“… Et deux chocolats chauds,” says René Akereggi, placing some of the less delicate mugs reserved for Melitown’s youngsters onto the table in front of the two girls, next to the dinner plate-sized chocolate chip cookies he’d presented with a grand flourish moments before. Tucking the brass filigree tray up to his chest, he beams down at them. “If you need anything else, my sweets, do ring for my attention,” he says, motioning to the green and golden tassel on a chain leading up to the ceiling, where it disappears into a decorative collar to connect to a series of service bells throughout the building that would light up a panel of numbers in key areas to signal for assistance.
Their eyes rivaling the cookies in size, the girls thank him with as much eye contact as they can muster, their focus drawn to the warm, gooey ginger and orange-scented bounty he’d bestowed upon them. René rather enjoys the awestruck expressions and inattention to good manners that his goods inspired in his customers. People travel from distant towns and cities to buy his latest baked masterpieces and are often left speechless in near trances after a bite.
The girls had waffled for a while at the counter, noses nearly pressed to the glass, debating their options, hardly narrowed in a useful way, until René asked if they wanted him to divine their desires. “Paws up, darling girls, and I will give you a read,” he cooed, reaching palms up for them to give him their hands. “Aha! A fine choice. I will bring you your wishes, most expeditiously, young lovelies. Please take a seat wherever you’d like.”
Giggling, they nodded, gave their thanks, and selected a quiet booth with a good view of the main room and the counter. In their ten-year-old eyes, the place looked ancient—far older than any structure standing on their side of the world could be—and while it was one of the oldest buildings in Melitown, there were much older things around them.
Le Café de la Chèvre was originally a house and then Le Chèvre, a hotel that, later, would become a clandestine meeting spot for revolutionary rumblings and many movements throughout all of its current nation’s stages of strife and change until the proprietor settled into his most recent occupation. The gentlemen baker and barman found the more peaceful times still provided sustenance for one of his kind—everyone desires a treat. And a devil as old as he can work with any amount of desire, teasing it awake and helping it bloom.
He doesn’t often make snacks of children, but plying them with enticing morsels ensures long-term returning customers and more time to cultivate the tastiest wishes. And these two are interesting: an awakening diviner and … a mystery. Chuckling to himself, he leaves them to their important fifth-grade conversations and youthful plots. These two are up to some trouble.
Michelle, nursing her hot chocolate reverently as if there’d never be another in the world, notices the numbers on the panel next to the counter lighting up and glances at their tasseled bell pull to see if Ellie had pulled it. Eleanor was too busy marveling at her cookie to notice much of anything else. Looking around the room, she was sure they had been the only customers when they arrived. Had someone come in while she was cookie-dazed, she wonders. The tables seem empty until she looks back at her cup. In her periphery, she senses movement and maybe hears low voices. When she concentrates, the room is silent.
She looks up again to see the café owner—a young man? Or was he older than her parents? He feels older than he looks. Is this what they mean by an “old soul?” He is average height, with a shock of black and white hair dipping over his right eye. No, his heeled boots have a bit of a platform, so he is smaller than she’d thought. She does her best to memorize his features for a drawing later: white dress shirt, under a black brocade vest, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Soft-seeming hair, mostly black with sections of white in a pattern she couldn’t figure out. Kind of crimped like when she takes hers out of braids, but if these were done intentionally, the braids would be terribly thin. Thin lines of inked symbols she couldn’t discern traveled down his pale, almost blue arms. She hadn’t noticed the tattoos before and feels childish remembering how occupied by the display case she’d been. He walks over to an archway she hadn’t noticed and disappears up a staircase she is pretty certain she would’ve seen when they were choosing their seat.
“Ellie, did you know they had an upstairs? Next time, let’s check it out,” she asks, nodding toward it.
Ellie turns to look, “Huh, no, I completely missed that. I wonder what it’s like.” She gives the café a better look. “Oh, I thought we were alone.”
Michelle turns to peek in the direction she was looking and startles, seeing a couple at the table she knew was empty just moments ago. They glance over at the girls and smile when they notice them staring. They return it, embarrassed, and look away.
“Man, these are some cookies. I feel like I’ve lost time just thinking about them,” Eleanor sighs. She only has three bites left, but she will do her best to make it at least six.
“So, what’s your plan for tomorrow night?” Michelle asks quietly, leaning in and looking around to make sure no one is listening. Momentarily distracted by double-taking a small table she hadn’t noticed on the top of a marble-topped bookcase. The toad, sitting behind it, looks up from its low bowl and returns her look.
“Ellie, are you seeing this?”
Eleanor pauses to ask, “Seeing what?” looking in the direction Michelle’s eyes were trying to direct her with the tiniest of head tilts.
“Oh, yeah, they’ve got a lot of books and some board games. We should definitely come back! So about tomorrow night…”
Upstairs, René stands, eyebrows arched, looking down at the small guests sitting on top of table 9. A pair of dream guides, scowling, he was sure, despite their respective beak and skull face not lending themselves well to interpretation.
“Young Mr. Akereggi, I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” greets the skeleton in a black cloak.
The devil smiles politely, unsettled. Dream guides are unreadable. If they have a desire outside of the Veil’s bidding to balance fear and woe and protect the vulnerable from those who would consume them with both, no one could say. It was extremely rare to meet one, let alone two. “It’s an honor, sirs,” he answers with a bow.
“Mythos and my associate, Fable,” says the small hooded skeletal form.
The crow bobs his head once and turns it to give him a better inspection. René shivers in his gaze, not used to being younger than anyone. Two elders at once! As far as he was aware, there was only one older than him in Melitown. She’d never shown any concern over his presence, and they got on just fine. He cannot recall doing anything that would ruffle the Veil. At least not recently.
“What do you make of those girls?” asks Mythos.
“Ah! The little diviner and … hmm … can’t say I recognize the other.”
Mythos nods, “The little diviner is my charge. The other is his,” he tips his head in Fable’s direction as the crow puffs up his feathers, their purple and navy sheen illuminated by the lighting.
“If you’ve got any plans for them, no, you don’t,” the skeleton says, rising to his feet with the aid of a bronze sickle materializing in an instant that he taps once to punctuate his sentence before it vanishes again.
“You wound me, good sirs,” says the devil. His grip on the Veil loosens, and two long floppy ears and three sets of horns wing back from under his shaggy, now lengthier hair—one straight, one scimitar, and another lyre-shaped. His newly pale amber irises make his slit-shaped pupils prominent; this sudden lapse proof of the sincerity of his hurt.
“Then what say you to a proposition?” Fable asks.
Mythos continues, “As they’ve clearly been ensnared in your temptations, I’m sure you will be seeing them quite frequently. We three are all creatures of inspiration, yes? We’re going to guide a little more forcefully than we tend to prefer, plant the seeds, as it were. What do desires look like to you, young one?”
“They don’t… I don’t see them. You see them?” René says, having brand new thoughts for the first time in decades. Unconsciously, his dark blue arrow-tipped tail forms a questioning curl. This is different. Something new is happening!
Fable hums, thinking. “Dreams are a tapestry of the Veil’s threads. To us, they look like floss. Little bits linger through waking, and we mend and enhance them each night. A spell to guide them, encourage them, and protect them until they’re strong enough to mend themselves. But wishes come from dreams. I always imagined they’d look like fragments of them.”
René looks down at the vivid pattern of encaustic tiles on the floor and his unexpected cloven hooves. His pointed tail wraps around his black-furred leg, alerting him to its presence, and his cheeks grow hot and lavender with embarrassment. He tries to brush it off as if it’s perfectly normal for one centuries-old to lose their hold on the Veil unintentionally. Older than most, he is young for a devil—a notion he’d not considered much, being so far removed from his kind. “I don’t have a seer’s eyes, so I’ve never seen it directly. But I suppose I’ve tasted it.”
The two guides look at each other. “You’ve tasted the Veil?” Mythos asks.
“Desires are delicious,” he shrugs. “If they’re parts of dreams and dreams are woven from the Veil, then the Veil has got to be the most delicious thing one can imagine,” he says, eyes closing, contemplating how one goes about sampling it directly.
“Fascinating,” says Fable. “How do you know which desires to instigate?”
“Really depends what I’m in the mood for—sweet, citrusy, savory, herbal, spicy… I don’t have much of a stomach for spoiled things, so I steer clear of the foul wishes. Very average taste preferences, from my understanding of the rest of society.”
“You can smell wishes,” the small skeleton states, plunking a bony fist into the other hand’s metacarpals. “How interesting! I suppose it’s not that different than the fear-eaters smelling fears.”
The blue-tinged devil’s brow crumples at this. “Not really a fan of this comparison. I don’t create desires for my own benefit. I don’t farm wishes by depriving anyone of anything until they are a feast of wants. Needs are not appealing. Plus, I’m not cruel.”
The dream guides look at each other again. “We’re terribly sorry, young one. It was very rude of me to casually say that without realizing it would seem like I was conflating two very different kinds.”
The service panel lights up for a table downstairs, and René regains his glamour. He reaches up to check his hair and, finding no horns looks down to confirm he’s back to boots and tight black pants. The crow looks him in his now-brown eyes, pupils blending well enough to keep their shape hidden and nods approvingly.
“Our hope is that friendship with the diviner will be a charm against gloom and despair. Life’s circumstances have her at risk of attracting enough for a swarm.”
Mythos adds, “And the two will need companionship as they pass from the Obvious to the Obscure. His little one is all alone, and mine is an egg in a clutch of stones.”
“A cowbird’s child?” the devil asks, surprised at the thought of brood parasitism in this day and age, especially in those who would fit with human hosts.
Small phalanges wave away the idea, “No, but a powerful seer in her family line, I suspect, for it to resurface this much later.”
“I need to,” he tilts his head toward the stairs, “go take care of a table. A moment, gentlemen?”
“We won’t keep you,” says Fable.
Mythos says, “They dream of companionship but I’m afraid they’re timid. Will you work with us, Mr. Akereggi?”
“It would be my pleasure,” René answers with a bow before turning and heading downstairs.