[fic] [Tales of Arcadia] Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet 139/?
Your Future Hasn’t Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 12th May, 2023
Even as he walked on in the growing dusk, Jim was aware that this was probably a bad idea. Sure, as soon as it was dark enough, he could shape-shift and use the geomagnetism Douxie had helped him unlock, and track his way toward the heartstone. But once he got to the "stone outcropping that looks like a goshawk's head" (whatever a goshawk was - probably some kind of bird), how was he supposed to get in?
"I don't have a horngazel," Jim said, doing his thinking out loud. "And given exhibit A - Trollmarket - and exhibit B - Dwoza - trolls really aren't friendly to outsiders." Plus Strickler's book had shown him as a human, and he didn't know if the local trolls were the kind that ate humans or not. Even non-Gumm-Gumms had used to do so, he was pretty sure. He clearly remembered Deya, before she had found her own name, back when she was still calling herself Callista, remarking that she didn't like eating humans because they were "too stringy." Which definitely implied past human-eating. Or maybe just a bad sense of humor.
Jim had deliberately never asked any of the trolls he knew what any of their old dietary preferences had been. Because while he could accept, sort of, that Aaarrrgghh had definitely eaten humans while he was still a Gumm-Gumm... Jim didn't want to know that about Blinky. About Draal. About Vendel.
He also didn't want to ask Strickler or Nomura. Because he was even less certain about what their answers would be, if it came down to it.
"The past is the past," Jim told himself. "Let the things that are gone, stay gone."
He walked on.
"Douxie doesn't have a horngazel either," Jim said aloud. He sighed. "Which is totally not a reason to abandon him to training Merlin," he admitted. But if he stretched, he could justify it. Douxie wasn't in the Book of Ga-Huel. Douxie needed to train Merlin, make him want to live again. Douxie needed to forge Merlin's staff and give him the time map, eventually. And aside from cooking, there was very little help Jim could give with that.
What Jim could do, was investigate the situation with the trolls here and figure out what the heck he was supposed to be doing.
Finally, finally, the sky got dark enough that Jim knew he'd be able to see better as a half-troll. So he closed his eyes, and between one step and the next, let himself relax into his other natural shape.
The world suddenly grew so much more intense. Human senses really were muted, he thought, opening his eyes again. Darkness held little mystery for troll eyes. The world of smell expanded a hundredfold. And he felt like he could hear a pin drop from a thousand feet away.
So far away from the moment he'd first realized what Merlin's potion had made him into, Jim finally felt right as a half-troll.
And the heartstone, he knew, was that way. He could feel it pulling, calling. It was like the offer of a warm fire and a comforting drink on a cold night.
Grinning, Jim shook all the human stiffness out of his joints, and began to run, for the sheer joy of running.
Myrddin wanted to snarl, to rage, to lash out at this interloping wizard who had invited himself, unwanted, into the middle of Myrddin's grief and lamentations.
But he didn't.
Because, for one thing, though he didn't quite believe this man's balderdash about being from Atlantis... the way Taliesin moved, and smiled sadly, and studied Myrddin when the man thought he wasn't looking....
Well, it raised the hairs on the nape of Myrddin's neck.
Taliesin was old, he'd believe that easily enough. And he looked like he was weighed down by the vastness of time, and space, and the world itself. Without the irreverent presence of his knightly companion, whatever his name was, Taliesin's sorrow and pain seemed quiet enough, and deep enough, to drown in.
Much like Myrddin's.
Why did the man keep moving, then, keep forging forward and doing things rather than just giving up and letting the peace of death take him?
"Come along, young Myrddin," Taliesin said after cleaning up the remnants of their meal. "We need to get your livestock in before nightfall."
"Can't you do that by magic?" Myrddin groused.
That won him a flash of an amused smile. "Magic," said Taliesin, "isn't a permissible shortcut to hard work."
"What the blazes does that mean?" Myrddin demanded, following the man to the sheep paddock.
Taliesin flicked his fingers; the gate opened before them. So much for not using magic, Myrddin thought.
"Hello there, lovelies," Taliesin crooned to the sheep, who came flocking to him as though he was the center of their shaggy world. "Come on, let's get you in for the night, shall we? There are wolves in these parts, you know."
They baaed and trotted along beside the dark-skinned wizard as he led them back to the barn. "It means," Taliesin answered Myrddin's question, "that mastery of magic is the mastery of life. Magic is not simply to be squandered and used for pointless things. It cannot be a crutch just to make things easier for oneself. Indeed," he said with a sigh, "it often seems that the more magic you know, the harder life becomes."
"Why study magic at all, then?" Myrddin asked, as sheep eagerly streamed past the two of them toward a night's safety. "If it only makes life harder?"
Taliesin looked past him for a long moment. Myrddin didn't think he was seeing the barn and the gardens and the ancient villa Myrddin had inherited from his mother. "To take the easy way out," Taliesin said softly, "is merely to exist." His gaze sharpened, focusing on Myrddin. "You must learn to live, young Myrddin, if you are to master magic. The same as I did."
"Why?" Myrddin asked, just as Douxie had once pestered Merlin ceaselessly with that same question, for so many things: Why does this spell diagram work? Why does this plant give this effect, and that plant a different one? Why are the incantations in Latin? What about wizards who don't know Latin? Why, why, why?
But Myrddin was asking about a very different thing, as they secured the chickens and sheep and went to bring the cows in.
"We" being a bit generous of a term, Douxie thought. Myrddin was doing little more than following in his wake. But that was all right. Douxie had never minded livestock, and gotten used to hard physical labor. Busing tables and sweeping floors in Arcadia Oaks was, in fact, the lightest job he'd had in centuries. Though that had always been balanced out by his and Archie's late-night activities.
"Why must I master magic?" Myrddin demanded as the cows came home.
Douxie sighed. "It is a rare talent, especially in these days of diminished magic, which can stretch itself to true mastery of magic," he explained. Presumably it had been less so back in the days of Atlantis, when there had been so many more wizards. "And master wizards are...." Well, the analogy of being the driver of a car didn't quite work in this time and place. "Imagine the world as a cart," he said instead. "Master wizards are the drivers, keeping the mules plodding on, the wheels turning, the load from spilling out across the cosmos. Because a master wizard studies as many branches of wizardry as he - or she - can, rather than focusing on just one thing. So we know how to fix a broken wheel, how to drive through the deep ruts, where to ford the river, when and what to feed the animals."
"For the whole world?" Myrddin's brows were raised high.
Douxie nodded. "For the whole planet. There must always be master wizards to keep the planet spinning onward. Or else... disaster." No one knew for sure, of course, whether or not there had been mages among dinosaurs, but... one asteroid strike changed the world. Could a powerful enough sorcerer have warded that off?
Though Douxie's short tenure at keeping the world going on had involved the fight against the Arcane Order.... Well, still does, really, he thought. And it's not a disaster unless we fail again. Speaking of global annihilation.
Myrddin looked away as Douxie shut the gate to the barn. "Why me?" he as much as whined.
For all that Myrddin was physically older than Douxie - though the black hair was keeping it easier to not accidentally address him as Merlin - he was, in the end, like almost everyone else. Painfully young, in comparison to someone who had walked the world for more than nine centuries. "Because you have the flexibility in your mind and magic that few do," Douxie said softly, giving Myrddin honesty. "And though I know it feels like the world has nothing left for you... it really does." Merlin's blue eyes met his. "The world has a destiny for you," Douxie told him. "Magic has been slipping away from the world for a long time. It needs a defender. You."
Myrddin stared at him for a long time, then shook his head. "Bollocks," he said, and walked away.
"And there are these cheese caves!" Eli waved his hands excitedly. "Huge gigantic caves in Missouri, filled with government cheese!"
From his space on the counter, getting in a few last minutes of snuggle time with his wife, Chompsky chittered in disbelief.
Steve snorted. "Yeah, right, Pepperjack," he said in solidarity with the gnome. "Government cheese. Pfft, whoever heard of such a thing?" He turned to Aja. "The government doesn't have cows in it."
"What do cows have to do with cheese?" she asked, blinking.
"Uh...." Steve clearly failed his explanation roll. "Anyhow," he said, turning back to Eli, "that one's definitely not real. Pssht. Cheese caves, yeah sure."
"Actually," said Blinky, coming into the bookstore's front room, "the cheese caves are quite real."
Eli beamed. "See? I told you?"
"Why on Earth would people store cheese in caves?" asked Krel, his face wrinkled up in confusion. "Wouldn't refrigerators be more efficient?"
"Ah, but you see, refrigerators do not have cheese cave yeti," Blinky explained, setting a book down on the counter.
The conversation visibly screeched to a halt.
"Cheese cave yeti...?" Toby asked slowly, exchanging a look with Chompsky. Eli's eyes were wide; the glow of his expression could have lit Las Vegas.
"Indeed!" Blinky expounded. "One of our most distant cousins, they haunt caverns where cheeses are made and stored, world-wide. Their bodily flora are precisely adapted to the perfect temperature and humidity for cheese making, and assist in producing some of mankind's most delicious dairy products."
"Do they... eat the cheese?" Steve asked hesitantly.
"No more than you might eat a houseplant," Blinky assured him.
Eli pushed up his glasses. "Uh, my mom keeps culinary herbs...?" he offered.
"The yeti, I'm afraid, are what you call 'lactose intolerant'," Blinky said kindly.
"Oh."
The bell over the bookshop's front door rang. "Hey," Claire called as she entered. "It's almost go time. Everybody ready to head over to the museum?"
All eyes fell to Chompsky. The gnome swept up his doll wife, bent her over in a deep dip, and kissed her bubble helmet passionately. Then he set her gently back upon the counter, and shouldered on a backpack that rose to three times his own height. He gave a thumbs-up.
"I'll say that means yes," Toby interpreted.
"Whoa." Steve was still staring. "Get it, Chompsky."
"You all go," Blinky said benevolently. "I will stay here, and guard Ms. Go-Back against any unfriendly interlopers."
Chompsky nodded, jumped from the counter, and headed for a door at a speed which, given the brevity of his legs, would have seemed improbable to anyone unacquainted with gnomes.
Crossing the park, their group did not attract much attention, save from the small group of senior citizens sitting on folding chairs under the shade of a pop up canopy situated right where the bandstand used to be.
"Oh, Toby-Pie!" his grandmother trilled, looking up from the chessboard that sat on a card table. "Off on another adventure?"
"Not this time, Nana!" he called back. "It's all my buddy Chompsky today. Him and Claire's brother."
"Oh, well. Good luck!" she said, and turned her attention back to the game, making a move that had Jerry groaning and slapping a hand across his face.
"You too, Nana!"
"It's so nice to have supportive family," said Krel.
"Yeah, well." Toby shrugged. "Nana's awesomesauce like that."
The Tarrons exchanged a glance. "You know, I have never thought about it," Aja began. "Where are your parents?"
Toby gestured with open hands. "They won the lottery and went on a cruise when I was two. They never came back. That's as much as Nana ever told me. I don't know if she even knows more."
"Oh." She looked surprised. "They are dead, then. I am so sorry."
"Yeah, me too," said Toby.
Chompsky patted Toby's ankle and said something. "Oh, you're an orphan too?" Toby asked, surprised. "What happened to your parents?"
A chitter.
Toby grimaced. "Eaten by trolls," he reported to the others.
"Ugh." Expressions of dismay went around their group.
After mounting the museum's steps, they made their way to the room where Killahead Bridge was now a permanent display. The decapitated statue of Bular had been joined by several other petrified Gumm-Gumms, in various states of injury. Beside the glass case that held the Fetch stood Nomura. And beside her were the Nuñezes, Enrique held in his mother's arms, blowing bubbles at her, while Javier helped NotEnrique check over his pack once more. Like Chompsky's, NotEnrique's bag was bigger than he was.
"Hey, how goes cleaning the nyarlagroth skeleton?" Toby greeted Nomura.
She smiled sharply at him. Even in human form, her grin exposed too many teeth, reminding him of a shark. "The bones should be ready to hang in the entryway next week."
"Whoa, awesome!" said Eli.
"I certainly hope it will be," she said tranquilly, and unlocked the Fetch case.
"Okay, mijo. You have your watch?" Javier asked.
"Right here, an' tickin'," NotEnrique reported, displaying the device strapped around his wrist.
"Every twenty-four hours, at three o'clock, on the dot, we will open the Fetch for the two of you," Javier promised. "Right here. Until you are both back safely."
"Got it, Pops."
Claire stepped forward and knelt down beside her brother. "Now, I know you're not going to be stupid--"
NotEnrique gaped. "Who, me?" he asked, clawed hand held to his chest in offense. "You gotta be kidding, Sis!"
"But," Claire continued with a watery smile, "I've got something extra for you. Just in case." She reached inside her purse and drew out a pyramidal objet d'art. "Think you've got room for this in your bag?"
"Uhh." NotEnrique took the item, eyes wide. "Holy frijoles, Sis. This what I think it is?"
Claire nodded. "A kairosect. The one Jim took with him to the Darklands. And I have no idea how he did it, but all three crystals are still fully charged. So you have three forty-four minute time stops, in case you guys get in trouble."
Chompsky chittered something that sounded both obscene and impressed, his beady eyes open wide.
"Yeah, what he said," NotEnrique muttered. The green of the glowing crystals reflected in his eyes for a long minute. Then he shook himself and made busy fastening the timestop very securely to the outside of his bag. "Okay, that's it for goodbyes. You ready?" he asked Chompsky, who nodded.
"You're not done yet," corrected Ophelia, and knelt.
Enrique shrieked and lunged for his almost-twin. Who held him tight. Enrique blew a slobber-bubble onto NotEnrique's cheek.
"Yeah, yeah, you too," NotEnrique said, wiping the spittle off. "See ya soon, kid," he said to his former familiar.
"And from me." Ophelia pulled a fine chain over her head and draped it around NotEnrique's neck. The crucifix swung free for a second before he picked it up and looked first at it, then questioningly at Ophelia. "I will be praying every night," she told him. "You do what you need to, then come home safely to us, mijo."
NotEnrique sniffed, then lunged for her arms. "Aw, Ma...."
"Family cuddle!" Javier crowed, and lunged from one side, while Claire lunged from the other.
"You know," Krel murmured, "this is almost touching."
Steve elbowed him sharply in the side. "Hey," he said, "we don't diss the behavior we want to see more of, dude."
"Wow, your therapist is really doing you good, Steve," said Toby. He looked down at Chompsky. "Do I get a hug before you go off to the evil dimension?"
Chompsky solemnly shook his head no. Then held up his hand for a high five.
"There's my buddy!" Toby beamed. He knelt and completed the high five just in time for the Nuñezes to untangle themselves and NotEnrique to shrug on his backpack.
"If you're quite ready," said Nomura impatiently.
"Bring it," said NotEnrique, grinning toothily.
She knelt, activating the Fetch and bringing it to ground level before the plinth of its display case.
"You ready?" NotEnrique asked Chompsky. Who nodded.
With one last look around, NotEnrique stepped forward into the glowing green portal, Chompsky at his side, and just like that, both of them were gone.
The last hints of the sun were gone from the sky by the time Jim reached the rock that did, indeed, look like a bird's head in profile. He tilted his own head to the side and studied it, committing the shape to memory. Then he leapt down from the high tree branch he'd jumped to. He really didn't need to survey the territory - he could feel a heartstone thrumming somewhere beneath his feet, telling him he'd come to the right place - but old habits died hard.
Besides, there was something wrong here, which made him want to take his time in the approach.
Something very wrong.
He knelt by the first pile of rubble. Once, he wouldn't have known what it was. He hadn't known Kanjigar's remains for what they were, when he'd dug through them in search of whatever it was that had been calling his name, long ago in a canal on another continent.
He knew now.
"What happened to you, friend?" Jim murmured, his right hand, his troll hand, three fingers and a thumb, resting on top of the pile of K-spar that had once been a troll.
He looked around, at the dozen or so piles of stone. "What happened to all of you?"
Myrddin was uncommunicative, sullen, and disgruntled. All of which combined to give Douxie a sudden appreciation for anyone who'd ever had to raise a teenager. Well, not himself, of course. He was sure he'd been an utter delight to both Archie and Merlin. Or, at the very least, he'd never shut up, so he'd been a pain in the ass in an entirely different manner.
As it was, wasn't it entirely unbecoming of a man in his, what, forties, to be behaving like this? Douxie could and did grant him the effects of his mourning, but that, Douxie felt, did not justify spitting in the face of those trying to help you.
Still, he gritted his teeth (or, rather, Taliesin did) and tried to be graceful. To not push too hard. To be understanding.
But with Jim off to deal with whatever matter there was with the trolls... Douxie was running out of time.
He'd explored most of this Roman villa by now (and was getting the impression that it was Myrddin's by right, by inheritance, which certainly made clearer where the Latin surname Ambrosius was to come from). He hadn't dared set foot in two of the rooms. One had clearly been the domain of the lady of the house. A half-finished project still stood, gathering dust, on her loom.
The other room he hadn't dared enter had been a child's bedroom.
Douxie knew what it was like to lose a father. A sister. A familiar. He couldn't imagine how painful it must have been to lose a son. Especially not one who had been, by any measure, still a child.
He had walked away from that room, and not looked back.
Myrddin's workshop, on the other hand... well, the cantrips barring Douxie from entry had been old-fashioned, by his standards, and easily diverted.
Charlie, he found, had not been exaggerating Myrddin's stock of precious metals and gemstones. It was quite a hoard. Almost dragon-worthy, in fact.
And one piece, Douxie very much recognized.
He held his breath as he lifted the great emerald down from the high shelf it had been shoved onto, neglected and abandoned with the rest of its kind.
"Well," Douxie breathed, wiping dust off a facet with his thumb, "you'll make forging a staff rather easier."
"I tried to heal them," came Myrddin's voice from behind him. Douxie turned, to see the hedgewizard standing in the doorway, lines of grief etched deep onto his face. "When possets and potions failed, I thought, heartstones heal trolls. There must be some gemstone that resonates at the correct frequency to heal humans. But if so, I never found it."
"I'm not sure that there is," Douxie told him. His own heart ached for Merlin's loss. And, suddenly, anew for his own, so long ago.
"You of Atlantis... can you teach me to heal?" Myrddin asked. His voice was very quiet.
Douxie shook his head. "I cannot. Try as we might to master everything, no wizard knows all magic. I've never been able to heal."
Myrddin's face fell. "Then what use is magic?" he demanded, anger overtaking his grief for magic. "If we cannot even protect those dearest to us--"
Douxie set the emerald down. "No one can keep anyone safe from life, and all its attendant hazards," he said quietly, wishing he had a different answer to give to Myrddin. He remembered another conversation, with Barbara, on this same topic. For everything I know, everything I can do, there are limitations. "I have lost, and lost, and lost again, so many times that I cannot begin to count them all. And there have been times when I wished that I, too, was among the lost."
Myrddin's voice was hoarse. "Why go on living, then?"
"Because...." Douxie stopped and thought about it. "Because there's hope," he finally said. "Amidst all the pain in the world, there's hope that it will someday ease. That things will get better. That there will be someone, or something, to love again, however unlikely."
Myrddin could not be read. "Your companion."
Douxie nodded. "He gives me hope. And yet I know that if - when - I should lose him too, he will want me to go on. That he would want me to find happiness again, for the memory of him. And I wish the same for him, should the fates be kind enough to grant that he survives me."
"Your lover," Myrddin shot.
Douxie shook his head. "He's not. I've never had one, never wanted one. He is my friend, and I would call him brother. Nothing more, and definitely nothing less."
Myrddin stared at him for a moment, then turned and stalked away silently. Douxie looked at the empty doorway for a long minute, debating whether or not he should follow, but turned back to the raw materials instead. He needed to find the rest of what he would need to forge the Staff of Avalon.
Taliesin did not understand, that much was clear. He'd never had a lover? What could he understand, then, of the loss of one's partner, one's own heart? Let alone the death of the child who was the cumulation of that love?
What good was Atlantean magic if what survived of it could not heal? What use the shreds of time magic that Merlin could see about the man, when even the ability to turn back time would not save his loved ones?
"A pox on you, Taliesin," Myrddin grumbled as he rummaged through the storeroom, in search of... ah! There it was. "A pox on all mages, and all magic." He hauled the cask to the fore. They'd set it by a few years back, to age. By now, the liquor inside should be quite potent.
He opened the spigot and filled his goblet. "A pox on it all," Myrddin said, his heart breaking and breaking and breaking again. "Let the world burn, without my love in it."
He drank.
Author's Note: The analogy of wizards being like the drivers of a car, where the world is the car, is lifted from Diane Duane's book High Wizardry. The cheese cave yeti are my Wonderful Husband's invention, from a silly idea he and I tossed forth for a Wallace and Gromit story wherein Wallace learns about America's cheese caves and the pair of them go spelunking, only to meet the shy but friendly yeti....