Robyn Bachar - Blood, Smoke and Mirrors

“Your first test begins now.”

I opened my mouth to form the word “Now?” but the floor dropped out from under me and someone blacked the lights out again.

Thankfully this time I was conscious, though the landing might have been more enjoyable if I had been unable to feel it. The breath whooshed out of my lungs as I hit solid ground with a very painful thud. Looking up, I expected to see light shining through the trapdoor that attacked me, but only saw more darkness. I reached down and unsnapped one of the pockets of my cargo pants, blindly grabbing a large hunk of crystal and pulling it free. Holding the lump in my hand, I spoke the incantation to activate the spell stored within it.

The crystal began to glow with a bright white light, surrounding me in a circle of illumination. Sadly there was nothing to see-no walls, no ceiling, no people-just more darkness outside my globe of visibility. I almost called out to ask if anyone was there, but I bit my tongue and decided against it. If there was anyone out there in the black, they probably weren’t about to come to my rescue, and were much more likely to try to kill me instead. Holding the crystal aloft, I took a few hesitant steps forward. The floor was rough earth, not the pristine marble of the great hall. Roots from indeterminate plants poked through here and there, and I eyed them, half expecting them to leap to life and attempt to strangle me. When the plants did not become homicidal I continued to walk forward, hoping to reach a wall, or better yet a door.

The silence was eerie, even more so than it had been since first I entered the mound. Tilting my head to the side, I paused and sniffed the air, but everything still reeked of cinnamon and was of no help at all. With a disappointed frown I went back to my slow, cautious walk. Maybe this wouldn’t be as difficult as I first thought. Maybe this was just a test to see if I could get myself out of wherever I was, which should be easy enough. All I had to do was leave the faerie realm, and I had the materials to do that on me. I just needed the mirror in my compact and my-

Panicked, I grabbed for my dagger and discovered it was missing, as well as my sword.

“Damn it,” I cursed under my breath. Well, I would have to find another way to cut myself then. Something in my many pockets ought to be able to do it.

A slithering, skittering noise interrupted my internal cataloging of my equipment. The strange sound was unfamiliar and startled the hell out of me after all that heavy silence. Whirling around, I searched the darkness, but saw nothing. Nervous, I licked my lips, waving the light around and trying to find the source of the noise, but the darkness remained cold and unmoving. Then again, maybe I wasn’t supposed to just find my way out. Maybe I was supposed to find my way out alive after whatever slimy monster out there tried to bite my head off.

I balanced the crystal on the brim of my top hat, giving it a sort of magical coal miner’s helmet effect. Centering myself with a deep breath, I felt my shields snap into place with an electric sizzle and a spark of multicolored light. Feeling more secure, I dug through my pockets and produced a matchbook. After a few attempts I managed to get one lit, and I turned myself toward the south (thanks to my magician built-in sense of direction).

“Light that warms and nurtures life,

Pierce the darkness like a knife.

Drive back this black unnatural sea,

As I will, so mote it be.”

A ball of fire appeared in front of me, growing from the tiny flame at the end of the match into a small sun the size of a basketball that hovered in front of me. Now that I had a decent light source I extinguished the crystal atop my hat and popped it back into its pocket. The warmth of the flames soothed me, and thanks to its light I was finally able to see the room I had dropped into. Like the floor, the walls were rough earth, and the ceiling stretched high above my head. I didn’t see my father, which was good because I might’ve accidentally hurled the ball of fire in front of me in his general direction. He must have been sent to another room, or perhaps a different test. I turned around to examine the rest of my temporary prison, and saw an enormous golden eye staring at me, less than ten feet away from where I stood.

I did what any sensible witch would do in my circumstance. I screamed like a scared little girl.

The eye blinked. Once, twice, and then shifted as the dragon turned its head toward me, regarding me with both golden eyes. “I could have eaten you, you know.”

I nodded numbly and stammered, “Thank you for not doing that.” I knew dragons existed in Faerie, though I’d never seen one before. Dragons are reclusive as a rule and tend to guard their privacy ferociously, so only the overly brave or overly stupid seek them out on purpose. The creature was huge, taking up a good portion of the room with its bulk. Black scales covered its body, and leathery wings were folded against its back. Smoke puffed out of its nostrils for a moment, and my stomach leapt in panic.

“I only eat virgins though.”

I stared at the dragon in disbelief, feeling the inexplicable urge to defend my past sexual history. My mouth worked as I struggled to find an appropriate response, and I thought I saw a glint of humor in its golden gaze.

“Oh,” I managed. “Why am I here?”

“Because you wish to be Titania.”

“Well, yes, I mean why am I here in this room?”

“Because you wish to be Titania.”

“Right…” I suppose I should have expected that and just been grateful it wasn’t picking bits of Catherine out of its teeth. Turning around, I surveyed the room again, seeing no obvious exit or entrance. “How did you get in here?”

“The same way you did.” The dragon laid its head upon the ground, its tail swishing forward to cover its nose, reminding me of a dog curling up against the cold. I couldn’t imagine why the council would have abducted a dragon to stick in the room with me if it had no intention of eating me, and no intention of helping me either.

“Can you leave?” I asked, curious. Dragons were magical beings, but I really didn’t know the extent of their magical abilities. Maybe it couldn’t teleport, as faeries could, and relied on those leathery wings for transportation when faeries used theirs more as a fashion statement.

“No.” It sighed and smoke puffed out from its snout in a great huff, which made me jump. “And I’m missing Jeopardy! . It’s celebrity week, you know.”

“Yeah, Sean Connery’s on today too.” The absurdity of that statement hit me for a moment and I shook my head. My day was just getting more bizarre by the moment. “Would you like me to help you leave?”

The dragon raised a brow, its expression quizzical. “Can you do that?”

“Umm…maybe?” I guessed. Could I? Sure, I could get myself out of the room by returning home, but I couldn’t bring the dragon into my apartment. Aside from the obvious fact that it was bigger than my entire apartment building, dragons are very specifically forbidden from traveling into the human world and have been for several centuries. That’s why dragons are known to hoard human loot stolen by other faeries. I couldn’t leave the dragon here alone in good conscience, not after it’d been nice enough not to eat me or roast me to a toasty Cat crisp. There had to be a way to do it.

I could try opening a portal to elsewhere in Faerie. I’d never tried anything like it before, but I figured it was hypothetically possible. On Earth you couldn’t use a mirror to go from one place to another, only from Earth to another world. There weren’t any concrete answers as to why that was, but the general thinking was that Earth simply doesn’t have the magic in it to support that sort of travel anymore. Centuries ago a magician didn’t even need a pre-made portal like a mirror to world walk, they could use almost anything as a gateway, especially mist or water. Faerie didn’t suffer from that problem though; Faerie was magic. I should be able to get us from the room to somewhere safer, somewhere I was very familiar with. It was worth a shot, if nothing else.