Photo credit: Charles Carvalho via Google Photosphere
I shadowed Zaooli to incense-hazed coffeehouses, brightly-tarpaulined markets, elite pleasure gardens. Rumor claimed he’d unearthed a city of silver. I learned nothing.
Despairing, I befriended him. One night, loosened by drink and darkness, my queries spawned conspiratorial hints. On a country lane, Zaooli waved aside a curtain of mist…
The silver-paved street, bordered by stately statues, led to a shining palace. A giant iguana with onyx eyes asked, “What is value?”
The magical gatekeeper’s questions, of course. I pondered. We discussed philosophy, wealth, and meaning for hours.
I woke to pale daylight and cursed my foolishness. The path was dirt, the statues trees, and the iguana a misshapen log. I’d controlled everything I imbibed. Zaooli must have a mind-mage accomplice, spying on the spy.
He’d be long gone. I rubbed my aching head. A wise man would find easier prey. But he’d tricked me.
Pride conquering wisdom, I set off.
Word count: 150. Written for this week’s What Pegman Saw challenge. Big thanks to Josh and Karen for hosting this wonderful writing prompt, and giving us all something special to look forward to in these otherwise very quiet weekends! This week Pegman takes us to Brasilia, Brazil. Click on the link to see what sights the other participants found and read the stories they inspired — and feel free to write your own story and join in!
I was having a hard time finding a good image to use until I saw this odd-looking log. With my foggy vision these days, it really did look like a giant iguana for a second there. So it was a short hop to a story about someone who’s fallen prey to a magical hallucination spell.
Tales from Eneana 
Love that last line. Recipe for disaster 🙂
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Thanks! And it really is, I agree. It’s pretty bad when you *know* it’s an unwise proposition and you do it anyway.
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Alas, a common human trait, for whatever the reason
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Splendid story. I love the way you weave this world, Joy. The emotions are all too human. Well done.
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Thank you Josh, I’m so glad to hear you think it reads that way. I figure there’s no sense worrying about the readers believing in the magic if they don’t believe in the characters first.
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I can see that iguana! Fabulous take on the prompt – I love how your man was tricked, knew he was tricked but decides to follow them anyway. That’s a real example of hope over experience! Great tale
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Thanks, Lynn, I’m glad you liked it! When I first saw the image I really did think the log was something… an alligator, maybe. But I don’t know whether alligators exist in Eneana, while I do know that iguanas do, so there we have it.
And yes, the very fact that he got tricked by the mind-mage perversely drives him on, to salvage his wounded pride. It was all I could do to resist having him say, “But now it’s personal.” Such a cliche, I know, but it felt so appropriate!
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He needs to be careful of his motivation for carrying on, and whether he’s putting himself in unnecessary danger.
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Oh he is definitely putting himself in unnecessary danger, like an idiot. Pride cometh before a fall, and all that.
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He’ll learn that from painful first hand experience soon enough!
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This was wonderful, Joy! I can just picture the whole scene…
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Thanks Dale! Always good to hear that my words manage to come together to make believable images in a reader’s mind.
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🙂
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Spying on the spy indeed. I love teh images in the first paragraph. They really draw the reader into the story.
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Thank you Alicia — I’m so glad you said that. I had to cut out so much to get it down from the original (more than 250) and I almost cut those descriptions too. But I liked them! Originally it explained more about how the narrator was hiding in the shadows, stalking his target, watching the man spread around his “fresh wealth” at all those places, looking and listening for clues about where and how he’d gotten so rich so quickly.
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Isn’t funny how much we need to cut and how gratifying it is to know we left the perfect words in?
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I’m just happy when the words I left in still make sense, with all those others cut out! 🙂
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Very nice way to use the picture for your story and it seems so believable. It would be like that in a dream, right?
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Thanks for stopping by and for commenting — I’m glad you enjoyed it! Yes, very dream-like. My idea was that the narrator first suspected that he’d been given some hallucinogenic drug in his drink or food, but he’s smarter than that and was being very careful. So it must have been a magical spell cast upon him that had a similar effect. Scary thought!
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RIght?!?! Nowadays with futuristic TV and artificial intelligence, you never know.
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Good point — this could be a similar story as a science fiction tale rather than a fantasy one.
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Definitely
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You’ve constructed this story beautifully. It’s all delightful, but I particularly enjoyed, ‘The magical gatekeeper’s questions, of course.’ This implies so well that your MC was wrong to presume that he knew what was happening. Just brilliant! And I’m really glad you omitted, “But now it’s personal.” You implied it so much more effectively.
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Oh, I’m so glad you picked up that part, thank you! I was trying to show how, like in a dream, you “make sense” of things that are obviously nonsensical in the clear light of day. So I figured he would jump to thinking about that common trope in legends, that there’s a mystical figure guarding a path or bridge or gate and you have to answer their questions before being let through.
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I want this story to go on! It feels like there’s an old feud here, one that’s risen and fallen in turn with each mage. I’d love to see how one outwits the other in another scene. 🙂
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Ooh, interesting idea! I wonder what happens next… I was thinking of this more as the beginning of the feud. That old cliche where the tricked man says gruffly, “Now it’s personal!”
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Hee hee! I’d love if there was a sequel!
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So many lovely lines (my favourite, “Pride conquering wisdom”), and vivid imagery in this, Joy. Fantastic! And that log *does* look very lizard like! 🙂
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Thanks Sammi! I always like to hear what lines stood out for other people. That log was a real find. When I first started doing WPS, I figured it would work because I could always find a generic image of a tree or plain or river, something Eneana-friendly. And sometimes that’s what I resort to. But it’s the images with the interesting unique thing that really spur my creative writing ideas! When I saw this lizard-log, I knew I had to write about it.
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