Gypsy Wine
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 3,752 words
Publisher & ISBN
JMS Books LLC / 9781611520019
Airk Ranon is a rogue-for-hire who is only passing through the seaside town of Rouyn on his way to somewhere else. But the tavern he stays in serves the most haunting draught ... gypsy wine.
Soon his journey is forgotten as the bottle consumes his days. Nights are spent on the shore, gazing into the roiling waves. Between the seaspray, he swears he sees a woman dancing in the water, calling to him, wanting him.
Another glass or two, and nothing will stop Airk from joining her.
This story appears in the print collection, Bones of the Sea and Other Stories.
Excerpt
They warned him of the gypsy wine as soon as he came ashore. “It’ll show you things,” the barmaid cautioned, “things you weren’t meant to see.”
“You have no gypsy blood in your veins,” the barkeep observed, shaking his head. “The wine will be your death.”
But the trip had been long -- a fortnight at sea on a merchant ship, passage paid for with the blood of a baron -- and Airk Ranon had not tasted wine since he left land. It seemed as if the only wine in the seaswept town of Rouyn was the cursed wine of the gypsies, a fantastical race Airk thought lived on only in tales. He drank the wine zealously. As the fifth glass clouded his mind, it made him forget, as wine is wont to do.
And, as the cry of the midnight hour echoed down Rouyn’s empty streets, he began to roam the town, searching for something, something the wine wanted him to find.
Gypsy wine was like that.
* * * *
By the light of the moon, the sea’s waves roiled like loosened curls. The sand was gray where the waves licked at it hungrily, and Airk watched the rocks break against the tide. Foam wrote cryptic poems in the sand but, before he could read the words, they were devoured by the greedy beach. Seaweed hair undulated, beckoning him to follow beyond the breakers.
Gypsy wine, Airk thought. Devil’s wine. Drugged wine.
The sea smiled at him, and the moon followed him back to the inn.