“Up for auction is Lot 14356: a simple silver ring, circa 1000AD, with an indecipherable inscription on the inside of the band. Let’s start the bidding at $20.”

I felt a small uprising of anger at the insanely low starting price, but I squashed it and settled deeper into my chair. I was simply happy to have the bidding get underway. Glancing around at the people that were placing bids and slowly bumping up the price of the ancient ring, I felt a trickle of excitement and an unconscious grin appeared on my face.

That simple ring had sat in the old woman’s jewelry case for over forty years, never worn, collecting a thin layer of dust. I don’t think she really believed the family stories about the ring being haunted, but she still never put the ring on. She would pick it up now and then, study the words she couldn’t read, and then put it back. I never could figure out what she was thinking when she looked at it; quite possibly she was debating the relative insanity of her predecessors.

Nonetheless, the ring had stayed firmly in one place for the last forty long years and, as a result, I’d gotten to know the general vicinity of her jewelry box quite well. I had the feeling that the rather ugly pattern on the carpet would be ingrained into the backs of my eyeballs for a thousand years to come. Now I was getting to see something new, and that was more than enough to put a smile on my face.

When the bidding touched fifty dollars, I looked over at the old woman sitting in the front row. Nearing eighty years old, she was selling almost everything from her home. No heirs, no children, no more family legacy. She was sitting in the chair, her back straight, a look of steady determination on her face. That was her personality – strong and steady and very down-to-Earth. Not someone to shed a tear over parting with a ‘haunted’ ring, no matter how long it'd been in the family.

I held little love for the family that had owned me and my ring for the past several centuries. They hadn’t been the worst of masters, that much I knew from personal experience, but they’d hardly been candy and cupcakes. Much of their family fame and fortune had been the direct result of me meddling in the affairs of others, usually at my masters’ commands, and much of their current decline in money came because I had been set aside some forty years earlier when my last master, the old woman’s hag of a mother, had finally passed away.

The witch had been hit in the head by a falling chandelier and died a bit more quickly than I’d hoped she would. The years of torment I’d suffered through under her mastery deserved a slow and painful ending to a life I had feared she would never leave. With retrospect, I probably should have chosen a lighter chandelier.

“Sold to number 18 for $63.”

I flinched, shaken out of my daze at the sharp voice of the auctioneer. My eyes flickered around the room, trying to determine who’d had the winning bid, surprised that it was over so fast. After nearly four hundred years with the same family, my ring had finally changed hands. And it was rather more anticlimactic than I’d been expecting; none of the pompous fanfare, war, and screaming bloodshed that had come with the last familial switch.

A number of people stood up at the end of the lot and I couldn’t see the numbers in their cards to determine which was the mysterious ‘number eighteen’ and my newest owner. I could have walked up to them and looked, it wasn’t like they could see me, but I contented myself with settling back and waiting. All good things come to those who wait and it was one of the few things I was good at. I’ve had lots of practice.

One of the women at the front tables pulled out her checkbook and I studied her closely, inwardly begging that she hadn’t been the one to win the ring. The pinched face and sharp angles of her body reminded me too closely of one of my previous masters – one who had, unfortunately, found himself locked in a burning room with no way out after he’d taken a whip to me one time too many. When she started writing in her book and a large painting was brought to her, I relaxed a little and moved on.

I felt a faint tug as my ring was moved. It wasn’t enough of a pull to get me to my feet, but I followed the pull of my ring closely as it was carried along the tables to the winner of the auction. It passed by the sharp-faced woman who had bought the painting, paraded past the old woman who had owned the ring but never had used it, and past a number of plain gentlemen I assumed were antique dealers of some sort.

It stopped in front of a young man, perhaps thirty years old, who exchanged a small handful of bills for the jewelry box containing my ring. His clothes were clean but worn, his sandy hair slightly longer than the current fashion, and had a pair of glasses perched on his nose. More academic-looking that anything, I figured. I leaned forwards, setting my chin in my palm, and narrowed my eyes. So this was my new master.

He looked a bit too much like a collector for my taste. It would be just my luck to have my ring put in a glass box on a shelf somewhere as part of a collection. I could already imagine what it would be like to have to spend a large portion of the foreseeable future being bored. It would never do.

Not even bothering to get to my feet, I simply disappeared from my chair and reappeared standing slightly behind my new master. “You don’t look like a ring kind of guy,” I muttered sourly, pacing around to stare into his green eyes for a moment. “So why did you buy my ring? Girlfriend? Collectable? Resale?”

He didn’t answer, but then he hadn’t heard me speak. Instead, he had a small smile on his face as he opened the small jewelry box and picked up my old silver ring, running his fingers over the smooth surfaces. “It’s beautiful,” he murmured in a soft baritone, holding it up to the light for a moment.

I arched an eyebrow at the small compliment, something I hadn’t received in generations, and crossed my arms, deciding to be polite for a moment and introduce myself. “Hello, I'm the soul currently bound to your new ring. I’d suggest you not put it on – it won’t come back off until you’re dead.” He couldn’t hear me, of course, but I’ve heard it’s the thought that counts.

Whether he followed my line of thought or not, he didn’t slip the ring on his finger. Instead, he held the ring closer to his pointed nose and squinted at the inscription. “I wonder what it says,” he said, stepping to the side to get into better light. The sunlight glinted off the ancient silver, but he would never be able to make out the writing. Not only was it written in a dead and forgotten runic language, a thousand years of wear had wreaked havoc on the relatively malleable silver. It was only the magic inherent in the ring that preserved what was left of the writings.

I knew what it said, of course. It was my name – my true name – written in a magic tongue. It was what bound me to the ring and enslaved me to whoever wore it. Should this young man slip the ring onto his finger, I would be soul-bound to obey his every command for the rest of his life, however long it should last.

Rocking back on my heels, I watched him carefully put the ring back into the box and slip it into his pocket. “You don’t happen to live in a city, do you?” I asked hopefully, trailing behind him as he left the auction room and headed for the streets. “I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere for decades. Even if you never put that ring on, at least I’ll have something new to look at. I’m rather sick of flowers and bugs.”

When he stepped into a taxi, I followed, wrinkling my nose at the disgusting state of the cab. “I’d teleport you, if you asked,” I muttered darkly as he fumbled with his seatbelt and informed the driver of his destination. The car pulled away from the curb in a noxious cloud of fumes and I sighed, turning to gaze at my new, unknowing master. “Bought for sixty-three dollars and cab fare." I shook my head dismally. “This is going to be tons of fun, I can tell.”