Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 16th August 2021
"Hey." Douxie woke slowly, blinking his eyes open to warm sunlight and a concerned face looking down at him.
"Jim?"
"Archie told me what happened last night. I thought you could use some hot soup."
"Bless you and all your makings," Douxie replied and struggled upright. Jim set the breakfast tray on his lap. Douxie looked at it for a minute, at the spoon, then gave up all thoughts of coordination and just picked up the bowl, drinking from it directly.
Jim stifled a laugh. Douxie ignored him in favor of the rich, slightly salty broth that tasted like something next to heaven. He'd slept off most of the headache (a little bit lingered), but he still felt pounded flat.
After he'd downed half the bowl, he set it back down. "Thanks. And if the remains of the cake in the fridge were meant for anything, my apologies."
Jim waved it off. "They were meant to be eaten. Seriously, you okay?"
"Tired and shaky, but all right. I doubt he'll come after me again before I can recover."
Jim grinned. "It's got to be driving Bular mad, not knowing who the Trollhunter is."
Douxie shared his smile. "Arrogant git, just like his father." The smile faded, though. "I miss my staff."
"Yeah, so about that." Jim shifted on the bed. "Any way we can get you a new one?"
"Hardly." Douxie shook his head. "A proper wizard's staff has to be shaped by a master and gifted to a student. They're unique and connected to us on the deepest level. Even if I had access to a forge and the proper materials, including a focal gem, it wouldn't be the same, wouldn't work right."
"What about if your staff got broken or destroyed?"
Douxie had to grin. "Given it took sustained dragon's fire to destroy Master Merlin's staff, it's not likely to happen. Any wizard who loses their staff is likely already dead themselves."
"Or sent back in time thanks to a magic rock," Jim pointed out. Douxie had to chuckle. "So how do staffs actually work?"
"Difficult to explain from the outside." Douxie thought about it for a moment. "Okay. Imagine a lens." His hands described a circle. "It focuses light into a laser, makes it significantly more powerful."
"Following you so far."
"Except the lens, the staff, when in its wizard's hand, also has its own inherent power, makes its own light."
"Okay."
"And it also works as a battery. Merlin's staff had well over a millennia of excess power stuffed into it. Mine only had a year's worth, but that's still not a bad backup."
"Given what I've seen you do without a staff?" Jim shrugged. "Consider me easily impressed."
"Hardly, Trollhunter." Douxie grinned. "My staff focused my magic, made it wider and deeper, more effective, easier to use. Without it, I'm a lot weaker. Which was fine for who I used to be, who I was at this time. But now?" Douxie spread his hands. "Until we get tossed into the past and Merlin makes that staff for me again, I'm afraid I've a master's skill and master's mindset, but an apprentice's power."
Jim hissed out through his teeth. "That sucks."
Douxie nodded. "Agreed."
"Anyway." Jim shoved up from the bed. "I have to head out to school. Field trip today." He flashed a grin at Douxie. "I'm going to steal a piece of Killahead Bridge."
"Wait, what?!" But Jim was already out the door.
As the crowd of students scattered into the museum, Jim caught Claire's eye and nodded toward the curator. "Miss Nomura?" he asked, walking up the steps to her. "My friend and I were hoping you could help us."
Nomura's expression was caught between relief, annoyance, and suspicion. Was there a tiny bit of hope? Jim couldn't imagine she had reason to expect the best from high school field trips.
"We're in our school's play," Claire explained, her face alight. "I'm Juliet and he's Romeo. We were hoping you might be able to help us research for our costumes."
Nomura's face shifted to something more like genuine pleasure. Jim had never thought to ask, before, how she had felt about her employment at the museum. Or if Strickler had enjoyed teaching. Now he realized it had been something she truly enjoyed, not just a job that had been in service of the Janus Order's rebuilding Killahead. Jim suddenly felt bad that both of their careers had been taken from them. It had been his team's decision, his decision ultimately, that had destroyed the human lives the remaining changelings had built.
But could he even make a different decision this time, knowing what he did?
"Of course!" Nomura said. "The play was written in late Elizabethan England. Is it still being set there, or has your director chosen to present it in a different time period?"
Jim walked with the two, listening to them talking intelligently, and occasionally chiming in with words of his own. Nomura, he discovered, had a small office tucked away to the side of the museum, with packed bookshelves, a few knick-knacks tucked in among them, and what looked like Japanese prints framed on the wall. On her desk, there was only her computer and a single blooming orchid.
At first, he didn't know why his gaze caught on the flower. Then he did. "It's like stillness in the middle of a storm, isn't it?" he asked, carefully touching the edge of a petal.
Nomura looked surprised. Then her face gentled in a smile that seemed unlike her. But there was more to her than impatience and wrath, Jim knew. Her museum lady side was part of her too.
"Very perceptive," she said, with an approving nod.
She turned the monitor of her computer so that they could see it as well, and led Jim and Claire through how to search for proper historical pictures on the internet, and warned them that while generally accurate, most paintings had a bit of artistic license to them, to flatter the artists' patrons. "There are very few extant garments from the Italian Renaissance," she told them. "Clothes were commonly reused, cut down and resewn, and finally turned into rags and then paper. However, some very fine work has been done both to conserve and to study the garments and textiles that do still exist, and experimental archaeologists are helping us to fill in the gaps in our knowledge."
"Experimental archaeologists?" Jim asked.
Nomura smiled at him. "People who recreate ancient crafts to see how they were done."
"Oh, like at the RenFaire!" said Claire.
Nomura nodded. "The more serious end of it, yes, or the SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism," she added, filling in at their blank expressions. "Now, these are the websites that I think would be of most use to you..."
Jim listened for a few more minutes, then shifted as if uncomfortable, and excused himself to use the bathroom.
He didn't need it. But he knew where the bridge was, and he knew Nomura was distracted.
He slipped into the restricted section of the museum quickly, quietly, and unnoticed.
Douxie wasn't quite walking with his usual ease and panache as he made his way down Main Street to the bookshop, but it was definitely better than the dragon-assisted stagger he'd managed the night before.
His plans for the morning were nothing more strenuous than unboxing the newest delivery of fiction, shelving it, and otherwise taking it generally easy, but then something caught the corner of his eye as he passed the alley by the record store.
He paused, then went down the alley, Archie trotting along beside him. "Douxie?" his familiar asked.
"Just a sec, Archie-"
And, yes, there, poking its corner out of the dumpster, was a huge office whiteboard. It was used, with shadows of old ink, and damaged, with one corner bashed in but good. But overall...
"I can use this," Douxie murmured, and hauled the thing out of the dumpster.
"Whatever for?"
"Strategic planning," Douxie said, and carried his find out of the alley and down a couple doors to the shop.
"You've got that look in your eye again," Archie said as Douxie unlocked the door, let them in, and flipped the sign to open.
"I've always got some look in my eye, Arch, you'll have to be more specific."
Archie sniffed. "Brilliant madness," he specified.
"Well, where'd be the fun in it if I were a boring normal wizard?" asked Douxie as he temporarily stored his prize by leaning it against the counter. "Now, work first, or 'work'?"
"You know what Merlin would say."
With a sigh, Douxie looked at the boxes of books waiting to be opened. "Work," he chorused with Archie.
Taking a small piece out of the bridge was easier than Jim had thought, as was stashing it in the very bottom of his bookbag. If he wanted the bridge to never be opened, he thought, it would be easy to prevent it. Just take his stolen shard and drop it into the Marianas Trench.
No, no, he didn't actually have a way of getting it to the Marianas Trench, Jim thought as he eased his way out of the restricted room. And Gunmar needed to be permanently dealt with one way or another, or he'd always be a Sword of Damocles, as Strickler had once put it-
"Mister Lake." Jim jumped. Strickler raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you make a habit of going into forbidden zones?"
You have no idea. "I was looking for the bathroom," said Jim. "Miss Nomura said it was this way."
"A bit farther down," Strickler said, pointing behind himself. "Tell me, did you see anything interesting in there?"
"Well, no bathroom," Jim joked, but it fell kind of flat. "There was something big covered by tarps, though. Do you think it's a tank, maybe? Is the museum going to do an exhibit on war?"
Strickler's expression eased slightly. "That could be interesting," he allowed. "I'll have to inquire."
"Cool." Jim eased past his teacher, then had a thought. "Hey, Mister Strickler," he said, turning around.
Strickler made an inquiring noise.
"You know, because my mom's a doctor, she's got like no embarrassment reflex."
"Oh?" Strickler asked, clearly wondering where Jim was going with this.
"Well, she said she met you for tea at the cafe the other day. And she blushed when I asked her about it," Jim said, not lying in the slightest. He shot his teacher a grin and two thumbs up, then went off to find the restroom.
And he did not stop grinning as he heard Strickler's soft, wondering, "Really..." behind him.
It was mid-morning by the time Douxie finished unpacking, stocking, and hauling the flattened boxes out to the recycling. Not to mention dealing with half a dozen customers along the way, one of whom almost sobbed with joy after acquiring, following years' worth of searching, a signed first edition of The Hobbit. Mister Del Toro, himself a wizard specializing in finding books and grimoires, had finally been able to locate the volume in a small bookshop in Cambridge, England, and had express-shipped it back to the shop for his customer.
But now that was done with, Douxie kept an ear out for the shop's bell and stood in his former room in the back, wiping down the four-foot-tall board with paper towels and rubbing alcohol. Once all the old ink was cleaned away, he propped the whiteboard against the wall, uncapped a dry-erase pen, and started to write.
First came a list of the nine of them who'd loosened Excalibur from its stone and could be made to remember the future that had gone awry. Next to Toby's name he put "Trollhunter." Next to his own he wrote "& Archie." Beneath that list, he made a secondary one of as many of their allies as he could could think of. He was proud that his hand didn't shake when he wrote his master's name. He grouped a lot of individuals he didn't actually know under "Trollmarket." Beneath that came a line, then the names of the Arcane Order. Then Bular, Gunmar, Morgana, Janus Order, General Morando, Green Knight (Arthur Zombie), and there he ran out of space.
Huffing, Douxie consulted his bracer.
Archie, on the ottoman, perked up. "Are you sure you're up to that?"
"It's a lightweight spell," Douxie said. "It should be fine. I think." And he touched the rune, cast the spell, and suddenly there were two whiteboards, one glowing blue and scribbled all over, the other clean.
Douxie waited for any feelings of lightheadedness or unbalance, but none came. "Right," he said, and kept writing on the next board. There had been bounty hunters after Aja and Krel, he knew that much, and all that unpleasant nonsense with the Colonel from Area 49-B, so he wrote those down. Would they be able to save the Akiridions' parents this time? He kept writing, knowing he needed more details from them, and from Jim, about the events he hadn't been part of.
He duplicated the whiteboard again, and on the third one wrote down everything relevant he could think of about the time trip back to Camelot.
By the time he capped his pen and sat back, out of ideas for the moment, Archie was standing by him. "That is rather a lot to keep straight," his familiar admitted. "I see why you wanted to write it out."
Douxie rubbed the top of Archie's head. "Sorry for dumping all this on you."
"Oh, Douxie. This is hardly the first time we've been separated by time, you know."
"Yeah, I remember."
The front bell jangled. "Hisirdoux Casperan!"
Douxie startled.
"No, seriously, you should see the pictures Eli was showing us at the museum!" Toby insisted as Jim threw a ball, aiming mostly at Steve. "It was all, like, green and slime but there were ears and some legs-"
"Sounds gross," Jim commented.
"Yeah! I'm going to get him to send me the pics." And Toby dodged a ball, spun, picked one up, and threw. It missed Seamus, but not by much.
"You going to show them to Blinky?" Jim asked.
"Heck yeah!"
"Hey, Zoe," Douxie said, coming out of the back room.
"You have been dodging me," she accused, pointing a sharp, manicured finger at him. Her flawless nail polish matched her hair.
"Ahh..."
"He has been rather busy," Archie commented.
"Yeah, right."
Time to man up. "Zoe," Douxie said, taking her wrist and guiding her hand out of his face, "I really have. Also, Bular the Butcher's about and attacked me last night, so you might want to tell your friends to keep alert."
She faltered, then recovered. "Bular? Yeah, right. Try another one."
"He is not lying," Archie said from where he was grooming the fur on one rear leg. "Bular and his changeling minions are in fact infesting Arcadia Oaks at the moment."
"And you beat him," Zoe said scornfully. But Douxie knew her well enough to see the edge of doubt, of fear under her words.
"Barely," Douxie told her. "And I don't fancy a rematch. But something big's coming, Zoe, and I'd prefer you kept yourself safe."
"Ooh, 'something big.' It's always something big with your kind. Why can't you just give up those aspirations and be happy with the rest of us hedgewizards?"
"Because it's not who I am," Douxie told her, honest and a little sad.
Zoe paused, actually looked at him. "You're different, Casperan," she said after a minute.
"I am. And I can't tell you why. I'm sorry." I can't play games with you like a child anymore, Zoe. I've grown up, and have responsibilities. The future is our burden to bear.
A long minute of silence. "You'll keep yourself safe?"
"Archie'd kill me if I didn't."
Her eyes and mouth were sad. "Can we even still be friends, if you're going to go all serious bigshot wizard on me?"
Douxie chuckled. "Zoe, I will always be your friend."
"Good. Well. Don't you dare skip out on band practice!" she ordered, pointing at him again, her stiletto nail now a bare half-inch from his face. "We have a gig coming up. And if you screw it up for us, Casperan, forget your familiar. I will kill you." And so saying, she flounced out of the shop.
"You know," said Archie, "that went rather better than I would have expected."
Jim's phone pinged in the middle of his date with Claire. He checked it automatically only to see that it was a set of pictures.
For your eyes only, Douxie's text said. Curious, Jim zoomed in to look at one of the photos. His eyes widened when he saw that the wizard had been writing out a list of just about every problem they needed to tackle in the next two years, including a few Jim hadn't even considered.
Hastily, Jim shut his phone off and buried it back in his bag.
"Problem?" asked Claire.
"No. I thought it was maybe my mom letting me know she was going to be working overtime, but it was just my friend sending me a message."
"Toby?"
"Nah. A different friend, he doesn't go to our school. So," Jim said, turning the conversation back to her, "it must've been really weird when your parents told you you were going to have a brother."
"Yeah!" Claire laughed. "Thirteen years as an only child, and then I get a baby brother. But he's so cute, and sweet. I love him."
"Have any pictures?"
"Do I ever!"
Later, Jim convinced Claire to let him walk her home. They didn't live that far apart.
"Look," she said, once on her porch, "this was a really nice date, Jim. But if you're looking a kiss-"
"I'm not," Jim said. Something in his gut was telling him that this was it, though, this was the moment. "Could you do something for me, though?"
"What?"
Jim dug through his bag, pulled out his amulet. "Can you read this?" he asked, and handed the amulet to Claire.
She looked at him, confused, then down at the amulet. She traced the words with her fingertips. "For the good of all... daylight is mine to command?" she asked.
Emerald light spiraled up her arm, wrapped all around her as her eyes widened. Jim could swear he even saw it in her pupils, light waking in her as her memories returned.
And after the light dissipated, Claire stood looking at the amulet, breathing hard. Her eyes raised to his. "Jim?" Her voice cracked.
"Claire."
She flung her arms around him, held him tight. "You did it," she whispered.
"Yeah." He held her and thought he'd almost never been so happy. "I did."
After a minute, she pulled away a little and looked up at him. "Now, about that kiss," she said, grinning, and sealed the deal.
Author's Note: Nomura let me indulge in a mini lecture about my interest in historical dress. (That said, Claire's costume in the play, as well as everything in Camelot is best described as "medievaloid"). And Douxie let me work in a reference to G. David Booksellers in Cambridge, England, which is a shop I always manage to sneak a visit in to whenever we're across the pond visiting our good friends who live in Cambridge. Usually I end up purchasing some antique fashion prints to support the aforementioned interest in historical dress.
