17 January, 2014

Normally when a coma patient awakens, somebody notices. There are nurses everywhere in the hospital, shouldn't somebody notice? No matter how long the patient's been kept on life support, no matter how many people do or don't go see him or her, someone really ought to notice.

Nobody noticed when she woke up. Nobody really noticed when she climbed out of bed. Surprisingly, nobody paid any attention when she pulled on her breeches, coat, and surcoat, sheathed her sword, and strode with purpose from the hospital. Until she suddenly stopped, she had not known she'd been dreaming .

The rest of Portland, however, suddenly began to.

A pair of identical twin girls with shoulder-length black hair and matching green dresses were ecstatic over the change. Meet and Greet walked through the city at first light. Holding hands, they strolled the spokes of the wheel that made up Ladd's Addition in SE Portland. Sometime around 4AM, the entire little area had been transformed. It almost looked like home: dark verdant forest with little thatched houses scattered throughout. Jack Madison, former hunter and current shut-in, was going to wake up to find himself with nothing to wear but breeches, a linen shirt, and a red cape. Meet couldn't help laughing at the appropriateness of it all.

"Do you know who did it?" Greet asked her sister.

"No, but it's going to be fun." Meet pulled a perfectly red apple from a nearby tree that had never before borne fruit. "Don't you think so?"

"Only if it doesn't mess things up. We need to find out who did it. What if they get to Seattle? They could throw off all of the plans."

Taking a large bite from the apple, Meet considered for a moment. "Do you think we should tell someone?"

"I think it would be a good idea." Greet took the apple from her sister. "Don't you?" She also took a bite.

"Probably, but I want to stay and watch. We could just make sure that whoever did it doesn't get too far."

Greet tossed the apple over her left shoulder. In moments, it sunk into someone's front yard, took root, and grew into a tall, strong apple tree that bore fruit as well. "I guess we can stick around for a little while."

Somewhere in the trees to their left, something growled. A pair of bright, shining eyes glowed between the leaves. "Maybe we should leave something for Jack just in case he doesn't remember who he is when he wakes up."

"I don't think that's how they work, but we might as well," Greet agreed.

Holding hands, they walked back to the cottage. He'd been sweet to them after all, leaving out fruit and sometimes bread. No reason to let him die just for a bit of fun.

The strong little fist rapped three times on the door to the Hunter Cave.

Dressed in floor-length, midnight blue robes decorated with tiny, glittering stars, Justin opened the door. He looked out left and right and then finally down before noticing the dwarf who was waiting with a scroll in his hand. "Can I help you?" Justin asked.

A brusque voice answered. Maybe it just sounded hoarser because it had to find its way around the impressive beard hiding the dwarf's face. "This is for you and your kind." He slapped the scroll into Justin's outstretched hand and blinked out of existence.

It took a moment before Justin was able to turn his focus from the person who was no longer there to the piece of rolled parchment in his hand.

Trapped in the tower, your princess awaits. Who will set her free?

How did one get in contact with other people without some kind of phone? Justin looked down at the pointed hat sitting where the laptop Felix had bought him used to be. Everything else in the house was different. Justin could only conclude that the laptop was, somehow, now a hat. This was going to difficult.

The city was quiet for early evening. The Knight, now fully awake, found her way through the rows and rows of medical tents perched on Marquam Hill. The day before, those tents had been a brick and mortar hospital.

The Knight strode through the quiet town. Near the base of the hill, she spotted a university. Great banners flew from the battlements, declaring it a place of higher learning. She knew she would find what she needed there.

The young friar who guarded the door showed her to the training grounds without a word. No words were needed. The Knight was clearly on a holy quest, sent by some higher power to right great wrongs. Why else would she be there?

A horse, her horse, trotted through the park blocks over newly-minted cobbles that seemed a thousand years old. The Knight didn't understand about pavement and cement, so they had no place in her world. As long as Portland was her world, such things would have no place there.

The Dark Forest (formerly known as Forest Park) was rarely entered by those who valued their lives. The magic that lay within its boundaries and the dangerous creatures who called the forest their home drove off all those who would even consider entering.

Inside the stooped little hut in the very center of the forest, three women sat waiting around a fire. The eldest, who had three eyes in her face, looked everywhere but where they sat. "They're on their way. They're here!" she said finally. The others beside her stirred. The sister with two eyes replied, "Not yet! We are still waiting!" The youngest, who had only one eye, responded to neither of them. As she saw only the past, she thought she was still asleep.

Moments later, the front door banged open, and Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Merlin, Aladdin, Death, and someone's lost and overly pouffy fairy godmother stood on the threshold. Aladdin and the fairy godmother were pointedly avoiding one another. The youngest sister screamed with laughter that nobody else shared.

"Dear ladies," the bald Robin Hood said, "we've been wandering in circles for hours. Can you help us find our way to-" He turned to Merlin. "Who did you say gave you the scroll?"

"A dwarf," the very young Merlin replied.

Robin Hood turned back to the residents of the cottage. "Can you help us find our way to the dwarf?"

"Of course we can," the sister with two eyes said. She stood from the stool and ushered the group out the front door. "We'd be happy to help," she said in her reedy little voice, "if you'd just be so kind as to get us a few of those beautiful apples in the tree behind the house.

Inside the house, the sister with three eyes watched what would come. Before anyone else heard it, she heard them give up on the apples, magic fruit that could only grow when one exposed regrets, and start talking. Their tears at the recent loss of a young woman watered the tree, and new apples grew heavy on the branches, sweet and close and easy to pick. The middle sister pointed them away from the cottage toward the golden forest.

Many minutes later, the middle sister actually did tell them where to go. With her long, knobbled finger directing them south, she said, "Go through the golden forest to the rushing river. Do not turn back. Do not stray." She placed the magic compass that had been hidden in the apple the strangers had given her into the fairy's hand. "You'll be fine if you trust what you have and what you know."

The fairy opened the brass cover on the compass and looked at it. She glanced once back at the old woman, but both she and the cottage had vanished. Together, the group set off to the south with the sparkling, glittering, twinkling fairy leading the way, compass in one hand and useless wand in the other.

The rushing river made almost sound as it wound its way under the golden forest. The shade of a middle aged woman stood some distance from the ferryman. She saw only those moments of her life she still could remember, a few birthdays and that one time she'd managed to successfully bake a quiche. The attack that had killed her had nothing to do with her really. She knew she'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. At least, she was pretty sure. None of her memories suggested that she'd done anything to end up here.

The scrabbling and scratching of incoming travelers shook her from her reverie. Did they know? Who were they? What did they want? They didn't belong by the river.

"Miss? Ma'am?" Someone was speaking to her. She had to pull herself forward to think, to pay attention.

She blinked. "Yes?"

"Can you help us?"

The young woman who had spoken was dressed in an over-long, sparkling blue dress. It caught what little light filtered down into the underground cavern, and reflections from the sparkles danced across the walls. They distracted the woman. She tried to follow the little shining lights with her fingers and smiled.

"Hello?" The sparkly woman tried to place a hand on the dead woman's shoulder. It passed straight through, making them both jump.

"What? Who? Who are you? What do you want?" the shade demanded.

The fairy godmother had a hand on her chest as though her heart were about to break through in panic. "We want to get across the river. Can you help us?"

"Tell me something beautiful," the shade demanded.

"Something... what?"

"Tell me something you remember. Tell me something beautiful."

The young woman looked around the cave, a place where there was nothing beautiful to focus on.

"The marble gorge in Taiwan," a voice sliced in, smooth and confident. The man who stepped into the shade's view was dressed in puffy, Arabian pants and a patched vest that showed off an over-supply of pectoral muscles. The woman in blue glared at him. "If you go into the gorge right at sunrise, that pink light just dances over the marble walls of the canyon. It's breathtaking!"

The shade closed her eyes and nodded slowly, breathing in the recollection. "It's like you're the only one in the world."

"Yeah! Just.. wait, what?" Aladdin wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "What was I talking about?"

"No matter," the shade responded. She smiled at the young woman in blue. "Give some stones to the ferryman. He'll take you and your friends across the river, but don't tell him that I told you. He hates me!"

The shade turned and ran away, taking the memory of the gorge with her. Sitting nestled in her memory now was something to make the cave a little less dark, a little less bleak. The man could always make new memories; her only recourse was to steal them.

In the distance, she could hear the long pole of the ferryman's boat hit the bank. The river splashed against the sides, and the shade crouched behind a large rock, watching the sun rise on the other side of the world.

On the streets of Portland, the White Knight rode her shining charger. The horse pawed nervously at the ground, whining and huffing. He'd grown unused to the weight on its back.

On the edge of her vision stood a pair of identical girls holding hands, watching her.

The Knight held a gleaming sword that reflected the moonlight. She stared down the three vampires in front of her who had come to sully her town.

Under the Knight's watchful, all-seeing eyes, the three intruders found themselves transformed, body and mind. They sat astride chargers bedecked in blood red regalia. All three held well-polished swords and and wore shining helms. The White Knight leveled her sword at them and charged.

The witch laughed. "You'll never manage to save her that way," she told Merlin as he struggled to see from under his hat. "You've only one task left, and you'll have to think of something a bit better if you want to clear the forest by sunrise."

Death was having a heck of a time wielding his scythe. "I mean, I know that this is what these things are for, but it's not like I ever really learned how to use one."

"Maybe if we'd just given up knowing who we are, this all would've been easier," suggested Robin Hood as he stared toward the tall tower on the eastern wing of the castle that they'd found on the other side of the river.

"What do you mean?" the fairy godmother asked, trying to slice bamboo with her wand. It wasn't working.

"When I went to see Catherine earlier," Robin Hood said, "she didn't really know who she was."

"Who did she think she was?" Merlin asked.

"Snow White, I think." Robin Hood broke one of the pieces of bamboo off in the middle. "She wasn't herself at all and kept asking who I was."

Aladdin, lazing three feet above them all on his carpet-for-one, looked out across the unending forest. "This isn't going to work, you know. I mean, there's no way we'll clear out all of the bamboo. Might as well give up." He saw no particular need to help. He didn't know the girl they were supposed to be helping. Heck, he and his buddy'd just been passing through when all this happened. Wrong place, wrong time.

Robin Hood glared up at him. "You may not have known Chloe, but some of us did. Nobody made you come along. You could've stayed home."

"And miss an adventure like this?" Aladdin stood up. "Never! This is amazing, although I probably won't be able to put it in my next book."

"Probably not," Death agreed.

The fairy godmother stamped her left foot and glared as hard as she could at Aladdin. "You have no idea what happened. All you care about is yourself and your next damned book!" The cheery attitude that usually surrounded Caitlyn was at a breaking point. The others who, admittedly, hadn't known her terribly long looked sideways at her. "What?" she asked. "He's a selfish, conceited, useless lump up there! I just wish..." She gripped the useless wand in right hand tighter . "Rrrgh!" With a hard snap, she brought her hand down and the frustration exploded from her in all directions, leveling the forest.

At the edge, the witch raised an eyebrow. "Someone's been needing to get that out," she observed and started laughing again.

Caitlyn, the fairy godmother, blushed.

In the tower, a princess awoke. She sat up and ran her fingers through her long, golden hair. Far below her window, she could see the stubbly remnants of the bamboo forest.

"Chloe!" Robin Hood called up to the tower. "Are you okay?"

Princess Chloe, the trapped remnants of Chloe Hancock's soul, leaned out of her window and called back. "Thank you. Thank you for waking me up. Thank you for freeing me." Leaning slightly further, she blew kisses to each one of them.

Far below, everyone watched as Chloe continued to lean and lean until she tumbled from the window. She opened her arms wide as they turned into wings. She transformed into a silky grey dove and flew away.

Caitlyn had nothing to say, nor did anyone else.

Eventually, Aladdin piped up. "So, who was that and how do we get home?"

In the city, the White Knight plunged her sword, blooming with flame, into the heart of one of her assailants. The enemy rolled several feet before bursting into flames and then ash. A hard glare at the other two was all that was necessary to convince them to turn and flee. Her work was done.

In the back of her mind, a quiet voice tugged her away from the city. There was far more for her to do, so many dangerous places to see.

I have a home for you, if you can find it, the voice said, and the White Knight followed its encouragement out of the city.

The next morning, as people awoke to find their homes back to the way they had been, nobody talked about the day before. Terrible and beautiful things had happened, but the human mind isn't ready to deal with it. Meet and Greet knew this and used what little influence they had over the ebbing remnants of unreality to hide the worst atrocities from the humans who had committed them. They'd eventually told their master about the Knight, and he had lured her from the city. The broken mind of a mage could wreak terrible damage. The Knight had no place there long term. There was simply too much that she might have messed up.

On Jack's back porch, Meet and Greet found two perfect apples and shared them for their breakfast.