Bobbing for Dragons: A Love Story

by Jason Beil

won’t. Maybe it’ll tear the world apart and maybe it’ll heal it. But whatever. Ours is not to reason why.”

  “Yeah, but my Uncle Lupo used to say…”

  “He ain’t your uncle, Greg,” said Mitch.

  “All right, third cousin once removed. But he used to say…”

  Outside, the ground quaked and the sky flared a sickly green. They all rushed to the window. Looking out, they saw a great storm brewing, neon-green lightning crackling through the sky.

  “The Witch-Queen?” asked Mitch.

  “No,” said Brad. “Green’s not her color.” He shook his head. “This can be only one thing.”

  “Oh, snap,” said Greg.

  “Guys?” said Mitch. “What are you talking about?”

  “The big guy,” said Greg. “He’s back.”

  “This could be good,” said Brad. “Or very, very bad.”

  “The big guy? Come on guys, I’m just a zombie. I eat brains; I don’t HAVE them. Throw me a bone here.”

  Brad sighed. “You know. The BIG guy. Draco Magicae.”

  “Oh,” said Mitch, his eyes growing wide with horror. “Snap.”

  “Okay, youse, bar’s closin’,” the half troll grunted. “Get to your squads!”

  “You know,” Mitch mumbled as three of his teeth fell to the table, “us zombies don’t have squads.”

  “Squad, grave, whatever!” the half troll/half billy-goat grunted. “Just get yourselves, and all your parts, out o the bar.”

  The three drinking buddies started for the door.

  “What are you doing, Mitch?” yelled Greg.

  “I’m walking, what does it look like I’m doing?”

  “You’re a zombie,” Brad replied. “Aren’t you supposed to be shambling?”

  “That is such a stereotype. I can’t believe you two!”

  Brad and Greg just sniggered. “Sometimes it’s just so easy” they chorused.

  As Brad, Greg, and Mitch ghosted, slunk, and shambled down the street (come on, a vampire, a werewolf and a zombie can’t just walk!), a giant soap bubble grew out of the cracks between the cobblestones and enveloped them all. A moment later, they were sprawled on the concrete pavement in front of a rather large bar and dance club, “The Twilight Zone” where it was open mike night.

  “That was weird,” said Mitch.

  Greg shrugged. “Better than going to our squads. Who’s buying?”

  “I’ll buy,” said Brad, heading into the club. “But you guys owe me.”

  Holding the door for the others, Greg said, “Well, as Uncle Lupo used to say…”

  “He’s not your uncle!” cried Mitch and Brad in unison.

  Bob, still unable to move due to the force field around him, glanced nervously at the woman in the lavender robes. She looked as nuts as Deidre. Crazier, actually. And now he was supposed to fight in some tournament representing both Deidre and her sister, his only weapon a fish…

  Oh no! I dropped that fish back in the town! What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  Nearby, Vivian raised her hand, getting the lavender woman’s attention.

  “Er…your pardon, my Queen, but…”

  “Yes, yes…what is it?”

  “Well, the young werewolf, Sara… she was to be my champion.”

  The Queen leaned toward her and glared menacingly. “Oh was she?”

  “I… well, yes. I mean, with Lupo and Hugo missing for so long, it was just Deidre and me competing for rule of Satya. This was supposed to be last battle to end the decades-long war between us.”

  The Queen laughed. “Is that what you thought? Here’s the truth, little witch: This is my game, and it’s been my game all along. I am the Witch-Queen, and though you may be one of the Four Primes, I outrank you by, oh, I don’t know, seventeen gazillion miles? So if I say jump, you ask how high. You got a problem with that?”

  “Um… no, my Queen,” Vivian said, backing away in terror.

  Bob looked to Amy. Somehow he knew that the girl he loved was the key to all of this. He was about to call out to her, when green lightning flashed in the sky, and a rumble of thunder like nothing he’d ever heard assaulted his ears.

  The Witch-Queen’s eyes went wide. “No! Not here! Not now!”

  The air shimmered in front of her and she cowered away. A portal ripped open, and then, to everyone’s surprise, a rather plain, bedraggled, middle-aged woman walked through.

  What the…! thought Bob. Isn’t that the laundry woman from my building? Liza?

  “Hello, Jane,” said Liza.

  “Dra… Draco?” she stammered. “How did you… and why are you…?”

  Liza’s eyes flicked to Bob, and she smiled. “Robert Paper. I should have known you would be a part of this.”

  “Uh…what?”

  “Your father… Jackie… used to be my best friend. But then he grew up.” Liza sighed and then turned her attention back to Jane.

  “This stops. Now.”

  “Never! I banished you once, and I can do it again! You do not have the power to stop me. Not in that body.”

  Liza shrugged. “Perhaps. But what I do have is my own champion.”

  “What?”

  “Amy. Our daughter fights for me.”

  Amy looked at the newcomer and frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s mine, Draco.”

  “No. Remember the rules? You touched her. I can feel it. That was a big no no. Doing so, you released her from your power. She has free will now. She can choose.”

  “But…”

  “Amy,” said the person who looked like Liza, “by your own choice you can save or damn this world. Will you fight for me?”

  “But…but who are you?”

  “Amy, my darling. I am your father.”

  “Oh my god!” Bob sobbed quietly, realization dawning on him. “Dad used to sing that song all the time. He said they stole it from him, insisted the story was real! I never believed him.”

  Suddenly Bob glanced at his upper arm. Barely showing was the edge of a gold-covered armband.

  “Harvey! I’m so sorry, I think I do have one of your birthday presents.”

  “Fi, Fi, Fo Fum !” Harvey roared. Suddenly the armband, which had been given to Bob by his father, disappeared from his arm, and reappeared on Harvey’s smallest finger.

  It was a giant’s ring. Just like his father had always told him.

  It was all too much for Amy. She peered intently at the crazy woman who clamed to be her father. She looked strangely familiar, but her bearing, her expressions just looked so wrong. Then she cast her confused gaze at Jane. Her birth mother wasn’t dead, as she had believed all these years! And her natural father, if she could believe what had been said, wasn’t human! Which, she supposed, meant she wasn’t either.

  And now she was being asked to make a decision with major consequences! The most she had ever had to decide before was whether to take art or music as an elective. Add to all that, Bob had proposed to her, when he had always in the past harbored a deathly fear of commitment. She wanted to trust him, but could she trust anything in this crazy world into which she’d fallen?

  She wished desperately for her adoptive mother, whose face she couldn’t remember, but on whom she had always been able to rely.

  There was a sound of harp strings, and a tall, ruggedly handsome man, wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans, and motorcycle boots appeared on the edge of the clearing, supporting himself on hands and knees, and dazedly shaking his head.

  Bob, caught up in a moment of nervous insanity, laughed and pointed at the newcomer. “And who is this? Anyone else coming to the party? Come on, this is getting freakin’ ridiculous!”

  “Praise the dragon gods!” cried the person he still thought of as Liza. “Someone must have activated the Linking Orb, drawing my true body close to my consciousness.” Liza began running to toward the man in black. “Do not move, woman! I need my body back!”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Jane shouted, raisi
ng her hands above her head. Thunder crashed, and the man in black launched into the air screaming. A football-field sized vulture flew overhead and snatched the man in its massive beak.

  “Come back here with my body!” exclaimed Liza, looking up and shaking her fist.

  “Please,” said Amy, looking first to Jane and then to Liza. “This… this is all too much. Can’t we resolve this peacefully?”

  “No!” cried Jane and Liza in unison.

  “Father,” said Wilberforce, “I am sorry for what we did to you. Jane tricked us.”

  “I’ll deal with you and your brothers later, gatekeeper. For now, I need…”

  “I don’t care what you need!” screamed Amy. For a moment, she looked hopeless, locked in indecision. Then she turned to Bob, her eyes pleading. “Please, Bob… what should I do? You… you’re the only one here that I can trust.”

  “What?” he said, stunned. “Me?”

  “Of course. You love me. And I love you, too. And yes, if we get out of here alive I will marry you.”

  “WHAT??” cried Sara, suddenly bursting into full wolf mode. “HE’S MINE, YOU BITCH, I’LL RIP YOUR FREAKING HEAD OFF!”

  Huge vines tore out of the ground, entangling Amy, and pulling her down. Sara leapt toward her, snarling.

  Jane laughed. “The power of vegetable! Outstanding!”

  Oh God, thought Bob, What am I supposed to do? Come on… floppy… floppy…

  And just like that, a thousand fish flopped out of the sky, burying Sara. She thrashed around for several seconds, but soon burst free, her red, murderous eyes locked on Bob. As she charged him, Harvey reached down and picked her up.

  “Little Bob give Harvey birthday present! Leave him alone!”

  “Die, you freak!” she cried, clawing at his nose. He dropped her, and then grass was growing up his legs, somehow strong