I rise. The open window beckons. It seems to be a warm day; the birds are outside, and I look through the glass to see on the stone path below two of our horses. They are grazing. The lilies beside their cloven hooves shudder gently. They are clothed in the lightest gold.
A light snore to my left indicates that Octavia still rests. Making sure not to wake her, I carefully move my legs over the side, plant them on the floor, and move off the blanket.
I stand; I look through the window again, and see that the horses continue to graze. The stone path bears some fallen leaves; it needs sweeping. The birds continue to chirp, and I make out some larks perched on the branch hanging over the path. Their blue feathers glow.
It’s my imagination; larks cannot produce such light, especially in the early morning. I open my mouth; I cannot reproduce their call, but I produce soft whispers as the larks continue to sing.
One of them ruffles its wings and leaps off. The movement causes a flash of blue.
It’s morning. Ianuarius the first, of the new century—1400. It has been over thirty years since I reunited with my wife, the partner spun of my soul. I catch another glance; her hair, grey as the stone, shifts gently on the pillow as she breathes. I grasp a strand of my hair; still as burnished, still red, as the day I became fully human. I am still as young, in body alone; but my soul, my mind, has never once stopped to continue along the unbroken path. Hard and lined with grass. Sometimes great, majestic beasts graze alongside. I hear them neigh…
Meanwhile, alone in Fontainebleau, Charles the Mad rages…
I carefully step around the corners of the bed, and, still walking softly, slowly swing open the door, and, closing it behind me, leave the bedchamber, Octavia’s light snores continuing to sound.
I enter the hallway, still the same after all these years… it is not great, but ample enough space for us, especially after Premi finished his studies at the University. Only two doors remain; the one to his former room is closed, but the other remains open, and Deuxi runs out, her dark red hair, nearly black, flying.
“Father, Father! I finished my first folio!”
“I just awoke, but good, Deuxi!” I answer, and as she nearly runs into me, pick her up; but, as she was yesterday, she’s heavy, and I gently return her to the ground. She’s been writing; a play, no less, but, to my eternal gratitude, not in Latin as they so prevalently seem to be.
“What is the plot?” I query.
“Father, you know…” she sulks, but I laugh and nuzzle her hair. “I know, I know; I jest, Deuxi. So you finally figured out how to not have Prince Oiseau live?” I walk forward, and we walk together down the hall; and turning the stairway, down those soft steps.
“It was difficult, but I decided to have him live and die, both,” she quips.
Oh, she is a master.
“A good solution, do tell,” I continue, and we reach the first floor, and head into the main room. I feel my stomach rumble slightly, but not so loudly as to quell Deuxi’s clear and unrestrained excitement.
She runs over to the cabinet and pulls out a fork and a spoon. Taking them, one in each hand, she has them strike each other; ring. Not true silver; but, her trait is certainly handy in these moments.
“The fork is Oiseau, the prince, alive,” she says. She’s speaking more quickly, her breath hushed, as if she’s about to reveal a great mystery; one told in the deepest confidence, and behind closed curtains of royal red. “The spoon is the prince, dead in body and soul.”
“But?”
“But they are the same utensil!” she exclaims, rushing back to the wooden cabinet and nearly hitting her head as she places them back on the napkin next to the others. She closes the cabinet, and turns to me. “A fork and a spoon can be the same, they are both for eating.” She reaches into one of the many pockets of her trousers and pulls out—a utensil, I think, but I have never seen it before. It’s still the same color; nearly silver, but rather than have just the tines of a fork, the part for eating is shaped, curved, like a spoon; and it still has the three tines, just attached.
It is both a fork and a spoon.
“And that is Prince Oiseau,” I say, pointing vaguely to the new silver implement. “What do you call it?”
“A fpork,” she utters excitedly. “I know it’s something only French can say, but it’s not bork. That’s something else.”
She’s making up words, now. “So you brought together the alive body, and the dead body, into the same body,” I propose.
“No, no, no, Father, were you listening? This is a fpork. He is both alive and dead. Everyone thinks so. And everyone chooses whether so. He is both!”
“I—I’m afraid I’m still confused.” I walk over to the break-fast table and pull out some napkins from the small wooden container on its middle. “You cannot be both dead and alive.”
“But everyone thinks he is.” Deuxi comes around to the other side of the table, and drops her fpork onto a napkin; it clangs somewhat loudly for its size. “It’s a play. So that’s all that matters.” She looks at me, her eyes searching; I am still bewildered, for even if the audience thinks the prince is dead, or alive, he is either one or the other; but I smile and nod.
“A wonderful answer to your greatest problem. When can I read it?”
“Premi’s got it first,” she says. “He’s already asked.” She doesn’t look happy; but her eyes are firm, because Premi hasn’t come home in years, and no word. From him or any of the Medicis. So of course, he hadn’t asked, but I nod, for Deuxi is only ten.
“When he’s done, surely, I am next,” I respond. Octavia doesn’t read; but on occasion, she does act in our daughter’s canon. But it has been some time, ever since her knees lost their movement.
I take a glance back at our bedroom; the door is still closed. It moves me still how a pre-Moment, not in nightform, Emulus would have maintained much the same body throughout the most of their life; and how a post-Moment, always the corpus of humans, Emulus has various aches and pains…
Only I alone have no suffering.
“Father, I know you’ll figure it out,” Deuxi says, as she takes the fpork and wraps it within the napkin; like a human corpse, or a dish of some meat inside a foil of bread, or the inner part of an organ but no blood. “Someday when you’re older!”
“Yes, Deuxi.” I take the napkin and fpork into my fingers; unwrapping the soft material, I see that it is now a separated fork and spoon.
I am older; I think it is to Deuxi’s brilliant mind that she has somehow not yet questioned how her father’s hair is still as burnished red aside her mother’s grey. Aubert the librarian asked me about it the day before last, and just four years ago when Premi last stood in this house, we shared the same height, the same fervor in our hair coloring, the timbre of our voices.
I sigh.
“Are we having breakfast?” Deuxi asks. “We don’t have to use the fporks.” She reaches into the pockets of her trousers again. “Here, I have some normal ones!” She lays them on the table in front of her. I can see her gazing. She’s itching to do it again. I think again of my son, of her brother, of the words he’d said.
“Deuxi. You’re not using your trait in front of others, right?”
She pouts. “That doesn’t answer my question. No! I don’t show what I’ve written to others. Only to family.”
She is really too clever. “Not to Estienne the butcher?” She really liked his hams. I didn’t… “Or to Pernelle, the fisherwoman down by the harbor?” She always gave Deuxi the smallest fish, the ones others wouldn’t purchase. All Deuxi had to do was take a fish, look at its eyes, and turn them into those of a dove…
Deuxi shakes her head, shakes her head. “No, father…” Her stomach growls. “I can—”
A knock. We look at each other. Rays of hope seem to stream out from my daughter’s eyes.
“Premi,” she says in a whisper. Utensils clattering, she runs.
I pull out a wooden chair, and sit down. It is likely Aubert; here to pick up some court-romances, and deliver the next books of hours. I rather liked those illustrations… I hear Deuxi’s steps making rapid thuds as she approaches the door. Neighs coming from the horses. They do like Aubert, he always gives them apples from the trees around the cathedral, just on the way…
A soft creak as the door opens. I’ll offer Aubert some of our bread in thanks. I pull back the chair—
“Brother!” comes a distant scream. But I heard it clearly. Clear as the day. Deuxi’s thuds seem to repeat in my chest. I see the bread, coarse grain, delineated against the bark-brown, sitting in its basket… up on that stool… I just need to go take a loaf, but I need to fully stand, and not midway between sitting and standing—
“Deu, you’ve grown,” he says, and I sit back down. More voices appear. They are distant—like voices coming out of a distant memory, rings of a bell—the horses are happily neighing away—several voices. Ranging from a young boy or girl’s to some other adults, female and male. Deuxi’s among them is a cacophony of hoarse cries and shouts of greeting, tells of recognition and remembrance. Oh, Octavia will awake—it is far too loud, this early—a game of forks and spoons, no, sporks and foons—a curtain falling, a shower of red, as the prince is revealed alive.
I’m still sitting as he turns the corner and enters our small room for eating. It is not quite a room; there are no doors separating it from the rest of the house. His hair is brown, with streaks of red, and he is wearing a red-and-gold tunic, a yellow tapering hat, and a tall, tan wooden flute emerging from the traveling pouch hung over his shoulder. A traveling musician. No, a minstrel.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Hello, father,” he says. He must not be quite thirty, he looks full of strength. Before I can respond or stand, Deuxi whirls out from behind him, and some others appear, and they are all similarly dressed, as minstrels, troubadours, traveling players. Like the distant faces out of the sea of memory I see them. And before they name themselves, even by the color of their hair, and the way their eyes move and change, I see them.
Coming to stand just next to Premi is Orion Medici. Still with the same silver locks, albeit a bit burnished, like his sister Carina, coming in to put a hand on his shoulder; hers are still dark. Orion is wearing a mock, kingly crown, has a full beard, and is dressed the part, in full robe of scarlet, a trailing cape, high shoes, and a book held in the crook of his left arm. Carina is carrying a large, concealed object over her back, a basket under her left arm, in dappled green-and-blue traveling cloak; as she says her name I see more, one even taller—hair that had back then been silver and ochre, now a vivid green, tinged with silver, Dorado, an instrument with both strings and pipe strung across his chest, a tunic of fading blue. Crux is next, leaning herself against the corner of the wall just adjoining the cabinets, hers now a burning orange crossing into red, fox-fur pelts draped over her shoulders and various animal designs sewn into the fabric of her tunic. And last, Lacerta, a youth somewhere between boy and girl, with long trails of green, red, and silver falling across their shoulders. A bit taller than Deuxi, he or she was dressed simply in brown traveling cloak and chausses.
And among them, Deuxi, her red-black hair seeming to float as she prances in excitement.
And then, I stand. I do not know what to say…
“It’s been—six, seven years?” Carina says. “And yet, Monseigneur, you look not a day changed.”
Now, they appear my age, is the thought I know, and that I hope they do not say. Octavia should be waking soon… the last they saw Deuxi, she was but four winters, and four springs…
“But you know why, Carina,” I respond. The reason being the cause of their departure, or rather, why I had stayed here, especially after Deuxi was born. “You all do.”
A scene comes, distantly, to the forefront of my mind—of Octavia coming to me with her first gray hair, of the shock that came with realizing one was now fully human. And the strength, the birds’ call, I kept on hearing with the morning.
Every morning. Every single morning!
Deuxi was besides herself. She didn’t know. Orion Medici, if you tell her—
“I wrote a play,” she said to her brother, who was far too old to be playing her parts… He smiles and tousles her hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back earlier. I had to finish what we started, with Father.” He looks to me and the memories, certain ones where I revisited the Medici home, talk of finding others, other scions. How difficult it was, for unlike the Medicis who came time and time again just chary of revealing their abilities to the world, other scions there were, seemed to prefer a life separate and distant from the Magy’cal, who was now just a name, one I used when Deuxi was even younger to scare her to sleep.
I hadn’t seen one in thirty years.
“Wait. What do you mean by finished?”
Orion is smiling very broadly, approaching, and indicating for the siblings to sit at the table. A thought of serving bread. No, something to cool their throats. Orion sits and gestures to the book that, as he remains standing in front of me, Premi is holding by his chest.
“That, Monseigneur. Our book of traits.”
I stare for some seconds before it comes to me. Orion had convinced Premi to leave the University with the rest of the Medicis on that quest. This, I had not even told Deuxi, and the dance in Orion’s eyes, as he told my son of his dream, of finding others descended from the original races—of finding their traits—all those various elements, and shapes, and colors—another memory—meeting Octavia in The King’s Parley, with a triptych she had done, of a Zarr warrior, a Ligaeryen priestess, a wandering Ab’maluk.
“I can’t believe it.”
I hold out my hand, and Premi places the book in my palm. With both hands I take it, and turning it over lay it on the table.
The cover is plain. It bears no title.
Without looking I see that the Medicis and Deuxi are peering at my movements with fixity, as if I were opening the king’s own copy of the scriptures. I pull back the cover, feeling the sheepskin parchment, coarse but permitting, through the pages as I look to the first page.
CHILDREN OF THE MEDICI
Book of Traits
Signé
Orion – Hunter
Premi – Firstborn
Carina – Traveler
Crux – Bearer
Dorado – Swordfish
Lacerta – Little Dragon
“Keep turning, keep turning,” Deuxi urges.
And I turn.
The first page bears a phrase. Scions of the Dragon.
I look below. The first word is ‘continued.’ Ah—of course—the Medicis are all already. Below are some names, shadowy fringes, as I cannot forebear any longer, as I look at them.
Jehan – Sheets of the sky
Guillaume – Candlelight flickering
Agnes – Fire-painting
Richard – Fire on the water
Martinho – Navigation in storms
Eleanor – Fire-cloaked
And there were just those six names. I scanned the rest of the parchment page—there were no more, just those six, and I spread and brushed my fingers across it, and yet could not find more. Just these six. Just these six scions. But all six scions of the dragon.
“What—how—where—” comes out of my mouth, my throat feeling warm, and my fingers unconsciously reaching for the bottom right corner of the parchment, feeling for the turn, for to turn was to seek, and to seek was to find…
“Here in France, Milan, Portugal, and England,” Orion answers. “Our quest has brought us many fruits.”
I turn to see him. He is, standing there, like a king.
My throat is warm. “But—when—how—all of these—”
“All of these,” he says. “We have met them. They are of an age with us, and your daughter. We find them, and we write their names. We seek them, and write their traits.”
“Traits,” I can only say for now.
“Yes, father,” Premi says. He has his hands out on the table, palms pressed to it. “As you can see, these six, and ourselves, have traits of fire. ‘Traits’ is how we call them.”
Traits of fire.
I remember that Premi is a Scion.
“But you—” Are a Scion of the phoenix and the elf. Playing with cards. Changing their faces.
Has he—
I think of marriage. Premi and Orion. An unthinkable thing. Not unimaginable, given such societies as the Spartans and China going back centuries; but unthinkable. Orion has surely tangled my son in his dreams.
I can feel the next page, but it seems unwilling to turn.
I can feel Premi’s light breathing. Some attention that I am sure Orion pays.
I take my other hand, wrest my right hand away; and close the book.
“And these are for the seven races,” I say instead. Premi is long his own person; he decided long ago to join upon this fair quest, with rumbling consequences.
“No, Monseigneur,” Crux now says, adjusting her fox-pelts as they almost touch the table. “That first page is just traits of fire. Common explanations of dragons only concern fire. But we have found Scions of the dragon with traits of fire, water, of the air, stone, and a few in others, like flora, one in wax, and steel.”
She raises her left arm beneath a pelt, and gestures towards the book.
There’s more pages there, she is saying, and I know, and I know. There are so many Scions they have found; about half a finger in height, is this book, and I think of the races they have found—
Children of the dragon.
Children of the light-wielders. Of the elves, like Octavia. Of the Undying, of the thoughtless who walk in chiaroscuro, and—
Of the phoenix. Of the wizard.
Premi is looking at his father, and he opens his mouth.
“No, father, there are no Scions of the phoenix that we have found, besides myself, and—” He looks to Deuxi, my wisp of a daughter, bright and proud already, the fair genius of the folio—“Deuxi, just us two.”
That leaves the wizards.
A thought of a castle, shrouded in mist, of a legendary stone…
“And them, them too,” now says Lacerta, her or his fingers interlocked in their hair-strands of green and red and silver. “The Magy’cal. They’re at the end, and their traits are the greatest.”
Lacerta, who used to be just a baby. He, or she, or they, are now putting their hands inside the folds of their cloak. I hadn’t seen. I hadn’t seen the glimpse of green on the bottom side of their fingers.
I turn my eyes to Deuxi. She is staring back at me. And I can see her question, the riveting desire to go forward, not only with her folio to show her older brother, but also to join him on this quest.
The Magy’cal also had children with the people who walk this earth…
Octavia. She has not yet woken. I push back my chair, and make to stand.
“There’s no need, Monseigneur,” Carina says—she has her fingers, of her right hand, on the table in front of her—they are splayed out, and her fingers partly clench, forming a heart—a hand the size of a heart. Inside the space, seen between the interstices, clutches a spot of warmth, a bulbous soft red, swelling and pulsing.
Inside me I feel her, understanding and true, returning from the tavern with cards pressed against her chest—she has come home, and without speaking we press ourselves upon one another, all sense from the day gone, my hair still strewn with the dust of old shelves. I only feel the single moment of being together.
“Mother,” my daughter breathes, and she pushes back her chair, and runs out, runs out to the bedroom—just less than a decade before, I had felt her, even then noisy with excitement inside Octavia, and I—
—I see the elf, splayed out on the wet floor, still among my friends.
I take the book of traits, running my fingers over its spine, thinking of all of its contents, all of the Scions found, a romance of its own, but one real, one very real, and soon I hear my daughter’s voice loud, coming from the bedroom, drowning out the chirps of the blue birds, asking her to wake up, urges soon becoming pleas, and I take the pages of the book and turn, and I keep turning, until I find a page that is white, with no names. I flex my fingers unconsciously. They need a quill. I look at my hand and see its appendages, supple and carrying the memories of my years. They yearn and grasp until Lacerta deposits a quill into them, and I take to the page, find its top center, and write Who Once Were.
It is rather simple. It is just a name. I can turn memory and touch into meaning and truth. I write the name of the one who woke me.
I stop my hand then, but I think of writing more, of delving within the remaining pages for more. I clutch my fingers but they are shaking. With my other I close my left ear; the urges that have become pleas are now hoarse cries demanding that the person in front of her is one way, and not the other.
For an instant I think to the spoon, and to Deuxi touching her mother, raising her…
A movement of the table; Premi, my son who is silent, is clutching the leg in front of him with his arms, and is turned halfway, peering at the wall, there is nothing there, and the rest are quiet. They are no longer speaking about their journey. A hunter and traveler amongst them, with tales to pry, and they are quiet! Why, is there no story to tell?
Deuxi weeps.
I look again at the book in front of me, and close my eyes.