Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (15 page)

“We’re looking for a manga dealer,” I yelled
back. “And Captain Jack Sparrow.”

Even with Diz’s height, which gives him an
advantage in a crowd, it took us nearly two hours to find the right
dealer. I recognized the shelves of manga and the wall of flat
stuffed toys from my vision.

I also recognized the strawberry blonde with
the droopy headband ears. She was dressed in a white pinafore that
could have doubled for lingerie, and her hair hung straight past
the bottom of her dress. She was with a guy doing a pretty good
imitation of Johnny Depp’s character in the
Pirates of the
Caribbean
movies.

Diz and I got to the booth just as the girl
grabbed the little white ceramic cat. I’d witnessed some frenzied
shopping in the dealer room, and I wasn’t about to come this far
only to lose the figurine to the anime version of Little Bo
Peep.

“Stop right there!” I yelled at her.

I must have startled her because she let go
of the ceramic cat like it was a hot potato.

Elves move fast. I’ve always known that, but
Diz surprised even me this time. One moment he was standing
alongside me, and the next he was on his back on the floor at the
girl’s feet. He caught the figurine before it hit the concrete.

“Outstanding!” the Captain Jack cosplayer
said. “I believe I have a spot for you on my crew. Do you like
rum?”

A short, rotund man with a dealer badge
clipped to his shirt bustled up to Diz. “See here, you. Give that
back. It’s not for sale.” He glared at the girl with the headband
ears. “It’s not for sale. Didn’t you see the sign?”

Sure enough. The figurine had a “Display
Only” sign taped to the front.

By the time Diz got up off the floor, still
holding the figurine, Little Bo Peep and Captain Jack were gone. At
least we wouldn’t have to fight them for the figurine.

The dealer was another story. He held out his
hand to Diz. “I believe that’s mine.”

Diz ignored him. “This is the right one,” Diz
said to me.

“How can you tell?” Three more white ceramic
cat figurines crowded the wire shelf where this one had been. Other
than the “Display Only” sign, all the figurines looked
identical.

Diz made a fist with his other hand. That was
the signal he used when he sensed magical energy but didn’t want to
say so out loud. The first figurine we’d found had no magical
energy at all.

I turned toward the rotund man. “Why isn’t
this one for sale?”

He glared at Diz, but the glare didn’t last
long. He clearly wanted the figurine back, but like a good many
criminals before him, he decided he’d have better luck with me.

“It’s our display piece,” he said.

“It looks just like the rest of them.”

“It’s the first one. It’s our good luck
charm.”

I gestured toward the shelf, about to point
out that he had three other good luck charms.

Only now four white ceramic cat figurines
crowded the shelf, all identical.

I raised an eyebrow at Diz, and he nodded.
He’d seen the same thing. “It replicates itself when it feels
threatened,” he said.

The flight-or-fight sensation I’d felt when
my vision put me inside the ceramic cat, that was right before the
figurine used its magic. One way for something to hide in plain
sight, especially when that something couldn’t move on its own, was
to surround itself with a whole bunch of somethings that looked the
same. I guess I knew now where the first replica we’d found had
come from. This poor little inanimate ceramic cat must have felt
seriously threatened when Customs opened its box.

Or was it so inanimate? I’d never heard of an
object that could use magic on its own.

I took a stab in the dark. “You know,” I said
to the dealer. “It’s illegal to trap a magical being inside an
inanimate object. The penalties for things like that are pretty
severe. Am I right?” I said to Diz.

“Severe,” he said, cranking up the wattage on
his glower.

The color drained out of the dealer’s
face.

“I wouldn’t want you—” I began, but I was
interrupted by another guy with a dealer badge who’d just worked
his way through the crowd.

“What’s up, Harry?” he asked the guy I was
grilling.

I turned to glare at the intruder and found
myself face to face with the owner of the comic book store.

Hadn’t even opened the package, my ass. More
like found the goose that laid the golden egg.

“Hi, there,” I said. “Remember me? I was just
discussing with Harry here the penalties for trapping someone
magical inside a figurine.”

“They’re severe,” Diz said, right on cue.

The guy didn’t even try to bluster his way
out. “Take it,” he said. “No charge.” He snatched a stuffed toy off
the display and thrust it at me. “In fact, take this, too. You see
anything else you’d like? I got the latest compendium of
The
Walking Dead
. You can have it, my compliments.”

What was it with zombies? Maybe I should
catch up with the rest of the world. After all, my nights weren’t
exactly booked solid.

“We’ll let you off with a warning,” Diz said.
“This time.” He arched an eyebrow, and damn if he didn’t look like
The Rock, only with much more hair. “Don’t do it again.”

He grabbed my elbow and steered me away from
the booth before the owner could hand me anything else or wake up
to the fact that we weren’t undercover cops.

We made it out of the convention with only
three more people asking Diz for his picture. When he got outside,
the first thing he did was unclip the badge from his shirt and drop
it in the trash.

So much for my partner’s first foray into
cosplay. Diz still held the little ceramic cat carefully against
his chest, pretty much the same way I held the felt toy. I hoped my
cat would like it. If I brought home one more strange thing she
didn’t like, I might find myself sleeping in my office along with
Dog.

***

My cat loved the felt toy. In fact, I don’t
think she’s stopped grooming it. I’m not sure all’s forgiven, but
it’s a start.

The little fairy forgave us, too. I’ve never
seen anyone so happy to get a little ceramic cat in my life. Joy
radiated from every inch of her, her happiness so bright that it
lit up the inside of Mrs. Takahashi’s store and turned the fairy’s
hair golden blonde. The fairy even cast a spell that removed every
last granule of sand from my hair.

The rest of what happened with the fairy and
the figurine I didn’t witness, but I’m a decent detective and it
was pretty easy to make an educated guess. The next morning when I
stopped by Mrs. Takahashi’s store for my sweet bean roll fix, I
noticed that the case that held the ball-joint dolls was unlocked.
Other than a little dust at the bottom, the case was empty.

“You sold them?” I asked Mrs. Takahashi as I
handed her money for the roll. “
All
of them?”

She smiled at me in her normally reserved
way. “They have found a home,” she said.

“
All
of them? The same home?” I had a
hard time imagining someone spending that kind of money on
dolls.

Her dark eyes twinkled. “Every being has a
home. Some, like your dog, find it on their own. Others need a
little help.” She placed the money I’d given her for the roll back
in my hand and closed my fingers over it. “Thank you for
yours.”

It took me a moment, but I got it.

The dust at the bottom of the case was all
that remained of the ceramic cat figurine—and the ball-joint
dolls—that had housed the beings held inside each of them. The
ceramic figurine hadn’t been a prison. It had been a shipping
container, just like the dolls—a way for the rest of the fairy’s
family and their pet to leave Japan. The pet inside the ceramic cat
had been the last one to make the journey, and, more than likely,
the fairy needed the pet’s magic in order to work the spell to
release the rest of her family from the dolls. Just like the being
inside the ceramic cat had hidden in plain sight by replicating
itself when it felt threatened, Mrs. Takahashi had hidden the dolls
in plain sight in her store by putting them up for sale but pricing
them so high that no one—especially no one in our
neighborhood—could afford them.

I left her store smiling to myself. Sure, the
fairies and Mrs. Takahashi had broken a bunch of immigration laws,
but I wasn’t with the cops anymore. Things weren’t black and white
in my world these days. I might be terminally single, but I’d
helped reunite a family, and that was pretty darn cool. It didn’t
improve my love life, but I had a fresh bean roll, a kinda-magical
dog, and my cat didn’t hate me anymore. Right now, in this moment,
life was good.

What do you know. Maybe I’d finally figured
out Zen after all.

Introduction to “That Lost
Riddle”

USA Today
bestselling writer Dean Wesley
Smith pens several short story series. By far, the most popular
series is Poker Boy. These standalone short stories rely on his
offbeat writing skills (there is a Planet Dean as well as a Planet
Ray) and his years as a professional card player. In the next six
months, he will publish three Poker Boy collections. He’s currently
finishing the first Poker Boy novel,
The Slots of
Saturn
.

In addition to the Poker Boy stories, he has
published more than a hundred novels under different names, and
hundreds of short stories.

About Poker Boy, he writes, “One day, a
decade or more ago, while I was sitting at a poker table, a guy who
couldn’t play a lick of poker and who was losing a lot of money to
me and the others at the table, complained that the poker gods
weren’t watching out over him. I started wondering what the
gambling gods would actually be like. So I tried to imagine if I
woke up one day to discover I was a brand new superhero working for
the God of Poker who worked directly for Lady Luck. Thirty or more
Poker Boy stories later, I now have Poker Boy and his sidekick and
girlfriend, Patty Ledgerwood, still
saving the world, doing
favors for Lady Luck, and generally having a great time.”

That Lost Riddle

Dean Wesley Smith

Out of thin air I heard Stan, the God of
Poker say, “Knock, knock.”

It wasn’t a bad joke. It was how he asked to
come into my private doublewide trailer up in the woods in Oregon.
It seems that when Stan teleported, he couldn’t just drop in
outside and then use the door to actually knock on. But he was a
God, and my boss, so I supposed he could do just about anything he
wanted, even make bad “knock-knock” sounds in thin air in my living
room. I was only Poker Boy, a lowly superhero. Not much I could say
about it.

I pushed aside the cold fried chicken I had
been eating while sitting on my old green couch and watching the
evening news out of Portland. “Come on down.”

Stan appeared beside my couch and glanced
around, shaking his head. He always did that when he came here. He
just didn’t understand why someone with as much money as I had (and
as many superpowers) would keep an old, 1970s-furnished doublewide
trailer in the Oregon Coastal Mountains, even if it was within a
half mile of a casino.

It was the green couch and chair and shag
carpet that did it for most people, not counting the fake wood
paneling on the wall. I figured if I waited long enough the styles
would come around.

The last time Stan had come here he suggested
I put a felt painting of dogs playing poker on the wall. I was
considering it.

My girlfriend and sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood,
aka Front Desk Girl, couldn’t figure out why I liked this place
either, now that she knew how much money I really did have. I
discovered I had a vast amount when Patty made me go through it and
lay it all out for her. I hadn’t bothered to total it in a decade.
I just kept adding to it.

Even though I could afford a couple dozen
mansions, I liked this old place, even though Patty said it smelled
of faint mold and pine trees. It reminded me of my early days as a
poker player and superhero. The old furniture and funky smell sort
of kept me grounded. I said that to Patty once and she just shook
her head and muttered something about how the place kept me
actually in the dirt.

Needless to say, we spent most nights in her
wonderful and very large apartment in Las Vegas, furnished with the
best and most modern furniture, thick carpet, and views of Las
Vegas that were tough to beat.

I usually only came up here while she was
working and I was waiting for a tournament to start. Instantly
jumping from Las Vegas to the mountains of Oregon was one of the
many advantages of being able to teleport.

Stan didn’t say anything after his disgusted
look at my place. He was wearing his standard tan sweater, tan
slacks, and loafers. He looked so nondescript, he could blend in
anywhere and no one would notice him. I had a hunch if he stood in
my trailer long enough, his sweater and slacks would turn 1970s
green.

I took one more bite of the cold chicken leg,
then stood and headed for the coat hanger beside the front door to
get my black leather coat and black fedora-like hat. They were my
superhero uniform that helped make me Poker Boy.

Stan only came here to get me when something
was going wrong somewhere. Never a good sign. So the coat and hat
were going to be needed for something very soon.

“So where to?” I asked as I slipped on my
coat.

“You look like you need a drink,” he
said.

“What?” He knew I didn’t drink. Never had and
I sure couldn’t see myself starting now.

I was about to say something about going back
to my chicken and news when Stan jumped us to position beside a
large white-marble pillar with people walking by. There were slot
machines and a nearby restaurant. I could feel the power from the
casino around us flowing into me.