Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (26 page)

Trying to keep my mental probe gentle so it
doesn’t get noticed, I slide among these backwoods half-breed Fey
aristocrats, dressed up in ratty old uniforms and hunting outfits.
They’re all red faced with wine and Fairy Dust. I pick up mental
images of the pups as they died and wonder if maybe it was a
mistake.

The Sheriff’s big ass is stuck in front of
the fireplace with tiny fire sprite faces peeking out of the flames
behind him. Magic’s so common here that you hardly notice it.

Speaking aloud because some of this gang’s
telepathy’s not so good, he says, “Well Lady Enigma, I hope your
report to the Palace will be favorable.”

Before I can say anything a no-tune whistling
back on the Witch’s porch makes my concentration wobble and starts
to pull me out of the viaculum. A quick glance to the side shows me
Phil the Faun, half-goat, half-human kid blowing on a pipe and
dancing on the porch with his little hooves, looking for my
attention.

Phil is part pet, part pest and I need to get
rid of him and stay focused on Lady Enigma. If I really go into his
mind I’ll find myself blocked by an image of the Witch and her grey
wand.

But I can plant in his empty little head the
sight of this great hairy, winged monster swooping down. Phil sees
it and runs away bleating and crying. The figures in the viaculum
waver but I run through my six senses and they stabilize. I don’t
have to start over again.

It takes a lot of patience and concentration
to get everything inside my head working right. Only the fact I’ve
got to learn how to do this if I’m going to get back to my own
world makes me hang in.

When it feels like I’ve done enough with
Lady Enigma in Dragon Country
for the morning, I perform the
ritual that stops it. And I step away from the viaculum wondering
if the way I’d handled the pups had been as wise as it seemed.

Phil is snuffling and I see him standing a
ways off glaring at me. He’s figured out I sent the black, hairy
thing. A couple of weeks ago I’d have been happy to kill him; now
he seems like the only friend I have in this place.

He can’t be let indoors because he’s not
housebroken.

Since the Witch isn’t around I go in the
kitchen and get him a couple of these ginger cookies he goes for
and grab one for myself.

First he won’t take them, backs away from me
rolling his eyes and stamping his hooves. But I hold them out and
he grabs them with his human hands. Once he’s shoving them in his
mouth he lets me scratch his head between his horns, which he
likes.

Pretty soon he forgets how I scared him and
he’s skipping on his animal legs with his little boy parts bouncing
around, pretending to butt me with his tiny horns. This maybe is
what it’s like to have a kid, a thing I’m not going to do, or a
baby brother which my mother didn’t do. I realize he’s probably the
nearest thing to that I’ll ever know.

I’m thinking about this when out of nowhere
there’s a sheet of flames and voices inside it screaming with
laughter. Except Phil doesn’t notice and nothing’s burning. It’s
something from the Witch’s mind and she uses it to smash the brick
wall defense I built in my head, gets inside me and I have to try
and throw her out. Maybe she’s doing this to teach me. But half the
time I feel inches away from death.

Second Month

After weeks of being Lady Enigma it seems
like I’ve got a certain feel for the rhythms of the game. I’m not
in control but as I travel in the service of the Queen I know there
will always be times when I’m in a crowd with dozens of other minds
around me and things happening at the sides of my vision. I’ve cut
way down on the violence. I notice if I stay calm the story does
too.

This one morning I’m standing on the porch,
patting Phil’s furry head, remembering the taste of the Witch’s
tea, smelling blossoms, seeing the light, hearing birds, feeling
this hum which I realize is somehow the mind of the trees.

At the same time Lady Enigma is using her
senses in the grand salon in the Palace of Prince Oberon. I have to
stay aware of the room, overhear the servants whispering gossip,
sip the wine and recognize something bitter there.

I smell a dozen different perfumes, catch the
glances of women and men above their decorated fans. Thoughts,
messages fly through the air: most of them pretty stupid.

“
Bouquets of kisses for one so
angry!”

“
The Chancellor of Dreams will hear of
this!”

Once in a while one catches my attention.

“
A Queen has reasons and her reasons have
reasons.”

“
Not an enigma so much as an empty
vessel.”

Was that last about me? Was the first? Was I
intended to catch the thought?

Images fly too: A male Fey in full silken
court dress but with the head of a cat. Clouds part and a chariot
bearing a naked child and pulled by three winged horses flies
toward a tower made of roses.

Then I catch for a second, someone in the
room seeing a pair of eyes so old and smart and cruel that they
chill me. Those eyes scan the salon of this ornate palace in this
rich province.

I’ve learned to probe minds lightly. Around
here even some of the servants have a bit of telepathy. I notice a
butler who, like me, obviously caught a glimpse of the eyes. I
watch as he turns slightly and steals a glance at a slender, young
noble. This man, whose name is Lord Robin, stares at a mural. I
follow the gaze and see a floor-to-ceiling portrait of a dragon
with glittering blue and gold scales, wings furled, head
raised.

The eyes move but Lord Robin does not react.
My guess is that the first time he saw them move he was surprised
enough not to conceal his reaction. This time he looks then turns
away. But it has got to be important—dragons are in this
adventure’s title after all.

I’ve done enough for one morning. As I run
through the rituals to disconnect from the viaculum, Phil looks up,
offers me a crumpled, grimy piece of cookie. I refuse and he stuffs
it in his mouth.

When I was brought here, I was basically
under arrest. The two Fey who brought me, Kailen and Evalyn, were
all flickering Glamour and polished gold. But they were tough and
one or both of them always had their minds trained on me.

The idea I got was if I didn’t shape up I’d
get abandoned and end up about like the eight-eyed giant. The Fey
had discovered me, crazed and killing anything that moved, holding
onto a few ruined blocks of New York. My crew, even Dare my
girlfriend, were scared of me. But the Fey decided I’d make a
useful ally in some war they’ve had forever with the Elves if they
could fix me up.

So they took me to the Forest of Avalon and
the Oak of Ware and introduced me to the Witch. Her specialty is
patching up damaged warriors for the Fey.

She’s tall, seems far away even standing next
to me. She welcomed us, smiled a smile I found scary. All of a
sudden, behind her in the bushes around the Oak of Ware I saw some
kind of animal and then saw it was a naked kid. He grabbed hold of
the Witch’s dress, hid behind her staring at me. I tried to go into
his mind and found the image of the Witch with her grey wand
blocking me.

The Fey chuckled, the witch was almost
amused; patted his head which was human except for a couple of
little horns. I saw furry legs, hooves and eyes and ears like an
animal’s but the rest is maybe a six year old boy.
“Philippe’s a
Faun,”
the Witch explained,
“orphaned. He’s shy around
strangers.”

The Witch dismissed the Fey. She and I sat on
the porch one late spring evening and she served dinner, explained
to me that as part of a treaty with the Fey King she sometimes
teaches untrained or damaged telepaths, ones with the Soldier’s
Malady. She brings us back, allows us to return to duty.

Birds sang in the trees. I was angry, lonely,
and ready to kill. I looked up and the faun was staring at me
wide-eyed. I unleashed every bit of hate in me, imagined a flaming
face with eyes spouting fire and hurled it at him.

Phil ran away crying, hid in the bushes which
was stupid because I knew just where he was. I started to go after
him again then was aware of the Witch gazing at me, hard; felt her
in my mind seeing any and everything there.

A couple of months later, on the same morning
when Lady Enigma discovered the dragon eyes, I notice Phil is
sucking his thumb and make him stop. I remember my mother doing
that when I was little. She’d tell me it would spoil my smile when
I grew up. I do it for Phil even though I’m not sure what
difference it will make in a boy/goat.

We walk down a path to a lake. I hold out my
hand and Phil comes skipping over and grabs it. With the sun
starting to come through the leaves I take in the sounds, the
breeze on my skin, the smell of leaves and some musky urine, a bite
of ginger cookie. I scan in the way I’m learning to, not busting
into minds, just touching them.

I close my eyes and look through the eyes
around me, ones that just see black and grey, ones where light is
like a knife blade. I see twigs that look like tree branches and
leaves big as tents. I feel life under the dirt and in the air.

A weasel, startled by me, loses a rabbit she
had in her sites; a jay spots me as an intruder and starts to
scream. Phil puts his head down, rushes at the jay, chases it off
and comes back looking happy and proud.

Then a tree seems to shift and turn and takes
the shape of a woman in green and brown robes carrying a twisted
grey stick. The Witch of Avalon smiles and looks as pleasant as she
ever does.

Knowing one of our sessions is about to
begin, I gird my senses for what’s to come. As we walk Phil trots
in circles around us, stopping every once in a while to piss on a
favorite tree.

Out of nowhere a huge red bat spouting flames
suddenly rushes at my face. That was a nightmare I had as a little
kid. When I first came here months ago with no control over my
telepathy the Witch had free access to all my memories. She doesn’t
hesitate to use what she found in these duels.

But I feel the path through the soles of my
feet, concentrate on touch and summon the memory of a broken brick
wall. This time there’s a poster on it with me looking tough and
the words, “SHE FIGHTS FOR US!” I take the bat image and smash its
head into the bricks.

The flavor of her tea’s still in my mouth.
Before the Witch does anything, I concentrate on the taste; take
the memory of a ’copter flying low, spitting bullets right above me
and try to shove it into her head.

She shows me a dark passage, torch lights on
the walls and a huge dog with five heads and each head has eyes big
as plates. I know this is something she actually saw. The heads are
at my throat, I feel their breath.

Then I catch a hint of smoke in the air from
some chimney far away. I twist that into my memory of the Hudson
River on fire, boats burning, people screaming. And I hurl the
smoke and flames into the mouths of the dogs. Their saucer eyes go
out like lights.

I take the murmur of the trees and the sun
coming through the leaves. I want to lift the forest and everything
in it, smash them down on the Witch and crush her. And I start to
do that.

But I see a woman, half bald with cheeks
sucked into her skull and her empty eyes staring through me. It’s
an image of my mother dying in a plague started by some terrorist
militia. It’s something I never want to remember and the Witch uses
it to beat me.

She’s inside me. It’s like she gets her hand
on my heart before I shake her off. And I’m down on my knees on the
path, gasping out tears with Phil holding my arm and crying because
I am.

So the Witch wins like she does every day.
But this time she says,
“You have learned”
and sounds
thoughtful. We both know only that memory of my mother stopped me.
And the Witch is the only one besides me in this world or any other
who’s seen it.

Third Month

The trees are like giants. My first days in
Avalon, I felt them glaring down at me and blocking the sun and sky
when I looked up. I told this to the Witch and she shook her head
like she was sorry that I was so wrong.

Yesterday I heard the trees mutter a name
they’ve given me. When I mentioned that to her, she nodded and
looked pleased that I’d finally noticed.

Today I’m aware of flowers like a whisper in
the background. The sound changes when a breeze passes through. The
wind is like a living thing.

That’s still on my mind when I go into
Lady Enigma
.

Seeing the dragon’s eyes move was a key; and
so was getting to know Lord Robin. Over the next few weeks we
tracked the biggest and most beautiful of dragons.

This morning we see her in all her glory and
I know we can’t beat her or outsmart her. Cassese’s tail is as long
as railroad trains I’ve seen in pictures. When her wings flap the
wind almost blows Robin and me off our horses. She breathes fire
into the ground to spook our winged mounts so we rise into the air.
Robin flies to the right I fly to the left and our minds go into
Cassese’s. She spins her head like she’s shaking away flies and
almost knocks us off our horses.

We can’t beat her but I think we can amuse
her. When it becomes obvious she can’t get rid of us and we can’t
harm her she sits down and we do the same. Cassese sends her
greetings to our Queen; gives us a formula for turning turnips into
gold, predicts the birth of a royal heir and promises to leave the
local folk alone though I know she’s lying. Suddenly she rises,
shimmers in our eyes like sunlight on a mirror and slips away.

Lord Robin and I mount our horses all ready
for another quest. I’ve pretty much gotten this story down just
like I did with the fairytales.