12 posts from November 2006

Taliesin woke up with a new dream vividly in his mind.  Ava's face filled his mind's eye, and she was riding Cernunnos across a sky that was full of rainbows.  They flew through them, unaffected, and the colored prisms of light played across her fair skin and Cernunnos' many-colored scales in a dizzying display of beauty.  There was thunder all around them, and a blackness in the sky that seemed ready to swallow them.  He was afraid, frightened for Ava and for the Great Dragon, and he tried to call out, to scream and warn them, but his voice made no sound.  It was as if he was not even there, but merely observing, as if looking through a window into someone else's memory or experience.

He lay, awake, but unable to shake the feeling of fear.  It felt very early, and the light in his room was very dim.  He could not go back to sleep, however, not after that kind of dream.  It had felt so real; he had never dreamed that way before.  He got out of bed and grabbed the robe that had been laid out across the wooden chest at the foot of the bed; there was a chill in the air.  He wondered if he could start a fire in the fireplace on his own, and decided to give it a try.

The hearth was stocked with a pile of split wood and some kindling, so he arranged it like he imagined he might have learned how if he had been a boy scout.  There were hot coals under the ashes, which he knew were there because he had noticed Greta covering them over carefully the morning before, so he poked at them and tried to prod them up underneath the twigs and dry bits that he was hoping would catch fire quickly.  The twigs started to give off a tiny curl of smoke, which excited him an inordinate amount.  He gently put a medium-sized piece of wood over the smoking pile, with the cut side facing it.  He was watching it so intently that he did not notice his door opening, or the hooded figure that came up behind him, until he was tapped on the shoulder.

"Hey!" he yelled in surprise, and jumped to his feet, a split log still in his hand.  "Tristan?  What are you doing here so early?"

Tristan pushed his face close to his own, and shushed him.  "Keep quiet!" he hissed in a stage whisper.  "He might be listening!"

Taliesin lowered his voice to a whisper as well.  "Who are you talking about?" he asked, trying to keep as quiet as possible.  He sat down on the hearth, and noticed that his little fire was failing miserably.  The curl of smoke that had looked so hopeful was nearly gone.

The magician crouched down next to him.  "Merlin, of course," he hissed.  "Come with me, and I will explain what I mean," and he grabbed Taliesin by the arm and dragged him, silently, through the door and down the dark hallway.  The windows at the end were faint shapes that could barely be seen in the early morning half-light, and the dark paneling of the walls and doors made it even dimmer.  Tristan hurried them along the hall, his feet making no noise at all, and turned down a hall that was opposite the doorway to the morning room.  Taliesin had only been down this hall once, yesterday, when he was carrying Ava back from their walk.  It led to the large staircase that he had climbed up, with her in his arms.  The small magician passed the staircase and kept going; now they were going deeper into the castle than Taliesin had been yet.

The hall here looked almost exactly the same as the one in the guest wing, except that the tiled flooring had no rug on it, so their feet made some slight sounds as they made their way toward whatever destination it was that Tristan had in mind. 

Taliesin was nearly about to ask the magician where he was being taken, when they stopped abruptly at a doorway, and Tristan took a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, casting glances up and down the hall as he did so.  "In here!" he hissed, and almost yanked Taliesin's arm in his haste to get him through the door.

Inside was a small, cramped room, lined with shelves and stuffed with books.  In fact, it looked so much like Tristan's tiny cottage that Taliesin began to chuckle.  This was obviously the magician's laboratory, or personal library.  This must be the place he came to when he wanted to think and relax and write important things and ponder the meaning of life.

The magician gestured at the room in general.  "This is, for lack of a better term, my office.  I keep most of my journals here, and all my important papers and research.  I have only a few of my own things at my cottage, except for all my many books.  And as you can see, I have a great deal more books here, although some of them do belong in the Great Library.  I brought you here because I have spells on this room that protect it from eavesdropping or spying."

"So, like the spell to hide us that Cernunnos saw through?"  Taliesin hadn't meant to mock him, but that was the first thing that occurred to him to say.

Tristan's face grew a little red, and he sighed rather loudly.  "The Great Dragon's powers were obviously a little beyond my estimation.  It will not happen again.  And I can assure you that the protective spells I use here were taught me by Merlin himself, and I can trust their strength; he was the strongest among us.  It is about him that we must speak.  Sit down."

Taliesin found a low stool, and sat as Tristan instructed.  His curiosity was piqued, and he was also becoming a little bit nervous, as a result of the magician's paranoid manner.  He had thought that Tristan was merely putting on for show, but now he wondered if that initial assessment was wrong.

"I have discovered something, just an hour or two ago, that disturbs me deeply, and it moves up the time line drastically."

"Time line?  What are you talking about?"  Taliesin was confused.

"I thought - oh, bother it all.  I have had no chance to explain to you what I confirmed in my research this evening.  We do not have very much time, and you must believe me on this point.  We are all being watched, and you must leave in a matter of hours, less than that if possible, so that you can begin your journey before he realizes you have left."

"Leave in a few hours?  Where am I going?  You can't just - "

Tristan interrupted him.  "I understand your frustration and your confusion.  Please believe my words - time is not on your side.  Listen to me now, and I will try to make it as clear as possible."

Taliesin had stood up and was wavering between leaving and going back to his room, and staying to listen to what was beginning to seem like the paranoid fancies of an old man.  He decided that Tristan deserved at least the courtesy of his attention, so he sat back down and motioned for him to go on.

"Good lad.  Now, what I was searching for in the Library was a particular text, an alternate translation of the prophecy that reads the first part as:  the rainbow will bring forth a king and in him our destruction, instead of the more traditional:  the rainbow shall appear and bring forth a king, and he shall bring about our greatest danger.  Either translation can be taken as meaning the new king will BE the destruction or danger, or the danger will come as a result of his appearing.  I personally, through careful research, have concluded that this prophecy refers to you as the one who comes as the king, and to Merlin as the one who is brought about by your appearance here - he is our destruction, the most dangerous person to our world.  While I was re-reading the manuscripts once more, I sensed a presence in the Library, an ominous presence.  I tried to ascertain where in the building it - or he - was, and I followed its aura toward the castle.  Once I realized that it was indeed headed for the guest wing and your rooms, I knew that I had to act quickly."

His urgency was infectious, and Taliesin felt very bothered and anxious.  "But where did it go?"  he asked in a worried voice.  "Is it still here?  Is Ava safe?"

"She should be safe, yes... the prophecy pertains only to you, so I do not think that she will be bothered at all.  Merely an accident, I'm sure, her being here as well.  There are no prophecies about her.  The presence did leave, but only because of my spells and incantations - and I came into your room directly after I had chased it away, and now we are here.  And now you must prepare yourself for another journey.  I will get provisions for you, and a horse, and you should leave in no less than an hour from now, if at all possible."  His voice was very grave.

"But where am I going?" 

"You are the only one who can find the waystone in the rainbow's imprint.  The closest one is the mountain where Cernunnos sometimes dwells, where the girl came through, and a swift horse will get you there in less than a day.  I'll put these things in a saddlebag," and he began scooping up various small items from shelves and tables, acting for all the world as if Taliesin was not sitting there stunned and unmoving.

"I'm not going anywhere until I know what you mean," Taliesin said in a measured voice.  "Why am I the only one who can find it?  Why can't you go?"

Tristan stopped his packing for a moment and answered in a shocked voice.  "Me go!  I have to stay here, foolish boy - my research and knowledge are too important to this city and your future in it as king for me to be galloping toward the mountain, putting myself in danger!"

"Oh, so I will be in danger, then?  Just how much danger?"

Tristan waved his hand impatiently.  "I am sending you with spells, and you will have a sword and a belt knife.  I am sure that you can take care of yourself."

"You still haven't told me why I'm the only one who can find the waystone," Taliesin rejoined sharply.

"Because you just came through the rainbow!  I did not think I would have to explain such a simple concept to you twice!"

"You know what... I need some time to think about this.  I was not prepared for you to spring this on me, and I - I need to think.  I'll be back, but don't follow me," and Taliesin walked out the door as quickly as he had been hurried through it.

He shut the door quietly behind him, and now that he was once again out in the dimly lit hallway, with the silence of the castle all around him, and the thought of Ava alone in her room, possibly in danger, he began to wonder if what Tristan was asking of him was really too much.  He rubbed his eyes and walked back down the hallway the way they had come.  At the staircase, he paused and remembered carrying her upstairs what seemed like only hours ago.  Tristan might not think she was in danger, but he was not entirely sure that the magician had everything correct.  Ava had been through the rainbow too, and Ava seemed as likely a target as he was if the presence, which he assumed was connected to Merlin in some sinister way, was in the castle for evil purposes.

Was he really the only one who could do the thing that Tristan seemed convinced must be done?  He had not explained why the waystone was important.  Maybe it had some greater significance than merely being present at the time that all three of them had been translated into another world.  Maybe it had powers of its own.  He remembered that Tristan had a waystone in his cottage, and frowned at the recollection.  Why couldn't he be going back there to fetch that one, since the road back to the cottage, at least passingly familiar now that he had been down it once, was arguably safer than an unknown road to the mountain where the Great Dragon might be?

He continued to walk back toward the guest wing, thoughts turning this way and that inside his mind.  Tristan must be holding some important thing back, some piece of information that might cause his insistent request, which was hardly a request, to make more sense in Taliesin's frame of reference.  Before he realized it, he was standing in front of Ava's door.  Greta had told him to leave her alone, but that was before a crazy old man had whisked him out of his room to charge him with a ridiculous-seeming and time-sensitive quest.  He hesitated only a moment, and then opened her door as quietly as he could.

She was fast asleep, curled up on her side toward the windows.  Her rich red hair was very dark in the grey morning light, and he reached out tentatively to touch it, then thought better of it.  There was no reason to wake her up; he was not even sure what he was doing in here besides staring at her.  The longer he looked at her, peaceful and slumbering, the more he felt firm in his heart that if there was anything he could do to protect her, he would.  Whatever connection they had felt very strong to him already, even though he really did not know how she felt about him, if she felt anything at all.  He could not dream about her and experience her physical presence and talk with her, and not become attached in some way, even in such a short time.

Quite suddenly, his mind was made up.  He would accept this task, or quest, or whatever it was, if for no other reason than to ensure the safety of Ava and all the others in the castle, the ones he had met as well as the ones he hadn't.  If he was the 'king' in the prophecy, then he had some kind of power here, or at least some kind of job to do.  He looked at her one more time, then turned and padded quietly out of her room, shutting the door behind him with barely a sound.

He went into his room, dressed himself in his clothes from the day before, and rummaged around in the wardrobe until he found a heavier cloak and a more sturdy pair of leather boots.  He also found gloves, which he took, and a rather silly plumed hat, which he decided not to take.  Once he was completely dressed, he made the short trek back to Tristan's crowded little office.  As he passed the staircase, he glanced down and saw two servants walking together across the wide floor at the base of the stairs, speaking quietly to one another, apparently unconcerned with anything unusual happening in the castle at this early hour.

When he entered the room again, he found Tristan sitting in a chair, smoking a pipe and looking off into the distance with a faintly disgruntled look on his face.  He looked up as soon as Taliesin came back in, and motioned for him to shut the door quickly.  "Ah, good, good," he said.  "You appear to have made yourself ready to travel."

"I have," said Taliesin.  "I will go and find the waystone for you.  But first, you have to tell me what it is for, and why I must go to the mountain to get it - why can't I go to your cottage and bring you back that one?"

"Because, my lad, their powers are greatest when they were recently used.  There is something that I should be able to do with the stone when you bring it to me, something that should help ensure that Merlin has no way of coming back here again; but it can only be done when the stone is as full of the rainbow's strength as possible.  This is why you must go quickly - that, and I do not want him to send anything to block your way.  Take this bag - there are supplies for you, bread and cheese for eating, and several papers with spells already written on them.  They have some power, just the paper and the words, but you must use them carefully and sparingly.  There is a horse ready and saddled, with the rest of the things you might need."

“I guess I’m ready then,” said Taliesin.  It all seemed very final now.

Tristan led him out to the stables, where there was indeed a chestnut horse waiting for him, stamping and twisting his tail around in the dawn-tinted air.  He was saddled up, that much Taliesin could see for sure – but he was at a loss as to how to get on the horse in the first place, since he had never ridden one in his life.

Impatiently, Tristan waved at the stable boy, who was waiting patiently, holding the horse’s bridle.  “Help him up, would you please, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” the stable boy responded, and quickly gave Taliesin a heave up.  Taliesin managed to seat himself, but felt quite uncomfortable, and his legs were hanging awkwardly over the horse’s sides.  It would probably take him a long time to figure out how to sit properly, he lamented to himself.  For now, he was happy not to have immediately fallen off.

Tristan pointed to the west, in the direction of Cernunnos’ mountain, which was a faintly purple color.  “Ride directly toward the mountain, and do not stop.  If you ride all day, you should reach it by night fall.  Rest in the shadow of the mountain for the night, and be sure you arise with the dawn.  You will need to leave the horse tethered at the base, because the trail up the mountain is too steep for him to climb.  If you push as hard as you can, you should reach the top by the end of tomorrow; do not stop except to eat a little.  It is imperative that you go as fast as you can, and as carefully as you can.  Do you understand?”

Taliesin nodded, a little reluctantly now, because the prospect of riding all day and mountain climbing all the next was not something he realized that he was signing up for, and he was worried about his ability to actually do all the things Tristan was expecting of him. 

“What is the horse’s name?” he asked the stable boy.  “If I’m going to spend all day with him, I guess I should know his name.”

“Dragon Bane, sir,” replied the boy.

The tree line was a lot further away than Ava had though it was going to be, and her ankle felt swollen by the time she asked to stop walking and sit down.

"Oh," said Taliesin, in an anguished sort of voice, "I didn't realize you were so hurt!  We could have stopped earlier!"

"I'm alright," Ava said in a mockingly cheerful voice.  "No, really, it's okay.  No, ow!  Don't touch it, just let me sit down here.  I think I overdid it, that's all.  It's my fault."

He eased her down near one of the curiously planned-looking piles of rocks, and she leaned against a rock and stretched out her leg as far as it could go.  It was swollen; she had walked at least twenty minutes longer than she should have.  She had been enjoying the feeling of walking with him, her arm through his arm, his body supporting hers as she walked.  He kept leaning closer to her and she thought for sure that she had caught him smelling her hair once or twice.  Every girl gets a peculiar sort of rush when a boy likes her, and this was certainly no different than that; unless it was somehow different.  He had seen her in his dreams.  They both came here the same way.  Were they connected?

Taliesin sat down next to her, breathing a little heavily.  He must have been using more energy than he showed during their walk, helping her the way he had.  He leaned his head against the rock and closed his eyes for a moment.  Since he wasn't looking at her, she studied his face a little bit.  She might be very brash and outward most of the time, but she still felt rather shy where the opposite sex was concerned, even if she did get a charge out of being admired.

His skin was pale, but his cheeks were flushed slightly just now.  His hair was very dark, almost black, and his eyelashes were thick and jet black.  A thin, narrow nose suited his face, which was what an older generation might call patrician.  His features were all clean cut, somewhat delicate, and quite nice to look at - at least to me, she thought a mischievously.  His eyes, when they were open - she could already recall their color with a surprising level of clarity.  They were grey, deep grey with black flecks, and a just the slightest touch of gold.  She had looked full into them once when she had stumbled and almost fallen, and he had caught her; and their depth startled her.  She did not expect them to be so bottomless nor so fascinating.  He opened his eyes and must have felt her looking at him, because he immediately turned his head to meet her gaze, which she quickly broke.  For some reason she could not quite fathom, she was completely nervous and embarrassed when he looked at her.

"Well, I guess I have to sit here for a while," she said and giggled, stupidly, she thought to herself.  "I should not have walked so far," she grimaced, trying to stave off the fit of additional foolish laughter she could feel bubbling up inside.  There had been so many times that her tendency to act like an idiot when she was nervous had caused a potential friendship to fizzle out into nothing, and she didn't want to make that mistake here.

"Do you want me to carry you back?" he asked anxiously. 

"Oh!" she said, and her cheeks flushed.  "I don't... why don't we just sit, and maybe my ankle will get better if I don't walk on it right away."  She was so conflicted suddenly - part of her wanted to be carried, and part of her wanted to avoid it.  Which was odd, because just yesterday he'd carried her to the castle.  Of course, she had been tired and out of it then.  Today things were different; although it wasn't just because she was fully awake.  There was something else too, something that wasn't there yesterday.

"So where did you live, before?"  she hoped that some normal conversation would help with the awkwardness she was feeling.

"I go to college in northern Michigan," he said.  "Or I did.  I guess I still do - it's a holiday break right now, so I won't be missed for a few more days."

"Wow," she said, envious.  "I wish I was still in college.  I've had one semester and I loved it; I took a philosophy class and a writing class and math.  And I hate math, but somehow I enjoyed it anyway.  I think I just love to learn."

"So do I!" he grinned then, and his smile was breathtaking somehow, like a sunset painted across the sky in glorious colors. 

She stared at him for several seconds before she remembered to respond.  "What's your favorite class so far?"  She was glad he couldn't hear all the conflicting things going on inside her head.  For once, her mother's voice was not present - she had enough different voices inside her head to argue amongst themselves without her being there as well.  Stop staring at him!  she thought, and then His eyes are so dreamy...  She shook her head in an attempt to clear it enough to carry on a conversation like a normal person.

"Oh, I don't know... I like the world literature class I've had.  My professor is really old and bent over, but he is so interesting.  I already wrote a paper for him and he loved it, so I must be on track with what he's trying to teach us.  And I'm in a creative writing class too, although so far I've just done a little bit of crappy poetry.  I still get a good grade for writing anything at all, because it's a freshman course, so I'm happy with it.  I'm hoping that by the end of the semester I might be writing something worth reading to someone else..." he trailed off.  "I suppose that might not happen now."  His face was very sober.

"It's hard not to think about it," she said.  "I was hoping we could just talk about, you know, anything, but... it all comes back to that.  We're stuck and we can't go back, at least not right now."

"You don't seem very upset about it," he grinned again.

"I am, really, I'm just holding it in I think.  I learned how to hold things in a long time ago."

"Really?"  he looked skeptical.  "I didn't get the impression that you hold anything back."

Her cheeks flushed again.  "But I do!  I'm out there, sure, but I know when to keep things to myself.  My mother..." but she stopped, not sure if she really wanted to get into all that just now.  Not now, when they were having a good time talking.  "Never mind," she said.  "We don't need to talk about that right now.  Tell me more about yourself."

"Well... what do you want to know?  Because I keep things to myself too," he said.  "Maybe I don't want to talk about myself."

"Are you teasing me?"

"A little, maybe," he said, and smiled again. 

"You seem a lot different from yesterday," she said, smiling back at him.  Why did he have to be so gorgeous?  This was making it very hard for her to keep herself on an even keel.  Control yourself, girlie, she said firmly to herself.

"Really?"  he seemed genuinely puzzled at that.  "What was I like yesterday?"

"You hardly said a word!  You were so silent.  And I thought you were afraid of Tristan, like maybe he was angry with you or something.  Today you're... happy, maybe.  I don't know."

"Happy?  Really?"

"Now what are you doing?  Every sentence is a question!"  she started laughing.  "Aren't you usually happy?  You know, when you're in the place you're supposed to be living, doing the things you usually do?"

He laughed again.  "I suppose I am.  Well, probably not happy.  I don't think you could normally characterize me as happy.  Although I'm a lot happier than I was a few months ago."

"Oh, explain.  Now I'm all curious," she said.  She moved her legs and wiggled her ankle a little, but it still hurt quite a bit.  I'm so stupid, she sighed inwardly.  I think I just wanted to go for walk with him because he's so cute.  And I was bored.  So now my ankle is worse than it was... so stupid.

"Do you really want to hear all this?"  he looked sad again, or maybe it was worried, like he had yesterday.  "It's kind of complicated."

"Mine's complicated too," she said sympathetically.  "But I love to listen, so please tell me.  I promise I'll listen to all of it."

"Only if you promise to tell me yours when I'm all done."

She sighed.  "I walked into that one, didn't I... okay, deal."

He reached out to shake hands, which she did with a giggle.  She let her hand linger in his a little longer than she should have; his skin was warm and smooth, and she wanted to keep touching him, but she forced herself to take her hand back.  Why do I fall so hard when I fall?

He drew up his knees and leaned his elbows on them, and looked off into the distance, past Castle Agria.  "My growing up was... lonely," he began.  "I have a brother and a sister, but they are seven and nine years older than me, respectively.  My parents had gotten rid of all their baby toys after they outgrew them, and when I came along, I was a bit of a mistake, I think.  No, I know I was.  Anyway, they didn't buy any new toys for me, and they didn't let my grandparents send me any... I played a lot with toys that I made myself, but that wasn't until I was a little older.  I was ignored a lot, so I don't even think my parents even noticed when I started making toys out of the things they were throwing away, or things that were lying around the basement or garage or yard that they obviously didn't want anymore.

"There's a lot more than that, but.. I don't think I can talk about it all right now.  It's too much, and I've only recently been able to talk about some things without wanting to run away and hide.  My brother and sister went to boarding schools, and I only saw them on holidays, but not every holiday, because they spent a lot of time with my grandparents.  I went to public school, walked to the bus every morning alone, walked home every afternoon alone, waited until late in the evening for my parents to come home.  I used to clean the house a lot because I knew that would make them... maybe not happy, but they wouldn't notice me as much and be angry with me if the house was neat and clean when they got home.

"When I graduated, which I did with honors, I left that same day for school.  I got a full ride scholarship to Northern, and I did it all by myself.  I guess maybe I've been the happiest these last few months than I was all my growing up, and it's only because I'm finally free of them... I don't have to go home if I don't want to, I can stay gone forever if I want.  For now, I think it's enough that I'm not there anymore."

She wanted to hug him, hold him tightly and tell him everything would be okay, because there was so much pain behind his words.  Every sentence made her heart want to burst for him.  When she spoke, her voice quivered a little.  "I'm so sorry," she said.  "I don't even know what to say..."

"It's okay," he said quickly.  "You don't have to apologize.  I can't change it even if I wanted to, and it's part of me anyhow.  It'll always be part of who I am."

"But it's so sad," she said, a tear welling up and sliding down her cheek.  "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry," she sniffled and wiped it away.  "Look at me, I'm crying at you story - you should be the one to cry!"

"I'm alright, really," he said, and smiled again.  "I don't like to talk about it, but I can a little bit sometimes.  And you are easy to talk to."

"Oh," she said.  "No one ever said that to me before.  Usually they say I'm loud," she added.  She laughed a little and wiped her face again.

"Your turn," he said. 

"Oh," she said again.  "I guess it is, isn't it?  Yuck.  I really hate talking about it, but I did promise.  I don't think mine is as bad as yours, but I think it's kind of bad.  My mother - she left my biological father when I was just a baby - raised me on her own, and I think she ended up resenting me, or something, because when I was old enough to know I could screw something up, she was always telling me that's all I did.  I thought for a long time that all I could do was make mistakes.  Of course, I'm also really mouthy, and I tend to think I know what I'm talking about, so we got in a lot of arguments and fights and she threw me out of the apartment more than once.  I went to a therapist for a while, and she said that I'm a very independent person and that my mother felt threatened by that.  All I know is, I can't ever do anything right where she's concerned.  Heck, I even have her voice in my head all the time telling me so, even when I'm nowhere near her.  It's kind of disturbing."  Taliesin was looking at her sympathetically, but she was starting to worry that she was coming across as really nuts.  He did ask, though, so she was going to go ahead and just say it all.

"When I was seventeen I ran away from home.  You would think that because she threw me out so many times that it wouldn't bother her, me leaving, but she went absolutely crazy about it.  She had the police looking for me, posters up everywhere, the whole deal.  She even went on the local television station during the evening news and cried over me and lied and said that she had no idea why I ran away, that maybe I was upset but it would be okay, and to please come home.  And even though it was a lie, I believed her - she sounded so genuine.  I thought maybe she really did love me, that things would be different, so I went back home.  Do you know what she did?  She beat me - smacked me around and threw me against the wall and screamed and yelled and broke things.  I had a black eye and I limped for three months after that.  The police came to the door a few days after, to follow up with her, and she made a big deal out of me being home and how she hadn't told them yet because she was so busy taking care of me, and that I had shown up bloody and limping and wasn't it awful.  I couldn't even say anything because of what she might do to me later.

"After that, I made a promise to myself that I was going to leave as soon as I could.  On the outside, I pretended that I was going along with her way of doing things, I wore the clothes she wanted me to wear and spoke the way she wanted me to speak and did my homework and got good grades and went to bed when I was supposed to.  I did my chores without complaining and kept the apartment straightened up.  I got a part-time job, and some of my friends helped me find a cheap little apartment in another city, rooming with a friend of mine, and I left one day while she was at work."

"Did you tell her where you were going?"  Taliesin looked like he was on the edge of his seat, and she laughed a little.  It was so odd to have someone so fascinated by the pain that had followed her in her life.

"No, but I sent her a postcard after a week or so.  I told her not to try and find me, that I was fine and had a job and didn't need her to help me.  She knows that I live in the city but not where, and I don't use my real name any more."

"Wow," said Taliesin.  "Your story is much better than mine.  You have a fake identity and everything?"

She laughed, relieved to have told it all and still be in possession of her self-control.  "My first name is really Ava, but I changed my last name."

"What city do you live in?  Grand Rapids?  Detroit?"

"No," she giggled.  "I don't live anywhere near Michigan.  I'm from New York state."

His surprise was tangible.  His eyes got very wide and his mouth dropped open a little bit. 

"Did you think the rainbow only went to your part of the country?" she started laughing then, a gasping sort of laugh, the kind of laugh that usually left her with sore abdominal muscles and teary eyes.

"I guess... but that's no reason to laugh at me!"  he seemed indignant, but then he broke down and joined in the laughter, and his face went red and he had to wipe tears from his face from the force of all the hilarity. 

After they had convulsed with laughter for a few more minutes, they calmed down a little bit and tried to breathe more slowly.  "I guess we should go back soon," said Ava.  "Do you think anyone wonders where we went?"

"I'm sure we didn't go so far that they can't see us, and besides, it's not like we were walking so fast anyhow.  You're not all that fast on that bum leg of yours."

This last caused Ava to start giggling again, which hurt her already sore stomach muscles.  "Stop," she gasped.  "You're hurting!  Stop being so funny!"

"Nobody's accused me of that before," he grinned, and stood up.  "Here, let me help you again.  There's no way that your ankle is better yet."

"I guess I shouldn't say no to help," she said, and grabbed his outstretched hands.  "OUCH," she exclaimed when she tried to put weight on her injured leg.  Before she knew it, he had scooped her up in his arms and was carrying her back to the castle.

"Hey," she protested ineffectually.  "I was going to try and walk, you know."

"I know.  And you don't like to be helped, but that's too bad.  You can't walk right now."

She gave up arguing about it, and laid her head on his shoulder again, since it was too difficult to keep her head steadily upright while he was walking with her.  Truthfully, she did not at all mind being carried again, but now his close physical proximity was sending off all kinds of signals.  Wow, he's strong.  And gorgeous.  And troubled.  That can't be a good combination...

It did not seem like any time at all before they had arrived back at the castle, and he was carrying her up the staircase, servants looking on surreptitiously, toward her room.  She was really not sure how he managed to find the wing with their rooms in it, because he had gone in a completely different door than the one they had left from, but he did it.  In the long hall, Greta was coming out of one of the many rooms, and he stopped her. 

"Greta - it's Greta, isn't it?"

"Yes, young master," she nodded.  "Is there something you are needing?"

"The lady has hurt herself further, and I believe she needs some kind of medicine.  Do you have medicine you can give her?  Or a... compress or something?"

"Just take her in and set her on her bed, if you please sir, and I will fetch some medicines."  She hurried away down the hall, and Taliesin found Ava's door and pushed it open.

Her room, which she already thought of as hers, was flooded with daylight, since the curtains had all been pulled back.  The rugs on the floor were golds and greens and deep reds, which suited Ava's temperament very well.  The bed was all in dark green, and had a canopy over it.  It was the consummate princess room, or at least the kind of room she would have wanted if she were actually a princess.  No pinks or yellows or lace, but rich colors and plenty of natural light.

Taliesin put her gently down on the bed.  "Thank you," she said, and hoped that she was conveying how heartfelt her thanks were.  "It is so generous of you to carry me so far.  If I had been you, I think I would have left me there and gone to find a horse or a bigger person to carry me."

"It was my pleasure, really," he said in a low voice, and met her eyes.  Her heart started to beat a little too fast, and she found herself at a loss for words. 

At that moment, Greta came back into the room, followed by two more maids, who had several bundles and a pile of towels and a steaming pitcher of hot water.

"Off you go now, young master," said Greta, shooing him out of the room, and he waved and gave her a half-smile before he left.

Ava's heart fell a little to see him go, but her attention was immediately returned to her injured ankle, and how much it was throbbing as the three maids tied it up tightly in a poultice, then gave her something to drink to ease the pain, then left her propped in the bed with a small pile of books. 

-----------

Taliesin did not see Ava for the rest of the day; he ate his dinner alone in his room, as Greta informed him that Tristan was still in the Library and was expected to be there for many more hours before he was done. 

He played parts of their conversation over and over in his mind, dwelling on the parts where she was smiling and laughing.  How someone who had experienced so much pain could be light-hearted and funny, he did not understand.  Maybe it was her coping mechanism, or maybe she was just naturally able to come out the better for things happening to her.  The only thing he could really be sure of was that he was falling for her.  Something about her was lodging itself deeply in his heart, and he felt completely powerless to stop it from happening, even if he had wanted to; and he did not want to stop it.

He sat for a long while, an open book, unread, in his lap, and stared off into space, thinking about her warm red hair, her smile that lit up her face.  Her bright green eyes, and the freckles that were sprinkled across her pale skin.  He remembered that she had said her mother had given her a black eye and a limp for a while, and he felt anger surging into his body, his fists clenching and his heart beating more rapidly.  All he wanted to do was protect her, even though she seemed more than capable of doing without anyone else's protection or help.

Greta came to clear away his dinner tray, and he asked about Ava.

"She's sleeping, young master.  Her ankle should be healing up nicely, but only as long as she stays off her feet," and she glared a little at him.  "You're not to disturb her this evening.  Tomorrow morning she can decide whether to have breakfast in the morning room, or stay in bed.  Until then, you just let her rest."

"Oh," said Taliesin, sad that he would not get to see her anymore tonight.  It did not even occur to him that he had only just met her, because the feeling growing deep within his chest was beginning to inform his thoughts about her.  "Tell her I said goodnight, then?"

"I will, if she is awake when I go in there.  I will see you again in the morning with your hot water, and you can ask me about her then."

"Good night then, Greta.  Thank you."

She smiled and left, taking his tray of dirty dishes with her.  He had never been waited on before, and it was simultaneously uncomfortable and enjoyable.  He hoped that the staff here were treated well, because he could not stand to think of them being yelled at or punished harshly or sleeping in dank little rooms; although admittedly, that might just be all the books he had read that were giving him those ideas.

Not long after she left, he climbed into the big bed that was his, and lay there for a long while thinking about Ava and the rainbow and what both she and Tristan had told him that day.  He wondered if he would dream of her again.

The moon shone clear in the night sky, and there was once again a shadow that moved through the castle halls, silently and almost invisibly.  It made no sound, and no living person saw it.

All the travelers slept deeply that night, each in a large guest room along a long hallway in the east wing of the sprawling castle, on ornately carved wooden beds, between softly silken sheets.  The cool night air was kept at bay by tall glass windows on the outside wall of each room.  They slumbered more peacefully than they had in years - even the two who had only recently come from a modern world of foam mattresses and ergonomically correct lounge chairs. 

A shadow flitted down the hallway deep in the night, making no sound, and waking no one.  The only thing alive that saw the shadow was a songbird, whose tiny black eyes glittered in the moonlight in his perch near a window, and who then tucked his head back under his wing, uninterested and unruffled.

As the sun began to rise in the early morning, the magician continued to snore in his comfortable bedding.  The maid assigned to his room slipped in and out with clean robes and did not wake him.  She did not draw the curtains or bring hot water, because he had been very specific about being left alone until he decided to rise for the day.

Taliesin woke slowly.  It felt like he was in a warm cocoon, nestled deep in, and he was really trying hard not to wake up.  Unfortunately, his body decided it was time to wake up.  He had a morning philosophy course that he loved, and was used to waking early, even if it was just early enough to jump into a clean pair of jeans and brush his teeth before he had to rush out the door.  Thinking about college made him feel disoriented, and it took opening his eyes and squinting in the sunlight at the artfully arranged bedroom furniture to remember where he was.

Memory came flooding back in, although less painfully somehow.  Just a little less.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, then swung his legs over the side.  Today he needed to find out... well, everything.  And he was going to start with Ava.  He had to talk to her, to try and explain to her that he had dreamed her, to try and communicate that strange sense of familiarity that he had about her.  She might not be happy to hear it, or maybe she wouldn't mind.  Over dinner the evening before, they had been laughing a lot and she seemed like things didn't rattle her too much.  It might be okay.

His feet had just hit the thick rug under the bed when a maid suddenly appeared in the doorway, holding a large jug of what he assumed was hot water, since there was steam coming from the top.

"Good morning, young master," she said in a pleasant voice.  She was very young, maybe a few years younger than he.  He was not at all used to having servants around, and he wasn't sure what he thought of it.

"Good morning," he replied.  "Thanks for the hot water," he said, and tried to take it from her.  She held on tightly and moved gracefully to a large bowl that sat on an ornate side table.  A snow-white towel was folded up next to the bowl.  She poured the water, then set the jug down and picked up the towel, hanging it over her arm. 

"What..." said Taliesin, feeling very awkward and unsure of the protocol.  He had never had a girl helping him wash his face in the morning.  "...I'll just wash up then," he finished rather lamely, and splashed his face with the water.  It did feel good, and woke him up a little more.  He blinked water from his eyelashes and found the towel in his hands.  He dried his face and put the towel down, and the young maid went around the room then, opening the curtains and straightening here and there.

"Will you be taking breakfast here, young master, or with your companions in the morning room?" she asked.

"I guess... in the morning room," he hesitated.  "Will Ava be there?"

"I will find out for you, sir," she said and curtsied, then left the room as quickly and silently as she had come in.

He found a set of clothes that, while they did not look at all like his jeans and sweater that he had worn from home (because he had thought of the college and his dorm room as home ever since the first day of the semester), certainly seemed comfortable as well as slightly dressy.  There was a pair of pants, a thin undershirt, and a lightweight yet very warm overshirt that buttoned up the front.  Instead of his dirty socks and running shoes, he put on long warm socks and a pair of flexible leather boots.  He was quite taken with the boots, in fact, and posed in front of the long mirror for several minutes, admiring them and the effect of the whole outfit; he was interrupted by the maid coming back into the room, silently again, to tell him that Ava was taking her breakfast in the morning room, and would he please be there in fifteen minutes.

Since he was already dressed, he decided to wander the halls for the remaining time.  He stopped a moment in front of the windows, taking in the spectacular view from his vantage point.  The eastern wing of the castle looked out over the residential district of the city, and the morning sun made the white stone roofs glow.  The dragon's words echoed in his mind again: THE BOY WILL BE CROWNED.  Was that him?  Was he destined to be king in this castle, of this beautiful city?  He was a college student, a boy from the northern United States, a lonely person most of the time.

Things had been going on too long now for them to be a dream, so the only conclusion he could reach was that he was indeed caught up in another world, another dimension, and that there were talking dragons and magicians here and prophecies that might actually be talking about him.  It would be easier if he could silence that part of his mind that was still struggling to match his life at college with the life he was suddenly and unexpectedly living; but did that mean he wanted to forget?  Was he giving up the hope of going back home?  He shook his head and sighed, then turned away from the windows.  He still wanted to walk a little down the halls before breakfast, because he wasn't sure at all what he was going to say to Ava.  There was too much in his head that might come spilling out badly if he didn't take some time and compose himself first.

The heavy door of his room swung open effortlessly and without a sound.  That must be how the maids come and go so quietly, he mused.  He shut the door behind him, and it gave out a barely audible click.  His room was on the very end of the hall, so there was only one direction for him to walk.  It occurred to him that he had forgotten to find out just where the morning room was; so maybe his walk to clear his head was actually a quest to find the room with breakfast in it, and Ava.  And maybe Tristan.  He hoped that Tristan wasn't there, actually, so that he could figure out what to say to Ava in relative peace.

He passed three or four more doors on the same side as his room door.  The hallway was a north-south passageway, and so far all the rooms in this wing were on the eastern side of the hall, probably because the views were better.  The furthest end of the hall, which was still a way off, faced directly north, and it ended in a windowed alcove.  He was fascinated with the architecture in the castle - it was all so beautifully done, so evocative and solid and... it felt like home.  He stopped, shocked that he had just thought that.  It felt like home.  This place.  Like he belonged here.

A strange smile started at the corners of his mouth, and his heart was light.  The day suddenly seemed as if it might be quite wonderful: breakfast with Ava, time to spend in this wonderful building, and maybe Tristan would go to the Library and then answer the rest of their questions. 

He passed another door just as it opened, and Ava nearly collided with him.  She sprang back, obviously flustered and embarrassed, and he stammered out an apology.  She looked very fresh and clean and vibrant, in a simple dress of deep reddish-orange.  He noticed that she had a pair of new boots too, although hers had slightly higher heels than his, and had laces that criss-crossed up the sides.

"Why are you looking at my shoes?" asked Ava, in a loud voice. 

"I - I'm sorry," he said.  What was it about her that made him always sound like a fool?  Now he was worrying about how their conversation might go, or if it would go at all.  "Do you know where the morning room is?" he asked, attempting to shift the focus to something other than his own awkwardness.

"It's this way," said Ava, apparently unconcerned with his inner turmoil.  "I asked Greta."

"Oh..." said Taliesin, and followed her as she led the way determinedly.  "Who's Greta?"

"The maid!"  Ava said over her shoulder.  "You didn't ask her name?"

"Uh, no," Taliesin was beginning to feel rather stupid.  Breakfast would probably help.  He hoped it would.

Ava sighed loudly but did not say anything else, and then they arrived at the morning room.  It was the last room on the right side of the hallway, and its walls were completely of glass.  The northern wall of the city was also the northern wall of the castle, and behind the city were rolling hills, some gold with ripe grain, some green and dotted with little white things that Taliesin assumed were sheep or cows.  In the distance, he could see a mountain range, which was faintly purple.  The mountain that Ava and Cernunnos had come from was on the southern side of the city, and so could not be seen from this room.

Ava walked right up to one of the windows and put her hands on the glass, her eyes large.  "It's so beautiful," she said breathlessly. 

A table had been set with a white cloth and many silver dishes with lids.  Taliesin almost sat right down, then remembered his manners and stood by his chair, waiting for Ava to sit down.  She stayed at the window for a little while, not noticing that he was waiting for her, but he decided that he didn't mind.  Yesterday she had started out as a burden, and he had been resentful of needing to carry her, but today he was seeing her in a completely different light.  Maybe it was the good night of sleep he had gotten, or this new place, or the fact that she looked rather breathtaking in that dress.

She turned and looked at him, and he was momentarily afraid that she could read his mind and knew what he had been thinking just now.  "Were you waiting for me?  I'm sorry," she said, and hastily sat down at the table. 

"It's okay," he replied, and sat down opposite her.

"Oh my goodness, look at all this food!" she exclaimed, taking lids off dishes and examining their contents.  "I could never eat this much!  Can you eat this much?"  She spooned out some scrambled eggs onto her plate and took a few pieces of bacon.  "Is there coffee?"

Taliesin was still so engrossed in his own thoughts that he nearly forgot to respond out loud.  "Here," he said as he found the small silver pot that had the unmistakably marvelous aroma of roasted coffee beans coming from it, and he poured her a cup without spilling a drop.  As she began to eat her small portion of breakfast, he put bacon, toast, pancakes, sausage, and several fried eggs on his plate.  She cocked an eyebrow at him once, but seemed content to eat her own food and enjoy her cup of coffee. 

Ava finished her eggs and bacon well before he was done, and sat back in her chair, sipping her coffee.  "This coffee is so great," she sighed contentedly.  "It's as good as the cafe I usually go to."  Her face fell at that, although he could tell she was trying to keep from thinking about it too much.

"I know what you mean," he said.  "I miss home too."

Ava teared up a little then; he could see tears glistening at the corners of her eyes.  Her eyes were golden green, which he somehow had only just noticed.  She put her cup down and dabbed at her eyes a little with the napkin from her place setting.  "Thanks," she said in a shaky voice.  "I was trying not to think about it too much, but I guess I shouldn't have said anything in the first place."

"No, I'm sorry too.  I could see you were upset and I guess maybe I thought that if I said something it would help, not make it worse."

She wiped her eyes a little more, then put the napkin back and picked up her coffee again.  "I think... I think that I'm still getting used to being here," she said.  "And I don't really understand what's going on, so that doesn't help either."

Taliesin hesitated.  "Can I tell you something kind of strange?  And promise not to throw coffee at me for it?"

Ava frowned.  "What are you talking about?"

"I had a dream, the first night I was here.  That was the day before we met you.  I dreamed about a dragon, a huge dragon with golden eyes, and I... saw you, too."  He waited for her to shout at him or toss her coffee in his direction, but she just sat there, tapping the cup with her right index finger.

"Well, that explains it," she said.

Taliesin was confused.  "What?"

"When I first saw you, or I should say when you first saw me yesterday, you had a really odd look on your face. I could have sworn you were going to ask me if we'd met before, except of course I know I've never seen you before in my life, but instead of saying anything you've been absolutely silent about it until now.  Which actually is kind of frustrating for me personally, but then not everyone is going to behave the way I want them to, right?"

"Right," said Taliesin.  "Wait.  You're not angry about this?"

"Why would I be?  I can't help that you dreamed me, anymore than you can help that there is some kind of prophecy about you, or that I can help that I met a Great Dragon.  Well, I suppose I could have helped that.  But I'm curious.  My mother always says - " she stopped, and a look came over her face as if she had tasted spoiled milk.  "Never mind," she said in a tight voice.

At that moment, Tristan came into the morning room, dressed in bright yellow robes.  "Good morning!" he said cheerfully, and Ava's face looked even more sour than it already did.  Taliesin felt extremely out of his depth.

Tristan sat down and merrily began helping himself to every food item on the table.  "Eat, boy, you haven't even finished yet!" he said to Taliesin, who obediently began putting food on his fork and then into his mouth again, but he was thinking about Ava and why she was so upset suddenly.  She sat at the table for a little while longer, and then pushed her chair back and walked back over to the window again, where she stood and seemed to be lost in thought.

"Today, I will go to the Great Library," said Tristan through a large bite of buttered biscuit.  He washed that down with some freshly squeezed orange juice.  "I have some friends there that I will be happy to see, and they should be happy to see me as well," he continued.  "I have been gone a long time..."  He trailed off, but continued eating as if it did not at all interfere with either speaking or thinking.

"Why did you leave?" ventured Taliesin, who had finished eating.

"That is a long and complicated story," said Tristan.

"We have time though, don't we?  I need to know some things," said Taliesin.  "Please," he added.  "You said you would explain things yesterday, but then we... didn't really talk much, not after we met Ava."

Tristan frowned.  "You're right, boy.  And yesterday I had a lot on my mind.  I still do, in fact, and I still have the same pressing urgencies to be taken care of, but I slept well last night, which has cleared my mind of some of the cobwebs that had cluttered it previously.  I would rather speak with you about this after I visit the Library and re-read the ancient texts, but I suppose you will not let me wait so long."

Taliesin nodded.  Ava had turned to face the two of them, but was still standing by the window.  She looked distant, but her eyes were focused on Tristan.

Tristan sighed deeply and tugged on his robes, rearranging himself in his chair, and then pushed back his plate.  "Well, then.  Where do I begin?"  He was silent for a few moments, and then he began.  "A very long time ago, when I first came to this world, I first heard of the prophecy.  Now this prophecy is so old and so obscure that it has no formal name, so you will have to forgive me for always simply referring to it as 'the prophecy' when I speak of it.

"Merlin was the one who first recited it to me, because he thought that it was possible I was the fulfillment of it.  He had studied it himself for some years, certain that there was some deep, great meaning in the words, even though all other magicians since the time the prophecy was spoken and recorded had passed it by.  The King was still in this castle at that time, when I was first here, and that fact alone was enough for me to distance myself from having any active role in fulfilling the dragon's words.  Time passed and Merlin left, leaving me to my own devices - "

Ava interrupted him.  "How did Merlin leave?  Why is there no king here?  You aren't really explaining much, you know," she said tartly, and gestured at Taliesin as if she expected him to agree with her.

"Right," he said, a little hesitantly, which drew a glare from her.

Tristan frowned.  "I don't see how those events are relevant to what you need to know," he said.

"But I want to know - WE want to know," insisted Ava.

Taliesin nodded, then hastily said, "Yes, we want to know," when she turned her head toward him with that glare in her eyes again.  She either had a bad attitude in general, or the two of them were making her angry somehow.  He racked his brain quickly but could not think of what he might be doing wrong; maybe it was just Tristan.  He hoped it was just Tristan, because the last thing he wanted was to have her mad at him.

"Very well.  I suppose it cannot be avoided or put off," he raised his eyebrows at Ava, "so I will begin at the beginning and tell you the whole of it." 

At this, Ava came closer to the table and sat on the floor, her legs crossed, skirt spread out around her, and sat forward expectantly, leaning on her folded hands.  Taliesin wanted to slip off his chair and sit near her, but he was worried that she might take it wrongly, and decided his best bet was to stay where he was for now.  He shifted a little uncomfortably, and Tristan began speaking again.

"When I came here, as I said, I was taken in by the nuns of Woodchurch Abbey in the small town of Grainge, which is many miles to the west of this city.  They kept me for weeks, nursing me back to health, since I had nearly injured myself fatally in the journey and the lack of food.  Until I was well enough to get up, I read books that they had in their small library, or I sat and stared out the window, trying to make sense of what had happened to me.  This was painful for me, however, since I had absolutely no idea how I would ever get back to my home, or if it was even possible; so I tried to make myself busy instead.  Once I could get up and move about, the nuns allowed me to help them in their gardening.  I showed myself to be able to learn the different herbs and their properties, which was mostly the purvey of the Magicians' Order, although the nuns learned it as well out of necessity, so that they could care for their congregation and all rest of the folk who inhabited their little town.

"The magicians themselves, once each year in the spring, would come through each town, looking for apprentices.  The nuns were impressed with my ability, and suggested that I attend the meeting the magician would be holding in the sanctuary when he came.  The gathering was always held in the Abbey in that town, because it was the largest building that they had.  They never knew which magician would come through in any given year, but one always did.  That day, I woke early, nervous and unable to sleep, and after completing my chores early, I went to sit in the sanctuary and wait.  Merlin was already there, although I did not know who he was, or that he was the King's Magician, the highest of that order.  He must have sensed in me something that he was looking for in an apprentice, because he went directly to the nuns and asked to take me with him, even before the meeting was called.  They were somewhat shocked at his manner, but they agreed to his request, because the life of a magician's apprentice was the best thing they could offer to me.  I did not expect to cry when I left them, but I did; they had become like an extension of my family, indeed the only family I had at all in this new world.

"Merlin brought me here, and I lived in a tiny room adjacent to his quarters for ten years as his apprentice.  On my twenty-fifth birthday, I was inducted into the order, and the King himself gave me the Magician's Oath in a ceremony held in the Great Hall.  Soon after that, Merlin grew restless, and he seemed to change overnight; although, to be fair, I was extremely busy in my new role as Magician, so I may have missed what signs there may have been that would have indicated to me the change that was taking place.  He and the King, with whom he was quite close (in friendship as well as being his chief counselor), began having many loud arguments, lasting long into the small hours of the night.  I did not ask what they argued about - Merlin is not a man who is easily confronted about anything, and his word had been law for me for so long that I assumed that all was well.  My foolishness and naivete may have cost the kingdom its King, however..."  he trailed off, looking out through the glass toward the far mountain ranges, or at least that is what Taliesin thought he was looking at.  Perhaps he didn't see them at all.

Tristan continued after a few moments, and his voice was more grave now.  "Merlin and the King fought, on the last night anyone saw either of them.  They argued loud and long, and at one point they sounded as if they must be threatening to kill one another, because their voices grew harsh and full of rage.  The next thing that happened is hard to say exactly, because it was late at night, or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it.  There was a great crash and a bright blinding light appeared inside the castle wing where the two of them were; several guards rushed to the room and threw open the door, and found neither the King nor his Magician.  There was blood on the floor, and a piece of the King's robe, torn off obviously, was lying next to it.  The furniture was in some disarray, as if they had struggled and fought, but there was no sign of them apart from that.  It is generally believed that Merlin took the King with him on some type of journey, because to think that the King was murdered was too much for the guards and servants to accept.  There was not enough blood, surely, to have come from a dead man, although that does not mean that he is not dead.

"I left the castle after a few months, because I could neither solve the mystery myself, nor stomach the lie that the King's own people wanted to believe.  At least to me, it is a lie.  I do believe that Merlin killed him, but for what reason, I cannot say.  I went away, and I built my little cottage, and I gathered my own people around me that respected my powers enough to obey me as their master.  I have waited for another to come through the rainbow's path into the wood that I once came to, so that I could finally discover what the prophecy really means.  So that I could find out why I came here, and maybe avenge the King I never bothered to protect because I thought he was already safe."  This last was said sadly, in a melancholy voice that touched Taliesin.  He was seeing Tristan from a completely different perspective.

Ava sighed quietly.  "I'm sorry, Tristan," she said.  "I didn't realize you weren't from here, that you came here like us.  I thought you were just..."  she stopped, her cheeks flushing.  Taliesin wondered what she was about to say.

Tristan sighed as well, and got up from his chair.  "I will be in the Library if you need me later, but please... don't bother me for a while.  I need time to think and read, and to concentrate on my theories."  He left, considerably less cheery than he had been when he arrived. 

Ava brightened a little as he left, and looked up at Taliesin.  "Let's go for a walk, out there where the trees are.  Do you want to go?  My ankle still hurts but I want to exercise it, so that it gets stretched out.  I think it might heal more quickly that way."

Taliesin's heart leapt in his chest a little.  She wanted to walk with him. "Of course!" he said before he realized he was speaking.  He reached down and helped her up from the floor, and she put her arm through his and leaned on him a little. 

Something was happening with him, something that almost felt more important than his recent travel through the rainbow.  But he couldn't think about that now, because her hair smelled really good and it was very close to his face again.

I have to apologize up front for this chapter - it's a little rough around the edges (okay, a LOT), and it doesn't feel to me as if it's really done.  But I've got to keep moving in my story or I'll get bogged down by editing stuff.  ;)

The sun was setting low in the sky, bathing the city walls in blood-red light, as the traveling party walked wearily up to the front gate.  The stone of the walls sparkled here and there, leading Ava to believe that it was in fact some kind of quartz rock. The walls were very high, and the only thing that she could see above them was a tall, slender spire that looked like it might be on some beautiful cathedral.  Its shape was graceful, and along with the sparkling rock walls and the colors of the setting sun, she was beginning to have an expectation that the city itself must be very fair to look upon.

The gate itself was actually a gigantic set of doors, carved from a pale ivory wood.  They were wide open, and the closer they got she could see people walking through a paved square, other people riding horses or on wagons, and a few stalls hawking wares.  Two guards began to shut the doors, but Tristan shouted out - "Hold! The king's magician has returned!" - and they stopped immediately and marched out toward the three. 

Tristan and Taliesin stopped walking then, and Ava slid off Taliesin's back and was pleasantly surprised to find that her ankle did not throb nearly as much as it had last time they stopped. 

"Tristan, King's Magician," said the taller of the two guards, as they came to a halt in front of them, "have you now come back after your years away from us?"

Ava sensed old history here, and suspected that these guards were angry, or disappointed, that Tristan had been gone for so long.  She wondered how long he'd been away from them, and why.  They had not spoken to each other for the entire journey to the city, and she was beginning to feel disoriented from such a long trip and the sudden knowledge that she knew nothing of her companions.  A wave of unsettling emotion hit her then, and it took a supreme force of will for her to remain standing and not show what she was feeling.

"I am here now," stated Tristan.  "What reasons I had for leaving have now been fulfilled, as you will all find out soon enough... but for now, we need food, and beds, and I need a page to take me to the Great Library."

Ava was taken aback at his manner; he had become almost regal, a change from the frustrated silence he had exhibited all that day.  He must have been used to ordering people about and being given what he asked for or demanded.  At least he had asked for food and bed, because she was most definitely exhausted and could use both of those, as soon as possible.  Thankfully, the guards did not waste any time getting them into the city; and as they walked through the carved doors, the sun slipped down below the horizon for the day and the air instantly became cooler and the shadows bluer.  The doors slammed shut behind them, which startled her.

The paving of the square caught her eye next: it was a large representation of a dragon, complete with colored scales, fierce ivory teeth, and unfurled wings.  She stood and stared at it for several minutes, then recognition dawned on her.  "That's my dragon!" she exclaimed, which drew confused and worried looks from the guards, who were still beside them. 

"Cernunnos belongs to no man," chuckled Tristan.  He had not even cracked a smile all day, and his change of behavior was almost irritating to Ava.  She suspected that the irritation might be mostly the result of walking all day and having next to no lunch or dinner.  Her stomach growled then, and Taliesin's echoed hers, which sent her into a fit of giggles, which made her stomach hurt.  Taliesin merely looked embarrassed.  He had yet to speak, which Ava thought was odd, but then she didn't know him at all yet, so maybe for him that was normal.

"Take us to the food, please," she begged.  "I am so hungry!"

"Follow me, please," said the shorter guard.  Ava thought he looked nice; he had brown curly hair and brown eyes, and dimples that were obvious even though he was not smiling.  He took them on a route that went directly into the heart of the city and through it. 

Only a little way into their trek, Ava stumbled and fell into Taliesin, who was trudging along beside her.  He caught her and held her up.  Tears sprang to her eyes.  "My ankle," she moaned.  "I think I twisted it again!"  She started to cry.  So close to food and sleeping, yet so far away, and now her feet wouldn't even take her there when she wanted them to. 

"It's okay," said Taliesin gently.  "I can carry you again.  But not on my back this time."  He scooped her up then, one arm under her shoulders and one under her knees, and they started walking again. 

Ava was too miserable to be embarrassed, and laid her head on his shoulder and cried a little bit more, silently.  She hoped he didn't mind too much that she was leaving a wet spot on his sleeve.  The rhythm of his steps lulled her almost to sleep, and she was startled when they arrived at their destination and she was being gently put back on her feet.  "We're here?" she asked in a disoriented voice.  "Where are we?"

"This is Castle Agria," spoke the curly-haired guard.  "You are guests here for the duration of your stay.  Ethelreda will take care of you now that you are at the Castle.  Farewell," and he bowed to all three of them, then left.

"Ethelreda? Who is that?" Ava asked, feeling increasingly stupid with fatigue and hunger. 

"Mistress of the house," said Tristan.  "She is in charge of the servants and everything that they're in charge of.  She will get us our dinner and our beds."  He pushed open the door they had stopped next to, and led them inside. 

The atmosphere changed completely once they were inside the castle.  They had apparently arrived in the kitchens, and the air was heavy with heat and the smell of things baking and broiling and roasting.  The room itself was huge, and it was full of stove tops and ovens and long tables piled with potatoes and other vegetables and loaves of bread.  A large woman, swathed in a red apron, appeared in front of them, and immediately began talking in a very loud voice.  "TRISTAN!! You old fool!  I should have known it wouldn't be long before you showed up in my castle again!"  She looked almost as if she would hit him, but instead she gave him an energetic hug.  Tristan looked as if he was being crushed, and also looked like he was enjoying it.

"Ethelreda, my dear woman, you haven't changed at all!" he said when she had let go of him.  "We are famished and have traveled all day to get here.  What can you give us?"

"I have fresh bread and stew," she said, but sniffed disapprovingly.  "That is hardly a dinner worthy of a Magician of your stature," she said, then turned to inspect Ava and Taliesin.  "Look at these two!"  she exclaimed.  "Near starving to death!  Come in here with me now, sit down, have a drink of this.  ANNA!" she shouted that last in the direction of a woman who was busy over a pot at one of the stove tops.  "Bring three bowls of that stew, and a new loaf of bread, there's a good lass!"

Ava sat at one of the wooden tables, eating piping hot stew with crusty, buttered bread, and felt herself coming a little bit back to life again.  She did not realize just how hungry she had been until she was halfway through her second bowl and was buttering her fourth slice of bread.  Taliesin and Tristan were similarly engaged, the two of them going through their stew at an alarming rate.  Ethelreda had Anna bring them slices of apple pie with hand-whipped cream, and tall silver mugs of hot cider.  They ate and drank until Ava was nearly asleep on the table, and were then ushered off to bed, each in their own guest room.

She was so sleepy that she barely noticed that a maid had to help her out of her clothes and into a nightgown, and then into bed.  She was almost completely asleep before she had a chance to realize that she was even in a bed at all.

As the three walked along, the old magician and the boy walking next to each other, and the girl clinging to the boy's back, late morning gave way to afternoon, and the sun was high in the sky before the magician called a halt to rest and eat.

They stopped at a rock pile that looked to Taliesin that it had been arranged just so, which was overshadowed by a one large tree with several large branches that hung low over the rocks.  Ava slid off his back near one large rock that was separate from the pile, and he sighed heavily and stretched out his arms and back.  She heard several loud cracks, and immediately felt horrible for being the cause of his obvious back pain.  They had walked all this way in total silence, however, and she felt almost uncomfortable breaking it, which was another unusual thing for her, and she knew it.  Already this place was... not changing her, but it was eliciting different responses than she usually gave.  One thing she was certain of: having been nearly eaten by a dragon, she would never again see anything the same way.  Fear had a whole new meaning for her now.

As Ava sat and rubbed her arms and shoulders and tried to relax in the shade, Tristan paced back and forth, back and forth.  He seemed unable to stop moving, even though he had been the one to tell them they were stopping to rest for a while. 

"Tristan," said Taliesin hesitantly, as if afraid to break his concentration, "what did you bring for eating?"

Tristan stopped only long enough to open his pack and throw a few apples at the two of them, and mutter something about bread and cheese for later.  Ava caught the apple he threw at her, and looked at it in mild surprise.  "This is a snack," she said matter-of-factly.  "Not that I'm refusing it, but this is hardly lunch."  Taliesin nodded but said nothing.  Ava wondered if the small magician was angry with him, because Taliesin seemed very wary of upsetting him.

After only ten or fifteen minutes, during which the white-haired magician continued to pace back and forth and occasionally say things under his breath (at one point he stopped and gestured, in a sort of westerly direction), he waved them up again, and Ava climbed onto Taliesin's back once more.  It was starting to feel familiar, if not exactly comfortable.  Now that they were traveling again, they kept silent like they had before.  She felt that this was odd, but did not feel comfortable being the first one to say something, so she remained mute, keeping company with her thoughts once more.

------

Taliesin's back was beginning to ache.  He had carried the red-haired girl for what seemed like miles already, and Tristan was obviously not going to stop again for hours.  His mind, which up until about a half an hour before their rest stop had been foggy and, he suspected, still under the effects of whatever magic Cernunnos possessed, was now laboring over the things the dragon had said about him.

THE BOY WILL BE CROWNED, he had said.  The reverberations of his voice had gone all throughout Taliesin's body and seemed to have lodged in his very bones, because recalling the words of the dragon also recalled the sensation of those words being spoken.  There was no other boy there but him when Cernunnos had spoken, although he honestly did not think of himself as a boy.  Tristan, however, certainly considered him a boy - he called him by that title constantly, even though he had only met him the day before.  How strange that one could meet a person and already have a complicated history with them only twenty-four hours later.  And how strange to dream a red-haired girl, and the next day to be carrying her on your back. 

He shook his head, trying to get the thoughts in some kind of order so he could figure out how it all affected him, what it all meant.  Ava shifted her weight and her hair fell in his face again, but he didn't mind.  She tossed her head a little, which almost threw him off balance.  The hair was not hanging by his cheek any more, and part of him regretted that.  He had no idea who she really was, but some part of him knew her.  If he only knew why, maybe some part of this would make some sense. 

He tried to recall his dream from the night before, but all he could remember was her: her pale skin, red hair, and her sadness.  She hadn't seemed very sad when he met her, though.  She had seemed decidedly annoyed, although whether it was from her twisted ankle or some other reason he was not privy to, he had no idea.  She smelled like the woods, like autumn leaves and mossy bark.  She made him think of poetry and loneliness, and he did not even know who she was.

If only someone would start talking; Taliesin was beginning to feel uncomfortable, as well as powerless to change that feeling.

------

Each mile they walked was another mile closer to the one thing that would either confirm or destroy Tristan's long-held belief in prophecy.  Cernunnos had referred to a very old prophecy, one that was so obscure that almost none of the lesser magicians even discussed it anymore.  Tristan was different, however.  Tristan had not been born on this world, and his perception of things, as somewhat of an outsider, had always served him excellently in his life here.  There were always mistakes that could be made, though.  This was either a colossal mistake or the fulfillment of what he considered to be the most important prophecy that this world had ever known.  Cernunnos' sire, a Great Dragon of legend, had been the one who prophesied more than an Age ago.

The prophecy echoed inside his mind as if he had heard it when it was first spoken, instead of having merely read it from its brittle pages and repeated it to himself many times:

The rainbow shall appear and bring forth a king, and he shall bring about our greatest danger.  The Great One will be wounded and his blood will heal the rift.

The rainbow itself was a very rare appearance, and he had made a point of studying every such occurrence throughout the last Age and this one, ever since the prophecy had been made.  His first reason was, of course, because he had come through the rainbow himself years ago.  For a time, when he had heard of the prophecy through Merlin, he wondered if he was meant to be a king.  As time went by, he began to believe that the prophecy was not about him.  Not only was there a King in the city up until five years ago, which would make ridiculous any claim he personally had to be the fulfillment of the prophecy, he had always had an inkling... a feeling deep inside his awareness... that he was meant to be in this world to guide the coming king when he appeared.  Taliesin could be that fulfillment.  And Cernunnos had referred his sire's ancient prophecy when he met the boy, and the words of a dragon were always of some import.

Whether great import or small, it remained to be seen.  His impatience in their journey was getting out of hand - years of life had not taught him nearly the patience he tended to need on a daily basis.  He needed to read the prophecy once more, in the King's Library, and to consult the attendant commentaries and expositions that had been written on it hundreds of years ago when it was still new and was being discussed by the most important and wisest magicians.  He needed to speak to his fellow magicians, the few of them who still lived in the city.  He needed Taliesin to go into the king's castle and observe him there.

He sigh, irritated at their slow pace.  Taliesin, obviously sensing Tristan's frustration, began to walk a little faster. 

This is taking so long... complained Tristan to himself.  It would not be a good idea to let them know just how impatient he was, so he attempted to rearrange his countenance and walk purposefully instead of hurriedly.  Still, it was several miles to the city and evening was coming on soon.  He hoped they could get within the walls of the city before twilight arrived and the gates were shut for the night.

The early morning sun warmed her face, and she awoke before opening her eyes.  A cool breeze caressed her face, and it suddenly occurred to her that she had fallen asleep in the woods last night, and stayed out there ALL NIGHT.  Her first thought was that she was going to be late for work, and she sprang to her feet in a panic - and then she remembered that, oh yes, she had gotten fired yesterday, so never mind anyway.  But still, she really ought to go back to her apartment - the television and lights and all that were still on and her food had sat out all night.  That was particularly disappointing, because she had a pet peeve about not eating food left out overnight, even if it was fully cooked and completely unlikely to spoil.

She got up and stretched, and decided that since she wasn't working today, or anytime in the foreseeable future unless she could find another job, she was not about to beat herself up over sleeping outside. If only she had brought some money, she could celebrate her first morning job-less by going out for coffee and french toast. Actually, coffee and french toast sounded so good that she was just going to go back to the apartment and get her money. Might as well spend all the rest, since there was no money more coming for a while.

As she left the circle of still-untouched grass - untouched except for the outline of a person indented on the blades, she became suddenly and startlingly aware of the lack of city noise.  No distant cars revving, no horns honking, no doors swinging open or clicking shut.  No keys jangling or people talking, no ambient noise at all.  This was odd in and of itself, but then she noticed that there was no fence.  In fact, the further she walked, the more it dawned on her that she was not in the park at all.  She was not even in the city.  She walked out of the trees then, and found herself at the top of the highest mountain she had ever seen.  It was so high, in fact, that she became immediately dizzy upon realizing that there were clouds below the ground she stood on, and she fell rather ungracefully when her knees got all rubbery and buckled underneath her.

Her head was spinning.  She had fallen asleep in the woods - she woke up on top of a mountain.  The incongruity of the whole thing was almost beyond her ability to process it, so she sat there in shocked silence, struggling to understand, and nearly gasping for breath.  She tried to get up again, but her knees were still shaky; she crawled closer to the edge, fascinated and horrified at the same time.  How far up was she?  Where was she?

After a few minutes, the world stopped spinning so badly, and she was able to carefully get on her feet again.  She faced the woods again, found the place she had exited.  Maybe if she went back in the same way, she could just get back home right now and not be stuck here.  Although... it was so peaceful up here.  She laughed at herself then.  How ironic, she had just been flipping out because she woke up in a strange new place, and now she was thinking it wasn't so bad.  Her mother would have a heyday with that classic example of Ava's contradictory nature.  Make up your mind!  her inner-voice mother said sternly.  And, of course you go back home.  Go RIGHT now, you foolish and headstrong girl!

Ava was certainly not one for doing what she was told, even when it was a voice in her own head that imitated her mother.  She deliberately walked past the opening in the trees where she had so recently come out, and walked instead along the edge of the small forest.  She could see now that it really was small - a stand of trees on top of a lonely mountain, just thick enough that you could not see from within the wood that you were, in fact, on top of a mountain.  Turning to face the startling vista again, she wondered (steadying herself against the bole of a tree) how far up she was.  Since she seemed to be having no trouble breathing, aside from the minor fit she had just minutes before, she couldn't be quite as high up as it seemed that she was.

Wondering what else was up here, she kept walking along the tree line, although it came into her mind now that she ought to be careful.  She might be letting her imagination run away with her now, but what other surprises - and not necessarily good ones - might be in store for her?  She walked as quietly as she could, avoiding small branches and trying to step around leaves.  It was because she was attempting to be so silent that she was able to get so close to the dragon before it saw her.

She noticed a long scaly thing in the ground that she at first thought was a snake, and then right after that realized it was attached to something much bigger and most definitely not a snake.  She followed it with her eyes, the lines of the thing, and let out a small scream when she had a name stored in her mind for what she was seeing.  Dragon.  A real dragon.  The dragon's head, which was nearly as big as a small car, swung around at her scream and two huge glowing golden eyes, eyes that were so large that it was difficult to understand them as merely eyes, looked straight at her and caught her in their mesmerizing gaze.

A sound like thunder on a summer night, when purple lightning plays in the clouds and the air is still and hot, rumbled up out of the dragon's immense chest, and came out rather unexpectedly as speech.  Ava had expected to be incinerated, since this great dragon, with its huge liquidly golden eyes and shining covering of rainbow-shimmering scales, was like a perfect replication of every frightening fire-breathing beast she had ever imagined while reading fantasy books late at night.  Instead, the glorious and terrifying creature spoke to her.

"THE SMELL OF THE RAINBOW IS ALL AROUND YOU," it said.  The thundering of its voice was so deep that it felt like it had vibrated through every bone in her body.  She could understand that she had been spoken to, and that perhaps a response was expected, but she could not think of anything to say, and indeed she had nearly forgotten how to form words herself.  If she were to die right now, either because of the mere fact that she was beholding the awesome beauty of the dragon, or because she would soon be burned alive in its fire (for surely it breathed fire, all dragons did, right?), she could have no regrets.  In its eyes was contained all of life.

"COME CLOSE TO ME," the dragon thundered.  She walked toward it now, drowning in its magnificent eyes, powerless to withstand its all-encompassing presence.  Her feet carried her forward of their own volition, or perhaps more accurately, of the dragon's volition.  She stopped mere inches from its head; a long and powerful jaw opened directly in front of her, showing sharp ivory teeth and twin curving fangs.  It breathed on her then, and she was bathed in an exotic heat.  She was dizzy, light-headed.  The dragon's will kept her standing upright.  "IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME..." it rumbled, and its magnificent eyes closed.  In that instant, she regained herself somewhat, and she gasped and her knees buckled underneath her.  Falling onto her face, she covered her head with her arms and began to sob, quivering in the certain knowledge that she was about to be consumed by the great beast.

For several minutes, nothing happened, except that she could feel the hotness of its breath on her head and back each time it exhaled, which it did very slowly.  She willed herself to stop crying, and slowly raised her head and looked again at the dragon, although this time she avoided its eyes.  There was a mesmerizing power in its eyes that was strong, enticing... she would drown in them if she allowed herself to look into them again, while she had just a minute ago been completely swallowed up and controlled.  She looked instead at its body, barely seeing out of the corner of her eye that its eyes were still shut.  It breathed, regularly, and did not move.  She got to her feet, as silently as possible.  It still did not move.  She backed away, putting one foot behind the other carefully, not taking her eyes off the dragon's still form.  She was several yards away from its sharp fangs when she tripped and fell hard on a large rock.  Her ankle twisted as she fell, and she cried out in pain.  The dragon's eyes snapped open, and it shifted forward slightly and brought its head near her.  She screamed, helplessly.  "Please!" she cried.  "Please don't eat me!"

"IF I WAS GOING TO EAT YOU, HUMAN GIRL, I WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE SO," said the dragon.  "YOU ARE INJURED.  CAN YOU WALK?"

Bewildered and in pain, she sobbed out, "How was I supposed to know you weren't going to eat me?  What are those teeth for, anyway?  And no, I can't walk!"  She kept crying, the tears stinging her eyes.  What a bizarre and entirely frightening turn of events.  If she had only listened to the voice in her head, maybe she could have been back home by now.

"LET ME HELP YOU," said the dragon.  Ava looked incredulously at it, still avoiding direct contact with its eyes.  "THEN WHEN YOU HAVE HEALED, YOU WILL HELP ME."

Her tears abated somewhat.  "Are you... making a deal with me?  What could I possibly do for you?"  She wiped her face with her sleeve.  What she wouldn't give for a tissue so she could blow her nose with minimal mess.

"WHEN THE TIME COMES, YOU WILL BE WILLING," the dragon replied cryptically.  "IF YOU CAN CLIMB ONTO MY BACK, I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE KING'S CITY, WHERE THE REST OF THE HUMANS DWELL."

"Okay," she agreed, sniffling and wiping her face again.  "Just so long as you promise not to eat me," she added firmly.  Trying not to put any weight on her injured ankle, she limped back toward the dragon.  Its scales shimmered and glowed when it moved.  It reached around suddenly and grasped her around her waist, but before she could protest or scream again, it had deposited her on its back, in between two large ridges.

"HOLD TIGHT TO ME," it said.  "I FLY SWIFTLY AND I CANNOT CATCH YOU IF YOU FALL."

She clung to the ridge in front of her, which rose to almost a sharp point, as did the ridge behind her.  She turned her head to look behind her, and could see that the ridges continued all the way down the dragon's back and to the end of its tail, which seemed very far away.  This dragon was absolutely gigantic, and she was not sure whether to be elated at seeing and experiencing a real live dragon, or to be hysterical and start screaming again.  She decided against the latter; after all, it had just agreed not to eat her.  At least it wasn't going to eat her right now.

Wind whistled past her ears and she felt a lurch in her stomach, the same that she got on roller coasters; the dragon had just launched itself into the air and was spiraling down around the mountain.  A sound came from its wings - a sort of humming noise, and the flapping of its great leathery wings layered additional sound on top of that.  The combined sound was almost enough to overwhelm her senses, but thankfully as they descended further, the sound receded a bit.  She found, to her surprise, that she was quite stable in her perch between the two ridges.  The dragon's center of gravity must be working in her favor; if only she remember something more of the physics class she had in high school, she might be able to venture an informed guess about it.  What mattered was that she was not about to fall off any time soon.

She leaned a little to one side, so that she could see below them.  The wind blew her hair all around her face and neck as soon as she leaned away from her protected spot, but she caught a glimpse of fast-approaching ground before she leaned back in, out of the gusts of wind.  The sensation now was the same as driving in a fast car over sloping roads - moving, but stable.  A friend of hers had once been on a large cruise ship, and had told her that its movement was barely noticeable most of the time on account of its vast size.  This must be the same kind of thing.

There was a bump and a jolt as the dragon landed.  Its wings folded slowly back into its body, and its head swung around to look not at her, but at two figures who were huddled in the road they had alighted near.

One of the figures, a frail old man with white hair, shouted something she didn't understand, and made signs in the air with his hands.  Sparks shot up around he and the young man that was with him, and they disappeared suddenly from view as if they had never been there.  The dragon shifted itself and she heard the sound of its breath.  It was breathing on the spot where the two men had been standing, and they reappeared, but seemed faded, as if surrounded by a fog or by smoke.  The old man looked positively offended, and turned to speak to his companion, who was obviously terrified.  Ava herself wondered why the old man did not behave in a more frightened manner, or why he did not begin walking toward the dragon's fanged mouth as she had, while under its sway.

She clambered down from between the dragon's ridges and promptly put too much weight on her sore ankle, and that was when the two men noticed here.  "Ow," she winced, and shifted her weight quickly to the other foot.  The old one was now shocked - he stopped in mid-sentence and his eyes were round as saucers.  He pointed at her wordlessly, and the young man was also shocked.  No, not shocked.  There was something in his face that she could not place at first... it was recognition.  He recognized her.  Now it was her turn to be disconcerted.  She stepped forward, trying not to use her injured ankle, closer to the dragon's head.  It was still holding the two men in its gaze, but was unmoving.  Its great jaws were shut, and its eyes were open and unblinking.

"Who are you?" she demanded of the two men, because she could think of nothing else to say to them.

The old man drew himself up and replied, "I am Tristan the Magician.  Who are you, who ride so securely on the back of the Great Dragon himself?"

The young man looked at her in bewilderment, then at the magician, then at the dragon, then at her again.  "I thought... I thought that dragons... eat people?" he asked the magician in a shaky voice.

Tristan the Magician ignored him, and turned his attention to the dragon.  "Never in the long ages of this world have I ever heard of a dragon consorting with a human... not even the lesser dragons.  For the Great Dragon, Cernunnos himself, to allow a human to ride on his back... this is a portent that things are changing.  The world is changing.  And these two - "

"I ALLOW NO MAN TO SPEAK MY NAME, FOOLISH MORTAL," thundered Cernunnos.  The air around his great body began to feel, to Ava, angry and shimmery at the same time.  As if the dragon was able to cause the very air that surrounded him to be subject to his will and emotion.  Tristan stepped back; he must be able to sense the same thing.  Taliesin just stood and shook a little.  So far Ava was quite unimpressed with him, already having forgotten her own terror at first meeting the dragon.

"My apologies, great one," said Tristan, and bowed.  "I meant merely to say that for a legend such as yourself to mingle and mix with humans is not only highly unusual, but world-shifting as well."  Cernunnos remained silent.  "The boy with me has been through the rainbow, and we are traveling to the city of the king.  I am sure that in your unfathomable wisdom you know why he must go there."

The dragon's eyes blinked once, and focused on Taliesin, who went white, then seemed to relax, and took a step towards the great beast's head, slowly.  Ava, fascinated and a little horrified, wondered if the dragon would eat him or just smell him.  She shifted a little nervously, forgetting about her injury, and winced again.  Cernunnos breathed in deeply through his nostrils, opening his jaws a little as well.  Taliesin just stood still, obviously under the spell of the dragon's eyes.  Cernunnos shut his eyes then, and Taliesin stumbled back and fell, his face once again a picture of fear.

"THEY SMELL THE SAME... YET DIFFERENT."  Cernunnos' eyes were still shut.  "THEIR FATES ARE INTERTWINED WITH ALL OUR FATES.  THEIR PURPOSES ARE OUR PURPOSES."  His eyes snapped open, and he looked directly at Tristan.  "YOU WILL LEAD THEM TO THE CITY AND THE BOY WILL BE CROWNED.  THE GIRL..." he paused for only a moment.  "THE GIRL WILL FULFILL HER PROMISE TO ME, BUT LATER.  NOW GO," he said, and in an instant he had gathered himself and flown off in a howl of wind and the sound of beating wings, disappearing into the horizon at an alarming rate of speed.

The three looked at each other.  The magician was, for once, at a loss for words.  Taliesin took a deep, shuddery breath, and sat down, putting his head in his hands. 

"I don't understand," said Ava plaintively.  She sat down too, carefully, because her ankle still hurt.  Tristan remained standing, and looked off into the distance, to the north, the direction of the city.  

After a few moments, he made a harrumph-ing sound, and waved at the two younger ones.  "Get up!  We must go."

"Where are we going?" asked Ava.  "And, in case you hadn't noticed, my ankle is twisted.  I don't think I can walk very far."

"To the city of the king, which is currently empty of a king.  Taliesin will carry you, as he is young and strong, and those days are far behind me."

Taliesin looked up, startled out of his reverie by those words.  "Did you just offer me to carry her on my back?" he asked, incredulous.  "I don't know if I can - "  he looked at Ava, and his face changed.  Again, she could see that he seemed to know her, because it showed in his eyes, which were very dark, almost black.  She was offended, but at the same time she was piqued at needing the help he was not actually obligated to give her, so she kept her mouth shut, which was no small feat for her.  You can't change, the voice in her head said, just like her mother, because you are stubborn.  Just like your father.

"I can change!" she shouted, then immediately turned red, because both of her new companions had a look of... what was that?  Pity?  Surprise?  Embarrassment?  "Never mind," she said hastily.  "I can try to walk if you really don't want to help me.  I mean, if you don't want to carry me."

"No, that's okay," said Taliesin slowly.  "Here," he said, and pulled her up gently, then helped her onto his back.  He looked small to her, slight and possibly scrawny; but his back was firm and strong, and his shoulders compact.  She leaned into him and put her arms around his shoulders, trying to keep her clasped hands away from his neck.  What an oddly intimate position to be in with a complete stranger.  Except that he had looked at her like he was familiar with her already.

The three of them set off on the road to the city, too busy in their own thoughts to talk to each other just now, and too preoccupied to worry about any more dragons.  Nothing could compare to the conversation they had just experienced with the Great Dragon, and his cryptic statements ran over and over in their heads.

Ava Gordon was eating alone again, and she was eating on the couch instead of at the kitchen table.  Her mother would be mortified.

She had ordered three different meals from her favorite Chinese restaurant, even though she usually had trouble finishing half of one meal.  It was one of those days, and she was in one of those moods.  Sometimes food helped distract her.  That was another thing her mother would be contemptible about - food as comfort.  Food as a stress-reliever.  Food as a friend - but that last was really taking it too far.  Ava was not stupid enough to think that food would ever be her friend.

The television was on, but she wasn't really watching it.  A crime drama was half-way to its anti-climactic ending, but she was barely paying attention.  It was only on so that the silence would not drive her insane anyway.

She had no roommate to annoy with either the silence or the noise - she could do anything she wanted.  Except, apparently, hold down a job. 

She sighed and smacked herself in the forehead - the reason for all the food and the tv was so that she would NOT think about getting fired.  Buying food she could no longer afford was like saying, hey job!  Up yours!  Hey, uncertainty?  Kiss my ass!  Language, Ava!  her mother's voice echoed inside her head, and she groaned loudly.  "Why can't I just get away from you!" she cried, and slammed her sweet and sour chicken down on the coffee table, where it began to ooze a little bit.  There was already a sticky residue on her hand, and she licked it off instead of wiping it with a napkin.  She had to physically make her mother's voice leave her alone even for that little social no-no.

Now her appetite was gone, and not just because she had stopped being hungry at least ten minutes ago.  Thanks a lot, Mom, she thought sarcastically.  If her mother knew, or could hear, all the conversations that Ava had with her inside her head, she would probably try to have Ava committed.  Or at least medicated heavily.  She could picture herself, sitting in a white wicker chair on the front porch of some posh insane asylum for the chronically rich... somewhere down south, although why it was down south she had no idea... dressed in a spotless white straightjacket and drooling from one corner of her mouth.  She shivered. 

She decided suddenly that she was all done eating, but that she was not really interested in cleaning up any food-related messes just yet.  Instead, she took her coat and favorite scarf from their hook by the door and put them on.  She stuffed her keys in her coat pocket, turned to wave goodbye to her cheap little messy apartment, and locked the door behind her, forgetting to turn off the light as she left. 

Even though her apartment was as cheap as they could possibly get in that part of the city, she was not in what you would consider a 'ghetto.'  Her mother, of course (ever-present in her imagination and consciousness) did not approve of where she lived, but that was probably one of the main reasons Ava had decided to take that particular apartment, if not the main reason.  The other main reason, if there was one, would be that there was a lovely quiet park only a block away.  It was full of trees and private paths and there was almost never anyone there.  Ava suspected that everyone else in the area either thought it was a sure place to get raped or mugged or murdered, or they didn't know it existed.

Not being one for feeling afraid, and also having a can of mace in her other coat pocket as well as three years of karate in her available defense repertoire, Ava went to the park very regularly.  Walking there always made her feel better no matter what was going on in her life; whether it was her mother's real voice hammering away at her or just the accusatory voice in her head that sounded just like her mother, it all faded away when she went to her park.  That's how she thought of it - as hers.  When there were other people there, she glared at them and avoided them until they left, as if it was actually her property and they had no right to be there.

It only took her a few minutes to walk to the park, and there was nobody out at this time of night on the sidewalk.  A few cars sped past on the road - another of the shabby apartment's drawbacks was that it was situation on a main road.  The speed limit was barely reduced for the residential area.  Not that Ava cared, really.  She had to take the bus to work and never really needed to worry about the relative safety of pulling out of the apartment's parking lot onto a busy four-lane road during morning rush hour.

Once in the darkness of the trees, Ava began to relax.  She slowed from a brisk walk to an amble, and breathed in deeply.  No flowers bloomed this late in the year, but the smell of crisp fall leaves was in the air even at this time of night.  It was her favorite time of the year: cold, full of color and smell, and windy.  She loved wind, especially so because it gave her an excuse to wear a scarf.  She took a hand out of its warm protective pocket and fingered the lime green scarf she was wearing.  She had actually knitted it herself, which gave her an immense sense of pride every time she wore it; and its strange combination of cables and stripes made it the most unusual, personality-shouting accessory she had ever had.  A happy smile curled at the edges of her lips.  Walking at night was good, handmade scarves were good, being in a place of her choosing was very very good.

She walked this way for a while, smiling at some secret joy that was hers alone, kicking at small piles of leaves that arranged themselves on the path every now and then.  Preoccupied, she had traversed the park's short path twice before she realized it.  Deciding that it was a good time for sitting now, she found a bench that had been built into the bole of a particularly large and friendly oak, and sat down on it.  Then she changed her mind and reclined on the bench, her knees up in the air so that her legs didn't dangle over the end.  She could barely see stars in the city sky as it was, and that was made even more difficult by the overhanging branches of the oak.  If it weren't for the fact that it had already lost over half of its leaves, she would not have noticed the rainbow gracefully arching overhead.

She blinked once, then blinked again, then rubbed her eyes.  Surely this was an optical illusion.  It was a cloudless night, and the sun had set hours and hours ago.  For once, her natural curiosity was replaced with caution.  She was still curious, of course, but a rainbow on a clear night?  Her foolishness had its limits.

Now completely focused on the rainbow, she continued to lay on the bench, staring through the gnarled branches.  It wasn't fading, and it hadn't disappeared when she looked away and counted to thirty.  The longer she stared at it, the more it drew her toward it somehow.  She wanted to reach up and touch it but it was too far overhead.  She jumped up from the bench, brushed off the back of her pants out of habit, and reached up with her hand to trace the rainbow's path to earth.  It looked like it was just a little further on in the park, actually... how very strange and interesting.  There seemed to be no harm in following it, just like there was no harm in finding trees and chickens and dolphins in piles of puffy white clouds on a sunny day.  Her feet made almost no sound as she hurried along the park path, deeper into the trees.

She looked up many times, checking the shafts of clear colored light.  A rainbow had never looked so close before, nor so reachable.  She came to a curve in the path, which was near the back of the park.  She could either keep going, toward the chain-link fence, or give up and continue walking around the park until she came back to the entrance once more.  Not one to give up, Ava barely hesitated as she scuffed through the cool grass, still following her rainbow.  At the fence, she did hesitate.  She could see nothing beyond it but more trees, and she was honestly not sure whose property it was; but she couldn't imagine them caring much if she crashed around back there for a little while and then went home.  There were no 'Trespassers Will Be Shot' signs posted anywhere, so she felt confident about continuing on her trek.

Hooking a foot through the fence, she hoisted herself up high enough to grab a low branch, and then swung the rest of the way over.  Her landing was graceful although not quiet - she crunched quite loudly onto a pile of sticks and leaves that looked like it had been dumped there last fall and left to decompose.  After dusting herself off again, she began pushing her way through the underbrush, past the shadowed trees that she had never walked through before now.

Only a few minutes later, she came upon an opening in the trees that was somewhat dimly lit.  She assumed at first that the light was coming from the moon, but as she looked up to ascertain the moon's position in the sky, she remembered that it was a new moon that night.  Now she was ever so slightly spooked.  She moved into the opening, and immediately was bathed in dimly glowing light, a faint spectrum of colors that danced across her arms as she moved them in front of her.  Almost like cosmic bowling, except outside, and not actually a disco ball with a black light.  She walked further in, slowly, and sat down exactly in the middle of the circular clearing.  There were no leaves or sticks piled up here, and the ground felt entirely flat, except for some small hard thing she had accidentally sat on.  She pulled it out from under her leg - it was a smooth grey stone, oval in shape, and it was warm to the touch.

A great and terrible feeling gripped her suddenly, as if she was being wrenched out of a moment in time or space - the stone flashed with light and color, and a flash came and she fell back unconscious in the soft grass.

For all his good intentions, Taliesin did not sleep well that night; he tossed and turned, and dreamed of dragons.  At the very end of his dreaming, he seemed to come almost fully awake, yet his body was still unmoving; and he saw, with startling clarity, a woman of extraordinary beauty, with long red hair and pale skin.  She seemed sad, distant, untouchable.  Taliesin tried to go toward her, to move in some way, but he could not - and the urgency grew in him that he must reach her, that he was the only one who could help her - and then he awoke, sweating.  He lay for a moment, his heart pounding in his chest, trying to work through the feeling of helplessness that gripped him just before the dream-state ended.

He breathed deeply and tried to relax back into his blanket, but the air was cold and he was now too alert to be able to find that warm sleepy place again, and besides his makeshift pillow had put a decided crick in his neck.  At least the sun was coming up, so he would not be awake for hours before there was anything to do.  He glanced over at the old magician's bed, tucked into the corner by the southern-facing window; he was still asleep and faintly snoring.  His words from the night before: You are the only one who can find the rainbow's end, echoed confusingly in his mind.  He wished he had a day, a week maybe, to take it all in, to find for certain his place in all of this.  He felt as if he had no time, that he was already running far behind - although far behind what, he did not yet really know - and yet his understanding of his present circumstances, with all its actions and consequences and meanings, was still so incomplete.  Most of all, he was tired of feeling that he was a victim.  He wanted some measure of control or he would end up exploding in anger, or crying helplessly like he had the night before.

Walking was the one thing that cleared his head, so that is what he decided to do.  As noiselessly as possible, he pushed aside his blanket, pulled on his shoes, and tiptoed to the door.  There was a heavy coat hanging on a hook next to the door, and he hesitated just a split second before he took it down and put it on.  Surely Tristan would not mind - he had no proper outer wear, after all.  And he would only be gone for a little while... less than an hour, certainly.  There should be no problem.

The door creaked slightly as he opened it, and he winced - glanced at the slumbering magician, who did not move at all - and then slipped outside without another sound.  Closing the door carefully, he breathed in deeply, savoring the instant sense of freedom.  A walk would really be a good thing right now.

The early morning air was cold but clean.  It smelled entirely of grass, trees, and a little wood smoke from the cottage's small chimney.  Beyond the cottage, away from the road he and Andrew had traveled down, was a long stretch of level plain that was covered almost entirely in long grasses.  He decided to walk through them and see how far he could get before he felt he should go back.  A small warning popped into his mind, but he felt at least reasonably confident that the grass would help hide him if he were to hear any dragons flying over.  Of course, if there were smaller ones, maybe they wouldn't be as loud.  But even if he ran the risk of being eaten by a dragon, loud or quiet, he didn't care at this point.  He just needed to walk.

He had to walk rather slowly, because there was no path through the grass.  He feet left large dents on the vegetation, and there was a light dew on the ground that he was also disturbing.  Looking behind him once, he noticed that his path was almost ridiculously obvious to anyone who cared to look.  One thing he had never learned how to do was to hide his tracks, but that was probably because he had never needed to sneak around before.  He had always gone where nobody else went, which took the potential for being followed completely out of the equation.

As he walked, he let his mind just wander where it would, reliving the past day and a half, mulling over Tristan's confusing yet illuminating words.  He wondered what Andrew was doing, what Tristan had meant by saying that Francis' service was done.  What service was he paying, and was he the strange midget that had first met him?  He supposed that the men at the camp were Tristan's guard.  He wondered why Tristan lived so close to the Wood, when he might be happier to be around other people rather than be lonely.  Perhaps Tristan preferred to be alone.  Would it be like that for him, after he had been here for decades?  Would he give up and acclimate?

No, he decided firmly.  He stopped walking.  "I will not stop," he said out loud, and the sound of his own voice was unexpectedly loud in the stillness of the morning.  He had been walking with the sun rising on his right, and when he started out it was still below the horizon.  Now, half of its brightness was shimmering at the edge of the plain, although now Taliesin could see some low hills further toward the sunrise.  He turned and began toward them.  Hills were good for sitting on and thinking, and he felt like doing whatever it was he wanted to do right now anyway.

It took him longer than he expected to reach the hill he was aiming for, and the sun had fully risen by the time he walked up its gentle slope and plopped down on the top.  The sunshine warmed his back as he relaxed and breathed deeply, clearing his mind as best he could so that he could finally grasp some kind of clarity. 

He closed his eyes and tried to remove everything from his conscious thoughts, but things kept popping back in.  The street he grew up on.  Moonlight streaming through his bedroom window, where he used to stay up late and read.  Birthdays, Christmas, his favorite movies.  Songs he listened to when he was thirteen.  The smell of a hot latte in a coffee shop, with the aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls in the air.  There were too many memories intruding on his mind to keep at bay, so instead he let them wash over him.  He lay back, eyes shut against the white-hot light of the sun, and relived for a while some of his most vivid memories.

The first time he had learned how to ride a bike one-handed... he had been riding all day, up and down the same dirt road (that was the only road his mother would allow him to ride on without direct supervision), and as he was coasting down a hill, hair flying out behind him, wind rushing past his ears, he had an inkling of what to do - some intuition that told him that if he balanced just this way and leaned a little bit that way - and he let go.  For almost an hour, he gloried in his new ability to ride with no hands.  He even found that he could ride up hill that way too, if he got up enough speed.  He tried some turns, some curving back and forth in the road - and that was his ultimate undoing, because at the moment he took his most daring curve, a big red pickup truck came roaring up the road toward him.  His heart leapt into his throat and the only thing he could remember really doing was swerving away from his certain imminent death by being squashed into the truck's massive grille, and wiping out in the loose gravel at the edge of the road.  He flew off his bike and hit his head against a small tree, and lay there, confused and terrified and bleeding from scrapes on his arms, legs and face.

After he limped home, he tried to get into the house quietly so he could clean himself off before he was found, and he nearly accomplished his goal.  Until his father found small blood spots on the pristine white carpet of the stairway to the second floor.  Only two tiny spots, barely noticeable.  Pinpricks of red.  That day was also the day of his worst beating.

He shook his head then, willing that memory away, because even thinking about it made him feel the hurt again, the hurt of being punished for something you didn't mean to do, and the hurt of cruelty being done to you before you are old enough to realize how cruel it really is.

He was long past crying over that time in his life, even though it was still near enough in his past to feel like the present; but that did not stop him from feeling cold inside now and again.  Cold and hard, like someone was squeezing his heart until it could not beat.  Almost involuntarily, he breathed in deeply and felt the steady thump of his heart actually beating, keeping a rhythm even though he was usually completely unaware of its constant functioning.  The sun was getting higher, and he felt then that it was past time for him to start back.  There was no way he would work through all the complications of his life in one morning's walk... not even the comparatively smaller complications of the past day and a half. 

The walk back went more quickly than the walk out.  He must have been walking more slowly when he had left, he mused.  Perhaps he was not as brave about this new place as he was leading himself to believe.  He scanned the sky in all directions, but saw nothing, not even clouds.  The dew had all but evaporated from the grass now, and the remaining moisture did little to dampen his feet as he followed his footsteps back through the crushed grass. 

As he stepped into the cottage's little yard once more, he wondered what all the little holes were from.  Crouching down, he inspected one closely - there was an acorn in it.  He looked in another hole - there was an acorn in that one too.  Sitting back on his heels, he laughed out loud.  He had never noticed a squirrel digging holes in a yard to hide nuts and then neglecting to cover them up.  This must be an odd kind of squirrel.  Whatever kind of squirrel it was, however, it must be asleep still, because Taliesin could not see it anywhere.  At least he was safe from flying acorns this time.

The door swung open noiselessly this time, which he noticed because it had been creaky when he was leaving.  A magician's house was surely a place of odd happenings, if nothing else - but he had only his love of books to draw out any sort of information on real magicians.  He might be terribly mistaken. 

Tristan was busy poking the fire and, from the smell that greeted Taliesin as soon as he stepped in, making coffee.  There was a little blue metal pot buried half in the coals on the side of the little hearth, and steam was coming from the spout at the top.  Coffee had never smelled so magnificent and delicious as it did just now.  Tristan looked up from his fire.  "Aha! Went for a walk, did you?"  He had a mischievous sort of gleam in his eye, which made Taliesin nervous.  "If you had gone in the afternoon I am sure you would not be back here."

"What, is that when the dragons are out?"  Taliesin asked, feeling foolish.  "Or are there other things I should know about?"

"Well, you obviously know how to accept a mistake when it's made.  I like that in you, boy," said Taliesin, and the twinkle now seemed slightly less dangerous.  "Fortunately for your little excursion, dragons sleep in the morning.  There are nocturnal dragons and diurnal dragons, but they are almost never out in the morning.  The only reason you will ever see a dragon out right after the sun rises is if it is wounded and could not get back to its eyrie as quickly as normal.  And believe me," he said, taking the pot out of the coals ever so carefully with a thick pad of cloth, "you do not want to meet a wounded dragon."

With that, he took two mugs from another shelf - the tiny cottage did not seem to be able to hold so many shelves on its small walls, but somehow it did - and poured them both full of steamy, dark, rich-smelling coffee.  Taliesin was sure that he had never wanted a cup of coffee as much as he did right then, but he burnt his lip just tasting it and had to wait several long minutes for it to cool.

Tristan stood up with his coffee.  "Walk outside with me, boy," he said.  He ambled toward the door, which swung open, silently again.  Taliesin was just slightly nervous again, but he followed the old man outside with his own very hot cup of coffee.

Tristan walked out toward the dusty road, stopped at the edge, and gestured toward the north.  "The great city of the king is that way."  He turned and looked meaningfully at Taliesin, who nodded but was not quite sure what the old man was getting at.  "We will begin our journey after breakfast."

"We - what?  We're going there?  Is there someone - " Tristan interrupted him.  "I will explain it all on the way, but I can only say to you now that you must do exactly as I say.  We will leave soon, and we will not stop until we have reached the next town, which we should be able to reach by the evening."

"What about dragons?  Aren't we going to be in danger?"  Everything the magician had said since the day before was beginning to seem like it was contradicting itself.

"I am Tristan the Magician, boy," he said, and drew himself up straighter.  "My powers are not so weak that I cannot hide two men from the clear quick eyes of the greatest dragon alive.  Now, finish your coffee - we have preparations to make."

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.

When he awoke, he was lying in a grassy circle, surrounded by trees, and pale early morning light streamed down around him.  His first thought was that he had somehow fainted and slept out in the woods all night.  He sat up and rubbed his eyes, feeling rather foolish.  Who falls asleep in the middle of the woods when his bed is so near?  He was surprised that nobody had gone looking for him, but the more he thought about it, he realized that he had no close friends around to wonder where he was.

How disappointing that he had fallen asleep rather than find out what the rainbow was doing there, or for that matter, why that stone had gotten hot and started glowing.  The thought of walking back out of the wood as if it had never happened made him strangely sad.

After several minutes, he sighed and resigned himself to normalcy once again.  He stood up, stretched a bit, and set off in the direction of the college campus.  The air seemed to smell different than usual, but he assumed that was because he wasn't normally out this early in the morning, and wouldn't have noticed it before now.  The smell, which he could only categorize as being slightly sweet, grew stronger and more cloying the closer he got to the edge of the trees.

As he stepped out past the edge of the tree wall, he nearly walked into a very short, half-bald man.  Shocked, he began to stammer out an apology.  "I - pardon me, I'm so -"  and then he began to notice his surroundings.  The midget stared at him a moment, angrily, then stalked off muttering, long hair on the right side of his head waving oddly in the slight breeze. 

Where the college had been - was supposed to be - was a collection of low tents, made of leather pieces stitched together and hung over wooden poles.  Several small fires were smoking near the entrances of some of the tents, and the strange midget was now crouching over one at the closest tent, stirring a metal pot with a long-handled wooden spoon.  Other people, men, who looked to be normally sized like himself, were milling about between the tents, carrying things from one place to another or stopping to talk with each other.  He wasn't at all sure what to do next.  He wasn't even sure where he was, what had happened, or whether or not they would chase him if he turned and ran directly back to the grassy circle.

He stood indecisively and worried that he was dreaming.  Everything felt and looked real - the smell on the breeze, which must be coming from the cooking pots; the men walking around; the feel of the grass under his feet.  He looked up at the sky and saw the sun peeking over the tops of the trees.  It seemed to be the same sun as always, and the birds he could hear twittering up in the branches, in those trees that looked almost the same as what he had seen the day before, were greeting the dawn the way they always did.  Before he could continue to speculate on the actual existence of all the things he thought he was seeing, however, the midget appeared before him again, this time yelling loudly, and grabbed him by the knee.

A tall man loomed up behind him menacingly and he felt the back of his head explode with pain.  And for the second time in his life, he lost consciousness.

...

When he awoke, the sweet smell (now familiar) was very strong and made his stomach turn.  His head was aching, throbbing dully.  He wondered whether it was bleeding, or if he had a concussion.  Maybe he should see the nurse or go to the clinic in town... reality jolted his senses and made his stomach turn again.  Where he was right now was not where he was supposed to be.

He sat up, gingerly, his heart pounding with a mixture of fear, confusion, and curiosity.  He was inside one of the leather tents, on a dirty woven blanket.  He wondered fleetingly why he wasn't tied up, if they (whoever 'they' were) had gone to the trouble of knocking him out.  He felt that he had no frame of reference, no way to find out what was going on or where he was.  There were still men walking around outside the tent, talking to each other.  It was as if nobody was very concerned about him at all.

Suddenly and intensely frustrated, he stood up - and grabbed his head with both hands as the blood pounded forward in his temples painfully.  "OW," he moaned. 

Immediately the piece of cloth hanging over the tent's entrance was pulled aside and the tall man strode in menacingly, towering over him.  Through the throbbing in his head, he realized that nobody was ignoring him, just being quiet about watching him.

"Sit," the tall man said.  There was no arguing with that tone of voice, even if he hadn't been responsible for the painful smack in the head.  He sat carefully, but quickly.

"Who are you? How did you find this place?" the man demanded angrily.  "Tell me now!" 

"My name..." he winced and blinked slowly.  "My name is Taliesin, and... I don't know how I got here.  I don't know where here is."  The tall man looked even more threatening, which hadn't seemed possible.  He made as if to hit him again, but Taliesin flinched and exclaimed, "You have to believe me!  I'm not lying to you!"

"You came from the woods," the tall man growled.  "Nobody comes from those woods.  That place is inhabited by the gods and mystics.  Are you one of them?"

Taliesin's bewilderment was nearly complete.  "I - what?  Gods and mystics?  There was a rainbow, and a stone, but nothing that - "

The tall man backed away then, eyes so wide the whites showed.  He opened his mouth, then shut it, then turned and left as suddenly as he had entered.  Taliesin's head hurt with new and even more confusing information.  Gods and mystics in the woods.  Where on earth was he?  Was he even on earth?  If it wasn't for the fact that he had already fallen asleep (or been knocked unconscious) twice and woken up again, he would have tried to believe he was dreaming. 

He sighed.  Should he get up and leave?  Who else would come in?  Was he safe in this place?  He had read enough books throughout his solitary childhood to know that when you've been swept into a strange world, the best way to get back home is to find out why you were there in the first place.  He had always wished he was living in one of those stories instead of in the life he'd been given, but of course he was smart enough to know that it was just wishful thinking.  Now, faced with a truly confounding thing happening to him, he was just not sure what his next step ought to be.

A commotion was stirring outside the tent now - it sounded like a crowd was forming, all of them beginning to talk at once. 

Taliesin stood up, tired of being the center of a fuss he knew nothing about, and pushed aside the curtain.  All the talking stopped at once, which was not what he expected to have happen.  The tall man was standing at the front of the small crowd, who were all standing as still as a herd of deer in the headlights of a car, and all staring directly at him.  He felt decidedly awkward, but could no longer wait to be told what was going on, and was beginning to doubt that anyone there could explain to him what had happened anyway. 

"You," he said to the tall man, who shrank back ever so slightly.  "Tell me what is going on!"

The tall man cleared his throat, obviously hesitating.  From behind him, the midget reappeared, his odd shock of hair wafting around his shoulders.  He stopped directly in front of Taliesin and looked up at him angrily.  He shouted, "YOU MUST SEE THE MAGICIAN!"  Taliesin sprang back at that, both from being yelled at as much as from surprise. 

"What?!" he said in consternation.  "What are you talking about!  I want to know where I am, and who you are - who all of you are!"

The midget backed away slowly, wearing a menacing look on his face.  "I will not tell you my name," he grunted rudely, "but this camp is by the Serran Wood.  A creature such as yourself, who obviously came from that wood - I found you, don't forget that! - should already know this!"

At this, the crowd of men began muttering to each other and shifting nervously.  None of them said a word to Taliesin, however.

"Who is this magician?" Taliesin asked, desperate for some explanation.

The midget narrowed his eyes at him and looked for a moment as if he would refuse to speak.  "The magician... knows everything.  He understands the nature of those that live in the Wood.  He will know what your purpose is - if you have a purpose," he said mockingly.  "You will go to him at once."  He turned on his heel then, and stalked off, his hair floating behind him.

Taliesin was not sure what to make of the midget or his words, but he was getting an idea that he was the one who was really in charge of this camp.  He looked at the tall man again, who was still standing in the front of the group.  They all looked so wary of him, almost as if he made them afraid in some way. 

"Very well," he said to the tall man.  "Tell me your name."

"I am called Andrew," the tall man said quietly.  "We do as the small one commands.  He does the magician's bidding."

"So... so you are all here because of the magician?"  Taliesin asked.  A small realization dawned on him, which made him feel less confused.  "You're all guarding the Wood, aren't you."

Andrew shifted on his feet, and nodded in reply.  All of his anger from before seemed to have been completely replaced by alert caution.

"Are you afraid of me?" Taliesin asked incredulously.

Rather than answer, Andrew waved the crowd away.  As they dispersed, with many backward glances and whispers to each other, Andrew motioned to Taliesin.  "You will come with me now.  I will take you to the magician."

Something shifted in Taliesin's perception of this strange place, and for the first time since he had awoken in the circle of grass, he felt sure that this was something he was supposed to be doing.  He left the side of the leather tent that had so recently held him captive, and followed Andrew as he turned and walked with long strides out of the camp, away from the Wood. 

Maybe now my adventure will begin.