The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The)

by Owen, James A.

  “It has never been in the Repository,” Poe said as he reached inside his breast pocket, “because it has never left my person.”

  The other Caretakers rose from their seats to look at the curious, small book that Poe was holding. It was very, very old, compact but thick, and resembled nothing so much as it did . . .

  “The Little Whatsits.” Twain chortled. “It looks like those bloody annoying books of genius and wisdom the badgers refer to all the time.”

  “The thing is,” Bert said, “the information in the Little Whatsits is almost always spot-on.”

  “That,” said Twain, “is precisely why those books are so bloody annoying.”

  “It is indeed much like the Little Whatsits,” Poe said, “in that inside its pages is an accounting of all the knowledge of the world that once was. A world that was smaller, and seemingly simpler, and never to be known again except in stories.”

  “How did you find this book, Edgar?” Houdini asked.

  “I didn’t find it,” Poe answered, “I wrote it.

  “Now,” he said, stepping out into the hallway and beckoning the others to follow, “gather everyone together. Everyone. All the Caretakers, and Mystorians, and Messengers; all the helpers, and apprentices, and associates. Everyone at Tamerlane House should attend, because I’m going to do a reading—one I have waited to do since the beginning of the world.

  “It is time,” the master of the house said, “for all the secrets of history to be revealed.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “What, pray tell,” Charles exclaimed, “did you do to the poor Indigo Dragon?” He walked around the airship, fondly caressing the battered hull and once-living masthead he knew so well. He and his colleagues John and Jack had shared some amazing adventures aboard this ship, and it pained him to see it made so . . .

  “Short,” he said, bending over to examine it more closely. “And it’s got wheels. Sweet heaven, old girl—what have they done to you?”

  “It was kind of necessary,” said Fred. “We needed something that could go anywhere, do anything. And the Indigo Dragon has been the greatest Dragonship there ever was.”

  “Meh,” said Elly Mae.

  “Mahhh!” said Coraline.

  “Flying goats,” Charles said, shaking his head. “The more things change, the more they, well, change.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Rose said anxiously. “The city is coming apart, and the deluge can’t be far away.”

  “Not yet,” said Madoc. “Kipling is still—”

  “Right here,” a weary Rudyard Kipling said as he stepped off the staircase and onto the broad plaza where the companions were. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Rose ran to him, giving him a hug, and Edmund greeted him with a warm double handshake—but Charles realized immediately that something was wrong.

  “Rudy, old boy,” he said, his face showing open concern. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Kipling sighed. “I’m not coming with you.”

  That stopped all of them, even the goats. “Muh?” said Elly Mae.

  “I’ve been . . . compromised,” said Kipling. “I can’t—shouldn’t—go with you.”

  It was Madoc who realized what had happened. “Your shadow,” he said with a twinge of old sorrow in his voice. “It’s missing, Caretaker.”

  Laura Glue and the badgers stared at him, dumbfounded. “What,” the Valkyrie said, “did you do?”

  Kipling looked pained, but he managed to smile anyway. “I did something terrible that had to be done. At least,” he added, fishing in his pocket, “I hope it did.”

  He withdrew a small envelope identical to the ones that Deucalion had given to Uncas and Fred. The companions rapidly exchanged anecdotes and arrived at the same conclusion.

  “Telemachus has made his choice,” said Fred. “He’s decided to join the side of the, um, angels. So to speak.”

  “Maybe not,” said Charles, “if he’s also giving instructions that cost Caretakers their shadows.”

  Rose, for her part, was still pained by what Fred and her father had shared with her about the true identity of their possible adversary. She still remembered the lost little boy prince, Coal, far too vividly to easily accept that he had been one of Verne’s Messengers in disguise, was a possible apprentice to John Dee, and might be the Archimago destined to hand the entire world over to the Echthroi.

  “We’ll find a way to help you,” she said, almost pleading. It felt terrible to contemplate leaving him there after finally seeing some hope—especially with what they all knew was going to happen. “Please, come with us.”

  “It’s too risky,” Kipling said. “Ask Madoc. He knows.”

  Reluctantly Madoc looked at his daughter and nodded. “If he is now shadowless, then he lost it by his own choice, by his own actions, as Jack once did,” he explained, “and that leaves him vulnerable, as you were. If an Echthros somehow manages to use him as a conduit, then they can follow us anywhere. John Dee already gained access to the City of Jade because of the shadow that you didn’t know had come with you. If we were to find the Architect, and an Echthros was with us . . .”

  Madoc didn’t need to finish the statement. Every one of them knew Kipling was right. He would have to stay.

  “Edmund,” Kipling said, “before you go, may I have a word?”

  As the two men talked, the others readied the Indigo Dragon for the flight out and tried their best not to feel the despair that was all too present.

  “All right,” Edmund said when they stepped back over to the ship. “We need to leave now.” This last he said with a wink at Kipling that only Madoc saw. The Dragon furrowed his brow but said nothing as the others all hugged Kipling and said tearful good-byes.

  “One last thing,” Kipling asked. “Fly me up to the tallest tower still standing. The show is going to be spectacular, and I’d like to have a really good seat.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  As the reunited companions took flight up and out of the doomed City of Jade, Fred and Laura Glue explained how they had traveled there using Shakespeare’s Zanzibar Gate, and also, less enthusiastically, explained what its limitations were.

  “Three trips?” Rose exclaimed. “That’s all we get?”

  “Two now,” said Fred. “We used up one to come find you.”

  “Just one, actually,” Uncas said, trying to be helpful, “because now we have to go home before we can go out again. And whoever goes on that trip . . .”

  “Will basically be in the same boat—so to speak—that Charles and Edmund and I were in the last time,” said Rose. “But we aren’t going to do that.”

  “We aren’t?” said Fred.

  “We aren’t?” Uncas and Quixote said together.

  “No,” Rose said, a determined smile on her face. “After what you told us about Deucalion’s great-grandfather, Enoch, I’m convinced that he is the man we’re seeking. If we can get to him and restore the keep, then we won’t need to worry about how to manage a return trip.”

  “One problem,” said Edmund. “According to Verne, the rules of time travel say we must take a trip into the future to balance every trip into the past. Won’t we be causing some kind of temporal problem if we don’t do just that?”

  “Verne lies,” Rose replied. “I think the rules about time travel are more fluid than he’ll ever tell us, if he can help it. Besides, we came further back again getting here without a counterbalancing trip to the future.”

  “Because we had help, remember?” Edmund said. “The old man in Platonia—the one who sent Bert back to Tamerlane.”

  Rose scanned the sky as if waiting for help from above. “I wish he’d step in to help us now—or at least, let us know we’re moving in the right direction.”

  “Couldn’t Edmund simply create another chronal map?” Quixote suggested. “That way, we wouldn’t be using up the power in the gate.”

  “I tried it, back in the city,” Edmund said sheepishly. “It didn’t wor
k. Whatever damage has affected the keep in this time is also affecting my ability to make chronal maps. If I have a machine to augment it, it could work. Hopefully.”

  “We do have the gate,” Fred said helpfully, “and it’s designed to use a chronal map. That’s how we got here.”

  “That’s the second problem,” said Edmund. “I can program the gate, but I have no clue where we’re going, since we don’t even have a vague description of the City of Enoch.”

  “We have this,” Fred offered, holding up the bronze bas-relief of Enoch. “It’s a pretty good likeness, I think. You could make a chronal map to take us through the gate directly to him.”

  “I really don’t know,” said Edmund. “I’ve always created maps to places and specific times. I really have no idea whether it will work if we try to use it to take us to a specific person.”

  “I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Charles said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the city as they flew out over the desert. “Look.”

  The wall of water was more massive than anything they had ever seen before, taller even than the Corinthian Giants, the children of the renegade angels called Watchers. As they looked, it enveloped the City of Jade and moved past with no apparent loss of speed or power.

  “Now, Edmund,” Rose said, trying not to sound anxious, “I believe in you. This will work.”

  “All right,” Edmund said as they approached the Zanzibar Gate. “I guess I’d better draw quickly.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Well,” Kipling said as he watched his friends through the spyglass. “I guess that’s that, then.”

  He folded the spyglass closed and slid down the wall behind him, sitting on the smooth pavement. The buildings all around him and even the ground beneath him were vibrating constantly now, and in the distance, he could see cracks starting to form in some of the greater towers.

  It would not be long now.

  Outside in the city, those who still remained could be heard praying. Some were reciting histories; others, poetry. Each denizen who knew what was approaching had chosen to meet his fate in his own way, as Kipling had chosen to meet his.

  He started to recite one of his poems, then paused before starting another, but he stopped reciting that one too. “Curse it all,” he muttered to no one in particular, “I really should have written some less depressing poems.”

  He finally settled on “En-Dor,” mostly because several stanzas were a comfort to him, even if the overall poem was not. Still, it was a good poem, and there, in that place, at that moment, that was as good a legacy as any, he decided. He had written a good poem, and he had done good things, and he thought if his son had been there, he would be proud of his father.

  A loud rumbling startled him out of his reverie, and the light from outside dimmed, as if a cloud had moved in front of the sun. It wasn’t a cloud, Kipling knew.

  He closed his eyes and continued to recite the poem as the massive wave moved into the city, toppling towers and overwhelming everything in its path.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  On their approach to the gate, the companions were relieved to see that the controls and aperture began to glow as soon as Madoc was near.

  “That’s what we like t’ see,” said Fred. “Dragon power! Boom!”

  It took only a few minutes for Edmund to complete the drawing of Enoch. He added one or two more flourishes, then with Fred’s assistance, he set it into the spot on the gate next to the control crystals.

  “Hmm,” said Madoc. “That visage looks terribly familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it.”

  “As long as it gets us to him,” said Edmund. “That’s all I’m concerned about.”

  “I just hope,” said Laura Glue, “that we don’t end up parking the entire Zanzibar Gate right on top of him, like they did with that house the tornado dropped on the witch in Oz.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean for that to happen,” said Uncas.

  “I’m sure they did,” said Laura Glue. “The way I heard it, it took them three tries to actually get her.”

  “Well, we have one try to get this right,” said Edmund. “We’re good to go—all the settings are locked.”

  Madoc stood atop the deck, stretched his wings, and took a last look around. The refugees still in the encampments were either disassembling tents, or frantically running back and forth, or praying. In the opposite direction, Deucalion’s great ark was sealed up and waiting to fulfill its purpose. And ahead of them, the future and the past were both waiting to be created.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Take us through, Fred.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The companions aboard the Indigo Dragon had no idea what to expect when they passed through the gate. There was no transition period, no time to adjust to a new environment. It was almost instantaneous, and very similar to walking through one of the doors at the keep.

  What the Indigo Dragon moved into was a fairy forest.

  It was night, and the skies were dark, but everything around them glowed with pulsing, vibrant, living lights that illuminated the airship and its occupants with greens and blues and other colors they would not have believed were possible on earth.

  There was a ring of tall, mostly branchless trees that towered above a smaller grove of thicker, leafier varieties. The shrubbery was so thick that the ground was almost impossible to see, and everything seemed to glow of its own accord. Lights, like fireflies but not, floated lazily among the foliage, giving off more than enough light for the companions to see by.

  “Oh,” Laura Glue said as she reached for Edmund’s hand. “Oh, it is so beautiful.”

  Uncas lifted his nose and sniffed. “It all smells like mint,” he declared. “I like it.”

  “I thought we were coming to find a master builder. An architect,” said Edmund. “Instead, we find this . . .”

  “Garden,” a voice said from the far side of the trees. “I know it must pale in comparison to the original, but I never had the pleasure of seeing that one in person, so I’ve simply done the best that I can.”

  They stepped off the airship and walked around the trees to better see who had spoken. There, sitting on a stool, was a man who very strongly resembled the drawing Edmund had done. He glanced briefly at the companions, then resumed his work, which was creating a city in the sky.

  He was drawing with light, in the air.

  A bright point of energy was emanating from his right index finger, and everywhere he touched, the light remained. There were squat, square buildings, but also majestic, soaring towers; and every inch of the miniature city glowed with the light from his touch.

  “This is my next project,” he said, turning around and sliding off the stool. “I thought I’d add a few things while I waited for you.”

  “You . . . have been waiting for us?” Rose exclaimed. “Are you . . .”

  “My name is Enoch, the Maker,” he said simply, “and I have been waiting for you to arrive for a very long time.”

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  The Archons

  After the initial astonishment at Enoch’s statement passed, Rose regained enough of her composure to ask him how it was he knew to expect them.

  “I was told,” he said, folding his arms behind him and looking at them as if he’d actually said something useful.

  “If he pulls a cream-colored envelope out of his pocket,” said Laura Glue, “I think I might throw up.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Fred.

  “We’ve come a long way to find you,” Edmund said, trying to change the subject, but Enoch wasn’t listening. He had stepped closer to examine Laura Glue’s wings.

  “These are constructs, are they not?” he asked. “Used for flight, but not a part of you.”

  “Yes,” the Valkyrie answered. “They were made for me.”

  “But yours are your own,” he said, turning to Madoc. “Intriguing.”

  Rose was about to ask another question when something
she caught out of the corner of her eye distracted her. It was a column of swirling clouds, like an inverted tornado, far off in the distance. “It looks like the Frontier that separated the Archipelago from the Summer Country,” she said, pointing at the clouds.

  “There. . . . Watch, as it turns to twilight.”

  Enoch looked at her in surprise. “Interesting,” he said. “Few people can actually see the Barrier, and most of those see angels carrying flaming swords, the way the Adam claimed to. How unusual that you can see it for what it really is.”

  “Is that . . . ?” Charles asked, swallowing hard. “Is that the Garden of Eden?”

  Enoch smiled wryly and shrugged. “It may be. The Barrier has been there since long before my time. Not many still live who remember the time of the Adam and the Eve, but one does. It may be possible for you to meet him. We shall see.”

  Edmund rubbed his chin, thinking. “You keep mentioning ‘the Adam,’ ” he said to Enoch.

  The Maker looked at Edmund, not understanding, then he realized what the young man was asking.

  “It was his calling, not his name,” Enoch explained. “No one living knows what his true name was—and I doubt that after what occurred with his sons, he ever shared his true name with anyone else, ever again.”

  “What does ‘the Adam’ mean?” asked Rose.

  “As I said, it was his calling,” said Enoch. He lowered his head, struggling to find the right words. “In the language of the Host, it means . . . purpose? Yes, that’s it. To me, the Adam meant to have purpose in the world.”

  “That makes sense,” Quixote said, nodding. “Given that he was the first man.”

  “But he wasn’t,” Enoch said quickly. “There were men and women here for thousands of years before he came, as there are many peoples here who have cultures and history far beyond my own. He was simply the first man with purpose. Regardless, it was his calling that mattered then, not his name. Names can be changed.”

  “My father has changed his name several times in his life,” said Rose, taking Madoc by the arm.