Work Text:
The realm of magic is the realm of dream, of inspiration, of memory indistinguishable from story.
Once upon a time, in one of her memories, the little princess left her foster father and Sir Orrin and Uncle Smrgol to talk outside the cottage while she ran upstairs with a wiggly, spiky, tongue-tickling, gwancking dragonet in her arms. Next to her own bed, she heaped up his very first hoard for him: gold rings and necklaces from her mother’s jewelry box, coins from the magic purse that contained half her father’s kingdom in treasure, even the special occasion cutlery from the cupboard downstairs. And as he turned around and around on the pile, getting it thoroughly messy and comfortable for himself, she told baby Gorbash a bedtime story she remembered hearing from one of the nursemaids while her parents lay ill, about Great Peter, and how he gathered together the first flight of dragons and taught them to speak as men do. And how the dragons, in return, taught him to listen….
In one of her dreams, the horse and rider traveled along a mountain path above of a lake of clouds. But in the middle of the clouds, the dais of the Golden Wizard stood empty, with the silver owls of the full moon blinking bemusedly in the rafters above, and the brazen phoenix of the noonday sun singing sad, shrill songs that rose and fell and vanished in the twisting vapors.
“Well, that’s a spot of bother,” the rider said, pulling absently at the end of his greying moustache, tugging irritably at a padded leather sleeve. “Having to leave all our armor and weapons back at the Gate of Transcendental Whatsis -- not that I expect we’ll be needing the old blade in this place, eh, Lancer? Still, something feels amiss...”
The great bird stopped its song and took flight into the fog, losing itself in a few wingbeats. The knight unpacked his horse’s saddlebags and removed the bit so it could forage while he himself settled in for a wait by the pathside.
“Gold Wizard must have popped out for a bit. Hope he turns up soon. You know, I can almost fancy I see a face in that cloud there, Lancer. Eh? What do you see, old boy? Haystack, I shouldn’t wonder. Looks a bit haylike to me, too, come to think of it. And that one there’s almost dragonish. Almost….”
In less than a moment he was up on his feet, reaching for the space where his scabbard should have been. He looked down at his empty swordbelt, and then up into the scaly and whiskered snout of a very long, very quiet dragon.
“And I was feeling so peaceable this morning, too.” The dragon sighed a puff of scalding vapor. “The balance in this place was troubled enough before your coming, man of war.”
“I’d prefer ‘keeper of the peace,’ if it’s all the same,” said the knight, backing toward more stable ground.
“You carry a weapon.” And the dragon indicated with a flick of its tongue the white-fletched arrow that hung by a loop of green ribbon from the horse’s saddlebow. The horse didn’t look pleased with the attention.
“No weapon,” said the knight quietly, “but the token of a champion.”
“Were you not told to leave all weapons at the borders of this land?”
“Oh, I would not part with this arrow for all the world.” His voice unsoftened, and he stood taller. “I, Sir Orrin Neville-Smythe, do come hither on errand.”
“What errand?”
“To seek out the Golden Wizard on behalf of his brother, Carolinus.”
“Lo Tae Zhao is not here.”
“Clearly.” The knight cast another glance at the fog. “So to speak.” He peered up at the dragon. “Are you his emissary?”
“I am his esteemed companion, Shen Tsu. And I am very worried.”
“Ah, I see. Well, no, dash it all, I don’t see. Care to explain what’s going on?”
“It is a long and thirsty tale." The dragon looked at the contents of the saddlebags hopefully, and the beginnings of a campfire Sir Orrin had started. “Might you have time for some tea, perchance?”
“Always.”
She dreamed the grey-black wolf climbed the last steps of the highest seamount, tongue lolling between his front teeth, panting hard in the thin air. Below him the ocean roared; above, the sky was always stars, even at full noon. In the blue dark, the mailed and toothy guardian of the tower was nearly indistinguishable from the tower itself, but the wolf sniffed him out right away.
"Sorry to barge in," Aragh said to the dragon, "but I'm here on business. Carolinus is in a bad way. And you don't look like much yourself, Solarius," he added for the benefit of the blue-robed man huddled in the corner of the room, head in his hands.
"Roots skyward, branches underground. One and one, and one and one and one..." Solarius rocked back and forth, slumping further forward, further into himself.
Aragh blinked his yellow eyes once, twice. "Is he moon-touched?"
The narrow-nosed dragon snorted a thread of flame. "The Blue Wizard is master of the moon, and never a subject to its madness. But since the last tide turned, he has not been himself."
"Clearly."
Another snort of flame, brighter this time. "How do you know him?"
"Oh, we go way back, eh, Solarius? Now calm your hackles down, dragon. We're all in this last realm of magic together, right? And it's going to be all right, that I promise you." The wolf sauntered over to where the crouched figure curled in on himself, away from the world, and nosed his arm. "Paid back my debt to you fair and square, wizard, a life for a life, but that doesn't mean I'm just going to walk off and leave you like this. Wolf's honor."
One last snort from the dragon, this time a laugh.
"You keep clearing your furnace like that, you'll set your beard afire. Then I'll be the one laughing."
She dreamed herself next outside her old home, outside the double doors of the cottage where a woman in woodland garb sat by a makeshift fire, a pile of white feathers and half-finished arrows by her side. Over the fire hung a foul-smelling pot which she stirred and stirred, every now and then looking to the nearest open window of the cottage from which there drifted the sound of low voices. The smaller of the two doors opened, and out came an elf and a unicorn, still talking together in an undertone.
"...For a fortnight now," says Giles. "No worse, but no better either, for all my little skill with greenwood remedies. I fear he used up what little magic he had left in sending a messenger to them."
"Nay," said the unicorn, shaking her mane. Melisande remembered her, the healer of the forest, the one who once long ago came to the cottage to cure a sick little girl of the demon fever that had taken her parents. "The wizard still has magic unspent -- it is all that keeps him with us still. What concerns me is when--"
The unicorn stopped and looked up, ears pricked. It saw her.
"Ah, you're nearly here." And when Melisande started to step forward, hand outstretched, she shied away, snorted, "Too close for comfort," and ran off.
The elf and the archer had seen her at the same time. Giles stood frozen as though he'd come up face to face with a ghost, but Danielle advanced, bow in one hand, gluey stirring spoon brandished like a weapon in the other.
"What is this? Dark magic?"
In her dream, caught between the worlds, Melisande searched for the right words to say, but from the open window another voice cried out, too thin and frail, and she heard her own voice calling back as if from a great distance.
"Father!"
Again she tried to move, but her feet couldn't feel the ground. She could see the ground through them, though -- little wonder that Giles was so frightened. But then there was Danielle in front of her, staring boldly with eyes blue as her own.
"You don't seem like dark magic. I suppose I will have to trust that you aren't." The other woman started to pull an arrow from her quiver, remembered to trade the spoon to her bowhand just in time. "He's already there by now. Take this, so you'll remember." She pushed it feather end first into her hands. "Remember! Hurry!"
And Melisande came awake in bed with fear clutching her heart, the arrow tight in her grip, glowing as red as blood and then crumbling away to pieces.
Her hands smell of old blood. Peter isn't here. The window blinds are pulled up, even though it's bright city night outside. His jacket and scarf are gone from their peg by the door. Melisande stands in her robe by the unlatched deadbolt, at a loss. Remember. Hurry. With her eyes closed and mind wide open she reaches out blindly, despairingly, and after one breath, two, three, she sees it in her mind's eye: the same night sky, grass and trees all around, a lamppost half bent and flickering, and her husband sitting on the broad back of a very large, very real, and very familiar dragon.
“See, what I don’t understand is how you can have a Boston Common without Boston cows.”
“Well, to be honest, I wasn't really thinking about…”
“Not even an elk or a nice fat ploughhorse or anything."
“Gorbash, I don't think…”
“All this nice, green, fattening grass going to waste.”
“Gorbash!”
“Mm-hm?”
“Not now.”
“Oh! Right, the realm of magic. Any ideas how to get us both back into it?”
“Not a clue.”
The dragon trickles little flames out into the smoggy night air, uncreaks and refolds his wings. “Well, blast.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Melisande comes back to herself abruptly, knowing where she is, where she has to go. She throws a coat on over her robe and runs pellmell out the door, downstairs, down the sidewalk and across the lanes of Beacon Street, dodging cars that flare and roar as they fly by, running across grass and under trees to where a shadow looms, bigger than any tree in Boston.
“Gorbash!”
“Huh? Sis!”
The shadow falls over her as the great head bends down nearly to the ground, blowing roast beef and lightning-smelling breath in her face. She hugs him fiercely, as much as she can reach.
“Melisande!”
She stands back and cranes her neck to glare at Peter as Gorbash sets him down.
“Husband, I will not be left behind. Not when the fate of my father and all the realm of magic lies in peril. I have had true dreams this night -- and you as well?" She waits for him to nod, then goes on. "In this place and under your tutelage I have learned all manner of lore pertaining to the realm of science, written in heavy tomes and secret words just as the lore of magic is, and I think… that is, I begin to understand, however imperfectly--”
“Melisande, you can’t go back. I can’t. It’s just not possible anymore.”
“But it is! I know that it is. Do you not remember how you spoke to me of light, in waves like the sea, or in motes like dust, but never wave and mote together at once? Or the poor cat that is boxed, or yet unboxed…”
“Meli--”
“Listen.” She lays a finger to his lips. “Such is the realm of magic, and of science, too. One realm, not two -- oh, do you not understand? Do you not see it yet? We are there now, if we will it.”
“That… makes no sense.” He's almost laughing, and his glasses slide down his nose as he tilts his head down.
“Like a man magicked into the body of a dragon, until his knowledge willed it otherwise.” She finds herself almost laughing, too, and pushes his glasses back into place, kissing the bridge of his nose. “Logic is indistinguishable from enchantment sometimes, or so your lore books say. And if I know anything of enchantment, it doesn't need to be sensible, it only needs to be. So for the sake of my father, for the sake of all magic and science together, let your knowledge will us there now? The three of us?" She takes his hand.
“It does take three to begin a magic quest, brother,” Gorbash reminds Peter with a giant wink.
“I’ll take your word for it.” He squares his shoulders. “Okay, then.” He clears his throat and looks up into the brown twilight over Boston Common. “I un-deny all magic and I wish -- I know that we three are standing in the hidden realm.” And the next moment, the place where they once were is empty save for trampled grass and one bent lamppost, creaking like a dragonwing in the wind.