So, the short story is happening, only, well, it’s not so short.  Editing happens, too, but while I remove 2500 words at a time, somehow I end up adding 1800, so while there is a net loss, it’s not as significant as I’d like.  In the meantime, I’m taking requests!  Before I move into book 2, I’d be happy to write some small vignettes on characters or events you might want a focus on… comment and be merry.  Just remember to close the door.  Before the horses get out, or something.

There was still some debris in the lot when I drove up, but all the flags and banners and reminders of what happened had been removed.  I was still a little shocky and in disbelief about the situation, kind of pushing it away like it had been something I’d read about or seen on TV.  You know, not actually there at the scene of the devastation.  I’d seen footage of tsunami (is that the plural, too) and I think there’s a level of escapism and a level of “sheer overwhelm” that us folk who get their information from the net have in handling real life.  I also think there’s probably a correlation between that and the adrenaline junkies amongst us – we spend so much time in the virtual it’s hard to remember the physical, so we’ll do extreme things to feel “alive.”

Just a theory, of course.

I walked up, tossing my keys in my right hand.  I’d have to return the car in the morning, but I was tired from the drive. 

I saw a letter in the gutter between the corners of my roof.  I’m sure there’s terms for it in carpentry and construction, but it was the little corner of overhang.  It took me a few tries with a stick to knock it down before I made it inside.  I knew who it was from.  After all, I’d seen her naked around there before…which is something for a good X-rated game of Clue, I thought.  (“On the roof, naked, and with a bat.”  Well, this one was “Previously as a bat,” but nevermind.)

I unlocked my door, dropped my keys in the octopus cup, turned on a light, closed & locked the door behind me (you remember who’s telling the story, right?) and then dropped down onto the futon, opening the letter to read.

“Huh,” I grunted, about a few minutes later.

Nothing for me to worry about now, that was for sure.  I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the futon.  I was asleep maybe fifty seconds later.

This time I didn’t dream.  I forgot how exhausting driving could be.  I mean, you’re sitting and watching things and maybe (all the rental cars I’ve ever driven were automatics) occasionally extending your foot.  It’s all the other things, because it’s not just like passive TV, where the most interest you get in a show (minus your being a powerful creature holding the magical might of an entire kingdom of fey who is most definitely concerned about the well-being of some meerkats) is in occasionally throwing popcorn at it if you’re disappointed in the lack of wit and character development.  While driving you actually have to react, sometimes to actual events (like that bag of leaves that blew off the truck in front of me) and sometimes to perceived possibilities (like my occasional, “No, really.  Is he going to stop at the stop sign or crash into me? No, he’s going to do a screeching halt and create the potential for an accident anyway.”)  After just a couple of hours, your tailbone is beginning to complain, anyway.  The scenery is moving past, but in long stretches of the west it’s not very different.  (I’ve driven up in the Pacific Northwest and that scenery is riveting.  If you like the colour green, of course.)  And then, especially at night you’re looking for the deer who is going to take this moment to cross the road, and other than that, it’s dark and fields and lots of dark. 

I can see why that kind of scenery is prone to myths of killers in cornfields, and abductions outside of places where there might be a payphone.  Alas, while a lot of my friends have concerns about there not being original ideas due to the number of remakes of movies and TV shows, I don’t share their concerns.  Cellphones change the plot of so many horror flicks it’s silly.  “I’m in your house,” is still scary.  “Good, then you know I have my shotgun in my hand,” is a fine response to that.  Sure, there are short-distance cellphone disruptors, but I think it’s requiring horror movie writers to come up with new hooks, um, so to speak.

I woke up because something was pressing against my thigh in a very uncomfortable fashion.  Well, that’s the reason I woke up, but the reason I didn’t just take the dragon tooth out of my pocket and roll back over for another couple of hours was because of the Dragon.

“Peredur?” I asked, groggily, staring at the face and the faint smell of burned wood.  It wasn’t sulphur, it was more like a campfire.  Great.  Dragons have signature smoke scents, maybe like perfume.

The eyes were right.

“Flee, wizard.”  He couldn’t fit in my place.  He was there, and not there at the same time, like he had slipped into the skin of the house but not the physical space. 

“G’way. I’m sleepin’.”  I am a lot braver when I’m groggy and things could still be part of my dream.

Then he roared.  It wasn’t…loud.  It wasn’t made of sound.  It was made of terror and heartbreak.  It was made of the breath of thorns and the coming of fire in the desert, where the resin of the cacti makes everything explode.  It was made of heat and hot and there was something of lost music to it, like the kind that swells up in your dreams and makes you feel like crying, but you can’t remember anything of the tune.  There were tears in it, and of course, fears, and it wasn’t at all like a shout.  Sorry.  I blame the still being asleep.

I froze.  It’s what we do with predators.  Then I moved, trying to get up, but apparently I wasn’t fast enough.  I saw his teeth come at me, and I was terrified, too much so to figure out even where I was, let alone catch the fact that his claw was aiming to pin me down.  He was black and red and like those really good pictures of Smaug, except right there in my face, in my house, and then I was flung out into space.

I rolled as I hit the grass, coughing, and aching.  I picked myself up.  I recognized this place.  It was in between the eight corners of Monaco.

I didn’t recognize the shadow that had burst through my door, the last thing I had seen as Peredur turned to face it.

I took a deep breath.  “Flee,” he said.  Well, I had business in this Kingdom. 

“To bedlam, then,” I said, aloud, and I walked between the trees.

Unlike “Hotel California,” I didn’t have any problems leaving once I’d checked out.  Of course, I often thought of the line, “You can check out any time you like,” to refer to being in control of your own destiny when it came to deciding to shuffle off the mortal coil (another euphemism.)  I would then combine it with some “Phantom of the Paradise”-esque contract.  (When I was younger, I’d often add “Everything excluded shall be deemed included,” as fine print to my notes at school.  It was a rare teacher who noticed, and even rarer that they knew the reference.)  I didn’t buy the button, “Death does not release you,” though, because that just underlies the ultimate fatalism of many religions.

Those morbid thoughts consumed me (not so literally, thank goodness) on the ride back, as I considered Ereshkigal, Ani-lbo, and Hel versus Hades/Pluto, Yeng-Wang-Yeh, and Arawn, and the gender discrepancies involved.  I probably really only had the Shadow King on my mind.  My dreams and my conscience were both full of bits that needed digestion, although speaking of such, I did have to make an extra stop because ice cream really isn’t for breakfast.

It occurred to me about two hundred miles out that there wasn’t a Shadow Queen.  I didn’t stop in the middle of the road the way such epiphanies always seem to hit me, because I then spoke Sylvia’s name aloud.  I hit the steering wheel again and swore.

I checked the time and called Ed.

“I figured it out.  Mars needs women.”  If that didn’t tell Ed who was calling, merely naming myself would have been at best a let down.

“Says you,” he replied, immediately.  “Although Heinlein did kind of brush off men who liked men in Stranger in a Strange Land by deciding that his uber-civilized alien would find it unnatural.  I’ve read a lot of fanfic that disagreed.”

“Rule thirty-four.  Fine.  Shadow Kings need the womenz.”

“I’m in ur psyche stealin’ ur anima?” he tried.

“Well, if he likes the witches, who better to hang out…as?” I asked.

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve got a point.  Hey, have you ever seen me as the type to have a badger on my head?”

“I don’t need drugs, E.  I’ve got conversations with you.”

“Am I an afterschool special?”

“Better than an afternoon delight,” he teased.

“No, see, it makes sense.  He’s after Sylvia, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I think that’s why he was in that house.”

“No, really.”  I hit my steering wheel again.  “Okay, fine, it was right in front of me the whole time and I insisted it wasn’t just a bunch of trees, it had to be a forest.”

“Be careful, you’re almost making sense now,” Ed reminded me.

“Dude.” I tapped my fingers against the wheel and tried to get my thoughts in order.  “He can’t have Maggie.  If he was in my head, it’d be obvious.  But I wanted Sylvia, so he wanted Sylvia, and then maybe he got the -cubi in because he wants to birth a new god.  Or a new goddess.”

“I want a new god, one that does what it should? One that answers my prayers said at night, one that smites my enemies so good?” Ed filked, musing.

“How do gods mate?” I asked.

“Oh man, try the internet for that one.”

“I mean procreate.”

“I’m not backing off my original answer.  Zeus was creative, but not as much as Loki, if I recall correctly.”

“Right.  But what about gods of the underworlds?”

“Oh.  Um.  Persephone was stolen, wasn’t she?”

“Right.  I thought I remembered something about Anubis having a wife.  I know he had a daughter.  Anput.  Qadesh.  These names kind of circle around in my head, but I don’t know for sure.  And I’m driving so I can’t look it up.”

“Voice recognition systems for the win, eh?”  Ed sighed.  “I don’t know, E.   Where do you go from there?”

“That’s just it.  The wheels are turning, and I’m afraid of where the road leads.  What if he needs a female aspect in order to rule a new land?   I said then that he’s making some sort of power grab, and that’s kind of weird.”

“Taking this whole conversation as real and not part of a gaming session is kind of weird.  What, he’s running for President?  I’m voting for the lesser evil.  Hold on a second.”  He put his hand over the speaker and talked to someone in the background, while my mind raced.

-Cubi procreated in dreams, succubi stealing the seed and incubi sowing it, leaving its victim pregnant with the possibilities.  It wasn’t a nine-month gestation, either, as it had to do with the connection to the Outside, not the physical.    The Shadow King was an old power, and rare was the human that could birth a demigod.  If the -Cubi got something out of the deal, could they take the Shadow’s seed and plant it, instead?

I caught myself thinking, “Not in my Sylvia!” and then frowned.  Not my Sylvia.  And not using Rohana as a midwife, a thought that occurred and was discarded as quickly as possible.  Of course, there was a whole coven who could do the trick in a pinch, couldn’t they?

“Okay, I’m back,” Ed said.  “So he gets married, has a baby Shadow and rules a magical kingdom somewhere far away from us, right?  Why are we worried?  Doesn’t this kind of stuff happen to like hundreds of weird creatures every day?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly.  “He’s just been too connected to me and my friends to not be worried, I guess.”  My mind started winding down, or at least the anxiety decreased.

“Mom says come on over on Sunday for chicken.”

“Sounds like a plan.  Can’t miss her chicken,” I said, almost automatically.  “She’ll want to find out what’s happening.  She was in my dream, you know.”

“Yeah.  Everyone at work said they had weird dreams during the morning meeting, but dreams suck to try to tell to other people.  The best you get is, `Well it was weird,’ like your subconscious is normally straight.  Heh.”

I rolled my eyes.  “So you’re saying my subconscious is queer?”

“Hey.  Your dirty thoughts can stay right out of my side of the fence, mister.”

“Your side of the sewer, you mean.”

He chuckled and we got off the phone, while I focused on driving.

“I think you have a point, sir, but are you aware that there is a badger eating your head?”

I sighed.  “He is merely nomming.  Besides, this has to be a dream, because a badger’s jaws simply can’t open that wide.”

“Perhaps you have a point, sir.”

“A pointy head?  And stop calling me, `Sir,’ like I’m something sir…um…ish.”

“If you wish, sir.”

“Oh, no, no, no, you don’t get me that easily.  I never wish.”  Which was a lie, but so was the badger on my head.  I scratched my badger in lieu of being able to sit and think.  The strange boy who looked like an extra from “Oliver” cheerfully ceased to exist.

I was sitting on a bench that didn’t exist in a part of the Botanical Gardens that also didn’t exist, at least, to my merely mundane knowledge of the place.  I recognized the area, but not the plants, or the scent of the flowers.  It was kind of like the stuff those coffee places called chai, but more if it had been crossed with a dusty road that had just been touched by the first rain of the season, and then a packet of barbecue sauce had been split on it by the passing hoof of an antelope.

Pareve barbecue sauce, of course.

Matana sat next to me, watching the sun go down over the fields of odd, motile flowers.  “I thought you habitually closed doors,” she said.

“I thought you habitually feasted on human blood.”

“You do know there’s a badger eating your head?”

“We each have our parasites to bear, then, I guess.”

“No, a badger, not a bear.”

“Why do you insist on badgering me?”

“Have you taken all you can bear?”

I harumphed, and she giggled.  That was the way of it, then.  “Why are you in my dream?” I asked.  “I don’t even like you,” I said after the last ray of the sun fell past the ridge and the flowers slowly came to a stop, as if falling asleep.

“The feeling is entirely mutual.  Maybe that bothers your subconscious?”

“I think everyone wants to be liked,” I said, hesitantly.

“Perhaps I represent your unresolved anxieties revolving around violence?”

I quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Perfectly reasonable, of course, but I’ve never been anything but civilized, and I think that galls you.”

I shifted, not admitting anything.  After all, it was my dream, and thus my fantasy, right?  ”It’s been a rough dreaming, a rough night.”

“And so are its creatures?” she asked, teasingly.

“I might have a few mysteries that include you, so my subconscious may still be churning out the reasons you’re connected.”

“Dream a little dream of me?” she shrugged.

“That’s a Sandman reference.”  I sighed.  ”DC, of course,” like I had to explain to my dream.

As I watched the garden, some of the flowers began to glow, and the luminescent petals were picked up by the wind.  It was disturbingly Disney, and I was going to remark on that to Matana, but she was gone, out sucking blood in someone else’s dreams, maybe hers.   Or whatever she ate. I was still unclear on that.

“If this is,” I said to the plants, “some kind of metaphor, I will have you know that I do not read poetry for fun, and I would prefer if some sort of deus ex machina came out and explained it all to me.  Exposition and spoilers are fine.”

The flowers did not answer, but someone else walked past and sat on the bench.

“Thomas.  I was wondering when you would show up,” I said, with as much dry wry in my voice as I could manage without a cough.

“And here I am.  Not to provide answers, but maybe poetry.”

“I don’t think my brain has had the opportunity to make simple couplets, let alone some naughty limericks.”

“Am I Bedlam or Rhymer?” he asked.  It seemed to be very important to him, so I didn’t shrug off the question.

“Is this dreaming at all true?” I asked in return.

“You were exposed to a great deal of magic today.  I do not think you escaped it all,” he said. “Now, a true Thomas sees the path to Heaven as one foul and tempered too much in order, and instead spends the biblical forty days instead on the road to fair Elfland.  Mad Tom has been spit out from Elfland and maudlin, his disciples walk ten thousand miles to meet him.  What path do you follow, E?”

“I prefer the doctor moniker than something suggesting I’ve walked out of an asylum, previously mentioned comics aside,” I said.  ”Why am I on the road, and does my GPS work there?”

“You’re a seeker, one who wanders the fringes, seeking the path of truth.”

“I think I’m more the type who tries to avoid truth, holds his hands his eyes with the fingers just wide enough to not stumble, and runs away shouting.  The one who knows the best bet is to throw himself on the live grenade than read a book of unspeakable horror.”

“You’re a very scared man with a badger on his head.”

“At least he’s got an affable aroma.  He could be a stinking badger.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Until you reminded me of it, I had forgotten it.  But I’m sure it’s there for a reason.  Perhaps it is a gentle method of indicating that I am as stubborn as one.  I don’t know if it even really looks like a badger, because it’s a dream.  It could be something that my mind had made a picture of that says ‘badger’ and all of your reflections in my subconscious has agreed, indeed, it is a badger, especially if it is not a chinchilla.  I, myself, just want to know am I suffering for having a badger on my head in real life?  Is this badger some stubbornness within myself that is holding me back?  I don’t know if I could go into an interview with a badger on my head.  That would probably not get me the job.  What if the badger decides it wants someone else?  Would my head be cold?  Would it suddenly savage another in order to rid itself of the taste of my scalp and go back to wherever head-eating-badgers come from?  I try not to think about it, really.”

“Madness, then?”

Of course, it was then that the alarm on my phone woke me up.

I woke up and stared at the phone on the desk next to the bed. I thought I had caught a flash of the message light, but it was dark. In the background, the battle of Kitchen Stadium was still raging.

I had believed the Questor’s wife when she said I was safe. It was rare for a Dream sending to be dangerous, and honestly it was hard to tell how much was sending and how much was dream. It was considered a chink in the armor of many wizardly beings, though, since so few remembered to put up a guard. (Maggie did. She said it kept her from being able to have more prescient dreams, but it did protect her from a variety of minor curses and banes. Banes were apparently negatively oriented charms, which could be both physical and psychological in nature.)

I’d read enough psychology to know that there was no way I could tell if there was something more or less “real” about the dream. I thought there was, but the dialogue wasn’t quite right. I wasn’t going to call up the Questor at (glancing at my cellphone) dark o’clock and ask if I’d been dream-warded by his wife. We were tentative buds, but not bros.

I thought about calling Sylvia’s cell phone. Had it been on her? Had it gone with the police? I had driven here carefully. Which meant I didn’t care about the speed limit unless the cars around me did, but I kept having this guilty feeling that there ought to be a warrant out for me or something. I didn’t like it when magic and the legal system butted heads. Not just because of that Swamp Thing in Gotham City bit, but because the magic world always felt kind of underground. Clandestine, that was the word. Some have it that people outside the culture would come at it with pitchforks and torches, but I don’t think that’s true.

I have a hammer and everything I see is a nail. I think if people were clued in and closed their darn kitchen cabinets, we’d have less spaces inbetween. I’ve heard a lot that a closed life doesn’t have room for magic to creep in, I guess. It’s a perspective. I think that science is pretty darn magical, and that’s even when I understand it, Mr. Clarke. (Oh, and for the record, when I was in the kitchen of Mr. Questor, I saw his wife close the cabinets behind him.)

I look at the world and I see magic. I see magic that frightens me, but mostly, I see magic that gives me hope. I see the magic that Barrie said create fairies, I see the fabulous colors of the sunsets against the mountains and know the magic there.  I see the magic between a smile and shy bowing of the head.  I see the magic of shadows on the sheets.  Doloise was a creature of magic, and yet there was the shimmer of her laughter when she watched the cavorting of meerkats as edited and made into, well, magic.  I like the magic of a hot fudge sundae when you put one of those plastic red spoons right through the whipped cream, make sure you have the proper number of nut pieces, and then pop it into your mouth, enjoying the alchemy as it hits your pleasure centers.

Man, I was hungry.  Just look at those dishes up on the television.  Ignore the judges because they never have any taste. Ahem.  So to speak.  It was too late for a run to an ice cream shop and too late for room service.  (Which is a joke, if you ask me.  Aren’t hotels like a 24-hour project?  Don’t they have people to handle the bizarre cravings of the penthouse suite?  ”Jeeves, I need a sirloin brazed on both sides for 30 seconds and then put in the microwave for 4 minutes, some potatoes mashed with sour cream made from the milk of a recent primigravida, some shallots minced with a silver knife, and a large double scoop of mint chocolate.” “Very good, sir.  Would you be wanting the whipping cream also whipped with mint and a hint of ginger? And the chocolate waffle cone?” “Jeeves, do you even have to ask?” “Of course not, sir.”  Of course, this was a budget motel and I think ‘Jeeves’ anymore is a title, not an actual name.)

I had seen an all-day cafe on my way into town, but I wasn’t really motivated into leaving my bed.  I needed my sleep if I was going to make it back home in the morning.

Why was I in a hurry to get back?  Sylvie’s comments came back to me for a moment.  I’d had houseplants, but no fish, no pets, an unofficial girlfriend who my dream says lives with someone else, and a war.  Memories.  I could get my books packed.  Really, I could probably pay for some movers.  The job search sucked everywhere, but I could float for a while.  I’d be farther away from my sister, and Ed, and my mother, but for two of the three it was really kind of a blessing.  Plus I was pulling Ed too deep into this stuff.  He might be better off without me.

Whoa.  That kind of thinking was not the kind I was used to making.  What was with that?  That, my friends, was a spiral.  I could blame low blood sugar, I guess.  Nothing but to go get some of the trip snacks, which meant leaning over to where I’d put my briefcase.

Sugar bar in hand (it claimed to be a “granola” bar, but we all know better) I watched as my favorite Iron Chef was marked the winner.  I ate it while flipping through the channels for something else to watch.   This time of night there were an awful lot of commercials, as if the late hour weakened the usual resistances against buying things, or maybe because no one creates good movies for the 2am crowd.  (“Jeeves and the Giant Chocolate Sundae.”  It’s a small art film, designed for people hungry for the Queen’s ice cream delicacies.)

Eventually I fell asleep.  And I dreamed.

I stared at the screen at the hotel, and put on the Food Network for background noise.  I had had the strangest run of what I would normally have considered luck, but after a night with the Questor and his family, understood was magic.  Several kinds of magic, really.  Good conversation, good food, all of that was a magic we folk who aren’t wizards share.  Of course, the full set of green lights on the way back, the upgraded suite, the little perks, that was the kind of magic wizards could share and too often didn’t.  I didn’t know what the karmic repercussions were, but the whole, “The aggravations are kept to a minimum,” feel of it seemed like a blessing more than a spell.

I let the comforting buzz of Kitchen Stadium fill the air while I leaned back on the extra pillows I hadn’t needed to ask for from room service.  I think the secret ingredient was spoo or targ heart or something.  I wasn’t really paying attention.   I was thinking of Gideon and the monsters of Midian a la Clive Barker, honestly, having verified the contents of my hotel room’s desk drawer.  (And checked for signs of bedbugs.  Maggie got me into that way of thinking from her day job.   How I long sometimes for the bliss of ignorance.)

The phone on the desk rang.

I ignored it.  It simply couldn’t be for me.  Someone who wanted to call me would have used my cellphone.  I checked to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, idly, and then slid it back onto the table.

It rang again.  Someone was trying to get ahold of someone who had left this room, I decided.   It was too late for any courtesy call.

I let it ring a third time before curiosity got my tongue and killed the cat, or whatever the phrase is.

“You never called me back,” Sylvie said.

“You were supposed to be dead,” I said, feeling very nervous.  The Questor’s wife said I was safe from anything less than a Dragon.  I had believed her.  I was sitting in my boxers half-watching delicious blue bantha ice cream being prepared for the dessert portion of the competition.

Of course, magic can’t fix the human things you messed up.

“Oh, that.  Look, Maggie’s crazy.”

That wasn’t a newsflash.  ”I always thought so.  Have you seen the way she drives?”

“No, she’s got some kind of rage-on for you.  I got some help from a… friend,” I knew without even asking that she meant an Other ally I wouldn’t approve of, “and tried to leave the coven.  I guess you got caught in the cross-fire.”

“You had to fake your own death in order to leave?  I think I saw this cult in this movie, once.   And you’re calling to apologize for me taking the fall?”  I was suspicious.  ”How in the coldest Peruvian afterlives did you get my number?”

“You’re, um, well, you’re bugged.  In a magical way.  We lost track of you earlier this evening, but the auguries found you again.  I was calling to try to tell you not to come back.”

“What?  Since when am I in a spy novel?”

“You let a witch help you in your convalescence.  Do you know how many bandages you left lying around?  At least you need to skip out of town for a while.  I’m serious.  After the blow-up between Maggie and Matana, and the whole Rohana thing, you’re on her hit list.”

“You make it sound so literal,” I gulped.  ”What Rohana thing?”

“Um, your girlfriend, right?  Who lives with Joy, Maggie’s Second?”

I remembered Joy only vaguely.  The Magster didn’t share well, and I got the impression (the few times I had actually listened to coven gossip) that she more had an understudy than any assistance.  Joy wasn’t one of my favourites, and in fact, I remembered her as kind of mean.

Wait.   Rohana lived with Joy?  My girlfriend was some other girl’s girlfriend?  I wanted to say it wasn’t an unpleasant thought, exactly, but I was kind of feeling weird about it.  Really, except for its inevitability in adult video design, I had never really thought of anything like that happening to me.   On the other hand, Rohana didn’t seem the type to like mean girls.  Not that I had any right to determine Rohana’s preferences.  I liked that she seemed to like me, because that gave me license to like her.  So there was probably a whole lot to Joy that I didn’t know, and I was just about to give her a pass on the mean thing I couldn’t remember, except that if she was also part of Mag’s coven she might be trying to kill me.  What if she knew Rohana was cheating on her with a guy?  My ticket to death city was about to be validated.

“Uh, E?”

Oh, I was involved in a conversation.  “Sorry, I was thinking.”

“Well, do it fast, and do it right,” she snapped. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she immediately apologized.  ”You have no idea how stressed I am.  There’s so much happening and I’m suddenly in the middle of it.  I thought… I thought it would be different.”  She sounded lonely and sad for a moment.

“Of course they bite.  What did you expect them to do?  Grant wishes?”  I can’t have any of my chivalric tendencies manipulated like that.

“What?”

“It’s a reference to a movie.  Nevermind.”  I sighed.  ”All my stuff is back at my place.  It would have to be pretty convincing to have me leave it behind.”

“Fire?  Flood?  Blood?”

“Ah, the terrible trio.  Now we are on to threats,” I said, and an anger took me.  ”Look, I don’t care what kind of games you guys are playing.  Stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours.  I’m not a witch, I’m not involved in your war, and I’ll handle the Shadow King my own way.”

“Your own way,” she repeated.  ”You can’t have it, you know.”

“Yeah, it’s Shadow King, not Burger King.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Ditto,” I said, and I hung up on her.  Who did she think she was, anyway?

I stared at the phone for a moment as I realized that was indeed a good part of the question.

“I’m not afraid, exactly.” The words seemed to come hard.  ”I just wouldn’t be very good at it.  I’m happy being a small fish.”

“Don’t tempt her,” the Questor grinned.

“Bah.  There’s no room in the tank,” she said.  She leaned back and looked at me.  ”Really?” she asked, with an eyebrow cocked high.

“Why doesn’t anyone believe me when I say I’m uncomfortable with the power I have?”  I said.  I hadn’t really ever said it that way before, and I was surprised it had come out that way this time.

She nodded slowly.  ”You should be.  We usually think of Openers as dangerous.  Incanters, summoners, taking from the Outside, but you, you crippled and nearly destroyed a Dragon.  Not to say there aren’t other Powers, but even the word Dragon summons, if you forgive the term, images of the fears of mankind.  A Dragon makes many enemies and few friends, but those friends are now warned about you.  Your name is spoken in places that speak languages even the wise fear, Gandalf might say.”  She smiled a little.

“So you’re saying I have powerful enemies?  I kind of got that one on my own,” I rolled my eyes.

“Wouldn’t being a wizard tap you into the kind of power to handle them?  Or are you more scared of yourself than you are of anything that might strike at you?”  There was a smile hinting at her lips.

I got the feeling that there was some kind of test in this.  ”I don’t even get the choice of fading and leaving for the West.”

“California’s too delicately balanced.  It’s a minefield.”  She shook her head.  ”You’re not getting the One Ring, E.  Have you tried to close the door, such as it is, on your mark?”

That was an interesting idea.  I shook my head.  ”Could I?”

“You could ask me to wipe it out, or find someone to transfer it to, willing or unwilling.  Play your enemies against themselves.  You could do a lot of things.”  She didn’t answer my question.  ”The Questor,” she waved at her husband, “gave you several free answers.  That in itself could worry your foes.”

I hadn’t thought of that.  We were just folks making good conversation, but on one level, she was absolutely right.  ”So what’s the advice?”

“Honestly, I’d like to counsel you to become a wizard, but I don’t take apprentices and it’d be irresponsible otherwise.   That leaves me with an old saw.  Be yourself.”

“That’s easy enough to say,” I pointed out.  ”After all, I don’t really know how to be anyone else.”

“Easy with the scare quotes, mister.  We are human beings and we have a choice.  We can work with, against, or just surrender to the flow of things.  Each of those things are important at the right time, at the right instant, and none of us know what that time is.”

“The whole mythology of free will?” I asked.

“Good choice of words.  If you’d just said myth, I would have kicked you in the knee.” She gestured with her foot.  ”I think it might touch on that, but even without the context of soul and the behaviouralism inherent in that system, that’s a lot of what makes us human to each other.  It’s how we act when we get to that crux.  You had to free the fire.  It didn’t do Prometheus or Dog or the Sparrow any good, did it?”  It was a sad smile.  ”And what comes from outside our worlds has no reason to play by our rules.  They are outside the system, immune to the flow, not part of our cycles, not with the interests of our world in mind.  Like, um, literally.  So, for me, in defining that good or evil thing, I have the good of my world in mind.  You’re a force for it.  Suck it up.”

I grinned.  ”Does that mean I get a superhero emblem and maybe a theme song?”

She mock-glared at me.  ”I’m sure I could get the kids to whip something up, if you don’t mind being called something as obvious as Hero Man of the Hero Kingdom of Hero Men in Hero World.  I blame it on their father and his inability to find names for his characters.”  She turned the mock glare over to him.

He shrugged, grinning.

“Yeah, yeah, `Nothing wrong with heroes that Batman or the Green Arrow can’t solve.’  That’s practically a motto.”  She sighed.  ”Alright, it’s long past time for dessert.  I’m going to make some ice cream sundaes, and then start the kids on their baths.”  She got up and moved towards the kitchen.

“Um, she is aware that they’ve both been members of the JLA, right?” I asked the Questor.

“She had too early a Frank Miller influence on her superheroes, I think,” the Questor.

“It was the smartest question I had brainpower for, I think.”  I yawned.

“Just don’t bring up Superman,” he warned, still smiling.  ”She has opinions.”  He stretched out his legs for a moment, then took the dishes into the kitchen.

“Do you like chocolate syrup?” she asked from the doorway.

“Yes.  What, no `eye of newt’ and `wing of bat’?” I teased.

“Dragon’s-blood orange?” she teased.

“Just like mom used to make,” I retorted.

“I can also burn you a grilled cheese sandwich if you’d like.  I’m good with that.”  She disappeared back into the kitchen, in a purely mundane fashion.  That, at least, was like most of the wizards I knew.  I’ve seen some lairs, and some labs, but you still needed the occasional PB&J.  Even wizards had to eat.  Invisible servitors still had to be taught how to scramble your eggs just right.

I flinched.

“I don’t try and make enemies.  I, um, have a Dragon on my metaphorical tail.  Peredur wants me for something, Naul probably has a legitimate beef with me.  I don’t know if Peredur counts as hostile, though, given I lost him his pretty fairy.  I was paid by some old-fashioned Russian sorcerors, but that doesn’t mean they were happy with my services.  My ex- runs a coven who is in the middle of a witch war and she seems to have some kind of vendetta against me.  I was set up against the Shadow King.   I staked a vampire out in the sun for a while to get some answers.  She might hold a grudge.  Some -cubi have my worst interests at heart.  My could-have-been-an-ex- is officially dead, although her phone called me and I haven’t called it back.  I’ve been told her death was a ruse.  That’s just in the last few months, let alone days,” I sighed.

“You keep busy,” he said, nodding.  He held back the slip of paper to me.

“Oh, you know, it’s important to keep a hand in,” I said, hoping the sardonic tone explained everything.  I took the slip and put it back in my pocket.  “What is it?”

“Minus one handbasket, I’d say it was a pretty sincere threat.”

I took it right back out of my pocket and placed it on the armrest of the couch.  “You mean…”  I put it into context, and then took it back out. “That’s a floating place?”

“Marlowe’s Doctor may have had the right of it.”  He shrugged.

“I say we make our own torments,” his wife said, coming back into the room and the conversation.  She had something in her hand, a strange rock-like thing with an edge, kind of micro-obelisk-ish.  If that’s a word.  (Saying it aloud is hard to do after eating crackers, I bet.)

“I don’t know if it’s a path I could set anyone upon,” the Questor half-smiled.

“Don’t mind him,” his wife said, sitting next to me.  “He’s an atheist.”

I couldn’t help but make a surprised laugh.  “I think you’re looking at a bigger picture than I can,” I said, finally, to the Questor.  “Not that I’ve dealt really with non-manifest Powers.  I just hear stories.”

He grinned.  “I try not to take anything on faith.”

His wife rolled her eyes.  “Here,” she said, putting the rock into my hand.  I considered snatching my hand away at the last minute, but she was quick.

It felt warm, very warm, and almost as if some kind of heartbeat were pulsing through it.  “What is it?”

“A tooth.  I’d say about four warriors worth,” she grinned.  “It’s not a major canine or anything.  Anyway, I’m only letting you borrow it, not bury it.  Next time Peredur comes a-calling, you have some leverage.”  She tilted her head.  “You’ll want to give me something in return so the pendulum swings freely and not at an angle.  I’ll similarly keep it in trust.”  She glanced at her husband.  “It feels really weird to ask for such things.  Why is it always that calling out the rules sounds so ridiculous?”

He chortled, but stayed quiet.

I pulled out the rock the Small Folk had given me and gave it to her without hesitation.  “It’s a wish, I think.”

She held it up to her eyes and I could feel things moving around in the air as it was inspected on several different levels.  It was like a music-box melody, with tiny little “pings” as the cylinder rotated and pushed bits of metal away.  “A fair trade,” she said.  “And both gifts perilous,” she smiled and I saw her teeth.

“We only make the most interesting friends,” the Questor murmured to her.  They clasped hands for a moment, smiling at each other.  I smiled, too.

“What is your next step?” the Questor’s wife asked.

“Uh… I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I admitted.  I pulled out my phone.  “I’ve been making lists.”

“Things to do, promises to keep, how many miles before you can sleep?” she asked, teasingly.

“Well, yes, and, yes, and, no.”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“Try and stop her,” the Questor grinned.  She slapped at the air near him.

“Sure,” I said, bemused.

“You are in no danger here.  You will be in no danger, short of a Dragon, sleeping in your hotel room tonight.  Get some rest.”  She seemed quite sure of this, and I suspect it wasn’t just digging up a tooth that took so long in the back.

“Am I allowed to thank you?”

“What, do I look like a fairy?” she asked, with a hint of what I always thought was a New York accent.

I shrugged, grinning.  They look however they want to look.

“Alright, I’ve been accused of being a little fey at times.   Anyway, I understand you don’t want to be a wizard.  I have had those moments, myself.”

“About twice a month, if I recall correctly,” the Questor suggested.

“Shush!” She grinned at him, then turned back to me.  ”Once I took on the mantle I owed too many favours to get out of it again,” she said, adding, “Even if I knew how.  You’ve been marked.”  She made sure I knew it.  I nodded.  ”Until whatever it is is truly relinquished, the kinds of things that are happening to you, and no, I don’t know or care what all of them are, will keep happening.”

“So I’m stuck being a weirdness magnet until I somehow get rid of the invisible blot of Caine?”

“Well, that’s a way of putting it,” she said, her grin turning wry.  ”But you’re not Job or any martyr.”  She looked me straight in the eye, just long enough for me to see that she was serious without it becoming anything else.  ”You could pick up the mantle, such as it is.”

I shook my head.

“What if I said wizards are made, not just born?” she asked.  ”Why are you so afraid of it?”

“You shall not pass.  You shall not collect two-hundred dollars.  The dark fire shall not avail you.  You must pay rent on Mediterranean.”  She said it in an almost dramatic monotone, if that wasn’t some kind of oxymoron. 

“So, your non-Flame of Udun burning question?” the Questor asked.  He put down his plate, but that’s the only kind of preparation he really seemed to take.

“There’s a cream for that, isn’t there?” I muttered.  “Do I only get one?”

“Yep, and that was it.”  He looked sad for a moment, but the minute passed and I could see from the way his eyes crinkled that he had been joking.  “Seriously, I think the reasons people with this particular talent have made it difficult to get to them in the stories is because it can be practically a deus ex machina, or you end up saying, `Oh, you had the ruby slippers all along.’”

“Silver,” his wife corrected.  “In the book.”  She had gone back to writing, but she had that curious look a lot of wizards I’d been around had, suggesting that her attention was in more than one place at once.  Honestly, wizards multitasked in strange fashions.

“If they’d told Dorothy that from the beginning, would she have just said, `I’m going home now, good luck with the witches?’  That’s not the kind of thing that makes a good story.  It’s worse than, `It was all a dream.’”  He shrugged.  “I’m just not the type to find the frugal life on top of a high mountain to be to my liking.  Too cold.”

“Not enough wi-fi,” his wife grinned.  “Maybe we could set up the usual three challenges the asker needs to face, the smarter of which give you clues as to the answer you’ll receive.   I mean, we’re strong believers in narrative causality around here,” his wife interjected, “but you don’t have to find three golden apples.  I prefer Fujis anyway.”

“I wonder,” the Questor mused, “if there are granny nymphs, too.”

“Only polyamorists sow their domesticated oats,” she rolled her eyes at him.

He stuck his tongue out at her, and I know she saw it.  He put his attention to me.    ”Do it right, though.  If you want to spend the night figuring it out, and then seeing me at the shop, we can do it that way.  Although…” he trailed off.

“The boss,” his wife explained.

“The boss?” I asked.

“We’re free, here,” she said, implying they were expensive somewhere else. 

At least, that’s how I read it.  I nodded, as if I understood.  I looked around.  Well, we were all wage-slaves to someone, I guess.   I took a breath, composing my thoughts.

He held up his hand as if to stop me from saying.  “I know one of them is about the Dragon,” he said.

“That wasn’t a lucky guess,” his wife winked at me.  “It’s not often we entertain an actual Dragon slayer in the house.”

“Trouble is, you only get them on Sundays,” the Questor said. 

“Lawyers aren’t always nice,” I retorted, recognizing the quote.

“But they can be, for a price,” his wife picked it up.

“Not rules-lawyers, I hope,” the Questor said.  “Let me answer that one for you.” 

I was looking for it, and so I was ready to see it.  A flicker in his dark eyes, like a flame wavering behind them.  Like Peredur?  Was the Questor’s trait related to the Dragons? 

He wasn’t looking at me, or anything in this world, that was for certain.  I could feel something like a brush of the Beyond.  It was like opening a door, but it was done within some kind of other structure.  It was more like pushing a paintbrush heavy with paint, that kind of smooth cool sensation as you put down the first coat.  It didn’t have a sound to it, just the sensation.

“The path to the cave is coated with ash, and her jewels no longer can defy the darkness.  The entrance is blocked by the roots of the forest, and thorns dig deep into her nest.  They remain locked in eternal battle, neither able to breathe or grow.  Fire would free her, but the ones who came before freed fire, instead.”  He shuddered and took a breath, and the flickering of his eyes quieted and was no longer visible.  “I can almost see her,” he said, as he came back.  “She’s hurt, but it’s a Fisher King sort of hurt, an eternal wound.  It’s like…”

I shook my head.  “It’s like she tore out her own heart.  More Davey Jones in that popular pirate flick.”

“She can’t die that way?” he asked.

I saw his wife smile and shake her head, sadly. 

“I’m pretty sure her lover did it in some kind of synchronicity.  No.  I think…”  I put some pieces together.  “Artur’s still alive, then.  Holding her back.  He had some kind of ancient grudge of the forest against her.  I think she broke some sort of cosmic rules.  We had to free the fire, though.  I don’t remember any jewels.”  Thorns.  Doloise.  “Man, I wish I knew if Peredur had set me up on this, or if he’s just an opportunist.”

The Questor’s wife’s eyes narrowed.  “Peredur?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah.  Interfering Dragon with a grudge against a Shadow King.  Know him?”

She closed her book and stood up.  I glanced at the title, but all it was was some kind of travelogue-style journal of some sort.  After kissing her daughter on the forehead as she went by, she passed the doorway into another part of the house.  I looked at the Questor.

He shrugged.  “Maybe she’s looking up his e-mail.  You’d never believe her little black book.”

I shook my head.  “I’ve dealt with wizards.  I’d totally believe it.”

“What’s the second question?” he asked.

“Speaking of little black books,” I said, pulling the slip of paper out of my pocket, “tell me where that leads.”

He stared at it for a few minutes, and then sent it back.  “Who did you annoy?” he asked.

“Oh boy, you want a list?”

He chortled.