If I recall correctly, and my recollections were in doubt these days, yes, Peredur did knock.  

Now, I don’t know how to rate Dragons on any kind of scale (hah hah – get it?) of power or intensity or sheer toilet-training defying measures, but Peredur scared me more than dear Nell.
I had been offered more opportunities to experience fear in the past few weeks than any time before in my adult life.  It was something I had spent some of my sullen schmuckish time on, introspectively defining and cataloguing it.

“Fear of the unknown,” is a strange thing to experience as a kid.  On one hand, you’d think, “Well, I don’t have enough experience to be scared of things I don’t immediately understand,” but on the other hand, because you don’t have the structures built to process things, the unknown can be Big and Overwhelming.   As you grow to adulthood, your structures go into overtime, rationalizing the night sounds to be things like, “The house settling,” as if the house normally gets up and shakes like the family hound and has to get back into position.   You might even find yourself with your own kids, reassuring them of such things like, “The thunder is loud, yes, but it can’t hurt you by itself.”  You might tell them there is no such thing as ghosts.  Or better yet, you can get yourself caught up in a place I think of as Schrödinger’s Lie: “You don’t have to worry about it.”  (“Verschränkung” sounds like the stiff drink someone needed after looking in after the cat was put in the box.  I guess “Schrödinger’s Turtle” just wasn’t as, well, catchy.)

Adults, when you think about it, seem to try to process things as “worry” instead of “fear.”  No one likes to go around and admit that they’re “scared.”  Even when they say, “I’m afraid that…” they’re not talking about fear, they’re trying to salve someone’s upcoming disappointment with a polite social lubrication.  (Most lubricants are a form of lie.)  What grown-ups are scared of is loss of control.  This is why our relationships are so messed up – you can’t (unless there’s an app, I mean a spell for that) control the way someone else feels.  Most of the time neither of you can communicate it well, which is even worse.  So the one thing we can control in a relationship (ourselves) can’t work in the vacuum of individualism, or there’s no relationship in the first part.  It’s all interconnected, and thus fairly complex (if not necessarily complicated.)

I like to consider myself an optimist, if only because I am troubled only by a handful of things in my personal sphere of attention that go wrong at any one time.  After all, while I’m not on any kind of cellular level aware of the ambient bursts of radiation that my epidermis encounters (and the potential mutations that might ensue) on a daily basis when I go into the big blue room and its blasting solar light, I’m far more worried about being roasted by what I thought were mythical creatures than, say, skin cancer.

The knock came back, a little heavier this time.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

I received no answer.  Either the mysterious visitor didn’t hear me, or he/she/it had been badly burned on “Knock Knock” jokes as a child.  I, myself, love Interrupting Cow.

I decided to act.  I don’t want you to think it was an easy decision, but I had wavered for a while on the far sightseeing bluffs of metaphor overlooking the realm of catatonia, and I had decided that I did not believe their fancy tourism magazines.  In fact, visiting no matter how nice it seemed this time of the year did not sound like it was good for my (mental) health.

I turned around and started towards the door.  In my head, I counted steps like that favourite scene in “Aliens” with the motion detectors, although I was unsure I had 18 meters in any straight line within the apartment.  I really should get a geomancer in here and make sure my Feng Shui wasn’t pointing to “Tasty to Dragons” or something similar.

If they were able to make a movie from the images in my head, it’d be a trick shot.  The camera would bob up and down like there was some kind of motion of my walking, but the door would never get any farther. It would loom there, and there’d be some kind of echo-y sound effects. 

After all, who knew better than I the risks of opening doors.  It was just one step removed from letting in the monsters.

Then I’d grasp the door handle, and yank the door open.

Strike that.  I’d unlock the deadbolt, grasp the door handle, and yank the door open.

“Hello, small wizard.”

I stood there surprised for a moment.  If I ever get to revise the character sheet of my life, I’d like to immediately add the aspect, “Is especially witty when the unexpected occurs,” to it. 

I recognized the fellow and the kind of double vision that sometimes happens when I interact with creatures of the supernatural.  He had the apron from one of the all-night supermarkets folded over his belt, a pair of jeans, and one of those short-sleeved button-down shirts that aren’t exactly casual.  He wasn’t smoking, and his black hair was more up in a knot rather than a ponytail in that style that kind of reminds me of a Samurai.  At the same time, he was an eight foot tall troll, with a nose like a mountain crag, a nose that took up all his visible face, and he was down on one knee.

“Um, hello,” I decided.

“The path of the sacred acorn lies open to you, sweeper of doorways.”  I wasn’t sure if I liked “Wizard” better.  “The liege of small places requests your presence.”  He bowed, and one mountainous arm swept before him.

“At,” I glanced at my watch, “this time of night?”

“Hey, what can I say?  I always pull the suck-end of night shifts.”  He moved his weight from one leg to another visibly and I could hear the creak of the steps up to the door.  “Anyway, I’m sure my King knows you are a very busy man.”  He rolled his eyes.  I began to defend myself, but he put a hand out.  “Seriously, word has it you’re a Dragonslayer.  And I’ve heard that can take a lot out of a man, let alone a little wizard,” he said.  He grinned.  “Of course, I’ve also heard it said that Dragons make excellent pate.”
I think I looked a little ill.  I certainly felt faint.

He laughed.  “Anyway, this is a thing fair Thomas can do no more for us.  You know the eight corners of Monaco.  Travel them not deosil, but widdershins.  Remember it by knowing I’d kick you in the shins if you went the wrong way.  Fall under the bridge of trees, and you shall be in the smaller realms.   And do it after dark – you don’t want to bring sunshine in where it isn’t wanted, got it?” 

I nodded.

“Good.”  He paused.  “Oh,” he said, and started digging through his pockets.  He came out with a small flat stone.  “This is for you as token of our good will.”

“Isn’t this one of those times where if I’m smart I don’t take your gifts?” I asked.

He shrugged.  “It’s up to you, wizzy McWiz.  If you don’t want it, I’ll keep it, I guess.”

“Hey, I never said I was smart,” I said, taking it from his hand.  It was surprisingly cool to the touch, and just small enough across my palm that I could gently bend my fingers around it. 

He nodded.  “Good choice.  Hopefully Thomas was as true as he claimed.  For your sake.”  He looked at me for a moment.  “Before the solstice.  I’ve got some vacation time banked.”  He shifted again and I could feel the stairs tilt.

I nodded again, somewhat bemused.

“They’ll send another messenger,” he said, almost as if it were a warning.  “That dandelion fluff-head Peredur is too interested in our business.  Ah well.  I’m off.  Gotta catch my bus.”  He smiled and jumped over the steps and onto the concrete, cracking it in a couple of places.  “Oops,” I heard him say as he sauntered into the distance.

I closed the door behind him.  You know, if I posted on the Internet that I had just been visited by a troll, they’d get it all wrong.  I think.

I was caught between getting rid of all the dragon-related items and storing them for when it didn’t hurt so much.  I mean, I still liked the idea of dragons the way I had had before this unfortunate incident, but I also didn’t want them staring at me.

“Storage,” Sylvie said, giving me a glass of water.   “It’s like rental on a time capsule.  No, actually, it’s more like a man’s version of scrapbooking.”

“That’s the garage,” I suggested.

“Doesn’t disprove my point at all,” she noted.

“You have experience with this,” I said to Sylvia at one point.

“I like helping out,” she said.

“No,” I said.  I didn’t mean to disagree with her, but I was having some serious Mercury-in-retrograde kind of communication difficulties.  “It’s more than that.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.  She was shutting me out.  Someone else in her life had gotten her used to long hospital stays and cranky convalescence, but I let it go.  She didn’t need to share any pain with me.

She was there when her classes were out.  Matana had offered to stay over nights, but I just wasn’t feeling inviting enough to have to deal with a vampire on top of my own bad attitude.  Maggie came by and worked on my computer at things, since I was mostly catching up on everything my DVR had to offer, and falling asleep on the couch every now and then.

I was rousing from another bout of drug-induced somnia when I was hit in the face by something thrown at me by the Magster.  The notebook was followed up with a pen.

“You can’t sit there forever.”

“No, I have to use the facilities often enough,” I noted.  It was a pretty big complaint, actually, since it meant I was using muscles that were aligned against me.  Actually, if my body was at war with itself, the muscles were really the, um, muscle of the enemy operation.

“You’re going to run out of television fairly soon, you haven’t checked your e-mail in days, and occasionally I get a snarky comment out of you, but that’s about the most you’ve said besides `please’ and `thank you’ when we shove food into you.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, and a lot of grunts.”

“What do you want?”

“I want E back from whatever dark place he’s hiding.”

“He’s too busy hiding.  If you’d like to leave a message at the tone, he’ll return your call after St. George helps him take care of his special reptile infestation.  Beep.”

She threw a couch pillow at me and went back to whatever it was she was doing.

After she left, I picked up the pen and started writing.

Goals.

1. Stop being such a schmuck.

2. Find out what happened.

I kind of stopped there, because I had a thought.

The Questor.

3. Have dinner with Questor.

4. Slay Dragon, keep treasure, live in luxury for rest of life.

I think I put the pen in my mouth for a moment, thinking.

5. Find right girl to share treasure & luxury.

Yeah, that sounded about right.

So, how to stop being a schmuck?  I think that was the right word.  My Yiddish was worse than my Chinese, and I only knew enough to say “Feng Shui” a couple of different ways and not embarrass myself by ordering in food.  I was not a linguist.

First, apologies.

Apologies: Chocolate?

Apologies: Flowers?

I crossed that last one out – neither Maggie or Sylvia were flower types.  The carcasses of once beautiful things probably irritated the whole witch aesthetic.  “Unless it was the heads of their enemies,” I noted to myself, aloud.

The living room was very, very quiet.

Apologies: Dinner

Yeah, that definitely worked for Sylvia.   I’d take her out someplace nice.

I scribbled a few other ideas for Maggie.  I got up and went to my computer, intent on browsing the History to see if she’d scrubbed it or if there was anything interesting.  Then, of course, I had to check my e-mail.

A few hours later, I stretched and realized I didn’t hurt so much anymore.

Or I could have a fever.

Second, in the “not being a schmuck” column, I took a shower.  I brushed my teeth.  I put on something that wasn’t ratty or funky.  I took some time shaving.  I looked at myself in the mirror.

I don’t know if I looked like I cared.  I at least looked like I could fake it.

Third, a real meal.  I spent some time throwing things out of the actual refrigerator area that were too fuzzy to meet the “scrapable” standards.  I ended up having to use some frozen stuff to pad out the dinner, and I ate out of the skillet, but it wasn’t strictly convenience foods.  It made me flip to the next page to make a grocery list.  Then I had to flip to the page after it to make a practical note about calling my insurance about my car.   It led to a few other items I had to handle.

Part four would be making amends to Maggie.  I didn’t even know where to begin with that.  I mean, we’d given each other the “just friends” speech in countless ways in the interim, but I think both of us finally got it.  I say “both of us” and “we” because I’m the kind of guy who likes to take full credit for his understanding and relationship foibles.  Yeah.  So really, what would a friend do?

I stayed stymied on that for a while.  Maybe I was missing some kind of obvious response, but “not being a schmuck” would kind of have to handle it until the right thing dropped into my head.

Part five, find out who this Rohana person was.  She left me her number, so I guessed she meant for me to call it.  I could at least thank her for the books – I was enjoying them even if reading was more scattered than normal.

I checked my watch.  It was too late to call tonight, but I’d try tomorrow.

There was a knock on the door.

I froze up.  I couldn’t remember if Dragons knocked.

The most thoughtful gift left behind was a stack of books I hadn’t read yet, and a bookmark with a “Rohana”‘s telephone number.  Well, I mean, I suppose thought went into all the gifts but they were mostly potted plants, and I could tell the petunias were probably thinking, “Not again.”  They could have been petunias.  Or geraniums.  Or chrysanthemums.  A few days ago I had people who could tell me, handle the spontaneous garden that seemed to have bloomed around me.  I had Artur who could probably call a couple of these cousins, and Doloise always smelled of green, growing things.

Honestly, my eyes still watered at the thought, but I was too tired to cry.

I had some missing moments.  Lots of time out of my life that nagged at me, making me wonder what happened between the time  I was closing doors and the waking up in the middle of a burning restaurant.   Some bleeding, I’m sure.  Probably something unmanly – Magda had had my clothes laundered.  They didn’t exactly smell girly, but they weren’t marinated in Old Spice, either.

The hospital had a lot to say to me, but I really wasn’t listening.  You know, follow up with my regular doctor.  I didn’t even ask them if a witchdoctor counted.  After all, the only one I knew of would say, “Ooh, E,” and then I’d have to follow up with, an “Ooh, ah, ah.”  And then there’d be tings, and tangs, and walla-walla-bing-bangs.

You kind of have to finish that kind of joke.

I hadn’t had any dreams.  When I fell back, it was into darkness, and darkness gnawed at me.  It didn’t consume, it merely worried at my bones, as if looking for something in particular.  Had Vasilisa hidden a tall blue glass inside my chest?  No, that didn’t make any sense at all.  It nudged me with its ineffable nose, and occasionally stared and howled with its invisible eyes and inaudible cries.

Of course I got to be wheeled out in a wheel chair at a solid, orderly pace.  It’s like a stroller for grown-ups, only we get frowned at when we look into the rooms on the way like we were at the zoo.  “Over here, a dialysis being performed in its native habitat…   On your left is the pudding frenzy.”  I actually kind of like hospital pudding.

“You gave me your spare key,” Maggie reminded me.  My impromptu greenhouse went into her trunk.

“Oh.  I had wondered where that had gone,” I said.  It was all we really said to each other for the fifteen minute drive.

I wasn’t too proud to take her help up the stairs.  My place felt different.  Emptier.  She set me up on the couch next to the television.

“Rent’s been paid,” she said.

“What?” I turned around to look at her.

She passed me an opened envelope from my bank.

“That’s a federal offense,” I muttered.

She just smiled.

I got to the deposit part of the statement and wiped my eyes because the numbers couldn’t have been right.

“Guess I’ll be able to pay my medical bills after all,” I said.

She passed some other mail to me, a utility bill, a couple of flyers (including one for a local gaming convention), and a couple I didn’t recognize.  One turned out to be an advertisement offering to sell my home.  The other gave me a literal chill.

“Debts are not settled. -A.”

I would have probably felt better if it had been letters cut out from newspapers and had it had instructions.  “I have taken the Dragon hostage. Send me five unmarked fey with red caps or you’ll never see her again.”

“Huh,” Maggie said, reading over my shoulder.  “Doesn’t say who owes whom.”

I shrugged.

“There’s some prepackaged dinners in the freezer.  I could put one in the microwave for you.”

“I’m fine,” I said.  I tried not to be snippy.

“You’re snippy.”

I didn’t say I’d succeeded.

“Maybe a little,” I acknowledged.

“I’m barging in and taking over your life.  You’ve got every right to be mad at me for picking up the slack,” she said.  She held her arms crossed in front of her, and she didn’t look at me.  “I’ll give you some alone time, but I’m worried that you’re going to sulk.”

“Everyone’s entitled to a little self-indulgent aggrieving of their woes.”  I smiled a little.

“So what aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

My first impulse was to deny that I was keeping secrets, so I don’t know why I opened my mouth and said, “A lot of things.  I have to process them first.”

“Were you in love with the girl?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I demanded.  I actually shouted it, and hadn’t realized how angry or loud I was until I slapped the back of the couch with a hand.

Maggie took a step back.  “Probably because you’re touchy about it.  I want to know, E.  I know… things aren’t going to work out between us.  We’re never in the right place at the right time, but we’ve got experience.  Experience that’s going to keep us friends.  And I’m asking as your friend. And as your friend, I’m also not asking you to tell me right now.  Tell me in your own time, but know that I want to know.”  She came closer and put a hand on my arm.  “I love you.  I’m sorry that I don’t love you the right way, but I do still love you.”  She put my phone on the couch next to me.  “You have my number.  Sylvie will be over in the morning.  Call me if you need anything tonight.”

I didn’t say anything.  I kind of shrugged as she left, in fact.  At least she was being as honest as she knew how to be.

I didn’t want to be friends.  Not in that, “If I can’t have you, I don’t want anything to do with you,” fashion, but because when the passion was gone we really only had frustration left between us.  Frustration doesn’t sound like a good anchor to a relationship.

I stood up.  I was shaky, and I have to say it hurt, but I was a constant “four” on that stupid chart.  Four and above meant pain had to be addressed, and I had a prescription I’d get filled in the morning.

I picked up a box from the corner where I keep all the empties and started sweeping through my art collection.  My dragon statues, my posters off the walls, the books, the comics.  Everything.

It wasn’t until I ran across the meerkat coffee mug that I actually started crying.   I didn’t make it to my bed before the blackness took pity on me again.

So when words came back to my tongue (or, um, all those other places words needed to come back to – sentence structure chip gone ALL SPARKY!) of course the first thing I told the nurse who asked me was, “Not dead, yet.”  I did not offer to bite her kneecaps off for many reasons, some of which were simply that I couldn’t bend that far at this point to determine if she had any (kneecaps, that is), and whether or not they were best left on her.  Really, biting the kneecaps is always a fundamentally tricksy situation when you give it any thought.  I suppose things that often bite the kneecaps don’t really concern themselves with the finer etiquette, but I would be presuming.  There might be a whole book on kneecaps and the biting thereof, including what teeth to use and if you need to have a little pinky finger raised whilst doing it, provided you have a pinky finger available.  Maybe there was even a hierarchy – Black Knights before women and all that.

I said I had gotten words back, but I had said nothing about sense, and that for very good reason.  Of course, Maggie would probably have said there was little to begin with and what had been there really had been knocked out of me.

Magda’s coven had been in – I could tell that from the very, shall we say, appropriateness? Of the gifts.   Flowers that meant things that words would take all wrong, I guess.  I could tell the place had been very lightly smudged, and that I was probably the recipient of some gentle prayers.  In general that doesn’t bug me, because if it’s the thought that counts they’re thinking nice things about me.  I hope, at least.  Hallmark probably doesn’t do a series of more imprecatory prayer cards.  “On hearing of your illness, we have beseeched Quetzalcoatl to rid you of your mortal shell and thus your suffering.”  “May the Angel of Death tred lightly upon your doorstep and release you from the anguish of having a first born…” nah.

I was connected to many tubes and wires, far more than anyone not intending to become a bionic person should need.  Do they still use the term “bionic”?  Or is there a language joke about ebionics appropriate here?

“You’ve had some visitors,” the nurse noted, changing fluid bags and fussing with the monitor.   Everyone fussed with the monitor, even though all it showed was that I had a pulse, and was able to convert breath to oxygen through lots of automatic processes.   “A lot of women,” she added.  I couldn’t tell if that was meant to be a positive or a negative comment, but she mentioned it on purpose.  “A lot of them say they’re your sister.  You adopted?” she asked.

Oh, she was being nosy.  “I have a lot of sisters,” I replied.  I only have one, but really, unless someone’s an active danger to me or interfering with the care, I don’t think the hospital should have any right to deny me a concerned visitor.  I probably haven’t thought it through all the way, because I can think of a lot of murder mystery type stories that could be made more interesting this way, but I didn’t feel like I was in any real danger of that.  A murder mystery requires motive and while I might get myself squished by a Dragon, it’s not like they’re going to keep her out anyway.

Yeah.  No mystery to my murder at all.  No, “Whodunnit.”  I could probably write it in forty foot letters of flame, and well, it’s not like she can be handcuffed.  “It was the butler.  No, no, just kidding folks, he was eviscerated, guggle to zatch, by a Dragon!”  Probably could consider it suicide, actually.  “Et by Dragon.”  I could go get my cenotaph ready.

“You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts,” Sylvia said.  She had brought in a candy bar, a book, and had a pillow under her arm.  Definitely someone ready for the long haul of sitting at the hospital.

“Just amusingly morbid ones, if that’s not a contradiction in terms,” I frowned.

“I think it’s important to find humour in lots of things, but you’re not dying,” she said.  “We should be able to take you home tomorrow.”  She paused.  “Your place, that is.  You shouldn’t be driving, but…”

“Are you one of my sisters?  That’s about all I know about things right now.  I think my nurse suspects that I’m some kind of pimp.”

Sylvia laughed so hard she dropped her book.  It wasn’t that funny.  I could gather some witches around me and cruise the boulevard.  I look good in dark purple and leopardskin.  Sure.

The nurse scowled and something started beeping.  She pinched the blood oxygen monitor back into place.  “Don’t move around or talk too much and that won’t keep happening.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“You’re giving him an impossible instruction.  The last few times we’ve been together he’s fidgeted like a five year old hiding candy.”  Sylvie laughed.

“Hey!” I said.

The nurse sighed and looked at her.  “You’re definitely his sister,” she said.  She hid a bit of a smile as she left the room.

“So,” I said, in the sudden silence.

“So,” Sylvia replied.

“Have I been lucid?”

“Ever?” she laughed abruptly, but it died down into a smile and she shrugged.  “Maggie said she talked to you some.  You’ve had a lot of fevers.  She said not to leave you alone, but I had to,” she gestured towards where I supposed the restroom was, “and the nurse was here, so I figured it was okay for a moment.”

“Huh,” I grunted usefully.

“She told Rohana that you’d been hurt by a Dragon.”

I let the silence grow.  “Sounds crazy to me,” I finally said.  “Who’s Rohana?”

There was some kind of triumph in her expression.  “Oh, just another of the girls in the group.  Look, I’ve finally gotten to believe in the vampire stuff, but you have to admit, Dragons?  That’s really kind of out there.”

“So, parasitical creatures from other dimensions who bargain themselves for power and knowledge are fine?”

“They’re kind of like aliens, when you put it that way.”

“I’m just trying to figure out how far your acceptance goes,” I teased a little.  “I am…really thirsty,” I decided.

“I can get you ice chips.  Do you…hurt anywhere?”

“I’ve been trying to look stoic so I don’t cry like a little girl,” I said.

“Yeah, the wincing and occasional jerking away from things has been very manly,” she said, gravely.

“Can I get a can of cola with those ice chips, and maybe some cherry syrup?”

“Sure, if I can have a couple of quarters.  Oh, wait, you don’t have any pockets.  Guess you’re out of luck unless the doctor dropped some change somewhere inappropriate,” she said, with just enough sour twist.

“I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a soda pop today.”

“There’s a difference between old-school and obsolete, pops,” she grinned.

“Hey, I liked a lot of the old cartoons.  And painkiller.   I liked all the painkiller.”

“I’ll tag a nurse,” she said, stepping just at the threshhold.  “What are you really scared of?  What happened?”

“Wolves,” I muttered.

“You said that.”

“And Dragons,” I said.  The pain took me then, and I fell back into the black.

Sometimes you think you’re asking the right questions and all you get in answer is nonsense.  The problem with my job is that it happens when you’re dealing with emergency situations.

There are tons of protocols, from determining trauma to dropping off the already dead, and even if they’re set in policy and procedure manuals there’s still an etiquette.  I mean, it’s not codified anywhere, but for some of us it’s the need to live life blatantly and fully because we don’t care about leaving that pretty “nothing much happened” corpse, and for some of us it’s because, “Please,” and “Thank you,” make a heck of a lot of difference when for anything less than that you see the worst.

This job deals with extremes.  You get the superstitious types (just about anyone who continues to claim the full moon brings out the loonies is one of ’em) and you get the disbelievers.  (I won’t call them skeptics – “skeptic” implies someone who, if you could show them some proof, would change their minds.)   Every once in a while you get someone who slides from one side of the scale to another.

And you get a whole heck of a lot of witches.

It makes sense, I guess.  It’s a helping profession, and a lot of them feel they need the karmic boost.  Alright, that’s my cynical side.  It’s a way to take their healing qualities and put them to good use.   We don’t talk about it.  We’re not casting hexes on the boys who run off after finding out that pulling the trigger is nothing like it was in the video game or on television.  We’re not slathering herbs and chanting over someone who is bleeding out on the sidewalk.  Medicine and healing may not be the same thing, but there is definitely a code.

Do I have a healing altar where some of the patients I transport have a place?  Heck yeah! Do I tell them?  Best thing is that I can say I am praying for them.  That’s a fairly socially acceptable phrase and still true.

But this is about a fellow I’ve met twice in the last month.  A fellow named “E.”

This is about a couple of run reports I couldn’t be honest about, because “lacerations from Dragon” (or any kind of beast in the midst of a city that isn’t a dog or illicit big cat) just doesn’t help the hospital.  Snakebite?  Sure.  Sharkbite? Yep.  Scorpion, dog, spider, any of these things and there’d be a protocol.    “Poisonous festering wounds from mythical creature” just doesn’t have a place in modern medicine.

And the couple of hundred thorns poking out like quills from a plant I couldn’t identify?  That didn’t help, either.   Pertinent history?  “Had wandered off into another dimension.”  Again, not something one wants their supervisor to review, and not something your local emergency room is likely to be able to handle.

I’ve heard weird things, and usually you just have to ignore them.  Man who appears to have two hearts, at least according to your stethoscope?  Smiling lady on whom you simply can’t find a pulse?  Both of those were just last week.  “We don’t deny emergency services to the undead,” I said to my partner as I shut the doors, just like it was a company motto.

After all, the only type of person we ever say is missing their brain is usually a supervisor.  I don’t know what it is that takes someone from field to desk besides a thinking-ectomy, because it isn’t like they haven’t had to put up with the same things we do.  The smells.  The SUVs that think they can climb up on the sidewalks or emergency access lanes because they could afford the downpayment on their inexcusable vehicles.

Not that I have an opinion.  I try not to have opinions on the job.  I just try to save lives, and an opinion there makes you a devil.  Well, at least a demon.  Anytime you get to choose a life or death, you become something inhuman.  So my job is to save them all, like I was some Pokemon trainer looking for a record.

(“I choose you, man face-down in street!”  Only then we can’t have them fighting battles.  Maybe the Pokemon reference doesn’t work.)

He was cute, this “E” guy.  Kind of dorky in that probably-doesn’t-talk-to-girls-a-lot fashion, but there’s only one cure for that!  (Talk to girls, duh.)  Dazed and confused, but who isn’t after a major car accident?   A hit-and-run, at any rate.  Maggie, who doesn’t run the coven but has enough ego for it, said it was something else.

Yeah, she said it was a Dragon.

It’s funny.  I never thought I’d be the skeptic, but that was a big, big idea to swallow down, and I just couldn’t bite into it, you know?  I mean, not that I’d know a fewmet from any other kind of turd.  Again, my assistance rotation didn’t take the idea into account, and that might have to be done at a veterinary school, anyway.

When I ran into him the second time, along the same stretch of road, I knew it wasn’t just, well, fate.  It was Fate with the capital “F” for me to meet the guy named a capital “E.”  Something crazy like that.  He had…well, he looked like he’d been through an explosion, which, given that the building was burning (it had been some kind of ethnic restaurant – you know, the kind that was probably pretty good because the people of that ethnicity ate there, but you always felt kind of uncomfortable going into because, well, everyone might like food but you don’t know how to pronounce the stuff on the menu and you don’t feel like you belong) was possible.  It didn’t explain the cuts.  It didn’t explain the thorns – we thought maybe like splinters for a while, but there wasn’t any obvious cause.  I gave an instant to think about the poor nurse who was going to have to start pulling them out.   No one ruled out internal bleeding or any number of other curiousities, but I had a feeling that just like that car accident (Dragon accident, whatever) he was going to pull through fine.

I knew to call Maggie.  That much I could do.  And, well, I’ll make sure to give him my number if I’m right.  Fate, I tell you.  I just have a feeling about this.

My lips taste of salt, like the breath of a breeze that caresses the surface of the ocean.  The kiss of the coast, the mistress of sand and surf.  My lips taste of blood.

“-crzzzt- we have a fire”

“-nack-nack- just laying here”

“broken”

“no identification”

“Maggie said-”

Do leaves feel like this, swept up by the wind, buffeted by nothing so common and yet so precious as air?

“-snrack!  FZZZZT!-”

I cannot breathe.

“-seriously, the same guy.  Dairy Queen, remember?”

“I was birthed in thorns, and buried in ashes.”

No, that voice was just in my head.

I felt myself being pulled up onto the gurney.  I felt movement, and I felt pain, but I also felt disassociated.  This wasn’t me – the real me was kicking closed doors until it was just me and a Dragon.

“-fire under control-”

“Started in the kitchens–”

“It is one of the three ways I will assist.”

That left one more, and I thought it would sound better if he said, “It is the second of the three ways I will assist,” but I didn’t argue it.  I couldn’t move.  I was strapped down again.  I guess since the words were all in my head I could argue quietly.  Were the words speaking to me or just memories of sound?

I couldn’t hear anything.  My head was made of fuzzy muffins.

“No, small potatoes.”

In a hashbrown world.   I remembered grinning at that.  My head was made of small potatoes.   Was I good for baking, maybe a russet, or better for boiling, like a red nordland?

“If soaking your head was boiling.  Maybe a fingerling?”

That was a response to my thought.  Or maybe I said it aloud.  Or maybe I answered myself.

I am like a potato because to a Dragon I am crunchy and good with ketchup.  And that’s pretty much the only time to eat ketchup.  I am a french fry.  A lost potato.  Peter, Peter, potato eater, had a French maid but couldn’t keep her… put her in a ketchup bowl, and made up for all the time he stole.

I might have been delirious.

Someone up front was shouting numbers for a moment.  I hoped they were good numbers.  Maybe they were Jenny’s phone number.  I hated that song.

There were too many lights and too much sound and all I wanted was my friend back. 

She hadn’t been a very good friend, but that was alright, because she hadn’t had a lot of experience being a person.   I can be forgiving in that case.

“But did you love her?”

Love her?  What kind of question was that?  That’s the kind of thing your id sneaks in when you’re not paying attention.  It always wants the spotlight.  It’s like little fantasies of being recognized by fame and/or people you admire.   We all have them, and unless we’re some weird groupie type, we know they’re pretty dumb.  It’s the kind of rational rationale that keeps us reasonable folk from showing too much enthusiasm.  Goodness knows, we can’t like anything.  That’d be bad for our too cool for school image.

“But did you love her?”

Love her?

How do you answer that?  I can’t.  I can’t answer, “Yes,” because I wouldn’t have described it as love.  The language doesn’t have the right word.  I cared for her in all the meanings of the phrase, “cared for,” which might be a kind of love.  I liked it when she laughed at the meerkats.  I knew her favourite flavour (not that “anything chocolate” was hard to grasp) of ice cream.  I knew she always scanned the crowd for dangers only she could detect.  I knew she was an entity that did not belong fully in my world, and that she was a temporary thing, mine until her promise was fulfilled, and the whims of her makers could just as easily unmake what consciousness she had.    Can a group be said to have a consciousness (or a conscience?) different than the make-up of its individuals?

I think I had a headache.

But did I love her?  If I was going to go to bed with anyone soon, it was probably going to be Sylvia, provided she liked me without the influence of the incubus.  Doloise was too different.  You don’t go to bed with an entity without ending up owing it a favour.   Someone told me that once.  Or maybe I read it in a book. 

“E?”

I recognized that voice.  It was Maggie.  She sounded like she’d been crying.  Or arguing.  Or both.  I don’t get women.  I wonder why they made Doloise a woman.  I would have listened if it had been a man.  Or a tree, apparently.  I saw what Artur had done, trying to help me.  I guess it takes two bites by a Dragon to get to the center of a lesyie pop.

“Let me have a minute with him, alone, please?”

She was talking to someone else.  It was quieter here, but the lights were still too bright.  My eyes weren’t working.  Maybe I left them in the dark of the cavern.  Maybe they were just resting.  Yeah, I was just resting them.

“What have you done?”

The screams of the Dragon still roared in my ears. 

It’s odd, not knowing where you are, what position you’re in, if you’re still alone in the dark of a cavern while a Dragon spits out thorns and curses you for closing off access to its power, or if you’re in a hospital bed far from home.  Is that moss, or a tiny stream, or a cold IV dripping into your arm? 

Then the presence was gone, gone, and I was alone.  Alone inside my head, where I was away from the pain.  Alone away from my friends, the short fellow with the tree-like legs, and the tall one who smelled like dandelions, and the velvet bat, and the witches, and the smell of Ivan burning, and the wolves.

Don’t leave me.  There are wolves out there.

“I’m not leaving.  I’m here, E.”  A cool hand against my forehead and I started to feel my body again.  I curled up rather than scream. 

The wolves were inside me, weren’t they?

“I’ll protect you from the wolves.”

Who protects me from the Dragons?