I gave Ivan a few minutes to compose himself.\u00a0\u00a0 To be completely honest, I would have to say I probably would have wiped away a tear, myself, if I hadn’t been a total jerk.\u00a0 I mean, I was pressed to fault his logic, such as it was.\u00a0 I could think of no other reason, myself, to leave my heart in the lands of the dead.<\/p>\n
I had doubt, then.\u00a0 Doubt is an insidious worm at the best of times, destroying what love and faith have made glorious.\u00a0\u00a0 The Serpent in the Garden was doubt, I am certain.\u00a0 Part of it was a very personal doubt, that I would ever love anything so much as to be willing to do something that significant between our worlds for that reason, and part of it was doubt about my job here.<\/p>\n
If I closed the gateway, there was only one way for Ivan to be reunited with his heart.<\/p>\n
Possibilities flashed before my eyes, and I kept coming to the question: did Nellie love Ivan so much as to have him without his heart?\u00a0 Was the safety of the Red Poets so much more important than her love that she wanted him cured first, and sacrifice her relationship second?\u00a0 What would Ivan’s life be like, heartless as it was?<\/p>\n
He wouldn’t be the first – it’s practically a fairytale trope (for which there ought be a whole ‘nother Wiki) to hide one’s heart somewhere else.\u00a0 Perhaps there were support groups.\u00a0 “Hi, my name is Ivan, and I have hidden my heart.” “Hi Ivan!” “I first lost my ability to care about other people when I traded it for the ability to speak the tongue of the dead.”<\/p>\n
I focused after a moment.\u00a0 I liked Ivan.\u00a0 He was still in touch with his heart, or he wouldn’t be so likeable, would he?<\/p>\n
Was this even my decision to make?\u00a0 I was hired for a particular job.\u00a0 I could just “follow orders.”<\/p>\n
Yeah, that sticks in my craw, too.<\/p>\n
“So?” Ivan turned around and asked.\u00a0 It was a challenging tone.\u00a0 “Do your…hocus-pocus, heh.”\u00a0 He waved his hand as if he had no care in the world.<\/p>\n
“Tell me first of dragons,” I said, suddenly.\u00a0 I looked for Doloise without turning my head, but couldn’t feel her under the pressure of the situation.\u00a0 Maybe she was behind me.\u00a0 I wasn’t going to worry.<\/p>\n
“Ah,” he said, as if I had suddenly earned a point, or at least some kind of respite.\u00a0\u00a0 He sat down again, his enormous frame fitting into the booth with the ease of practice.\u00a0 He looked at me, squinting for a moment.\u00a0 His hands moved in a way that indicated something specific, and he made words with the movement of his mouth.\u00a0 “First, tell me why you ask.”<\/p>\n
I felt the spell seize up the air around us.\u00a0 It both relieved and intensified the oppressive sensation I’d been feeling since before I’d woken up.\u00a0 It was a lovely privacy curtain, excellently delivered.\u00a0 Ivan wasn’t just one of the Red Poets, he was at least a middle-weight champ.\u00a0 I knew heavy-hitters who would have been hard put to do that with so little effort.<\/p>\n
(It made me think of spy movies from the Cold War period, however irrelevant to the current situation.\u00a0 What had Ivan been before he became a cook?)<\/p>\n
“It has been weighing on my mind,” I tried to explain.\u00a0 “Something about the way you referred to Doloise.\u00a0 Was Artur trying to give me a hint?\u00a0 The amulet that your Nellya wears.\u00a0 Some ideas that just popped up in my head.”<\/p>\n
He squinted at me again.\u00a0 “You are a small wizard.”\u00a0 He made that pinching motion with his fingers one uses to indicate distance.\u00a0 It was not flattering.\u00a0 “Andrei has good words for you.” \u00a0 He leans back.\u00a0 “And you come with daughter of Dragon to ask questions to one the Dragon has spit back!\u00a0 You are small wizard, but parts of you are very big!\u00a0 Hah!”<\/p>\n
I didn’t ask him to elaborate.<\/p>\n
“There are many routes to the lands of the dead.\u00a0 I asked a Dragon to take me there.”<\/p>\n
Oh.\u00a0 “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons.\u00a0 I am crunchy and good with ketchup.”<\/p>\n
“Pfah.\u00a0 Ketchup!”\u00a0 He gestured at the side of the table.\u00a0 “We do not use it here!\u00a0 But point! small wizard.\u00a0 Dragons do not like each other.\u00a0 Not even to,” and he made a motion with his hands that left very little to the imagination.\u00a0 Might be why there’s so few of them left, really.<\/p>\n
Ivan continued.\u00a0 “I spent three days dead.\u00a0 I spoke with many guardians of that land and ours and made deal for passage.\u00a0\u00a0 They were not all fair, but passed them I did.\u00a0 I thought of my Nellya, and would return.”<\/p>\n
He sighed, deflating.\u00a0 “To return, I said, was part of the bargain.\u00a0 The Dragon agreed, but wanted to choose his time.\u00a0 I held my way.\u00a0 He said he would then hold on to something to summon me at his need.\u00a0 I agreed.\u00a0 He took my heart.”<\/p>\n
He smiled and pulled up his shirt.\u00a0 In the middle of all the pasty flesh was something my eyes refused to focus on – I’ve told you, I can’t see gates.\u00a0 But something from it still smoked.<\/p>\n
“Once marked by Dragon’s blood, marked forever.\u00a0 I do not know how a small wizard like you can fix it.”<\/p>\n
I could close it.\u00a0\u00a0 I heard the sound, and it was not\u00a0 a complicated pattern.\u00a0 I felt the openness, the wrongness<\/em> of the portal, and I wanted to, I really did.\u00a0 So why were the words, “I guess that means we need to talk to the Dragon,” what came out of my mouth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Once marked by Dragon’s blood, marked forever. I do not know how a small wizard like you can fix it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-three"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}