by Holly Lisle
“Shoodlaf cheese,” Minerva whispered. She picked up a blunt-tipped knife and began loading things onto a slice of bread. “What does this stuff taste like, anyway?” she asked, piling on slices of the meat he’d identified as “imitation kaldebeast.”
Talleos winked at her. “Chicken. Everything foreign tastes like chicken, doesn’t it? Never mind — you’ll like it. Trust me.”
They took their sandwiches, some bright yellow fruits he identified as bose, and their beer, and went into the book-lined sitting room. Talleos took a seat on the couch and patted the space next to him. Minerva sat in the chair furthest across the room.
“You said something about tourists—” She took a bite of the sandwich. It tasted nothing like chicken, but was still good.
“Oh, yes. Tourists. The curse of my existence. The Winterkinn National Heritage Preserve runs from south of Hallyehenge — where you came through today — to north of the Green Mountains. It’s sort of a reservation for us magical types — the few dragons and cheymats and nillries and whatnot who managed to survive the Magic Drought all got corralled over here about — oh — seventy-five, eighty years ago. The government paid each qualified individual a stipend to stay in the Preserve, so that the rest of Eyrith’s population could come point their fingers at us and say, ‘Golly, Thubert, a real cheymat. Just imagine, there used to be millions of those randy suckers.’ “
He pinched his nose when he imitated the tourist, and made his eyes round and his jaw slack.
Minerva, who was swallowing a gulp of lager, laughed at the effect and got beer up her nose. She coughed and sputtered, and her eyes watered. “Must be a heckuva stipend,” she finally managed to say.
“Why would you say that? Oh — the house?”
She nodded. “Pretty nice for government issue.”
“Nah. I made a killing in the stock market.”
Minerva closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. Just imagine what it was like when there were millions of them, she thought. But maybe he’s exaggerating. Hoping for the best, she asked if there really had been millions.
Talleos cocked an eyebrow and sipped his beer. “Not of me personally. The universe has never been that lucky.”
“Hah!”
He shrugged. “All right. Once we were common. Well, not common. We’ve always been spectacular. But plentiful. Before my time, of course. But cheymat history does speak of how easy it once was to get laid on Jolfing night.”
“Jolfing night?”
“The spiritual equivalent of your Friday.”
“Oh.” The bose was delicious — just a little sour, with a great citrusy bite. Minerva leaned back in the chair, resting her head against the soft, deep cushioning. Right at that moment, it was hard to believe anything was wrong in the universe. The rich, bitter lager spread its glow through her veins, and her full day of hard exercise mixed with the soft crackling of the fire in the fireplace made her sleepy.
But there were things wrong. Her kids — she would have given anything to know that they were safe. And the people who were out to get her. And those dark shapes at the bottom of the hill—
Talleos was sipping his lager, eyes closed.
She had to know. “Those things watching us this morning — what were they? Ring Wraiths?”
Talleos gasped and beer foam sprayed out his mouth and nose.
She smiled slowly. Revenge, even unintended revenge, was a wonderful thing.
When he got his breath back, he looked at her incredulously. “Ring Wraiths? Karras! What do you think this is — a set from Lord of the Rings?” He shook his head, disbelief apparent.
Minerva took a big bite of the sandwich and shrugged. “Okay,” she said through a mouthful of the stuff that didn’t taste like chicken. “So they weren’t Ring Wraiths. What were they? They sure put the fear of God in you.”
“Worse than Ring Wraiths.” Talleos propped his hooves on his coffee table and stretched out. “They were tourists. If we hadn’t done that dance and then run like hell, they would have been after me for my autograph. They won’t interrupt a performance, but they would have wanted pictures — they would have asked me a whole lot of stupid questions about how I thought the death of magic was going to affect life in Eyrith and whether I had any kids.” Talleos snarled and bit into his sandwich as if he wished it were tourists.
Minerva looked at the pale meat in hers and frowned. She couldn’t swear that it wasn’t. “Do you have any kids?”
“Hell,” he snarled, “I can’t even find a female cheymat. Why do you think I’m committing treason and risking my life to help you? Because I’m such a great guy? Unh-unh.” He shook his head. “If the magic doesn’t come back, you’re looking at the last of the cheymats.”
“You’re almost extinct?”
“Yeah, well—” He shrugged and drained his lager. “We all have our problems.”
* * *
“Darryl — Darryl — wake up.”
Someone was shaking his shoulder. Sounded like his mother — but his mother hadn’t woken him up in years. The fuzzy edges of what must have been a nightmare clouded his thinking. He opened his eyes. He was in his room — the room at Mom and Dad’s. His senior picture was framed on the wall, his Voice of Democracy plaque hung next to it. The curtains were the same gruesome green they’d always been.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Something awful had happened — or had he dreamed it. His wife — a dream? He looked at his left hand. The wedding band was there, braided gold that gleamed dully even in the dim light. Not a dream.
“Darryl, who’s watching the children?” His mother was beside him, face worried. “We checked with the little girl who usually babysits for you, but she doesn’t have them.”
Oh, Jesus. The kids. He’d seen the blue light swallow Barney — he had to assume it had gotten Jamie and Carol, too. Where were they? He didn’t know — he couldn’t say. But if he went home, maybe—
Or was the vision a sign of insanity? Minerva was dead. Gone. What had happened to his kids?
“I don’t know, Mom. I — got snowed in at work last night. When I got home this morning, Minerva and the kids were gone.” He thought a moment. His version of the truth wasn’t going to go over too well. He came up with a better version. “When I got home this morning, the window in the boys’ room was out. From the storm, I suppose. The power was out, the phone lines were down — so I figured she’d taken the kids over to her folks’ house because it was so cold. Then the hospital called and I just wasn’t thinking at all.”
His mother went white. “But Laura called me to see how the kids where holding up. She thought they were here.” There was a long silence. Then his mom whispered, “They’re missing?”
Darryl nodded slowly. His thoughts seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace — some side effect of the shot they’d given him at the hospital, he imagined. Missing. My kids are missing. And my wife is dead. A lump grew in his throat. He wouldn’t let himself cry. He wouldn’t.
He shook his head back and forth as if that would clear his muzzy thinking. “I don’t know what to do.”
His mother put her hands on her hips. “I do. The police have been trying to figure out what happened to Minerva — I’ll tell them about the children, too.” She hurried out of the room.
He nodded. Yes. Of course. The police. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Probably because he knew his kids weren’t anywhere the police could go.
“You know, the yokels in the local constabulary are going to find your alibi just fascinating,” a sub-bass voice rumbled behind him. He jumped and jerked around in the bed. Birkwelch leaned against the wall next to Darryl s old school desk, grinning.
“Jesus Christ!” Darryl made shooing motions. “Get out of here before somebody sees you.”
The dragon crossed his stocky arms over his chest. He chuckled — the sound was almost identical to the garbage disposal in Darryl’s kitchen sink. “They can’t see or hear me. Only you can. You’r
e wearing the ring, so you can perceive alternate realities.”
“And I can’t get rid of the ring.” Darryl kept his voice down and one ear trained on the hallway. It wouldn’t do to get caught talking to the walls.
“Nope. But be glad of that. Without the ring, you couldn’t get Minerva back.”
Darryl felt hope blaze in his chest — and gutter out. “Minerva’s dead,” he whispered. “Gone. There is no going back from that.”
The dragon clucked his tongue. “Well, in a sense, she’s dead — if you want to look at it that way. I certainly wouldn’t. And in a way, you’re correct. There is no going back — but there is always moving ahead.”
“In a sense, she’s dead?!” In spite of himself, Darryl’s voice rose. “You can’t be dead in a sense. Dead is dead. She’s dead! She’s gone!” His voice dropped again, and he gripped the bedspread. “Gone. I’ll never get to see her again.”
From down the hall, Darryl’s mother called “Darryl? Is everything all right?”
No, Mom, he thought. The world came to an end and didn’t take me with it. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he yelled. “I’m having trouble dealing with things right now. I’ll be okay.”
The dragon laughed. “And you know so much about life and death? You didn’t even know there were dragons. Just think of all the other things you don’t know.”
Darryl scooted to the edge of the bed and stood. The room made slow, dizzying spirals around him, then settled down and satisfied itself with merely rocking back and forth. “There are no dragons,” he muttered. He turned his back on the one that stood in his bedroom. He wasn’t going to humor figments of his imagination anymore.
“Oh. Oh, thanks. No dragons. And what am I — a Canada moose?”
“Canada goose,” Darryl corrected. Then he remembered he wasn’t speaking to the nonexistent monster. He wobbled down the hall to the bathroom.
He looked in the mirror when he was washing his hands. He wished he hadn’t.
He didn’t see his face. What he did see was that same damned goat-man from earlier, with a big glass stein of dark beer clutched in one malformed hand, and a plate with a half-eaten sandwich propped on his lap. The satyr lounged on a couch, talking.
The view shifted. An identical glass of beer welled up in his field of vision, then moved back out of sight. A hand reached up to rub the bridge of the nose and removed the glasses. Minerva’s glasses. The left hand wore a ring — but everything was blurry without the glasses. He waited. The glasses went back on again, and the view cleared. He caught another glimpse of the ring — just a brief one in passing. It was identical to his own, on a hand he would have recognized if he had to pick it from a million others.
Minerva was still on the other side of the mirror. If the dragon was telling the truth, she was alive somewhere. If the dragon was telling the truth, there was a chance he could save his kids — and the universe, too, now that he thought about it. If, of course, there was no dragon, he was certifiable. Nuttier than a fruitcake. In serious shit.
Okay, Darryl, ol’ buddy. Let’s look at this logically. You can hang onto your sanity, refuse to admit you can see your dead wife in mirrors and hear dragons talking to you. You can be nice and sensible and you can attend your wife’s funeral, and kiss your kids goodbye forever and that will be that. Or you can embrace the madness. Pretend the dragon and the mirrors and all that shit is real. And maybe — just maybe — you can get them back.
He gripped the edges of the sink and stared at his wife’s hands on the other side of the mirror.
No contest, Kiakra. No contest at all. His mouth started to stretch into a grin. He squinched his eyes shut, and the grin got bigger. LET’S — GO — CRAZY!
He had to get home. Miracles might be waiting to happen, but they weren’t going to happen in his parents’ house, in his old bedroom with the ugly green curtains. God knew, they never had before.
He burst out of the bathroom in high gear. The dragon’s head snapped up, and his eyes widened.
“Go get in the car,” Darryl told Birkwelch. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Birkwelch tipped his head to one side, then smiled his alligator smile. “Well, all right! Way to go, Darryl!”
Darryl’s parents were sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee. His mother jumped out of her seat and hugged him before he even got through the door. His dad stood up and patted him on the back.
His mother was still wired. Too much coffee, Darryl decided. In pretty much one big gasp she said, “Let-me-get-you-something-to-eat-do-you-feel-like-food-oh-we-have-some-leftover-turkey-and-some-tuna-casserole-I’ve-called-the-police-and-Stanley’s-flying-in-from-Massachusetts-to-see-you.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“Mom — Dad—” He looked into those familiar faces, the faces of people who loved him. Darryl ran out of words.
What do I tell them? That I don’t need comforting because she’s only gone, not dead, and besides, if I did need comforting, I’d rather be comforted by Birkwelch the socially unacceptable dragon than Stanley my asshole brother? That I’ve got to magically get my dead wife and my missing kids back? I don’t think so.
Both parents were looking at him. He took a deep breath. “I’m going home. I need to be alone for a while.”
His mother looked into his eyes with that intense mother look, then nodded. “Of course, dear. We’ll be over to check on you — if you need anything, just call.”
Just call. The mother mantra. And his dad, walking with him out to the car, totally ignoring Birkwelch in the passenger seat and draped half into the back of the Nova; his dad telling him life has meaning, and time heals all wounds, and have faith, his kids will show up and they’ll be fine, just fine.
Just call. Mom words, because only moms can make everything better.
And later, when he’d been home for a while, he thought about calling — but what was he going to say? Mom — the police have invaded my house. They’re crawling all over the place, giving me fishy looks and asking me where I was and why do I think Minerva went out in the cold and died. I see my dead wife in a mirror, and I’m supposed to save the universe, and Mom, I want to go back to being a kid again. I want to go back to my life before I forgot what mattered, before I lost my dreams and became a nobody and screwed around on my wife — I want to start over.
He couldn’t get those thoughts out of his mind. And when the police did go away, with their evidence from the boys’ room in little plastic bags and their admonition that he was not to leave town, he muttered behind them, “Barring saving the world and other miracles, of course, I suppose I’ll go nuts.” He stared in the mirror of the finally empty house, and the only thing looking back at him was his own reflection.
The dragon came up behind him without warning and rested a taloned forefoot on his shoulder. “Give her a break,” Birkwelch had said. “She has to sleep sometime.”
* * *
Barney could see only darkness out the castle window. He was, he suspected, up past his bedtime. He wondered if any of the monsters were going to come in and tuck him in and turn off the light. Carol was already asleep on one of the three beds the monsters had given them. Jamie sat on the second, morosely replaying their defeat.
“Up the outside wall and in through a window. I can’t believe it. They just climbed — and we didn’t do any booby traps on the window — we didn’t mine the floor underneath — nothin’. That’s what we did. Nothin’. We were stupid!”
“I thought we did pretty good,” Barney said.
Jamie flung himself backward and lay staring up at the ceiling. “We lost. It doesn’t matter how good you do if you still lose.”
Barney frowned. “But they didn’t want to hurt us.”
“Yeah. And that makes it worse.” Jamie propped himself up on one elbow. “We should have been able to cream them.”
“I’m glad we got caught,” Barney said.
“Traitor.”
“I am.” He stuck out his lip and fro
wned at his big brother. “Ergrawll was really nice, even though we hit her on the head and tied her up. And the food was good.”
“Listen, butthead. They’re all monsters, and they swiped us from home.”
Barney thought about that. “I know. But Mom is here now. She’ll come get us.”
Jamie sat up and stared at his brother. “Mom’s here? You mean here, in the castle? Did you see her?”
“No. Not in the castle. Just... here.” He closed his eyes. When he thought very hard, he could feel her presence — but from far away. “Wherever this place is.”
“Oh, great.” Jamie flopped on his back again. “More invisible mystery stuff.”
Barney thought of something interesting. “Ergrawll said she and the rest of the monsters would have caught us with magic — but they were too tired from bringing us here.”
“I’ll bet. Monsters always tell stuff like that to little kids. That’s cause only little kids are dumb enough to believe ‘em.”
“Nuh-uh!” Barney swung around and sat on the side of his bed with his feet hanging over the edge. “I didn’t believe her. So I made her show me. She really can do magic.”
“What’d she do — pull a penny from your ear?”
“Nah. That’s not real magic. She did real magic.”
“Sure she did.”
“She did. She made me some candy.”
Jamie snorted. “I’ll bet. She didn’t make me any.”
“It was chocolate. It was so-o-o-o good—”
“Prove it.” Jamie sat up. “Give me some.”
Barney smiled. “I ate it all.”
“No you didn’t. You’re just lying.”
“It was really good.”
“Liar! Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Jamie yelled.
The door to the room opened and Ergrawll stalked in. “That will be enough of that. Why is the light still on? Why are you children still awake? I want you to go to sleep right now.”