Child of Fire

“This doesn’t make sense!” I exclaimed, bouncing up off my stool, and pacing the length of the bar and back. “It makes no sense and you, sir, are craze-balls if you believe anything you just said.”

“No, it doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Juniper agreed sanguinely, watching me pace and smiling serenely. I threw up my hands and paced harder and faster, as if that would help. As if that could change what Mr. Juniper had said.

What his mildly-delivered words would make of me.

Shoving my hands in the pockets of my cargo pants, I hunched my shoulders and paused near Mr. Juniper’s chair. The old man—old wizard, if he was to be believed . . . which he wasn’t, because there was no such thing as wizards, right?—simply looked up at me and continued smiling.

“My boy, it may make no sense to you, but every word I have spoken is the truth. You are the many times great-grandson—through your mother’s side—of the late Dragon Emperor of the great Karegan Empire.”

“There’s no such place as Care-Again!” I blurted out, and not for the first time, though this was the first time the blurting was immediately followed by the thought: Not on this Earth, anyway. . . .

“It’s CARE-ago, my dear boy, and there is such a place. I can take you there, if you’ll but take my hand,” Mr. Juniper said, his kindly grey eyes shining as he held out his wrinkled, liver-spotted, but strong-looking hand.

I sighed, shaking my head. I needed a cigarette. Badly. Unfortunately I’d quit about a week prior and as a result had none on my person. And anyway, there was no smoking allowed in the bar, even when there was no one there but the bartender and the nutty old party said bartender had been listening to spout nonsense for the past half hour.

“I’m sorry,” I gritted out patiently, but with hints of strain purposely showing. “But I can’t believe the things you’ve said, Mr. Juniper. Now, if you’re not gonna get a drink or something from the menu, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

“Can’t believe, or won’t, my boy?” Mr. Juniper asked, his eyes twinkling shrewdly, as if he hadn’t heard the second half of what I’d said. I felt a muscle near my eyebrow tic, but shrugged nonchalantly.

“Same difference,” I told him, trying to affect blithe unconcern. Mr. Juniper sighed, too, now, and stood up. He was markedly shorter than me—but then, so was just about everybody. At six-six, I rarely met anyone I could actually look in the eye without craning my neck down—with thinning white hair, and a bushy white beard, mustache, and eyebrows to match. Between all the facial fur, I couldn’t make out much about his face, other than the twinkling grey eyes and a round, prominent nose. He looked more like Santa Claus than a wizard.

The dark blue robe he was wearing didn’t even have arcane symbols on them. It was just a long, cowled man-dress.

The fact was, Mr. Juniper looked nothing like Dumbledore or Gandalf. He had no funky, pointy hat; no wand; and no staff.

But suddenly, as he stood there looking at me as if measuring me, Mr. Juniper began to seem a lot more dignified and imposing than he had when he first stepped into O’Flaherty’s, letting in bright, muggy, late-afternoon air.

He drew himself up to his full five feet eight or so inches and gestured once, sharply, with his left hand. Then he was muttering words I wouldn’t have understood even if he’d been shouting them, they were so foreign beyond any language I’d ever heard spoken. I shuddered as a chill raced through me, then was instantly replaced by a flush of heat, like a full-body blush.

Then the air around me did two things simultaneously: it grew instantly hot, like I was trapped in a bubble filed with boiling steam.

And it burst into flame. Literally.

I started to scream and sucked in two lungsful of flames, which scorched my throat and lungs rather painfully—of course, it didn’t occur to me until later that any other human being . . . that is, any other normal human being . . . would have been dead—and I began to choke. “Help me!” I chuffed out, falling to my knees to do the drop part of stop, drop, and roll. I immediately rolled onto my side then started rocking and rolling to try and put myself out.

It didn’t seem to help. Flames went out, smothered by my body and the grimy barroom floor, and more took their place seemingly out of nowhere.

In the midst of this calamity, I heard Mr. Juniper tsk, as if I wasn’t being very bright.

“Try not to breathe it in, just yet, dear boy! You’ve missed out on a lifetime of practice, and your innards are not nearly so impervious as your out’ards!”

“I’m burning! I’m dying!” was my screamed reply to that. My clothes had turned into ash that I was rolling around in. Flames licked my bare skin, hotter than anything I’d ever felt. “Oh, God, I’m dying!”

“My dear boy, do cease these melodramatics. You’re neither burning nor dying—you are perfectly fine, but for the fact that your clothes have burned off. We’ll just have to get you new,” Mr. Juniper said, as if that settled everything and he was very satisfied with the outcome. I laughed desperately, still rolling around on the filthy floor to no avail.

“Are you for real? New clothes? Are you freaking nuts?!” My insides felt like they were burning up, and no wonder. I coughed again, flame shooting from between my lips. “Who gives a flying fuck about modesty—I’m fucking burning to death!”

“Are you?”

Genuinely miffed, I stopped rolling around and opened my eyes to regard Mr. Juniper. He was leaning over me, that infernal—maybe literally—smile shining out like a beacon. I opened my mouth to let fly with some choice words about his parentage, and what he could do with himself and his tall tales, when I realized that I wasn’t in any pain.

Oh, I was in considerable discomfort—I had breathed in very real fire and it had scorched my lungs . . . but I was still alive and mostly fine, but for what felt like a case of bad acid reflux. I even belched, and that relieved some of the burning, leaving me blinking up at Juniper through steam as, with a gesture and a wave, he made the flames licking my skin go out.

Then I was taking the hand he extended—cautiously—and letting him help me to my bare feet.

“Uh,” I said intelligently patting myself down—especially my junk—for signs of burns. Nothing. Not so much as a sore-spot. “What just happened?”

Juniper smiled. “That, my dear child, was the hallmark of your maternal great-great-so-on-grandfather’s line. He was, by his father’s side, half-dragon. And while he did not inherit the, er, size or shape of a dragon, he did inherit a few tricks that dragons have laid claim to for millennia. Such as being impervious to fire, inside and out.” Chuckling a little, Juniper clapped my shoulder and led me to a corner booth in the empty bar. I should have felt weird, seeing as I was sliding into a booth completely starkers, but I think I was in some sort of shock.

“Look, man, I dunno what you’re talking about, but what do you want with me?” I demanded, leaning back in the booth when Juniper leaned forward.

“It’s not about what I want, my lad, but about what your kingdom needs . . . it needs a champion of the Old Blood. A banner to unite behind.” Juniper frowned a little. “Or a figurehead to flock to.”

Juniper’s tone said he disapproved of the latter, and I shook my head as if that would clear it of the fog of shock and incredulity. I still didn’t believe what he’d been nattering on about since practically the moment he walked in: another Earth, one where I was the descendent of an emperor, and where magic and myth coexisted side by side.

The fire that’d burned away my clothes had been some sort of magic trick—some David Blaine/David Copperfield hokum. That would explain why it’d burned away my clothes, but not hair and skin.

Wouldn’t it?

There had to be a scientific explanation for this. All of it.

“Look,” I began reasonably. Juniper leaned forward again as if his life, the universe, and everything hinged on what I was about to say. “Okay, say I believed you . . . how would we get to this other world of yours? Magic?”

“Of course,” Juniper said, sitting back, satisfied as if I was finally starting to catch on. In that moment I felt bad for the crazy old codger, and sighed.

“Alright. Sure, I’ll play along.” I shrugged. “But first, could you magic me up some clothes so I don’t arrive in, uh—Karego naked?”

“Certainly!” Juniper gestured again, brief and decisive, muttering a word I couldn’t make out. And suddenly the warm, tacky fake leather of the booth seat under my ass and legs was replaced by wool. I jumped in complete startlement, looking down at myself.

I was wearing a deep maroon tunic—edged and accented with gold stitchery and a golden device on the left side, over my heart—that seemed to go down to my knees. Under that tunic I seemed to be wearing brown leather trousers of some sort. I stuck my leg out of the booth to confirm the trousers and saw I was also wearing grey, mid-calf length boots of some soft material, like suede. The boots—the whole outfit looked handmade, but very well made.

“The fuck,” I breathed, running my hands down my torso, then down my legs to the knee. I wiggled my toes in their fancy boots.

It was all real . . . cloth and leather and suede.

Once more I found myself gaping at Juniper, who was smiling that serene smile once more.

“How—?” I began and he chuckled.

“Why, magick, dear boy!” He winked. “A talent you might also hone, if you so chose. It’s in your blood, you know.”

“Because my great-whatever-grandfather was a dragon?” I asked grumbled, running my hands up and down my arms.

“Because your great-whatever-grandmother was a hedge-witch and a shapeshifter. You’ll have inherited some of her talent, no doubt, as well as your great-whatever-grandfather’s imperviousness to fire.” Juniper hummed thoughtfully. “Of course, you’ll have to hone these abilities . . . which may take some time. But the spark is definitely within you. I could feel it from the moment I walked into this dark, dank public house.”

Ignoring the aspersions cast upon my place of employment—and after all, Juniper was right. It was dark and dank—I laughed a tad desperately. “So on top of being the future emperor of Karego, I’m also a magician, like you?”

Juniper bristled, his kindly gaze turning waspish. “I am not a magician, dear boy. I am a wizard. I do no sleight of hand, nor do I gull the unwary out of their hard-earned money with cheap tricks and illusions,” he huffed, before settling back against the booth seat. I held up my hands in placation and that seemed to mollify him, somewhat. “And our respective magicks are of quite a different nature. Yours is native to what you are—part dragon, part shapeshifter. Mine is learned: spells and incantations.”

“The difference being?”

“Anyone can learn to do what I do if they have the patience to learn the true names of things.” Juniper shrugged. “What you will be able to do is quite a bit rarer. You will be able to make things happen, sometimes by accident, simply by wanting them badly enough. You will be able to infuse people with your magick and your will. Convince them to change their very minds and hearts, with what is called, for lack of a better word, charisma. If your charisma is strong enough, you may even be able to change the nature of matter with sheer will and desire. What wizards do is somewhat dissimilar—work their will on the world, yes, but with words spoken just so. Where you will convince with charisma, we must command, for often does our will conflict with the natural order and will of nature.” Juniper held out his hands as if to say: There you go. Magick explained. “Such as the magick it took to bring me to this parallel-Earth to which your ancestress fled. That took the will and words of ten wizards to bend the barriers between universes enough to let me through.”

I buried my face in my hand for a few moments, trying to think. All I could come up with was: “If it took ten wizards to get you here, how are you going to get back? With me in tow, no less?”

“An excellent question!” Juniper, it seemed, approved. I looked up into his flushed, pleased face and sighed. “It is taking ten wizards chanting nonstop to keep me here. If and when they cease to chant the true name of this parallel universe—which isn’t really close enough to mine to be exactly parallel—I and anything I’m touching will be pulled back to my origin universe.”

I frowned. “But doesn’t that mean as soon as you let go of me back in the Karego-‘verse, I’d just get pulled back here?”

“Not if you were to be grounded in my universe by stabilizing magick.” Juniper’s smile turned sly and he reached up his sleeve. When he withdrew his hand, he held it out to me, and I took the object that rested on his palm: a large silver pendant in the shape of a dragon—of course—on a fine silver chain. There was gold filigree on the wings and it had garnets, or maybe rubies for eyes. Juniper chuckled again. “That will act as an anchor, tying you to my universe until you become acclimatized to it, and can safely remove it. It’s the only one of its kind left in my world, for long has the knowledge of how to create such things been gone from even the greatest of us,” he said sadly.

I looked at the pendant again. “How will your wizard-friends know when to stop chanting?”

Juniper pointed at the pendant. “When you put on the talisman, they’ll feel it, and stop chanting. And we’ll be off!”

“Riiiight.” I snorted. “Say I believed you could take me to this parallel world . . . why should I go with you? What’s so great about where you come from? What’s in it for me?”

“What’s so great about where you are, now?” Juniper countered calmly, and I glanced away from the certainty and knowledge in his keen eyes.

Staring at the pendant, I thought about my life of late. Thirty-one years old and going nowhere. A perennial college student, passing through several majors and degrees before finally maxing out my loans. Working in a dive bar for shit money. Dumped by my last boyfriend eight months ago because I was: going nowhere fast.

And Ben was right, wasn’t he? You’re spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere. Only, you’ve even stopped doing that, haven’t you? You’ve just given up, a voice whispered in my head. It sounded like Ben’s—weary and pitying—the night he’d finally declared it over between us.

You’re in despair, Ray, he’d said as he sat on our bed, refusing to meet my eyes. You’re in despair and I don’t know how to pull you out of it. I don’t even know if I can, but I know I’m tired of trying when you won’t even help me.

And as much as it hurt to admit it, he’d been right. He was still right, I knew as I gazed at the pendant. The ruby eyes seemed to flicker and flash at me in the dim light of the bar. And I wondered . . . could Juniper be right? Could all of this be real?

It was completely crazy, of course, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t on the level. Stranger things had to have happened than this, right?

Possibly.

What harm could come of playing along for a little longer? Hadn’t Ben always said I’d squandered life’s many opportunities with indecision and shying away? Well, here life was, in the opportunity of nutty old man claiming to be a wizard, here to whisk me off to a strange, new world where I could be a king. Where I had magic and charisma.

Where I could get away from the barren trash heap my life had become. . . .

Not that I actually believed any of what Juniper said, magic tricks aside, for a moment.

“Ah, what the hell?” I muttered, slipping on the pendant. The moment I did, I seemed to hear a hum start up around me. Juniper quickly reached across the booth table and grabbed my hand. The moment he did, the hum left off and the bar went completely silent as everything seemed to freeze. The ceiling fan stopped spinning, the crappy AC unit stopped noisily pumping out lukewarm air. The television above the bar froze in the midst of some retired player-turned-announcer droning on about draft picks. I half-stood, meaning to go examine the phenomena, myself—it had to be a trick, right?

Then everything went dark for a few seconds, and for that few seconds, I felt as if I was being turned inside out. My skin and muscles burned far worse than they had when Juniper set me on fire. . . .

But Juniper held onto my hand tight and I grasped his back tightly, for dear life.

A few moments later everything was suddenly light . . . bright white light that dissipated in a flash, yet left its after image burned on my retinas for long moments afterwards, beyond the few seconds it took for the burning in skin and muscles began to abate.

Then I was crashing to my hands and knees in wet grass, coughing and dizzy.

I fell over onto my side, the world spinning wildly, as I threw up the leftover take-out I’d eaten earlier in burning glurts of grossness.

“There, there, my lord . . . it’ll be alright,” a soft tenor soothed and a gentle hand settled on my back and began to rub in slow figure eights. “Everything will be alright now that you’re here.”

I groaned and retched a few more times before flopping onto my back. That gentle hand settled on my forehead, this time. I groaned again and slit my eyes open. All I could see was a blur of color. Of blue-blue sky, and the sienna-and-navy blob of whomever was comforting me.

“He is fevered,” that soft, melodic voice said worriedly, and I heard a snort from my left and a groan almost as weak as my own.

“He is part dragon, my young friend,” Juniper wheezed and coughed. “And he is once more in a world in which that part of himself may be given voice.”

I chanced opening my eyes a little wider, and when the light didn’t hurt too much, I blinked a few times to clear my vision.

Leaning above me, his delicate features grim with concern, was a boy. Well, a young man. The sienna-and-navy blob that had comforted me during my brief illness. The sienna bit was his face, dark and angular, with dark, dark eyes that seemed large in his narrow face. The navy was his robe, which was exactly like Juniper’s, only newer-looking. His cupid’s bow mouth was turned down in a frown, full lips slightly parted as if he was about to speak.

“Are you better now, my lord?” he asked, and I stared at his perfect mouth as one mesmerized.

“Um,” I said belatedly, then belched. Turning red, I covered my mouth. “I’m, uh, fine . . . I think.”

“It is well, then,” the young man said, smiling solemnly, almost shyly, and my heart skipped at least five beats when he did.

Then I was taking the hand he held out and sitting up with yet another groan. Nearby, Juniper was being helped to his feet by a trio of older men and one woman also in the same navy robes. Six others were standing not far off, staring at me as if I’d grown wings and flown around above their heads.

Maybe they expected me to. After all, I was part dragon. . . .

Then I was gasping as I got a look at my surroundings.

We were at the top of a hill in a large, almost perfectly circular purple-green valley, covered in heather, and surrounded by foothills and mountains, and in which I could see what looked to be several small towns and one large city with tall towers made of gleaming white stone. The cobalt sky that stretched above it blazed with not one, but two suns and one moon that was only half full, but still larger than the one that orbited Earth. Even the shadows on it were markedly different and darker. . . .

“Where the fuck am I?” I asked no one in particular. But Juniper was the one to answer, smiling as he dusted off his robe.

“You are in Karego, my lord. One valley of it, anyway, for the Dragon Empire is vast.” Juniper swept out one hand to the north—what I presumed was north. “It extends far to the north and west, to the Lands of Eternal Ice. And South, to where it buts against the Free Nation-States of Upper Zydania.”

“Fuck,” slipped out of my numb, bile-slimed lips. The young man who’d patted my back while I puked squeezed my shoulder sympathetically.

“Welcome home . . . your Majesty,” he said gravely, bowing his head. He was quickly emulated by all the other robed wizards, including Juniper. And despite the abundance of suns and moon, the world around me, spinning nauseatingly once more, went completely dark.

END

Read the companion piece, "For Those Who Favor Fire": http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1890233-For-Those-Who-Favor-Fire--...