A thing you must always keep in mind is that wizards and dragons don’t like each other.

 

I think it’s a matter of eating. Wizards don’t, and dragons do, and that is a basic impasse neither can overcome.

The wizard and the dragon looked each other in the eye over the waist high steel fencing and I could see the calculations going through their minds. I couldn’t make head or tail of what the wizard was thinking (wizards are funny, and if I could read their minds, I wouldn’t want to) but the dragon was probably thinking about lunch. That’s the other bit about wizards and dragons and eating, the dragons don’t mind eating the wizards, and if that wouldn’t set you back in a business, I don’t want to meet you over the dinner table.

I sat on my stool and smoked, and watched the both of them. Which ever one made the first aggressive move, I was hitting him with my walking stick, and if he got up I was hitting him again. But I said nothing. I’ve been dragon handling for twenty years (I started early) and you have to wait until they make the first move.

Finally, the dragon narrowed his eyes. Hello, he said.

Wizards in general do not understand dragons. This wizard was no exception, but he was brighter than most and caught something. His reply was as cautious as the dragon’s. “Hello.” Then he looked at me.

The dragon looked at me too.

I sighed. “He says hello as well.”

The wizard looked at the dragon and back to me. “Can I ask him something?”

I waved my cigarette, wafting blue smoke in his general vicinity. “No skin off my nose. Ask away.”

“Do you know . . . .?”

“Ask him, not me.”

He stopped “Not you?”

“Not my business.”

“But you told me what he said.”

“Yes.”

“So that implies that it is your business, at least a little bit.”

What the hell does he want?

“What the hell do you want?”

The wizard glanced at the dragon. A smile flickered across his face. “Thank you.” It wasn’t directed at me. “I need to get to Glandrealt.”

The dragon laughed, silently. This is very threatening to those not aware of the laughing aspect. His jaws stretched so wide apart that they cracked, and his throat muscles moved to make a low huff hff hufff noise and the greenish saliva dripping from his upper fangs fell to the very tip of the lower in long, oozing lines.

The wizard backed up a step and narrowed his eyes. He examined first the upper set of teeth, a good two feet above his heat, and then the lower jaw that just brushed the floor. And then he tilted his head enough to look the dragon in the eye and said, “I didn’t think it was that funny.”

The dragon’s mouth snapped shut and he started the wizard. I like you, wizard man. I mean, a bit. He looked at me. Tell him that I like him.

“Not if you’re going to be rude to me.”

Rachellina, please.

“Zucchini says that he likes you. A bit. But he still thinks you needing to go to Glandrealt is ridiculous and not really his problem.”

I didn’t say that.

I looked at him.

But I should have. Completely right. Continue.

The wizard watched our exchange. “I am willing to pay you in Tarka marks.”

The dragon snickered. Snickers are very different from a laugh. They usually involve fire. For a second, the fencing glowed, The moron is offering me gold? What next, virgins.

“I take it that is not sufficient? I could also sacrifice—“

“If you’re offering virgins, you can stop right now.”

He stopped, stared at me for a second, and then grinned. He looked five years younger. Wizards almost always look young, unless they look old, but the expression made him look less wizard-young and more like a nineteen-year-old charmer. “I wouldnt’ offer to sacrifice virgins. For one, virgins are in rather short supply right now. For a second, I’m rather squeamish around blood. Makes me ill. Completely unsuited to any sort of human sacrifice. Real shame, too, my master said I could have quite a talent for it.”

Zucchini was grinning now, and panting in amusement. I like this man more and more. Tell me, man, why are you trying to get to Glandrealt?

The wizard’s head snapped back to the dragon. It was getting a bit unnerving. I’d never met a wizard before who heard them at all. “It’s very important to me.”

“Why?”

Why?

The wizard ran a hand through his hair. “I’d tell you that when the king gives you a mission you have to follow it through and that you shouldn’t ask questions, but you look like honest Northeastern citizens and you know that’s full of shit. I’d tell you that this is wizard business, prophecy and all that such, tell you when it’s done, no questions now please, but then you’d throw me out on my ass. I’d tell you that my beloved little sister, surviving for five year on nothing but chocolate ice cream has written to tell me she won’t eat another drop and will die of despair if I don’t show up to her birthday party tomorrow, but if you believe that you’re crazy. So all I can do, I can ask you not to ask me that question and expect a response, but I can ask you to help me anyway, because that I am asking from the bottom of my heart.”

He looked at me. Most wizards have dark blue eyes, the good ones at any rate, but his were pale blue, unnaturally blue, like the shell of a robin’s egg or the sliver of sky at the edge of the sunset that isn’t any other color. And his eyes trapped me and wouldn’t blink.

Don’t look a wizard in the eye!

I pulled away just in time. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t, but my heart was beating too fast. I reached out the cigarette in my hand and the burning stick was shaking. “Smoke?”

Most dragon handlers smoked. Dragons don’t really trust someone that doesn’t but they have the advantage of fireproof lungs. Most wizards don’t. Yet another barrier to long-term positive relations.

The wizard shook his head. “No.” He looked at the dragon. “Your answer?”

Damn, he’s got cool eyes. Zucchini leaned closer, and his eyes widened. Like the rest of him, they were green. The dragon blinked first, turned and waddled away. Tell him yes. I’m going to get the lazy saddle boys moving. Sometimes, I swear they take all day.

The wizard stared after the dragon. He swallowed. It looked slow and painful. He turned to me, but there was a tightness in his movements that hadn’t been there before. He forced a smile onto his face, and it made his cheeks look like a skull. “He said no then?”

“Why do you need to go to Glandrealt. There’s nothing there. Rocks. A hot spring. Nothing.”

He jerked his head, side to side in one quick movement. “I answered that question already.”

“I suppose you did.”

“I should be going then.”

Zucchini stuck his head around the side. Are you coming too, Rachellina, or should I tell them to just put on the single?

“You’ll want to stick around for a while. It doesn’t take that long.”

“What?”

Rachellina! I can’t be waiting all day. I have a wizard to terrify!

I craned my neck around. “Saddle the double!”

A saddle boy appeared in the shadows, looked at me in alarm, and then vanished again. The dragon chuckled to himself (again, another thing entirely from laughing or snickering: more of a rasping rumble with barred teeth), and followed into the saddling enclosure.

I turned back to the wizard. “So, how many marks are we talking about?”

His expression broke into a dozen little pieces and under them he looked a little shocked. “He’s taking me?”

“He’s taking us.”

He nodded. “How much do you want?”

 

Both dragons and wizards are magical creatures. But, you knew that already, or you should. How else would a dragon be able to fly? How else would a wizard use magic, hear prophecies, and get through life without eating?

The wizards, instead of munching their way through life, absorb ambient energy and save time. Dragons could theoretically do the same. Granted, wizards can eat, just like dragons are physically capable of vomiting, but, in both cases, it’s a completely voluntary choice. If you ever see a fat wizard, you know that he’s particularly fond of the king’s brandy, or he’s found a favorite midnight snack in a little avocado cheesecake, but rest assured he doesn’t need any of these things to remain a perfectly healthy, though thin, human being. In contrast to the relatively innocent effects of wizards eating, if you see a dragon vomit, run. Their lungs are fire proof. Do you really want to think about what happens in their stomachs?

Dragons are particularly interested in involuntary regurgitation, because they don’t do it. So, when a dragon has a first-time flyer strapped to his back, he tends to get a little creative trying to see if he can inspire the effect first hand. At times like these I lean back in the straps and imagine that I’m in a particularly fast moving hammock. I checked the wizard once, and he was doing well, ghost pale with a white knuckled grip on the spinal ridge which is the only secure handhold these double saddles really give you in a dragon of Zucchini’s size. Then I closed my eyes and the dragon went into a triple roll. At one point, I think I fell asleep.

I woke up when we plomped onto the ground. I shook the sleep form my eyes, and unstrapped myself.

“Good landing,” I shouted and worked my way closer to the still wizard.

Zucchini preened. Thank you, I thought it was a bit smoother than last time too.

I unstrapped the wizard quickly and then waited for him to move. “I think you killed him. Hey, wizard, are you okay? We’re here. It’s okay now.”

He raised his head slowly. His throat was try. “We’re here?”

“Yup?”

He moved like a once-dead, now reanimated man getting off the dragon. When he slid carefully down the side and his feet hit the ground, I thought he was going to fall over. But the he looked up carefully. “Thank you.”

The dragon twisted his head around. He’s still alive?

The wizard visibly gathered himself, looked around the hot spring splattered rocks where we had landed, and then headed off into the mist.

“Apparently,” I muttered. “Excuse me. I’m going to watch him, make sure he doesn’t fall over or anything.”

I thought I killed him. I mean, I did six barrel roll. I was dizzy. Yeah, you watch out for him, Rachellina. After all, there’s still the fly back. Zucchini chuckled to himself as I followed the wizard into the mist and the heat of the hot springs.

I found him sitting on a rock by the central geyser, watching the falling mist intently.

“I thought you might come,” he said.

I felt uncomfortable. “Wanted to make sure you were okay. That was quite a –“

“Do you see it?”

Involuntarily, and I looked. And I did.

“A rift,” I breathed. “But, but that can’t be. They don’t just happen. I mean, when they do the government steps in. they regulate things like that. I mean, that’s the only freaking use for government, to regulate the rifts. I mean, it can’t be a rift.”

But it was. Visible only because of the steam coming off the hot water below, the break in the dimensions shivered and danced before my eyes like a pieces of spider silk dancing in a breeze. But spider silk should not leave behind a raw look, like an open cut, when it changes positions too much. It shouldn’t scare you.

“I told you that king’s business was unbelievable,” he said.

“Why aren’t there guards? Why isn’t there a fortress or something?”

“Do you know where it goes?”

“Why the hell would I know something like that? What the hell are you doing here?

“There was a prophecy. A small one. It would have gotten written down, and forgotten for a century or so and then a secretary would have come in and cleaned it out and they would have wondered what the hell that one turned out to be that they missed, but had my name in it. So they gave it to me and asked me what it meant, and I told them that I needed a hundred marks, or a dragon, and they didn’t ask questions.”

“This is wizard business?”

“That’s the amazing thing about prophecies, wizards don’t ask questions because they assume that you know what you’re doing, or if you don’t they’re not going to be able to help. And any prophecy that they have that tells them not to listen to you, they probably don’t have the foggiest idea what it means because most of them are so damn vague you could work code-breaking on them for years and never get clue.”

“If we had know this was blood wizard business, we would never have done the job. I’m getting out of here right now. Zucchini!”

“Do you really think that I care about that?” He looked at me and smiled and he looked nineteen again and in pain. “I know what I’m doing.”

He stood up and stepped into the rift.

I didn’t think and reached for him a bit too late or much too early, depending on your opinion. Hand wrapped around his wrist, I got sucked in beside him.

I’ve been told the transition is like falling. Like drowning. Like pain or like fire, all depending on the rift, but this one was like stepping through a door with a bead curtain. One moment I was in Glandrealt and then next I was in a white room and I had an uncontrollable need to wipe the cobwebs off my face. There were no cobwebs, but I scrubbed for a good minute, and when I looked up, bright flashes of color still playing behind my eyes, the wizard was beside the bed and I could see the girl.

She lay very still, and her eyes were half open and a long clear tub connected a half-empty bag of clear liquid to her arm.

The wizard sat by her side and his eyes never left her face. One hand traveled along the clear tub, up to the bad, and sent it to gently swaying. “Nothing but chocolate ice cream. Five years. Chocolate ice cream.” He laughed. It was broken. “Prophecies are cruel sometimes. They have a fine sense of irony. A fine sense of incoherence, and yet when you arrive at the date and the time and the place with the right people and the right thoughts about you, well then they all make sense don’t they?”

“She’s your sister.”

“My beloved little sister. And today is her birthday. I guess we’re her birthday party.” He made the same sound as before, but I wasn’t sure any more that it was a laugh. Broken class on broken glass on skin.

I sat down next to him. “I thought wizards—“

“We have family. Anything else is a lie. A misdirection. A prevarication. Do you know where wizards come from?”

I swallowed a line about a boy wizard and girl wizard having little baby wizards. “No.”

“Join the club. Some are born. Some just show up. Do you know how long I’ve been a wizard?”

“No.”

“Five years. And it’s her birthday today.” He was shaking. “Five years, and they only told me now. Five years, and they realized it had my name on it. And it’s her birthday today.”

You don’t touch wizards. They absorb energy from the dimension, they are beings of power and might, they can destroy whole cities with a word or a thought. They think eating is cute.

I sat next to him and stared at her face.

When her eyes opened, I thought I was hallucinating. And then her head slowly turned, and those eyes, bright unnatural blue, focused slowly on his face. “Kevin?”

Salt water dripped from his chin to the blankets. He reached out a hand, tried to say something, failed.

She smiled, and she looked tired, pale, seventeen. “Kevin. You came back. I’m glad you came back. I’ll be with you soon.”

He still didn’t blink, he couldn’t look away. “No you won’t. Stay with me here. Don’t leave me.”

“I could hear them the whole time. They thought I couldn’t but I could. But, don’t worry I’ll be with you soon. Kevin. I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“You didn’t. You never did. Even that time, you remember that time we went ice skating, and you took forever with the skates and you couldn’t find them? But you never, never. . . “

She smiled at him, smiled sweetly, and then her eyes lost focus. They remained open.

His closed. Quickly, trembling they opened and closed a dozen times in a heart beat. A horrible, shrieking noise filled the room, and he stood, strode around the room and pulled a cord from the wall violently. He collapsed to his knees at the side of the bed and reached for her hand, scrabbled for it, but his shook so much he couldn’t catch anything, couldn’t hold anything.

I reached over and clasped their hands together. His shook. Hers were already cool to the touch.

“Don’t,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to me.

“We have to go,” I said.

“You never kept me waiting.”

“We have to go.”

I held onto him, pulled him away.

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

“We have go.”

“No. I can hear her. She’s still here. She’s calling? Can’t you hear it? Please, can’t you hear it? You can hear dragons. There are dragon, and wizards and amazing things and I can hear her calling. Please, I can hear her calling.”

I pulled him away, because I could hear a voice through the rift.

“We have to go.”

“No. No.”

“She’s not here anymore. She was, but she’s not anymore.”

“Why didn’t they tell me? Why didn’t they tell me sooner? I could have . . . I could have come. I could have come sooner.”

I could hear Zucchini through the rift. I knew where it was, the feel of him, where the rest of the room was only white and dead. I moved forward and he began to fight me.

“No no no!”

He got away.

Wizards, like dragons, don’t have names. Do you think that Zucchini’s sires looked at him fresh from the egg and thought “Good lord, our hatchling looks just like a green variety of smooth skinned summer squash! What a good name!” They live on nicknames, wrapping them around themselves until the true core, the being is forgotten but not gone, buried an never touched but always there, waiting.

“Kevin,” I said.

He stopped, six inches from the bed, shaking.

“Kevin, she might be waiting.”

He didn’t move, but he held still while I took him by the arm, and pulled him toward the rift. The second before we hit, when the beady/cobwebby feeling just touched my face, he pinned me with those unnatural eyes.

“Are you lying to me, Rachellina?”

I met his gaze and felt for the rift with my other hand. “I hope not.”

And then we were through.

 

It hurt more this time. Mainly because we fell into the hot spring on the way through. Chortling merrily (chortling is somewhere between chuckling and laughing), Zucchini swam in after us and fished us out before we boiled to death, completely ruining the saddle for flying that day. Later, we sat by the campfire roasting marshmallows, leaning against Zucchini (who was dozing with a massive hot spring fish safely in his stomach) and the saddle was laid out for hopeful overnight drying. The wizard, curled over himself, stared into the fire. I watched him to make sure he blinked every once in a while.

What happened to him?

Zucchini sounded subdued. “His sister just died,” I whispered.

I didn’t know wizards had sisters.

“Neither did he.”

You know what you should do? You should feed him. Food makes me feel better. That’s what I did when my sister died.

“You ate her?”

Of course not.  I don’t remember who ate her. I had a horse. It was delicious. But seriously, you should feed him.

“He’s a wizard.”

So? He can take it.

I took the stick out of the fire and examined the marshmallow. It was brown and crunchy on the outside, but not burned. A perfect marshmallow. I looked at the wizard.

“Wizard.”

No response. I thought for a second, rotating the stick, and then said it.

“Kevin.”

He jerked and looked at me. He blinked. “What?”

I wiggled the marshmallow at him. “Do you want a marshmallow?”

He stared at it as thought he had never seen it’s like in his life. “A marshmallow?”

Pure sugar, every wizard should try one once in his life, Zucchini mumbled contentedly.

The wizard, Kevin, looked at me. “Did you mean what you said. Was it true?”

“It could be true.”

He stared at the marshmallow for a long moment. “I would like a marshmallow.”

I gave him that one and started another and Zucchini purred softly at my back. And the dragon, the wizard, and I sat down and had a bite to eat, and we were, for the second at least, content and still.