The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The)
Page 23
♦ ♦ ♦
Madoc and John had decided that the best approach would be the most direct one, and so at John’s urging, the son of Odysseus stood to address the Caretakers.
“We are going to dissolve the Frontier,” he said simply. “Before today is ended, the Archipelago of Dreams and the Summer Country will once more be one world.”
At hearing this, da Vinci choked on his wine, spraying it across his hapless colleagues at the end of the table. “Are you mad?” he said, barely containing his anger. “If you do that, then anyone can simply cross over! It’s madness!”
“Anyone who has a guide,” Madoc said, gesturing at the stack of Imaginarium Geographicas piled on the floor next to Fred. “A guide, and the purity of heart to see the invisible world that our magic has restored.”
Twain nodded in agreement. “Most humans wouldn’t be able to find the Archipelago if we strapped them to a Dragonship and dropped them onto Tamerlane House,” he said as he lit another cigar, “but there are some who would be able to find a way here if they were blind, deaf, and dumb. They would still feel the magic, and heed its call. And for those people, it should be as open as possible.”
Da Vinci scowled. “This has all gone exactly as you wanted, Mordred,” he said, deliberately using the name that had at one time struck fear into the hearts of all the Caretakers. “You wanted to rule the Archipelago, and you shall. You wanted to open the Archipelago to the world, and you will. And after all our efforts trying to defeat you over the years, and all the lives that were lost in the pursuit of that goal, you have won everything after all. Well. Done.”
“I am no longer Mordred,” Madoc said, his words measured and cool, “and I am dictating terms to no one. I have the support of the Prime Caretaker”—he gestured to John—“the Caveo Principia,” he continued, gesturing at Jack, “the other Caretakers of this era”—he nodded at Charles and Fred—“and the Imago herself. This is the best plan we can try, and it will be worth our efforts.”
“It also supports what I established with the International Cartological Society, back in the Summer Country,” said Jack. “We already have dozens of apprentices, and hundreds of associate Caretakers, and we hope that number will soon grow.”
“Grow?” da Vinci said, incredulous. “At this rate, anyone in the world who wants to will be able to find their way into the Archipelago of Dreams!”
“Yes,” Madoc said, smiling. “If we do our jobs right, that’s exactly what will happen.”
♦ ♦ ♦
It was dusk when John, Jack, Charles, and Madoc made their way to Terminus for a private discussion they had wanted to have for a very long time.
“You realize,” Madoc said as they stepped off the new boat Shakespeare had built to be pulled by the flying goats, “the last time all four of us were together was here, on this island.”
“So many graves here,” Madoc said. In addition to Captain Nemo and Artus, they had also added markers for Kipling, Tummeler, and Samaranth. “It’s a good place to think about the future. A good place to remember the good choices, and the bad ones.”
“It’s easy to see the good and bad in others,” said Jack. “It’s much harder to see it in ourselves.”
“Is it?” asked Madoc.
“You knew about me,” Jack said. “When we first met, all those years ago, when I was still a child, you knew. You saw the shadow-side I didn’t even know I possessed.”
“I was a different man then—” Madoc began, before Jack cut him off.
“You keep saying that,” the Caretaker told him, “but that’s not actually true. You are the same man, Madoc—you’ve just been Named differently. Sometimes of your own volition. Sometimes by others. But still the same man.
“When I was young, and brash, and full of good trouble,” Jack went on, “you saw the potential in me to have a darker side. That was very difficult to accept. But when I finally did, I was able to do things others could not. I was able to restore a Shadowed Archipelago not because of my purity, but because I had faced my own shadows—and accepted them. That’s all I did when I faced my shadow-self here on Terminus. And if it hadn’t been for the lessons you taught me all those years ago, I never would have been able to do it.”
“We wanted to bring you here,” Charles said, “to tell you about the new History I’ve just begun. It’s a history that starts here, today, with the four of us—just the way the last one ended.”
“That one was a prophecy, though,” said Madoc. “It was all about the things that happened—the things I caused to happen—that only the three of you were able to stop.”
“This one is going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, then,” said John. “It’s going to project all the things we want to have happen, and will make happen, because we choose for them to happen.”
“Yes?” Madoc said. “And what are you going to call this work of fiction-made-real?”
“Rose suggested the name. We’re going to call it The Reign of the Summer King,” John said as the three men put their hands atop one another in front of him. “May you live forever, Madoc. Forever.”
Epilogue
The old man was dying. He had, however, lived a very long and happy life, and he had accomplished many things. He had a loving family and colleagues who respected him, and he wasn’t in pain. All those things were important to him.
Two years earlier, when his wife passed away, he had returned here to his Oxford, to live at Merton College. It was a balm for him, to live in familiar surroundings.
It was, in truth, his second-favorite place in the entire world. He blinked his eyes in the soft light—someone, several someones, had entered his room.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “Who is it?”
“Uncle Hugo let us know it was time,” said Rose, “and we’ve all come to be here with you.”
“Rose! Charles!” he exclaimed, rising up on his elbows. “And Jack! You shouldn’t have left Tamerlane House! What if . . .”
Jack simply smiled and helped him lie back down. “Now, John—you know I’ve left Tamerlane a hundred times in the last ten years. Just as long as I’m not away more than a week. You know that.”
“I know,” John said, breathing heavily. There was a rasp in his lungs. He was not long for this world. “So has Basil painted my portrait, then?” he asked. “Please tell me he thickened up my hair and tightened up my belly.”
“No portrait, Uncle John,” said Rose. “You would never be content being so tied to Tamerlane House.”
A look of alarm crossed the old man’s features. “But I haven’t prepared a tulpa! And there isn’t time, unless someone else has already . . .” He looked at Charles, who raised his hands in protest.
“Not I,” Charles said. “I learned my lesson the last time, remember?”
“Then what?” asked John. “What’s to become of me?”
“Something you earned, Scowler John,” Fred said, stepping out from behind Charles. “Something special.”
“The lands of the Archipelago are restored and flourishing once more,” Rose said as she removed a small pendant from around her neck, “but the restoration is not yet complete. One thing remains to be done. The Archipelago of Dreams must have a protector.”
She held up the pendant. John could see it was made of clear crystal, with some kind of fluid inside that caught the light and made it dance.
“Water from Echo’s Well, which is the same water from the Moon Pool of the City of Jade,” Rose said, smiling even as tears began to streak her cheeks. “Just look into the water, and speak the words.”
A momentary thrill crossed John’s features, only to dim a moment later. “It’s . . . a great, great honor,” he said, “but to suddenly vanish from the Summer Country . . .”
“Your family knows,” said Fred. “Your son is an apprentice Caretaker, after all. It’s all been arranged.”
“Well then, it’s all fine and good,” said John, “but I was hoping . . . I mean to say that I wis
hed that Edith . . .”
Jack leaned forward and put a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Edmund made a chronal trump, and he and Hugo are with her now, two years behind us. She will meet you on New Paralon.”
“Two hearts are as one, Uncle John,” said Rose. “Of course we wouldn’t give this to you, without offering it to her as well.”
A great breath escaped John’s lips, as if that was the only thing that had held him to life. “Then yes, please. Yes. I accept, gladly, happily, joyfully, yes.”
“Just look at your reflection in the water,” Rose repeated, leaning close, “speak the words . . .
“ . . . and ascend.”
♦ ♦ ♦
When the huge, violet-colored Dragon arrived at New Paralon, his mate was already waiting. She flexed her own great wings and lifted up to meet him as he plummeted faster and faster toward her, and to the reunion he had hoped for since her death. They had been apart for two years, but now they would never be apart again. Without speaking a word to any of those assembled on the newly built docks, the two Dragons soared up into the clouds and disappeared.
Occasionally someone would report a sighting—never of one, always of both—and the peoples of the Archipelago knew that they were close, and if they were needed, would be even closer. These were not tame Dragons, but they were Dragons nonetheless, and they knew their purpose—to protect those who needed protecting, and offer guidance when it was needed. Everything else was flying. Together.
No one was on Terminus, at the waterfall at the Edge of the World, to see it happen, but in the moment the Dragons returned to the Archipelago, a star appeared in the darkness beyond. Then another. And another. And another. And soon the sky was so full of stars that no one would ever imagine that it had ever been a place of darkness at all, or a place where anyone in need might cry out and not be reassured with the response that was carried in a whisper across the sky. . . .
. . . Here, there be Dragons.
Author’s Note
One of the drawbacks of blazing a new trail, which writing a book always is (especially if it’s part of a series), is that you can’t really tell how successful your choices are going to be looking forward. You have to blaze the trail first, so that you can look back and take an accounting of how well your choices worked.
A great many things changed between the time I wrote my original series outline and the publication of Here, There Be Dragons. When plans went forward to do The Search for the Red Dragon, the outlines changed even more; and when I jumped full-bore into writing the third, fourth, and fifth books, there were not only points where I veered a long way off from what the original plan was, but also points where I wondered if the whole thing hadn’t just gone completely off the rails. But that’s the nature of the beast: Fiction, especially in an extended form, is more than just a narrative. It’s the recording of the lives of the characters within it—and sooner or later, everyone’s lives become complex and complicated. That’s what makes things interesting.
I had always had the general endgame in mind—but the exact nature of the players involved changed over the course of the series. Some bad guys became worse; characters who started out as rogues transformed into friends; and the character who changed the most revealed himself to be far, far greater than I ever imagined—and in the process, gave me a big part of the ending that pulled all the threads together into a tapestry. The idea that something can be destroyed only by the one who created it was set up with the first book, and the nearly indestructible Imaginarium Geographica. It was a perfect circle to close to realize that I had set things up for that to apply to the Keep of Time as well.
The original outlines are really interesting to look over (to me, anyway), and might be worth doing an essay about sometime. I had envisioned three main books under the series title Here, There Be Dragons, and a second set of smaller books, to be called the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, which would tell the history of the Cartographer—the notes for which were used almost in their entirety in The Indigo King. The three primary books were to involve the three main conflicts with the Winter King and were going to be very much more straightforward adventure stories than these books turned out to be. But once I realized that merging the Cartographer’s story into the main narrative made everything more fun to write, that meant that Madoc was going to play a more complex role in the stories as well. After that, the series took on a life of its own.
Someone said the best way to make a story interesting is to have a good character do something bad, or have a bad character do something good. I think that’s the sort of thing that makes the best stories resonate with readers long after the cover of the book is closed: because we all have those elements within us. We all have the potential to make mistakes—and the potential to learn from them, and to try to choose better.
I am not ashamed to admit that in writing this book, I wept more than once. The characters I spent eight years writing were changing, so it was a very emotional book to finish. Most of the book had to be written to line up with everything that had gone before; but I wrote the epilogue, with only a few changed details, over five years ago.
There were times in writing these books where I felt like I was losing my way, but in the end, I think I pulled it all together and made it read as if I knew where I was going all along. And maybe, just maybe . . . I did.
James A. Owen
Silvertown, AZ
James A. Owen is the author and illustrator of the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series; the creator of the critically acclaimed Starchild graphic novel series; and the author of the Mythworld series of novels. He works at the Coppervale Studio in Silvertown, Arizona, where he lives with his family.
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ALSO BY JAMES A. OWEN
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica
Book One: Here, There Be Dragons
Book Two: The Search for the Red Dragon
Book Three: The Indigo King
Book Four: The Shadow Dragons
Book Five: The Dragon’s Apprentice
Book Six: The Dragons of Winter
Lost Treasures of the Pirates of the Caribbean
(with Jeremy Owen)
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by James A. Owen
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Book design by Laurent Linn
Jacket design by Laurent Linn
Jacket illustrations copyright © 2013 by James A. Owen
Map design by Lon Saline
Map illustration by Jeremy Owen
The text for this book is set in Adobe Jensen Pro.
The illustrations for this book are rendered in pen and ink.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Owen, James A.
The first dragon / written and illustrated by James A. Owen. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica ; [bk. 7])
Summary: “To save the world, the new generation of caretakers must find the First Dragon and restore the lost lands of the Archipelago before it’s
too late.”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-4424-1226-2 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-1-4424-1228-6 (eBook) [1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Characters in literature—Fiction. 3. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.O97124Fir 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2012037552