Overture

Rianna spun the magic of the cantrip intricately, and shimmering specks of light rose up above her outstretched palms, hovering before the wide-eyed children.  "What do you want to see in the lights?" she asked, "a princess saved by a common peasant? Monsters overcome by magic and blades?"

The children clamored and shrieked, while their parents looked on indulgently, but mostly kept themselves occupied in their own discussions at the other end of the hall.  "How about something real?"  one boy asked, scuffing a foot on the floor petulantly, arms akimbo.

"Ah, so you want the magician to show you something real, hmm?" Rianna asked.  "And tales of daring and courage and monsters aren't real?"

"I don't believe in monsters."

Rianna contemplated the lad.  "You've lived all your life here, then-never been with your parents to the borderlands." Her eyes narrowed.  "Very well, then, you shall have your real story.  Believe it if you will."

"Now, some people say that there are no monsters," Rianna whispered to her small audience, which clustered around her knees where she sat.  "Those people are wrong.  A monster lurks in the heart of everyone ever born, but it's up to each of us whether we let it out or not.

 The lights spun faster, and resolved themselves into tiny figures and places.  A keep hall, not unlike the one where they sat now, filled with minstrels and entertainers, performing for the amusement of a lord.  The scene sped inward, the outer edges fading away, until only three figures remained in focus:  an older man and woman, both dressed in sparkling robes, and a young, copper-haired girl.  "And now, in our final act, we will make our daughter disappear, and reappear, without our using a single spell!" the man declaimed.  "Have your court wizards focus their attention on us, m'lord; let them prove to you that my wife and I will use no magic at all!"

The tiny girl vanished, and the wizards appeared, looking baffled and angry.  "They used no magic!"

"It must be a trap door!" 

"But what they didn't know, was that the girl knew a little magic, had been taught it by her parents," Rianna explained.  "One single spell; how to become invisible."

 The girl's figure reappeared, seated in the lord's chair beside him.  "Here you go, m'lord," she said with a smile.  "I think you dropped these."  She took coins out of his ears, and rings out of his goblet."

"A good performance, lass," he told her. "Keep this; you and your parents have earned it."  He handed her a ring.

"But later that night," Rianna continued, "The monsters that lurk in everyone's souls got loose.  The lord was a kind and decent man, and he was murdered in his bed, his keep overrun." 

 The lights flickered uneasily, showing flashes of the scenes-screaming women and children, the flash of blood-smeared swords in the light of flames, the harsh pall of brown smoke as fire consumed everything.

"Is this real enough for you?" she paused and asked the one lad.  "I can show you more, if you like."

He shook his head, as fascinated as any of the rest of the children.

"Well, our friend, the girl, got away.  She'd been overlooked in the confusion, and she used that one single spell of hers to turn invisible, to make sure people would keep overlooking her. She watched as the mercenaries picked through the pockets of the dead, watched as the man who'd hired them took the lord's circlet from his dead hands and placed it on his own head, could only watch.  Because, after all, she was only a little girl; what could she do against a whole army?"

"She could've done  something !" the little boy exploded.

"What?"

"Stabbed the soldiers in their backs, something!"

Rianna shrugged.  "An idea," she admitted.  

 The scene shifted, and they could watch the girl's transparent form as she, with an angry look on her face, lifted a dagger a coin purse off the belt of one of the soldiers.  And food from beside one of the campfires outside the keep.  And then she padded off along the forest road that led away from the keep.

"But that's stealing!" one of the little girls objected.

"Was it wrong of her?"

The little boy replied, rather practically, "No.  She had to stay alive somehow."

Rianna shrugged, and the lights spun faster.  "The girl knew how to get to the next nearest town; her family traveled a lot with other entertainers.  She knew how to make sure no one would steal her money from her, how to look poorer than she was.  But she didn't know where to stay, and wound up sleeping in the streets more nights than not, and the monsters inside other people thought they could take advantage of someone smaller and younger than they were.  So, she spent a lot of time hiding, using that one spell of hers to stay safe.  Until one night, she decided to sleep in a warehouse. . . ."

 The scene went very dark; the pitch-black of the inside of a closed barrel.  The only thing the children could see was the girl's pale form as she stumbled around in that darkness.  Some of them whimpered when they heard the first scraping sound coming out of the darkness.

"Run!" one of the little girls cried out at the illusion, as the figures of several adult men entered the picture.

 But the girl didn't run.  The men looked surprised to find her there, and one looked quite amused when he caught her turning invisible to try to get away, his belt pouch in her small hand.

"They took her in, gave her a home, of sorts," Rianna explained.  "They were a guild, or an association.  They stuck together, and taught her how to steal from people.  How to break into the houses of rich merchants and nobles, and take enough to survive on, but never enough to harm them.  How to be a parasite, a flea, sucking on the blood of a greyhound."

The children shifted uneasily.  They were getting very quiet now.

"One day, though, she almost got caught."

 The girl, older now, sprinted through the early-morning darkness of a city's streets.  Behind her, they could see men with swords and torches-and uniforms-following, gaining on her.  With a tremendous acrobatic leap, the girl vaulted a wall, and fell into the depths of a wagon piled with carpets and blankets and bags.  She pulled herself into a bag, and vanished from the viewers' sight as she cast her single spell once more.

"Where is she?" the guards demanded of someone the children couldn't see.

"I don't know who you're talking about," a cracked, ancient voice replied, and a wizened old man entered the picture.

"A magician!" several of the children whispered, and reflexively made the signs against evil that their parents had used around them.

 The guards left, grumbling.  The magician waited a moment, then opened the exact bag the girl lay huddled in.  "I can see you just fine, child.  Tell me, do you like being a thief?"

"Not exactly."

"You have other talents, my young friend.  Your use of the invisibility spell is actually quite an impressive feat for one so young.  Of course, you do have a little of the look of the Fey Folk to you, so it might well be in your blood."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She fluffed her hair around her ears, and made sure her hat was pulled down firmly on her head.

"Of course now that I've caught you, I could always turn you in to the watch for the reward."

She glanced at him, the quick, assertive look of someone who knew the score.  "Or what? Mind you, if what you want from me is what I think, I'd rather spend the night in the gaol, not that I couldn't break out of it."

He laughed.  "I'd like to teach you, have you as an apprentice.  But you'd have to travel with me to do so; see a bit more of the world than this grimy gutter."

She waited.  "And what exactly would you get out of this?" she asked, her voice wary.

"Companionship.  Someone worth teaching.  Any number of things," he brushed off.  "And I could definitely ensure that they'd be able to see you in that gaol, incidentally," he added.

"Then it would seem I have little choice.  But keep in mind, I have a knife, old man," she replied reluctantly.

"And she's traveled ever since, learning what she can, trying to save other people from the monsters inside others' souls, and sometimes even from their own monsters," Rianna concluded, and the lights vanished.

The children were silent.  "That wasn't a very good ending," the one boy criticized.  "The man who took over the keep and murdered the lord never got what was coming to him."

Rianna looked at him, a long, straight, level look, without expression on her face.  "That's because it was a real story," she replied.  "In real life, almost no one ever gets what they deserve.  Or at least, we can all hope we won't."

She pulled on a hat, and strode over to the childrens' parents to collect her fee for her night's work in amusing the company, and then left the hall, a shadow among shadows.  She was growing weary of this complacent town, so far removed from the realities that shaped the lives of those in the borderlands.