by Holly Lisle
She laid a finger along the doorframe and rolled it forward a millimeter at a time, pressing, hoping against all hope the latch had not caught. But it had.
She could have screamed with exasperation. Instead, she thought, How could magic help me?
She hurried back to her room, much less careful than she had been on her way out, closed the door behind her, and wedged a chair under the knob. Then she got out her paper.
She thought fast. If she drew the cheymat, perhaps she would be able to hear what he was saying, or perhaps he would appear in her room. Then the game would be up. If she drew the dragon, the same things might happen. Of course, she could do all that and have nothing at all occur. She wished she had a better idea of what she was doing.
But all she really wanted was to hear what they said — preferably without getting caught listening. I need a big ear, she thought. It seemed a bit stupid, but she drew one, then sketched it behind the jar of dragon bits on the shelf in the magic room.
Sudden conversation surrounded her — she felt as if she were right in the middle of it.
“—but you could screw up the whole show, here, Birkwelch,” Talleos was saying. “She’s bought it all — dammit, I even have her about ready to believe that crap about sex magic. She’ll do anything if she thinks it will help her rescue her kids.”
You miserable shit, she thought. I should have known.
“So I don’t suppose you’ve told her that old Darryl is going to be burying her body tomorrow, or the bodies of her kids in a couple of days?”
Burying my body — the kids’ bodies? But I’m alive — and they... well, they have to be alive, too. I saw them — they have to be.
“Hell, no, I haven’t told her. She doesn’t know how it works, and I don’t want her to know. They’re a lot stronger than we thought they’d be, you know. Look at the charge she put on that crystal. I sat her in the decagram and kept her concentrating for only a couple of hours — if I can keep her sitting in the middle of the decagram for another month or two, I’ll be able to drain enough magic off her to make myself a few female cheymats. Then I’ll be able to breed. There will be cheymats again—”
“What about her mate, and her young? You have it easy here, Talleos. You don’t have to watch her suffering, because she doesn’t know what’s happening. But her husband’s been watching her in mirrors. He knows she’s here, but he still believes she’s dead. I think Darryl would have killed himself tonight, except that I slipped nagral in his drink — it’s the only way I dared come here.”
“He can see her in mirrors?” The cheymat sounded worried. Then he sighed. “Oh, well — as long as she doesn’t find out. Just handle things. Once I’ve got my cheymats — and a couple of female dragons for you, too — we’ll let them go. We’ll tell them how the magic really works, and they can get their kids back and go do something else.”
She could hear the dragon snort. “You think the Unweaver is going to sit and wait after you’ve drained her dry? He’s afraid to touch her children now — but if you drain her power off, you don’t think he’ll destroy them?”
“Humans aren’t extinct,” the cheymat snapped. “We are. You are. Magic almost is — and it’s the fault of these two people you feel so benevolent towards. Why should I feel guilty for saving my own kind?”
“They’re not bad people. I still think if we taught them what they needed to know, then asked them, they would help us.”
The cheymat made a growling noise, low in his throat. “I’ll help myself.”
That works both ways, Minerva thought. She raced around the room, throwing clothes into the duffel bag and looking for things she might need. She put all the pencils into the bag, and the vellum. She only had four plain sheets. She wished she’d taken more out of the magic room when she’d had the chance. Too late — she’d just have to draw small.
She had no idea what to do to locate her children. But now at least she knew what not to do.
She turned out the light and climbed out the window.
It was only when she was on the other side that she remembered Murp. She hadn’t seen him — and she didn’t dare go back in.
A furry form brushed against her leg. “Mrrrrrrrrp?” it chirruped.
She reached down and scratched Murp’s chin. “Hi, guy,” she whispered. “Let’s get out of here while we still can.”
They set off through the woods. Above the trees, a necklace of moons beamed softly, casting faint shadows.
* * *
“Wake up,” someone whispered in his ear. “C’mon, wake up already. We need to get busy.”
Darryl rose through layers of sleep, muzzy-headed and muddled. “Dad?” he said, and realized his father had never sounded like that. Darryl sat up slowly, and the room spun and dipped around him. The great god of headaches hammered through his skull with railroad-spike vehemence; he licked his lips and found them dry. In his mouth, foul and furry things grew.
“Your mom is asleep downstairs on the couch. Your dad is on the landing. I slipped them something to, ah, help them sleep. They should stay asleep — as long as we’re quiet.” The dragon sat on the side of the bed and it sagged under his weight.
“Oh. S’you.” Darryl closed his eyes and fell back onto his pillow. “G’way.”
“I lied to you,” the dragon whispered. “There is something you can do to save your wife and your kids. Besides hoping and thinking good thoughts, I mean.”
“Ri-i-i-i-ight. Lied t’me before, but now you’re tellin’ me truth.” Darryl pressed his hands against his forehead. He wasn’t going to have to kill himself, he thought. He was going to die any minute.
“Headache?” Birkwelch asked.
“Plague, more likely.” Darryl tried rolling over and pressing his head against the cool pillow on the other side of the bed. It didn’t help.
“That’s because I gave you some of the same stuff I gave your mom and dad. I had to go someplace, and I didn’t want you killing yourself before I got back.”
Darryl rolled back and squinted at the dragon. “You gave me this headache? Lovely. Deciding, no doubt, that it would make me doubly sure to kill myself once you got back.”
The dragon grinned at him. “Bitch, bitch, bitch. I did you a favor, man. Now I’m going to do you another.”
“Oh, lucky me.”
The dragon held out a glass. “Drink this.”
“Decided to finish poisoning me? Let’s hope you did it right this time.” Darryl took the glass and got the liquid down in one swallow — which proved to be nothing more than good tactics on his part. It was unutterably vile. “Ha! Yeggh! Shit! What is that stuff? Jesus Chri—” And then the headache went away. It didn’t fade, it didn’t weaken. It just went.
“Better?” Birkwelch looked insufferably pleased with himself.
Darryl sat all the way up and swung his legs off the bed. “For the moment. Before it comes back, why don’t you tell me the new lies you’ve thought up. Since you’ve apparently decided you didn’t like the old ones.”
The dragon’s eyerilles flattened, and a tiny reddish light glowed from his nostrils. “I don’t have to put up with that attitude from you, pal. I can leave your wife and kids stuck on the other side.” His huge yellow eyes narrowed. “And without me, I don’t think you’ll figure out how to reach them.”
Darryl crossed his arms over his chest. “The way I see it — pal — if you didn’t need me, you would have been long gone. So cut the bullshit.”
Birkwelch opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it. Then he sighed. “Let’s be honest. We both need each other. What I told you about the extinction of dragons was true. What I told you about magic and how it works was not.” The dragon stopped and stared thoughtfully into space.
Darryl told him, “Go on. I’m listening.”
“Real magic is extremely simple — but very hard to do well. When you pursue your dreams, your magic is positive. When you turn your back on them, your magic is negative.”
/> Darryl snorted, and sang, “...So just follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far.”
“That cynicism is bad juju, bud. Real black magic,” the dragon snapped. “Lose it. If you had only pursued your dreams, if you had lived by your principles — if you hadn’t stopped caring — we would never have had this mess. This is the thing you must remember — Weavers weave. They never unweave.”
The dragon blew a cloud of noxious smoke into Darryl’s face. Darryl coughed.
“I haven’t done so badly with my life!”
“You’ve done terribly! The results suck.” The dragon poked him in the chest with one huge talon.
Darryl was willing to admit his life wasn’t turning out quite the way he’d hoped. He wasn’t sure he was willing to take the blame for everyone else’s problems. “Great. My fault. I didn’t see anybody running along behind me, telling me I had to change jobs or the world would fall apart.”
The dragon rolled his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “Nobody told me...” he mimicked in a falsetto voice. “The universe doesn’t work that way. Personal responsibility. You want your life to turn out good, you gotta make it turn out good You don’t work for what you want, you won’t get it.”
“So why are you telling me now?” Darryl leaned toward the dragon, frowning.
“Because sometimes — just sometimes, pal — the universe gives you a second chance.”
Darryl clasped his hands together and stared down at them. Second chances, personal turning points, and starting over — starting from the bottom again. It would be easier to die, he thought, than to keep trying. Easier to give up than to go on. Why is it, he wondered, that the easy choices are always the wrong ones? He had no doubt that dying would be the wrong choice. Somehow, he had faith in the dragon — somehow he believed there was still hope. In spite of the lies, in spite of the pain, in spite of everything, he still wanted to believe.
He turned and faced Birkwelch. “There really is a way to get my family back?”
“Yes.”
“What do I need to do?”
The dragon shrugged — or came as close to shrugging as its sloping shoulders and narrow, scale-plated chest would allow. “You’re the one with the dreams. You tell me.”
“My dreams.” Darryl sighed and stared off into space. “I wanted to be a playwright. Broadway — maybe Europe. My name in lights...” He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble with the back of his hand. “So that really was my destiny and I blew it, huh?”
The dragon sighed. “Who can say?”
“Well, that was my dream. To be a famous playwright. You said before that I was supposed to be a famous—”
The dragon stood up and stretched. “You said that. I didn’t say anything. I just let you assume. The magic comes from pursuing your dreams. Pursuing. Nobody said a damn thing about succeeding.”
Darryl stood too. “You mean I might not make it as a playwright?”
“Yep.”
“Yep?! Yep?! Is that all you have to say?”
The dragon gave him a hard look. “The magic is in the journey. Not the destination. You don’t get guarantees.”
It was four in the morning. Minerva’s funeral would be at one this afternoon. Darryl wondered what people would say if they saw him rummaging through the junk piled in Minerva’s art room, looking for his old Selectric typewriter — once upon a time the best machine money could buy, and a Christmas gift years ago from Minerva. He wondered if they would think him cold and heartless, or merely crazy, to be thinking about writing at a time like that.
He set the typewriter up in the art room. Then Birkwelch went slinking through the house, looking for typing paper. There wasn’t any. The dragon finally ran out of the house and came back a few minutes later with a packet of the cheap flimsy stuff the convenience store had in stock. It wasn’t twenty-pound bond — but Darryl wasn’t typing submission copy, either.
He pulled up a chair, turned the machine on, and rolled the paper around the platen. The he glanced up at the dragon, who leaned against the doorframe, smoking.
He nodded toward the billows of smoke. “Do you mind?”
The dragon winced. “Can’t help it. Indigestion. From nerves, I guess.”
“Oh. Wonderful. You smell like a steel mill.”
“Probably all the cans in my diet lately.” The dragon left the room, still belching smoke, and came back carrying the bedroom mirror. “You might need this.” He placed it so Darryl could see through Minerva’s eyes, then closed the door to keep from waking his folks up.
It was dark in her world, too. She walked through a forest — huge, twisted trees leaned over her, their branches reaching for her. She seemed to be in a hurry. The satyr was nowhere to be seen. Every once in a while Minerva bent and touched something near the ground — Darryl strained to see what she was doing. Finally he realized she was petting a cat.
“That looks like our cat,” he said.
Birkwelch belched out an especially large cloud of sulphurous smoke, and coughed “Probably is,” he said. “Eyrith doesn’t have cats.”
“But the cat was with the kids — the police found it. It was dead.” He watched a bit longer and felt some of the pain recede from his soul. “If the cat’s alive, surely the kids are, too.”
“I told you they were.”
“I didn’t believe you.” Darryl tore his attention away from the mirror and back to the typewriter humming quietly on Minerva’s sewing table. He rested his fingers lightly on the home row — felt the keys smooth and cool beneath the pads of his fingertips. Once he’d had words that seemed to wait in those fingers, that would pour forth when he had a chance to put them down. Once — long ago. But no words waited to spill out as he sat in the art room, with the dragon breathing awful fumes over his shoulder.
“Write something,” the dragon said.
“Write what? I don’t know what to write anymore.”
“Well...” The dragon sat on the thick forest-green carpet, so that his head was only a little higher than Darryl’s. Absently, he scratched at the back of his neck with one hind leg, then fidgeted to reposition his tail. His wings opened partially, and Birkwelch shook them and settled them neatly across his spine. “Hmmmm. There are really two ways to go about this. The right way, of course, is just to write the stories that are important to you. That’s the slow way, but the magic is safe when done that way.”
Darryl nodded. “The other way—?”
“Is much riskier. You write the things you want to happen. No story, just scenes, the way you want them to occur.” The dragon sighed directly at him, and Darryl put his pajama sleeve to his nose and mouth.
Dragonbreath. Morning breath is a rose garden by comparison.
“That actually seems safer to me. More likely to get me what I want.”
The dragon leered derisively at Darryl. “It only seems safer because you don’t know what you’re doing.” The dragon laughed. “Direct meddling is always the shortcut to hell. On the other foot, I don’t think you have time to do things right.”
Darryl cracked his knuckles and looked at the blank sheet of paper. “So — how do I do them wrong?”
“Write what you want to happen — but don’t get too far ahead of what is going on right now. You need to give yourself some space for damage control. And whatever you do, don’t create any huge logic leaps.”
“Damage control? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Let’s just hope you don’t find out.”
* * *
Barney stepped through the door and out of the dimness of the cage into the darkness of true night. He locked the door behind him, then sent it back where it came from, and did the last bits of magic that trapped the Unweebil inside his castle and set a monster loose inside it to find and eat the fiend.
Barney had landed them on a rocky road — a darker strip of darkness that went straight on — seemingly toward nothing.
Jamie was a shadow in front of him, Carol a smal
ler one beside him. The stars were out, but they were dingy and dim and muddy-looking; the wind that blew against his cheeks was hot and full of sand.
He had no good idea of what he wanted to travel toward — but what he was fleeing was clear in his mind. He felt its terrible weight at his back; could see, in his mind’s eye, its sharp-clawed fingers reaching out for him. He didn’t want to turn around, but something compelled him.
A wall of clouds rose along the far horizon, stretching from the ground into the heavens, glowing with ugly, dirty yellow light. Lightning ripped from cloud to cloud and stabbed out toward him — reaching. It was reaching. Growing. Spreading. He could feel the hatred that came from the place, and he could sense what that wall of cloud meant, and what it did. It destroyed and devoured — it took things that were something and made them nothing. As he watched, a bulge grew in the wall, and the mass of clouds churned and heaved — and lurched forward.
Beside him, Jamie whispered, “Oh, man!”
“The bad place,” Barney said.
“No joke. We need to keep moving,” Jamie said. “We can use the darkness as cover and sleep during the day. That’s what fugitives do.”
Barney said, “I got to sleep now.”
“That’s okay. You get in the wagon. Carol and I will take turns pulling you.”
Carol said, “I wish he could make us a car.”
“You don’t know how to drive,” Barney muttered, and climbed into the wagon. “And Mommy said Jamie drives his bike so bad he won’t get to drive a car till he’s thirty.”
“Hah! That’s what she thinks. Six years, man — just six years, and I’ll be sixteen. Then I’ll get my license, and look out world! Vrrooooom! Squeek! Scrreeeech! Blam! Powie!”
“I’m not makin’ a car,” Barney said.
Carol’s voice was thoughtful. “That’s prob’ly a good idea.”
* * *
Barney’s first indication that something was wrong came when he heard his brother whisper, “Quick! Off the road and hide!”