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It wasn’t that the pickle was magical. Not by any means. I knew of real magic. Proper Taborlin the Great magic. Magic told in stories. Magic that couldn’t be found in a university lecture hall or in the vast village of red veneered books that littered the library like the varnished husks of a hundred million milkweed pods.
No, this was something different.
The pickle was plump and steadily pulsated, casually throwing plumes of perfumed putrescence into the air. The smell crept along the bar, brushing the nostrils of the cat that bit at its breakfast of burnt boar. It bore down on the baby breathing softly in his mother’s arms and bit at the broken door of the small Inn. Its skin rippled, like a leviathan was moving in its sleep beneath taut skin. I you have ever been truly afraid of a thing.
If you have ever cast your eyes upon an inanimate object; felt fear fly into your veins as surely as an arrow fletched from the feathers of the finest fowl, you may be able to understand. You may be able to glimpse the outside edge of the fear that flickered slowly into eyes of the man at the bar. If you have ever held a festering leach, fat from a full day of feasting, squeezed gently and felt you heart race you may be able to understand. If you ever find yourself in this situation the only sensible thing is to run. Run as fast as you can into the night and never look back. But I am Edema Ruh down to the marrow of my bones and the Edema know how to deal with panicked patrons and putrid pickles.
I strode forward, reached out a hand and plucked the pickle from the plate, pirouetting I threw the pickle, hard towards the closed window. Resting a hand on the man’s glass I muttered the appropriate sympathetic bindings and the window flew open. The putrid smell faded, the partrons applauded and I, always the showman, took a bow.