NINETY NINE ORPHANS - COL CORT
Mortal lives are volatile treasures, and only the most powerful beings dare trade them. Such trade took place in a crowded hall east of purgatory, an elegant building of wooden beams and stone pillars. Its single level was filled with creatures from a thousand mythologies. Titans bartered with fairy godmothers, walking statues outbid beings of light, goblins screamed their wares, demons consulted shopping lists. The hall was a noisy, chaotic place, filled with magic, commerce, and greed. Only one mortal had ever dared enter the hall.
His name was James. He was a short man, old, with bright green eyes that saw everything. His stall was in the most disreputable section of the hall where trade was common and questions rare.
James rubbed his hands together eagerly. They were thin hands, pale, wrinkled.
“Who’s our next customer, Mary?” James asked.
Mary hovered in the air beside him. She had been a guardian angel before her atheist charges shunned her. Working as James’s assistant had made her rich and unhappy. She considered this better than being poor and unhappy. She consulted her list.
“A Jinn,” she said. “Young, with a single life to sell.”
“Summon him.”
The Jinn appeared in a burst of smoke.
Its skin was green. It had smoke instead of legs, a curved sword strapped across its back, gold chains around its neck. It was still in the earliest part of its eternal life and looked bewildered by the crowds in the hall. James winked at Mary, who rolled her eyes.
“What can you offer me?” asked James.
“I found this life behind my grandfather’s left eye,” the Jinn explained.
James said nothing; lives had come to him from stranger places. He held it up. Lives look like fireworks frozen at the moment of explosion. James was a master at reading their color and form.
“How did your grandfather die?” James asked.
“Of natural causes,” the Jinn said, eyes flickering nervously.
It was a bad liar.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mary muttered, more out of habit rather than belief.
James pulled out a jeweler’s eyepiece and examined the life more closely. He tutted at what he saw.
“Full of wasted opportunities, regret, heartache,” James said critically, turning it over.
The Jinn nodded eagerly. He knew so little of humans that he imagined heartbreak was rare. James shook his head.
“There’s nothing special about this life,” James said.
“But surely-” the Jinn protested.
“I’ll buy it for a song.”
“Nothing more?”
“No. You are welcome to try another stall, of course. How did you say your grandfather died? Was it-”
“Let’s trade,” the Jinn said.
It took the song and, disappointed, disappeared. James laughed.
“That was practically theft,” Mary said. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“And the Jinn didn’t need to kill his grandfather,” James said. “But we both did, and now one of us is richer for it. That’s how the universe works. Who’s next?”
#
The sun was dying on the horizon and the crowd was thinning out as James packed his latest purchase, a saint, in a box he reserved for short-term investments. Mary checked her list.
“We have one last set of customers,” she said. “Fire elementals. They’re seeking a philanthropist.”
She sounded sad. Fire elementals only ever had one plan for the lives they bought. James nodded, casting an eye over his collection of lives. Philanthropists were rare, but James had one that was near death. He dug it out of a box as a pair of walking flames approached him. They bowed; he smiled. He placed the life on the philanthropist on the desk.
“Your offer?” he asked.
“Ninety orphans,” the elementals hissed, setting a metal box on the table.
The orphans’ lives spilled out. The lives were poorly crafted and full of suffering. Their only virtue was quantity. James stared at them, seemingly uninterested, unimpressed. That was how he always looked when he was considering new wares. He didn’t rush, picking over the lives, weighing their worth. He considered one: the orphan had pink hair and a bad attitude. She was a slave, but a defiant one. She spat in the tea and smuggled a stray dog into her master’s house. That almost made James smile.
The elementals spluttered impatiently. They wanted an answer. Mary shook her head.
“We don’t trade in such poor forms,” she said. “But we-”
“I’ll take them,” James interrupted, surprising her. “But ninety isn’t enough. Are there more?”
The elementals hissed and flared with anger. They were used to inspiring fear in mortals, but James was unmoved. He was a businessman. He had once told Mary that his heart was too full of greed to suffer other emotions.
“We’ll add a dragon’s heart,” one elemental proposed. “Fresh, still beating.”
“Don’t insult me with trinkets.”
“Or three wishes? You could-”
“No. More orphans. Everything you’ve got.”
“But-”
“All of them, or no deal.”
The elementals flared white hot. They raged, they cursed, they swore to destroy everything James loved. And then they made the trade.
“Nine more,” the older elemental spat.
James placed the ninety-nine young lives in a box of their own. One faded away as illness took it; orphans were a risky investment.
“Why did you do that?” Mary asked, shocked. “I’ve never seen you make such a bad trade.”
But James didn’t answer.
#
The sun set behind the clouds. Shadows engulfed the hall. A clay golem walked past the stalls, lighting torches on the walls. Mary went home to her family. James remained in the hall, as he did every night. He hadn’t left his stall in decades. There were customers, even at night. James placed the orphans’ lives on the table and watched them through the night.
Their lives were full of pain.
One orphan, braver than the rest, signed on as a navy deckhand only to drown while still in port. James shook his head. Luck and joy were not distributed fairly across lives. He picked one of the lives up. The pink-haired orphan again. He could see from the bright white lines of her life that she dreamed of escape, of victory, of burning down the society that failed to care for her. James could sympathize.
He was still watching the orphans when dawn and Mary arrived together.
“Are you okay?” Mary asked, concerned.
Before he could answer, a passing witch offered James a shooting star for three orphans. James stared at her yellow teeth, her angry red eyes. He picked up three lives, then paused.
“What do you want them for?” he asked.
“For a spell, a skull, and a snack.”
“No.”
Mary was surprised; James had never once asked his customers why they wanted his lives. He had never denied a good trade. The witch hissed in fury. After a few minutes of argument, James sold her a magical toad and a flying umbrella at a low price.
“The orphans are long-term investments. They could become anything,” James explained as the witch left.
But all Mary saw in the orphans was misery and financial risk.
“You’re the boss,” she said, uncertainly. “But could I at least put them away, they’re taking up the whole-”
“No. Pass me my abacus.”
Mary sighed; James ignored her.
“Who’s our next customer?”
#
James spent most of the morning making a deal with the devil. Mary disapproved, and not only because the devil never paid on time. The beast cast a hungry eye over the lives on James’s table. It licked its lips when it saw the orphans.
“Those!” it demanded. “Now, for me! Give!”
Mary nodded half-heartedly. James shook his head.
“They aren’t for sale.”
The devil was not used to being rejected. It stamped its hooves, spat snakes from its mouth, and roared a fireball at Mary that left her smelling of brimstone.
“How rude,” Mary muttered.
“Can I offer you a few presidents instead?” James suggested. “You could use them to start a war. I know you like that sort of thing.”
The devil shrugged; its collection was full of politicians.
“Or six royal families, perhaps? And a pair of popes?”
“Thirteen! And five”
“Eight and two.”
“Fine!”
The trade was made. Perhaps caused by the Devil’s proximity, one of the orphans turned to a life of crime and was killed in a robbery. Its life faded away with a quiet pop.
#
James spent a second night watching the orphans. Their lives were so different from the trading hall. Crueler, harder, mundane. So unlike what his own had become. He selected the life belonging to the girl with pink hair. Her life was unfair, but he could fix that. He pulled a pot of luck out of his desk drawer, pinched a little, and dropped it into the orphan’s life.
Then he slept.
When he woke, the orphan’s dog was digging up buried treasure in the woods. The orphan laughed when she saw it. It was an odd sound, uncertain and weak. She had never laughed before, he realized. It showed in the colors of her life. Her new laughter was a bright green.
James was surprised by what he had achieved. He hadn’t thought that lives could be changed, from the outside. They were commodities to him, not projects.
Mary arrived in the hall as the sun was rising. She glanced at the orphans’ lives, but didn’t mention them.
“Ready?” she asked him.
“Next!”
#
Each night James watched over the orphans. He poured pieces of his collected wealth into their lives. Courage, here and there. Gold. A good friend. An inspiring enemy. A sunny day. A magic stone. A wish, a talking cat, a moment of perfect silence. All the things he had accumulated for himself over the years to use one day, when he left the trading hall.
The orphan’s lives began to change. For the better, mostly.
“You seem happy,” Mary told him as they wrapped up a crusty teacher for a passing angel.
“I suppose I am,” he said.
“Do you want to talk about-”
“No. Who’s our next customer?”
A large minotaur walked out of the crowd. It had golden linen wrapped around its hairy waist, an iron spike through its nose. It emptied a dirty wooden box onto the table. An odd collection of lives spilled out. They were large, misshapen, unevenly colored. Ugly. The minotaur had tried to sell them to a dozen other stalls before coming to James.
“You want?” the minotaur asked gruffly.
It looked at James without much hope.
“These are junk,” James said out of habit.
He shuffled through them. They had nothing in common except tragedy. A child prodigy grown old, unaccomplished, bitter. A war hero dying of cancer caused by his own weapons. A scholar too attached to her own reputation to see the truth before her. All the flares and color were faded from these lives.
One life was far larger than the rest. James left it until last, holding it up. He peered into it, but it resisted him. It did not want to be examined, he thought. It took all of his focus and power to see inside it. The life had started out grey and lonely. Another orphan for his collection. The life changed dramatically in early adulthood, lighting up with sparks and outlandish color, a miraculous climb to power, a wonder of dancing flames. Bright colors unlike any he had seen before. Something great had happened in this life, something beautiful, but he couldn’t see what it was. And then the life became dull again, the color fading away quickly for many decades. A disappointing end.
James blinked. He forced his was into the life. He saw an old face looking back. Wrinkled. Tired. It looked familiar. He frowned; the face frowned.
“What?” he said, surprised. “When did I get so old?”
“You want?” the minotaur asked, more hopefully.
“Yes. Yes, all of them. Mary, make the trade,” James said.
He couldn’t put his life down. He had spent so many years looking for it. So much of it was extraordinary, yet in the later years it had become almost worthless. He shook his life, desperate for it to change, to mix, for the color to take over again. He wanted to break it, shattering it into pieces. Anything would be better for it than what it had become.
“How? How is this possible?” he shouted. “I was only meant to be here for a few years! How long have we been here, Mary?”
“Sixty years,” Mary whispered.
James slammed his life down on the table. As he did so, he saw a few flecks of gold amongst the grey. A flash of pink, too. The orphans, he realized. They were the only color in his later life. He turned his gaze to their lives. They were still small, and dark. That could change.
“Mary,” James said quietly.
“Yes?”
“It seems that I know everything about lives except how to live one.”
Mary said nothing.
“But perhaps…”
He looked down at his collection of lives. The pink-haired girl and her dog had escaped to the city. That was not enough. Her life was still full of dangers. She knew it, she was scared, but she would not give up. Nor would James.
“I was a great scholar, in my youth. Perhaps I’m not too old to learn,” James said. “Pass me that bottle of wisdom, I’m going to need it.”
Col Cort is a scientist by day and a day-dreamer by night.