by Joe Corso
“Crooked horned ones,” Lucky asked.
“Yes, those beasts who leap gallantly and whose meat is savory. They are the elegant beasts.”
“Oh, deer,” Lucky said.
“Deer? We shall catch us a large boar, roast him, and celebrate the return of my sister-in-law, whole and complete with cure, thanks to the great wizard. Now, in addition, duty requires that I must visit a shire or two and travel to the border of Wales. The Welsh bear no fear and are quite the formidable opponent. They lurk behind nature – trees and bushes – and attack with surprise.”
Lucky grinned. So gorilla fighters existed even back then, he thought. Interesting.
“What brings forth this happiness, Sir Lucky?”
“Oh nothing, Your Majesty. Please know that it is not meant to offend. I am just smiling at a chance, perhaps opportune, that we might encounter these men, the ones with no spine who seek to hide and harm.”
“Well, now Sir Lucky, your allegiance is duly noted. My gratitude to you. Well now there is so much I want to present for your eyes, let’s not waste more time as it’s precious,” he said as he raised his fingers and gave a quick snap. “James,” he said to a footman standing nearby, “tomorrow morning please have someone assemble our horses and prepare us with the necessaries for this broad journey. And this time,” he said turning to Lucky, “my ears shall not hear a denial of my request,” he said smiling.
James wasted no time exiting the room. Lucky could hear his steps pick up as he launched into a trot of sorts, eager to please his King.
“Oh, and I almost forgot,” the King added. “We must also make time for another short stop. We will journey past a stonemason. I have need of his services. It is necessary to practice deceit with marauders and at present, our castle walls are timber. Should stone replace them, or ‘appear’ to replace them, our enemies may give pause to invading us. This ‘transforming’ has begun on some areas of the castle, but I am in need of more men with this skill to make haste the process. Seeking more craftsmen is yet another reason for this travel.”
The King was right. Lucky felt he couldn’t put the King off again. He had refused him every time he had asked him to remain behind for a while, to visit, and besides, Lucky liked King Robert. He was a real man’s man, a good King, something Lucky respected. Lucky thought about how different this King was from his boss, Dirk Sommerville, who wanted to be King and the treachery that Dirk had laid upon him.
There was something about this place. Lucky always felt so relaxed and safe here. His mind immediately traveled back to that moment in the portal – the moment he felt the Princess as she pressed against him and for a few seconds, Lucky forgot that the King was standing before him, talking to him. Damn, what a woman can do, what a woman does to a man, he thought, as he shook himself.
The King was staring at Lucky. Lucky, a little embarrassed having been caught daydreaming, smiled.
“It will be my honor, Your Majesty, our honor, to accompany you on your travels.”
The King’s face broadened with a smile all consuming.
“Great, then tomorrow, after the fullness of our stomachs, we will then depart.”
The evening was a joyous one. Mickey and Lucky ate and drank and laughed with the King. The Queen and Princess Krystina talked nonstop the entire evening. Gaiety and laughter filled the air as the music played to the delight of the guests’ feet.
Morning came early and after breakfast the King leaned over to Lucky and said, “Let us make our way outside to where our horses and horsemen await.”
Lucky and Mickey arose. Lucky walked over to the Queen and the Princess. The Princess, upon seeing Lucky, brightened. Lucky stared at her for a moment. The Queen glanced slightly at her sister, then back toward Lucky.
“Please, dear Queen and fair Princess,” Lucky said, “excuse us while we accompany the King on travel.”
“You are excused,” the Queen said.
“Safe journeys, Lucky,” the Princess said.
The men joined the King now standing at the door entrance waiting.
As he walked down the hall, a sergeant approached the King and a few words were exchanged. The King apologized saying he had some business to address with one of his ministers before he could leave.
“Your Majesty,” Lucky added. “Please send your sergeant-at-arms to get us when you are ready to leave and we will meet you back here.
“As you wish,” replied the King. “I will send him to fetch you and shall meet you here as before.”
“Mickey,” Lucky said. “Let’s use this time to find Jacob the jeweler and pay for the goblet set.”
Jacob was there, as usual, tending his wares inside his tent. He smiled as he saw his favorite customers enter. The entire process from purchase, back through the portal, and on to Sotheby’s to deliver the merchandise, took less than an hour. Lucky and Mickey returned to find the King waiting outside the castle with a team of horses, travel supplies and knights. But there was something else as well. A carriage sat among the horses. The King nodded as they approached, patted his horse on the neck, and instructed Mickey and Lucky as to which horses were theirs. The team of horses and the King’s entourage began to depart . . . and so did the carriage.
Mickey leaned to Lucky and said, “Let’s just hope there’s no gold in there. I’m just not in the mood to come to this place and get killed. I’ll never have any children then,” he laughed. Lucky laughed in return.
Chapter Twenty
Lucky rode alongside the King with twenty men-at-arms following closely behind. King Robert, by all accounts, was a good King, one who administered justice fairly. His taxes, it seemed, were not overbearing and the serfs and peasants knew that taxes had to be collected in order for the kingdom to subsist. He was a respected King.
The men had been on horseback, according to Lucky’s wristwatch, for approximately two hours when suddenly a curtain to the carriage pulled open. There was the Queen’s face, smiling and cheery.
“Well now,” Lucky said. “We have more in our midst.”
The Queen smiled at Lucky and said, “Yes we do. You do not believe that we ladies would allow you men all the laughter without us, did you?”
“We? You mean there are more, dear Queen?” he asked as he dropped back a bit to ride alongside the carriage.
And at that moment, another head popped from behind the carriage curtain. It was Princess Krystina – beautiful Princess Krystina. She stared at Lucky. Lucky held his gaze, his eyes to hers, for what seemed to be minutes. The Queen just smiled.
“Well, Sire Lucky, I guess the answer to that question is now made clear,” she said as she chuckled like a little schoolgirl. “She insisted on traveling with us and it only made sense. If we are amongst you, then my sister makes good company as the wizard can continue to work his magic with her potions.”
“Well, Your Majesty, that is certainly efficient use of the mind and thoughts,” he chuckled.
“Might we seize these moments to talk, Sire?” the Queen asked. Princess Krystina pulled away from the curtain and placed her head down upon a makeshift pillow that the Queen’s maidservants had so meticulously prepared.
“Why certainly, dear Queen,” Lucky answered as he tugged on his horse’s reins to drop back even farther, in order to ride in tandem with the carriage.
“Please, allow me to assume a horse,” the Queen advised.
Lucky called ahead for the group to stop. Each man on his horse stopped except for one who rode back to check on Lucky.
“I would like to ride with Sire Lucky here for a short while and leave the Princess in calm. Her body needs quiet and rest for a while.”
The horseman rode ahead, dismounted and set about padding the saddle of one of the unridden horses. He grabbed its reins and led it back to the carriage and Lucky’s horse. Once he was assured that it was fit for a ‘Queen’, he assisted her up onto the horse and helped her position herself. She began to ride sidesaddle right next to Lucky.
&nb
sp; “My sister,” the Queen said, “was about to depart us when you took her. I implore you to tell of these wonders of which she speaks. She states that she had odd manifestations, visions.”
“Of what sort?” Lucky asked.
“She tells of slumber in a sun bathed room yet in the middle of the night. She states that travel was in strange conveyances, horseless carriages, and she is of firm conviction that she was moving up high, indeed flying, in the heavens, above clouds and from this large room, high in the clouds, there were water and kingdoms below her. She speaks of much light at night. How can this be, so much shining at night, these suns across the land? She cannot explain these visions, but in one, there was a sire putting objects into her mouth with strange sounds. And now the ailment inside her mouth that was her pain is gone and in its presence, there are new teeth. How is any of this possible?”
Lucky knew that eventually questions like these would arise and he wasn’t quite sure just how he could explain hundreds of years of technology culminating in dental implants. But he had one thing going for him – the King and Queen had seen his magic before. They had witnessed flashlights and listened to music using earphones that Lucky had provided. Perhaps they could, or would, just take this for what it was worth.
“The doctors of my time,” Lucky began, “have studied with other men, men greater than they, who know many things. They are learned men who have studied with the finest of masters. The magic injection that I provided your sister saved her from death. Its name is an ‘antibiotic’. This magic does battle against sickness. It was sufficient to keep her alive until the learned men, the doctors of my time, could treat her with more magic. While she was sleeping, the doctors placed the Princess’s body inside a large machine. Well, first they had a machine examine her mouth then they employed still yet another, much grander machine to look all through her body . . .”
“Horrors,” the Queen exclaimed. “That is not acceptable for the Princess!”
“No, no, dear Queen,” Lucky said as he raised his right hand and waved it slightly side to side. “The machines only look for sickness. They looked into her body for sickness and the machines found serious sickness in her mouth. This is called an ‘abscess’. This ‘abscess’ was dripping sickness into her body, her blood, and could have caused her to depart. The learned men, the doctors, cured her teeth. They took out the poison that created illness for the Princess. The poison is gone and the new teeth are filled now with beauty, are they not?”
“Yes they are,” the Queen answered. “It is amazing what beauty you have brought to her. Might I have this beauty come to me, to my mouth as well?”
“Why, yes,” Lucky answered, “if the time arises that you need this beauty. But for now, you do not need it. Besides, I brought you some magic that will assist with the beauty. It is my gift.”
Excitedly the Queen asked, “What is it? Please, you must state it. I must know. Your gifts and magic capture my mind.”
“I give you, dear Queen,” Lucky said, “what we call a toothbrush. It is made of things not known in your kingdom.”
This news thrilled her. She became so excited that she found herself slipping from her horse.
“Careful, Queen,” Lucky said. “We do not want to have to use the learned men on the Queen now while on travel,” he laughed.
The Queen blushed a bit but then asked, “Did you bring the gift for Krystina as well?”
“Yes I did,” Lucky said as he smiled. “She gets one and so does the King.”
Krystina, quiet until now, poked her head back out through the curtain to acknowledge Lucky and then gently placed her head back down onto her pillow.
“By the by, did she ask about me?” Lucky asked completely off topic.
“Who? Did who ask about you, Sire? The Princess?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Well, I dare not tell our secrets but, yes, she inquired with great mind as to your country, your knowledge. I told her of your visits to our kingdom, how you fought King Emeryk for us when we were attacked. I spoke of the miracles you performed and filled her ears and mind with most events. You hold her intrigue, as you have held ours, the King and I.”
This news made Lucky really happy. Here he was, on a horse, in another time, with a Queen, and a carriage, and a Princess in a carriage, who might like him, and well, it was just all so surreal. And there they were again – those rumblings. Those tried and true butterfly flitters that happen only several times, if at all, in one’s life.
“She speaks of being between worlds trapped in hell, a purgatory she calls it,” the Queen continued, “of no past, present or future. The two of you held captive in a land where no land exists. And then, in an instant, magic brings you here, to our kingdom. It plays with the mind. She speaks these things and I don’t understand any of it – your magic. King Robert’s castle was not in view and then it appeared,” she states.
The Queen became even more serious for a moment and in a low voice she asked, “Lucky . . . does the heart feel for my sister?”
Lucky remained silent.
“Please,” the Queen added, “if the heart pines, I beg you for careful thought. My fear is that a heart can feel such pain, like the pain in her mouth. You have kindly removed the pain from her mouth. I implore you do not add back pain to the heart.
Promise me Sire Lucky.”
Lucky looked down, looked back up and softly said, “Queen Alexandra, I would not bring pain to your sister’s heart with malice. There is a fondness that I feel, my heart to hers, but I do not know the Princess. She is a beautiful lady and her beauty is hard to ignore.”
This was by far the longest conversation that Lucky had held to date with the Queen. One moment she was excited like a little girl over a new toy and the next, she exhibited such confidence and assurance.
The Queen looked off into the distance for a moment and then turned back toward Lucky.
“I suspect,” she said, “that you are a true wizard, Lucky, as you have shown us great magic, but my mind tells me that what you can do with your magic, many other people in your land, in your time, can do also. If I am right, that means that your time is a time of many wizards, am I not correct?”
Lucky could not argue with that logic. She was right. The Queen was smart and that clearly showed now.
“Yes, you are of sharp mind, dear Queen, and it leads you properly. “Everyone in my time is a wizard and most can do what I do, with one exception.”
“What would that be Lucky?”
“I can journey through time, in time, to other lands, other kingdoms. So here is my story, should you request the tale.”
“I do so request the tale,” the Queen answered.
“Well,” Lucky began, “someone, another sire, attempted to make short my breath, to dispense with me. Those learned men, the doctors, took this,” he said pointing to his skull, “and put it together as new. They did this using extreme magic and are skilled craftsmen. When I awoke and the head sickness was no longer in my body, my mind and body felt differently. I saw things that others did not. My mind and eyes became aware that I can journey to places long ago. My mind is still learning what my body can and cannot do. It is my thought that no other man in my land can do this. Not only do I have the magic of potions, but I have the magic of movement, of travel. I can move from your time to mine with ease. No man can claim that magic but me.”
“Why do you speak these things to me?” the Queen asked.
“Because it may serve you, and the King, well. This magic, dear Queen, cannot be used if others learn of it. I ask your vow of secrecy regarding this matter.”
Queen Alexandra nodded in understanding.
“May I offer a thought?” Lucky inquired. “I would love to speak to Krystina and whilst I do enjoy the presence of the Queen, I do not wish the King’s wrath upon me.”
The Queen smiled, gave her horse a slight tap, and trotted off to join her husband, already riding ahead, in front of the carriage.
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br /> Lucky dropped back a bit to allow the carriage to catch up with him. The Princess, though resting, became alert as she sensed a presence beside her. She leaned her head outside the curtain and smiled.
“Dear wizard,” she said, “would you care to dismount your horse and rest a while inside the Princess’s carriage? I do not desire to be alone now that my dear sister has abandoned me,” she chuckled, “and besides, I have many curiosities for you.”
“Why, of course,” Lucky answered. It took only seconds as he jumped from his horse, passed the horse off to one of the King’s men, and with one fluid motion, firmly planted his left foot onto the platform outside the moving carriage and entered right foot first. He looked at Krystina for a moment. Her eyes were simply beautiful. It was time to break the uncomfortable silence.
“So, Your Highness, what questions may I address?” he asked.
“Well,” she responded, “I was ill when you took me and I fully expected to depart. What magic is it that restored my health? And where went the illness in my mouth? Teeth so beautiful have replaced it. What magic did you supervise?”
Lucky was patient with her and even though he had just completed this same line of interrogation with the Queen, he was quite happy to do so again and besides, it was a good excuse to remain in the carriage . . . and near her. So, on and on, he spoke as she hung on his every word, barely interrupting, hardly questioning.
The King and Queen could not help but hear and notice the laughter emanating from inside the carriage and once in a while; they would trade a look of approval.
Lucky explained their adventure in detail and waited for a response.
“Do you have any other questions?” he finally asked.
“The visions were true,” Princess Krystina answered. “I dreamt of a strangely dressed man, his hand inside my mouth, whilst holding strange sticks. And I dreamt of horseless carriages and houses flying through the sky. I dreamt of a dungeon, not unlike the ones we have in my sister’s kingdom. I was alone, but then you came. You gave comfort and gave your honor that my safety was your desire, that I would once again see my sister. But . . . my body would not listen when I beckoned it to move. I was so very frightened. Death visited my door. Then, like that,” she said as she snapped her finger, “you made the castle appear from nowhere and I arrived to my sister.”