It was chilly and wisps of mist hung in the air.  On the distant shore, beyond the wall formed by impossibly tall redwood trees, large spruces, massive maple and bay trees, filled in between by thick huckleberry and azalea bushes and wave upon wave of rhododendron, some giant and no doubt frightening monster roared out a challenge.  From its tiny animal carrier on deck, the little dragon answered.

“Gawp!”

Senta stepped onto the deck and knelt down by the box.  Zurfina had dressed her in another weird outfit, this one a floor length black dress with a white collar.  A black ceramic rose right in the front of her neck that made it difficult to look down at the high-heeled black sandals on her feet.  Of course Zurfina had on a matching dress, and cut a striking figure standing along the railing of the forward deck with the Captain, Miss Dechantagne, the Dechantagne brothers, and other notables, all of whom were dressed in light summer clothing, as they surveyed the coastline.

“Pet!” said the dragon.

“Yes, I hear you,” said Senta.  “I’m going to take you out, but you have to have your leash on.”

The dragon hissed.  She opened the door of the carrier and the dragon climbed out onto the top.  He turned his head and pointedly looked the other direction as she snapped the little chain onto the ring around his ankle. Once the little clip had snapped shut, Senta attached the other end of the chain to a bracelet on her right wrist.

“See there.  We’re both chained by the wrist.  Nobody’s the boss.”

“Gawp,” said the dragon, and then spreading its wings to balance, it climbed up her arm and onto her shoulder.  It slithered down to lie across her shoulders, one hand and one foot holding onto her dress and one hand and one foot holding onto her hair. Senta stood up.  The little dragon was now over four feet long from nose to tip of tail, but he was only about six inches thick across the belly and he was surprisingly light.

“What do you want to do?”

“Gawp.”

“Me too.  This is sooo boring.”

The ship had been sailing parallel to the coast for the past four days and Senta was getting tired of it.  What was the point of sailing all the way to Mallon, if you didn’t get out and walk around on it?  Twenty days was more than enough time to explore every square inch of the largest battleship and Senta had spent more than three times that length of time on the Minotaur. Not even murders, gunfights, and drinking wine until you threw up could take away the boredom forever.

“Fina,” said the dragon.

“All right.”

Senta walked toward the front of the ship.  She had gone only about halfway to where Zurfina and the others stood watching the coastline roll past, when a figure stepped out of the shadows. A freckled face and striped shirt quickly identified the shady figure.

“Hey Graham,” said Senta.

“Hi Senta.  What’ya doing?”

“Nothing.  He wants to go up by the grown-ups.”  She indicated the dragon with her thumb.

“Can I come?”

“Sure.  Just don’t get too close, ‘cause he’ll bite you.”

“I thought he was tame.”

“You can’t tame a dragon.  Zurfina says you can’t tame anything that’s smarter than you are.”

“Who says he’s smarter than me?”  Graham was indignant.

“Not just you, stupid.  Dragons are super smart.  When he gets big, he’ll be able to talk and do magic and all kinds of cool stuff.”

“Brill,” said the boy.

Senta and Graham walked forward, the boy keeping several paces behind her at all times, until they reached the group of adults.  Miss Dechantage was wearing a yellow dress with lots of lace and a matching hat, tied below her chin with a lace ribbon.  Her dress was almost the same color as the suit Professor Calliere was wearing.  It made him look like a very large banana.  Mr. Korlann was much more dignified.  His grey suit was so light that it would have seemed white, had he not been standing next to Miss Lusk in her white day dress.  Senta saw Miss Lusk reach over discretely and touch Mr. Korlann’s hand. Wizard Labrith was wearing a light brown suit and Wizard Kesi, for once not in colorful silks, was dressed the same. They both stood near the back of the group, all four of their eyes boring holes into the back of Zurfina’s black dress.  The two Dechantagne brothers were both wearing khaki safari clothes and pith helmets. The older brother looked like he was sick.  Finally Father Ian had eschewed his traditional robes for a more modern suit with a clerical collar.

“This is it just ahead,” said Lieutenant Dechantagne, pointing.  “You see the bay just here, and this land just beyond is the peninsula.”

“Children are limited to the aft deck of the ship,” said Miss Dechantagne, noticing Senta and Graham for the first time and looking down her nose at them.

“Children with dragons may go wherever they wish,” said Zurfina, without turning around.

Miss Dechantagne made a clicking sound with her tongue.  Miss Lusk gave Senta a wink.  Senta and Graham walked to the side, out of the way of the adults and looked at the forest moving past.

Lying on his stomach on the small single bed, Terrence Dechantagne breathed a heavy sigh as Pantagria rubbed his back.  Her powerful fingertips found every sore muscle, every angry nerve ending, every spot filled with fatigue or stored unease, and kneaded it out of existence. He could feel her naked buttocks sitting on his and her naked legs on either side of his stomach.  Both were warm, far warmer than a human body should be, as if she was running a fever, but then she wasn’t human.  She wasn’t even real.

She finished massaging him and got up, walking across the small room.

“How was that?” she asked.

“Good.  Very good.”

He closed his eyes and savored being here, where he felt so good.  This was only the second time in a fortnight that he had been able to find a place for his real world body to lie undisturbed while he “saw” the world in which he truly felt he belonged.  He drifted off into a slumber and wondered in his half-awake state, if he fell asleep here and began to dream, what world would he find himself in then?  Would he dream himself back into the real world?  He didn’t want that to happen, so he forced himself awake again, and sat up on the bed.

Across the room, Pantagria stood in front of a wall-mounted mirror.  Her graceful, tanned body was the very picture of perfection.  Her snow white feathered wings were outstretched, almost touching the walls to her left and right.  Their broad expanse shielded her head from his view for a moment.  He stood up so that he could see her perfect, beautiful face. Only then did he see what she was doing. She had a straight razor in her right hand, and with her left hand, she was gathering great bunches of her golden hair and slicing through it.  Half of her head was already denuded.  In some places the hair that was left was an inch or two long, while in other places she was left nearly bald.

“What are you doing?” he asked, more shocked by this unusual behavior than he would have been if Iolanthe or Yuah or some other real woman had done it.

“Do you remember when you came to me last time?  It was the night of the dance.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“We didn’t dance,” she said, as she continued to hack away at her hair.

“I didn’t want to dance,” he said.  “I wanted to make love to you.”

“Do you remember what you called me?”

“What I called you?  No.  I don’t remember.”

“You should.  You call me the same thing every time you visit me.”

“What did I… what do I call you?”

“You called me ‘perfect’.”

“You are perfect.”

“I’m tired of being perfect,” her voice became a growl.  “I want to be real.  I want to be in the real world.”

“You can’t be,” he said.  “I don’t want you to be.  This is all just a dream.  This is my dream.  This is my haven.  This is where I come, because I can’t stand life in the real world.”

She folded her wings and turned around.  Only a few stray bits of long hair remained on her head.  She placed the palm of her hand on his chest and shoved him back onto the bed.

“If I can’t be real because I’m perfect, then I’ll make myself real by making myself imperfect.”  She turned back around and began to use the razor for its original purpose by shaving her head, starting on one side and moving across.  Terrence watched her in stunned silence.  She scraped the razor again and again across her head, leaving numerous small red scratches and a few cuts from which tiny red rivulets of blood flowed.  She shaved her entire head bald.

“Pantagria,” he finally said.  “I don’t think this is going to help you or me.”

She turned around once again, stepped toward him, and placed her left palm on his cheek.

“How do you know?” she asked, and then kissed him on the lips.

“This world isn’t the real world.  It’s all in my mind.  There’s no way to go from here to there.”

She hissed.  “You do! You do it all the time!”  She swung her right hand across his face. The blade of the straight razor sliced through both his nostrils.

He cried out in pain and was suddenly sitting in the corner of the supply closet where he had been when he had rubbed the white visio on his eyeballs. His eyes were tired but that was not why they were watering so profusely.  His nose hurt like hell, and he looked down to see a huge amount of blood running down onto the front of his shirt.

Getting up, he grabbed a white towel from a stack on a shelf nearby and pressed it to his face.  It was quickly turning red.  It was the only bit of color in the room of white and grey.  Still holding the towel to his bleeding nose, he opened the supply closet door and peered out into the hall in both directions.  There wasn’t a person in sight.  He stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. He moved quickly away from his hiding place.  He had to take the towel away from his nose in order to climb a ladder up to the next deck. The blood began to drip quickly again as he climbed.

On the next deck, he pinched his nose with the towel to try and slow the blood flow, but winced in pain.  He looked around for a moment and then realized where he had to go.  He stepped quickly along forward, but had to stop after a moment and lean against the wall because he was feeling lightheaded.  He took a few deep breaths and continued on. At last he came to the cabin door he needed, and knocked.  The door popped wide open and the broad body, big stomach, and round rosy face of Father Ian appeared.

“Good to see you, Captain Dechantagne!” boomed Father Ian’s voice. “Don’t stand out in the hallway. Come in.  Come in.  Good gracious, what has happened to you?”

“I cut myself shaving,” said Terrence, pulling the towel away from his face.  “I was hoping that you could help.”

“Uuthanum,” said the girl, and the teapot rose slowly up into the air and floated across to the other side of the table, coming to rest in front of Egeria Lusk.

“Brilliant!” said the short, fire-haired woman.  “I see you will soon be as great a sorceress as your guardian.”

Zeah Korlann sat back in amazement.  When he was Senta’s age, he had barely been able to write his own name. This child was some kind of magical prodigy.  Zeah had often heard of secret wizard colleges where young men and sometimes women, young adults really, at the age of majority, went to study magic. Afterwards they would presumably apprentice with a master wizard somewhere.  But he had never heard of a child casting magic spells.

“Where is your dragon today?” asked Miss Lusk

“He’s sleeping today.”

“All day?”

“Yup.  He stays awake for two days at a time, and then he likes to sleep for four or five.”

“He sleeps four or five days straight through?” wondered Zeah.

“Yup.  Zurfina says dragons sleep a lot.  The older they get, the longer they sleep.”

Miss Lusk picked up the tea pot and poured more tea into Zeah’s cup, then Senta’s, and finally her own.  She passed the plate around to each in turn, allowing them to take their share of the tiny sandwiches, made with meatless sausage and cheese between two crisps. They had biscuits for dessert. Miss Lusk had catered the whole tea herself.  Zeah marveled that a woman who could master complex mathematical equations and create what she called “programs” for the most advanced machine in the world, could also provide a fine repast, seemingly at the drop of a hat.  She had only learned that he would be available for tea the day before.  She had also invited the sorceress’s ward.  Had the two of them dined alone, people would have talked.

Tea with Miss Lusk presented a welcomed change for Zeah.  Each day seemed to be just like the day before it. Almost all of his time was spent organizing activities for the passengers, which would provide the necessities of life or a change of pace to prevent boredom or depression caused by long confinement on the ship.  The first two days after their departure from the island of Enclep, he had been occupied seeing to the inventorying and storage of the supplies purchased there. The following day, he had to arrange for the priests onboard and Dr. Kelloran to deal with a fungus infection that had broken out among many passengers and crew.  The day after that had been washing day, which always kept him busy.  It had ended with the death of Miss Kilmurray and the summary execution of Mr. Murty by Master Terrence.  Zeah would have liked to have seen Murty tried for his crimes, but he was as loud in his laudation for Master Terrence as anyone else on the ship.  His daughter could have easily have been Murty’s next target, or Miss Lusk.  The following day, Zeah had organized a memorial service for Miss Kilmurray.  Two days after that, when Lieutenant Staff had completed his investigation, Murty’s body, which had been kept on ice, was dumped unceremoniously over the side.

It was surprising to Zeah, who had expected that there would be a somber mood among the passengers following the memorial, but the atmosphere on the Minotaur actually seemed to lighten.  There had been a cloud hanging over the lives of everyone onboard since the murder of Miss Astley, though most had not realized at the time that the murder was one of a series.  Now with the murderer dead, people were much freer with their smiles, their attitudes, and their actions.  Zeah had originally planned a series of games and activities to slowly raise people’s spirits, but had changed his plans and instead scheduled a dance.  It took place the evening of Pentuary ninth, ten days after leaving Enclep.

The danced proved to be a great success and everyone who was there seemed to have a wonderful time.  Miss Dechantagne surprised everyone by attending.  She wore a beautiful royal blue evening gown with large balloon sleeves and a white satin belt with embroidered blue and silver silk flowers. She had a bouquet of fresh flowers at her waist and atop her curled auburn hair.  And the bare expanse of her shoulders and the choker of pearls she wore made her long, thin neck look even more so.

Everyone admired Miss Dechantagne’s beauty, but Zeah found Miss Lusk’s charms even richer.  She had arrived in a buttercup yellow gown with butterfly sleeves.  The skirt had little pleated waves of fabric falling straight on the sides, and was trimmed with vines of embroidery in gold and beads extending down each side of the front.  It was ornamented on one side with a velvet panel, and on the other with two large velvet bows.

Zeah had not yet spoken to either of the two women when Master Augie arrived with Dr. Kelloran.  Lieutenant Dechantagne was dressed in a fine cutaway coat, which exposed a red waistcoat embroidered with a dragon motif.  He had a new grey felt derby, which he must have purchased just before leaving Brech, with a red carnation in the band.  Dr. Kelloran’s Thiss-green silk gown might not have stood out as much as those of yellow or royal blue, but it was equally fine in an understated way. Decorated with beads of jade and tiger-eye, it was wonderfully offset by her long white suede gloves.

Every passenger attending, especially the women, came in their finest clothes.  It seemed less like a simple dance staged rather quickly aboard a crowded naval ship than the social event of the season.  More than a few officers and sailors attended as well, and all of them wore their dress-whites.  Notably absent was Lieutenant Staff, who was on duty that evening.  Master Terrence was not in attendance either.  Zeah thought that this was a shame, as seventy-four unmarried women, and more than a few who were married, all seemed to be looking for him.

The large field of purple flowers stretched in any direction as far as the eye could see.  The one-foot tall flowers, each with five petals danced back and forth, enjoying the sunlight streaming down from above.  In unison, they blinked the very human looking eye that was located in the center of each flower.  Amid this endless field of purple flowers was a large flat rock, roughly disc shaped about ten feet in diameter.  Lying on the rock, on a red blanket was Terrence Dechantagne.  His nude body exulted, as did the flowers, in the warm rays of the sun.

“Are you happy?” asked a voice from above.

Pantagria floated down from the sky, her huge, feathered wings outstretched. They were twelve feet from tip to tip and as white as the clouds, as white as newly fallen snow, as white as faith and hope.  The rest of her body was smooth and supple and sublime and beautiful and completely naked. Her feet came gently to rest beside Terrence and he gazed up at her lovely face and that perfect body.  Her long blond hair cascaded down her shoulders, impossibly thick, almost to her waist.  Her eyes were spaced wide above her prominent cheekbones and small but perfectly formed nose.  Her full lips smiled crookedly exposing straight teeth as white as her wings.

It had been years ago that he had first met Pantagria.  She had been as different as he had been.  A beautiful child, an impossibly beautiful child with great white wings and cascading golden curls; she had been waiting for him in her little cottage.  The little cottage had been there in the unearthly field of unearthly flowers in whatever unreal world the mind retreated to when milky magic was applied to young eyes. And Terrence had retreated there, with his boy’s body and old man’s soul, and Pantagria had welcomed him, and had enfolded his body in her own body which then had been only a bud and not the brilliant rose that it would later become.

“I am so glad to meet you,” she had said.  “I have been waiting just for you.”

He had only sobbed into her shoulder.

“Tell me everything,” she had said.

“He shot her!  He shot her right there!”

“Why?  Why did he shoot her?”

“He found her.  He found her with Mudgett.”  He had broken into sobs again and she had pulled him tight against her.

“There, there,” she had said.  Her large white wings had flexed out and folded back again.

“He shot them both.”

“Are they both dead?”

“Mudgett got away.  He tried to shoot him, but he got away.  Then he shot her again.  And she’s dead.”

“But you’re all right.  You’ll be all right.”

“How can I be all right?” he had wailed.  “I don’t have a mother!”

“You won’t need a mother,” Pantagria had said.  “You won’t need anything else but me.  And I’ll always be yours.”

“Are you happy?” the fully-grown Pantagria asked again.  Her wings folded behind her and she sat down beside Terrence.

“How could I not be?”

“You could have the sudden, stark, and horrifying realization that none of this is real.”

“I already know that none of this is real.”

“Do you?” she asked, stroking his cheek.

“Of course.”

“How about me?”  Pantagria kissed him lightly on the lips.

“Oh, you’re not real either.”  He sighed

She stuck out her lower lip, pouting.  He laughed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.  “I love you more because you’re not real.”

“How can that be?”

“You are unequalled.  Nobody in the real world is unequalled.  Everyone has a flaw.”

“I thought it was the flaws that made you unique.  Isn’t slightly flawed and real better than perfect but unreal?”

“No,” he said.  “Everyone has a flaw.  Everything has a flaw.”

“Can’t something be good without being perfect?”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “You’re going to make me wake up and I don’t want to waste a full dose.”

“Too late,” she said, as the world started to drain of its color around him.

That world faded away.  Pantagria faded away.  The rock and the endless field of purple flowers faded away.  Terrence was once again lying on his bed in his cabin aboard the H.M.S. Minotaur.  Someone was knocking at the door.  He sat up and looked at the door but didn’t get up to open it.  The person on the outside pounded on the door, changing from knuckles to the ball of the fist.  Terrence just sat.  Whoever it was finally went away.

Picking up the tiny blue bottle on the nightstand, he held it up to the light and gauged how much of the milky liquid remained.  The bottle was almost completely empty.  He had been rubbing the potion onto his eyes continuously and had almost used it up.  He would have to go get another bottle from Oyunbileg.  He couldn’t quit just yet.  He just needed Pantagria a little bit longer.  Maybe he would buy two bottles.  Money was no problem.  Maybe seven bottles: he probably wouldn’t be able to find any more in Mallon.  Maybe one really big bottle.  The ship suddenly rolled with a wave, and he had to steady himself with a hand on the nightstand, knocking over a drinking glass as he did so.

“Bugger!” he cried.  Shoving the blue bottle under his bed pillow, he jumped up and ran out the door, down the corridor and out onto the deck.  The ship was at sea.  There was not a speck of land anywhere on the horizon.

“Bugger all!” he shouted.

Senta watched from the deck of the H.M.S. Minotaur high above, as Iolanthe Dechantagne paced back and forth on the dock, her hands clasped tightly behind her back.  Senta clasped her own hands behind her back and paced back and forth across the deck, all the while keeping watch on Miss Dechantagne from the corner of her eye. Miss Dechantagne’s older brother, Captain Dechantagne, walked up to her and she stepped close to him and spoke, emphasizing whatever words she was saying by poking her index finger into his chest.  Senta walked over to the small tiny steel dragon sitting near her.  He had a tiny chain fastened around his ankle, attaching him to his carrier box.  She poked her finger at the dragon.

“You listen to me,” she said.  “I’m very important and you are only my brother, and I am the boss, and you’d better not do anything I don’t like.”

The dragon half-heartedly snapped at her finger, which she pulled out of the way.

“Don’t tease our boy, Pet,” said Zurfina, appearing behind her.

“He doesn’t want that chain on,” said Senta.

“We can’t let him loose right now,” said the sorceress.  “He’s liable to fly off into the forest and not come back until well after we’re gone.”

“He can’t fly very good.”

“That’s just what he wants you to think.  Now bring him inside.  I have something for you.”

Senta opened the door of the animal carrier, but the little dragon just looked at her.

“Go on,” she said.  “Get in.”

The dragon made a noise more like a cat yowling than a reptile.  Senta reached out and rubbed the scales on its belly. The dragon bit her on the wrist, not hard, though its needle sharp teeth still drew blood.

“Ow!”

The dragon made an apologetic noise and then crawled down into its chamber. Senta closed the carrier and then sat down.  The ship was starting to spin around her.  She looked down without real comprehension at her wrist and watched as the blood flowed freely down her palms, down her fingers and dripped into a puddle on the deck.

“Cheeky twonk.” said Senta, woozily.

“Oh good grief,” said Zurfina.

She bent down and pulled the large, black ribbon from Senta’s hair and tied it around the girl’s bleeding wrist.  Then she picked her up and heaved her over her shoulder.  Leaving the dragon in his carrier, sitting on the deck, she carried the girl to the hatch.  Senta couldn’t pay any attention to the direction they were going, once below deck. It didn’t really matter.  Every time they went below, they went to a different door.  Once inside the door though, they were always back in their cabin.  Senta wouldn’t have been able to find her own cabin without the sorceress, but Zurfina was usually there to guide her.

The cabin was spacious.  It was large enough to hold two comfortable beds and had its own bathroom.  It also featured a great many pictures on the walls—a few were photographs, but most were painted, and all were of Zurfina. The biggest picture was taller than Senta, and was a portrait of the sorceress sitting on a blue day couch, naked except for a pair of dark silk stockings, a silver necklace with a large, dangly pendant, and a black feather boa around her neck.  The painting hung just above one of the beds.

Zurfina tossed Senta onto the bed just below the great nude painting.  She walked to the other bed and opened a huge wooden trunk at its foot, rummaged around for a moment, and then approached the girl with a small brown bottle.  She unwrapped Senta’s wrist, took the stopper out of the bottle, and poured some of its contents onto the bite marks, which had immediately begun to bleed again upon being exposed to the air.  The liquid from the bottle was cool and clear, but it bubbled and fizzed on the blood.  After a moment, Zurfina poured on a second dose, and it washed away the blood, leaving not a single bleeding hole, not a blemish, not even a scar.

“That’s the fourth time this week,” said Zurfina.

“He didn’t mean to bite me,” said Senta.

“No, he didn’t,” said the sorceress.  “He’s just too little to help himself when something that looks like food gets near his mouth.  Just imagine if someone who looked like a giant teacake was waving her hands around your mouth.  It would be hard to resist, now wouldn’t it?”

“Now I’m hungry,” said Senta.

“You’ll be very excited to hear then that we are having dinner with Miss Dechantagne.  You’ll be able to watch her from up close,” Zurfina smirked.  “Believe me.  That will be even more fun.” She sat the small, brown bottle on the floor by the bed.

“Yay,” said Senta.

“Have a crumpet to tide you over.”  Seemingly from nowhere, the sorceress produced a small plate with a steaming crumpet covered with melted butter and strawberry jam, and a small glass of milk.  Senta ate the crumpet quickly, and wiped the excess butter on her dress.  Then she drank the milk.  When she was done, the plate and glass went mysteriously back to wherever they had come from.

“Now,” said Zurfina, producing a large sewing needle.  “I’m going to pierce your ears, Pet.”

“Is it going to hurt?”

“Yes,” said Zurfina, grabbing the girl’s earlobe and sticking the needle through it.

Senta screamed.  The sorceress didn’t wait for the girl to stop screaming.  She took the needle and plunged it through her other earlobe. Then, while the girl’s crying lessened to a weeping, she pulled out two hoops of gold, about an inch in diameter, and placed one in each of the girl’s ears.  Retrieving the brown bottle from the bedside, she poured a bit of the clear liquid on each of the tiny holes she had just made.  Senta took a deep, sobbing breath.

“All right, stop crying.  It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

The girl stuck out her tongue.  Zurfina returned the gesture.