while the black stars burn

by kucy a snyder

  “Hello?” called the Doctor. “Hello, my good fellow!”

  The dragon opened one sleepy eye, stretched, wiggled, then said: “Are you Hynek? Come in search of the three doves?”

  “Hynek?” replied the Doctor. “I’m afraid not. I’m known as the Doctor. I hate to bother you, seeing as how you’re obviously having a grand old time sunbathing, but I was wondering if you might know the quickest route to Prague Castle. My companion and I are in a bit of hurry, so any—”

  The Doctor’s words cut off, and after a moment Ace leaned over toward his side of the vehicle. “Professor? You all right?”

  The Doctor leaned down. “Did he say ‘Hynek’?”

  “That’s how it sounded to me.”

  “Ah.” He stood up again and continued his conversation with the dragon. “If you’d be so kind to point us in the right direction...”

  The dragon raised up its left wing and flicked it southward.

  Tipping his hat, the Doctor said, “I thank you for your kindness, good Sir Dragon.”

  “You haven’t by chance a sheep you could spare, have you?” asked the dragon. “I could fancy a snack right about now.”

  “So sorry, fresh out of sheep, I’m afraid. I might be able to locate a chocolate bar, though.”

  “No, thank you,” said the dragon. “Chocolate doesn’t very much agree with me. Ah, well....” And the dragon closed its eyes, stretched out in the sunlight, and fell back asleep, though not before mumbling something about three doves and dancing devils.

  The Doctor leapt back into the car, slamming closed the door and hissing, “We must make haste, Ace, to the nearest library or bookstore. The first one we pass, stop. The very first one.”

  Ace pulled away with a bit more speed than was called for; if the Doctor noticed, he said nothing.

  “What’s going on, Professor? Why do we need to go shopping for a book?”

  “Not just any book, oh, no—it’s a very specific book I’ve in mind. And it must be the correct edition!”

  “Got a sudden urge to read, have you?”

  “A sudden need, dear Ace.” He turned toward her. “If my hunch is correct, then we may very well be dealing with something infinitely more threatening than the loss of the city’s power and the presence of these fantastical beings.”

  “And what would that be?”

  The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, closed it, tapped the handle of his umbrella, and then said, “Not just yet. I have to make certain that my hunch is correct.”

  “That’s not fair! I’m entitled to know what we’re going up against!”

  The Doctor stared at her. “Tell me, Ace, when you spent all that time alone when you were a child, did you ever find solace in fairy stories?”

  Ace pulled in a deep breath; the Doctor’s question had opened doors in her memory that she’d prefer remained closed forever. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  The Doctor once again squeezed her hand. “You’ve given me my answer. We need never speak of this again, unless of course you feel compelled to share with me.”

  *

  By the time Ace managed to navigate the roads and side-streets leading to the Little Quarter, the sky was growing dim as more clouds crowded the horizon. Though enough sunlight managed to break through to give her a clear field of vision, the shadows were massing for a final attack.

  “Not much daylight left, it looks like,” she commented.

  “Oh, going by the clock, there’s still well over three hours of daylight remaining,” said the Doctor as he leaned forward and looked up through the windshield. “However, I’d say that the elements are conspiring against us. If you’ll look around us, Ace, you’ll see that there are fewer cars on the road and more horse-drawn wagons. It would appear the citizens of Prague are as resourceful as ever. They know the electricity is going to fail them as soon as the lights fades, and they’ve found a way to adapt—at least, as far as their transportation needs go.”

  “Tell that to the bloke with the tricky pacemaker in his chest. I’m sure he’ll find a lot of comfort in that.”

  “Point taken. The branch of the National Library should be just round this bend.”

  As indeed it was; a towering, elegant, Gothic-style stone building with numerous Baroque additions, the place looked to Ace more like a cathedral than a place to house books—but of course, as the Doctor would undoubtedly point out to her, all libraries were a sort of cathedral, when you thought about it.

  “Impressive,” said the Doctor; then, to Ace: “Or if I may borrow your term of choice, ‘Wicked’.”

  “No arguments here,” replied Ace. She was just pulling into a parking space when the car completely stopped; the engine died, the dashboard lights cut out, and the radio—which Ace had been playing at a low volume—snapped off.

  “Well, well,” said the Doctor. “It appears that the clouds have at last ruled the day—or what remains of it.”

  Ace looked out her window. All around the Quarter, lights were going out; no sooner did the electricity in one building cease to function than someone inside began lighting numerous candles. Even the interior of the library began to sparkle with dozens of small dancing flames.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  Opening his door, the Doctor replied, “We go in search of the needed book. Come, Ace, we must basin.”

  “‘Hasten.’”

  “Have it your way.”

  They scurried up the stone stairs leading to the magnificent wooden doors of the entrance, but no sooner had they reached the landing than the Doctor was knocked backward by some invisible force, losing his balance and dropping firmly on his backside, his Panama hat falling from his head.

  But his was not the only hat Ace saw on the landing; as soon as the Doctor collided with whatever invisible barrier had stopped him, a well-worn cap fell to the landing, as well, seemingly from thin air.

  At the same instant the cap became visible, a young-ish lad dressed in woolen peasant rags and carrying an ancient rucksack appeared; no more than seventeen, looking several centuries out of date in dress and manner, he, too, had been knocked on his backside.

  “Hello,” said Ace, looking back and forth between the two. “What’s this, then?”

  “This,” said the doctor, getting back on his feet and snatching up not only his hat but the stranger’s cap, as well, “is one Sleepy John, unless I am mistaken.”

  Sleepy John looked wide-eyed at the Doctor as he rose to his feet. “I’m afraid you have me at a great disadvantage, sir. You know my name, but I don’t recall our ever having met before.”

  “I’m known as the Doctor, and we have met before, my good fellow—many times, in fact. I know your tale well. Have you located the secret place where the Queen is off to every night? I imagine the King is exasperated with concern.”

  “Hold on,” said Ace. “I don’t mean to seem rude, but I think I’m entitled to know—”

  The Doctor faced her. “We no longer need to go inside the library, dear Ace. Bumping into Sleepy John here has now told me all we need to know.” And with that, he removed his Panama hat, slipped on Sleepy John’s cap, and immediately disappeared.

  “Professor?” yelled Ace, suddenly feeling panic. “Professor, where–?”

  “Right where I was,” came the Doctor’s voice. A moment later, he removed the cap; both he and it were quite visible again. “An odd feeling, invisibility. Really, Sleepy John, I don’t know how you put up with it. That…queasy feeling in one’s stomach.”

  “After a while, you no longer notice or mind,” replied John. “No discomfort is too much to endure for the sake of my mistress’s content.”

  The Doctor shot a quick aha! glance at Ace. “Your mistress, you say?”

  “I do.”

  Ace, now frustrated and more than a bit anxious, yanked the Doctor’s hat from his head and took John’s cap, as well. “All right, then! Neither one of you are going to get your stupid hats back until one of you tells me,
right now, what’s going on!”

  The Doctor pointed at Ace but addressed John. “She’s got a lot of spirit.”

  “’Tis an odd name for a lady so delicate and lovely,” said John.

  “Odd?” shouted Ace. “What’s so odd about—hello. Did you just call me ‘delicate and lovely’?”

  “Aye,” replied John, bowing gracefully, taking hold of her hand, and kissing it.

  Ace slowly pulled back her had, red-faced, and desperately trying not to giggle.

  “The fellow you are looking at, my delicate and lovely Ace,” said the Doctor, “is none other than Sleepy John, a character from a book published in 1917 by Unwin Brothers Limited, the Gresham Press, Woking and London. The book in question is called Czech Folk Tales, the stories in its table of contents having been selected and translated by Dr. Josef Baudis, M.R.I.A., Lecturer in Comparative Philology at the Prague University.

  “If the appearance of the dragon we saw back on the road—as well as those beings described by Elizabeth’s assistants—struck you as odd, it’s because they are three-dimensional recreations of the illustrations contained in that very book, drawn by...let me see now—ah, yes, I have it! The first two illustrations are copies of pictures by Joseph Manes; the others were drawn by E. Staněk, who in some case has adopted drawings by Mikuláš Aleš.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Ace, gawking at Sleepy John.

  “Believe it,” replied the Doctor.

  “May I ask, Doctor,” said John, “if you, too, seek not only the Queen but the princess and the three roses?”

  “What did you say? The princess?”

  John gave a nod of his head. “And the three roses.”

  The Doctor folded his arms across his chest, then raised one hand to scratch at his forehead. “This is very strange, very strange, indeed.”

  Ace looked at him. “Stranger than bumping into monsters and characters from an old storybook?”

  “I should say so, yes. Give me a moment to think.” He turned away from them, facing the street.

  “M’lady,” whispered John to Ace. “I don’t wish to appear discourteous, but will you give back my cap so I can be on my way?” He turned slightly so that Ace could see the contents of his rucksack; vegetables, fruits, fresh meats and poultry, a small cask of water, and several boxes of matches. “My mistress has not eaten in three days, and I must get this food to her.”

  “Did you steal this food from the marketplace? While wearing this?” She held up his cap.

  “Aye, that I did.”

  Ace thought that—if one were forced into a situation where food must be stolen in order to survive—it was dashed clever to enlist someone who could make himself invisible.

  “I think,” she said to John, “that your mistress is someone we need to talk to.”

  “My mistress talks to no one but we who live to serve her. She has no desire to be part of the affairs of man or his implements of power.”

  “’Implements of power’? What you mean by that?”

  John pointed to a darkened street light, the unmoving cars in the street, even the phone lines on their towers. “My mistress lost her father to the great battle over such power many years ago. He was...he was killed in a most brutal fashion.”

  “The petrol riots,” said Ace, more to herself than to John. “Was her...was your mistress’s father, was he killed when Dalibor Tower was destroyed?”

  “Aye, and a great conflagration it was. He had hidden her elsewhere in the castle where she would be safe from harm, but he himself fell victim to the brutality of the mobs.” John looked at his feet. “He was crushed when the tower came down. He lived for nearly two days afterward, trapped beneath the rubble. My mistress knelt beside the ruins talking to him, trying to keep him alive. But it was all for naught. His death broke her young heart. She took the only possession she had remaining—the book of which the Doctor spoke, a gift from her father—and retreated into the castle, never to venture out into the evil world of men and their power again.”

  “The batteries, the electricity, the generators, all of it,” said Ace to herself. “She’s drawing on that power to bring you to life! That’s why the sightings continue after the sun goes down!”

  “And why the entire city experiences massive power surges at dawn every few days,” said the Doctor, rejoining the two of them. “The girl must sleep sometime, and no doubt her waking causes a moment or two of tremendous confusion and disorientation, thus the surges. Excellent deduction, Ace. During the day, this girl draws her power from the sun—it’s child’s play to convert solar energy into electricity—but at night...ah, at night she has no choice but to draw her power from every available source of man-made energy. And seeing how she hates it so—after all, the fight for energy cost her father’s life—she would have no regrets whatsoever about doing so. Electricity, batteries, generators, all of it, is evil in her eyes. It’s what killed her father.”

  John once again nodded his head. “Aye, good Doctor. She has spoken of her hatred for it often.”

  “As she understandably would. But what puzzles me—well, there are several things that puzzle me at the moment, so why don’t we address them in order?

  “One: the last petrol riot in Prague was over fifteen years ago. May I ask, Sleepy John, how old is your mistress?”

  “Eight-hundred-twenty-five days and a thousand.”

  The Doctor’s eyes grew wide. “Five years old? Oh, dear me, Ace, this is worse than I feared.”

  “How d’ya mean?”

  “Remember when I told you that we may very well be up against something infinitely more dangerous than a simple series of power outages and these sightings of strange creatures?”

  “Yes.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Well, my dear companion, we are facing what is perhaps the most dangerous opponent we’ve yet encountered—the iron will of a child’s imagination, a child who also has the power to make her fantasies sentient in order to act against a world she hates. If she’s been secluded for this long, then of course she’d have no idea of the medical technologies people rely upon—pacemakers and such—and so would have no idea the harm she’s causing, the danger she’s inflicting on the people of this city.”

  Ace stared at him. “I’m not sure she’d care if she did know, Professor. If the petrol riot that killed her father was fifteen years ago, then she ought to be—”

  “—there is no room in her universe for what ought to be, Ace. She retreated into Prague castle and, in essence, froze time for her and those who, like Sleepy John, exist only in her imagination.”

  Ace felt her throat tighten and her eyes begin to tear. “Oh, that poor little thing. How...how lonely she must be!”

  “Quite so,” said the Doctor. Then, to John: “Where was I?”

  “You were about to ask your second question.”

  “Ah, yes, thank you. Two: You say that you are also in search of a princess and three roses, correct?”

  “Aye.”

  “Fascinating. Three: why were you here at the library?”

  “My mistress sent me to retrieve the very book of which you spoke—and to fetch the two of you, should I have the opportunity to find you.”

  “Why did she want the book?”

  “I think it not a matter of her wanting it, good Doctor. I think it a matter of her wanting you not to have it. I must confess that it puzzled me, as she already has a copy.”

  “Yes, a last gift from her father, I heard. So your mistress has been aware of our presence in this city since we arrived, I take it?”

  “Aye.”

  The Doctor looked at Ace. “Good Lord, what tremendous, incredible, startling power she must possess.” Then, to Sleepy John: “My good sir, would you be so kind as to escort us to your mistress?”

  “I have a wagon with horses waiting across the road.”

  Both Ace and the Doctor looked to where John was pointing.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Ace.
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br />   “That’s because the same enchantment that enables Sleepy John to become invisible has been extended to anything his mistress deems necessary—isn’t that right, John?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, I daresay, Ace, that you and I are about to attract some curious stares, as we’ll be floating along in the air.”

  “No, good Doctor,” said John, producing two more caps from his sack. “I’ve been instructed to ask you to wear these so that none will see us and be tempted to follow.”

  Taking his cap from Ace—but not yet placing it on his head—John began to descend the stairs, gesturing for Ace and the Doctor to follow.

  “I hope you brought the sonic screwdriver with you, Professor.”

  “It would do us no good, Ace. Its power source is man-made.” He took hold of her arm. “Besides, should the need arise—and I do so hope it does not—we have those canisters of Nitro-9 that you think I don’t know you smuggled out of the TARDIS.”

  “No one’s ever known me as well as you, Professor.” Ace reached down and took hold of his hand. “Or accepted me as you have.”

  “Yes, well...I don’t know who else but you would put up with the likes of me, so we’re well-paired, don’t you think?”

  “I do.”

  They smiled at one another as they followed Sleepy John down the stairs and across the street.

  “What else is puzzling you?” asked Ace. “Don’t try to deny it, Professor—you’ve got that ‘I-still-don’t-know-all-the-answers’ look about you.”

  “Perceptiveness is your middle name. The dragon by the road earlier, he asked about three doves and spoke of dancing devils, did he not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Sleepy John, he says his quest is not only to discover where the Queen goes at night, but to find the princess and the three roses.”

  Ace shrugged. “Seems simple enough to me.”

  The Doctor stopped and turned to face her, taking hold of her shoulders. “But it’s not simple, dear Ace, not simple at all! We have encountered two characters from the book, yet they have told us that they are involved in some way with elements from...let me see...at least six different stories! Sleepy John had nothing to do with the princess or the three roses—those are two completely separate tales from his. The dancing devils of which the dragon spoke? Those are from Sleepy John’s story.”