BG Sparrow

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 10 Rite of Passage

Marty tilted his new shield in the small sliver of sunlight stretching into the Royal Alchemist’s chamber. His family’s crest adorned it in red, silver, and gold, boastful and proud.

Marty felt ill.

“I thought I’d be excited for my first tourney. And I am, I suppose. But I’m nervous.”

“Putting one’s honor up for scrutiny in sport often is intimidating, my prince,” Doc said, shelving a book. “But I have no doubt you’ll make your people proud.”

Marty slumped against the stone wall. He propped the shield up opposite himself and glowered.

“I’d rather play my hurdy-gurdy for them.”

"IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT..."

“I did it!”

Marty upended a large satchel of gold coins on the workbench and smiled.

Emmett, recognizing that they weren’t quite right, picked one up to examine it.

“I ground down the weaker links of my old mail and let the coins sit in a solution with it. With the smallest amount of heat, they turned to gold!”

“It is not true gold, sire. Has more the look of brass.”

“But any bandit trying to rob me on the road again would be too greedy to notice that until it’s too late!”

“Let’s hope that was a one-time incident.”

"YOUR FUTURE IS WHATEVER YOU MAKE IT."

“I don’t want it.”

“It is a prophecy, your majesty,” Emmett said. “You cannot reject it – but you are also not defined by it.”

Marty huffed a sardonic laugh, pacing before his throne.

“I was born into a life that would never be my own and told that once I ruled, I would have dominion. I would have control. Now, a prophecy has the arrogance to take that from me as well?”

“Prophecies are merely a prediction, sire. And they are open to interpretation.”

Marty sighed, head in his hands.

“And if I interpret it incorrectly?”

“I won’t let you.”

"HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING…"

Marty laughed at his brother’s joke, popped a grape into his mouth, and took in the glowing banquet hall from the High Table. His brother’s people were full of song, wine, and beauty, especially the lady that had Doc’s undivided attention.

“Who is she?”

“Our librarian,” Dave said, “though it seems Doc has discovered her passion for astronomy. I only see her speak so passionately when she speaks about the heavens.”

Marty sipped at his wine with a knowing grin in Doc’s direction.

“Why do I have the feeling that my alchemist’s chambers will soon be filled with star charts?”

"GREAT SCOTT!"

Another bundle of wood was tossed at Doc’s feet. He tried to wriggle his rope-burned wrists free again, but the bounds were too tight.

Marty glared at him from the adjacent stake.

“I told you magic is outlawed here, and you said,” – Marty exaggerated Doc’s voice – “‘I’m an alchemist, not a sorcerer, I don’t know magic’, and the next thing I know, I am being burned at the stake after you healed me with magic !”

The flame was brought forth. 

Suddenly, a dagger was at the executioner’s neck. 

Jennifer removed her hood.

Marty’s eyes grew – and his smile.

“My lady!”

"THIS IS HEAVY!"

“But it’s not possible.”

“If you allow me to lift the curse veiling your memories, you will find most anything is possible, including traveling through time,” the Enchantress Edna said silkily. “Your alchemist is not just an alchemist. Deep in your heart, you’ve always known this.”

Marty eyed her, holding his breath.

“He meant well, but he unintentionally afflicted himself, too, when he happened upon that magic. He does not remember stranding you both centuries in the past.

“I could send you both home.”

“This is my home! Be gone!”

Edna curtsied, an unsettling smile on her lips.

“My lord.”

"IT'S ALL IN THE PAST."

Marty searched the conservatory, the library, even the moat, but Doc was nowhere to be found. 

The young prince harrumphed. He’d finally worked up the courage to apologize to the well-meaning alchemist, and now he couldn’t find him. Was he intentionally being covert?

“Mother, have you seen Doc?”

“Oh, sweetheart…”

Marty took a step back.

There was one place he hadn’t checked.

“You can’t!” Lorraine said when Marty bolted off. “Martin!”

Marty was scooped up by two guards at the infirmary doors.

“Let me –!”

Marty paled, slackening in the guards’ grip.

Three large, grotesque buboes distorted Doc’s neck.

“Oh, no.”

"DAMN, WHERE IS THAT KID?"

“Do you know, I’ve had a thought.”

Emmett sighed. 

“Sire, get out of the tree.”

Marty bit into his apple.

“I said ‘mapple tree’ the other day, and it’s fed the most bizarre idea that there are trees where each leaf is a map and one of them leads to a great treasure. Or all the leaves on the tree, when pieced together, produce one large map, revealing the location of an unknown realm filled with the greatest secrets of the universe.”

“Did you distill my juniper berries again?”

“Don’t go changing the subject, sir. We are discussing mapple trees.”

"BUT IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU."

Marty reached back for the last arrow in his quiver only to discover that he’d miscounted.

There was nothing but air.

The enemy’s barbaric cry bore down on Marty’s widening eyes, and he held out his bow to block the strike, but the heavy mace busted it in half. 

Marty rolled out of the way of the next strike, trying to crawl to the nearest fallen soldier for a weapon or shield when a purple-white light appeared above the back of his head.

Emmett threw the mace off the force field protecting the stone atop his staff.

“Doc!”

“Run, sire!”

"I KNOW, BUT I HAD TO COME."

“I’m glad we were able to settle this diplomatically.”

Marty eyed Douglas, the Prince of Pines. Their fathers sat them together at the High Table to practice their political etiquette on smaller matters that affected their kingdoms.

“As am I.” 

Marty accepted a goblet of wine. Douglas raised his cup with a greasy smile.

”To the longevity of our alliance.”

Marty lifted his wine — and Emmett’s hand covered it.

“Doc? What are you doing here?”

“Apologies, sire.”

Emmett added an elixir to the wine. A pungent, sulfuric odor arose.

Marty gaped at the other prince.

“You dare poison me?”

“I’M REALLY GONNA MISS YOU”

“Must you go for so long?”

“The sooner I go, my prince, the sooner I can return,” Emmett said, securing the last crate in his cart. “The famine has ravaged your brother’s kingdom, and it threatens your sister’s. In time, it will starve your people, too, if I can’t help.”

Marty nodded as Emmett whistled for Vitello. When the dog was in the cart, Marty embraced the alchemist with a long, sad sigh.

“I will miss you, my friend.”

“As I will you, sire.”

“Send word when you’ve arrived.”

“Of course.”

Marty ruffled Vitello’s ears and stepped back.

“Safe journey!”

"BY THE WAY, WHAT HAPPENED TODAY?"

“Explain yourself.”

Marty shrunk under the withering gaze of his mother, trying to keep a straight face.

“Your majesty, if I may –”

“I am speaking to my son.”

Emmett bowed his head, apologized, and took a step back behind the prince.

"Explain yourself."

“While my actions were unbecoming as a diplomat, the baron’s were unbecoming as a man. He called into question my bravery before my people. Am I not to punish such insolence?”

“Many a time you have been insolent yourself, boy,” Lorraine chided, “but we have yet to lay a roost of chickens in your quarters as punishment.”

"YOUR FRIEND IN TIME"

“I had the strangest dream.”

Emmett squinted at a green glass jar in his stores, shook it, made a face, and put it back.

“Oh?”

“You wore the strangest white robes. And I, the strangest doublet. I’m not even sure it was a doublet, truly. I digress. You made this little metal carriage travel at incredible speeds.” His brow furrowed, eyes detached. “There were people… who hurt you.”

Emmett turned, offering Marty a sage smile.

“T’was but a dream, my prince. I have no enemies.”

Marty folded his arms over himself and smirked.

“The Enchantress Edna would disagree.”

“She would.”

"ROCK N' ROLL!"

“Have you tired already of the dulcimer and sakbut?”

Marty smiled up at the approaching alchemist, a spring breeze ruffling his shirt under the shade of the great oak tree. 

“Those are for those besotted, plebeian chants in worship.” He held up the instrument in his lap. “This was made for music!”

“And what is that?”

“It’s a hurdy-gurdy. Here.”

Marty turned the wheel with his right hand and played the keys with his left, conquering a bouncy folk tune he’d never quite perfected on other instruments. 

“If I had it my way,” Marty said dreamily, “I’d be a bard.”

"FORGET ABOUT ME AND SAVE YOURSELF!"

Finding his balance on a knobby branch, Marty leaned out over the bandits’ encampment. Wincing through cookfire smoke, he spotted Doc tied to a tree.

Emmett jumped when Marty landed next to him.

“Sire! You must leave! If anything happens you –”

“If anything happens to you, I’ll never make it to my coronation day.”

An arrow whizzed into the tree between their faces.

“Run!”

Marty grabbed his stolen bow. He expertly loosed arrow after arrow until the last bandit was on his back under Marty’s aim.

“The keys if you will, good sir.”

“...He’s tied up.”

“Cut him loose then!”

"YOU'RE THE DOC, DOC."

“Pardon me, your majesties,” Father Marcus said, “but why does the young prince call the royal alchemist ‘Doc’? To my understanding, he is not a physician.”

King George smiled. “A term of endearment.”

“Martin was taken ill with a fever in his youth,” Queen Lorraine said. “None could discern its source or grant him relief. We feared the worst.”

“My heavens.”

“The alchemist was the only one able to produce and administer a remedy.”

“Our son thought he was a doctor. We were so relieved that we couldn’t bring ourselves to correct him for some days.”

“Now they’re nigh inseparable.” 

"WE DON'T BELONG HERE!"

Marty backed away from the hellish roar of the gargantuan beast before them. His grip on his sword weakened when its great, gold-tipped wings blacked out the sky.

“You did not say anything about a dragon.”

Emmett tried a shrug, frantically shaking the flickering light atop his staff.

“I said we may encounter –”

“A sordid assortment of the realm’s most vile offerings,” Marty supplied bitterly, chest heaving as their heels met the cliff’s edge. “I thought you meant rogue knights, angry peasants, and the plague, not a dragon!”

“Tis but a small dragon, my l—”

“Are you mad?!”