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coruscfairy tale(s)
• • • • •
Once there was a young man named Thor who loved a mortal maiden. To be sure, he was mortal himself, but his people reckoned ages by the rings of the tree whose branches wound around all the worlds, and the maiden whose heart he had won only through a great suffering hailed from a land dyed in the green of spring, one that would crumble like an autumn leaf before old age would bow his head. It was bowed today, but for the death of his brother, not for the loss of his love, for he would have time more than enough to grieve her as well, near eternities. Sad singing shivered the foundations of his father's house and draped its columns in the shades of mourning. His father sat silent in this shadow and gazed at him with eyes as dark as a well; Thor's had deepened in the days since his foolish boasts and reckless misdeeds and he would have met them, squarely, had he not been so keenly aware of his fault that no amount of tears would wash away. He fled into the brightly lit halls of the house of his father where the people sighed and lamented the madness of it all: a foundling, a chanceling, had it been not? Lunacy hand-reared from the dregs of war. Now everyone knew the true parent of the dead prince, Thor's brother, their great, sworn enemy, and war, was it not? no wonder, they said, nodding, and Thor raged at them and broke their heads or would have if he had not been so changed; he could only slink past them like a dog with a broken tail. His lady mother, who was wise in many things, seeing him thus, took pity on him, kissed his brows, encircled him in her arms, and did not speak of the space her arms and his arms left empty so Thor did not, either. His boon companions clasped his arms and gave him condolences and encouragement; one of them, an unparalleled warrior, held his hands in hers. Do not despair, she said, to which he said, I feel as though I may die of grief, to which she replied, as sharp as a blade: It will dull.
"Then it will hurt more when the last of my heart's blood is drained, and I shall have deserved the pain, every single drop," Thor said.
"We grieve, too," she said. She did not think much of Thor's feeling sorry for himself, for all that she loved him as a shield-brother and better. "If grief kills Thor, then the rest of us are not long for this world."
"Of love I shall expire as well," Thor said grimly. "If one should fail the other will strike true." This was melodramatic even for an expressive and demonstrative people such as theirs, but under the circumstances his friend felt inclined to show him compassion, rather than box his ears as she had when they were children and Thor had done something particularly asinine or ill-advised, rare occasions not in the least, in the past.
"If you call upon me I will gladly die beside you, but not at the altar of love, nor grief neither. Otherwise I shall stand," she said. So do not give in, she added, squeezing his hands and rising to her feet to attend to his lady mother, for the call for the table rang out then. At the feast for his brother's passing Thor sat at his father's right, and his father did not need to say, all heard in their hearts, what he had said to his dead son last, that echoed in Thor's very soul. In the days that followed he heard his brother called traitor, and it was true, he had nearly begun and finished a war by himself, for which people also made a sign against evil, but he was dead and disgraced and his name spoken less and less, even by the rumor-mongers and rebellious children. Thor slept little if at all, and then only fitfully, but his dreams were desolation, graced by nothing but ice and rocks that cut his feet. He was still able to make himself run, but nowhere did he see a face dear to him, hear a call he would have recognized and would have answered with joy. Out of his mind, he wandered far, perhaps too far, across the waste and reached the edge of a wood. Before another dream in the dream claimed him he thought of the mortal woman he loved, whose name had twisted his brother's throat, who knew nothing of their strife except that by its violence Thor had nearly died, who lived in a place he could not reach any longer. He had destroyed the way by destroying his brother. Only by dreams it would be. Under the shade of the leaves—
Thor swam, paddling half-heartedly, but the water was unexpectedly heavy or he was too buoyant, one or the other, so that it was easier to swim through the air instead, his feet occasionally skimming the tops of the waves. The sky was the color of the sea and thick with schools of silvery fish. They obscured his view, which was why Thor found himself tripping over something lying on the surface of the water. Sitting up, the obstruction revealed itself to be a man in soldier's garb with blue eyes and blue lips and skin the color of a corpse.
"Hey watch it, buddy."
"I did not mean to disturb you," Thor said.
"You don't need to apologize. Just watch it next time."
Thor nodded. His first response had been to demand that the man, obviously a common infantryman, show him the proper respect due his rank, but that was before. "Where are we?" he asked, as the liquid waves turned into flying flurries.
"I dunno," the soldier said. "Who or what are you?"
"A prince," Thor said truthfully. The admission came out embarrassed.
"Then you are the second member of the royalty I've met today," the soldier said. He tugged at his hair and then his crumpled collar. "I wish I had worn my dress uniform."
Lightheaded with hope, Thor untangled himself and scrambled to his feet. "What did he look like? Which way did he go?"
"He's still here," the soldier said, gesturing with a thumb. Thor's head whipped around but his amnesiac hopes turned instantly to ashes when he saw that it was not his brother but a water-dweller, arms crossed. He was in bad temper, going by the deep frown on his face.
"Another one," he said, displeased.
"Have you seen perchance—" Thor began, only to be interrupted. "No," the sea-dwelling royal said.
"This guy is a jerk, don't bother," the soldier said.
"You dare!"
The soldier lay back down and turned his back to them, tucking himself into a napping position. "All right, all right." Thor heard him yawn. "We haven't seen anybody else."
"I am sorry to have disturbed your rest," Thor said. He was no deft hand at seeing far, but his father was a great sorcerer, and if he had not inherited much talent for the unseen mysteries, having grown up in his father's house, he at least knew how to recognize when he was in an otherworldly situation, and in such situations it never hurt to be polite.
There was another yawn. "It's been a long day. Right, fall in. . ."
When the gentle snoring began, Thor looked at the king, who appeared resigned. "There is no use trying to talk to this one," he said. "He does as he pleases, which means not leaving."
"Perhaps he has no one to wake him up," Thor suggested. "You have tried?"
"I am reduced to waiting," the king answered, disgruntled. "I will not suffer intruders in my home, but neither will I lower myself to attack a sleeping enemy. Wake up, you," he said, nudging the soldier with a bare foot. He did not stir, only mumbled something indistinct. The king sighed and looked around with another frown. "So it goes." He glared at Thor. "What do you want? I have too many ne'er-do-wells loitering in my country already," he warned.
"I'm your friend, not a ne'er-do-well," the soldier said.
"We have never met," the king insisted.
"This is a dream, where strange things may be true and true things false," Thor said diplomatically.
"Dream or not, I want this land creature gone," the king said, and then bent down to try to lift the soldier. He gave up after a short while, huffing, and cursed in his native tongue and rubbed his hands together to try to banish the cold. When the king made no further move Thor gave it a try, but the soundly sleeping soldier was heavier than a haystack of lead, and his arms like ice. He stepped back with a mutter. "Absurd."
"Just so," the king agreed. "I see that you are looking for someone."
"No," Thor replied sadly. "No one at all."
"If you help me remove this fool from my realm I will point you in the direction of someone who can help you find this person," the king declared, blithely ignoring what Thor had just said.
"Neither you nor I could lift him, and we are no mere saplings," Thor pointed out instead of setting the king to rights, because his heart felt as though it would break were he to say out loud: my brother is dead.
"If he cannot be moved, then we find someone who can," the king said. The sudden shift from 'I' to lowercase 'we' rather bothered Thor, but he said nothing definite, only hemmed and hawed. He was familiar with quests of all kinds from the stories his father used to tell, had even gone gallivanting on several during his youth, full of bluster, though never while dreaming. They were often messy affairs, or the reward too meager to show for the effort, but the experience had been reward enough when he was younger, especially in the company of his nearest and dearest. Compared to those exploits, moving a snoring soldier dressed in outlandish rags seemed like a task beneath his dignity, but then Thor caught himself thusly thinking and felt shame rising up his craw. This was the sort of thing that was before, when he had gone around smashing up lives, of others and his own, heedless of the suffering he caused, believing himself to be above reproach.
"Who might this person be?" Thor asked the king, who told him of a witch who lived in the sky in a house spun from gold. He pointed to how he might climb up, using one of the silken ropes that tethered the house to the earth, and Thor hauled himself up bodily up, climbing until the two figure below were mere specks, climbing until he stopped getting disgusting nosefuls of flying plankton, climbing until he cleared the clouds, climbing until round metal birds, lights in their feathers aglow, drifted slowly past. Beyond them floated a golden castle—
The throne room he found empty, except for a corner heaped with insect husks. Thor ducked his head to keep it from catching on the webs, and descended the steps. Bodies crunched underfoot and threw up fine particles of bronze, dusting clearly the outline of eight long limbs and lashes woven around eight bright eyes.
Well met, the witch said. She was sharpening two pairs of knives that went clack, clack, clack. Thor explained his purpose there, and the witch cut out a rectangle in the soft dirt beneath the web's gray awning, fixed the corners with the point of each blade. He will need to be kissed, the witch said, and Thor said that he was already promised to another, and it seemed uncivil to turn around and ask the king when he had been the one entrusted by him with the matter, and the witch let out a chuckle.
"By someone from his past," she explained. "I know just the person, but before I tell you, I require a favor."
"Name it," Thor said, though he was beginning to understand why the king of the sea had been so cross, it did not do to live in dreams and tales after all, everything took three times as long, "and I shall consider your request."
The witch directed his attention to the map on the floor, a piece of bark as delicate as a pinned moth. She told him that a dragon had taken up residence there and that she needed him rid. Thor inquired whether she needed a token or proof, and the witch simply climbed up his arm and across his shoulder and over the shell of his ear to sit cross-legged upon the crown of his head.
"My eyes will be proof," she said, and bore the negligible weight of a spider, and so they set off into the land in the map, creased with rushing streams of ink, wrinkled with prairie, and dotted with hills. The dragon dwells in a cave behind that hill, the witch said, but when Thor climbed down the other side the cave was an upturned gourd, and the hillock really a heap of sand.
"And the fearsome beast?" Thor asked, inwardly laughing in spite of his best intentions to have become a new, mindful man. The witch climbed down onto his nose to glare at the spot right between his eyes, and then parachuted down onto the ground. Thor crouched down to better see her and the small green lizard curled up in the shade of the hollow gourd.
"This is no place for a dragon," the witch said. "The castle will suit you better."
The dragon said: No castle. Like cave.
"I will give you a maiden to devour," the witch wheedled. Thor scowled at this, but the dragon said: No maiden. Princess.
"Princess!" the witch said. She looked at Thor, who was just then not in the least bit sorry that he had not been born a princess, and back. The lizard did not budge; the spider started weaving for him enticing, juicy tableaus. Thor listened to them haggle for a while, but the amusement wore off quickly; his mind wandered and then his feet, and for the second time he found himself crashing to the ground, snarled up in someone else's arms and legs. A thin, bespectacled man who had been walking next to the knight Thor had walked into helped them extricate themselves and then stood back.
"Hey you big lug, watch it," the knight said. He got to the rest of his feet with a clanking of metal. "Have you seen a dragon around?"
Because he was sure he would start laughing otherwise and because he did not want to cause any more offense, Thor queried, "Why are you looking for a dragon?"
The knight looked at him as if he were daft and tapped his breastplate with the knuckles of a mailed hand, whereupon a clasp on the burnished cuirass dangled off. The scholar came to help the knight hook the end of it back on. What was strange to Thor, though, was that the knight carried no weapons.
"We heard of a great dragon terrorizing this region," the scholar told Thor.
"We're heroes," the knight said. After a pause, he said, "This guy is, anyway."
"Not so," the scholar said, tightening the clasp and straightening. He dusted off his elegant, strong-looking hands. "We're lost."
The knight exclaimed that they were not lost, and pointed at a glimmer in the sky. "We're following the right star."
"That is a witch's house," Thor said. "That's what I said," the scholar said, adding that he knew the way and that it was his, not that of his friend. "Let's just find that dragon," the knight muttered. Thor sighed, but not out loud. He set the odd duo on the path towards the cave and the hill, but before parting ways, asked—
How did a soldier end up in the middle of the sea, anyway? To which a ghost of a man who had no name and no past who was dipped to his elbows in blood replied, It's because he's always been a punk. His visage swam like a pale fish in the ocean at night. He was dreaming, too, the ghost, who said, Like you. Like me. His was a voice to throw even the sun into melancholy, but the morning was calling Thor, made glad of it though if he had wandered further perhaps he would have eventually reached the shores where his lover slept or the mountains that entombed those lost to life. Thor was shedding the dream and its skin; but he would sleep a while longer, the ghost said.
Our friends are gone but I am still here, so I will wake him, he said. He smiled—
In the light of the waking day Thor was troubled by it, the dream, though he remembered it none. He only had the sense that he had not yet finished the conversations he had had. Everywhere he went in his father's house the funereal air stifled him; he went outside to the gates, closed against the intrusion of the outside world, or perhaps it was ward the outside world from the sables within, Thor did not know. The gatekeeper, who had served his father for time immemorial, it seemed, he had known all his life. He had loved to pester him with questions as a child, but grown, he went to him for counsel, though the questions had never completely ceased. The gatekeeper sat him at his table, rough-hewn ash. For his distress, he said, only stories would do, and this was one of those he told:
Once there was a young woman named Jane who loved an immortal warrior. To be sure, she was immortal herself, but the winds that the souls of her people weathered were storm gales, and if their substance did not easily scatter, it was simultaneously crystal and indistinct to the eye, so that even finding them once was no mean feat for those raised imbibing unhurried tides and leisurely breezes, and twice, well, that was hardly ever made mention even in the most glory-wreathed of legends. A storm fit for inclusion in such legends had come and gone, but not all was lost; even washed away, the bridge that had tied her land to her love's had not completely disappeared, the bridgeposts stood. They lay too far apart to be stepping stones, but lay just far enough apart that Jane could imagine that they were guiding stars, set like a ladder in the sky, twinkling bravely on even though the floodwaters had swept everything else connecting her to the one she loved out of existence.
She is gathering stones by the swollen edge of the river, the gatekeeper said. She is casting lines. She is sending paper boats into the rapids and charting their course. Watching the shadows cast by dragonflies among the flattened reeds. She knows that once bridges were built out of birds' wings and yarn. A long time ago. I am old, the gatekeeper said, older than your father, but even I do not remember when last any one in any realm raised such a thing; she may yet.
• • • • •
Years later, sorrows later, many more ghosts later, after all the dreamers had awakened and when they had returned to sleep this was what he told her, to which she replied, now I will tell you my version. He listened, and that shared part of them which was perishable instead lived for evermore; he dreamt.
• • • • •
• • • • •
Once there was a young man named Thor who loved a mortal maiden. To be sure, he was mortal himself, but his people reckoned ages by the rings of the tree whose branches wound around all the worlds, and the maiden whose heart he had won only through a great suffering hailed from a land dyed in the green of spring, one that would crumble like an autumn leaf before old age would bow his head. It was bowed today, but for the death of his brother, not for the loss of his love, for he would have time more than enough to grieve her as well, near eternities. Sad singing shivered the foundations of his father's house and draped its columns in the shades of mourning. His father sat silent in this shadow and gazed at him with eyes as dark as a well; Thor's had deepened in the days since his foolish boasts and reckless misdeeds and he would have met them, squarely, had he not been so keenly aware of his fault that no amount of tears would wash away. He fled into the brightly lit halls of the house of his father where the people sighed and lamented the madness of it all: a foundling, a chanceling, had it been not? Lunacy hand-reared from the dregs of war. Now everyone knew the true parent of the dead prince, Thor's brother, their great, sworn enemy, and war, was it not? no wonder, they said, nodding, and Thor raged at them and broke their heads or would have if he had not been so changed; he could only slink past them like a dog with a broken tail. His lady mother, who was wise in many things, seeing him thus, took pity on him, kissed his brows, encircled him in her arms, and did not speak of the space her arms and his arms left empty so Thor did not, either. His boon companions clasped his arms and gave him condolences and encouragement; one of them, an unparalleled warrior, held his hands in hers. Do not despair, she said, to which he said, I feel as though I may die of grief, to which she replied, as sharp as a blade: It will dull.
"Then it will hurt more when the last of my heart's blood is drained, and I shall have deserved the pain, every single drop," Thor said.
"We grieve, too," she said. She did not think much of Thor's feeling sorry for himself, for all that she loved him as a shield-brother and better. "If grief kills Thor, then the rest of us are not long for this world."
"Of love I shall expire as well," Thor said grimly. "If one should fail the other will strike true." This was melodramatic even for an expressive and demonstrative people such as theirs, but under the circumstances his friend felt inclined to show him compassion, rather than box his ears as she had when they were children and Thor had done something particularly asinine or ill-advised, rare occasions not in the least, in the past.
"If you call upon me I will gladly die beside you, but not at the altar of love, nor grief neither. Otherwise I shall stand," she said. So do not give in, she added, squeezing his hands and rising to her feet to attend to his lady mother, for the call for the table rang out then. At the feast for his brother's passing Thor sat at his father's right, and his father did not need to say, all heard in their hearts, what he had said to his dead son last, that echoed in Thor's very soul. In the days that followed he heard his brother called traitor, and it was true, he had nearly begun and finished a war by himself, for which people also made a sign against evil, but he was dead and disgraced and his name spoken less and less, even by the rumor-mongers and rebellious children. Thor slept little if at all, and then only fitfully, but his dreams were desolation, graced by nothing but ice and rocks that cut his feet. He was still able to make himself run, but nowhere did he see a face dear to him, hear a call he would have recognized and would have answered with joy. Out of his mind, he wandered far, perhaps too far, across the waste and reached the edge of a wood. Before another dream in the dream claimed him he thought of the mortal woman he loved, whose name had twisted his brother's throat, who knew nothing of their strife except that by its violence Thor had nearly died, who lived in a place he could not reach any longer. He had destroyed the way by destroying his brother. Only by dreams it would be. Under the shade of the leaves—
Thor swam, paddling half-heartedly, but the water was unexpectedly heavy or he was too buoyant, one or the other, so that it was easier to swim through the air instead, his feet occasionally skimming the tops of the waves. The sky was the color of the sea and thick with schools of silvery fish. They obscured his view, which was why Thor found himself tripping over something lying on the surface of the water. Sitting up, the obstruction revealed itself to be a man in soldier's garb with blue eyes and blue lips and skin the color of a corpse.
"Hey watch it, buddy."
"I did not mean to disturb you," Thor said.
"You don't need to apologize. Just watch it next time."
Thor nodded. His first response had been to demand that the man, obviously a common infantryman, show him the proper respect due his rank, but that was before. "Where are we?" he asked, as the liquid waves turned into flying flurries.
"I dunno," the soldier said. "Who or what are you?"
"A prince," Thor said truthfully. The admission came out embarrassed.
"Then you are the second member of the royalty I've met today," the soldier said. He tugged at his hair and then his crumpled collar. "I wish I had worn my dress uniform."
Lightheaded with hope, Thor untangled himself and scrambled to his feet. "What did he look like? Which way did he go?"
"He's still here," the soldier said, gesturing with a thumb. Thor's head whipped around but his amnesiac hopes turned instantly to ashes when he saw that it was not his brother but a water-dweller, arms crossed. He was in bad temper, going by the deep frown on his face.
"Another one," he said, displeased.
"Have you seen perchance—" Thor began, only to be interrupted. "No," the sea-dwelling royal said.
"This guy is a jerk, don't bother," the soldier said.
"You dare!"
The soldier lay back down and turned his back to them, tucking himself into a napping position. "All right, all right." Thor heard him yawn. "We haven't seen anybody else."
"I am sorry to have disturbed your rest," Thor said. He was no deft hand at seeing far, but his father was a great sorcerer, and if he had not inherited much talent for the unseen mysteries, having grown up in his father's house, he at least knew how to recognize when he was in an otherworldly situation, and in such situations it never hurt to be polite.
There was another yawn. "It's been a long day. Right, fall in. . ."
When the gentle snoring began, Thor looked at the king, who appeared resigned. "There is no use trying to talk to this one," he said. "He does as he pleases, which means not leaving."
"Perhaps he has no one to wake him up," Thor suggested. "You have tried?"
"I am reduced to waiting," the king answered, disgruntled. "I will not suffer intruders in my home, but neither will I lower myself to attack a sleeping enemy. Wake up, you," he said, nudging the soldier with a bare foot. He did not stir, only mumbled something indistinct. The king sighed and looked around with another frown. "So it goes." He glared at Thor. "What do you want? I have too many ne'er-do-wells loitering in my country already," he warned.
"I'm your friend, not a ne'er-do-well," the soldier said.
"We have never met," the king insisted.
"This is a dream, where strange things may be true and true things false," Thor said diplomatically.
"Dream or not, I want this land creature gone," the king said, and then bent down to try to lift the soldier. He gave up after a short while, huffing, and cursed in his native tongue and rubbed his hands together to try to banish the cold. When the king made no further move Thor gave it a try, but the soundly sleeping soldier was heavier than a haystack of lead, and his arms like ice. He stepped back with a mutter. "Absurd."
"Just so," the king agreed. "I see that you are looking for someone."
"No," Thor replied sadly. "No one at all."
"If you help me remove this fool from my realm I will point you in the direction of someone who can help you find this person," the king declared, blithely ignoring what Thor had just said.
"Neither you nor I could lift him, and we are no mere saplings," Thor pointed out instead of setting the king to rights, because his heart felt as though it would break were he to say out loud: my brother is dead.
"If he cannot be moved, then we find someone who can," the king said. The sudden shift from 'I' to lowercase 'we' rather bothered Thor, but he said nothing definite, only hemmed and hawed. He was familiar with quests of all kinds from the stories his father used to tell, had even gone gallivanting on several during his youth, full of bluster, though never while dreaming. They were often messy affairs, or the reward too meager to show for the effort, but the experience had been reward enough when he was younger, especially in the company of his nearest and dearest. Compared to those exploits, moving a snoring soldier dressed in outlandish rags seemed like a task beneath his dignity, but then Thor caught himself thusly thinking and felt shame rising up his craw. This was the sort of thing that was before, when he had gone around smashing up lives, of others and his own, heedless of the suffering he caused, believing himself to be above reproach.
"Who might this person be?" Thor asked the king, who told him of a witch who lived in the sky in a house spun from gold. He pointed to how he might climb up, using one of the silken ropes that tethered the house to the earth, and Thor hauled himself up bodily up, climbing until the two figure below were mere specks, climbing until he stopped getting disgusting nosefuls of flying plankton, climbing until he cleared the clouds, climbing until round metal birds, lights in their feathers aglow, drifted slowly past. Beyond them floated a golden castle—
The throne room he found empty, except for a corner heaped with insect husks. Thor ducked his head to keep it from catching on the webs, and descended the steps. Bodies crunched underfoot and threw up fine particles of bronze, dusting clearly the outline of eight long limbs and lashes woven around eight bright eyes.
Well met, the witch said. She was sharpening two pairs of knives that went clack, clack, clack. Thor explained his purpose there, and the witch cut out a rectangle in the soft dirt beneath the web's gray awning, fixed the corners with the point of each blade. He will need to be kissed, the witch said, and Thor said that he was already promised to another, and it seemed uncivil to turn around and ask the king when he had been the one entrusted by him with the matter, and the witch let out a chuckle.
"By someone from his past," she explained. "I know just the person, but before I tell you, I require a favor."
"Name it," Thor said, though he was beginning to understand why the king of the sea had been so cross, it did not do to live in dreams and tales after all, everything took three times as long, "and I shall consider your request."
The witch directed his attention to the map on the floor, a piece of bark as delicate as a pinned moth. She told him that a dragon had taken up residence there and that she needed him rid. Thor inquired whether she needed a token or proof, and the witch simply climbed up his arm and across his shoulder and over the shell of his ear to sit cross-legged upon the crown of his head.
"My eyes will be proof," she said, and bore the negligible weight of a spider, and so they set off into the land in the map, creased with rushing streams of ink, wrinkled with prairie, and dotted with hills. The dragon dwells in a cave behind that hill, the witch said, but when Thor climbed down the other side the cave was an upturned gourd, and the hillock really a heap of sand.
"And the fearsome beast?" Thor asked, inwardly laughing in spite of his best intentions to have become a new, mindful man. The witch climbed down onto his nose to glare at the spot right between his eyes, and then parachuted down onto the ground. Thor crouched down to better see her and the small green lizard curled up in the shade of the hollow gourd.
"This is no place for a dragon," the witch said. "The castle will suit you better."
The dragon said: No castle. Like cave.
"I will give you a maiden to devour," the witch wheedled. Thor scowled at this, but the dragon said: No maiden. Princess.
"Princess!" the witch said. She looked at Thor, who was just then not in the least bit sorry that he had not been born a princess, and back. The lizard did not budge; the spider started weaving for him enticing, juicy tableaus. Thor listened to them haggle for a while, but the amusement wore off quickly; his mind wandered and then his feet, and for the second time he found himself crashing to the ground, snarled up in someone else's arms and legs. A thin, bespectacled man who had been walking next to the knight Thor had walked into helped them extricate themselves and then stood back.
"Hey you big lug, watch it," the knight said. He got to the rest of his feet with a clanking of metal. "Have you seen a dragon around?"
Because he was sure he would start laughing otherwise and because he did not want to cause any more offense, Thor queried, "Why are you looking for a dragon?"
The knight looked at him as if he were daft and tapped his breastplate with the knuckles of a mailed hand, whereupon a clasp on the burnished cuirass dangled off. The scholar came to help the knight hook the end of it back on. What was strange to Thor, though, was that the knight carried no weapons.
"We heard of a great dragon terrorizing this region," the scholar told Thor.
"We're heroes," the knight said. After a pause, he said, "This guy is, anyway."
"Not so," the scholar said, tightening the clasp and straightening. He dusted off his elegant, strong-looking hands. "We're lost."
The knight exclaimed that they were not lost, and pointed at a glimmer in the sky. "We're following the right star."
"That is a witch's house," Thor said. "That's what I said," the scholar said, adding that he knew the way and that it was his, not that of his friend. "Let's just find that dragon," the knight muttered. Thor sighed, but not out loud. He set the odd duo on the path towards the cave and the hill, but before parting ways, asked—
How did a soldier end up in the middle of the sea, anyway? To which a ghost of a man who had no name and no past who was dipped to his elbows in blood replied, It's because he's always been a punk. His visage swam like a pale fish in the ocean at night. He was dreaming, too, the ghost, who said, Like you. Like me. His was a voice to throw even the sun into melancholy, but the morning was calling Thor, made glad of it though if he had wandered further perhaps he would have eventually reached the shores where his lover slept or the mountains that entombed those lost to life. Thor was shedding the dream and its skin; but he would sleep a while longer, the ghost said.
Our friends are gone but I am still here, so I will wake him, he said. He smiled—
In the light of the waking day Thor was troubled by it, the dream, though he remembered it none. He only had the sense that he had not yet finished the conversations he had had. Everywhere he went in his father's house the funereal air stifled him; he went outside to the gates, closed against the intrusion of the outside world, or perhaps it was ward the outside world from the sables within, Thor did not know. The gatekeeper, who had served his father for time immemorial, it seemed, he had known all his life. He had loved to pester him with questions as a child, but grown, he went to him for counsel, though the questions had never completely ceased. The gatekeeper sat him at his table, rough-hewn ash. For his distress, he said, only stories would do, and this was one of those he told:
Once there was a young woman named Jane who loved an immortal warrior. To be sure, she was immortal herself, but the winds that the souls of her people weathered were storm gales, and if their substance did not easily scatter, it was simultaneously crystal and indistinct to the eye, so that even finding them once was no mean feat for those raised imbibing unhurried tides and leisurely breezes, and twice, well, that was hardly ever made mention even in the most glory-wreathed of legends. A storm fit for inclusion in such legends had come and gone, but not all was lost; even washed away, the bridge that had tied her land to her love's had not completely disappeared, the bridgeposts stood. They lay too far apart to be stepping stones, but lay just far enough apart that Jane could imagine that they were guiding stars, set like a ladder in the sky, twinkling bravely on even though the floodwaters had swept everything else connecting her to the one she loved out of existence.
She is gathering stones by the swollen edge of the river, the gatekeeper said. She is casting lines. She is sending paper boats into the rapids and charting their course. Watching the shadows cast by dragonflies among the flattened reeds. She knows that once bridges were built out of birds' wings and yarn. A long time ago. I am old, the gatekeeper said, older than your father, but even I do not remember when last any one in any realm raised such a thing; she may yet.
• • • • •
Years later, sorrows later, many more ghosts later, after all the dreamers had awakened and when they had returned to sleep this was what he told her, to which she replied, now I will tell you my version. He listened, and that shared part of them which was perishable instead lived for evermore; he dreamt.
• • • • •