The Sleepers Wake

Dear Grandmamma,

Elegant possessor of the most choice gems of wisdom, and collector of jewels beyond price! Your humble granddaughter salutes you, and her friend Rose sends her greetings as well.

The last time I wrote to you I was waiting, without much hope, between two pine trees on the west side of Briar Hill. I was wondering if Minsky had survived the tumble? What would have happened when it hit the event horizon between four-dimensional space and what was effectively three-dimensional space within the stasis? Would it be ripped apart by the disconnect between the wild rush of time on our side and the drip-drip you’d get on the other, where the fourth dimension would be so shrunken and curled that the part of you arriving there would be jerked down to nanospeed? Or that’s what our teachers used to say, when they warned us about playing with time-warps. Of course, when we were older they told us you couldn’t cross such a horizon at all; you’d just smear out along the turbulence of the interface for however many eons it took the time-paradox to resolve.

I was also wondering, as work had trained me to do, whether I was to blame for anything. I didn’t think so. The Watch should have been more careful with the genealogies of its recruits, and arriving late couldn’t be my fault when I was not supposed to be there at all.

It had been Minsky’s idea to dive off my back, so if it was now a steak of grease lubricating a dimensional interface, that was its own foolish fault, not mine. If against all odds it got though unharmed, it would just go to sleep with everyone and everything else, wouldn’t it? And wake up with them, when the intruder finally found his way to the dome, wouldn’t it? And none of that would be a problem, so it would be nobody’s fault, let alone mine.

I’d arrived at that wholly satisfactory conclusion and was meditating on the rare pleasure of being in a situation where I could not be blamed for anything, when I heard voices.

Minsky’s saying, "There, over there . . . watch your step!"

A cultured but worried young woman’s replying, "Where? There? Have you any idea where you’re going? This path leads to the Westwonderview Lookout – that means, it’s a cliff edge, fuzzball! We’ll be trapped; we have to go back... WHAT’S THAT?"

Not an uncommmon reaction to running into a clearing full of dragon on a pleasant moonlit night, though I had heard variations on the same theme enough times throughout the last three or four hundred years to be tired of it.

Minsky introduced us. The young woman was the erstwhile sleeping Princess, Briar Rose. She had never seen a dragon before, so it made her nervous when I ruffled my spines, spread my wings and smiled broadly, as proper etiquette requires when being introduced.

Minsky curled around her legs, reassuringly, and said, "This is Tobermory, she is a friend, and has volunteered to be our transportation this evening."

Rose looked at my wings, and nodded slowly, then looked at my teeth, and shook her head firmly and without hesitation.

Noises from the direction of the Castle were becoming louder, obviously more people waking up and possibly even starting to organize themselves. I had a horrible sneaking suspicion that Minsky’s volunteering me was rapidly moving me from my previously blameless situation to one where I’d be judged complicit in all sorts of imminent disasters and alarums. Only my even stronger suspicion that being found by the court might involve numerous men in armour (crunchy and not worth the trouble – or so I had been told) prompted me to interject, "If we are going, we’d better start before anyone finds us."

"I would rather go back to the Castle, marry a nincompoop, and live a long and boring life than escape to the most wonderful place in the world, if I will arrive there as dragon poop."

"I don’t eat people." I interjected, without pointing out that it was only true if one remembered that ‘people’ didn’t include clients, or princes, or unwary opposing counsel, or just about anyone else as long as I was really hungry and they weren’t good friends of mine.

"Swear you won’t harm me!" she said.

We didn’t have a notary public there for a proper oath, so I just said a dozen or so of the really gross words I learned in primary school (she looked very impressed), and added that I’d no intention of harming her. "I’ll just take you to the city, where you can get help. Perhaps our offices are a good place to start, you’ll obviously need legal assistance."

"Legal assistance? What do you mean?" she asked.

"I can’t concentrate on carrying the two of you and lecture on new post-sleep social structures at the same time. And don’t listen to Minsky’s explanations – they’ll just leave you more confused than you started. I can listen to you, though, so why don’t you tell me what just happened, and why you are leaving so unceremoniously."

Finally reassured, she tucked up her cloak and her skirts (she seemed to have an endless supply of them) and climbed on. When she was settled, I took off over the edge of the cliff, found a couple of thermals to gain attitude, and set off for Briar Neustadt.

She told us about the curse and the birthday party, more or less as Broad had described them. The party had actually been rather boring, although some of the gifts were nice. They’d had lunch, it was the turn of her awful Bupleurum cousin to sit with her, and he was flirting with the maids as usual. His name was Prince Theodorus Henrike; the maids called him Prince Twenty-Hands. The gift-giving continued, the next was an exotic pet of some kind in a basket. It looked so fluffy and cuddly she just stroked it, felt calm and sleepy, and somehow fell asleep.

She woke with the creature right in her face – it had kissed her on the mouth. She hadn’t much minded; so many people had kissed her that day; and a number of them had smelled a lot worse than the pet. But then she saw that everyone was sleeping around her, or just beginning to stir. Had the curse been triggered after all? She felt wonderfully refreshed. Had she slept a hundred minutes, or a hundred years?

Then cousin Twenty-Hands had snorted extra loud and flopped a bit, and she found herself wishing that she was still asleep as long as it kept him quiet too.

"Let’s get out of here!" It took her a few seconds to realize that it was the new pet talking – and it seemed to be making more sense than her father’s prized parrots ever did.

Leaving was a wonderful idea. Could they really escape? If they could at least get away from Twenty-Hands... "Run," she told the pet, "run, and I’ll follow you. It’s a cute thing I do, running after my pets; they are used to seeing me, they won’t stop us."

So the pet ran, and she ran after it. Once or twice she had to give it a boot in the right direction, but mainly it lead well. They got to a garden door without being stopped, though people were getting to their feet by then. She ducked into the mud room, grabbed a big cloak that covered her gown and her hair, pushed her feet into boots and picked up Minsky. Then out they went. If anyone had seen her crossing the garden, they would never have guessed who it was. Anyway, they’d gotten clean away to the meeting point, and here she was, riding a dragon.

"I have to thank you, Toby," she said; "this is wonderful! When I was a child I used to dream of flying; I guess most kids do. I feel so alive! Can we do this again in the daylight, so I can see the countryside? How come we have dragons now? Are there more of you? Things must have changed when Dad and the neighbour kings went to sleep; they were so strict about limiting contacts with the magic planes. What a hoot! They’ll be beside themselves! I say, I hope you’re ready to defend yourselves, because they’ll be really nasty to deal with. What are those lights over there? Shouldn’t Thorn Village be there? What’s happened to Thorn Village?"

She was pretty disoriented by the time I landed on my tower. I thought having someone around who looked more human might help, so I sent a night-hawk to find McLaren. When she arrived, I introduced her to Rose, showed them where to find the keys to the guest suite, and said good night.

With greatest love and respect,

Yours, Toby