Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
released 27th January, 2023
Jim was... concerned.
Actually, that was an understatement.
He chewed his bottom lip and kept his thoughts to himself as he followed Douxie through the woods. It had to be a shock that not only did a lot of humans want you dead for being a wizard, but so did, apparently, an actual god.
Well, three gods. But somehow Bellroc and Skrael's wanting Douxie (and everyone else) dead seemed... impersonal. No big deal, sorry it's a Tuesday, you and your pesky species were just in the way of our quest to remodel the planet, don't you see?
Herne, on the other hand... Herne pretty clearly had been hurt bad by one particular wizard, and was taking it out on all the rest.
Herne made it personal.
Douxie stumbled on a root but caught himself. He never stopped moving, striding on. The eerie woodland grace that he'd been displaying ever since they landed in the sixth century was gone entirely.
"Doux-"
"I don't want to talk about it," the wizard bit out.
Jim bit his lip again, then jogged a few steps to catch up until he was side-by-side with the wizard. "You don't have to," Jim said, "but I think maybe you need to."
Douxie's gaze flashed to him. There was anger on his face, and hurt, and-
Oh.
Jim knew exactly what Douxie on the verge of a panic attack looked like.
This was it.
Shit.
"I cannot," Douxie said, and it was clear to Jim, at least, that he was holding himself together by the bare scrapings of his fingernails, "show weakness. Not here. Not now. Lest I become prey." He spat that last word.
Jim's eyes darted around, searching. "Is Herne still nearby?" he asked in a low voice.
Douxie stopped. Stared at him. "Jim, don't you know- No," he cut himself off. "You don't. How could you?"
"Know what?" asked Jim.
Douxie gave a shuddering sigh. "Herne is... he is the forest," he said. "He's everywhere. He's like a mushroom."
Jim blinked. The eight-foot-plus-antlers god hadn't looked anything like any mushroom he'd ever seen.
Douxie wiped his hand down his face. "You've never studied mycology," he said, almost as if to himself.
"Myco...?"
"Mycology," Douxie repeated. "The study of mushrooms. Long version short: what we think of as mushrooms are the fruiting spores of a vast underground mycorrhizal network."
Jim gestured, silently asking for an expansion on what was obvious to Douxie but not to him.
Douxie sighed. "What we saw was Herne sprouting up at one particular point in the forest. He can do that anywhere, anytime, within his domain. He's bound to the forest, yes, but he can also use it to travel the way Claire does her shadow portals, popping up at any place within the forest. And," he looked around at the trees around them, "because of that, anything that happens within the forest is theoretically within his sight and hearing." He looked back at Jim. "I dare not show weakness within his forest, or I become fair prey to a wizard-killing god, Jim."
The hairs on the back of Jim's neck stood straight up as a chill ran down his spine at the thought. Herne could be watching them, spying, /right now/.
He wanted to argue to Douxie that mental health issues weren't a weakness... but this wasn't the time or the place.
"All right," he said quietly. "So what's the plan?"
Douxie, for once, looked like he had none. Slowly, he sank down on a root. His face went into his hands. Jim knelt down next to him. "I don't know, Jim," he said. "I just... don't know."
Jim put his hand on Douxie's shoulder. It felt like all he could do.
Douxie gave a bitter sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport."
The line sounded kind of familiar. "Shakespeare?" Jim guessed.
Face still buried, Douxie nodded. "Will did know how to turn a phrase."
Jim hummed, not knowing what to say.
After a moment, Douxie's head slowly raised. "Herne," he said. His eyes widened. "Herne!"
"Douxie...?"
The wizard looked at him, sudden elation on his face. "I know where we are!" Douxie stood. "The forest god was called Cernunnos through much of the former Roman empire."
"That's what you called him when he showed up," Jim remembered, standing also.
Douxie's expression was bright, a burning star. "But he was known as Herne in England! We're in England, Jim!"
"Oh...kay." Jim didn't see how this helped them much.
Douxie dropped into a crouch, dug his fingers into the ground, scooping up the soil. He brought it to his mouth. His tongue shot out, tasting.
Jim stared. "Douxie, what the hell?!"
"Shh!" Douxie's eyes were closed but he held up a hand, asking for silence. Between his eyes ran the faint line that showed up when he was concentrating.
Jim obliged.
After a moment, Douxie's gold eyes opened again. He stood. "I know where we are. And where we need to go." He looked around the trees, his hand flashing out as he spun. Marking cardinal directions, maybe.
"That way," Douxie said, pointing with the edge of his hand. "Come on."
School on Monday was not a blast.
Which, honestly, was pretty much what Toby had expected. It was like the whole Jim-in-the-Darklands thing again, except, well, not needing to use a Glamour Mask to fool Dr. L. Which Toby was totally okay with! That thing had reeked. Also, he and Claire didn't have to hoodwink the whole school into believing Jim was sick with an incredibly rare disease. And this time they were pretty sure that Jim (and Douxie) were just lost in time, not trying to survive in the worst place on... well, not on Earth, but the point stood.
So, really, it wasn't much at all like the two weeks Jim had been stuck in the Darklands, except for the parts that totally were.
Like riding his bike solo to school.
Or like not having Chef Jimbo prepared bag lunches.
"Is this edible?" Toby asked, poking a plastic fork at the contents of his cafeteria tray. A trail of orange goo trailed from the tines as he lifted the fork away. "I'm not sure this is edible."
Eli lit up. "The cafeteria lunch ladies are secretly creepers!" he announced, standing. "This explains everything!"
"Um." Toby looked at Claire. "Did we ever gaggletack any of the lunch ladies?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so? But," she added thoughtfully, "I don't remember any of them disappearing after Gunmar munched his way through the Janus Order, so they're probably not changelings."
"Awww." Eli sank disappointed into his seat.
"Eh, you lot are just too picky," said Krel. Aja was shoveling the orange-slop-and-rice into her mouth and munching with all evidence of enjoyment.
"Excuse me if some of us grew up on this planet and actually know what food is supposed to taste like!" Toby shot back, but there was no heat in it.
"I hate to say it, but Toby's right." Mary shoved her own tray back in disgust.
"Do we have enough time to run to Stuart's truck and grab lunch?" Toby asked Claire.
"Where's he parking?"
"Oh, I know!" Krel pulled out his cellphone and a blue holographic map popped into existence over it. "He is over at the corner of Blue Street and Honey Way today. He will not be parking at the square for a while, for obvious reasons."
At the tables around them, other students were looking similarly disgruntled by the cafeteria offerings and clearly eavesdropping on their conversation.
Darci patted her hip. "I've got enough left from my allowance," she offered.
"It's a little far to walk," Toby pointed out. "Claire, care to do the honors?"
She smiled. "It would be my pleasure." She waved a hand, a shadow portal appearing.
"All right!" Steve punched the sky. "Burritos it is!"
As they stood to go, Seamus stood up at the next table. "Hey, uh. Can we go with you guys?" he asked, indicating his own table, mostly jocks.
"Us too!" Shannon declared. Her table, full of geeks and student council members, all nodded, looking hopeful.
"Uh. Sure." Claire looked befuddled by all the sudden solidarity.
"Taco truck field trip!" Eli cheered. "Yeah!"
"Douxie!" Jim stumbled over a root. "Wait!" Dodged a tree branch. "Oof!" Got hit in the face by another. "Where are we /going/?"
Douxie turned around, walking backwards, effortlessly navigating the terrain without having to look at it. His face was shining like a star. "Don't you get it, Jim? We're in England."
"Yeah, your ancestral home or whatever," Jim groused. Douxie's face darkened a shade. "Or the home of your English oppressors," he amended, remembering Douxie's insistence on his Welsh identity and what little of the history between Wales and England Douxie had mentioned. Talking about anything historical with Douxie was like striking a single match in a dark cavernous room: you got a tiny bit of information, but the light went out before you could get the full picture.
Though, Jim supposed, in nine hundred years, if some kid with a magic amulet kept calling him Canadian, he'd probably have a similar reaction to Douxie's.
Douxie rolled his eyes, continuing to walk backwards. "We're in England," he repeated. "Who do we know that lived in England fifteen hundred years ago?"
"Uh... Merlin?" Jim guessed.
"Try again."
He thought a moment longer before his eyes widened. "Oh!"
Douxie nodded. "Exactly." He turned around and started walking forward again, effortlessly forging their path through woodland brush. "We're going to the lair of Charlemagne, the Devourer."
"Uh." Jim stared for a second, then jogged to catch up. "Uh, newsflash, Douxie: he doesn't know us. And Archie said his dad used to run with a rough crowd, remember?"
Douxie waved that off. "We're old pals. I'm sure he'll understand."
"Oh, sure." Jim made a face. "Let's just show up on a dragon's doorstep. 'Hi, you don't know us yet, but in fifteen hundred years we'll be your friends, honest'!"
"Works for me." Douxie kept going.
"C'mon, Doux! I mean, we're used to running on cockamamie plans, but this one's nuts!"
Douxie flashed him a smirk. "Got a better one?"
"Yeah! Not walking into the lair of a dragon called 'the Devourer'!"
"Eh." Douxie waved that off too. "Arch told me Charlie's called that because he throws - and eats - such lavish feasts. He's practically a hobbit, for a dragon."
"Archie also told you he baked his enemies into blood pies," Jim pointed out.
"Archie exaggerated, to make grand stories for an impressionable child."
"Douxie!" Jim got fingers on Douxie's hoodie sleeve and stopped. Perforce, Douxie had to stop also and actually talk with him. "Look, however you know exactly where we are - and I don't want to know how, since it apparently involves you eating dirt," (Douxie grinned), "I'm still not sure looking up Charlie's the best idea."
Douxie sighed. "Look, Jim. This is the only lead we've got." He freed his sleeve. "Charlie might be a bit rougher than he is in our time, I agree. But do you really think that someone who raised Archie - my familiar - is likely to flambé us on the spot?"
"I dunno," Jim shot back. "People change."
"They do," Douxie agreed. "But I have to have faith that Charlie's not changed that much. Because, otherwise, what're we going to do?" He gestured at the woods around them. "Keep wandering around, hoping we'll stumble into something?" He indicated back the way they'd come. "Try our luck with Herne again?" He shook his head. "This is our best shot, Jim. At least, I'm assuming you don't want to be stuck in the past any more than I do."
"No," Jim agreed, trying not to think of the million things he was already homesick for. And they'd only been here three days. He was sure his list would grow longer.
"All right then. So. We strike out for Charlie's place, and try our luck there?" Douxie was clearly asking for a consensus.
Jim sighed. "Here's to hoping we're not going to be dragon barbecue," he said, raising his armored forearm.
"Here's to hoping." Douxie tapped his vambrace against it.
"So," Jim asked eventually, keeping an open eye out for anything quivering or rustling in the brush that might be dinner, since they'd given the boar away to an asshole god, "how far is it to Charlie's?"
"Well." Douxie glanced up at the tree cover, which was starting to dim, "keeping in mind that I've only been to his place twice..."
"Douxie."
The wizard cracked a grin. "I couldn't give it to you in miles," he admitted. "But given it's heading on toward time for us to find a good hidey-hole for the night already, I'd say two days? Maybe three."
"Okay." Jim's gaze darted to some low, shivering leaves. His glaive flew out of his hand before he even processed it.
Something died with a squeak.
Douxie blinked. Then turned course to follow Jim.
Under the bush lay yet another stringy woodland rabbit.
The glaive had nearly cut it in half.
Jim winced. "Sorry?" he offered, though he didn't know whether he meant it to the rabbit, or to Douxie.
The latter answered. "Well, that's less than ideal," Douxie admitted. "But your aim's improved."
Jim grimaced. "So much for rabbit-on-a-stick," he said, picking up the remains with both hands, so they didn't simply fall apart into two pieces.
"Actually, I was thinking," Douxie offered. Jim looked at him. "How many brownies are left?"
"Two."
Douxie gave Jim a small, almost shy, smile. "If you're not overly sentimentally attached to that baking pan, I could probably transfigure it into a pot or a frying pan, if you'd like. Give us some more cooking options than simple skewers and roasting."
"Deal," Jim said, not even needing to think about it.
Lost in time, Barbara kept telling herself. Lost in time. Not dead.
It helped.
A little.
And it helped, too, that Jim and Douxie's friends were being very diligent in checking up on her. Especially Toby. Well, it helped that he lived right across the street. Walt had upped their dates to daily, though she hadn't invited him back to her bed since... well, since Saturday night.
Had it only been two days? She stared at the calendar.
"Feels like longer," she murmured, touching her fingers to its paper.
But sure enough, Saturday had been circled in red with "The Big Day!" written on it in Jim's handwriting. Underneath that, in a different ink, Douxie's notation said "Doomsday 1/3." Yesterday had been Sunday, and today was Monday. Only two days, of her and Archie being alone in this house that should be alive with the smell of cooking food coming from the kitchen and the soft sound of guitar being played in one of the upstairs bedrooms.
It didn't help, she thought, her mouth tightening, that there was nothing she could do. She couldn't stitch up any wounds, stick on any bandaids, kiss anything better.
She was a mom, and a medical doctor, and there was nothing she could do to get her boys back from the sixth century.
"Well, at least I've got the laundry," she told herself, hefting the basket. Jim or Douxie, or both, had run their wash earlier in the week, so there hadn't been much in either of their hampers, so she'd combined them into a single load.
Despite the fact that they were almost the same size, it was pretty easy to pick out whose clothes were whose. The boys might as well have color-coded themselves: Douxie wore threadbare black, and Jim wore newer blue. Even their socks and underwear were distinct.
Archie looked up as she came into Douxie's bedroom. He was draped, as he had been for much of the last two days, over Douxie's pillow.
"Laundry," Barbara explained, hefting the basket in explanation.
"Oh. Thank you, Barbara." He let his head flop back down into the pillow, gazing at nothing.
She sighed and set the basket down, opening the top drawer of Douxie's dresser and beginning to file his laundry away. "I can't even imagine what you must be feeling," she said quietly. "I've only had Jim sixteen years. You've had Douxie more than nine hundred."
"He'll be back," Archie said quietly.
Barbara shut the bottom drawer. "And if he isn't?" she asked quietly.
Archie made a deep, feral noise that reminded her that, no matter that he looked like a cat most of the time, the being lounging on her older son's bed was, in fact, a dragon. "Then whoever caused him to be lost to me," he growled, "will pay."
"You bring the firepower," Barbara promised, standing. "I'll bring the scalpels."
That won an amused snort and a lash of the tail. Almost more action than Archie had shown in two days. She crossed the room and sat down on the bed next to him. Her hand found the soft black fur between his ears and risked stroking. "How do you feel about salmon for dinner tonight?"
His eyes flew wide in alarm. "Barbara-"
"Oh, not me cooking," she said. It still stung sometimes, how she could literally perform life-saving surgery but the ability to follow a simple recipe remained beyond her. "Walt's going to come over and make the meal."
The cat-dragon relaxed under her hand. "Well, in that case."
"I expect you to come down and be social," she told him.
"I refuse to be a third wheel." He closed his eyes, but almost arched into her touch, making her regret that she and Jim had never gotten a pet. But she'd always been so busy with work, and expecting Jim to be the primary caretaker for an animal on top of all his other responsibilities... she'd never been able to stomach that. And Nancy Domzalski had always had half a dozen cats for Jim to snuggle and play with whenever he went over to Toby's, which was often. It had seemed enough.
"They'll be back," Barbara said quietly. She wasn't sure who she was trying to reassure: Archie or herself?
The cat shook his head. "Of course they will," he said simply. "They've got apocalypses to prevent."
"That's the spirit." She smiled, and stood, taking the basket to Jim's room, where there wasn't a languishing familiar to reassure.
Putting away Jim's laundry was quick. At least until she knelt down on the floor to put his jeans in the bottom drawer, and they just wouldn't go all the way in. "What in the world?" Barbara murmured, and moved her hand around in the back of the drawer, searching for the obstacle.
She pulled out a brown paper bag.
Blinking, she opened it.
Her eyes went wide and her cheeks flushed. Hastily she folded the bag shut again, and stared at it.
"Well," she said after a minute. "I guess I don't need to give him The Talk after all."
She put the bag back into the drawer, a bit to one side, and managed to get his jeans in flat. She went back down the stairs, still feeling pink.
Douxie refused to run from a bully like Herne, so finding a suitable tree for the night just on the edge of a meadow hadn't been a deliberate choice so much as the luck of the draw. The skies, which had been clouded since their arrival, were actually clear so he could see the familiar stars he'd grown up with, splashed across the dark sky over the grassy expanse. He spent a long time looking up at them while Jim pottered in their refuge, using his new pot to make stew.
Eventually, while it simmered, Douxie drew Jim out, shutting the door behind him so the Trollhunter could see something he likely never had before. Not with the modern light pollution dimming the night skies across almost all of America.
Jim's jaw dropped. "Whoa."
"There's a reason," Douxie said, sitting down in the grass and looking up, "that people used to think gods lived up there."
Jim stared for a minute longer before dropping down beside him. "Well, I mean, some have to, right? Gaylen couldn't be the only one out there creating planets."
"Hmm. True, I guess." Douxie scanned the sky. "I think Akiridion-5's over there," he offered, pointing. "At about nine o'clock. That cluster of brightness."
Jim breathed a laugh. "Hey, Aja and Krel's world," he said. There was just enough light that Douxie could see him giving a wave. "They're not even born yet. Hatched? Whatever Akiridions do."
"Neither are we," Douxie pointed out. "This is all long, long before our time. Even before mine."
"I never learned about the stars," Jim said quietly. "Sometimes I wish I'd been in Boy Scouts, gone on camping trips." His voice sounded wistful. "But without a dad... it just didn't seem worth it."
"Archie used to tell me stories about the stars," Douxie offered. "Mostly draconic. I learned the human constellations later. It's still easier for me to find The Scaled One or The Great Hoard than it is for me to remember, say, Cassiopeia or Orion."
Jim was silent for a long moment before he said, unexpectedly, "I wish I was smart like you."
Douxie blinked, not sure how to take that. Not sure how to respond. His fingers plucked at the grass while he searched for words. Finally he tilted his head to the side and spoke. "You know I'm not actually that smart, right?" he asked Jim.
"Bullshit," protested Jim, his tone indignant. "You know everything, Doux."
"That's just being old," Douxie pointed out. "I know lots because I've been banging around the world for centuries, picking up bits here and there. And I'll grant that sometimes I can be a bit clever. But if you want someone who's actually smart, Jim? That's Krel, or Claire, or Blinky. Not me."
"You know everything about magic, though."
"I know a lot about magic, which I grant is a fairly esoteric study," Douxie allowed. "But I certainly don't know everything. Merlin knows a good deal more than me. Archie knows more than me, and he's another one of those people on the list of highly intelligent individuals. The simple fact is, I've been trained to be versatile in using magic, and I'm fairly versatile in other things," he said, gesturing toward the treehouse behind them, "because I've had to learn a lot of different skills over the course of a long life. But other than survival, and loving two or three things? I never had a drive, Jim. And seeing how you do still amazes me."
Jim chuckled a little. "I didn't used to. I mean, you've seen Claire with acting, right? She's always been driven. I wasn't. Until, well." The darkness made his gesture nebulous. "Until I became the Trollhunter, and my life literally depended on getting good at it fast."
"And you got so good that it started to mean more than you'd realized?"
"More than I'd ever dreamed," Jim confirmed with a nod.
"Merlin designed the amulet to bring out the best in its bearers," Douxie said quietly. "And I'm sorry it forged you in fire. But I cannot be sorry of the results," he added, looking at Jim.
"Yeah, me either." Jim sighed. "You really think we're going to get home?"
"Well," Douxie said reasonably, "I think that rock in your amulet sent us here for a reason. And I don't think it's for us to die in the sixth century. So, yes."
"You think it has a plan? Like, it's intelligent?" Jim asked, pulling his amulet out of his pocket. Its glow illuminated him as he turned it around to look at the backside, where the Time Stone lay within.
"Mm, I don't think it's sentient, if that's what you mean. But." Douxie sighed and rubbed at his forehead. "Time is a mess, and time travel magic gives me a headache trying to sort it out. We changed things when we went back in time to Camelot the first go-around, because you said Merlin's version of Killahead before then didn't include me, yeah?"
"Yeah." Jim nodded.
"But," Douxie said, "this time we knew that we were, or at least you were, going to go back to the year 501, because it was already in Strickler's book."
"But I didn't the first time around," Jim said.
Douxie nodded. "The first time around, you didn't have the Time Stone. So, this little jaunt through time happened because you had it... and it was preordained. So whatever we do here has already changed things to the way we know them."
Jim thought about it. "I'm not sure if that's comforting or terrifying."
Douxie cracked a grin. "At least it means we can't screw up too badly, right?"
"Heh. But that still doesn't explain why you think the amulet sent us here for a reason."
"That... it's more of a feeling than a certainty." Douxie looked back at the sky, fiddled with his leather bracelets.
Jim waited.
"I've been thinking about it," Douxie admitted, slowly sounding out an idea that had been creeping around the edges of his mind for a while now, "and the more I think about it, the more I think the Time Stone is maybe connected to that book I pulled out of Gatto's stomach. The engravings and construction on the Chronosphere... there's pages, drawings, in the book that remind me of it very strongly."
Jim straightened, eyes widening. "Wait, the Chronosphere's related to your book?"
Douxie shrugged. "Like I said, it's more of a feeling than a certainty. The book's a mystery, and no one knows where the Chronosphere came from. But if they are connected," he said, looking back to Jim, "and Merlin's right that the book somehow 'resonates' with my magic... then maybe it's not entirely a coincidence that I ended up back here with you when the stone made that time leap. So." His hands splayed. "Make of that what you will. Because I don't know what to, yet."
Author's Note: Douxie's Shakespeare quote is from King Lear. And since the moment I rewatched Trollhunters and saw Merlin licking the ground of the canal, I knew I'd have to have Douxie tasting dirt somewhere in this story. ^_^ Wizards be weird, man. For the astute reader, there is a cameo in the street names Krel lists: HoneyxMonkey and BluHeaven-ADW let me bounce ideas for this story off of them in Honey's Discord server. Jim's glaive cutting a rabbit in two was a suggestion by my Wonderful Husband. And I've been waiting for months now to write that scene wherein Barbara finds that brown bag hidden in the back of Jim's drawer! More to come on the implications of that in future chapters.
