Milo and the Dragon Cross

by Robert Jesten Upton

  “Step inside,” Ayuthaya told him. “I’ll wait for you.”

  Bori trotted through the door and Milo followed. Inside was a graceful woman dressed in a shimmering silken gown. He noticed several things immediately. First, that she could be Ayuthaya’s twin, which she was. Second, that her long-fingered hands held brightly colored yarn, which she wound into a ball so swiftly that he could hardly discern her movements. The room held no furniture except for a spinning wheel, and next to it was a pile of multicolored balls of yarn like the one in her hands.

  “You must be Milo,” she said without taking her eyes away from her work. “I was expecting you to arrive somewhat earlier. Take a seat over there. We’ll talk later. The sun rises in just a moment.”

  Milo didn’t understand what the point was, but he did as he was told. Blai pulled the last loop away, wrapped it into her ball, and tossed it onto the pile. It rolled down onto the floor, where Bori began to swat it back and forth. Blai moved immediately to the spinning wheel. No sooner had she taken her place than the sun broke the horizon with the first edge of its disk.

  The tower filled with light. The rays of the sun shot through the walls and shattered into the banded colors of the rainbow. Blai reached up with her long, dexterous fingers and seemed to snatch up the banded colors and twist them as she began to spin. As she spun, the bands were drawn into the same colored yarn that made the balls in the pile.

  Milo, mesmerized, watched her work as the sun lifted free of the horizon and climbed higher, shooting its rays into the tower. Blai spun at a furious rate, her concentration fierce. The light in the room was so bright that Milo had to shade his eyes against it. On and on she spun, creating a cascade of many-hued and intensely bright yarns. The sun lifted higher and higher until, all at once, the rainbow rays vanished, leaving ordinary light in the room. Blai stopped spinning.

  “Wow!” Milo said in astonishment. “That was cool!”

  “Cool?” Blai said, swabbing her forehead. “I’m rather warm.”

  “I meant...” Milo started to explain. “It’s a manner of speaking. What I really meant was that it was awesome. Incredible. How do you do that? Spinning yarn out of light?”

  “Well, first you have to have a glass tower to break the sunlight into colors.”

  “Like when light passes through a prism?” Milo asked.

  “Or when you see a rainbow,” Blai added.

  “Yeah!” Milo went on, recalling what he remembered from physical science class. “Rainbows are created when sunlight strikes drops of rain at a certain angle. I don’t remember what angle that is, but when it does, the light is refracted by the raindrops just the way it is in a prism, and the sunlight breaks into its component colors according to wavelength. The angles of refraction define which color shows at that angle. So, depending on where you are standing in relation to the way light strikes the raindrops, you see a rainbow with bands of primary colors. I think that the most incredible thing about a rainbow is, although you can see it, there’s really nothing there. The thing you think you see as a rainbow is an illusion, because there’s nothing there except rain and light, which isn’t what you think you’re seeing. The only way you can see a rainbow is to be standing at the right place at the right time.” (Milo was impressed that he remembered all this. Maybe he really heard more than his teachers believed he did.)

  “Hmmm,” Blai said. “An interesting thought. Seeing a rainbow, then, is like anything that happens to you in your life, isn’t it? Being in just such a place at such a time, and seeing it from that angle. Miss it by just a little bit, and something very different happens to you.”

  Milo thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, I guess that’s right. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

  “Like arriving here just as the sun was rising, to seek your next clue.”

  “You already know why I came here?”

  “You saw the rainbow. Would you have seen it if you weren’t meant to see it? Milo, I think you came to the right place at the right time, not because someone put you here, but because something inside brought you. An ability to see what’s in front of you, perhaps. That’s how magic works. The question is, what will you do with it?”

  Milo wasn’t very clear about what she was talking about, so he went back to his first question as a way to change the subject.

  “How do you turn light into yarn?”

  Blai shrugged. “That’s my form of magic. It’s still light, only I’ve twisted it to hold a permanent shape in the form of yarn. I use it for a special purpose, which I’ll show you later, if conditions are right. But I think you came here for a purpose of your own: you want to ask me a question. Correct?”

  “Yes, you see—” he began, but she broke in.

  “You’re a contestant in the Magical Scavenger Hunt. You came to seek the Glass Tower. I know all that, but what can I do to help you?”

  “I need to know the next clue.”

  “Well, I don’t know what it is, either. I expect that discovering it requires using your own magic. While you work that out, you can help me.”

  She put him to work as she took the spun yarn off the wheel. She had him hold the looped yarn while she wrapped it into a ball, warning him not to drop the clew, which is what the spun thread is called. If he did, the loops would turn into a tangled mess. She showed him how to hold them tight between his outstretched hands as she drew the thread away.

  It seemed like a good time for Milo to learn a little more about this idea of what magic was. “So, I guess you’re a...a magician of some sort?” he asked. He had almost said “witch,” but stopped himself for a more neutral word.

  “No. I’m of another order completely. You humans have magicians, sorcerers, shamans, and so forth, but we don’t. What you practice as magic is as much a part of us as...as breathing.”

  “You aren’t human?” Milo asked in astonishment.

  “I’m of what you call fairy blood, as is Ayuthaya. We belong to the Elder Race.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Those who came when the world was still young. We aren’t immortal, exactly, though our life spans reach beyond many of yours, and we have kennings of which your race has yet to imagine. Not even by your greatest sages, craftsmen, and scientists. This tower, for example. Your people call it magic, and magic it is, but magic is very different for us than what your race ordinarily considers.”

  “How so?”

  “Tell me what you mean by magic,” Blai requested.

  “Well, magic is... ahh...making things happen that can’t happen in the ordinary world.”

  “But they do happen. And they happen in the ‘ordinary world,’ as you put it, don’t they?”

  Milo shrugged his shoulders. He was careful not to slip a loop of yarn off his hands as she drew it away. She was winding her ball and pulling it from his left hand, then the right, then the left, and so on, more and more rapidly, as they developed a rhythm.

  “Magic isn’t something that’s separate, or outside the real world,” she said. “Rather, it’s a part of the real, physical world, but at such a deep level of refinement that most people overlook it. Because they don’t notice how things function at such a subtle, interconnected level, they believe that magic is supernatural.

  “You explained to me how light is broken up to reveal the rainbow,” she continued. “That’s an application of magic. You also said that the most amazing thing to you is that you see a rainbow, but there’s not an actual thing there to see. That’s even closer to what magic is, because magic is not the thing itself. It’s how and when we perceive a subtle interaction of the physical world and our perception of it. Do you understand?”

  “I think I’m starting to see what you mean,” Milo said, aglow with that eureka feeling. But it was still confusing to his factual mind.

  “You, dear Milo, are a magician. You haven’t been trained as others of your race who call themselves magicians, but you are, nonetheless. You just don’t know i
t yet.”

  “Is King Alerik a magician? Or is he one of your people?”

  “No. Alerik is like you. He has fairy blood, of the Crane lineage. His ancestors married into the Crane Clan of my people long ago when first they came to this land, but he’s still mortal. His clan pledged to protect the Old Magic, taking as their charge protection of the Grail and this Glass Tower. Ayuthaya and I are the only surviving members of the original Crane lineage. Alerik is the last of his line, save for his daughter, my niece, Erisa. Although she is mortal herself, the Old Magic has a strong flow in her, for she is related to the Elder Race through her mother, who is of the Blood and through her father’s clan, which carries it.”

  “So, a mortal can marry someone of your race?” Milo asked. He thought of Erisa, and of marrying her. It made him blush a little.

  “Yes,” Blai answered, smiling knowingly. “If you were to marry Erisa, your children would be tied very strongly to the Old Magic, and you would found a new clan of your own.”

  “I don’t have a clan.”

  “Yes, Milo. You do. You just haven’t remembered it yet.”

  She continued. “It’s through the female lineage that the Blood is passed down from generation to generation. Although the subsequent generations aren’t immortal, the special characteristics and gifts of the Blood cast a much longer shadow across their circles of influence than that of a non-Blood mortal.”

  Blai paused. “King Alerik will pass from this world, as will my niece. Ayuthaya and I will outlive them as we have many others. So you see, our long lives are also a curse, because we are doomed to lose the people we love, who come and go, leaving us to linger on. Ayuthaya will grieve Alerik and she will grieve for Erisa in turn. It’s ultimately our demise. The grief wears us away. That’s why I’ve chosen to live in this Glass Tower instead of out in the world with your people. I have already lost too many.”

  The depth of the sadness behind these words made Milo’s heart ache. He thought that she faded a little bit as she said this, almost in the way he could see through the walls of the tower itself. Her face still looked nobly beautiful, though ancient.

  Her sadness passed, and she smiled again.

  “You are young and have much to learn, but you also have the heart to see into things. I’m sure that your cat, Boriboreau, who has tasted the flesh of the Great Salmon, understands that. It’s good that he’s your guide. He’ll make a fine mentor. You, Milo, are fortunate. I’m honored to have made your acquaintance.”

  She finished winding her ball, freeing his arms from the last loop. This felt like the end of the conversation, but Milo wasn’t ready yet.

  “Wait!” he cried. “I still don’t know the next clue!”

  She tossed the ball she had just wound, and he caught it in his hands.

  “You already hold the clue, Milo,” she told him.

  Milo looked at his hands holding the ball of sun-yarn. “This? This is the clue? I don’t get it.”

  “That’s my gift to you, to remember me by.”

  Just then the sun broke through a layer of cloud that had hidden it since Blai’s spinning. Brilliance flooded the tower.

  “Wow!” Milo said, forgetting his quandary.

  “Ahh!” Blai said in satisfaction, and picked up another ball of her yarn. “It seems that the conditions are right. I can show you another part of my magic. The sun breaking through is the sign I was watching for. Let’s go down now,” she suggested.

  Down they went. Ayuthaya was waiting inside the base of the tower, and the sisters embraced. Milo saw that they were crying, but he didn’t know why. He felt embarrassed and out of place to be witnessing this mysterious scene between sisters of fairy blood.

  “I think they have their own shared hopes. And disappointments,” Bori whispered in Milo’s ear. Milo was holding Bori on his shoulder. “Perhaps we should slip out the door and wait for them outside.”

  They did that. Outside, the earth was still soaked from the rain, but the sun sparkled in the jewel-like drops. The vibrancy and freshness of green on every leaf and blade of grass was in marked contrast to the somber colors they’d seen earlier in the morning. Cedric was still there, shaking the water out of his cloak. Blai and Ayuthaya came out of the tower, arms around each other’s waists. It was like seeing a single woman hugging her own reflection. They both looked much younger, no older than Erisa.

  “Time to go down to the castle,” Ayuthaya told him. “Come along, Milo. I have something for you before you set off on your way.”

  “And I want to show you what I promised,” Blai said to Milo, holding up the ball of color that she had brought along with her. “Here,” she said, peeling away the end of the yarn from the ball and handing it to him. “Hold on to that. Hold tight.”

  She unrolled more yarn, then tossed the ball into the sky. Hard. High up into the air. It unrolled as it flew, higher and higher, like a kite going up. As it flew farther and farther away, it made a long arc, leaving a ribbon of color that spread as it went, instead of remaining in a single string. It reminded Milo of the vapor trails made by jets back at home, except this one shimmered in the colors of the rainbow. It arced away, across the tops of the mountains and off toward the far horizon.

  A rainbow! Blai had just thrown a rainbow across the sky!

  6

  A Long Walk and New Friends

  The five of them—that included Bori, of course—came off the ridge and through the woods by the same path they had taken before sunrise. Only this time they could see where they were going.

  The castle looked much brighter in the fresh sunshine. Alerik, resting on a litter with Erisa at his side, waited for them high on the battlements where he could see across the lake and the forest, all the way to the gleaming Glass Tower.

  Alerik greeted Milo as warmly as if he had been Milo’s own father. “You are welcome to stay as an honored guest—nay, as a member of my family—as long as you wish,” Alerik offered.

  “Thank you very much, but I should see if I can find the next clue now that I’ve found the Glass Tower. I can’t quit the Hunt just like that. I need to finish what I started.”

  “I understand, and I agree,” Alerik replied. “I thought no less. But where will you go now?”

  “I...I don’t know.”

  “You are a seeker,” Ayuthaya interjected. “Perhaps you must set out on the Seeker’s Path. I think, Milo, it’s time you became a pilgrim.”

  “A pilgrim?” he asked in dismay, thinking of people who wore tall, odd-shaped hats with a buckle on them, like the ones worn by the Pilgrims of the Mayflower.

  “Continue your journey as a traveler, a pilgrim, to the End of the Earth,” said Ayuthaya.

  “What’s the End of the Earth?” Milo asked uncomfortably, for it sounded like a very distant and dire place.

  “It’s a place where people with a purpose go to fulfill their goal or where people without a goal go to find one,” Blai said with a knowing smile.

  “You mean, like a clue?” Milo asked, suddenly getting Blai’s suggestion. “Is it far?”

  “Very far,” Alerik said.

  “But it’s said that the journey itself is wonderful and important and provides whatever the pilgrim is seeking,” Blai added.

  “And they say that the End of the Earth is a remarkable place,” Erisa added enthusiastically, and perhaps wistfully as well. “Think of the adventures you’ll have just getting there!”

  “Yeah. I am,” Milo replied. He was having no shortage of adventures.

  Milo was beginning to distinguish between the romantic notion of adventure—which was what Erisa seemed to be thinking, perhaps because she’d never had the chance to leave home—and the grim reality of hardship and danger. Adventures, he decided, are a lot more fun to hear about than they are to have. He was thinking about adventure more along the lines of exhaustion after long, hard days of walking, uncertainty about where his next meal would come from, and nasty things like lopers.

  “How do I
get to the End of the Earth?” Milo asked, resigned to a destination that looked like his only choice.

  “You must go by foot, the requirement for every pilgrim who seeks that place,” Ayuthaya said.

  “You follow the Pilgrim’s Path, also called the Rainbow Way,” Blai added.

  The rainbow? But the one she had thrown had already faded and was gone Milo had begun to think that Blai had made him a sign to follow, but if it was no longer visible, how could he follow it? When he turned to look at Blai for an explanation, she pointed. His eyes followed, and caught a brightly colored butterfly flitting on the breeze. It followed the general direction where Blai’s rainbow had appeared. Then he saw another butterfly, and another.

  “They’re the pilgrim’s guides,” she said. “When the butterflies come, it’s the sign for the pilgrimage seekers to follow them from every shire and hamlet. The path is clear enough, for over the ages, many, many feet have followed the Pilgrim’s Way. But it intersects with other paths and may be hard to find in some places, for it’s been a long time since the last pilgrimage opened the way to the End of the Earth. So you’ll have to follow the butterflies. Whenever you’re in doubt about which way to go, watch to see where the butterflies are going, because they all go to the same place.”

  “You’ll need the right equipment,” Alerik said, sitting up from his litter with some difficulty. He handed Milo his walking stick. “I’ve used this these many years,” he said. “You should take it, to aid you with your walk. Take it with my blessing. It will support you when your limbs are weary, and hold any threatening dogs at at bay.”

  “And please take this,” Erisa said next, stepping forward to give him a rucksack. It was made of tough canvas, with leather for the bottom, the reinforcements, and the shoulder straps. “Inside there’s a blanket and special biscuits for when you find nothing else.”