiene, it was tantamount to telling the world, "Why yes, I would like to be the second-most-dreaded health professional on earth! And making small children cringe at no additional charge? Bonus!" No sane person ever wanted to visit the dentist, and the prospect of seeing the dental hygienist for the recommended twice-yearly check-up and cleaning was only slightly less appalling.

As if I were the one to blame for their oral hygiene problems! Lois thought as she finished tidying up her work station. Is it my fault their teeth look like prairie dog towns? Never mind that the closest that most of our patients come to using a strand of dental floss is chomping on a licorice whip. She channeled her frustration into scrubbing out the spit-sink until it had a blinding gleam.

She had just double-double checked the equipment and was about to go home when Bonnie the receptionist came in. She was a pretty, red-haired local girl whose present expression was the embodiment of Please Don't Shoot the Messenger.

"All right, Bonnie, what don't you want to tell me?" Lois kept her tone calm—Bonnie looked upset enough already—but she could feel her fingernails digging deep into her palms in anticipation of whatever stomach-churning information the receptionist was about to impart.

"Um, Lois, there was a complaint about you today. A big one."

"Who from? I had appointments with four screaming kids, but they're my regular screamers. Besides, I know their moms." No big surprise in a town as small as Sea Meadows, Lois thought. We're a flyspeck on the Connecticut shoreline, and from the looks of this place, that fly needs to eat more fiber.

"It wasn't any of them," Bonnie said. "It was—"

"Wait! Don't take all the fun out of it." Lois held up her hand. "Was it my three o'clock? Mr. Baxter the Nervous Talker? Yak, yak, yak, all the way through his cleaning! Was he mad that I didn't sufficiently appreciate his brilliant conversation because I was busy trying not to stab him in the tongue?"

Bonnie shook her head. "It was the man who came in to see you at noon, remember him? Another new patient, blue eyes, silver hair, about six-foot-eight. He looked like a cross between Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney."

"I think a match like that might still be illegal in Connecticut. Bonnie, dear, if you're going to drool like that, don't do it in the spit-sink; I just cleaned it."

The receptionist blushed and spoke on quickly: "His name's Dylan Shoreham and when he left the office, he told me to let you know he was going to send a letter of complaint about you to Dr. Petersen."

"Did he happen to mention what he's going to complain about?"

"He said that the whole time you were cleaning his teeth, you wouldn't stop trying to sell him a valentine." Bonnie managed to look both perplexed and apologetic as she added: "Even if he does send that letter, Dr. Petersen's just going to throw it out because he'd never believe it. I mean, he knows you better than that. You've been working here since . . . forever."

"That's right, forever," Lois echoed, taking the word for a drive down Irony Lane. "I still remember my first day on the job. I told those silly dinosaurs that if they didn't floss, they were going to be in big trouble, but would they listen?"

A fresh blush brought Bonnie's skin tone into close competition with her hair color. "I only meant that Dr. Petersen would never believe you'd do something so unprofessional. And on top of that, trying to sell someone a valentine? In June? That's crazy."

"It certainly is," Lois agreed. But she was not smiling. I didn't have a noon appointment. I was out of the office for lunch today. So he's back again, with all of his stolen magic—my magic! Twice a year, like clockwork, and every time he finds a different, more obnoxious way to send me his challenge. He thinks he's so clever! But clever or not, he is serious. I'd better see to this at once. With Bonnie at her heels, she went to the coat closet and put on the windbreaker she kept there in case of sudden downpours. The day was warm and sunny, but her action had nothing to do with weather. She needed pockets.

"Well, I just wanted you to know what was going on, so if Dr. Petersen mentions it, you won't be taken by surprise," Bonnie said. "But what's the worst that can happen? Dr. Petersen would never fire you."

"I should hope not," Lois replied with a smile. Casually she scooped a couple of toothbrushes and a spool of dental floss from the basket on the receptionist's desk and stuffed them into her left pocket. Then she picked up Bonnie's While You Were Out message pad and a pen. Fixing the girl with a hard stare, she spoke four words sotto voce and drew an emphatic line through the word While.

Bonnie's head dropped forward onto her chest, her breath the breath of deep sleepers. Lois grabbed her before she could hit the floor, taking the opportunity to whisper in the sleeper's ear, "There was no patient here today named Dylan Shoreham." She then dragged the girl's limp body back to her desk and made the necessary changes to the office records before shredding the altered While You Were Out slip.

"Huh?" Bonnie snapped awake, confused.

"You have a good day too, dear," Lois said sweetly. "See you tomorrow." She turned on her heel and was out of the office before Bonnie could reply.

Lois crossed the parking lot, making for her car at a pace that was only a half-step below a full-out sprint. She had just clicked her seatbelt closed and was reaching for the ignition with her key when all of her haste was brought to a screeching halt by a female voice shrilling her name.

"Lois, dear! Yoo-hoo!" A tall, pudgy woman in a red sundress toddled up on a pair of wedgie sandals so high, they made her look like a candied apple on a stick.

"Yoo-hoo"? Lois thought as her unwelcome assailant hooked scarlet acrylic claws onto the driver's side rear view mirror. Who says "yoo-hoo" any more? Are we living in a back issue of Archie comics? Aloud she said, "Oh, hello, Emily, so nice to see you, I was just leaving."

"But you can't!" Emily protested in a voice that could have annoyed fingernails on a blackboard. "This is the only time I've got free to talk to you!"

Lois kept her face expressionless. It was useless to protest that her own free time did not coincide with Emily's. The whiny wench viewed other people as 24-hour convenience stores. Trying to make her see that you had a non-Emily-related life was like punching rice pudding: Messy, frustrating, and futile. You accomplished nothing and wound up with raisins between your knuckles.

"Yes, Emily, what can I do for you?" Lois asked wearily.

"You have got to show me those adorable valentines of yours again, right this very minute!" Emily chirped. "I think I've finally decide on which one I want to buy."

"I'd love to, but I don't have any with me."

"Oh, don't be silly, of course you do!" Emily giggled in a manner that would have been inappropriately kittenish even for an anime schoolgirl. "You always keep them in the trunk of your car. You said so."

Dammit, when did I ever tell her that? Lois wondered. Not that it's untrue—I always keep everything in there. "I'm sorry, but I took them out of the trunk last night. I wanted to rearrange the showcases."

"Then let's go to your house." Emily had the persistence of a famished leech.

"I'm not going home right now. How about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's awful for me!"

"The day after?"

"Nooooooo!" Emily whimpered. "Lois, please, please, please, you have got to let me see those valentines today! I absolutely, completely, totally have to buy one right this very instant! I swear to God, if you do this for me, I will buy two of them. Honest!"

Mentally, Lois counted to ten. She knew how this was going to go: She'd cave in to Emily's dogged pushiness and "discover" that she did have the valentines in the trunk. She'd show them to her avid customer, who would take a good fifteen minutes or more poring over the contents of the showcases before announcing that golly, no, she wasn't going to buy one—let alone two—after all.

Oh, heck, it's called the inevitable for a reason. Might as well get it over with.

"You know, Emily, on second thought, maybe I did put the cases back in the car after I rearranged the valentines. Let me check." Lois got out and popped the trunk.

And there they were. Of course they were. Whenever Lois wanted to lay hands on any one of her personal possessions, all she had to do was reach into her car trunk and voilá! Or in more modern parlance, whoomp, there it was, thanks to the portal spell Lois had placed on said car trunk back in the days when it was still the bed of a horse-drawn wagon and Sea Meadows was a huddle of marshland huts filled with religious fanatic rejects from the Massachusetts settlements.

Inside the trunk was a stack of black velvet-lined showcases of the sort used to show off fine jewelry. Inside all was an assortment of small, glass-topped octagonal wooden boxes and within these . . . a feast of wonders. Each eight-sided box contained a marvel of meticulous art to rival the jeweled splendor of a butterfly's wings: an intricate pattern of breathtaking complexity and astonishing beauty, picked out in a delicate palette of seashells. Every one was a masterpiece. Lois couldn't help smiling when she looked at them, even though she'd known each from the time when it was nothing more than an empty container, a mixed heap of shells laid out on her dining room table, and a handy bottle of glue.

Valentines, she mused. When most people hear that word, they think of the holiday hype. I would happily lay a thousand year curse on the greeting card industry for turning something as wonderful as love into a joyless obligation.

Lois' creations had nothing to do with the dire and daunting Obligatory Displays of Mercantile Affection crammed down the public's throat every February 14, and yet they were valentines: Sailors' valentines. In the nineteenth century, they'd been crafted by the natives of Barbados and sold to English and American sailors making port on their homeward voyages and seeking gifts for their wives and sweethearts.

Lois remembered the first one she'd ever seen. It was a gift of the heart from her husband, a laughing young man named Tommy Meigs, who didn't care a fig for all the gossip that called his darling a witch. I wish you were a witch, he'd said, lifting her off her feet and swinging her around light as a puff of apple blossom. You could use your magic to keep me safe on every voyage, and to help me make my fortune!

She tried to tell him that magic was no laughing matter. She tried proving that her own powers, though limited, were no joke. She was no grand sorceress in the style of Circe, no all-powerful enchantress who could rule storms and summon lightning or dead calms on a whim. She was, in fact, a very modest, domestic sort of witch, more likely to make a good cup of tea than a gruesome cauldron of potion. Her powers were circumscribed by and confined to the realm of a single Law of Spellcraft:

As Above, So Below.

Lois laid out her showcased stock of sailors' valentines in the otherwise empty trunk, took a step back, and waved one hand over them. "Well, Emily? See something you like?" She couldn't help feeling a surge of pride as the other woman studied her handiwork. (And the sailors' valentines were her handiwork, quite literally. She had not used any smidge of her power in their creation. Even a witch needed a hobby.)

"Ooooh," said Emily. She gazed at those gems, those delights, those bits of poetry captured in snail whorls, cats-paw scallops, mussels like purple wings, heart-shaped cockles, and took a deep breath. "So you'll give me a good discount if I buy two, right?" she chirped. She proceeded to make Lois an offer that would have been lowball for a chipped conch shell from a Key West discount bin.

"Emily, that's nowhere near the price I charge for one. I told you, each of these is hand-made. It takes me a long time to put them together. The work is painstaking."

"My goodness, just listen to you, Lois! For someone who didn't want to take the time to show me these boxes, you certainly turn on the hard sell as soon as we start talking money. That's okay, I can play your game." She upped her opening bid by a dollar and declared, "Take it or leave it."

"Good idea," Lois replied. She began to lower the car trunk lid.

"What do you think you're doing?" Emily squealed, grabbing her wrist.

"Leaving it," Lois answered, shaking free.

"But you can't! I want to buy one! Where do you have to be that's so important you can't take the time to—?"

Lois closed her eyes. She knew Emily all too well from the eternally interwoven strands of suburban life in Sea Meadows. The woman could and would natter on, ad infinitum, until she wore down her chosen target to a nub of compliance. Or, if the target in question continued to resist her persistent whining, Emily would switch gears and turn the foolish upstart into fodder for some of the meanest, dirtiest, most artful character assassination imaginable. The thing about suburban gossip was that it did not need to be true to survive and spread; it only had to be entertaining. Anything to distract the listeners from the fact that they were living in a town where the biggest thrill on tap was betting on senior prom pregnancies.

Lois didn't mind what people said about her, but she did mind anything that got her noticed too much. Sea Meadows was more than her home, it was hers, and she was here to stay. Centuries ago, the New World Witchly Council assigned each magical emigrant to America a generous patch of land to call her own. Witches could be more territorial than cats, except that when they felt threatened, they marked their turf by spraying it with destructive magic. Nothing got the smell out.

The Council's way of preventing such cataclysmic spats among its members was practical, but far from perfect. To keep things fair, the witches' designated areas were assigned by lot. If a witch didn't like where she was sent, she could ask for a change, but the Council was notoriously slow to review and act on appeals. Their motto was: "Bloom Where You Are Planted. Or Don't. See If We Care."

Being stuck in Sea Meadows for over three hundred years and the foreseeable future was hard enough. It was no picnic having to fake her own death periodically (and show up as her own heir afterwards) to maintain appearances. The effort of casting the spells to affect the minds and memories of an entire town—plus those of anyone of her acquaintance residing in the neighboring communities—always gave her raging migraines for two weeks. She did not need people paying attention to why her "distant cousin from Nebraska" looked exactly like her recently "deceased" incarnation.

She did not need Emily making trouble.

Lois reached into the darkest recess of the trunk and a large clamshell was in her hand. It was a perfect specimen, upper and lower halves of the deceased bivalve intact and still hinged together. She held it up, wide open, in Emily's startled face and muttered, "As above, so below." Then she shut it with a resounding clack!

Emily's jabbering mouth did not go clack! when it shut, but it did make a satisfying sound of teeth coming together so hard that someone wearing cheaper dental caps might've chipped a porcelain-clad incisor. While Emily remained stunned by what had just happened, Lois' hand dipped into the trunk yet again and retrieved an old-fashioned school slate. "As above, so below," she breathed over the dusty black surface as she drew a quick cartoon of Emily, complete with bubbly thought-balloon. The balloon held a very basic sketch of a sailor's valentine—just the eight-sided outline was enough for Lois' symbol-driven magic to work—but not for long. As soon as she drew it, Lois wet one fingertip and erased the small chalk octagon, leaving Emily's image with nothing on her mind at all.

As above, so below . . .

"Um . . . Was there something you wanted to ask me, Lois?" Emily said, tilting her head to one side. Her face wore the clueless expression of a five-week-old kitten, with none of the charm.

"Just if you'd made your next appointment with Dr. Petersen," Lois said smoothly as she tossed the slate and the clamshell back into the contained oblivion of her car trunk before closing the lid.

Free at last, she floored the gas pedal and tore through town, headed for one of Sea Meadows' many beach access roads. The path she chose was a narrow street with barely room for two cars to shoulder past one another. In the old days it had been the route by which Goodman Harney had taken his seven children into the marshes to hunt waterfowl. In those days, Sea Meadows was more sea than meadow—poor for farming, worse for animal husbandry, useless as a trade port. The settlers would have upped stakes and moved if they'd had the wherewithal to go somewhere better. But no one did, and some were so cursed stubborn they wouldn't have left their original homesteads even if that were possible.

It took a powerful heap of duck and gooseflesh to keep the Harney brood fed, and Lois still recalled the heartbreak of seeing the little ones grow thinner and thinner in years when the flocks proved smarter than their father. She remembered thinking: Children shouldn't have to bet their lives on just one flimsy source of food. If we could measure this town by acres instead of gallons, they'd thrive! We should open a route to the world's riches, for their sake.

And soon enough, the afterthought: I wonder if I could do that? Shortly thereafter—once Lois got her hands on a big sponge and basin of sand and water—the residents of Sea Meadows woke up to find the marshes beaten back to a reasonable size, the waterfowl and other wildlife happy enough in their more compact quarters, and themselves the masters of a fine port and some of the best arable land in Connecticut.

The narrow street ended at a low stone wall overrun with beach roses. On the other side was a wide, clean stretch of pure white sand. Beyond that, the gentle waves of Long Island Sound had lapped the shoreline.

Except the sand was no longer white, no longer there. In its place, a shimmer of brackish water sloshed against the stone wall again and again, with the dull persistence of a trapped housefly banging its head against a closed window. The tame wavelets too had changed. In their place, slow, towering combers lifted their frothy heads high out of the sea and came crashing down on the now-nonexistent beach.

Lois popped the trunk and plucked something out of the depths, something small enough to fit comfortably in her closed hand. She knew this day would come—it came every six months, after all—and she was ready. She stowed the object in the right-hand pocket of her windbreaker, leaving the floss and toothbrushes in the left one. Then she climbed onto the wall and took the lay of the mostly vanished land.

A strand of luxurious houses ran all along the shore in either direction, high-priced seaside abodes for those rich enough to pay for the privilege of ocean views, either year-round or just for the summer. The swelling sea had already engulfed some of these well over foundation level, and it was creeping up the first story even as Lois watched. The people inside the houses seemed indifferent to the fact that their property was slowly being flooded, but even stranger was the sight of pedestrians and cars caught up in the inundation. They went on their way as if the chest-high waters didn't exist.

Which they don't, Lois reminded herself. Right now, they're no more than illusions for my benefit; him, flinging the usual gauntlet in my face. She pressed her lips together, well aware from past experience of how quickly illusion could become actuality, if she let it. All it will take is for me to fail and the waters will be real. She shook her head. So I can't fail. Reality is not an option.

As ill-omened as the drenched vistas to left and right were, she had to admit that the encroaching water was an impressive sight. But it wasn't a patch on the spectacle that was straight ahead, at a place in the heart of the rearing, tumbling waves, the very spot where, three hundred years ago, a young witch had cast her greatest spell on a huge stretch of sodden marshland.

On a throne of living harbor seals, a crown of starfish on his waterfall of silver hair, his right hand holding a narwhal's twisted tusk and his left resting on the head of an extremely cranky-looking walrus, the man who had caused Bonnie such erotic upheaval sat grinning.

"Mr. Shoreham, I presume?" Lois remarked coolly.

"Dylan Shoreham. I hope you appreciate the art behind the name?"

"Well, 'Shoreham's' painfully obvious, but Dylan— It means 'son of the sea,' doesn't it?"

He blinked those enchanting blue eyes in surprise. "How did you know?"

"I'm immortal unless someone kills me. That gives me a little extra time for reading." Her sarcasm was as pointed as the walrus' massive tusks. "I only regret I didn't use more of it to read your character. Or lack of any."

The being who named himself Dylan Shoreham laughed. "Still so bitter about my little dabblings in . . . self-improvement? I'd think you'd appreciate it. I only did it so that I could spend more time with you."

"Bullshit, Tommy Meigs!" Lois spat her former husband's true name back in his face with all the force she could muster. "You did it for yourself—first, last and always."

"Now how can you say that when you know I keep coming back to you time and again?" the metamorphosed mortal asked, his expression pleading and pathetic.

Pleading, pathetic, and not convincing to the woman who'd spent better than two hundred years dealing with the after-effects of her marriage. "It's not me you keep coming back for, Tommy," she said. "It's the land. The Council won't give you any territory of your own because you thieved your witchcraft from me. You couldn't fight the Council—none of us can—but you learned that though they control the land, they've no say over the sea! So you return here, time after time, to try using your stolen powers to help you steal even more. You want Sea Meadows to become your own private underwater kingdom, and to hell with the people who live here!"

"How can you doubt my devotion so cruelly, sweeting?" Tommy responded, but his mask of sincerity slipped just a mite. "It's what led me to wed you even when my friends warned me you were a witch."

"I wish they'd warned me about you," Lois countered. "I should never have left you alone in the house between your voyages. And if I did, I should've locked up my Craftbook. Children, dogs and husbands always get into things they're not supposed to."

Tommy leaped off his living throne and the seals scattered. He strode through the swelling breakers, naked except for a scanty draping of seaweed. The walrus galumphed along at his heels like an oversized bulldog. "At least I never lied when I swore I loved you!" he declared, brandishing the narwhal tusk. "But your love for me was only empty words. I'm living proof that your spellcraft had the power to let mortals cheat death, but if I hadn't taken that power for myself, you'd have let me age and die!"

"I would have let you live as you were meant to live," Lois answered. "As a man, not a monster. And don't you point that narwhal tusk at me!"

"Do I look so very monstrous? That red-haired wench didn't think so." A sly leer lifted the corners of his mouth. "Maybe I've been seeking my queen in the wrong places. Will it make you happy if I take that girl for my new bride? At least that way, one of your precious mortals will survive the deluge once I give all this land back to the sea."

Lois raised her closed hand. "You'll have to fight me for that first."

"As always." He made a low, antiquated bow such as he'd first learned in his mortal days when the War of 1812 was a recent memory and the Civil War was a nightmare yet to come. He held the narwhal tusk to his breast as he lowered his head, but with his other hand he made a short, imperious gesture.

The walrus charged.

Lois had expected as much. He wouldn't have brought along a walrus if he didn't intend to use it. Tommy never had been one for successfully playing his cards close to the vest. The only reason he'd gotten away with filching her sorcerous arts was because she'd been half-blinded by love and because the basic Law of Spellcraft she followed was so bloody simple to master, for anyone with the drive and ambition to pursue it.

As Above, So Below. It was the principle behind symbolic magic, the power that underlay the workings of such things as voodoo dolls. Its first manifestation was in cave paintings that showed a successful kill. Just as the images of spears and arrows were shown lodged deep in the quarry, so magic would compel the real weapons of the ancient huntsmen to find their targets.

Now as the enraged pinniped lumbered towards her, bellowing and slashing the air with its tusks, Lois jammed her left hand into the pocket of the windbreaker and pulled out two toothbrushes. Holding her ground atop the wall, she stuck them under her upper lip. "Av avov, vo bewhoa," she said as best she could, then whipped a length of dental floss from the spool, looped it around the first toothbrush, and yanked.

The walrus stopped dead in its tracks, a look of complete bafflement on its bristly face. Its right tusk was gone, as painlessly popped out of its mouth as the toothbrush had left Lois' upper lip. "Baroo?" the creature uttered, turning questioning eyes toward its master.

"Don't just stand there, you waste of blubber, get her!" Tommy boomed.

Obediently, the walrus renewed its charge, only to have Lois repeat her symbolic spellcraft on its other tusk. Bereft, the beast gave Tommy a look that as good as said Dude! This is so not worth it! and beat flippers into the sea.

"Damn it, woman, how did you know I'd be packing a walrus?" the would-be sea king demanded. "How did you know to bring the right weapons to overcome him?"

"I didn't," Lois replied. "I could have used those toothbrushes against anything you threw my way. They're remarkably versatile props for symbolic magic, and a good witch's best asset is her imagination. On the other hand—" She reached into her right pocket and drew out the object she'd taken from the car trunk. "—defeating some foes calls for special preparation."

It was one thing to create an elaborate seashell design in a box, but to do the same with the gutted husk of an antique pocket-watch was little short of a miracle. Yet there it was, in Lois' hand, the old watch framing the same baroque seashell work as in the larger, eight-sided boxes. But such tiny shells! Such intricate patterns, dainty as a spider's smallest web! It was a miniature works of genius, dazzling to the eye.

Tommy Meigs was intrigued. "And what might you have there?"

"Nothing worth much," Lois relied. "Only your heart. As above, so below!" She gave the altered pocket-watch a firm squeeze.

Tommy dropped the narwhal tusk and clapped both hands to his chest. The cry he uttered was more surprise than pain. Lois nodded with satisfaction. "You feel it, Tommy. You know the magic's strong. This watch holds the selfsame pattern as in the sailor's valentine you brought me from Barbados, when your own heart was still true to me. It's taken me months to duplicate, but now it's mine, to have and to hold—or to crush, if that's my will!"

"You wouldn't do that, would you, my angel?" Now Tommy's pathetic, pleading expression was the real item.

She dropped to the landward side of the stone wall and ducked from sight for an instant. When she leaped back up again, she gave him a good view of the big rock she'd chosen. "It would be fair payback, crushing the heart that once broke mine." She raised the lump of stone for an instant, as if about to smash the bespelled watch case, then lowered her hands. "But I won't. I'll only use this to drive you back into the sea!"

"Well, to be honest, you always do wind up driving me back into the sea, one way or the other, every time I try to flood this stupid town. And you always trounce me so thoroughly that it takes half a year before I'm fit to face you again."

Lois rolled her eyes. Was there ever such a man as this? Afraid for his life one moment, forgetting his terror the next, just for the sake of arguing a point with her.

"Yes, and for how many years, now? I wish my patients were as diligent as you about showing up twice a year! I'm tired of your shenanigans, Tommy. Before I emptied this watch of its works, I set the hands ahead so many turns that it will be a hundred years before you can recoup your powers for a return match!"

Tommy's silver brows rose. "You wouldn't."

"After all it took out of me to lift this town out of the marshes? After what you did to betray my trust and steal my spellcraft? After your continual efforts to undo my work not once, but twice every year? After you sicced a walrus on me?" Lois demanded. "You bet your sweet narwhal tusk I would!"

With astonishing speed and with the same dexterity that let her craft such dainty things as sailors' valentines, Lois managed to draw a length of dental floss from the spool in her pocket without losing hold of the rock or the watch-case. Five quick loops, a hasty knot, and rock and watch-case were a single, well-weighted entity.

"As above—!" Lois shouted, flinging her new-made missile well past Tommy's phantom tide, all the way to where the real sea lay. "—so below!" she concluded as it splashed down.

She had a throwing arm that a pro outfielder might envy. Virtual immortality gave a woman plenty of opportunity to build up her biceps. With a dreadful cry, Tommy was yanked backwards, the force of Lois' spell jerking him away to follow his "heart" into the depths. She watched him vanish under the waves, and smiled to see how all of his watery illusions streamed away after him. The beach was back. The upscale seaside homes were unmolested.

She hopped off the wall onto the beach and strolled down to the water, whistling happily. Just one more loose end to tie up in a pretty bow and for the first time in centuries, she'd have a little closure with her ex-husband.

The day was almost done, the sunlight fading, but it didn't take her long to find—or rather summon—what she needed.

 

Dr. Petersen came back to the office that evening in a foul mood. He'd gone home early to celebrate his wedding anniversary, only to discover just before dinner that he'd left his wife's gift at work. He intended to get in, grab it, and get out. He was in such a hurry that he almost didn't notice the light on in one of the treatment rooms. And why would he? He was annoyed, distracted, and he wasn't expecting anyone else to be there.

"What the—?" he began, jaw dropping when he saw the unscheduled patient his hygienist had in the chair.

Lois was prepared for this. "As above, so below," she muttered, turning from her work to pop one of Dr. Petersen's business cards into the small beer cooler at her feet. She'd stocked it with enough ice to last for the duration of her admittedly short and off-the-books appointment, just in case. As soon as the card—bearing Dr. Petersen's smiling photograph—hit the plastic bags of frozen cubes, the dentist himself froze where he stood. Lois only paused long enough to draw his caricature on her memory-wiping slate for later. Then she returned her attention to the patient.

"Now stop fussing and flopping around, you big baby," she directed. "This isn't going to hurt a bit. Really. Dental hygienist's honor." So saying, she picked up a large potato from the equipment tray and stuck a pair of toothpicks into the end where she'd drawn a round, small-eyed, nobly whiskered face. "As above, so below!"

"Ba-ROOO?" exclaimed the patient as the witch's magic did its work of restoring what he'd lost in their brief battle.

"And spit."

Once more the possessor of as fine a pair of tusks as anyone might care to see, south of the Arctic Circle, the walrus spat.

 

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