No One Cares About Heaven and Earth

    Shell Silverson was wandering the city. The city’s name was Capulno, but that didn’t matter to him. He hated the dull concrete buildings with their endless holes full of glass; his favourite buildings were the historical museums, the toy figure centre, and the hotel he was staying at with his family. The toy figure centre wasn’t even nice; it was just where the tiny plastic people were.
    Shell was the youngest of a family of four: his father, his mother, his older sister Jill, and himself. Of those four, he was the only extraordinary one. Shell knew this without conceit, since it was hard to be conceited when wizards were a banned substance.
    Shell wandered by the elven garrison, a giant construction of metal and stone – no concrete, thankfully, and it was the most lovely thing in the city, so it made his list of favourite buildings, but it wasn’t built by humans, so it technically didn’t count. Motorcars raced by him on the street, their backdraft whipping his thin white polyester T-shirt.
    His family was waiting for him at the toy store. He would catch up to them later…
    “Hey! Hey, you! Kid!”
    Shell turned slowly, appraising the policeman who had called him. The man’s hostile glare couldn’t be good.
    “Yes?”
    “Don’t say ‘yes’ in that smug tone, you little witch! Your kind has been banned from the city! You’re not supposed to be here!”
    “Ah. My apologies. I will exit immediately.” Shell couldn’t suppress a sigh of disappointment; he was only thirteen, and had been planning on buying a new set of goblin knights when he went to find his family. Of course, goblins didn’t exist anymore, which was a great thing for everyone, except the goblins, but he still liked their models.
    “Is there a problem?” a soft voice called. Shell turned again, startled more by the soft voice than the policeman’s earlier brusque shout.
    “There’s a wizard in town. This kid.” The policeman gestured to Shell.
    “Is that so?” The blue-clad elf soldier looked Shell up and down. He thought he saw one of the eyes wink at him behind blonde hair and the bandages that partially swathed the head and arms of the elf. The eye was scarlet. “And what is the procedure for dealing with a wizard?”
    “Wizards are dangerous criminals. They are all immediately arrested unless they can produce a legitimate reason for being in a settled area.”
    “I have a passport.”
    “Why didn’t you say so?” demanded the man.
    “You didn’t ask. I’m so used to being kicked out I just decided to leave when asked.”
    The policeman considered, giving Shell a long hard look. “Let me see it.” With Shell’s papers in his hand, he thought some more. “You should leave this evening, then.”
    “How long is the passport good for?” asked the elf soldier.
    “Saturday,” said the man grudgingly.
    “Then he should be allowed to stay until Saturday, of course. That’s the day after tomorrow.”
    “He should come with me anyway and the authorities will deal with him.”
    “Are wizards really so dangerous?” the elf queried laconically.
    “Depends who’s asking,” Shell answered in the same tone. The policeman’s already red colour heightened, and he pointed a shaking finger at the boy.
    “You’re not supposed to be here, passport or no! I’ll give you until tomorrow to clear out of here!”
    “That seems reasonable,” Shell acquiesced reluctantly.
    “Well, then, go about your business,” the soldier ordered the policeman.
    As the policeman left, Shell found himself presented with the elf soldier’s hand.
“What?” he asked, bewildered.
    “My name’s Keesh,” said the elf. “What’s yours?”
    “That’s… a girl’s name!” exclaimed Shell. “In elvish, of course. Forgive my lack of manners, but you didn’t look like a girl. I’m Shell.” He followed etiquette and kissed her hand.
    “A maiden, more properly,” Keesh explained. “A maiden in the military, yep, that’s me. And this isn’t a uniform. This is my off-duty clothing.” She gestured at the skin-hugging blue outfit. “Now that you have a couple more hours, what are you going to do with them?”
    “Get out, of course. My family will be annoyed, obviously, but that can’t be helped. I have until morning. I think I’ll get to bed.”
    “Fare well, then.”
    Shell hurried back to his hotel, which was not unpleasing to the eye, as it was covered in a raised diamond pattern. The windows were a little too regularly spaced for his taste, however. His family waited there; evidently they had given up waiting at the toy store. He brushed past them and hurried up the spiral staircase to the second floor. They followed him without comment. They had learned long ago that he was unpredictable, and snappish when questioned, so they simply followed.
    A maid was polishing the displayed fossils on the second floor. For some reason, that stuck in Shell’s mind.
    He came to his family’s room, and entered. His grown-up cousin Lucy and her new husband Phillip were in their bedroom, watching TV.
    Shell went into the large bedroom he was sharing with Jill and watched the sky grow dark to twilight. It was cloudy.
    He returned to the main room and ate dinner with his family, telling them briefly what had happened that afternoon. They accepted it, which made him glad to be part of such a loving family that accepted a freak in their midst.
    After that, he went back to staring out the window. He could see above some low, two-story residences. The sky was very dark now, but there was a patch of darkness that extended below his field of view. Almost like a very wide tornado…
    As soon as the thought crossed his mind, the patch tightened into a thin pillar and swerved to the left. Shell closed his eyes, opened his mind and watched the tornado carve its way across town. It halted about 110° to the left of where he had seen it first, then came towards him erratically. It cut a neat, foot wide gap through the corner of the room, almost sucking him into it.
    Shell leaped back a half-second too late, cutting off an involuntary exclamation, staring at the trench through the floor, the breaches in the walls, and the fissure in the ceiling. He had felt the wind scrape his skin, and now that he looked at his left arm, there was a 20 centimetre-long splinter sticking out of it. He wrenched it out of his arm angrily and grabbed his back-pack, rummaging through it to find a band-aid.
    Then he sneaked out of the hotel and went to find the evil wizard who was being so irresponsible with his magic.
    Boy-like, he went to the toy figure centre first, but found it guarded by six of the Royal Guard, knights in silver armour on horseback. Shell wondered what they thought of the freak tornado, but spent more time admiring their glittering armour. As he watched, two more rode into position in front of the centre.
    Shell began to wonder what sort of wonderful thing he had missed about the toy store. But, he left, searching for the person causing the tornado.
    He searched with his mind now, letting it soar above the rooftops and peering under pine trees.
    Under the pine trees behind the hotel were two freaky huge bunny rabbits. They weren’t hares – the ears were different. Shell frowned and headed in that direction.
    As he approached, his suspicions were confirmed. One of the rabbits was indeed controlling the tornado. Shell materialized a baseball bat in his hand and kept running.
    He did have to beat the one rabbit to death, the one that was controlling the twister. The other had disappeared…
    It jumped on him, knocking him to the ground and clawing and chewing at him. He curled up, whimpering as it gouged his side to ribbons. He fumbled for the magic baseball bat and changed it into a golf club for more power.
    Then he changed his mind and simply formed a shield around himself. The evil bunny attacked, and he blasted it away into a tree.
    He lay there for a long moment. He had stopped the tornado, but the wizard who summoned the demon rabbits was still out there. This time, when Shell searched, he found a potent power emanating from a field near the elvish citadel.
    Agonizing over his shredded side, he staggered to his feet and dragged himself to the main road, taking the collars of the rabbits with him. The sun was beginning to rise, and people, pedestrians and in motorcars, were about, so he cloaked his wounds and tried not to limp.
    The source led him to a large field, surrounded by trees and gathering people travelling in the same direction as he, clothed in baseball gear. One of them, mistaking him for someone, called to him. “Gary, you look awful! You’re so pale, man! Are you all right?”
    Shell shrugged and kept moving.
    Near the opposite end of the field there was a large man with a dark beard. Shell walked up to him.
    “Excuse me, sir, but are these yours?” He proffered a plastic bag, in which he’d stowed the rabbit collars.
    The man peered inside, then raised a furious face to the boy. “Who are you, little witch, to destroy my things?”
    “Who are you to put people in danger?” countered Shell angrily. “I might be an ‘illegal’ wizard, but I’m not evil. Those rabbits were.”
    “I am the king’s wizard, little boy. I was ‘encouraging’ you to leave. You were warned, yesterday! We are always watching you! We know where you are! You will have to die now.”
    “You’re crazy, that’s what you are!” sputtered Shell, throwing up a shield in time to avoid getting speared by a lightening bolt. Standard spell, he muttered to himself, but his shield was broken and drained.
    Shell lay on his back, unutterably exhausted and in pain from his injuries. The king’s wizard towered over him, and Shell aimed a kick at him and scrambled away. He retreated in the direction of a prickly hedge, trading spells with the wizard, barely dodging or surviving the ones targeted at him.
    The baseball team ran over to see what was going on. A wizard battle was hardly known anymore.
    Shell, crawling backward on his back, reached the hedge and warped through it, but was hardly surprised when his enemy passed through it without difficulty. The young wizard lay under a tree, under a thick branch. The king’s man jumped on it and bent it down with terrifying strength, intent on crushing his adversary. Shell reached up and kept it from doing so with his own supernatural strength.
    “Give up, boy,” growled the man. “Just give up and die. It’d be a lot easier for both of us.”
    “No!” grunted Shell, struggling.
    The pushing contest was quickly weakening his reserves of power. With a wriggle and a kick, Shell burst out from under the branch and flopped under skinnier branches. He looked up and saw a building behind him, above his head. It was still a long way away, but for some irrational reason it gave Shell hope. He wondered if he could make it. He didn’t feel he could stand.
    In a sort of daze, the distance between the tree and the building shrank until he was almost there.
    The man picked up and threw him over a barrel-shaped concrete flower planter, materializing a knife in his hand.
    In a lazy, half-speed time, Shell watched him raise the knife.
    “Hey!” There was a shout, but it wasn’t slowed down. It wasn’t unfamiliar, either…
    “Keesh,” croaked Shell as a blue-clad blur whizzed over him and he blacked out.

    He woke up tucked in a comfortable bed, Keesh standing beside it. Her hood was down, and her chin-length blonde hair hung free.
    “How are you feeling?” she asked kindly.
    “Tired, but regenerating,” Shell rasped. His side had been bandaged. “What happened to the evil wizard?”
    “Well, since killing him would be politically incorrect, all I did was knock him down and get you out of there. I have an explanation for the authorities, too. He was attacking you because you’re an ‘illegal’ wizard? Well, I say your power was so low I couldn’t tell, so I was rescuing a defenceless little boy from a homicidal maniac. Hey?”
    “You… you’ve saved me, twice, you know,” Shell murmured gratefully. “Yesterday, and today you saved my life… Thank you.”
    “Don’t mention it. I’ll probably have to resign now, but that’s all right. I’ve got other things to do besides be in the military. It was fun while it lasted.”
    “Take me with you,” the boy begged softly.
    “Why?”
    Shell was silent for a long moment, trying to sum up his feelings. “No one cares about Heaven and Earth.”