The Illusions In Between

by J M Robison

  “Enough to ask if they speak English, and if not, to ask them to direct me to someone who can. I’m looking at pictures, and for the word Illuminati, in case one has been spotted.”

  And this is why I brought him along. Banned from society, I’m short on knowing seemingly simple tasks like travel, non-English currency, and newspapers. Back when I was a younghede, every morning at noon, we’d all gather in Village Center to hear the town crier holler the most recent event that might affect our lives and all those events that would for certain effect the king’s life.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We shall be in Paris soon enough.”

  “Why did you prohibit me from hunting that small furry animal? Is it not good eating?”

  “Tis not a human thing to do. Ye must act as human as possible.”

  He grumbles dramatically and lays on the floor, curling into a ball, tucking his nose under his arm.

  “Ye hath been quiet so far, Joseara. Everything a’right?”

  She’d been resting in the corner closest to the window, one knee folded into her chest while she picked her fingernails with her knife. At my question, she sits up straighter, tucking the knife away into her sleeve, I see, deliberately taking her time answering my question.

  “I don’t know how to respond to that.” She glances at Jaicom, who appears intent on perusing a language he cannot read. “Because I don’t want you to think me ungrateful.”

  “Ungrateful?”

  She delays another minute. “You saved my life. I am forever grateful. The Fae Realm is an amazing place, and I am unburdened from so many hardships I had in England. I had to steel most anything I needed because…” She side-glances Jaicom. His eyes flick her way, but I don’t think she sees. She doesn’t have to explain.

  I nod to show I heard what she didn’t say.

  She lowers her eyes. “Despite the wonders of the Fae Realm, sometimes I wish…I had died. In the fire. Or by…”

  “My father.” Jaicom snaps another page open on the newspaper.

  She looks at me, her pretty eyes the only thing I see above a shroud covering her head and everything below her cheekbones. “I’m lonely there. No use living out of the Fae Realm, either. Worse still, because at least I have friends in the Fae Realm who don’t judge my ugly face. So, I guess I’m not lonely, because I have friends. It’s just…” She shakes her head. “Never mind. Just a girl problem you don’t want to hear.”

  She wants a lover. And I’ve no idea how to comfort her in having known that ache myself once. So, like an idiot, I say nothing. I look out the window.

  A knock on the door and Jaicom rises to his feet as if eager to open it and flush out the awkwardness, tripping over Varlith’s prone body on the floor and slamming into the door with an oath. Varlith snarls at him. Jaicom hisses back.

  “Better answer the door before our guest believes there’s a traveling menagerie in here,” I direct.

  Jaicom straightens his coat, nurses his elbow, and opens the door.

  “Voulez-vous du thé et des gateaux?” says a cheery female.

  “Parlez-vous anglais?” Jaicom asks.

  “Non.”

  Jaicom points to various things on the server’s food cart. Varlith rises and hovers over Jaicom’s shoulder, nostrils flaring as he sniffs. The server’s eyes drift downward, and she blushes.

  Our final order is a cup of tea for each of us and a tray of hot cakes. Varlith laps at his. I hadn’t noticed before how abnormally long his tongue is. Varlith looks nothing like a human. I feel it’s only our desire making us believe he looks human, and everyone else denying the fact he looks like a devil.

  Jaicom resumes reading the paper, Joseara, and Varlith both doze, so I’m the one who first notices the train slowing down. I look out the window, but the city Jaicom had described to me is nowhere in sight. Must be an unexpected stop at another station.

  Jaicom looks at me over the top of his paper. “This is not good.”

  “What?” I look out the window. The train continues to slow. I absolutely don’t need anything else to go wrong in my life right now.

  Jaicom tosses his paper aside, waking Joseara up with the noise. Varlith doesn’t move.

  “Prepare to be boarded, and your baggage searched,” Jaicom warns.

  The protests across Europe. The innkeeper warned us the train would be stopped. As I see it, so long as the train isn’t harboring trouble-makers, we’ll be back on our way.

  The train finally stops with a screeching of tracks. I don’t see anything even resembling a train station, just men on horseback trampling around a field of sunflowers, holding long sticks.

  A whistle shrills down the corridor outside our booth’s door.

  “Descendez du train,” shouts a loud voice, followed by another loud whistle blow. “Descendez du train…” The voice outside our door continues this pattern with whistles down the hallway. Jaicom opens the door and looks out.

  “People are exiting the train.” Joseara points out the window. I look. Men and women have started gathering outside in the field.

  “Bother,” Jaicom grumbles. “Keep all valuables on your person but leave your bags.” He snatches his hat and places it on his head, following after Joseara, who opens the outside booth door and steps out.

  I nudge Varlith awake with my boot. “We must dismount.”

  The dragon rolls onto his hands and feet, stretching in the same manner I’ve seen cats do. “I’m hungry.”

  I ignore his complaint and step outside, remembering last minute to illusion an English coat and pantaloons over my long blue wizard coat, because the illusion fell off some time after we boarded the train. Illusion spells only last until I forget I’ve done an illusion spell.

  The March weather I step into is fair but damp. Joseara folds her arms and kicks at the dirt. Looking down the line of people with us, I see the horsemen with sticks dismount, speaking French, and directing people to put their hands on the train. A mounted Frenchmen looks at us, though I don’t have to understand his language to know what he wants us to do. We all put our hands on the train.

  I look to my right and see one of the French horsemen running his hands over and around one of the male passengers, giving the woman just a cursory glance before moving on.

  They’re searching the passengers. Despite knowing we’ve nothing to hide, my stomach won’t relax. Suppose I still cling onto past traumatic experiences involving strangers whose touch locked me in the undercroft, and more strangers still who killed me in front of yet more strangers.

  A few male passengers are pulled away from the train, clustered together with horsemen guarding them. They look like normal people to me. My gut hardens.

  The Frenchman reaches Jaicom on my right. Jaicom grumbles as the Frenchman’s hands run all over his body.

  “Fingers away from my purse,” Jaicom snaps. “There’s no gun in there.”

  The man replies in French and steps sideways to Joseara. His eyes scan up and down her body and indicates she should face him. She does, and he motions for her to remove her shroud. The man flinches at her unmasked face and waves his hand, coming to stand behind me.

  I brace against large hands running up and down my boots and legs, muttering to myself that he’s just doing his job and it’s no direct insult to me. He slaps my back and chest. His hands run into the hard amulet through my tunic. He yanks on the chain behind my neck, pulling the blood-filled gem into plain view.

  I spin around to knock his hands away. Two other Frenchmen slam me into the side of the train.

  “Don’t touc–” But I doubt they would have listened had I said it in French.

  One of them fists my amulet–whether to investigate the validity of my reaction to them touching it or to plump his salary, it doesn’t matter. A burst of air emits a shriek, and a Faewraith whooshes in front of us.

  Those standing closest to it step back in that momentary brain dump of reality that tries to make sense of that which is impossible
to understand. The Faewraith opens its heavy maw and dives at a man who’s stopped blinking. I suck in air to shout a spell to save him, but Varlith beats me to it and snaps the Faewraith between his massive…dragon…jaws.

  A screaming pandemic erupts into a crescendo of terror from what must be every passenger disembarked from the train, and the French, “Diable!” punctuated throughout. Age, disabilities, and poor shoe choice all forgotten in a massive scatter back into the train, across the tracks, or into the field, wherever they can get away from the dragon.

  Varlith’s green scales and wings flash under the sunlight as he munches joyfully on the crying mass of blood and bone which used to be a recognizable Faewraith.

  I stand as if struck stupid, watching this situation I created spiral out of my control until a pressurized crack to my left nearly deafens me. I duck and cover my ears. A French soldier stands with the end of his wood stick pressed into his shoulder and pointed at Varlith. The last time I heard that sound was when Jaicom got shot in the leg with what he called a gun.

  The startling crack comes again, and a burst of smoke exits the end of his stick. At the same time, Varlith–who’s swallowed the Faewraith–yips and stumbles backward, shaking his head.

  Joseara slams her body into the soldier, knocking him to the ground. She grabs his stick and runs after another soldier who’s pointing his stick at Varlith. That same crack and Varlith barks, flaring his wings out. By now, everyone has either bunked back in the train or is running rampant through the fields in all directions. Varlith pulls back his lips, and with a deep growl that shakes all legends apart, he opens his fangs and vomits a brilliant spiral of flame upon the soldier.

  Joseara stops short and throws her body to the dirt, covering her head. The soldier drops his stick and lifts his arms, flames curling around his chest and arms.

  I clinch Jaicom’s sleeve and relocate us to Joseara who’s standing back up. I grab her wrist, look at the spot of ground directly in front of Varlith, and relocate us. We appear in front of him just as he inhales.

  “Varlith!” I wave my arms. “Varlith, stop!”

  He’s angry. Dragon angry, bringing to life the reason why medieval knights thought it a feat of heroics to kill them to near extinction. He closes his mouth and flares nostrils at me.

  I relocate the three of us onto Varlith’s back. His long neck swivels his head to look at us.

  “Fly!” I shout.

  He does so, spinning dirt and sunflower stalks into a vortex beneath him.

  “Fly forward until I tell ye to stop,” I holler against the wind buffeting my ponytail. I force my voice to remain neutral, though anger flares up, needing something to blame. But there is nothing to blame. Varlith likely saved me from admitting to too many witnesses that I know magic.

  A ribbon of thick blood slides up and over Varlith’s left shoulder. I watch the racing blood stop against my pantaloons. The black fabric soaks it up.

  Varlith coughs and spits, and I’m only reassured the guns didn’t mortally wound him because dragons are extremely hard to kill.

  I look behind us. I wait until the train is swallowed behind a hilly rise before I shout, “Land here!”

  He descends into a barren field, sending more tributaries of blood up and over his shoulder. He puffs his wings and lands. I slide off first, racing around to Varlith’s chest where he’s licking madly at a congealed wound. I see another one at the base of his neck.

  Jaicom dismounts with an animalistic growl. Grabbing his cane, he twists both hands around it as if he might run it through the first person who gets close.

  “Mut mith thith!” Varlith cries, and it takes me a second to realize it’s not my failed spell which had once enabled him to speak English, but that his jaw and lips in dragon form cannot bend and move to make English words.

  “Morph into thy human body,” I tell him. “I can help ye.”

  Varlith whimpers but does as instructed, though without much concern to making it look as human as possible. His skin is tinged green with distinct patches of scales, shrunken wings, a tail, long neck…he still looks dragon, except much smaller and standing on two legs instead of four.

  “What is this!” he wails, able to continue licking on the bullet hole in his chest because of his long neck. “Something is inside my body and making me frustrated with discomfort!”

  “It’s pain. Stop licking for a minute, and I’ll help it feel better.”

  His body shakes with attempts to not lick at it. I spread the wound open with both hands. The bullet impacted hardened scales, so it did not penetrate very deep. I relocate the metal nub into my hand.

  “Ye’ve one more on ye neck.” I pull the bullet out of there, too, and stand back as Varlith’s long tongue licks over both wounds as if to lick them and the pain away.

  I sit on the dirt, dropping both bullets, leaning back on my hands. Brittle wheat chaff from last year’s harvest bites into my palms. Jaicom has repurposed his cane back to supporting his weight away from his bad leg and hobbles over to me. I lie on my back and close my eyes. Arms folded. Ankles crossed.

  Jaicom’s shoe kicks dirt against my ear from where he stops. His heavy breathing has me concerned he’ll blow fire.

  “We’ve left our luggage.” He spits out the words as if he had to chew them down to size first.

  “Didn’t ye say to keep all valuables on ye person?”

  He hesitates, clearly knowing where I’m going with this. “I’m not wearing these same clothes to Rome and back to Valemorren. What will Clarissa think?”

  “Walk into thy house naked. She shan’t have naught to complain about.”

  Joseara stifles a snort. I crack open an eye to see Jaicom glaring at her. “How are we supposed to get to Rome now?” he whines uncharacteristically. “Wait, you know a relocation spell. Couldn’t—”

  “I have to have the destination in sight, and though I can spell us short distances, doing so too frequently without proper rest in between shall spike the blood.”

  His slow stare tells me he has no idea what “spiked blood” is, but doesn’t seek out an explanation. He plops onto the dirt next to me, daunted. His unblinking, faraway stare and disregard to the clean clothes he fussed about this morning bear testament to the exact level our new predicament has touched him. “We’re riding the dragon to Rome, aren’t we?”

  “We shall have to travel at night and stop every so often at villages to ask for directions.”

  Jaicom brings his knees to his chest and rests his arms over them. Varlith crouches to all fours and lifts his back foot, seemingly to scratch his head with it like a dog. Unsuccessful, he morphs into a dragon, the transformation traced by the seamless stretch and bend of flesh which forms him. He uses his hind leg to scratch behind his shoulder.

  “I really want to blame you for this.” Jaicom digs a small stone out of the dirt and rolls it around in his hand. “But it’s unfounded, so I haven’t yet. I didn’t have to agree to come with you. I, in fact, wanted to because your wife was bloody kidnapped. I can’t even blame you for bringing a dragon, because that dragon ate the Faewraith. And that was unpreventable because the Frenchman searched us, and the bastard thought to take your amulet because they are thieves as well as cowards.

  “So, really, the only person I can blame for me stranded in the middle of France on foot without my luggage is my great-great Whaerin ancestors for stealing your amulet, and the burden of that trickled down to me. But then I helped free you, so if I had not, you’d still be locked in your castle, and I wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of a French field on foot without my luggage. So, the only reasonable person I have proof to blame is myself.”

  “When we get to Rome, I shall ask the pope to make ye a martyr for thy sacrifice.”

  “I don’t want to be a martyr. I want to not be stranded.”

  “Ye are not stranded.”

  “I don’t consider spells and a dragon as valuable sources of transportation.”

  Varlith stops
licking madly at his wounds and lays on his back, rolling around to worry a trough into the dirt to fit his body. I should be more concerned about his dragon form, but I don’t see any dwellings or roadways in any direction which might bring someone to notice us. In truth? I’ve narrowed down my worries into a single, sharp point, and the only room I have left on that point is taken up with a desperate need to get Brynn and my son back. I could be sitting on the streets in the middle of Paris, and I’d feel as indifferent.

  I look about for Joseara. She sits by herself, staring into the distance, her back to us. Her last statement to me on the train brings worries that she might consider taking her own life.

  Varlith stops rolling around and stands, shaking off the dirt. With a deep exhale, he blows fire straight into the dry stubble. Massive curls of flame rise to life and surge forward across the field. He roars in delight.

  “Great!” Jaicom throws his hands up. “Now we’ve started France on fire!”

  Varlith inhales again.

  “No, Varlith. Fire destroys and causes pain. We don’t want to do that to anyone right now.”

  He snorts heavily at me and lies down, eyes focused on Jaicom, close enough his exhaled breath flutters Jaicom’s coat.

  The running fire doesn’t have enough fuel to continue, and putters out.

  “We can’t travel till nightfall,” I tell them. “Best to sleep now.”

  Jaicom has the audacity to laugh at me. “Sleep? On the ground?”

  “More comfortable than a stone, undercroft floor,” I snap, then immediately repair with a, “Sorry, Jaicom. I know ‘tis not what ye are used to.”

  He sits stiffly, clearly hanging onto my abrupt statement. It’s hard for me to sympathize with those who haven’t had it as hard as me. But that’s not Jaicom’s fault. If it wasn’t for his help, I’d still be in the undercroft, sleeping on that stone floor.

  He nods once. “You’re right. Sorry about my complaints. It could always be worse. It could be snowing on us, too, eh?” He grins at me to show he’s not slighted by my statement. He lies on his side, still wearing his top hat, and tucks both hands under his cheek. He grins with a fake yawn, smacks his lips, and closes his eyes. “Mmmm. This is delightful.”