This year’s entry in the Fountain Square Arts Festival Masterpiece In A Day contest. I did not win this year, but I think this story was just as good. The theme this year was Permanent Ink. The three elements that had to be included in the story where: a glass eye, a bar – closed, and a widow.

Permanent Ink

By James L. Wilber

Spell—Germanic, English: to put letters in the proper order to form a word. Also, a magical ritual.

Even after all this time they mean the same thing.

At the end of each round of drinks, I watch her wipe the rag across the bar using perfect economy of motion. Most reserve their respect for athletes or dancers, but I have learned to appreciate mundane tasks done exquisitely well, that which takes years upon years of repetition to master. She clears away the spills and rings of condensation as she commits to memory the shouts of dock workers ordering their libations. As she pours the drinks, she mumbled the words of her customers back, like prayer.

I describe all this in my journal, the background to her story. I marvel at how freely the ink flows from my Montblanc pen onto the smooth pages of my Moleskin notebook–such exquisite instruments, the refinement of my art, my purpose for being.

I cast my spell and remember.

Before there was a city called Khmun, remembered as Hermopolis, we gathered. Before there was a temple, before the days when scribes sat by the walls and scratched words on their papyrus, we came together at the behest of Prince Djediufankh. We had searched the kingdom and brought back every scrap and stone we could find–anything that contained the pictures. We had learned how the merchants and bureaucrats had begun to use these pictures to record their doings. That they had agreed that certain pictures meant certain words, and that way they could keep their words. They could remember them, and send them forth, and bring them back to make proof of their dealings.

We knew that to control these pictures, to make words that would not be said and then gone but kept on through the aeons, this was the greatest spell of all. So, we gathered them together and created new ones, a picture for as many words as we could think of. Enough words to make poetry, and songs, and prayers.

I was the best at this. I made the most words, scribed the cleanest pictures, conveyed the most… meaning.

Like any great man, Djediufankh wanted to live forever. While other princes built monuments and tombs, Djediufankh demanded that the words of his life be put down and carried through the ages. But what papyrus would last? What stone would not be worn away? He would go to his reward in the afterlife to serve Thoth, but someone must keep his words on Earth.

I was chosen.

My fellow priests laid me out and oiled my skin. They burnt their most expensive incense and mixed their precious ink. With a pin and a hammer, they made my back their parchment. On it, they scribed the spell that would sustain me through all time. With each tap of the needle, I was grateful. At completion of each word they would take a rag across my back and wipe off the blood, and I would say a prayer. “I am thy writing palette, oh Thoth, and I have brought unto thee thine ink jar.”

And when it was done, I lived.

I would eat, and breathe. I could get sick, but I did not die. Once, one of my fellow scribes became jealous of my words and stabbed me in the eye with a knife. It bled, and I felt muddy-headed for a time, but I lived. The eye, however, did not grow back. Many centuries later, a craftsman in Venice made me an eye made of glass. I was immortal. I would be the same as the day they tattooed the spell on my back, but I could be hurt. After my injury, I took great care. No matter how desperate I became over the ages, theft was never an option for me. I needed to keep my hands.

I needed to write the stories.

But through time, the stories I wrote changed. The last copy of Djediufankh’s story burned with the library in Alexandria. As I watched the night sky glow orange from the conflagration, it was not his story that I wept for. I cried for the scribes, who always, in some way, made the stories their own.

Great men will always have their stories told. Ramses, Caesar, Kublai, Charlemagne, Victoria, Luther, Washington, Hitler, Churchill, Clinton—those who led, for better or worse, would be remembered. Someone would always write their stories.

But what of the people? What of those who cheered at the blood on the floor of the Colosseum? What of the children made slaves when they marched to the Holy Land to join the Crusades? What of the multitudes who walked alongside Gandhi? What of all the lives of all the people who worked, and loved, and died, and no one would tell their stories?

The noise around me faded to the clink of glasses and the running of water. Only after I heard her turn the latch and shut off the buzzing neon sign, did I look up from my work.

The woman, long gray hair, rag still in hand, eyes weary, spoke to me. “You sure you still want to do this?”

“I’m sure.”

“Why me?”

“I just like to collect stories. Everyone has one.”

“There’s got to be better stories out there. You writing a book or something?”

“It doesn’t have to be published if you don’t want it to.”

“Doesn’t matter. I just can’t figure why anyone would want to read about my life.”

“Let me decide.” I murmured under my breath, “I am thy writing palette, oh Thoth.”

She went back behind the bar, the proper place to tell a tale. “Well, I bought this place after my husband died. We used to come here every night. The people, our neighbors, they were always so friendly. I guess I just wanted a reason to keep coming….”