Dead Dragons aren’t much fun.  Not even if they’re not really dead, just torn away from their roots and now everyone thinks they’ve got some kind of Hero on their hands.  I’m no hero.  I’m no wizard.  This was no disco, nor any country club.  Who was this beautiful King?  I shifted my weight, eyeing the shifting black claws of the Seven Monarch of the Small Kingdom.

“What Peredur wants and what he can have might be different things,” I said with all the confidence I didn’t have.  After all, he disrespected any mortal boundaries, walking through walls and flinging me several miles away with the mere effort of lifting me up by the jacket with his teeth.  That’s not reality as we know it.  I had a piece of him, though, and I knew a couple of wizards.  I wasn’t afraid to use them.

“So speaks the Guardian of the Threshold, the mortal who stands between.  But is he a Dragon-Slayer or just an advisor at the scene?” The King once more climbed up towards the egg, leaning against it and stroking it with those claws to make a thin scratching noise.

I considered the question rhetorical, and took the opportunity to look at the egg.  Was Thomas in there, then, being remade and reborn somehow?  What did they want me to do, crack him open and see if he was cracked?  Great.  It was catching.

“How do we get started?” I asked.  When in doubt, let them lead, right?  Even if it led to swamps and getting your feet wet.  Trouble, and possibly heavy petting.

“Speak, Tom, and be judged, let your silence savor the answer,” the King said, ringing the egg with a thump.  The light inside the egg brightened.

“From the hag and hungry goblin, that into rags would rend ye, to the King of ghosts and Shadows, summoned unto journey.  Do dance you in the Dragon’s blaze, all witches spin and turning, your lady with golden tresses fair, the maiden’s not for burning.”  The words came from a voice that was at once familiar and strange.

“Does he always talk like this?” I asked.

The Seven King answered.  “He couplets prophesy in verse, and so the gift we gave.  But whether his sight is true or cloudy, the truth is grave.”

“He said something that worried you,” I guessed.  “And you want to know if it’s going to become true, or just nonsense.”

The King stiffened, like literally, like a statue of obsidian for just a moment.  Rayya was similarly frozen, but hers faded faster.  She tilted her head, and that spine-tingling sense of curiosity returned.

“It was an easy jump, guys,” I complained. “I didn’t even need the backboard to get it into the hoop.”

Rayya looked confused.

“Nevermind. I’m no good at sports metaphors, and talking about THAC0 makes peoples’ eyes glaze over.  Let’s just say that that was easy, which is why I now suspect it.  But, because I’m playing the straight man, I’ll go with it at least until I get some kind of brilliant epiphany, if ever I am struck metaphorically,” I emphasized the word, “by lightning.”

“By lightning crisped, and fire crossed, the smoke you smell is clearer, though rings be granted, and silver tossed, your reflection is the mirror,” Thomas intoned.

“Does he know we’re out here?” I asked.

“It is not a prison,” Rayya said.  I think she was trying to comfort me a little, however too human a motive to pin to her.  “It is a chamber of sorts. His needs are few in this form, and he is not unduly affected by the Small things that waver and flow.”

“Flicker and flame,” the Seven King corrected, finding animation again. “Nor us to blame.”

No, not them to blame.  He was talking to me.  “They follow the call, or fall the fall,” I said aloud, remembering the phrase from his letter.  I knew then what he meant, or I thought I had.  Now I wasn’t so sure.

“The waves push back, the kraken unleashed, the war has unfolded, and the fallout released,” Thomas responded.  Not pleasant tidings at all.

The King froze momentarily, then flit to the other side of the egg.  “You called the Closer, and he came, my love. Speak of the words that sent us to look above.”

His voice changed, and it rang in my bones.  “Quested, Lost, and Dragon Bested. Small the Cost, Passion Guested. Love we speak, and love we waste, the shadows grow where she’s displaced. The one that fell… she will rise, the one who bites will be chastised.  The reign of kings of spectre’d throne, the rain of kings, all overthrown.”

I turned towards the King.  “What…did you ask him?”

The King transformed back into the dark-skinned lovely, bare and sonsy, the darkness filling out and changing like a wave from toes to top.  She wiggled and gyrated her way off the nest in a way that gave me ample opportunity to ogle her backside, each curve a perfect and pleasant way to rest my eyes.  Not a comfortable one, certainly, but pleasant, yes.

Rayya sighed.  “The Seven King seeks the satisfaction a Tom cannot grant her, as he is never truly belonging to this world.  The Seven King sought the name of a partner.  A Year King.”  Rayya shrugged, humanity flitting across her features.  “A Small thing.”

I backed away, putting my hands up between us.  “Not a small thing.  I mean, male pride aside.”  Great.  It really was contagious.  “I’m um, I’ve got a girlfriend,” I managed to say in my defense.

“One turn of your seasons is not a promise broken,” the King said.  “Tell us true,” she said, moving close, her lips luscious and ripe, “did you have a promise?”

“I had a premise,” I said, stepping back.

She moved towards me again, smiling as if this was just a form of dance. “We would have smelled the ties upon you.”

“I’m allergic to ties, except at formal functions,” I said, turning to the right slightly.  “I don’t have any commitment issues.  We’re just at the early stage, embryonic.  I’m all for the right to choose, and I’m choosing to see how it works out.”

She spun around, and touched my jacket lightly.  I could feel the warmth of her fingers through the fabric, and I think my pulse went up a notch or two.  I was feeling light-headed.  “We did not suspect fear. We saw further than you knew.”

“I know what happens to Year Kings.  Human sacrifice makes the sun come back, and the grass grow.” I felt less confident as I said it aloud, but I stopped the dance.

She laughed, the tinkling of icicles crackling at the first breath of spring.  She smelled like mint and a bit like Christmas.  You know, like a really fresh salad, and the frost on the wind, and a bit like fir trees, and maybe a bit like hot chocolate.  “This is the Small Court,” she said.  “Could we reassure you that no death is required?”  She breathed the last up against my ear.  She was taller than I expected, up this close next to me.  And her breasts were amazing.

“I’m sure you could,” I said.  “That’s not the same thing as saying it outright.”

“You are our guest, and no harm shall befall you from our people or our hand,” she said, very serious, but there was something whimsical in the way she ruffled my hair.

“And are there people besides yours I’m in danger from, or, you know, do you kill people with your feet?” I asked.  She touched my face, and I shivered, and my neck, and I shuddered.

“So suspicious.  Why did our Dear Thomas recommend you?” she asked, laughing again.  This was a laugh like the mewling of a newborn kitten.

“He was trying to set me up?” I asked.  “I don’t know.  What happens to Thomas if I,” I gulped, “agree?”  Her hand trailed down lower, somewhere near my zatch.

“Our arrangement is set.  What he wished, we will grant, and the cost will be borne by both. There are echoes of other Courts in what we do, but our needs are different.”

“One more question,” I said.  Her other hand rested at my throat, at that sensitive place between the collarbones, where you are almost ticklish.  An intimate place, and I felt half sick and half excited by it, the heat definitely adding to my dizzy.  “What is the Small Court?”

Rayya laughed.  “One more question, the wizard-friend says.  Did you forget, my King, that he is also the secret-caller?”

“We do not forget, Snowflake,” the King said, but it sounded almost fond. “We remember the warnings, all.  Are we displaced, or do we rise?”

The egg that held Thomas glowed once more.  “Quested, Lost, and Dragon Bested,” it repeated again, in the voice that echoed.  “Kings will fall, and Kings be tested.  Dance with fire, or dance with death, the fiddler cares not you’re out of breath.”

“My question remains,” I said as the King pulled away, looking at the slowly fading light from the egg. “I am being proposed to, and this engagement is awkward.  I am not much of a Queen.” I tried not to make the obvious joke. “What dowry am I bringing? Who am I kissing?” I tried not to blush, too, but I may have lost that battle.  I was better able to breathe now that the King had turned away from me.  Even the curve of her shoulders was gorgeous.  Glamorous.

Of course.

I had a theory, and I was going to try it.

I closed my eyes and tried to Close myself to this.  I tried to find where I was, in a sensory fashion, using my knack, my little talent, and Closed it to anything, drawing up some kind of rudimentary shield.  I don’t know how successful I was, but the massive um… the desire seemed to recede, so either I was successful at thinking about first player shooters and goldfish (the two least sexy things I could immediately name) or this was at least a somewhat useful thing to try again in the future.

Now that I could think of things besides how the fit of my clothing was less flattering with the inevitable physical reaction, I opened my eyes again.

“What truths could we give you that you would accept, what dreams would you dream bereft of the world you know?” the King whispered.

“Once I’ve gone down the rabbit hole?” I asked.   “This is not my world, and I don’t know the rules. I’ll be at a disadvantage and concerned with what’s going on in my absence.  I’m sure the sex would be awesome,” I said, because even without the constant push of arousal, the King was hot.  Really hit my buttons.  “Strained my buttons,” sounded a bit too cheesy.  “But I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”

“Are you the fiddler, then?” the King asked, still looking at the egg.

“I can’t play a tune,” I admitted.  “But I can’t dance either.”

“We disagree.” She turned around and twined her hands around me.  She kissed me.

That was a simple way of saying it.  I can’t say at any time I wanted to complain.  She was earth and fire, and magma, and tasted like Santa Claus if his red meant cinnamon-hot candies.  Um, my brain was a little fritzed. She pulled my hair and ground her body against me.

It was nice.  It was distracting.  It wasn’t everything it could have been if I hadn’t managed to give myself at least the mental space, and I would not be honest if I didn’t admit I was a bit disappointed.

Only a tiny bit.

Part of me was noticing it was nice to kiss girls… and it was even nicer to kiss naked girls.  And it was even nicer to be kissed by naked girls who really fit my aesthetic.

That was, of course, the moment the egg decided to start to crack.

Rayya moved to the side, letting me past her.  She stood behind me for a moment, gauging my reactions, watching my butt, making faces at me… I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head, so I don’t know.  I smelled a faint flowery scent from the open windows, probably some kind of linen perfume.  I was not on the first floor; I’d guess maybe…eight levels up? The windows looked down into a green park, and some streets with bad parking options, and I could see a hotdog vendor on the sidewalk.  I checked my phone out of amusement.  It was looking for a network, so I didn’t have any reference for the time zone. I looked in the drawers for hotel paraphernalia, like a menu, or a writing pad or a pen with their logos. (I had an old Lakewood Sheraton ballpoint that was one of the best pens I’ve ever had; smooth lines, consistent ink, and comfortable to use.)  Nothing.  There was a telephone with no numbers on it, no area code or something I could use to track down exactly where I was.  The door closed after a moment, and I looked up at the noise.  Rayya was gone, and so was the door.

Of course.

“But what if I want room service to bring me up an extra pillow?” I asked of the air.

Nothing responded, for which I was both relieved and annoyed at the same time.  Relieved because it would have made me jump, annoyed because I was not sure where I was.  I presumed I was back somewhere near my own Reality, but that was a guess at best.  It could be unicorn meat in the hotdogs, after all.

The bath looked more luxurious than anything I’d been exposed to outside of a paranormal romance.  It had steps up to it, and a faucet that looked a bit like a bronze dragon.  I froze for a moment, then relaxed.  More teasing, I presumed.  Looked nothing like Her, at any rate.  Wings were all wrong.

Talons were wrong.

Teeth were wrong.

I wrenched my gaze away from it.  The sink was one of those extra long rectangular ones with two faucets and drains, and one long and elegant brass mirror.  The towels were oh-so-fluffy.  A bathrobe was included. The floor was cork or bamboo or something under my feet.  I washed my hands, and, thinking about it, pulled out the silver ring from my pocket.  (I have to take off my rings when I’m doing the dishes.)

I saw the engraving in the shadow, a single endless branch with faint leaves.

I made it into the bedroom, where there were six large pillows, and a plush carpet that made me wiggle my toes just to enjoy it.  I sat down on the bed, and sank into it.  Alarmed, I poked it a couple of times. Oh, it was just one of those “space age” materials that always made me think of the word, “squamous,” or at least the way the word sounds.  I know it means “scaly,” but it ought to be something that just burbled into spontaneous generation from a swamp.  Or a gumbo.

It was comfortable enough. I stretched out.  I knew I was too wound up to actually sleep, which is why when Rayya woke me it was so startling.

“Door-closer,” she said.

“You can call me ‘E,'” I mumbled.

“You are summoned to the Seven King.”

“Again?” I wasn’t serious.  I was just suddenly hungry.  I used my fists to clean out my eyes.  Bad habit, and my eyes made that dry squeaking noise.

“You are required once you have broken your fast,” Rayya amended.

Food!  “I could kiss you,” I said.

“Please do not!” she backed away from me.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.  Literalists.   “Where is this… food?”

She waved to a sideboard out of the bedroom where, once I stood, I could see that there were bloom-down-cheeked peaches, melons, and raspberries. Apples, russet and dun.  The fruits of the Goblin Market. A pitcher of milk that didn’t smell like I was used to, but I took a glass anyway.  Probably gryphon milk or something. (I’d hate to have nursing gryphlets.  Those beaks look pretty sharp.)  No pineapple. Amazing grapes that actually tasted like grape.  I took a handful of some of the stuff I didn’t recognize, just in case they were snozzberries.  I wanted to taste snozzberries.  After all, weren’t all of us dreamers of the dream?

“There are also garments available to you.”

“Shoes?” I asked.  I live in Colorado.  This means that three-fourths of the year I can wear flip-flops, and the other fourth I’m in snow boots.  Barefoot is always a possibility, but it was more suited for beaches or grassy green fields while you run after kites and watch out for what geese leave behind.

Rayya stared at me blankly.

I sighed.  “Why the garments?”  That was a disturbing word.  Loincloths?  Hose?  Fishnet?

“Hospitality,” she said.  “You are our guest, and have insufficient fur to call your own.”

I munched on an apple, thinking.  Rayya stood at attention and continued to stare.

“The obligations of a host,” I thought aloud.  I guess I do make housecalls.

Rayya looked at me as if I were going to say something interesting, but then her curiosity faded.  She waited while I chewed and swallowed.

I laughed aloud.  “I’ve read of pocket dimensions, but you have enveloped a piece of Reality in a pocket. I bet this room doesn’t exist to the hotel it’s in, maybe always rented by an organization controlled by the Seven King, maybe forgotten, cleaned by brownies instead of maid service.  That’s why there was no chocolate on the pillow.”

Rayya didn’t respond.  I shrugged.  The food was delicious, actually.  Not what I would have ordered, given a choice, but sweet and satisfying.  The milk was good as well, rich and very different.  “I wouldn’t order this, mind you.  Do I tip the waiter, or is that like giving thanks?”

Rayya’s hands clenched, and there was a dark look to her expression.  She walked over and opened the closet with a bit more force than it probably warranted.  But maybe it was stuck.  I don’t know.  The closet door crashed against the wall, and vibrated for a moment.  The closet was packed full of clothing, little of which I could recognize if I hadn’t been to a Renaissance Faire a few times.  (Okay, every year since I was little.)

I gestured at the closet.  “Is it safe, or will it suck me up into Narnia if I push too hard?”

Rayya continued to glare.

“I’m not changing with you in the room,” I pointed out.

“You. Try. My. Patience, Door-closer,” she said, spitting the words out one at a time.  “I do not know why the Seven King has chosen to punish me with your presence, but I will abide.”

“You’re no slice of sweet cake yourself, Water-Daughter,” I responded.  “You’re bitter icing and dry pastry.  I’m here because a Dragon didn’t give me much choice in the matter.”

Her manner changed almost immediately.  “A Dragon?” she asked.

“Yeah, you know, big, scaly, lots of places at once, breathe fire, occasionally do crazy powerful magic.  Dragons.”  I made wing motions with my hands.  “I would have come because I was invited, but apparently it was important for me to get out of town, or something.”

“This is information the Seven King must have,” she said.  “You must hurry and don what you would so we may sooner be in Our Majesty’s keeping.”

I pulled out a couple of pieces.  There were, indeed, boots in there.

“Where do the clothes come from?” I asked.  “Or is this where all the socks go?”  I would have expected a number of mismatching, single boots in that case.  “It’s okay, I really don’t expect an answer for my rhetorical questions.”

“You may maintain your expectations,” Rayya suggested.  There might have been the slightest hint of amusement in her voice.

The clothing fit remarkably well, although if I didn’t have aspirations to being a LARPer, I would probably have felt ridiculous.  I didn’t know what to call the boots, other than high leather boots, soft heeled.  It was in a green that I’m sure accented my eyes.

“Acceptable.”  Rayya led me through the door that wasn’t there, and down deeper into the hill.

I followed, feeling much better wearing shoes.  It’s funny how little things like that change your entire mood.  It was like when I lost my watch and tried getting acclimated to checking my cellphone for the time.  I felt lost, and at a disadvantage.  I now felt I could handle the Seven King.  Or, well, maybe not handle, just endure.

I put my jacket back on, because it had pockets and this faire-wear did not.

The stairs continued the way the stairs had begun, irascible and patternless except in their continuing annoyance.  The wash of red along the walls continued to remind me of blood, as if the heart of the mountain was less and less a metaphor and more a literal situation.  If I started hearing drums, I was fleeing Khazad-dûm.

We entered a set of dark blue doors with bars made of metallic bone.  They opened before us with a silent but abrupt slamming, as if caught just before they hit the walls.  Black caryatids lined an overpass leading to a large round space, open like the floor of a coliseum.

Across from the overpass were bones, bleached white as if from the sun.  Not nasty bones, like you’d see as dungeon dressing, but smooth, semi-metallic ones.  They made up a nest, and within it was an egg.  The egg was lit up, perhaps with something inside it, and it looked humanoid, only very thin, like being able to see to the bones in your hands without x-rays.  Hard to describe, sure.  Perched next to it was the Seven King, in the guise Rayya called her form of war.

“He promised to serve me seven years, through well or woe, as chance may be,” she said to me.

“So it’s the standard Rich and Famous contract?” I said in response.  It was the shoes talking.

“Mortal years, and mortality, but the form of it chances to be my choice.  Remade into the egg, and what he becomes you must voice.”

“Your doorman does the work of Dragons,” Rayya interrupted.  Her voice was heavy with meaning.

“River daughter, queen of ice, what lies drip from your lips? They do not entice!” The Seven King glared at my handler, blind grey eyes glowing, and shadows beginning to seep from her form, like as if she sweated darkness.

I cleared my throat.  “I am guessing that it matters that I came here through the Peredur Express?  I mean, he punched my ticket.”  I pretended to look at something in my hand.  “Is this Disappointment City?”  That’s the destination I have frequent flyer miles to, at least.

“Did he have eyes of banked embers, and did he breathe the black smoke of wood? Would he eye you if he remembers, does he meddle or do good?” The Seven King jumped from the nest of bones and came almost within reach.

“Describes him pretty well, actually.  I can tell you, though, he’s a meddler.  I have this,” I pulled the tooth out of my pocket.  “Traded for it,” I explained with a shrug.

The Seven King laughed.  It was more on the level of a cackle, this one, like paint splattering against a wall, and the crack of an egg as it hit the floor.  “Oh, we know what to do with Dragons, we fear them not, my dear.  The rattle of bones, the tattle of tomes, they’re nothing to us here.”  She gestured with her long talon-like claws towards the nest.  “Do you work through Dragons?  Must I add another to my list of slain?  The bones you see are their bones indeed.  We need them for our play.”

I took a deep breath.  “Rayya, is the King telling me that that’s a bunch of Dragon bones?”

Rayya nodded, a sharp, almost human movement.

“Oh.”

“I go first?” I asked, giving an eye to the darkness. There was a faint white glow somewhere in the distance. “I mean, you know the way, so maybe you should go first, do the introductions, you know.”

“The Seven King did not request my presence,” Rayya said.

I didn’t fire off an, “I wonder why,” because I’m not that kind of guy. Plus, she had at least a sixty percent immunity to sarcasm. I sighed, and took my phone out of my jacket pocket, so I could use its flashlight mode. “Fairyland is going to be the death of my battery power,” I muttered.

Even with the light offered by my phone it was dim and murky. Truly, the shadow was like a sea I was swimming in, a floating black ink that gently shied away from the light, as if with some sort of respect. A, “Pardon me, I didn’t realize you needed to see. I’ll just be dark around the edges then, alright?” The glowing designs on the columns were green and gold or blue and white, to no pattern I was able to immediately discern. I took a picture of one, because hey, I already had my phone out.

The flash startled something, as did the click of the picture being taken. I forgot to turn that off in the options. I switched it back to flashlight and turned to the side. I wasn’t going to turn around all the way. No, that’s how they get you, and I didn’t want to be a pillar of anything, except maybe righteousness and strength. If I could order off the menu and not choose power’s prix fixe selection.

I didn’t hear anything, as quiet as I could try to be, what with the sound of my heart beating in my ears. I took a deep breath and switched modes once more. I took another picture. This time I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

The glowing designs wrapped around a stone creature perching like a gargoyle higher up on the column. I stepped back into the darkness as the realization hit me. These weren’t just pieces of art. I looked at all the columns between the door and the glow I was headed towards. This was an army. An army between myself and the Seven King.

I put my phone away and kept walking, careful not to brush against any of the pillars. The glow I was walking towards grew as the distance shrank. It was a huge tree, glowing white from bark, branches, and leaves. In front of it was a dark structure that I took to be a throne. It began filling the area up with light, so much that I was fighting blindness, especially in regards to the previous darkness. I slowed when it was a more comfortable distance, when I could almost focus on the dark structure and the stranger who sat there.

The structure itself was kind of like chair, but more something I would call a lounge. It was a cushioned bench partially made of the tree itself. The padding was made of black leaves and silver moss, I guess. It was a very modern look, and the individual lounging upon it (hence the reason for the term) was very modern in her own way. Sophisticated. Complicated.

She had beautiful skin the color of soil when it was freshly turned and rained upon, and if that seems very specific, it’s because it’s what I immediately thought. She had, let’s call it, ample cleavage, which was notable because not a stitch or thread or even a candy floss of clothing was worn. She had amazing legs. I mean, the turn of the toe, the length, the delicate curve of the calves. Yeah, well, they were nice looking. It’s a thing for me. I felt the flush and like just about every adult male since the beginning of clothing just put my hands kind of in front of my waist and tried to look nonchalant. Her eyes were dark, like pools of warm chocolate, and the lashes were feathery. She had long black hair, left adrift over her shoulders in fits and curls.

“Do I have the honor of addressing the Seven King?” I asked, finally.

The laughter was like chimes in the wind. “Dear Thomas was true,” the King said. “You will be an amusing diversion.”

I tried not to visibly swallow as she moved her legs in a scissors-like motion and slid forward. “A diversion? I thought you wanted me for my…” I took a deep breath, concentrating on the blinding white tree, “…professional talents.” Rohana would have laughed, I think.

Something changed about her as she chortled in glee again, and this time it sounded more like a symphony of triangles. It started as a shimmer at her toes, and spread like a wave up her form, and then she was diamond and water, two dark eyes in an almost sexless body, with a head shaped like an upside-down tear drop. She stood to her lovely crystalline feet. “Which ones? Dragon taming?” she smiled, and the insides of her mouth sparkled as her black tongue flickered.

“I know when I’m being mocked,” I said. I didn’t know if I was irritated. “You requested my presence?”

The triangles again, and she walked past me, smelling like cucumber and something spicy and wonderful like pumpkin pie in her passing. “I require your expertise.”

“If you want a door closed, I’m your man.”

“I do not know if I want a man,” she laughed.

“Why was the door Closed here?” I asked. The darkness settled on her skin like a grey mist, and then she was different once more, tall and ebony, with long curved spikes from her head, and wicked black claws at her fingernails. She turned back to me, and her eyes were grey and a film was over them.

“You are a piece of a puzzle, a con in the conundrummer’s beat,” she said. Her voice was breathy, like it whispered past cold caves in the night. “You are a liar for all you speak sooth, soothing words that belie your confusion, fused with the conundrum of a hero’s feat.” Long black robes wrapped around her body with a shrug of her shoulders, a cloak woven of the night. The patterns of the columns shifted and hands came out of the stone, panicking my personal zombie reactors (I have a line of them that stretch all up and down my left side) reaching at nothing, then melting back as she passed. “Come, world walker, follow the path of my thinking. I am thinking you fear the path before us, but fear’s behind us, and opportunity summons. Summon your courage, man. If man you will be for me, my desires may be given, and you given to yours.” She laughed, and it was a cackle.

The columns began giving out additional light, painting the huge room in colors, as when Gandalf lifted Wormtongue’s hold on Rohan. The sun had come to this place of stone in the form of a dark beauty, dancing before me.

What could I do? I followed.

I spent a moment considering that it was an incredibly good thing that I had spent my life as a geek. I mean, I was still agog seeing the special effects of the changes the Seven King (if, that indeed, was the King and not some imposter – I’d seen three forms, were there four more?) but I wasn’t paralyzed with awe. Was I getting jaded about magic? Or was I just mentally shying away from the thought that she had made a come-on to me, and I was wondering if she shifted shapes in bed?

And would that be a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, sure, we’d sipped at our beers and considered if cat girls were considered beastiality, but that was a thing we did because it alleviated the discomfort of finding them hot. Or if being in bed with werefolk was treading too far across the line. Shapeshifter sex was just a faint curiosity, tentacles or no tentacles.

I thought about Rohana and cringed. I mean, I had about six justifications ready along the lines of, “But fairy sex doesn’t count,” that was as applicable as explaining that sex with a -cubi or a nymph wasn’t too far from masturbation. I was also clearly aware that it was, indeed, rationalization. Were we enough of a thing? She had a girlfriend, or had had a girlfriend, and well, I knew people who lived the polyamorous lifestyle and some were happy and some, well, were not. You know, like everyone else. It just seemed a whole heck of a lot more complicated and required specialized time management software.

But you don’t refuse a King, right?

I didn’t hate the part of myself that thought that, but I did feel guilty about it. And wondered if I was carrying any kind of protection. I knew it was a bad idea to keep a condom in your wallet. Not only did it spill out at the wrong time when you were paying for your milk, but the temperature changes could damage the spermicide and the latex, and friction could tear it on a micro level. And once you have sex with a fairy, you have sex with all the other fairies they’ve had sex with…wait, that’s not how it goes.

I had been known to call vampirism a “magic STD,” but never to Matana’s face. I think.

The hall filled with light and the ceiling was still a fair mist, but a bright one instead of that of shadow. The colors of the columns flared, and the clicking of the stone feet of the one I followed was the only noise except my labored breath and bare feet against the floor as I tried to keep up with her.

We neared the door and Rayya bowed. “My King,” she answered my question, “You have answered in the form of war?” she asked from her kneeling position.

“Thomas spoke true, and in truth he bespoke the gift that gives us our answers. Answer enough.” The words were said in an off-hand manner. “Grant chambers to our guest, as I go to our captains, and Captain’s Chambers.”

Rayya nodded.

The glossy black statue turned to me. “The Cold Water that Shapes the Stones will guide you,” she said, and her hand reached out to gesture towards Rayya, then turned to me. Her long claws reached for my face, and I kept myself from flinching. Barely. I definitely blinked. One touched my forehead, and those grey eyes searched mine for something. I couldn’t tell if it was something she found, but she pulled those huge curved weapons (that reminded me of prehistoric ground sloths; those things were crazy dangerous) from my face and then disappeared in a haze of little black specks, like volcanic ash.

“The Water that Shapes the Stones?” I asked.

Rayya’s expression didn’t change from what I considered “annoyance.” “My brother is Cold Waves that Crash on Rocks,” she said. “His given name is Nen.”

Wrecks. Yeah. I can see it. “Does he have a song?”

“Yes,” she said.

I thought about asking further, but she turned and began walking out of the doorways. The doors closed slowly behind us, but didn’t feel quite as Closed. I still didn’t know why they had been sealed the way they had, unless it was to make Rayya exercise a power.  Was it a demonstration for me, or was it a chiding for her? That was my first mystery.

I followed my guide as she went down the stairs and chose a set of doors that were almost frilly. They had billowing blue drapes with white lace on the bottom, and they were outlined in ornamental silver shapes.  The wood was black, or at least painted that way.  The door led to a hallway that looked like a posh hotel, with room names like “The Engraver,” and “The Artiste.”  My room’s name was, “Eternal.”

“Welcome to Shangri-La,” I muttered, as Rayya opened the door to my suite.

“Wait,” I said, “nowhere in my song does it say, ‘Shrinker of heads.’ I feel like it should rhyme with ‘beds,’ somehow as a salve to my sexual machismo, but you don’t see me in rap battles for a reason.”

“Lord Thomas warned us that you had a way of speech most confusing,” Rayya said. “Can you declare what you mean more plainly?”

I finished squeezing myself into the hole, humming a cover of, “White Rabbit” that was remarkably on-key, if I only had my own ears to prove it. I stopped in mid-note, staring at the Wonderland beneath us.

You know that Escher scene in Labyrinth where Bowie croons that emo lullaby to incarceration in the destructive tendencies of youth? That might not have been what it was about, but I haven’t seen it in a while. That’s what the staircase reminded me of immediately, its blue steps wandering upwards and downwards in a spiral deep beneath the hill. The blue deepened into violet, and then into red the deeper it went. I heard singing, screaming, laughing, the sounds of metal clanging, the ruffle of books as they were browsed, a smile, a frown, a chuckle forced from someone who didn’t want to let it out. The sounds of life. I heard the portal like a faint gong, like a wave of heat passing, the taste of the dregs of your jasmine tea at the cheap Chinese place.

I didn’t fall, but it was a close thing. I stumbled down a couple of steps and caught myself before I trampled Rayya. I made an animal noise, something drawn out of me by shock, and then caught my breathing.

Rayya smiled at me, the strange contours of her cheeks and lips curving in ways human mouths don’t. They practice this, you know, mimicking our expressions to better control us. On their own, they don’t smile, or laugh, or cry. Maybe they send their emotions out in scent glands or some kind of pitch we can’t hear, or they do it telepathically through eye contact. I don’t know. I remember Doloise once asking me to make faces at her, and watching her make her own in the mirror to get it just right. I hadn’t really remembered that until Rayya tried her smile on, like, what did she say? “Cheap tailoring.” Worse than Wednesday Addams, if you know what I mean. It looked dangerously amused, nevertheless.

I kind of got the feeling she didn’t like me.

I don’t like that feeling. I don’t think anyone does, but I just wish there was some way to correct it. I’m a nice person. If I don’t dislike you, let me at least be neutral in your worldview. Give me a chance, or tell me how to fix it, right? If I’m doing something wrong, I might be able to change. Except I don’t know, maybe I remind them of their ex-, or maybe they hate my haircut, or maybe they just don’t like me and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I took a moment to look at my feet and make sure I didn’t have any thorns or, I don’t know… weird things attached to them. I decided to try again with conversation, anyway. “Isn’t there some kind of magic you can use to tell the difference? If he’s crazy or not?” Magic ought to be useful like that. “I mean, it’s not the kind of stuff I do.”

“Your opinion is required by the Seven King,” is all she said.

Huh. Well, if you think about it, crazy and truthful are kind of like a Klein bottle. They wrap around – if you have too much truth, you go crazy, and if you’re crazy enough, you tell the truth. Is there a doorway to madness? Is there a doorway to truth? Those were both good questions, and I didn’t have answers. My gut feeling was that there was, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near them, even if metaphorical.

“Follow,” Rayya said again, and she started leading me down the stairs. They were not…regular. Okay, even I had to chuckle at the use of the word, but this went for more definitions than usual. The space between the first step and the second was probably about four inches, and the second and the third was about nine inches, and then the third and the fourth… you get the picture. And they weren’t wobbly, but they weren’t straight. The first tilted left. So did the second. The third didn’t.

As we went down into the swirling staircase, the atmosphere got warmer, and some reddish light seemed to crawl up the sides of the walls, reminding me disturbingly of blood. Rayya was not so disturbed (well, I guess I was about to become the local expert on that) so I just gathered that it was a natural phenomenon as we ventured into the throat of the hill.

There were lights, so apparently the gnomes or kobolds or whatever Rayya and Wrecks’ people were didn’t rely on infravision. I made a mental note to argue that the next gaming session I made. There were all sorts of lights, though, varied and unusual from each other, like the steps. This one was a small brazier with a reddish flame. This next one was a tall one as bright as an LED, and made of silver coils. The third one was a low gold lamp out of one of Aladdin’s adventures. The fourth, a cage in which something small like a lit puffball floated. They illuminated the staircase in a way that was not consistent with the colors I’d seen from the spire above. It was a lesson, I think, that I could not rely on the presumptions of my senses.

Well, heck, yeah, I knew that going in… I mean, could there be a more obvious, “duh” moment? The problem is that knowing it intellectually, and knowing it in your gut isn’t the same thing. Sometimes you need to be literally hit in the gut, sometimes it just takes a little time to process. We rely on so much visual information to determine the world we live in that we are often unprepared for the worlds we don’t. Of course, this is another reason why that which is Beyond is not a good thing. Exciting, fun, dangerous, awesome, yes, all those things, but while it’s been said the crazy ones kiss better, is the rollercoaster worth your life? Your sanity? Your soul?

There were levels at the corners (as opposed to the rounds) and yes, they were all different. The first one had a set of double doors that wouldn’t have been outrageous in a Lord of the Rings film. The second was the jaws of something like a megalodon. The third was a bunch of silks waving in the wind with a faint music behind them. Some of them were more than doorways, or what I like to think of as “doorways plus.” You know, they had the potential to go to more than the next room.

Rayya moved me away from what I think was the fourteenth doorway with a bit of a push. “This is forbidden,” she said. The arch looked fine, outlined in writing that was squiggly and, well, I was presuming it was writing. It could be a whole bunch of Lovecraftian slime-guys hanging out with their weenuses showing. The tunnel went on through it, but curved pretty quickly so that I couldn’t see anything past it. She tip-toed or soft-shoe’d past it. (Wait, soft-shoe is a dance. But she wasn’t on the tips of her feet. Why are words so weird sometimes? She wore very soft slippers of white.) I didn’t feel anything weird past it, but maybe it was some kind of weird cultural taboo, like only people with purple tongues were allowed.

I did not trip down the next flight of stairs, but I did have to catch myself as we took the next exit. This one had two sets of stone doors. The first was huge, easily three times my height, and open to the sides. They were about two feet thick, at my glanced estimate. The second set was half that height, and closed. Sigils I didn’t recognize or understand marked the doors.

“If it continues to shrink in one of those Xeno’s paradox sort of ways, I won’t be able to get through,” I noted aloud.

Rayya ignored me. She went through the first set of doors, and I could feel tension, like the moment just before the bug zapper does its thing. I wanted to pause and maybe put a hand through first, wondering if the doorway was some kind of scanner. I stepped after her with a little jump, and felt nothing. The second set of doors remained closed.

Rayya stopped in front of them. I couldn’t really tell what she was thinking, but all the cues I could get from her manner suggested disappointment, or surprise, or some concern. She put her hands on the doors and some of the glyphs lit up. She brought her hands together and stepped back.

Nothing happened. She didn’t say anything, but I continued to have the feeling that something was not going as planned.

I reached out with my trick to kind of “feel” at the door.

It was Closed, alright. Closed with a capital “C.” I knew the feeling of it. When I Close things, if I’ve done it right, it fades into the fabric of what I think of as reality. Sometimes I can only Close doors so much that they can be Opened again under the right circumstances. You know, conjunctions, sacrifices, whatnot – some places simply can’t be closed permanently, just as some places may never be Opened. This was Closed, and shut down hard.

I said nothing for a few minutes as Rayya studied the door. I looked for handles, locks, hinges, torch sconces that you turn sideways… you know, all the usual stuff. “Edro!,” I said. “Mellon.” My elvish accent is atrocious, I know.

Rayya glanced at me, and I could read curiosity on her face. That was a definite fey emotion. Usually it was followed by the killing of a cat, and someone’s entrails being read, but it was at least something for which we had notes in common.

“It’s just something you say in front of closed doors. Like, ‘Open Sesame,'” I explained.

“Do doors listen to you?” she asked. The curiosity had faded, though, so while I had touched her, it hadn’t lasted. Oh well. Story of my love life.

“Sometimes,” I said, truthfully. I’ve caught myself apologizing to walls, too.

She made a kind of noise, a tick but not a tsk, if you understand the difference, and turned her attention back to the doors.

“Maybe the King decided on a long lunch?” I suggested. “Or one of these symbols means, ‘Gone Fishin’.'”

She ignored me, and placed her hands on different parts of the door. These items did not light up, which seemed to frustrate her because she pulled her hands back quickly and took a step away.

“They’re closed,” I said. “I mean really closed.”

“They should not be. We are expected. We are invited.” She was annoyed.

“I’m Door-closer,” I shrugged. “I don’t open them.”

“I am aware of your limitations,” she said. Yeah, she was definitely annoyed. “You are, however, ignorant of mine.”

She stood back, and I felt the gesture of her will. It was a kinetic force, a quick exhalation of breath, and then the stone doors shuddered. She gestured again, and her eyes were brighter, and the stone of the very earth shook once, twice, like a creature waking from a nap.

I guessed her knocking worked, because the Closure snapped. The doors slowly opened into a dark hall, lit by pale runes against columns that went up into the darkness of the ceiling.

“The Seven King awaits,” Rayya said, bowing.

I walked along the beach as the sun did its slow descent. The waves lapped at my ankles, sometimes at my calves, sprinkling me with salt and foam as I sauntered barefoot across the sand. I had left the shoes in my apartment, along with the socks, but I had my wallet, a Dragon’s tooth, some clothes I’d been wearing for far too many hours, and my cellphone. Oh, and a butterscotch candy I’d picked up from a jar somewhere I stopped while driving home.

I pulled my pants higher up on my legs, holding them at my knees with a twist. The water was refreshing, too cold to want to go into, but enough to keep me from getting tired as I wandered. A few hours ago, I’d been asleep in my bed. About an hour ago, I’d been in landlocked Colorado. I walked through a door in the trees, and here I was, somewhere else.

I sighed, and moved up to walk higher, where the sand was dry. This was not a natural place. The foam was like a crust of tiny diamonds, if tiny diamonds were made of sparkling water. When I stood against the tide, the water did not pull the sand around me. I could see the moon, faint in the sky, a pale crescent the size of my hand four inches away from my face. A stolen satellite, the ghostly face of a woman with a winking eye, rather than the dark basalt seas with which I was familiar. At least, that was my own pareidolia on it.  The sun had a pale violet tint to it, and the sky had that faint fogginess that suggested clouds but did not outline them in any specific.

I wasn’t wandering entirely blindly.  Like all fairylands in my experience, my will would eventually lead me to what I needed to find.  Except it wasn’t my will that had opened the gate; I’d been thrust through time and space by a Dragon for his own purposes.  Well, I presumed Dragons had gender.  I had met outwardly male and female versions of them.  I knew they had teeth.

The gate had opened in-between some cliffs, in what I would have called a crevice.  It was still there, and for a few minutes I considered walking back through it towards the traffic and maybe trying to persuade a bus driver to take me home.  The portal was an old one, and I suspected it had many destinations.  Any arch or doorway will do if you’re crazy enough, and the walls of the world thin enough there.  As a Closer, someone who hates that kind of chaos, my work would never be done.

Mine weren’t the only footprints on the beach.  While I couldn’t see any other signs of obviously sentient life (the occasional stalks of grass might chatter, but I didn’t know enough to talk with them) there were prints of larger things, higher up where the line of the water rarely reached.  Some went into the waves, some were being washed away by them as they dripped out of the sea.   I was following the majority of them toward what if the sun was in the west would be south.   It was a dramatic view along the golden cliffs streaked with red and violet by the setting sun, toward where I could see a darker haze of trees and green.

Of course, if I was just following the path to the local fifty-foot trap spider, or the tracks of a T-Rex, well, wouldn’t I feel foolish.   Ah, the egg on my face would just make me a more appetizing breakfast, I guess.

The first thing I saw was a ring along the beach.  It was silver and glinted for a moment in the sun.  I picked it up, checked it for obvious sentences in the speech of Mordor, and then pocketed it.  It was meant for me, and it was specifically being left in such a fashion as I would know it wasn’t a gift.  It probably was a key into something, like wearing the armor of the House of Soulful Singers or somesuch nonsense would lead me into their fabled realms of symphony.

That was how these things worked, you see.  Games and patterns woven into will.  I knew a little of what to expect; this realm was far more formed than that to which Doloise drew me.  The seashore was a place of meditation, a place of relaxation and focus.  I suspected I could have gone through far more chaotic gates, the whirlwind of the gyre, the puff of a thousand dandelions.  I couldn’t help but think of Doloise a little as I walked.

And of Dragons.

I shied from the thought.  Apparently I still had a bit of a trigger about them, and I needed the beach.  Peredur was a creature of the darkness of wood smoke, eyes the red of embers, nothing like the pale blue and violet of the sea, or the gold and pale sand of the cliffs.

I ran my hand over the tooth in my pocket.  I had exchanged a pebble for it, with a wizard.  It seemed like a wiser decision than Jack and his beans, but then again, maybe my golden goose was the one being cooked.  Or best for the gander. Either way.  The herald of the messengers, riddles I didn’t understand, but that haunted me nonetheless.  I had a few for them, too, like, “Who leaves the Questor without a Quest?” or  how many droid arms could a wookie chuck if a wookie chucked… no, wait.  That’s not how it goes.

There was the letter on my roof, from Matana.  It wasn’t much, just an e-mail address and a single sentence.  “Witches also burn with the stake.”

A reminder?  A recommendation?  I had had no dreams before being woken up to the smell of smoke and Dragon.

As I approached the green, a small figure stood there, patiently.  She wore white robes that blew in the breeze from over the waves.  I saw the robes first, along with the glint of silver on the ring she wore on her hand.  “Be welcome,” she said.  “Be welcome as a guest of the Seven King.  Within this realm will you leave your feuds unsettled, meet strangers as friends, and draw no blood before its time.”

“Is there a blood o’clock?” I asked.

She looked up at me.  “Is it that time already?” she asked sweetly and savagely.  I always like the word, “sanguine,” except when it’s pointed towards me.

“Do I have to sign something?” I asked.  “I mean, I’m good with the restrictions.  All my feuds are unsettled, kind of queasy, really, and my friends are the strangest people you might meet.  Well, except, for, you know, in a place like this… maybe.”  I wasn’t willing to give up that easily.

“Follow,” she said.  She was built in the same manner as Wrecks, perfectly proportioned and yet somehow inhuman.  Her hair was a plain brown, tied in one of those knots that always got called “severe” in books, like someone had a grudge against it. Her face had that same shape to it, one that still brought to mind something canine, if in this case it was more wolf than dog.  Something about the color of her eyes, which weren’t quite brown or hazel.

“What is the ring?” I asked.

“A promise to replace the one you traded, because we are still in debt.”

“I haven’t done anything for you, yet.”  I was getting the same kind of bad feeling I’d had when I got all those student loan offers, like I could quite easily stack up a bill I couldn’t pay.  I had too many girlfriends who had liked to trade in favors, and while sometimes the repayment was delightful, too often it meant I had to help them move.

“A promise is a promise, nonetheless,” she said, as if that were the end of the subject.  She led me onto the stiff grass that grew in the sand.  The cliffs had worn away into two great wings of emerald and mist around us.  I could see that there was, indeed, a path, but only because I could hear it.  We were slipping between places a little, and I could taste the discord like sharp notes in wine or cheese.

“Who are you?” I asked, a wave of sudden panic tightening my jaw as I realized I took the ring as a sign, and didn’t ask for her identification.  The path grew darker around us.

“Would my name mean anything to you?” she asked.

“Likewise your occupation, and from where and whence you came,” I said, stumbling over a rock that turned under my foot.  We were looking down into a valley, and there were white flowers along the hills, with an occasional red one like a pimple.  I know, it was probably more gothic than that, a “drop of blood amongst the purity,” but I wasn’t feeling romantic, just cold.  The mist was beginning to get at my clothes, and I was still barefoot.

“I come from under the hill, and over the waters, when the waves turned to chill as they danced with winter’s daughters.  I’m a snowflake, an icicle, an eave dropped in a game, I’m the silver ring’s caller, and Rayya’s my name.”

It had a beat you could almost dance to, I guessed.  “Do I have to introduce myself in the same fashion?” I asked.

“You need not be the singer if you already have a song.”  The mist almost swallowed her, except that she wore the white robes.

“Do I have a song?”  I hurried up behind her.

“Door-closer, dragons-bane, wizard-friend, found but lost he be, secret-caller, ghost-walker, he answers thus to  ‘E.'”

“Huh.  Kind of catchy.”

“It was sung by Lord Thomas so that I would know you when you came from Sundown Waters. It suits you well enough, though the tailoring is cheap.”  She made a little shrugging motion. “Hold fast for the footing here is treacherous.”

“I’ll take your word for it.  I can’t see a thing.”  The mist threatened, the white of the Nothing, the erasure of all that was vivid into the remnants of gray.  For a moment, I saw the flickering of her robe.  My foot slipped on wet stones, and just as I fell, I saw a road, and sunshine.

“It is not the best way, but it is a safe one.”  The sun began to burn away the fog.  “Some roads are easier to walk, but I chose to bade Lord Thomas’ wish.”

I considered.  “Is that a good wish or a bad wish?” I asked.

“It depends on which side of the scale he stands.  If he be a madman, then it is treacherous, if he be true, then it was the best path possible.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

The road was a collection of unmatched stones, no two the same size in a row, no pattern immediately evident except for the worn round nature of them, and the dark blue color against the dust of the road.  It wrapped around a hill with a boundary of some kind of flower with similar dark blue petals, and thorns the size of my finger.  I guessed the stones were actually seeds from these flowers, and at any moment they’d bloom and entrap us in the nettle.  The hill was awash in purple petals, and smelled a little bit like my grandmother’s bedroom, kind of powdery and nice.

She led us up the hill, and I took a moment to look behind me.  It’s never a good idea, but here all I saw was the road twisting and turning into the horizon, amongst more hills of purple flower.  The sky was the blue of ads for Caribbean cruises, but the strange moon of the shore had followed us, still a pale violet slice too close in the sky.

The flowers were rough against my feet, and I found myself slipping a bit behind, taking some time to choose a path.  Rayya slowed a little, and then whistled a birdsong.  It was matched by something I couldn’t see, and a door opened into the hill.

“We can’t tell, Door-closer,” she said, dropping into the doorway.  “That’s one of the tasks for which you have been chosen.”

I followed her, but I found no door behind me.