I dreamed.
I dreamed like I took 5-HTP or a full dose of Nyquil.
“It would be so…” The words left my mouth and I wasn’t sure what I was saying. I was on top of the mountain again, looking down at the glassy reflection of the lake and the Water Prince’s domain.
“Then what stops you?” she asked. She leaned back on a grey fuzzy blanket amongst the strange spiky purple flowers that only grew in a sorceror’s dreams. Or in that weird sculpture between Buchtel and Colorado Blvd., near the freeway.
I smiled at the Questor’s wife. “They don’t get me that easy.”
“Run, run, run, as fast as you can,” Magda said.
“I don’t afraid of you,” I said, butchering the language between the dual urge of panic and laughter. I called the Prince to attention with an extension of will that felt kind of like when you do your first really graceful move in tai chi. His head broke the waters, and Maggie frowned.
“Yes, but you do afraid of your failures,” she said, ignoring the lake as it eased into placidity. She gestured, and I turned to see the horrific black, burnt ground where I left them, Artur and Doloise both, to die of smoke inhalation and fire. The first would probably still kill them, and fire, that was our weapon against the Darkness Beyond.
“Fire purifies,” the Questor’s wife reminded me. She was wearing shades.
Maggie frowned. “Fire burns. Anyone who says it purifies hasn’t felt the cleansing flame.”
“Where are your scars, Magdalene?” I asked, quietly.
“Just because you dig at the wounds women leave in you doesn’t mean I’m as foolish,” she said.
“Who stole your heart? Because you certainly don’t have one,” I said, and I turned my back on her, slowly. I tried not to let my shoulderblades twitch in anticipation.
I wandered down the path to the still-burning entrance, and knelt down to where the earth was made black and grey from ash and loam. It seared my hands, but only the surface, and I suddenly saw a field of dandelion blooms, in full color. I thrust my hands into the dirt. It wasn’t that I ignored the pain; I was transmuting it. I was pushing it through the ground and transforming the heat and the fire into life. A golden carpet of flowers somewhat like buttercups, peppered with little purple spiky bits. Saffron flowers, curled in heavy ringlets of petals, like Doloise’s hair.
The heat rushed through me, leaving me weak.
“It would be so…” I started to say, and then the Shadow King sat across from me.
The castle of bone and stone hung over us. “Who broke the bread?” I asked him.
“Dragons fear few Powers,” he said.
“And wizards?” Ed’s mom asked. She rapped at the bread with her knuckles. “Made out of bone and blood. A trick within a trick.” She grinned at me. “You are what you eat.”
“Wizards fear Dragons,” I said, slowly.
“Do they?” Peredur asked. “Wizards, I find, tend to be more pragmatic. Begone,” he said to the Shadow King, who wavered in the sun, and then blew away like a puff of smoke. He sat on the bench across from me.
“Wizards are still crunchy and can be covered in ketchup,” I said. I pulled away a little from the table.
“That’s not how you cook a wizard, my dear,” Ed’s mom said.
“You cook a vampire in the sun,” Matana agreed. She stood behind Ed’s mom.
Ed’s mother didn’t blink. “A bit of garlic, to taste. Did you know why the martian needed salt?” she asked me.
“Is that a riddle?” I asked.
Peredur chuckled, a deep rumbling sound. “I do prefer things flame-broiled.”
“You’re a Dragon. You can have it your way,” I relinquished my seat, giving a mock-bow.
“Would you rather be a King?” Viktor asked, “than a wizard?” His accent was strong.
“I would rather be independently wealthy and rather handsome, if we’re making lazy wishes,” I said. “Which rules out royalty, I think, one or the other. In-breeding and bad economies kind of had it in for the family feudal.”
“We like the breeding part,” the Messenger said, even more beautiful in the sunlight than in the dark, if possible. I felt it hard to breathe, and to breathe it was… well, you know. To breed it was… heh. “Except that you’d deny yourself pleasure and procreation, prohibitively.”
“Oh, I indulge, I just have standards,” I said. I watched the sun set behind the mountains she stood in front of, leaving everything touched with a magnesium blindness as it went out. She brought her own brilliance with her.
“And these standards have protected you? Pleased you? Promoted you?” she asked.
“Maybe you have a point. But I don’t stick anything starting with a ‘p’ of mine in inhuman things. It’s a little rule I’ve got. Picked it up somewhere, took the rust off it, and now it’s mine.”
“Really?” Rohana pointed to Maggie. “Humanity is not her strong suit, dear.”
“I could see her in a human suit,” I agreed.
Maggie smiled. “And yet I don’t dabble with the devils or the divine,” she said, pointing over to Sylvia. “I, at least, keep out everything but the elements.”
“It’s been a fascinating education,” Sylvie breathed out. “Death and life, light and dark, black and white, and beyond.”
“Beyond is where we lose sight of the scale,” I said. “When you can’t define the ends of your spectrum, you’ve lost your connection. That’s why I can’t become a wizard.” I turned to the Questor’s wife. “I’m sorry. I know you’d be an awesome mentor. But magic needs people who are anchored in reality. We’re the pillars that keep you and the wizards who are doing good from drifting away into the Beyond. Into thinking that it’s OK to bud up with them,” I pointed at Peredur and Matana and the Messenger, and even towards where the Shadow King dissipated. “They’re not human. But we are, and I don’t want to lose sight of it. It’s tempting, just like the Messenger, and just like her, we come up ultimately empty.”
And I dreamed.