by R W Foster
“In my world, I deal with things which to others would seem to be magic more often than not. Something we named nuclear physics deals with splitting atoms. We call this process fission. This generates an enormous amount of heat. My friend and I once experimented with creating the opposite, called cold fission which generates a tremendous amount of cold. I am used to the unusual, which, I guess is why I’m not terrified about being in a whole other world.”
“What are atoms?”
“In simple terms, they are the building blocks of everything.”
“What about not simple terms?”
“Well, as I learned, an atom is the smallest component of an element having the chemical properties of the element, consisting of a nucleus containing combinations of neutrons and protons and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus by electrical attraction; the number of protons determines the identity of the element.”
“Hmm. I think I prefer the simpler way of saying it. I can learn a lot from you.”
“And I from you,” I said. “Now, what about the remainder of this test?”
She laughed. “Alright. This part is simple in concept: Catch me.”
“That’s all?” I asked, suspicious.
“Yes.”
I sighed and agreed. ‘This is silly.’ I lunged to where I had heard her voice from last, hoping to catch her off guard. This time, the laughter came from my right and a little behind me. I whirled and leaped. I landed hard on my stomach, my hands clutching the empty air. The air left my lungs in a rush as I slammed into the ground. Belly flops on the ground are painful, let me tell you. I groaned and rolled to my feet with care, cussing as I did. Further laughter came from my left, close by, so I swung my arm outward, intending to grasp her at the last moment. Soo-jau laughed again as my hand closed on empty air. Though I sensed no mockery in her constant laughter, only fun and enjoyment of the game, I found myself growing angry. I whirled left, then right, becoming angrier and more disoriented as I flailed about. I ceased talking, my only sounds grunts and gasps. I think she sensed my anger because her laughter also halted.
I found a scaled face with a flailing hand, and clamped down. A grunt and faint “Ow.” To my shame, I realized I had Angriz and caused him some pain. My anger melted away to be replaced with concern.
“I’m sorry,” I said, releasing my grip. “Are you okay?”
He pulled away. “No worries.”
With a clearer mind, I had a flash of inspiration. I stretched my hand out until I touched his leather clad chest. I moved to my right, stretching my arm out. I took two steps further away.
“Angriz,” I whispered. “Do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Hold your breath for thirty seconds.”
He took a deep breath, and did as I requested. I shouted, startling Soo-jau. A brief gasp of surprise revealed her presence to my left. I waited, counting to three in my head. She moved to my right as I anticipated. I leaped at her without turning my head. I manage to wrap my arms around her waist. Our combined weight overcame her levitation spell, bringing us both crashing to the ground. I released Soo-jau, and rolled to my back so I lay beside her. She panted in unison with me for a bit. Angriz resumed his normal pattern of breathing. A moment later, she sat up.
“Congratulations,” she said. “None ever caught me. How did you?”
I smiled, happy with my own cleverness and another chance to teach.
“After I hurt Angriz—”
“You did not,” he said.
“My shame caused my temper to evaporate,” I continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “When able to think again, I had a flash of inspiration: my hearing improved tenfold after I’d lost my sight, so I wondered if I might be able to hear you moving through the air. I had him hold his breath, and shouted. I guessed the suddenness of my shout would surprise you. You gasped and I knew where you hovered. I figured that you wouldn’t stay in place after giving your position away, so I listened as hard as I could for you to move. When you did, your mass caused a breeze. The day was otherwise calm so I knew where you ended up. The rest, you know.”
“Ah. Excellent,” she said with some pride in her voice.
I tingled with the sincere praise. I rose to my feet and held out my hand to her. When she accepted, I pulled her up from the grass.
“So, did I pass your test?”
“You did, Carter Blake. All of them.”
“All?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes. I wished to test your character, you adaptability, and your hearing. I figured you might get angry, though the speed with which you regained your composure surprised me. I admit, though, I did not expect you to catch me. I planned to call an end to the test when you tackled me.”
“So, what happens now?” I asked.
“Now, I begin my preparations. We will learn if I am able to aid you. Return tomorrow.”
2
Angriz and I approached the Vaush-Tauric’s home early the next morning. We were met by someone other than Soo-jau. She had a different scent and a lighter tread.
“Welcome tae Lady Soo-jau’s home,” a euphonious feminine voice said.
'Wait a moment. I recognize that accent. The speaker is Gaelic!'
Ignorant of my inner consternation, Angriz replied, “Thank you, Keeper Dearbhaile. This silent one beside me is—”
“Carter Blake. My mistress told me much of ye.”
“You’re Gaelic,” I blurted.
“Gaeilge atá tú?”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry. I said, ‘Are ye Gaelic?’ I thought ye might be.”
“No, I recognize the brogue.”
Keeper Dearbhaile giggled. “A gift from me mother. She be from Éire.”
I recognized the old name of the country I knew as Ireland. “Der va la?” I said. “A lovely sounding name.”
“Thank ye. Your pronunciation be excellent, Laird Blake! No one else evair gotten it right on the firs’ go.”
“When did your mother leave Éire?”
“In 1125 AD.”
Lady Soo-jau approached before I asked Dearbhaile anything else. I turned towards her. Soft hands pulled the cloth from my face. A brief inhalation came as one of the women got sight of the empty holes where my eyes had been. The two women stood close to me, so I didn’t know which one made the sound. A sudden exhalation of air against my face, and blinding pain ripped through my skull, centered on my eye sockets. I clapped my hands to the re-injured area as I screamed in agony. I fell backward to the ground, feeling as if someone had filled the holes with crushed glass and was grinding the shards into the delicate tissue. After an eternity of pain, I slipped into unconsciousness.
3
I came to with a faint headache. I sat up and clutched my skull, trying to keep my brain from leaping for freedom. I sensed someone nearby, but didn’t say anything. I wanted them to identify themselves first.
“Good. You are awake.”
I recognized the basso profundo of Angriz. I turned to where I heard his voice coming from. I still could not see.
“It didn’t work, Angriz,” I said. I tried to keep the disappointment from my voice, but I don’t think I succeeded.
He gave a low chuckle. “I’m sorry. I forgot to light the fire.”
A familiar sound rumbled from him. When I saw a stream of fire race from his mouth to the fireplace, I recognized it. Then, “Holy crap, Angriz! I can see again!”
I leaped to my feet. In my excitement, I got my feet tangled in the blanket I’d been covered with, and slammed into the floor. I groaned in pain, and then remembered I was no longer blind. I sprang to my feet, exuberant, and made to throw my arms around my friend in my exuberance, but spotted the blood-caked claw marks on his face.
“What happened to your face?”
“I forgot my place and Lady Soo-jau reminded me,” he said sotto voce.
“I believe I will speak with her about this,” I growled as I headed for the door. ‘Even if she did fi
x my eyes, no one gets away with hurting my friends.’
“She forgave me my lapse.”
I stopped. “Is this a dragon thing?”
“Indeed.”
“But, you’re only a half-dragon. Why’re you being held to the same standards as a full-blood?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s…personal, Carter.”
“Damn.” I sighed.
When Angriz didn’t reply, I looked around and discovered a log cabin style room. What appeared to be mud chinked walls stood in a pentagonal shape. Tapestries hung from the walls on my left and right as I faced the fireplace; on the left, a forest scene with a deer drinking at a brook. The right hand one looked to be of the night sky. A fan of astronomy, I walked over to learn what constellations I could come up with. When I approached, the wall-hanging seemed to become three dimensional. I smelled something like heated rose oil. It grew stronger until I was about two feet from the arras. The stars now surrounded me, to my delight. I’d never seen anything so remarkable! I reached out to try to touch one of the stars before I stopped myself. I did the same thing at the movies. As my hand approached, one of the stars grew larger until I spotted planets revolving. My jaw dropped as a grin grew on my face. ‘This is awesome! I gotta ask if I can have one of these!’ I reached for one of the planets next.
A sudden knock startled me. I blinked, and the tapestry reverted back to its two dimensional form. I opened the door. When my eyes fell upon the gorgeous woman on the other side, I forgot all about the tapestry. Her robes were palest azure trimmed with silver thread. Her hair, a fiery dark orange, hung over her right shoulder in a braid. Her eyes were the color of grass, her lips like sun-ripened strawberries and her flawless skin like ivory. A smudge of brown paint marked her high cheek bones and a golden necklace with a small bird pendant rested just above the swell of her bosom. Most surprising, her ears were pointed and pushed out a little through her hair. 'Lady Orwen, you are the most beautiful woman I know, but this lady; she is magnificent.'
“Are you an elf?” I asked. Realizing how it must have sounded, I slapped myself in the forehead.
“Nae,” she laughed. “I be a half-elf. Me father be the full-blood.”
The memory of our previous meeting surfaced just then.
“Oh, yeah. I remember now. Your mother came from Éire.”
“Aye.”
“So this is what you look like, Keeper Dearbhaile,” I said, my voice husky. “You are beautiful.”
“Thank you, Lord Blake,” she said, blushing.
Her burr was almost gone. ‘Curious. I’ll have to ask her about that.’
Angriz spoke up from over my shoulder. “Is Lady Soo-jau waiting for us?”
“Oh, aye! The Lady sent me tae learn whether Laird Blake had risen and tae invite ye both tae dinner if he had.”
She turned and hurried off. I gave into temptation and watched her hips sway as she glided away. After she was out of sight, I turned to Angriz.
“Please tell me I can bathe. I reek,” I said.
“Indeed,” he replied.
He led me to the back of the house where he opened a door and gestured me inside. I entered and saw a bathroom which wouldn’t have been out of place in a mansion back home. The hardwood floor resembled black oak. The ceiling appeared to be glass. As I watched, clouds scudded across the sky. I gathered from their swift movement a storm would hit soon. I looked back at the rest of the bathroom. The tub, hidden by a line of actual shrubs, was the size of an Olympic pool yet not artificial in form. The builders constructed over a natural pool. I glanced to my right. ‘And over a brook as well.’ Across from where I stood, buffalo grass grew right up to the edge of the water. The pool itself was strewn with cattails and water lilies. Bullfrogs and crickets chirred nearby. A single willow tree made up one wall, The others were marble and the white of fresh snow. ‘I’m in someone’s sacred meadow.’
I don’t know how long I stood, mesmerized by the beauty before me. A knock at the door brought me back to my senses. I shucked my clothes in a hurry as I called back to the door. “Yeah?”
“Just checking to make sure you were still alive,” responded Angriz.
I laughed as I slid into the warm water. “What would you have done if I had been under water and missed your knock?”
“Came in, and when I found you were okay, drowned you for worrying me.” He chuckled.
“I’ll be done in about ten minutes.”
“I’ll inform Lady Soo-jau.”
I finished my ablutions in a hurry and found a pile of clean clothing someone left for me along with a four foot length of deer hide to dry myself with. I toweled off and dressed, then went to look for my friends. I took in all the sights, like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The theme I noticed in the bathroom continued throughout the house: Three walls of pure white marble with the fourth being the trunk of an enormous tree. The flooring continued to be black oak and the ceilings were all glass, or maybe crystal. The place had to have been constructed with magic. There was no other way that it could have been built without shaping the tree by cutting it.
Soon, I found my way to the dining area, appointed in a Japanese and Roman blend. ‘I wonder how they achieved this effect. Have other people come here besides me and Keeper Dearbhaile’s mom?’ The table was situated low to the ground, and at each side was a couch. An older woman with blue tinged skin reclined at the far end of the table from me. Angriz and Keeper Dearbhaile knelt at the table to the woman’s left and right sides. From this positioning, I assumed she was Soo-jau, the Weirdling. As I crossed the room, I continued to look around. The wall behind Angriz was a huge stained glass window depicting a blue dragon lying with an emerald one by a wooded glen. Dearbhaile sat in front of ranks of gladiator statues lined a marble wall. On the other side of Soo-jau stood three wooden Tiang Roman pillars that rose to the ceiling. To either side of the pillars were shoji, a sliding rice-paper partition. What appeared to be Tatami mats rested on the floor. Servants came and went: bowing, placing platters of food, removing empty ones and refilling cups and glasses. I approached the table and bowed forty-five degrees to everyone, beginning with the lady and ending with Angriz.
“Please forgive this one’s lateness,” I said, imitating something I’d seen in a samurai movie. I was inspired by the scenery.
“Nothing to forgive, Carter,” said the lady on the couch.
I recognized her soft voice. She was indeed Soo-jau. She gestured for me to sit at the table. When I began to take a position near Angriz, the Lady beckoned me closer to her.
“You shall sit at my right hand.”
I did as she bade. A servant placed a brace of rabbit on a plate before me. The rabbits were roasted to a golden brown perfection. The aroma wafting upwards into my nose had my mouth watering. With a surreptitious glance around me, I noted the others were eating. So, without further hesitation, I began to devour the rabbit. I spotted a bowl of green vegetables. I pulled them over and began to scarf them. Angriz and I had only been traveling for a couple of days, but I felt as if I hadn’t eaten any vegetables in forever. Next was a tureen of a stew with thick chunks of boar floating near islands of potato; here and there were carrot pieces sticking up like a jagged reef. Though I’d been eating for the last twenty minutes, the scent of the herbs and spices coming from the stew caused my stomach to give a loud growl. A muffled chuckle came from my left. I glanced at the Vaush-Tauric’s apprentice, then resumed my eating. She slid a platter of fresh biscuits over to me. I murmured my thanks, grabbed a biscuit, dunked it in my bowl of stew and took a large bite, moaning with pleasure at the taste.
“Hungry, Carter?” Angriz asked.
Rather than responding with sarcasm, I grunted and continued to eat. Seeing a plate of fish had been placed within reach, I pulled it to me. A massive belch threatened to erupt from me. I did my best to stifle it, but it still managed to rumble through despite the tightness of my lips. Again, from my left, came a muffl
ed giggle. My face heated with embarrassment.
“Compliments to the host’s kitchen!” said Lady Soo-jau.
This caused everyone else in the room to give a shout of laughter. I ducked my head and paused in my eating. I hated the shame that welled up within me. This reminded me of that time in kindergarten when my class got to visit the White House and have lunch with the President of the United States. We won a contest by being the kindergarten class that raised the most money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I belched at the table, causing almost everyone to laugh. I was pulled from my seat by the teacher and lectured on how “nice people didn’t do things like that at the table.”
A warm hand touched my shoulder. I glanced over to Keeper Dearbhaile. She had a look of concern on her face.
“Are ye unwell, Laird Blake?” She said in a soft voice, fingering her necklace.
“Yeah. Just reliving a bad memory. I’m okay now.”
“I apologize if me laughin' caused ye pain.”
“No,” I lied. “It’s something else.”
I put on a big smile for her benefit. She gave me a warm one in return, then patted my shoulder and returned to her meal. I’d been so focused on her that I hadn’t noticed that conversation had resumed around me. I continued eating as well when Lady Soo-jau spoke to me. “I understand Angriz has begun to teach you how to fight with a sword.”
“Correction, ma’am, he has begun to teach me the care of a sword and the various parts of a sword.”
“What are the common parts of a sword?”
“A sword is comprised of a tip, edge, fuller, tang and hilt, which is made up of the guard, grip and pommel, Lady Soo-jau.”
“Excellent. What is the best way to care for a sword?”
“First thing in the morning, the sword is removed from the scabbard, wiped down with a cloth - rabbit skin is best, but deer hide will do in a pinch - then the edge is sharpened. After sharpening, the blade is wiped down with a grit cloth and then buffed with a polishing rag. At the end, you rub a light coat of oil over the length of the blade and re-sheathe.”