by Lex Chase
Atticus laughed. “And he’s dead!”
“Say his name!” Taylor howled. The lance in his hands trembled, and an upward slice on Atticus’s forehead took shape. “Say his name so you can know what the sound of honor is like, you miserable shit!”
Atticus smiled a blithe and contented expression. “Idi is his name.”
Taylor screamed and yanked the lance away. He threw it, and it dissolved into the ether. Taylor then launched himself at Atticus and tackled him to the ground. He brought his gauntleted fist across Atticus’s jaw, and blood splattered.
Atticus’s laugh was an infuriating one of delight. “Does it make you feel better, you maggot? To pathetically beat up on your brother?”
Taylor gripped Atticus’s shoulders and shook him. Atticus’s head thumped against the ground. “Look at all you’ve done! Look at all of this!” Taylor screamed at him. “Do you have any idea? You could have come to me. We could have worked it out. We would have—”
“Thought of something?” Atticus asked, cutting Taylor off.
Taylor slammed Atticus to the ground and then pushed to his feet. Taylor reached out his hand, and the lance winked back into existence. “Corentin told me this was about making decisions. Just make one and go to the next. Don’t think about it. Just keep making choices until there are no more choices.”
Atticus hopped to his feet and summoned the ice to his hand. The ice crystals shattered, and the axe was born anew. “And what’s your choice right now?”
Taylor smirked. “The unthinkable.” Taylor sprang into action, leaping high over Atticus. He landed behind him and swept his lance at Atticus’s head, this time taking no care to use the flat of the blade.
At the time, Taylor had thought he wouldn’t know what to do when this moment came. He thought it could all be smoothed over. He thought the love he had for his brother and the love his brother had for him would break any witch’s curse.
But those are just fairy tales.
Corentin was gone, but Idi would return. This much was true. Atticus would be vindicated. Atticus would continue to terrorize the mundanes at Idi’s side. The Witchking would rise with his lover the Witch Butcher.
Atticus ducked forward, out of the near decapitation. Only a sheaf of his hair was cleaved away. Atticus spun, swinging his axe for Taylor’s ribs.
Taylor dodged too slowly, and the blade connected, cracking Taylor’s armor. One of the shards gouged into his ribs. Taylor shuddered a sigh from the blow.
Atticus came at him again, using the axe in an upward swing for his face. Taylor dived to the right, into the wheat. Atticus loomed over him, ready for the killing blow, and Taylor couldn’t move. The pain was too great. The ice of Atticus’s blow to his chest was solidifying in his lungs. Taylor gulped for air like a dying carp on a chopping block.
He had a split-second decision to make. The glimmer of the axe blade caught the light.
Taylor had to save himself.
By any means necessary.
Atticus brought the axe down at the same time as Taylor threw his hand up. Briar vines bloomed from Taylor’s palm and streamed outward. The vines ensnared the axe, curling around it and then over Atticus.
Atticus struggled against the briars as they closed around him. He screamed, howling curses of his brother’s name, and then vanished into the prison of the briar bundle.
Taylor dropped his hand and struggled for breath. “Ri-rin-go-gooo….” Taylor croaked breathlessly. He felt along the injury to his side; it felt solid and frozen. His heart hammered. “Rin-rin-gooo!”
Ringo appeared in a blink with Honeysuckle a blink later. Honeysuckle clapped her hands to her mouth. Ringo took control and fluttered to the wound. “You need to relax,” Ringo said and pressed his palms to the frozen flesh. He drew back from the biting sting. Ringo shook his head at Honeysuckle.
Honeysuckle pulled her hands away from her mouth and put on a beaming smile as she hovered over Taylor. “Now, sugar pop, you need to watch me, okay?” Honeysuckle swished over Taylor’s head and sang a childish melody. She nodded at Taylor. “You’re watching right, sweetie?”
Ringo drove his hand into Taylor’s wound up to his shoulder.
Taylor’s vision blanked out with the inability to scream. He flailed at Honeysuckle.
She waved her hands. “No, no, sweetie,” Honeysuckle said. “You need to watch me. Okay? Watch me?” She continued to twirl and sway over Taylor.
“It’s in there deep,” Ringo said. He pushed farther into the wound with his arm.
Taylor’s heart felt as though it would burst. Ringo poked something in just the right spot, and Taylor’s body jerked with a convulsion. He gasped for air, none of it filling his lungs. The coldness was all over him. Filling him. Stiffening his limbs.
Something cold slipped out of his side, and the sudden surge of body heat tore into him from the bounce of temperature shock.
“Now, honeybee! Now!” Ringo snapped.
Honeysuckle wiped a gathered tear from her eye and then shoved it into Taylor’s gasping mouth, rubbing it across his tongue.
Taylor went still as the relief coursed through him. His heart thumped slower and slower and finally eased into calmness. His frozen lungs thawed and fluttered with soothing breath. The gash from Atticus’s axe sealed and rippled with the tickling brush of a feather.
Taylor took in a first breath as if he had been sleeping for decades.
He sat up with a broad smile, and Ringo and Honeysuckle latched onto his shoulders for hugs.
“You’re okay!” Ringo wailed.
Taylor laughed and petted Ringo’s hair. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Taylor looked up at the wad of briars looming over both of them. He frowned and clenched a fist.
Honeysuckle looked at Taylor. “Sweetie? Did you? Is he?”
Taylor pulled his knees to his chest. “Corentin talked about making decisions. I made a decision,” he said softly.
Ringo shook his head. “You didn’t….”
Taylor watched the briar ball. “No. I imprisoned him. He may be the Witch Butcher, but I don’t have the right to play judge, jury, and executioner. There will be justice. For Corentin.”
The pixies nodded solemnly. Taylor stood and turned to Idi’s gigantic corpse. He summoned his lance again and frowned.
“Let’s bring Corentin home.”
With a twirl of the lance, he slashed along Idi’s throat. Taylor propped up the loose, slimy flesh with his lance and peeked into the mucus-filled cavern. He waved Ringo over. “Give me a light, will ya?” Taylor asked.
Ringo fluttered to Taylor’s side and flicked, his wings blooming into a bright golden ball.
“Heeey…,” a voice carried from deep inside.
Taylor and Ringo blinked widely at each other. Without a second thought, they dived into Idi’s open throat. Taylor slipped and slid down the esophageal membrane, and Ringo lit the way. “Corentin!” Taylor called out.
“Heeeeey…,” the voice said again.
Ringo bounced. “It’s definitely male.”
Taylor inched his way along. “Corentin?” he called into the belly of the beast. “This better not be a trick.”
Ringo glowed brighter, and Taylor gasped as his light fell on a human shape.
Corentin had driven his sword into Idi’s esophagus just before he could drop into his stomach acid. With the threat over, he lay in the mucus, exhausted from hanging on.
Corentin lifted his slime-coated head and smiled sleepily. “You found me.”
WITH CORENTIN pulled from Idi’s gullet, Idi’s body immediately dissolved into the flecks of dark magic and vanished into nothing. Taylor and Corentin limped back into Cawker City proper. Only there wasn’t much left to call a city. The devastation stretched as far as the eye could see. Buildings in rubble, cars mangled, and the World’s Largest Ball of Twine lay scattered in the world’s largest mess of rotten sisal yarn. Corentin slipped and slid in Taylor’s grip. Ringo and Honeysuckle drifted along.
; “So. You’re not Curseless…,” Corentin said.
“S’pose not.” Taylor helped Corentin sit on a patch of grass.
“And you’re Sleeping Beauty.” Corentin looked up at Taylor.
Taylor pointed a finger. “Hey,” he said and held out his hand. The lance materialized once again. “Sleeping Dragon.”
Corentin arched a brow. “So… you’re a descendant of Princess Zellandine. The dragon slayer with the draconic soul.”
Taylor nodded with a sharp bounce. “Cool, right? Well….” He held out his hands and gestured around them. “Save for leveling a city and putting a town to sleep.”
Ringo and Honeysuckle shot to attention. Taylor jerked back with sudden movement.
“You put the town to sleep?” Ringo asked.
Taylor shrugged. “Pretty lame, right? Atticus can freeze people to death, and I just make people nap.”
“No!” Honeysuckle snapped.
Taylor startled and stumbled back. “Fuck, what did I say?”
Ringo turned to Honeysuckle, and they nodded to each other. They smiled eagerly at Taylor.
“Guys?” Taylor asked. “What?”
“As Sleeping Dragon, you are the keeper of the Blooming Lullaby,” Ringo said. He had a grin that was all too happy.
“I make people take naps?” Taylor still wasn’t following where this train of thought was going.
Honeysuckle took Taylor’s hands. “Where Snow White brings the Tranquil Frost, the winter of death… you bring the life of spring.”
Corentin snapped his fingers. “That explains the primroses when we kissed.”
Taylor shook his head. “I make flowers and put people to sleep?”
Ringo clapped his hands. “Taylor. Follow me. You heal people by putting them to sleep. You can heal any wound with the power of rest. The body. The mind.”
Taylor stared at Corentin with lips pursed.
Corentin was the first to say it. “You can save people from dying.”
Taylor gestured outward to the sleeping citizens of Cawker City. “They’ll be okay? They won’t be insane?”
Ringo nodded. “We can make a few calls out to the Enchants. When they wake up, they’ll just think it was a natural disaster. Easy.”
Taylor met Corentin’s and beamed with excitement.
“I’m covered in slime,” Corentin said with a smirk.
Taylor swatted him. “We can do it.”
Corentin sputtered. “Dude, that is just…. No. I’m covered in slime.”
Taylor stamped his armored foot. “We can do it. We can save Margate City.”
EPILOGUE:
SHAKING THE DREAMLAND TREE
The Quarantined Margate City, New Jersey
June 20
TAYLOR AND Corentin sat in silence in the space of their tiny rental car. The floorboards were clean. They even had paper liners. Taylor didn’t care for the paper liners. Ringo and Honeysuckle sat in the backseat like dolls, with no room to lounge on the dashes.
The rain spattered on the windshield, and Corentin flicked on the wipers. Taylor clenched his hands in his lap. Corentin pulled his Community Coffee cup from the cup holder. He took a sip and smiled. Taylor knew it was from Corentin’s reverence for chicory coffee.
“Nervous?” he asked.
Taylor nodded shakily. He didn’t speak.
“Are you scared about what we’ll find?” Corentin asked.
Taylor looked down at his lap.
Corentin managed the coffee cup and the wheel with one hand. He gripped Taylor’s hand with his free one. “Hey,” Corentin said gently and gave Taylor’s hand a squeeze. “I’m with you.” Corentin took another sip of his coffee and replaced it in the cup holder. They sat in silence for another agonizing minute.
Taylor snatched Corentin’s cup in one hand and rolled down the window with the other. He tossed out the last two sips of coffee and then rolled the window back up. Taylor held the empty cup in his hands like a beloved relic.
Corentin arched a brow. “What are you doing?”
Taylor threw the coffee cup onto the floorboard like a victorious spiking of a football. He smiled and nodded his approval.
“Feel better?” Corentin asked, then chuckled. “We’re not going to get the deposit back, you know.”
“Then I am going to get my money’s worth out of coffee cups on the floor.”
Sighing, Corentin shook his head. He turned his attention to the road and frowned when they came upon a blockade announcing the road was closed. Corentin threw the car into park.
Taylor unclasped his seat belt. “Looks like this is the place,” he said, popping open his door.
“I suppose we walk from here.” Corentin joined him outside the car.
Ringo and Honeysuckle joined him as they observed the barricade. Honeysuckle twirled and conjured a rainslicker for herself.
Taylor and Corentin took a breath in unison.
“Let’s do it,” Taylor said in a determined tone and held out his right hand. His lance winked into existence, and his black-and-gold armor shimmered into being.
Corentin likewise gestured with his right hand, and his enchanted compound bow materialized in his waiting hand. In a soft swirl of sparks, his green-and-black huntsman attire protected him. Corentin drew back on the magical string, and a glowing silver arrow appeared. Holding the bow down, he took point, ready to let the arrow fly at a moment’s notice.
Honeysuckle and Ringo parted the barriers with a sweep of magic, and Corentin slipped through. Taylor followed. The heavy clank of his boots rang out in the rainy weather.
They walked in silence. All remained on high alert for anything but were only greeted with the sounds of their breaths and raindrops.
The waves of the Jersey Shore crashed on the horizon. Taylor smiled, letting the waves soothe him. He had a lot to learn as Sleeping Dragon. Keeping a better grip on his anger was the worst of the trials until he could get a handle on the real sleeping dragon—his soul—slumbering inside of him. If he lost control, it would be disastrous for everyone.
Princess Zellandine had been a master on the battlefield while remaining in a perpetually soothed state. Taylor hoped one day that would happen for him. And when it did, he’d be ready for Idi again. He would just have to make sure to keep Atticus constantly out of Idi’s reach.
Bringing Atticus home from Cawker City wasn’t met with open arms extended to Taylor. His father had given him a once-over glance, and Taylor’s inner dragon stirred, as if recognizing the dragon within Sir Hatfield himself. It would be something that remained between Taylor and his father. His father outright despised him, but they were in fact written upon the same page of Mother Storyteller’s legends. Taylor would always have so many questions and had to make peace with never knowing the answers.
Before they had flown out, Taylor’s father had called him and, in an awkward discussion, informed Taylor they had moved Atticus to a more “comfortable facility,” one that understood how to care for Enchants and maintain discretion. If anyone knew the madness of Snow White, of course the Hatfields would find themselves in yet another scandal of catastrophic proportions. By some miracle, Taylor held his tongue over more politicking bullshit. He didn’t bother to question it at the time. There was follow-up that they were hoping to bring Atticus home by the holidays and that he’d be much happier with family. His father had made a point to mention that no doubt Taylor would always be too busy with his huntsman lover and then butchered saying Corentin’s name. It was at least a step that his father had made the move to include him in the dialogue. But it was Taylor who would have to make sure to stay abreast of Atticus’s status if he’d ever recover.
Taylor sucked in a breath. It was almost too much for Taylor to expect a thank you from his own family for saving all of Enchantkind.
“You okay?” Corentin asked.
Taylor shook his head. “Yeah. Just daydreaming.”
“Here we are,” Corentin said and stood tall. “Margate City.”
Taylor came to Corentin’s side and took in the devastation they had left behind.
Condos stood like scorched husks on the shoreline. Cars remained piled in charred remains on the streets. Trash littered the roads, along with glass from smashed shop windows. The waves crashed onto the beach. The ocean was the only sane thing in a city gone mad.
An olive drab army jeep darted out from an intersection and swerved to a stop. A beefy man leaned out the window and shouted at them. “This is a quarantined area. You’re in a restricted zone!”
Taylor smiled and gave a wave of the hand. “You work too hard,” he said softly.
The man’s eyelids fluttered, and he drifted off into a peaceful slumber.
Corentin pulled the door open and caught the guy before he could fall to the ground. He laid him down onto the concrete, and the man rolled as if he were in a soft, downy bed. Corentin shook his head.
Taylor stepped forward, beyond Corentin, and continued down the centerline of the street. His armored boots clanked in a meditative rhythm. Taylor concentrated, feeling the stirs of the slumbering dragon inside him. He clenched a fist to his chest, summoning the magic within to manifest into the outside world.
He unfurled his fingers and found the twinkling pink ball of energy dancing in his hand. “Bloom, little lullaby, bloom…,” he said to the spark of magic. He puffed his cheeks, and it blew away as effortlessly as a dandelion puff.
The ball drifted lazily, dancing, twinkling, and then burst in a silent pink wave that flooded over the town.
Taylor walked on, and Corentin followed behind. They had to check the work. Make sure everything would go off without a hitch. He followed the centerline of the street like a harbinger from another world. Taylor’s boots echoed through the buildings in metallic footfalls.
It was Corentin who had to look to make sure. Taylor knew.
As Taylor passed, the sounds of yawns and bodies shifting into sleep echoed inside his mind. The sounds of rest soothed the dragon within him, lulling it to sleep. Taylor led the way, and in his passing, more waves of people yawned, stretched, and dropped to the ground.