Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories

by Caroline M. Yoachim

  The heir looked at the easels. “I’d like to paint. If I finish these sketches, will you let me paint them?”

  “A princess doesn’t paint,” the queen said.

  “I’m not a princess.” The heir slashed at one of the easels with all ten fingers, leaving angry scribbles in a cacophony of colors.

  “I drew you to be a princess. It doesn’t matter what your colors are, at your core you are designed to sketch.” She left the heir in the tower and locked the door behind her.

  There was no water in the tower room, nothing but easels with black circles. If the heir drew them full of detail, would the queen let him paint? There was nothing else for him to do, and perhaps if he tried to sketch the queen would relent. He stared at the brightly colored scribbles on the easel before him, and idly sketched outlines around the lines of color. They looked like worms or snakes, and he sketched them with gaping round mouths of pointy teeth, monsters of rage. It would not please the queen, he was sure of it.

  He turned the sheet of paper over, putting the art of his anger out of sight. On the blank white side, he drew a circle. A planet, the queen had said. He would sketch another realm, a world of watercolor pencil citizens that could sketch and paint as they pleased. For hearts, he gave some of the citizens blades and others jars.

  He drew castles made of gemstones but with organic shapes, like trees. The towers of the castles twisted together to create a vast interconnected city. All around the city, he drew a jungle of trees and vines. He drew rivers and lakes, an abundance of water for those who had heartblades. Still the queen did not return. The heir didn’t want to face another blank sphere, so he continued sketching his planet, adding birds and beasts and fish in every shape and size. He drew more citizens, more gemstone cities, and thousands of trees.

  “Better,” the queen said, when she finally returned, “but a bit cluttered. I left you plenty of paper, why didn’t you move to another easel?”

  Despite himself, the heir basked in the queen’s approval. He chose his words carefully, for he did not want to anger her again. “You said to practice details, so I did a lot of details.”

  “A planet with this much detail should be drawn onto the primary paper of the true page, not onto secondary paper that was drawn into creation. This is practice paper, best for simpler things.”

  The heir looked sadly at his planet, at the work he’d done, wasted because he’d used the wrong sort of paper.

  “You will learn, with time, what can be drawn where.” The queen studied the easel for a moment, then shrugged. “It is a fine practice sketch. The king has finished painting my army, and I will lead them on a scouting expedition, to see what the dragons are doing at the edge of our realm. Keep up your practice while I am away.”

  She turned to leave, and the heir resisted the urge to ask again for water. His restraint was rewarded—when the queen left, she closed the door but didn’t lock it, leaving him free to explore the castle. He watched at his window as the queen led her army away from the castle, between the two great rocks that marked the edges of the twin tears, and into the first forest. Only when the army was completely hidden by the trees did he open his door.

  The king stood outside, holding a bowl of water.

  “She wanted me to be like her,” the heir said. “I suppose you want me to be like you?”

  It was entirely the wrong thing to say. He wanted to paint, he needed water, and the king was at his door with a bowl of water.

  “You’re already like me. And also like her. You have her heart, but no water to even try to paint.” The king held out the bowl. “A jar would be better, but she refused to sketch one. This was the best I could find of the things we had already created.”

  The heir took the bowl with shaking hands. Finally he would paint.

  *

  The heir studied the planet he had sketched. The queen had cautioned against painting a planet drawn on inferior paper, but with watercolor pencil fingers, the heir painted differently than the king did. He shaded the trees purple and blue with delicate cross-hatch strokes of his still-dry fingers, and made green fish that glowed bright in the black water of the rivers. He created a dark planet illuminated by a distant blue sun, everything shifted away from the warmth of red and orange.

  Only after the first layers of shading were already applied did he dip his fingertips in the bowl of water and begin to blend the colors together. The planet was so large and detailed that he had to re-wet the areas that were finished to keep them from becoming real before the entire project was done. The tower room was large, but it wasn’t capable of holding a planet. The extra water—or perhaps the inferior paper—made the paint bleed beyond the lines of the sketch, tangling the branches of the trees and blurring the edges of the watercolor-pencil citizens that crowded together in the cities.

  Worse, the water soaked through and dampened the scribbles of rage that he had slashed across the back side of the paper. The heir did not like to think what those would do, if they were let loose upon the realm.

  The paint began to dry, and the planet expanded, bulging up from the surface of the paper. With both hands, the heir pulled everything off the easel, the planet and the paper and squiggles of rage, and he hurled it all out the window into the night sky. His creation receded into the darkness, and soon it was no more than another pale dot, dimmer than the bright stars. Then even the dot vanished, for he had thrown the paper with such force that it had flown off the edge of the page and into the sketchbook beyond.

  The king knocked, and then entered. “I caught a glimpse of your creation, as you sent it into the sky. Did you like the painting?”

  “I did,” the heir admitted. “Have you come to gloat?”

  The king shook his head. “The queen has returned from her scouting expedition. She has asked me to go with her to the edge of the page. I wanted to give you this, something to entertain you while I am gone.” He held out an odd bit of paper, a loop with half a twist.

  “What is it?”

  “A Möbius strip. The queen set me to playing with paper, to try to come up with a way to defeat the dragons. I don’t see a use for this yet, but it is interesting, is it not?”

  The heir took the strange loop. Paper had two sides, but this, because of the way it was twisted, had but a single surface. “What will you do at the edge of the realm? Some other trick of paper?”

  “We will bend back the corner of our page and draw on the other side.”

  The king went with the queen to the corner of the realm farthest from where the dragons gathered. Together they walked across the thin border of white to the place where the paper ended. Unlike the bound upper edge of the page, which curved steeply downward into the binding of the sketchbook, here the paper stopped abruptly in a clearly defined line.

  The king told the queen, “We are lucky that the dragons are on the bound edge, leaving this corner free for us to use. We will not even have to cut the page before we bend it.”

  The queen knelt near the edge of the paper. “What if there is nothing on the other side of the page?”

  “Then we’ll put the corner back as it was and come up with a new plan,” the king answered, “but I think there must be paper on the other side.”

  He knelt beside the queen, and together they grasped the corner and pulled, bending the page in towards themselves. The back of the page was a pure and pristine white. The king held the corner and the queen sketched. She drew a copy of herself, and a copy of the king. Then she held the corner while the king painted them real.

  “No tricks this time,” she said. “Paint them true, and they will be our allies in the fight against the dragons.”

  The king painted the newly sketched couple to be a perfect match to himself and the queen. The drying paint pulled at the corner of the page, and as the copy of the royal couple became real, the queen lost her grip and the page snapped back to flatness.

  “Quick, we must pull it back again,” the queen said. “We have not w
arned them of the dragons, and they will not know how to draw their realm in preparation for the war.”

  With greater effort, they pulled the corner up once more, but their copies were gone. All that remained were scuffs of paint and pencil, tracks leading off toward the center of the page.

  “Should we try to follow them?” the king asked.

  “It would leave our realm unprotected, vulnerable to the dragons,” the queen said. “but we could try again, and draw another couple.”

  She let go of the page to sharpen her fingers, and the corner slipped out from the king’s grasp and snapped back into place.

  “I don’t have the strength to hold it alone. The page is heavier now that it has been drawn on both sides.”

  Far across the page, a plume of fire and smoke rose high above the realm.

  “Your paper trick was a good idea,” the queen said, “but we’ve run out of time. We must make what soldiers we can and face the dragons ourselves.”

  While the king and queen were at the edge of the realm, the heir remained in the tower. The Möbius strip the king had given him was interesting. The heir drew a tiny copy of himself onto the loop, near the spot where the former edges of the paper were joined together. Drawn so small, it reminded him of the queen’s soldiers, though much smaller. A toy soldier, marching on a thin strip of paper. As the toy soldier made its way around the loop, it drew simple spheres and geometric shapes on the paper. Eventually it came around to where it had started, and something strange happened. It was not only the paper that looped, but time itself, for the page at the start of the loop was once again blank. The toy soldier used the last of its graphite and paint to draw a copy of itself at the start of the loop, and the copy marched around the paper, drawing geometric shapes.

  The first tiny soldier, the one the heir had drawn, stood at the boundary between the two pages, unsure of what to do next. Tentatively, it crossed over the line. Nothing happened. The toy soldier was all used up, with not enough of itself left to make even the simple shapes it had once created. The heir regretted making the soldier as a copy of himself. He had thought the loop of paper a mere toy, but to the tiny soldiers, it was a world, and they believed themselves to be artists. They were certainly more artistic than the queen’s soldiers, for unlike true soldiers, the heir’s tiny creations could draw.

  But what could he do, now that he had made them? Destroy them and end their misery? Certainly he could not let the loop continue, for if each tiny artist drew a copy of itself the strip would soon be full of used-up artists. The heir cut the loop with his heartblade and laid it on the tower floor, placing it so the side that held the two tiny artists was facing upward.

  Outside the tower window, a pillar of flame and smoke rose in the distance. The heir wondered what the dragons were burning. His royal parents had gone in the other direction, to the unbound edge of the page, so he assumed that they were safe. Were the creatures truly a threat to the realm, as the queen claimed? Fire was dangerous, but no more so than many things.

  He stared at the horizon, searching for more smoke and fire, but whatever had provoked the dragons, it did not happen again.

  The king returned to the castle. “Our first plan didn’t work, so we must fight the dragons on our own. The queen will need more soldiers, and you must help draw them.”

  “I don’t want to sketch soldiers.”

  “I would let you paint some, too,” the king promised.

  “If she wants soldiers, she should sketch them herself. I think we should leave the creatures at the edge of the realm alone.”

  “We must defend the realm,” the king insisted. “The dragons breathe fire that could burn away the very paper of the sketchbook, and us with it.”

  “You created this world, so you think you can control everything that happens. The queen wants to drive the dragons off the page because she didn’t draw them. She wants me to sketch, like a good little princess. You want me to paint, like a good little prince.”

  “But you want to paint,” the king argued. “We want the same thing.”

  “No! I want to be left alone.”

  “Then be alone,” the king said, “but draw soldiers while you are alone. If you don’t sketch, the queen will come back to find out why, and she will be angry. Perhaps I was wrong to paint you as I did. We might all be happier if you were a pencil princess.”

  And with that, the king left.

  “I don’t care what either of you want,” the heir said, even though there was no one to hear. “I’m not a princess or a prince, and I will have no part in this senseless war.”

  He was like the tiny artists on the cut-apart Möbius strip, trapped in the realm his parents had created. The heir turned the strip over and studied the back. That side of the strip was not as cluttered, for there were no artists there to fill the paper with art. Did the true page also have a back? It must. But how could he get there?

  On the tiny strip of paper, the heir drew a door. But clearly that was not enough, for there were doors in the castle and they led to other rooms, not to other pages. What he needed was a way to go through the page. He used his heartblade to cut around the edges of the tiny door he’d drawn. The door opened, and the tiny artists stepped through.

  The cut-edge door went from one page to the next.

  One wall of the tower was still white with the original paper of the page, for the king and queen had originally planned to make themselves more children, back before the heir had turned out to be such a challenge. There was plenty of space for a door.

  The heir sketched a sturdy oak door and painted it into reality. He sliced around the edges of the door with his heartblade, cutting his way to the next page. Then he stepped through the door and sealed the cut edges with paint to be sure no one would follow.

  The Second Page of the Sketchbook

  I assumed, when I drew my door into the next page of the sketchbook, that it would be a blank white page, waiting for whatever world I cared to draw onto it. Instead, I found myself in a maze of buildings that stretched to the sky, each one made of mirrored glass that sent reflections scattered everywhere. My door, a sturdy wooden door of oak planks like the ones in my parents’ castle, was decidedly out of place.

  I’d left the easels and my bowl of water in my parents’ realm, so my first order of business was to find a blank bit of page and some water. Once I had those, I could draw myself any new supplies I might require. The water would be easy enough. There were puddles on the sidewalk from a recent rain, but the world was so fully drawn and painted that finding some blank page might prove to be a problem. My parents hid sections of the page behind curtains and tapestries, and the castle had an abundance of white paper on easels to create sketches of needed things.

  This world didn’t have curtains or castles or easels, at least, not that I could see.

  Three black birds flew lazy circles above me in the sky. Another flew down between two buildings, and landed on the sidewalk at my feet. It sipped water from a puddle, then hopped over to the door I had arrived through. More birds arrived, and landed on the door. They swished their black tail feathers, and with so many birds working together, they quickly erased the door, exposing a line of white page where the door had met the sidewalk.

  I stepped forward, thinking I might be able to use the blank page to make the tools I wanted. The birds let out a loud screech, then used their beaks to paint the sidewalk back into place. The only trace remaining of my door were the barely visible slits in the paper where I had cut it with my heartblade. The birds patched the cut with long strips of a clear film that I had never seen before. Several more birds flew down to the sidewalk. They stared at me and fanned their tail feathers.

  I jogged around the base of one of the mirror-glass buildings, looking for a way in. Birds continued to gather on the sidewalk, watching me in eerie silence. It wasn’t until the second trip around that I noticed the door, which was made of the same reflective glass as the rest of the building. This see
med a fussy sort of world to draw, and everything was so entirely unfamiliar that I hated to go inside and leave behind the sky, and the abundant water of the puddles.

  The birds, though, I would be happy to get away from.

  I reached out to open the door, but it slid aside before I could mar it with my colors. The inside of the building was as intricate as the outside, with patterned rugs covering any blank white that might have been on the floor, and swirling paisley wallpaper plastered over all the walls. I pulled up the corner of the rug, and was disappointed to find some sort of gray stone underneath.

  I had to find some paper. I did not want to meet whoever made this world entirely unprepared. There was no reason to believe that whoever had filled this page would be hostile, but there was also no reason to believe that they wouldn’t.

  At the opposite end of a long hallway, silver doors slid open, and two figures approached, one made of watercolor and the other of pencils. They had used a lot of themselves to create this world, and they were smaller than my parents, their bodies painted and sharpened away.

  “Is this your page?” I asked.

  “What an odd creature you are, neither watercolor man nor pencil woman, but a bit of both,” the watercolor man said. “Can you do both sides of art?”

  It seemed a rather intrusive question for someone who I’d only just met. I wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal what I could do, here in a strange realm without even enough blank paper for me to draw myself an exit. On the other hand, it would be rather rude not to answer at all, and I didn’t want to offend them. “I mostly paint.”

  The pencil woman studied me carefully. Before she could ask any questions, I changed the subject. “Your artworld is lovely, very detailed and complex.”

  “Thank you,” the watercolor man answered. “We created dozens of artists, and they made most of the art by making subtle variations of our original work.”