[Nano novel] Chapter Three: Fateful meetings.

Andrew led Taliesin down a wide dirt road that led out of the camp; or perhaps it was the other way around - the dirt road ended at the camp.  Taliesin had not had much chance to observe his surroundings while he was there, but he did not think that the road led anywhere else.  Perhaps the camp itself was a kind of no-man's land.  What was it that the magician's short apprentice and those men expected to find exiting the woods?  It might have been only dumb luck that he had not met anything truly dangerous during his short stay within its trees.  He shivered involuntarily.

They walked for some time in complete silence; Taliesin looked at the lonely countryside and wondered who else lived here, if anyone.  He could see no towns, no farms, nothing but occasional stands of trees and several rather uniform-looking piles of stones.  Andrew walked in front, never turning to the side or speaking at all.  Taliesin grew weary of looking at such sparse landscape and stared instead at Andrew's rather drab collection of clothing.  His pants were leather, but the sewn-together pieces seemed haphazard at best, and there were no back pockets.  He wore a wide belt of stiffer leather, to which was fastened a long knife in a black sheath.  A coat, also leather, hung loosely from his shoulders, unfastened. 

The weather there seemed very mild, but for the first time since he had awoken that morning, it occurred to Taliesin that he was certainly unprepared for the cold - his light jacket was barely more than a windbreaker, and he had not been wearing his waterproof hiking boots last night when he decided to go walking in the woods.

A sound that seemed as loud as a jet plane broke the silence, and Andrew looked up wildly, then threw himself on the ground, pulling Taliesin with him.  The sound grew louder and louder, and Andrew shouted in his ear, "DON'T MOVE, AND DON'T LOOK UP!"  Terrified, he lay absolutely motionless.  Only a few seconds later the sound receded, and with it he could now hear a distinct flapping sound, as if huge wings were propelling some giant monster through the air.  He felt sick to his stomach, but did not move.

Andrew lay still for several minutes longer, then slowly got to his feet, once again pulling Taliesin along.  "You listen well," he said.  He scanned the horizon, turning slowly as he did, then nodded.  "The beast is gone," he said. 

"What beast?" Taliesin asked, trying not to let his voice shake.  "What was that?"

Andrew sighed.  "That is one of the great dragons."  He began to walk down the dusty road once more, at the same pace he had kept before - no faster.

A great dragon.  To say this day was unusual would be seriously understating things.  Taliesin continued to follow Andrew, and had so many questions now inside his head that he was afraid that if he began asking, he would never be able to finish.  He hoped that the magician was close by, because now he was beginning to fear for his life.  Find the magician, find his way home.   Deep down, he was sure that it would never be that easy.  Whatever fate had brought him here may not be easily mastered.

A large clump of trees loomed up ahead on the right, and the closer they drew, the more details became clear.  A thin trail of smoke was wafting up from what appeared to be a small cottage built closely between two thick, heavily leaved trees.  Silently, Andrew turned off the road, toward the cottage.  Normally, Taliesin was nervous at meeting new people, but after everything that had happened so far that day, he was unsettled to such a degree that one more new thing did not seem to be making much of a difference in his state of mind.  Under the trees, there was thin mossy grass in patches, and little holes in the ground every few feet.  A squirrel was up in the crook of one of the two trees that seemed to support the cottage, and it began loudly chittering as they drew closer to the front door.  It threw an acorn that bounced off the sparse ground just inches from Taliesin's foot.  He stopped short and glared up at the squirrel.

"Look here!" he shouted, "Stop that!" 

Andrew looked at him narrowly, then walked up to the door and rapped his knuckles twice on it.  "I would be careful what you say," he said cryptically, waggling an eyebrow at the squirrel.  The animal itself continued to squeak and yell in its squirrel-tongue, and threw two more acorns before scampering up into the top of the tree and disappearing from view.

Taliesin felt momentarily foolish for arguing with a dumb beast, but was distracted from this train of thought when the door opened, seemingly by itself, and a voice beckoned from within the darkened interior.  "Come inside, and stop bothering my squirrel!"

Andrew stepped in first, and Taliesin followed closely behind.  Once inside, he could see that a small fire was lit on a stone hearth, and that a small, white-haired man in dark robes was sitting in a rocking chair with a brightly colored quilt across his lap.  He had small spectacles that sat on the end of his nose, and his hair appeared to be wispy, thin, and rather wild.  There were several small tables near his chair, but they could hardly be seen because piled on them and almost every other surface, including the floor, were many, many books.  Some were heavy, some looked very old, and some were slim volumes stacked up as high as the tops of the tiny windows that looked out on the lonely road.  As his eyes adjusted even more to the light, he noticed something else - a burnished metal stand on a shelf, topped with a glass cover, under which lay small smooth stone.  He gasped, and the old man noticed.

"Aha!" he said, almost gleefully.  "You have seen a waystone before!"

Taliesin nodded, barely taking his eyes from the stone.  The stone he had held in the wood had grown hot, glowing with many bright colors, as if it held the essence of the rainbow within it.  The old man's stone was dull and nondescript, but he knew, somehow, that it was the same kind of stone.  He had an almost uncontrollable urge to pick the stone up, to see what would happen - but he knew that being rude was not only stupid, but it would get him nowhere, so instead he stood still and waited for what would happen next.

"This is... Tristan, the magician," said Andrew gravely.  He was now standing by the old man's chair in an obviously protective stance. 

"Can you help me?" pleaded Taliesin.  "I think I'm lost."

Tristan chuckled, taking off his spectacles and rubbing his face.  "You're not far wrong, boy," he said.  "Tell me how you came to be here.  Andrew," he turned to the tall man, "you can go now.  And tell Francis that his service to me has been fulfilled."

Andrew's face was a picture of shock.  "Ah," said Tristan.  "You know what that means, then."  Andrew nodded wordlessly.

"Well, get to it then!  Those men won't lead themselves!"  Tristan waved his hand impatiently, and Andrew bowed to him, then nodded to Taliesin, then quickly left the cottage.

"What about the dragons?" Taliesin asked hesitantly, a little bothered to see his travel companion leaving so suddenly.

"If anyone in these parts knows how to be careful of dragons, it is Andrew," said Tristan firmly.  "He is the best that there is.  Now, sit down, my boy, and tell me everything that has happened to you.  Sit down in that chair there - be careful with that pile of books, they're particularly old - and begin.  Leave nothing out!"  He sat back in his rocking chair and pulled a pipe from a hidden pocket of his robe, lit it carefully, and began smoking it.  His dark eyes fastened on Taliesin, who had carefully moved a tall stack of heavy books onto a barely available floor space, and he was compelled to begin speaking.

"I woke up in the woods this morning - " he began, and was immediately interrupted. 

Tristan sat up and took the pipe out of his mouth indignantly.  "That is not the beginning of your story!  Tell me what happened before this morning!"  He put the pipe back and settled back in, and waved his hand at him.

Taliesin frowned, then started again.  "Last night, I was... sitting on a hill, watching the sun setting," and he paused to see if Tristan was going to interrupt him again. Instead, Tristan was smiling and nodding.  "I saw a rainbow, coming down out of a cloudless sky," he went on, "and even though I knew it did not belong there, I wanted to see where it ended."

Tristan nodded again, and puffed away at his pipe.

"The woods where... where I live, they aren't considered safe to walk in, but I do anyway, because I'm not afraid.  I'm not afraid because I always know where I am.  So when I saw that the rainbow seemed to end not far into the trees, near the places I've walked many times, I got up and just started toward it.  I did hesitate, at the edge of the woods, and I don't know why now.  Maybe it was because I knew nobody was around to notice I was going in there, or maybe somebody was watching, I don't know.  But I did go in, and I oriented myself toward the north, and I kept checking the rainbow to make sure I didn't get off course."  He paused to take a breath.  Even though it had just happened, some details were already fading, and he was having to dig deeper into his conscious memory than he realized he'd have to, in order to get everything straight.

"The rainbow started to fade, and I felt - I felt that I was about to lose something, something valuable, even though I had no idea what I was doing or what I was chasing.  I hurried, and I found a clearing, a circle in the trees.  It was so strange, because there were no leaves or sticks on the grass, which is really not usual in the middle of the woods.  I suppose I should have waited and been more careful, but I think something, maybe the rainbow, was drawing me in.  Or maybe that's an excuse, I don't know."  He paused again; he had not really taken any time to think through the reasons for his actions the evening before, and was sobered by the thought that he could have prevented this entire adventure by being more cautious.  But maybe he didn't want to be cautious.

He continued, "As soon as I realized that the rainbow was ending there in the grass, and I was standing in it, I stepped on the - what did you call it? - the waystone, in the grass.  It was just lying there.  I picked it up and it got warmer and warmer and started to turn colors.  Like it was absorbing the rainbow into itself, or something... then everything got too bright, and I guess I passed out."

Tristan nodded once more, and took his pipe out of his mouth.  "Well done," he said.  "That is the story before the story.  Now you will tell me what happened once you came to be here."

"Well, like I said before, I woke up in the woods.  I thought that nothing had happened except that I had fallen asleep out there, for some reason, and I felt foolish.  I was also upset, a little, because I thought I'd missed my chance to find out what was going on with the rainbow's end.  I got up and started to walk back to my home - well, it's my home now, it wasn't a few months ago, but that's beside the point.  As soon as I came through the edge of the trees, your... your midget saw me, and yelled something, I don't remember if I understood what it was, and then he left.  Then he and Andrew came back, and I think Andrew hit me in the back of the head and knocked me out.  After I woke up again, nobody has told me anything except that I should talk to you.  Oh, and that gods and mystics live in the woods.  I think they think I'm something like that," Taliesin sighed.  He was tired now; he had been knocked out, buzzed by a gigantic dragon, and yelled at by a squirrel and an elderly magician.  A nap sounded so very tempting.

The old magician puffed on his pipe for a little while, blowing a few rings of fluffy smoke up into the cottage's low ceiling.  Then he began.  "Long ago, when I was your age, I too came through the rainbow into this world.  No, no," he held up his hand as Taliesin began to interrupt him.  "All your questions will be answered in time, and most of them probably while I am telling you what I intend to tell you.  Be patient, my boy."  Taliesin nodded reluctantly and sat back in his chair.

"When I arrived, I too was confused by my surroundings, for at first they seemed entirely the same as where I had come from.  Indeed, I did not know - as you did not - that I had traveled to a separate world, a dimension in which the same earth exists yet is different.  That knowledge did not come to me right away, however; and for many days I wandered, lost, in a wilderness.  No men or animals were anywhere to be found, and it is only the luck of the gods, perhaps, that I was not pounced upon by one of the great dragons and eaten up, because I had nowhere to hide, and no plan for where I was going.  I simply walked and walked, eating handfuls of berries or nuts that I found in the stands of trees or small clumps of bushes, and drank from small pools of water that sometimes collect near the stone cairns. 

"After three days of walking, I - completely by dumb luck - stumbled into a small town.  There were little cottages, a marketplace, and a tiny church built of stone.  In my experience before this new world, a church is always a place of refuge, a place of mercy, a place where scraps of food might be given to the weary or the beggars; so into the church I dragged myself, exhausted and famished.  I crawled to the altar and fell down in front of it, and fainted dead away. 

"When I came back to myself, I was in the care of the nuns of that church.  They tended me for a full week before I was well enough to go anywhere, and in that period of time they called in the great Magician, Merlin, whose apprentice I shortly became.  He served the King, who is now gone, and has been gone for many years... but that is a story for another time..." he fell silent for a moment, lost in thought, and Taliesin's mind raced with all this new information.  This man had been through the rainbow!  But why had he remained here?  A horrible thought struck him - maybe there was no way to go back.  He was suddenly very queasy.

Tristan shook himself and went on.  "Merlin took me in then, and I was with him from that point on.  I followed him everywhere, from town to town, and into the King's fair city.  He was a doctor, a mystic, an advisor.  He was the wisest man around and a true genius.  I fear I did not learn as much from him as I would have liked, simply because I was not made with such a mind," he said this last in a quieter voice, full of wistfulness.  Taliesin wondered if the old man was lonely now that his master was gone.

"I will take you in myself, now that you are here - but I do not know what your purpose is.  There was a prophecy, some years after I came through the rainbow, that said the gate was now shut, that no other living being would ever travel those waves of colored light.  I gave up all hope of regaining my home, and have devoted myself entirely to this world and its inhabitants.  But Merlin, wise magician that he was, instructed me to always keep a guard at the Serran Wood.  He always considered himself the wisest of all, and even though he was, he trod where most would fear to walk - into the realms of the true mystics, in the spirit world.  He would say (but only to me) that the spirit world was much like this one - things were said that could be either done or undone or not done at all, and the mere fact that a prophecy existed did not mean it would surely come to pass.

"Over the long years, I have regained some small sense of hope - if not that I could go back, because now my home is here, and where I was born would be as alien to me now and this place was when I came here; but that at least I could go if I wanted to.  Hope is a powerful thing, my boy... a powerful thing.  And I have kept a guard posted ever since Merlin's disappearance.  I believe - I do not know that this is true, but I believe it to be so - that he himself went through the rainbow into another world, but that he knew where he was going, indeed that he planned his going and his place of exit.  There are many worlds, boy, many hundreds of them, all sitting on top of one another like a pile of papers, except that each paper exists in the same space as the one on which it rests.  Yet there are still hundreds of papers.  Do you understand?"

Taliesin nodded, "I think so.  But - " he was interrupted by the old magician.

"I am not done, boy.  Your turn will come," and he laughed then, and his eyes twinkled just a little.  "It is my own speculation that the stone enables you to pass through the rainbow into another dimension, another world, seamlessly - which is why I am in the habit of calling them 'waystones.'  Once you have touched one, you can recognize other stones, even by merely being near them.  They call out to your mind in such a way that you know what they are.  You experienced this, a while ago, when you saw mine?"

Taliesin nodded once more.  He had felt... something, when he saw the stone.  But he had only noticed it when he actually saw the stone lying on its protected pedestal.

"Merlin was researching the stones and the rainbows and their phenomena for years, and I believe he had been searching it out before I arrived.  He almost never shared anything with me about it... what I found out, I either stole a glance at his personal notes, or I found it out in my own research.  He was, in spite of his lofty knowledge of so many things, or perhaps because of it, so often distant and aloof.  Your reaction to my stone correlates my own, and solidifies that fact for me.  However, I have never found how he could predict what world to which the rainbow would take you, and I fear I never will."  This last was said on a note of sadness.

His thoughts now full, Taliesin sat quietly for a time.  His questions seemed foolish at this point, as it was obvious to him that this old magician did not know how to get himself back home, let alone the newest traveler in this world. 

Tristan's voice interrupted his reverie.  "You are the only one who can find the rainbow's end," he said. 

"But I don't understand," said Taliesin.  "I thought that you said you do not know how to go back to - to your own place.  What use is there in finding the end of the rainbow?  Is there some hope you have not shared with me?"

But Tristan only stared into the fire, his wispy hair taking on the yellow glow of the fire.  It had grown dark outside while they were talking, and Taliesin belatedly realized he had not eaten anything all day.  His stomach growled then, loudly, echoing comically inside the tiny cottage.  The magician roused himself then, and pointed out a wheel of cheese and loaf of brown bread on a shelf.  "Here, slice yourself some of this and skewer it together with that fork over there.  You can hold it over the fire until the cheese is soft."

Grilled cheese, thought Taliesin.  Too bad there's no tomato soup to go with it.  He started to laugh, then tears sprang to his eyes unexpectedly.  No matter how painful his life had been up until this point, no matter how lonely, it was still a shock to think of never going back to it.  Never see his professors again, never study for exams, never watch the sun setting while the sound of cars on the road beyond the campus intruded at the edge of his concentration.  Never see his family again.  Never again.  His shoulders shook and he began to sob, silently, large tears rolling down his cheeks.  How ridiculous and ironic, crying in front of an old man who had experienced the very same thing. 

He crumpled into himself, the sobs coming hard, and he squeezed his eyes shut.  Too much to think about it.  He felt a hand patting his shoulder awkwardly, and Tristan saying, his own voice quivering a little, "There, there, now... don't cry."  Taliesin wanted to abandon himself to his grief, but he could not.  He was not alone here, and there were still too many unknowns... if he could only get a grip on his emotions, he could just stop crying. 

He gulped and swallowed and tried to slow the racing of his heart; he so rarely cried like this.  It had been years since he had allowed himself to cry.  Too many memories swirling around in his mind now, reminding him not only of old, painful consequences for showing weakness, but also tearing deeper at the wound that was his present lost-ness in this world.  He had been lost once in his own world, lost for a long time, but this new deprivation was so much greater and so very final.

In a last-ditch attempt to pull himself together, he sprang up out of his chair, nearly knocking the poor magician back into his own chair, and said in a rather strangled voice, "I - will be - fine."

"Very well, boy, very well," said Tristan, who seemed very frail.  Perhaps he was thinking of his own lost place.

Taliesin continued to breathe, to concentrate on breathing, taking in air and letting flood his body, then letting it out again.  After a few minutes of this he felt much better, although his throat and head hurt from trying to hold in all the emotion and the sobs.  He was actually quite hungry now, and was glad for something to distract him.  He reached the bread and cheese down from the shelf and began to prepare some very rough-looking cheese sandwiches for himself and Tristan, who seemed rather gleeful that someone was cooking for him.

After they had eaten, in a strangely comfortable silence, Tristan told him where to find the spare blanket (behind several piles of books), and instructed him to wrap his jacket around a particularly large book to use as a pillow.  As he drifted off to sleep, he did his best not to think about the next day or what it might hold.  He fell asleep slowly, with the muted crackle of the hot coals in the fireplace in the background, and the quiet night-time chirping of bugs lulling him.