When I woke up I was somewhere I had never been before.
Okay, that doesn't narrow it down very much, does it? It wasn't Heatherfield though. If anything, it looked like a picture from one of Will's history books, depicting the Middle Ages. I was sitting on a bench at the edge of a market square. Above the square reared up a magnificent cathedral.
"Is this... Metamoor?"
There was a giggle. One I'd heard before.
"No," Elyon told me. "This is Dahl's Eternal Summer."
"What?" I scrambled to my feet, looking for a way to escape. I couldn't feel the bubble.
The other girl declined to meet my eyes. "I decided not to kill you. You'll do just as well as bait for the Guardians. They'll be joining you here, soon." She offered me a cup of something frothy. "This will help you feel better."
I accepted the mug. It wasn't as if she couldn't have poured it into me while I was unconcious if she wanted to. "I don't understand. Who is Dahl?"
"He was a painter. I've brought you into his last picture."
"You can do that?"
She curtseyed. "I told you. I have more power than the Guardians. You won't be seperated from your sister for very much longer."
"No offense, but I'd prefer it if she drove you off with your tail between your legs."
Elyon looked surprised and then shook her head. "It's too bad you're on the wrong side."
"Funny, I could say the same for you." I drank from the cup and found the contents spicy and reviving. When I looked up at Elyon she was giving me an impish look. "Alright, what am I drinking?"
"Mead," she told me. "It's a little bit alcoholic. And it's replacing some of the magic that you're made of. Everything you eat will do that from now on. Eventually you'll have a perfectly normal human body."
The mug hit the ground. "Really?"
She nodded. "It was more difficult than I thought, but one day you'll be a real girl, Pinocchiolina."
"Pinocchiolina?" I rolled the name around my lips as I retrieved the cup from the ground. When I looked up, Elyon was gone. I was alone and out of place in this little celebration. Setting the empty cup down on the bench I slipped away into the gap between two buildings and hid myself behind a barrel.
Curling up on myself I wondered how today could get any worse. I'd blundered right into Will's enemies, almost been killed and now I was being used as bait to lure her into a trap. "If I get out of this I'm never leaving the apartment again without letting someone know where I'm going," I vowed. "Please be alright, Will. If you get hurt then I'll never forgive her."
My cheeks felt wet and I realised I was crying. How foolish I was to be saying I wouldn't forgive Elyon when she didn't need to to worry about me at all. She had her magic and she had me trapped. And a part of me didn't want to hate her even with this. She had spared me - more, if she was to be believed then she had given me a chance at a real life, of one day being more than just a magical shell that thought for herself.
Could I really hate her when she was giving me life almost as much as Will had?
I think that I could. Not for what she had done to me and for me. Those, at least I could call us square over. But if she followed through and sent Will and the others here... I wouldn't be alone, but all of them would lose their families. Mom would be alone, never knowing what had happened to Will.
That I thought I could hate her for, if it happened.
I don't know how long I sat there, trying to get hold of my feelings, but eventually I had cried myself out. With a sigh I took off my cap, tidied up my hair again, and scrubbed away the tear-stains with a hankie before I put the hat back on.
Maybe the Guardians wouldn't be captured at all. Perhaps they'd even rescue me without any trouble.
But if they were captured then I owed it to them to do everything I could to help. Right now that meant finding out everything I could about this place, this prison. Elyon had left so there must be some way out. I might not have the magic to use it, but if Will was here she'd have the Heart of Kandrakar, so that shouldn't be a problem.
So where was I? I poked my head out above the barrel and looked out at the market square. It didn't look so terrible - in fact there was festival atmophere. Men in fancy clothes that looked nothing like anything I'd seen in Heatherfield were carrying tall banners through the crowds of more plainly but still oddly dressed people moving baskets of food and barrels that I presumed to contain drinks. In some parts of the square partying seemed to have broken out already - a couple were dancing (not the sort of dancing I'd seen Will do to music on the television but dancing nonetheless) and a juggler was keeping five apples in the air at once, which was pretty cool I had to admit. The fat merchant watching certainly seemed to agree with me.
"What are you doing there? Up to mischief?" a gruff voice demanded.
I eeped and spun around to see a plump man with a stained apron giving me an amused look. "Mischief? Me? Uh-uh!"
He gave me a searching look. "Hmm. You're not from around here. Eying the food I'll bet."
"ehh..." I rubbed the back of my head nervously. Better to let him think he was right.
"Well there'll be plenty of food for everyone later, as long as they earn their keep." He folded his thick arms across the apron. "And since my usual assistant is off juggling I could do with another pair of hands."
I bit my lip. I really ought to to find out more about this place... but where would I even start? At least if I was doing something for this man I'd not have to come up with an explanation for who was or why I was here. I nodded my acquiesence. "What do you want me to do?"
As it turned out, the man was an innkeeper and what he wanted me to do was wait tables. Before you start thinking that it was easy, you have to remember that I'm not very large and I had to carry food and drinks around on heavy wooden platters. There weren't any lightweight metal and plastic trays so I struggled quite a bit.
"I don't think you'd better try to lift this one," the innkeeper told me, balancing six heavy tankards onto one such platter. It wasn't quite large enough for them so one tankard was stacked on top of three others. He jerked his head towards a rack of bottles. "Take one of those over to Master Van Dahl. And be polite. He's an important man!"
I pulled one of the bottles off the rack and held it up for inspection. "Uh, who's Master Van Dahl?" Hadn't Elyon mentioned someone called Dahl?
The innkeeper nodded towards a corner of the room, near the window. I could just about see a man at the table there, wrapped in a long cloak.
Even the bottle was surprisingly heavy, so I held it in both hands as I walked over to him. "Master Van Dahl?" I extended the bottle.
"Ah, thank you." He accepted it with one hand and set it on the table without looking up. "Please bring me..." He looked up and I saw a thin, sad face beneath shaggy brown hair. "I don't know you."
"Um... should you?"
"I know everyone here," he said confidently. "What did someone your age do that Phobos would punish you? Stare at him? Take one step too close to him?"
"Ah... I'm not sure who Phobos is. I got sent here by a girl called Elyon."
Van Dahl rose to his feet and bowed slightly. "I'm forgetting my manners. It has been far too long since I spoke to another living soul. Elias Van Dahl at your service."
"I'm..." I hesitated. "Uhm... Miss Vandom."
He gave me a sceptical look.
"I don't actually have a name," I explained. "It's a long story."
"Young lady, I have nothing but time. I don't even know how long it has been since Cedric trapped me here."
"Cedric? I thought that you said Phobos...?"
Van Dahl sighed. "Cedric is Phobos' right-hand man. Like yours, it is a long story." He gestured to the chair facing him. "Please, take a seat and we can exchange our tales."
I complied. If the innkeeper protested, well he had told me to be polite. And besides, it seemed I'd stumbled on the one person that could tell me all about this place. "Cedric, I've run into. Assuming we mean tall, blond and turns into a snake. He and Elyon are working together."
"I see. Tell me, have you ever heard of Meridian?"
"Elyon said something about it, that it was their home. I'm guessing that it's something to do with Metamoor?"
"Yes," he agreed. "Metamoor is another world from the Earth and Meridian is the great city that covers it. Long ago, or so my teachers claim, Metamoor was one of the brightest of all the worlds but by my time it had become a world of darkness, lit only by the Light of Meridian. To protect other worlds, a veil was drawn between the worlds, cutting Metamoor off from the rest of the universe. And then... the Light failed."
"I was a court painter, the most famous artist of all of Meridian, when it happened. The queen and her consort vanished mysteriously. Her daughter, the heir, was no more than a child and so the crown passed to her brother: Phobos. Life had never been easy in Metamoor, but under his rule it became unbearable. His sister also vanished mysteriously, and Phobos withdrew into the shadows. He didn't want to talk to anyone, showing himself only to his loyal whisperers. Orders went out to destroy every statue, every portrait, any image of him in all of Meridian."
"You'd painted him, I take it?"
He nodded. "I had; and as a skilled portraitist I could easily paint more. I decided to run away away from him. There were people I knew, people who were afraid of what Phobos would do. They helped me to escape from Metamoor to another world, a place and time where an artist would be respected."
I blinked. "I take it that you don't mean here."
Van Dahl smiled sadly. "No. You'd know it as Europe. By your calendar, the year was 1700."
"Um... Master Van Dahl..."
"I've been here a long time, haven't I?" he said resignedly.
"Three hundred years," I confessed. "I'm sorry."
He sank in on himself. "I knew it was possible, but... I'm sorry, I need a moment."
I needed a little time myself. Three hundred years? This had been going on that long? But Will said that she had been chosen as a Guardian just in the last few weeks. Of course, they had been picked by Hay Lin's grandmother, who died only a little later so there had been no chance for anyone to ask questions about the history of the Guardians. But surely someone would know, if I could only find them.
Someone cleared their throat and I looked up to see the innkeeper. "Is everything alright, Master Van Dahl?"
"Merely sober thoughts," Van Dahl assured him. "I gather my young companion has been assisting you? I'm afraid you'll have to get along without her for a while." He pulled himself to his feet, towering over me, and dropped a handful of oddly cut silver coins onto the table. "Come along, Miss Vandom. We should talk more privately."
The innkeeper wasn't as tall as Van Dahl, but he was probably twice as broad. Nonetheless I saw his face pale as he stepped aside.
"That man was afraid of you," I accused Van Dahl in a low voice as I followed him out. Yes, I followed him. Quite honestly, he was too important for me back away from just because he seemed a little sinister all of a sudden.
He hunched his shoulders. "I imagine some of them do, yes," he agreed. "This is my painting, I created it and I created them as well. I don't usually throw my weight around, but they aren't exactly inclined to argue with me."
"You created this?" I gestured around us. "All of this?"
"Well, that wasn't my intention."
"This sounds horribly familiar." He'd created them? The way Will had created me?
Van Dahl's eyebrows arched. "I look forward to hearing your story. But I'm skipping ahead of mine. I'd fled Metamoor and made a new life for myself. I could paint, dream, wish... and like others, I could love. But I had not truly escaped. Phobos send Cedric after me to make sure I was punished. He found me and - whether it was Phobos' instructions or his own inspiration, he bound me to my latest work."
"The painting was supposed to be named 'The Last Tear'. A village where no one has cried in a long time. The last tear is in a crystal bottle in the cathedral and the life of the village is just joy. An eternal summer... Cedric told me that he'd always heard that artists put themselves into their work. He created a portal into it and forced me through it."
"Then this place has been for hundreds of years?" I asked. "Don't the people here notice?"
He shook his head. "It's like a play. They're caught in a few moments and no matter what I do, they revert to those actions unless I'm right there with them and sometimes even then. I've lost count of how often it happens."
I followed him up a narrow stair into a loft overlooking the square. "And they don't remember anything?" The room's furniture was barren except for dozens of incomplete paintings.
"Oh, they do but it doesn't really matter to them. As far as they're concerned this is normal. They don't know what it's like to be hungry, or thirsty or tired. I've almost forgotten them myself, this place just isn't real enough for them to matter."
"But you were drinking whatever it was in that bottle."
"The wine wasn't for sustenance," he told me wryly. "I guess you're not old enough to understand. Lucky girl."
"You don't look three hundred years old. I may not get any older." I looked around at the pictures. "I see you've been keeping busy."
Van Dahl sighed. "I tried to at first, but I can't finish any of them. Without colours, it's useless even to try."
"Without colours...?"
"It's all an illusion. When I try..." He gestured impatiently. "See for yourself. Letting me take my paint and canvases was Cedric's idea of a cruel joke. He took away my ability to paint and then left it dangling in front of me all this time."
Looking closer I saw that the pictures were washed out and felt... hollow, incomplete. The colours were scarcely more than hinted at. "That's cruel."
"There is no end to Phobos' cruelty," he said. "So what is your story?"
I found myself a seat against the window sill, looking down over the market. "Have you ever heard of the Guardians of the Veil?"
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Okay, that doesn't narrow it down very much, does it? It wasn't Heatherfield though. If anything, it looked like a picture from one of Will's history books, depicting the Middle Ages. I was sitting on a bench at the edge of a market square. Above the square reared up a magnificent cathedral.
"Is this... Metamoor?"
There was a giggle. One I'd heard before.
"No," Elyon told me. "This is Dahl's Eternal Summer."
"What?" I scrambled to my feet, looking for a way to escape. I couldn't feel the bubble.
The other girl declined to meet my eyes. "I decided not to kill you. You'll do just as well as bait for the Guardians. They'll be joining you here, soon." She offered me a cup of something frothy. "This will help you feel better."
I accepted the mug. It wasn't as if she couldn't have poured it into me while I was unconcious if she wanted to. "I don't understand. Who is Dahl?"
"He was a painter. I've brought you into his last picture."
"You can do that?"
She curtseyed. "I told you. I have more power than the Guardians. You won't be seperated from your sister for very much longer."
"No offense, but I'd prefer it if she drove you off with your tail between your legs."
Elyon looked surprised and then shook her head. "It's too bad you're on the wrong side."
"Funny, I could say the same for you." I drank from the cup and found the contents spicy and reviving. When I looked up at Elyon she was giving me an impish look. "Alright, what am I drinking?"
"Mead," she told me. "It's a little bit alcoholic. And it's replacing some of the magic that you're made of. Everything you eat will do that from now on. Eventually you'll have a perfectly normal human body."
The mug hit the ground. "Really?"
She nodded. "It was more difficult than I thought, but one day you'll be a real girl, Pinocchiolina."
"Pinocchiolina?" I rolled the name around my lips as I retrieved the cup from the ground. When I looked up, Elyon was gone. I was alone and out of place in this little celebration. Setting the empty cup down on the bench I slipped away into the gap between two buildings and hid myself behind a barrel.
Curling up on myself I wondered how today could get any worse. I'd blundered right into Will's enemies, almost been killed and now I was being used as bait to lure her into a trap. "If I get out of this I'm never leaving the apartment again without letting someone know where I'm going," I vowed. "Please be alright, Will. If you get hurt then I'll never forgive her."
My cheeks felt wet and I realised I was crying. How foolish I was to be saying I wouldn't forgive Elyon when she didn't need to to worry about me at all. She had her magic and she had me trapped. And a part of me didn't want to hate her even with this. She had spared me - more, if she was to be believed then she had given me a chance at a real life, of one day being more than just a magical shell that thought for herself.
Could I really hate her when she was giving me life almost as much as Will had?
I think that I could. Not for what she had done to me and for me. Those, at least I could call us square over. But if she followed through and sent Will and the others here... I wouldn't be alone, but all of them would lose their families. Mom would be alone, never knowing what had happened to Will.
That I thought I could hate her for, if it happened.
I don't know how long I sat there, trying to get hold of my feelings, but eventually I had cried myself out. With a sigh I took off my cap, tidied up my hair again, and scrubbed away the tear-stains with a hankie before I put the hat back on.
Maybe the Guardians wouldn't be captured at all. Perhaps they'd even rescue me without any trouble.
But if they were captured then I owed it to them to do everything I could to help. Right now that meant finding out everything I could about this place, this prison. Elyon had left so there must be some way out. I might not have the magic to use it, but if Will was here she'd have the Heart of Kandrakar, so that shouldn't be a problem.
So where was I? I poked my head out above the barrel and looked out at the market square. It didn't look so terrible - in fact there was festival atmophere. Men in fancy clothes that looked nothing like anything I'd seen in Heatherfield were carrying tall banners through the crowds of more plainly but still oddly dressed people moving baskets of food and barrels that I presumed to contain drinks. In some parts of the square partying seemed to have broken out already - a couple were dancing (not the sort of dancing I'd seen Will do to music on the television but dancing nonetheless) and a juggler was keeping five apples in the air at once, which was pretty cool I had to admit. The fat merchant watching certainly seemed to agree with me.
"What are you doing there? Up to mischief?" a gruff voice demanded.
I eeped and spun around to see a plump man with a stained apron giving me an amused look. "Mischief? Me? Uh-uh!"
He gave me a searching look. "Hmm. You're not from around here. Eying the food I'll bet."
"ehh..." I rubbed the back of my head nervously. Better to let him think he was right.
"Well there'll be plenty of food for everyone later, as long as they earn their keep." He folded his thick arms across the apron. "And since my usual assistant is off juggling I could do with another pair of hands."
I bit my lip. I really ought to to find out more about this place... but where would I even start? At least if I was doing something for this man I'd not have to come up with an explanation for who was or why I was here. I nodded my acquiesence. "What do you want me to do?"
As it turned out, the man was an innkeeper and what he wanted me to do was wait tables. Before you start thinking that it was easy, you have to remember that I'm not very large and I had to carry food and drinks around on heavy wooden platters. There weren't any lightweight metal and plastic trays so I struggled quite a bit.
"I don't think you'd better try to lift this one," the innkeeper told me, balancing six heavy tankards onto one such platter. It wasn't quite large enough for them so one tankard was stacked on top of three others. He jerked his head towards a rack of bottles. "Take one of those over to Master Van Dahl. And be polite. He's an important man!"
I pulled one of the bottles off the rack and held it up for inspection. "Uh, who's Master Van Dahl?" Hadn't Elyon mentioned someone called Dahl?
The innkeeper nodded towards a corner of the room, near the window. I could just about see a man at the table there, wrapped in a long cloak.
Even the bottle was surprisingly heavy, so I held it in both hands as I walked over to him. "Master Van Dahl?" I extended the bottle.
"Ah, thank you." He accepted it with one hand and set it on the table without looking up. "Please bring me..." He looked up and I saw a thin, sad face beneath shaggy brown hair. "I don't know you."
"Um... should you?"
"I know everyone here," he said confidently. "What did someone your age do that Phobos would punish you? Stare at him? Take one step too close to him?"
"Ah... I'm not sure who Phobos is. I got sent here by a girl called Elyon."
Van Dahl rose to his feet and bowed slightly. "I'm forgetting my manners. It has been far too long since I spoke to another living soul. Elias Van Dahl at your service."
"I'm..." I hesitated. "Uhm... Miss Vandom."
He gave me a sceptical look.
"I don't actually have a name," I explained. "It's a long story."
"Young lady, I have nothing but time. I don't even know how long it has been since Cedric trapped me here."
"Cedric? I thought that you said Phobos...?"
Van Dahl sighed. "Cedric is Phobos' right-hand man. Like yours, it is a long story." He gestured to the chair facing him. "Please, take a seat and we can exchange our tales."
I complied. If the innkeeper protested, well he had told me to be polite. And besides, it seemed I'd stumbled on the one person that could tell me all about this place. "Cedric, I've run into. Assuming we mean tall, blond and turns into a snake. He and Elyon are working together."
"I see. Tell me, have you ever heard of Meridian?"
"Elyon said something about it, that it was their home. I'm guessing that it's something to do with Metamoor?"
"Yes," he agreed. "Metamoor is another world from the Earth and Meridian is the great city that covers it. Long ago, or so my teachers claim, Metamoor was one of the brightest of all the worlds but by my time it had become a world of darkness, lit only by the Light of Meridian. To protect other worlds, a veil was drawn between the worlds, cutting Metamoor off from the rest of the universe. And then... the Light failed."
"I was a court painter, the most famous artist of all of Meridian, when it happened. The queen and her consort vanished mysteriously. Her daughter, the heir, was no more than a child and so the crown passed to her brother: Phobos. Life had never been easy in Metamoor, but under his rule it became unbearable. His sister also vanished mysteriously, and Phobos withdrew into the shadows. He didn't want to talk to anyone, showing himself only to his loyal whisperers. Orders went out to destroy every statue, every portrait, any image of him in all of Meridian."
"You'd painted him, I take it?"
He nodded. "I had; and as a skilled portraitist I could easily paint more. I decided to run away away from him. There were people I knew, people who were afraid of what Phobos would do. They helped me to escape from Metamoor to another world, a place and time where an artist would be respected."
I blinked. "I take it that you don't mean here."
Van Dahl smiled sadly. "No. You'd know it as Europe. By your calendar, the year was 1700."
"Um... Master Van Dahl..."
"I've been here a long time, haven't I?" he said resignedly.
"Three hundred years," I confessed. "I'm sorry."
He sank in on himself. "I knew it was possible, but... I'm sorry, I need a moment."
I needed a little time myself. Three hundred years? This had been going on that long? But Will said that she had been chosen as a Guardian just in the last few weeks. Of course, they had been picked by Hay Lin's grandmother, who died only a little later so there had been no chance for anyone to ask questions about the history of the Guardians. But surely someone would know, if I could only find them.
Someone cleared their throat and I looked up to see the innkeeper. "Is everything alright, Master Van Dahl?"
"Merely sober thoughts," Van Dahl assured him. "I gather my young companion has been assisting you? I'm afraid you'll have to get along without her for a while." He pulled himself to his feet, towering over me, and dropped a handful of oddly cut silver coins onto the table. "Come along, Miss Vandom. We should talk more privately."
The innkeeper wasn't as tall as Van Dahl, but he was probably twice as broad. Nonetheless I saw his face pale as he stepped aside.
"That man was afraid of you," I accused Van Dahl in a low voice as I followed him out. Yes, I followed him. Quite honestly, he was too important for me back away from just because he seemed a little sinister all of a sudden.
He hunched his shoulders. "I imagine some of them do, yes," he agreed. "This is my painting, I created it and I created them as well. I don't usually throw my weight around, but they aren't exactly inclined to argue with me."
"You created this?" I gestured around us. "All of this?"
"Well, that wasn't my intention."
"This sounds horribly familiar." He'd created them? The way Will had created me?
Van Dahl's eyebrows arched. "I look forward to hearing your story. But I'm skipping ahead of mine. I'd fled Metamoor and made a new life for myself. I could paint, dream, wish... and like others, I could love. But I had not truly escaped. Phobos send Cedric after me to make sure I was punished. He found me and - whether it was Phobos' instructions or his own inspiration, he bound me to my latest work."
"The painting was supposed to be named 'The Last Tear'. A village where no one has cried in a long time. The last tear is in a crystal bottle in the cathedral and the life of the village is just joy. An eternal summer... Cedric told me that he'd always heard that artists put themselves into their work. He created a portal into it and forced me through it."
"Then this place has been for hundreds of years?" I asked. "Don't the people here notice?"
He shook his head. "It's like a play. They're caught in a few moments and no matter what I do, they revert to those actions unless I'm right there with them and sometimes even then. I've lost count of how often it happens."
I followed him up a narrow stair into a loft overlooking the square. "And they don't remember anything?" The room's furniture was barren except for dozens of incomplete paintings.
"Oh, they do but it doesn't really matter to them. As far as they're concerned this is normal. They don't know what it's like to be hungry, or thirsty or tired. I've almost forgotten them myself, this place just isn't real enough for them to matter."
"But you were drinking whatever it was in that bottle."
"The wine wasn't for sustenance," he told me wryly. "I guess you're not old enough to understand. Lucky girl."
"You don't look three hundred years old. I may not get any older." I looked around at the pictures. "I see you've been keeping busy."
Van Dahl sighed. "I tried to at first, but I can't finish any of them. Without colours, it's useless even to try."
"Without colours...?"
"It's all an illusion. When I try..." He gestured impatiently. "See for yourself. Letting me take my paint and canvases was Cedric's idea of a cruel joke. He took away my ability to paint and then left it dangling in front of me all this time."
Looking closer I saw that the pictures were washed out and felt... hollow, incomplete. The colours were scarcely more than hinted at. "That's cruel."
"There is no end to Phobos' cruelty," he said. "So what is your story?"
I found myself a seat against the window sill, looking down over the market. "Have you ever heard of the Guardians of the Veil?"
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.