Daniel Stephens remembered the first time he heard of The Scribe.
It was the summer between fifth and sixth grade, and he was bored at his grandparents' house. He'd found a pre-Internet "big book of facts," written for kids about his age. And it was just there, a few paragraphs in the "Mythological Creatures and Other Fantastic Beings" section.
He wasn't sure why it struck him as much as it did, but it did: the idea of there being a person, who no one seemed to be able to describe beyond orange eyes and a writing implement in hand, who held the power to re-weave the fabric of reality itself. And perhaps, if a normal human could get their hands on The Scribe's notebook, they could exchange it for wishes -- or maybe use it themselves.
And in the book's breezily-written style, the description of The Scribe had ended with, "Watch out, because anything can happen when The Scribe changes reality. You could change into someone else, your parents could change into someone else. Even this book could change into something else!"
It ended up at the back of his mind for the next six months, until it was time for the Christmas trip back to visit his grandparents.
The book was on the shelf in his mother's old bedroom where he had left it, but there was no longer any mention of The Scribe.
As he moved into junior high and then high school, he started to research The Scribe online as best he could. "Orange eyes" seemed to be the best search. He'd find message board posts: "I swear I saw a woman with orange eyes. Anyone heard of that?" Tweets: "I bumped into this weird-looking guy with orange eyes in the club." And he'd try to follow what came next for these people -- sometimes a scrap of something like "I must have gained 10 pounds over the weekend!" But then nothing. And usually the posts would be deleted, or edited to say something innocuous that he could have sworn they didn't say before. Even if he got screenshots, or printouts.
He was obsessed enough to find a university with a Mythological Studies major, graduate, and then move on to a master's program at Columbia University. He did manage to dig up enough research on The Scribe, scant stories that seemed to stay put but did go back for centuries, that his faculty advisor was already suggesting that after getting his degree, he rewrite his thesis as a book.
The first warm day of spring fell on a Saturday, and Daniel took the day off from polishing his thesis -- besides, his roommate had a friend visiting the city, sleeping on the couch in their tiny apartment. On the downtown Number 1 train, he glanced around the car at the women who had shed their winter coats. He had the urges of the average heterosexual male, but being shy, awkward, and studious, it seemed he would get no closer to any of them -- or anyone like them -- than his seat next to the subway car door, at one end of a longitudinal bench seat.
So he couldn't help but think, as he often did, If I were The Scribe, things would be different. Deep down, he knew this was why he'd continued to obsess about The Scribe: the idea that there was someone who had the power to instantly make things different. Maybe not even better, necessarily, just different.
He took another glance around the car. A number of people on the train were in jackets or coats, so the man sitting opposite him wearing a trench coat while engrossed in an iPad drew little of his attention.
A blonde in a tank top who got on at 66th Street and chose to stand was more interesting, especially when the train lurched as it started up and she had to take a step to right herself. Daniel first noticed her large breasts jiggling, but then saw that she'd stepped onto the foot of the man in the trench coat.
"Ooh, I'm so sorry," she said.
"Don't worry about it," the man half-spoke and half-growled in an accent Daniel couldn't identify, as he half-raised his eyes from the iPad, and Daniel saw -- no, it couldn't be.
The chastened woman was now standing with her back to Daniel and the man, and Daniel could swear that the seat of her jeans was expanding slightly but still noticeably.
The man glanced up at it, with what Daniel saw as a satisfied expression.
The train stopped at 59th Street, the doors opened, people on the train began to exchange themselves for people on the platform, and Daniel suddenly exclaimed, "It's you!"
The man looked directly at him. His irises were the color of ripe pumpkins.
Before Daniel could say anything else, the man bolted out of his seat and through the open door just as it closed, jostling someone who'd jumped on at the last minute.
Daniel saw the iPad on the floor of the subway car and felt like a cobra striking, picking it up before anyone else could.
Through the windows in the door, he saw the man at the instant he realized that the jostle had caused him to drop his possession. The man's eyes seemed to widen to the size of pumpkin pies.
The train started moving.