Posts (page 2)

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.

Eleven months earlier:

A dark-haired boy sat alone on top of a low hill.  Behind him were the low brick buildings of a college campus.  The campus itself, which was not large, was surrounded by tall trees, which stood guard against the winds that tended to gust in the mornings and evenings. 

The sun was setting, and he sat and stared at the splash of vibrant color against the darkening sky.  More trees, pines and oaks and birches all mixed together, were densely growing together a few hundred yards from his small hill, so their tops intruded in silhouette along the line of his vision.  He was facing a soccer field, which also doubled as a baseball field and a football field, depending on which of the school's small teams needed to use it.

This hill was one of his favorite places, because it was quiet at certain times of the day.  When the field was in use, he went to the other side of campus and sat in the library by one of the big windows that overlooked more trees.

Today, the field had been quiet all day.  It was a holiday, and nearly every student was gone - either out with friends or home with their families.  His family was too far away, too distant in many senses, to go home to on a short weekend.  He would rather stay where he knew he belonged.

It had been difficult to find a place for himself here, at the beginning.  He was lonely and out of place for weeks before he fell into the simple yet busy rhythm of the small college.  He excelled in a few classes, which helped solidify his belonging.  He had no close friends, and stayed in a dorm room by himself.  His roommate had only made it through the first week of classes before he dropped out, which was secretly what he had been hoping for.  A room alone, silence if he wanted it, time and space to think - that was all he needed.

Occasionally, he would go for a walk in the woods alone, although the students were generally discouraged from doing that.  Being as far north as they were, the woods went on for miles in each direction, and the road to campus was the only road around that was much traveled by the inhabitants of the small college town and the college itself.  There were no signs or fences in the woods to mark how far you had gone, or to point the way back.  Walking in the woods in the evening was considered as foolish as diving in front of a train.

He was not afraid, however.  He had always had an extremely accurate, innate sense of direction.  He always knew where he was, and how to get to any other place around.  He could carry maps in his head and picture, with photographic clarity, the landmarks associated with each place he had been or intended to go.  Already, he had been out for a walk in the woods in the evening more than a dozen times in the past month.  As long as the wind was not bitterly cold, and his homework wasn't piling up, he took at least a hour long walk back under the mysterious and lonely trees.

The sunset was still glowing brightly, but something flickered off to his right, just at the corner of his vision.  He turned his head to look, and at first did not believe his eyes.  He blinked a few times and looked again.  It was still there, almost impossibly so.  A perfectly clear rainbow was coming down out of the cloudless evening sky, arcing gracefully past the campus buildings, and looked as if it came to rest about a tenth of a mile into the woods on the north side of the college proper. 

For a moment, he hesitated, but the rainbow (incongruous and beautiful) was calling to him.  I must find its end, he found himself thinking with determination.  He got up and strode silently toward the wall of trees, feeling strangely elated.  What will I find?

As he neared the wood, which was indeed almost like a wall - there was carefully mowed lawn, then tall mature trees, just like that - he glanced behind him to see if anyone was watching.  It was merely a reflex, and he usually did it each time, but he felt self-conscious, almost as if someone was watching him.  He hesitated again, one arm having just swung forward a bit in anticipation of his next step.  The light changed then, the sun having gone down further into the deep black night that crept slowly over the horizon.  Determined once more, he entered the woods.  He put a hand in his pocket to check for his flashlight and compass, and finding them there like always, he shook off the vague uneasiness and walked instead in the direction of the rainbow's end.

After several minutes of crunching across leaves and branches, he found a faint trail that he sometimes had used before.  It curved across his path and headed north, so he followed it for a while.  Every so often, he stopped and looked up, making sure he was still oriented toward the rainbow.  It still showed itself, not fading as the sun did, which made it even more unusual.  If he had had enough time to ponder it, he might have been spooked by its strange persistence.  More time passed, and he was having trouble seeing in the dim light.  His eyes had adjusted to it, but the day's light was still leaving, and soon he would need to use his flashlight.  He found himself wondering whether the rainbow would look any different with the beam of a flashlight shining through it.

He stopped to check the rainbow again, and to his disappointment it did finally seem to be fading from sight.  He pulled out the flashlight and jogged forward, hurrying to find it.  Low branches snapped his hair and face lightly as he passed, stinging the skin.  He came suddenly upon a small clearing, a bare place in a ring of trees.  Soft grass grew, but no leaves lay on it.  No branches or acorns or even pine cones disturbed it.  He stopped walking and simply stood on the edge of the grassy circle, unsure of what to do next.  Going back was probably the best idea, but he felt himself to be in the middle of some sort of small adventure, and decided to try a little longer before giving up.

Once again he looked up, and was immediately disoriented.  He was seeing the sky through a prism of soft light, and after blinking violently several times, he realized that he had arrived at the end of the rainbow.  The circle of grass was bathed in nearly transparent color, and he hadn't even noticed it until he was looking for it. 

Slowly, hesitantly, he stepped onto the grass.  Nothing notable happened except that the air felt slightly less chilly.  There was no wind, but there had not been any that day anyway.  He held out his hands in front of him, and was amused to see that the color seemed like it was overlaid on his skin.  It was like a cut glass ornament refracting the light and shining it onto some other object.  He moved his hands around and the colors changed.  Now unafraid, he walked further into the rainbow's circle.  The air grew even less chilly, almost approaching warmth.  His foot hit some hidden object in the grass, and he stooped to pick it up.  It was a round, smooth stone, and it was warm to the touch.  He turned it over in his hands, appreciating the feeling of smoothness, and it suddenly grew hot and became the same colors as the rainbow.  Before he had a chance to drop it or react at all, the light around him grew a hundred times brighter and he faded out of consciousness, falling to the ground in a haze of color.

The quill scratching across the parchment echoed weirdly in the dark, deep cave.  At the entrance of the cave, just within its stony ridge, sat a hooded figure.  His fingers shook as he wrote, perhaps with the cold, perhaps with emotion too long held inside.  His small candle guttered and threatened to go out as a chill wind whistled past the mountainside cave.

A dragon's eyrie is not a place where humans ever tread, and yet here sat a man, seemingly unafraid of his surroundings, concentrating solely on the business of slowly writing.  He did not appear to have much experience with a quill and ink pot, for his characters were formed laboriously slowly, and many drips and blots adorned the yellow surface of the page.  He bent even lower, making his letters as carefully as he could.

Ava,
I do not know if this letter will ever reach you.
I have only this sheet of parchment left, and too
many words will fill it up too quickly to finish
what thoughts I mean to convey. I am trying
to find the end of the rainbow, but I have lost
my guide and my compass. I am wandering
alone, and I fear I have failed.
Please remember me. I love you... loved you.
Taliesin

With that last sentence, the letters were somewhat blurred with teardrops.  He did not mean for them to fall - he had to blow on the paper quickly and cursed himself, under his breath, for marring the page further.  After it was dry, he sat in thought, his hood drawn close around his face.  He sat for so long that he seemed to be asleep; but then he roused himself, rolled the letter carefully up, and tucked it into an inner pocket.

Apparently satisfied that his task was finished, he blew out his candle, put it carefully next to his very small pack, and wrapped himself in the single blanket that he had. 

He dreamed of rainbows, of dragons, and of a red-haired girl who reached out for him, called his name, but whom he could never quite reach.  He was restless in sleep, and moaned softly more than once.  The night stretched on as if it would never end.

nanowrimo 2006 is nearly upon us!  OH JOY AND UTTER FREAK-OUT-NESS! 

i have a title for my novel:  the end of the rainbow.  it's fantasy with small flavorings of scifi.  it will be awesome (i hope).  at the very least, i will have a good time attempting to write it.  whee!

oh, right, and happy halloween.  nano is just so much more fun for me, i guess.  ;)

if you've clicked over from the forum at nanowrimo, welcome!  this is my (very bare) writing site.  it'll be the place i put any snippets or chapters that i write for november's upcoming writing extravaganza.

if you're reading this and don't know about nano?  then OMG, go check it out.  and sign up.  there's nothing better than writing fifty thousand words in one month, unless it's TRYING to write fifty thousand words in one month.  ;)

here's my user profile over there, if anyone's interested.