The Wizard's Wagon

by K M R

"Well?" I asked, tapping my foot impatiently on the forest floor. My mate, Vanity, was unseen in the tree above, peeking at the torn up, ragged road and looking for anybody that may be coming. She had been up there for about twenty minutes, and I noted the lowering of the sun as the sunlight dimmed around me.

"Shut it, Heavenly!" Vanity hoarsely whispered, climbing down the tree, clutching beefy branches. Her blue, skinny tee was tied around her waist, leaving her only in an immense studded leather bra, baggy commoners pants, and fuzzy animal-skin boots that ended just below her knees. Seeing her bare skin didn't bother me, for most of the women in the thief camp hardly wore any clothes, and, besides, we were all female. For a plus, it leaves the ambushed men speechless as they stare at flawless skin and a sexy tan while we take their abundance of money.

"Someone's comin'!" she whispered into my ear as she tugged me to a bush where we could watch. I had rogues positioned all around the road, waiting for the right time to attack and get what we sought. After society booted us out—abused us as women—we took to more...drastic...measures.

We peered out of bushy leaves and prickly plants, my nose itching oddly. I was about to yell at Vanity for being such a fool when a wagon, full with two white saddled horses and a butler-like coach, came into view. It was marvelous, with sparkling golden linings and black, velvety curtains blocking the view of the inside. It was probably just as beautiful as the outside.

Wasting no time, I put two fingers to my mouth and whistled, loud and clear, making the two horses nay and cough a bit before venturing on again. Shadows crept along the sides, wading deeply in the darkness, trying not to be seen. Obviously, they were not, as the coach drove obliviously on.

I sighed and waved on the rogues, two of them, who immediately jumped out of the shadows and cut the rope tethering the animals to the wagon, the horses running off into the sunset. The coach looked startled, eyes practically bugging out of their sockets, his hands still clutching the reigns. The two women quickly pushed him aside and started searching for traps, holding their weapons high as they approached the closed door.

One would have thought that the passenger would get out of the wagon, since it had stopped moving, and see what the interruption was about. But the door stayed completely shut, keeping the cooling air out. A slight sense of foreboding prickled down my neck and along my spine, settling in my stomach. I shook it off as I walked toward the wagon, unsheathing a long, wicked dagger from my boot.

I knocked once on the wooden wagon door, then twice, lifting a brow as a "Come in" drifted airily to my ears. I glanced at my girls, wondering who the world would act like a robbery was a tea party. "Oh, it's you," the voice said again as I was about to open the door. "Come in alone, please. Emphasis on the alone. You don't need your rogues to cross me."

What a strange fellow, I thought as I opened the door and stepped into utter darkness.

"Hello? Mistress?" the same voice asked, louder this time, sounding particurally taunting. Standing rigid and still, I grunted an affirmative and backed up a step, leaning heavily on the wall. There were no lights burning, and no fading sunlight got past the black drapes, so I couldn't see a thing.

I was going to die, I realized.

A chuckle broke my horrified silence, as if the speaker could sense my morbid thoughts. There was a slight whisper that floated in the air for a moment, then a flickering flame suddenly burst forth from ahead, and I was left gaping at what I saw. A man was grinning up at me, sitting casually on a prime red couch with his legs propped up on a coffee table, and a flickering rainbow coloured flame sat in a glass cylinder, seeming to float in thin air—but, of course, that would be impossible, I thought. Besides, there was certainly no air in the tube, so there was no way that it could be real fire. Magic, perhaps?

"Dragon's breath, actually," the man answered my thoughts, smirking. "Quite hard to find, too. Took me ages—oh, two hundred years?—to find one of the last living dragons. Poor fellows; almost all died out by the time I found them." He sat up and gestured at the seat beside him, as if only just realizing that his "visitor" was standing up. As soon as he saw that I was going to remain defiant and continue to stand, he sighed and said, "Do you like my living quarters? A little small, if I do say myself—but it really doesn't matter, now does it?" He laughed, a deep, rich laugh.

"Small?" I squeaked, outraged. Ahead of me was an immense, full room that was filled with numerous strange objects; some looked like they were from another age entirely. Shelves filled with books filled the mass majority of the space, taking up one or two walls and leaning against a few other objects.

"Oh, do you like my collection?" The man suddenly stood up and went to a book shelf, taking down a volume that had a dark, moss-green binding and waved it at me. "Very supreme, correct? A one-of-a-kind copy of Herb Witch—and in your favourite colour, too, if I am not mistaken?"

I shook my head, shrinking against the door. Impossible...

The man laughed, shaking his head and gazing at me with soft blue eyes. They were a beautiful light blue, tinged with purple around the edge and full of deep longing and sadness. They were also old and wise, as if they had seen more than they were supposed to.

"My name is Kaine," the man said softly, stepping foward a step and putting a hand to his chest, gesturing to himself. "In my time, Sir Kaine." Kaine laughed and looked at me again, a look so veiled yet yearning still managed to crawl out. "And yours?"

I laughed a nervous, high-pitched laugh. "Don't you already know?"

Kaine nodded once, seeming hesitant for a moment before he said, "But it would be better if I could hear it from your own lips and not my own for once."

I shrugged and uttered simply, "Heavenly,"

The man spun quickly on his heel and walked toward the book shelf again, as if he couldn't quite bear to look at me. "Heavenly Rose." he mumbled, brushing some dust off of one of the panels of a shelf. Kaine cleared his throat then turned around again, a fake grin plastered on his pale face.

No one knew my real name; the name I had abandoned so long ago... So how did he?

"How do you know so much about me?" I whispered, my voice strained and weak. It felt like my knees would collapse at any time, and I would slid down the door and land on my bum, as if a weakling. But I was not. I had trained constantly to rid myself of any cowardly traits; tried my best to rid myself of me.

Kaine shook his head, smiling a strange, mild smile at me. "How can I not?" He laughed, stepping toward me again, making the feeling of my knees giving out stronger. To answer my question, he added, "You could say that I heard...a prophecy, and did my research."

"A prophecy?" I laughed harshly. "Do you really think that I can believe that? Besides," I went on, "I don't believe in all of that mumbo-jumbo." It was Kaine's turn to laugh.

"You used to believe when you were a little child," he said, grinning at me in a way that intimidated me and intrigued me at the same time. "When you used to sing lullabies to the wind, hoping that it would carry you away to somewhere different and exotic; when you would cry at a butterfly's broken wing and try, only with will alone, to heal it. When did all of that change?"

I looked away, muttering something under my breath. "Fairy-tales don't come true. That's when everything—everything—changed."