A bald eagle. I looked at the gate. A whitetail deer. I was in North America.
Magic moved the world’s left to the right, and its right to the left. And magic murdered.
I wiped at my face. Crying again helped no one. Crying did not heal the deep bruise on my thigh and crying did not help me to “understand” the truth of this new land.
And crying made no difference to Chihiro.
What difference would developing the image make? Why did I think I’d learn anything? The friend I thought of as my sister was gone.
I would never again step foot in Japan, just as I would never again step foot in London, or San Francisco, or Berlin, or Singapore. I would never again walk the open country outside Moscow, or the Highlands of Scotland.
Those parts of the world had moved on without me.
I looked out at the garden wall once again, then back at the camera. Let her be alive, I thought. Let her be happy.
My sister. My friend.
I left the camera where it was, and limped toward my garden gate.
The new trees surrounding my cottage grew in a wavering, stream-like pattern toward the base of the knoll, and formed a hypnotic canopy over a free-form trail. I found a knotted-yet-strong stick and carefully made my way through the moonlight and into the forest.
A raccoon skittered into the underbrush. He snarled and glared at me as if I’d interrupted a game of chess, or strip poker, or life and death hopscotch. With raccoons, one could never tell.
The brambles nipped at my ankles. The ground alternated between uneven and damp, and rock-strewn and dusty. But I continued into the dark woods.
Perhaps I would come across a bear. I could think of worse ways to die.
I choked on yet another sob. It tangled around my breastbone and coiled around my lungs, and my entire chest felt as if it were about to melt.
Yet I stumbled forward into a small moon-bright clearing.
A small critter—a fox, perhaps—watched me from the trees across the way. Moonlight pooled in a hollow at the center of the clearing, a low depression full of small white blossoms.
One afternoon, Chihiro had dragged me from my cottage. “Come see the cherry blossoms!” she’d said.
The next sob did not catch. The next sob filled the clearing.
I dropped to my knees in the patch of watery blooms. The bruise on my thigh screamed and I groaned a response, but there was nothing I could do. It needed time to heal.
Everything needed time to heal.
I rolled over onto my back and looked up at the full North American sky. The moon, too, gleamed like ice floating in the warm summer air.
The bright moon was as much a part of my enchantment as the spells that moved the world. The moon laid bare the negative spaces between the positives taken by my enchanted camera obscura. The moon turned her silver eye to the truth I was supposed to understand.
I should go home. I should develop Chihiro’s last photo. I should at least do that for her.
Did I care if the knowledge I sought—the ability to identify my cottage’s magic and to anchor it to one location—floated off the surface of the magical daguerreotype plate sitting in the dirt of my garden? Did it matter? Not knowing gave me the option to believe Chihiro had survived.
I’d let the world move a million times if it meant I never had to look at the foretelling of a friend’s death ever again.
Colors danced around the bright eye of the moon first as a shimmering rose, then a light sorbet orange. Sun-kissed yellow followed, and the tender green of a new leaf. Then the clear blue of a boy’s eyes, and finally a soft sweep of petal lavender.
A dark cloud moved in front of the moon.
A burst of deep, flame orange saturated the bottom of the cloud as if Hell itself reflected onto the sky.
I closed my eyes. The cottage would pull me back soon enough, anyway, and I’d wake up in my own bed. I had no interest in the dappled natural magic of North America. I just wanted the pain to stop.
I woke to a canine tongue licking my cheek. I swatted, but the tongue moved to my arm, then my hand.
“Do you mind?” I said to the dog.
He licked me one last time, then sat on his still-wagging backside. His tail swept a doggie version of a snow angel into the patch of blooms in which we both sat.
He was a large dog, probably close to one hundred pounds, with curly, golden fur and a rounded hound face. Bright, intelligent eyes watched me closely.
The dog lifted his front paw and woofed a greeting.
I stared at the big, seemingly-friendly beast. He continued to wag his tail.
I looked around. I was still in the meadow. The cottage hadn’t pulled me back.
The enchantments must not have reached full power. When they did, the house would pull me back each evening no matter what I did or where I was.
The dog licked my arm again as if answering my question with “Let’s play!”
He really was a friendly dog. “You’re not wearing a collar.” I pointed at his neck.
He woofed again and inched toward me until he was close enough to put his big head on my lap. “Hey, hey, careful with the thigh,” I said. “I hurt myself when the world moved.”
The dog sniffed at my wound, then laid his head on my undamaged leg.
I rubbed his ears. Not much else I could do. He had me pinned to the flowers.
“You belong to someone.” He was too clean and well-fed to be a stray. “Did you slip your collar? You should go home.”
I should pick up my camera and accept the last gift of my best friend. No more sobbing. I needed to move on.
The big, golden dog raised his big, golden head and licked my cheek again.
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself.
The dog licked again.
The beginnings of a sob turned to a choked giggle. “Thank you.” I looked up at the sky. “You have to belong to someone.”
The dog half-barked, half-howled.
The giggle turned into a laugh. “I bet your name is something impressive.” I rubbed his ears again. “Regal and worthy of an empire.”
He thumped his tail through the blooms.
“We’re killing the flowers.” I patted the ground. “Not good, right?”
He woofed again.
“Okay, okay.” Slowly, I hauled my aching body to standing. Everything hurt. Everything always hurt after the world moved. Why the hell did I think sleeping in a meadow was a good idea?
But then again, I’d made a new friend.
I hugged his fluffy neck. “Chihiro was afraid of dogs.” I hugged him again. “But I think she would have liked you.”
He leaned against my side.
“What am I going to do with you?” Interacting with the locals this soon after a move often caused too many questions. Better to wait for the enchantment to unfold and “make” my cottage a long-standing part of the landscape.
Then they’d all start to think of me as part of their local color. I would become that background neighbor they saw but never talked to.
Usually.
Maybe I should stop fighting the inevitable and let the enchantment do what it always did—keep me safely locked away and others at a safe distance.
No. Giving up was the last thing Chihiro wanted me to do. Magic needed to stop moving the world. The consequences had begun to step beyond breaking my bones to breaking others’.
“I wonder if you’ll forget about me in a few days,” I said to the dog. If Chihiro had left my cottage when I told her to, she’d have forgotten about me by now.
“I’m going home,” I said. “Come or don’t, my handsome canine friend. It’s up to you.”
I picked up my walking stick and made my way toward the trees. The dog, for some unfathomable reason, decided to follow.
My touch carried little magic. I’d long wondered if my mother’s enchantments stripped out my innate, inherited magic when they moved my world, but I didn’t know, and I doubted I ever would.
>
But I could control the smoke and vapor needed to develop the plates. I could use what magic my fingers held to make an image on the silver.
I drew in the lines of this new land and I shaped them to the curlicues and waves of the vapors: Fire to light the image. Air to carry the magic. Water to lift what needed seeing above the surface of the mirror. Earth to speak the truth.
I drew my finger through the swirls, pulling them one way, then the other, to form a vapor-sigil at just the correct angle to the image.
In the corner, the candle flickered inside its red glass lantern, and gave me just enough light to do my work.
The sigil flared bright, and the vapors dropped to the plate’s surface as if pulled by the weight of the world.
It was done. The plate needed to be washed in true water, to reveal its truth.
I pulled my hoodie over my head—the cotton was light enough I wouldn’t overheat, but the morning still had a bit of chill.
I slid the plate back into its protective sleeve and made my way to the garden.
The golden dog waited under my now-ash tree. He stared up at the squirrel running the branches and occasionally yipped. The eagle was back this morning, sitting up at the top near the tree’s canopy like a huge black, white, and yellow sentinel.
The ravens, though, were gone.
I hobbled over to my garden’s pump. No matter where I ended up, the pump always worked. Cool, clean, clear water always flowed even though the pump itself—and the water—carried no overt signs of magic.
I pushed down on the handle.
Nothing came out. I pushed again, and again, nothing. I stood up straight and frowned at my well.
I threw up my hands. “Now what am I supposed to do?” How was I supposed to “understand” anything if I couldn’t fully develop my oracle?
Magic was a picky business. The lines, corners, circles, and swirls needed to be just right for a spell or enchantment to work. There was a geometry to it, an underlying set of rules that gave magic its own topography. Magic had a surface. You felt it, you knew it was there, but that surface was paper thin, on edge, and turned away from you, and thus unseen.
My oracle caught the magic light that bounced off that perpendicular surface.
“I need to rinse the plate,” I said absently. My cottage didn’t seem to care. Neither did the pump, or the tree, or my large sky-predator sentinel.
The dog, though, cocked his head and stood up. He stretched his front and then his back more like a big cat than a dog, and shook his rear paws one at a time.
He loped over and sat on my foot.
“Aren’t you being a little presumptuous?” I asked. “We’ve only known each other for half a day.”
He leaned into my leg.
“Hey, careful. It still hurts.” It would hurt for a while. No way around that.
I rubbed his ears anyway and he tilted up his chin for a good scratch.
The dog didn’t seem to care about the trouble I brought with me. He didn’t seem to care about the enchantments around my cottage or around me.
“I’m not sure I like this.” Stupid as it seemed, this dog was my friend. “I’m not going to get you killed, too.” I looked out at the gate. “I think we need to find your owner.”
He yawned.
“You don’t seem to care much about that, either.”
I swear he did a dog version of a shrug, then sauntered toward the gate but stopped long enough to look over his shoulder.
He was not a normal dog, any more than the eagle in my tree was a normal bird of prey, or the well feeding my pump was a normal well, or my enchanted cottage was a normal house.
Yet no magic hung around his golden fur.
No magic hung around me, either. But I was enchanted.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” I tucked the sheath and the plate into the pocket of my hoodie and limped my way across the garden.
I took my walking stick from its place next to the gate and followed my new friend out into the wider world.
My canine buddy led me to a lake. Water lapped the pebbles of the shore, and reeds surrounded a tree that had fallen into the shallows some time ago. In many spots, the forest grew right up to the water. In others, large rocks and granite boulders kept the plants at bay.
Insects buzzed just above the water. An occasional fish surfaced with a pop and a plop, before plucking a bug from the air. The breeze picked up the water’s humidity and its organic, earthy richness.
This was a place full of life.
The lake curved around a peninsula and out of sight. Across the shore, someone had marked out what looked like a lot, and had torn out a square area from the treeline.
Someone was building a lake home.
If there were humans living around the lake’s other arm, I couldn’t see them from here, though the buzz in the air suggested at least a few homes. The breeze also carried telltale hints of a recent fire.
I rubbed at my nose. “I hope that wasn’t your house,” I said to the dog.
He did his canine shrug again.
“If it was, you can stay with me.” I’d never had a dog before. “But I must warn you, my cottage can be picky sometimes.”
He jogged down to the water for a drink.
Clear and fresh, the lake water was not. But it might be true. I closed my eyes, inhaled, and felt for the natural magic of this place.
Old spells curled around the shore—world spells, the kind a place makes for itself. Tribal magic wove through the land magic, but had been mostly subsumed under a new power.
There were magicals here. Would they care that I’d landed in their domain? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, best for me to avoid their politics.
I pulled the sheath and the plate out of my pocket. “Show me how to stop the world from moving.”
No more ripping. No more tearing. No ramping up the destruction until I caused the obliteration of an entire town. I didn’t need a photo to foretell the obvious. I knew enough about magic to understand what seeing death in an image meant.
This was a test. Did I have it in me to make the sacrifices necessary? Someone needed to stick their arm into the workings of magic, even if that arm got chewed off.
I looked out over the slightly pungent, slightly hazy North American lake. People lived here. I might have landed in the country, but I was not alone. The next move might hurt more than a friend.
There was a simple solution. I dipped my fingers into the cool water. I could walk to the middle of the lake and kill the heart of the enchantment.
A loud, calling whistle blasted through the trees. The dog raised his head.
“Marcus!” a deep, male voice called. “Here, boy!”
I looked down at my friend. “Is that your dad?” I asked.
Marcus barked.
“Marcus Aurelius!” the man called.
I chuckled. “Your name is Marcus Aurelius? How fitting.” The calm and intelligent dog who’d helped me this morning was named after one of Ancient Rome’s greatest emperors.
The bushes moved and the largest person I had ever seen in my life walked out of the woods. He stood at least a foot, maybe a foot and a half taller than me, and had the broad shoulders and wide chest to match his height. He wore a blue t-shirt and jeans, and massive boots. His hands were huge, too.
He wore his black hair pulled and twisted along the top of his scalp, and looked as if he shaved the sides in more of an Old World, Old Norse way than any of the more modern versions of the same style.
He stopped just as he cleared the brambles. “Oh,” he said. His lips rounded as he looked at my face. He blinked once and his gaze dropped to my chest, then my hips, then quickly moved back to my face.
The dance of expressions spoke as clearly as if he’d narrated his inner dialog: The mountain of man standing in the bushes liked what he saw, but caught himself liking, and was working hard to be as gentlemanly as possible.
Nothing about his responses felt dangerous, at least n
ot to me. Even if he honestly was the biggest man I’d ever met.
From where I stood on the shore, I felt magic. Enchantments surrounded him like a shroud. Or armor. They didn’t permeate his flesh, but hung around him as if a magical creature—or creatures—had deemed him important and wished to protect his life.
This man was as enchanted as me.
Part of me wondered if I was in the presence of an actual giant.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I responded. The color of his eyes danced between deep brown, violet, and a maroon red. Faint scars covered one side of his head, and ran up into his scalp, and were probably the real reason for his shaved hairstyle.
Was he handsome? His square jaw and high cheekbones gave off a sense of classic good looks, and the scars added a hint of danger. He was interesting for sure, and huge. And, if I was going to be honest with myself, attractive.
“Your dog visited me this morning,” I said.
The man smiled and I swore the entire lake brightened.
I looked away. This new, giant, manly mountain of handsome goodwill was much too fascinating. I had a reason for being by the water. A reason that screamed Don’t talk to him! Not for me. For his safety and the safety of the people living in the area.
The big guy who named his dog after a Roman Emperor extended his hand. “I’m Frank,” he said. “Frank Victorsson.”
I tucked the plate back into my hoodie’s pocket and quickly wiped my hands on my jeans, but the shore was rocky and making it back up without my stick or Marcus Aurelius seemed a lot more daunting than getting down to the water had been in the first place.
“Here,” Mr. Frank Victorsson said, and reached out his big hand to cup my elbow.
But he blinked again, and shook just a bit as if surprised to be touching a woman.
“Thank you,” I said, and took his hand. “I’m Ellie Jones.”
“Ellie Jones,” he repeated, as if memorizing every miniscule phoneme of my simple name. His uncertainty didn’t ease, though, probably because of his icy fingers.
“Sorry,” he said, but helped me up the shore anyway. “Ellie.”
Dragon’s Fate and Other Stories Page 34
