Kissing The Wizard


The Okanogan is a wild place, probably one of the wildest left on earth.  Guthrie closed the sliding door behind him and stepped
out onto his cramped, one-man balcony and into a pool of yellow sun.  Even though he'd stubbed his toe on the threshold, he
smiled.  "Good lord," he said, "what a lucky thing it is for someone like me to live here, no more than a wing beat away from the
trees."   

The tall firs of the forest that started only a dozen yards away were independent sorts of trees, standing singly or in small,
loose knit groups - unlike their close-up-and-personal cousins across the Cascades.  These eastern-slope trees were soldierly,
like guardians, it seemed to Guthrie, and whenever they let him pass beyond their front lines, he felt like he'd been given top-
secret clearance and a dangerous mission.  

Anything might happen out there, he thought, swallowing the last of his morning coffee and stripping off his robe.  But then he
laughed and shook his head.   "No," he corrected himself, thinking of his love life.  "Not anything."

Half an hour earlier, he'd set his laptop on his two-TV-tray desk, revved it up, and jockeyed it around cookies and pop-ups and
internet caches, toying with the idea of subscribing to a service for cyber-dating.  He'd scrolled through the e-hype for two sites
before he found a third - LoveCharm.com - where both the "I'm a" and the "Looking for a" data fields let him enter the word,
MAN.

He'd clicked on the "Get Started Now" button and was whisked away to a parallel dimension where he found the World of
Romance.  He'd begun feeding the web demon data as fast as it could swallow.

My eyes are: BROWN

My hair is: BROWN

My height is: 6' 5"

My body type is: ATHLETIC/FIT

My love style is:

My love style is?

My love style is…

"Okay, I'll come back to that.  Yes!  I have a credit card!"

He'd thought, no wonder I haven't had a date!  Everyone's online, but here's me, still stuck in the latter days of the shaman.  
Well, that is about to change.

His smile had grown so wide contemplating his romantic future.  Joy had danced around the inside of his rib cage.  His heart
raced, his fingers twitched, and his toes curled.  "Good lord," he'd shouted, "I'm so excited!"

Then he'd begun filling out the "About Me" profile.

Q:  What are your hobbies and talents?

A:  I become a scavenger bird with a red face and a twelve-foot wingspan, and look for dead things to eat.  I'm impressive, I
soar, but my breath is atrocious.

If Guthrie had been the one to choose, his alter ego would not have been Condor.  Condors are vultures - very large, beautiful
in flight, but vultures nonetheless.  On the ladder of spiritual allies, Condor rated a rung higher than Buzzard or Budgie, for
example.  But Bald Eagle, Red Tail Hawk, or even Prairie Falcon could have slipped more impressively into casual conversation.  

Yet it was a rare, familial gift that had set him on the wing at five years old and he remained grateful.  Now, as the sun began to
fill the day like leavened dough rising in a pan, he stood on his hidden balcony and stretched up to his full height.  He balanced
on the rail to test the wind before beginning to phase and flux.  The summer breeze teased his bare chest and legs, and a
feeling washed over him that was as close to contentment as he ever got, these lonely days.

"I'm glad," he said, shrugging to loosen the bunched muscles in his shoulders. "I'm glad I get to fly, no matter what."   

He thought one last time - with regret - about LoveCharm.com.  At least, he sighed, they let me cancel the credit card
transaction. He crouched, spread his broad, black wings, clicked his claws for luck, and flew.

                                                                                             ***

Li perched on a rock ledge in the remote stretches of the Okanogan, Washington State, U.S.A., Earth.  He focused his gaze on
the uppermost window of the tallest turret in the Witch Georgina's castle – located for the moment at eye level just across
the canyon.  He suspected the wizard Jedrek was trapped in the room behind that window, which could have happened only
because Jedrek's soft heart had once again betrayed him.

Jed would be fine, of course, as always.  Meanwhile lunch was getting cold, and Li was annoyed with the wizard in that
possessive way that always develops when one man has spent two hundred years living with and working for another.  For that
long, Li had kept the wizard's house, found the wizard's lost socks, followed the wizard's orders, and called the wizard "Sir."

On the surface, that seemed ridiculous.  Renowned in his own right, Li's fame as The Golden Warrior bordered on idol worship in
their home world, Knuth.  Now and then, when he wasn't trailing Jedrek through the vortices, picking up after him all the way
from this world to that and back again, Li had slain Ice Demons, Fire Wraiths, and even Pookah Bellies - single-handedly.  
Generals studied his military brilliance.  Schoolchildren celebrated his birthday.

But first and foremost Li held the position of Shield Man to the wizard Jedrek, as well as butler, cook, and bottle-washer.   
Nearly always, he didn't mind.  The job afforded him a slick way to stay close to the man to whom his heart had shamelessly
sold itself one-hundred-ninety-nine years past.  Jedrek loved him back, too.  Li's faith in that fact was unshakeable.  Alas, Jed's
love was only the kind one might have, say, for a favorite nephew.

That would never change, and lately Li was thinking that two hundred years makes a hell of a dating dry spell.  

                                                                                             ***

The day began to go weird when, as Guthrie circled above the forested ridges and valleys of the wild country, he spotted a
castle.  With turrets.  And murder holes.  And a portcullis barring a stone gateway.  The structure could have been conjured
from a page out of the Brothers Grimm, and it couldn't possibly be real.

Guthrie had grown up in the nearby town of Tonasket. He'd fledged his baby wings flying over this part of the Okanogan.  If
such a castle had been there, he would have seen it.

He tilted his wings into the wind to smooth out his turns, worked them once, twice to ride the drafts, but all that was done by
instinct.  His entire mind was concentrated on the castle.  Specifically on a particular stone-framed, unglazed window in the
highest turret, and the voice he heard coming from beyond it.

"Don't come any closer, Georgina," said that voice.  "I mean it, you old witch."

Curiosity piqued, Guthrie circled down.

"Oh, you've got me scared now, Mr. Charlatan," answered a reed-thin voice with a cackle and an accent that made Guthrie think
of Nova Scotia.

He flew in closer.

"Not another step," the first voice said.  "I promise you I will take drastic measures."

Guthrie was just drawing even with the window, about to get a look inside, when he spotted something across the canyon,
something just as unusual and a lot more interesting.  A man.  An anachronistically leather-clad man with a Grecian physique.

He was just thinking, never say never, when the sky exploded.

                                                                                             ***

"Good lord!  It's a dragon!"  Guthrie felt foolish as soon as he spoke, but he forgot his embarrassment when he heard the
oddly dressed stranger's strange answer.

"Don't worry, Guthrie," the man said.  "It's Green."

"How do you know my name?"

The stranger, who'd been studying the terrain into which they'd both tumbled - near the bottom of a deep, forested ravine -
glanced over.  He frowned as if he'd already forgotten Guthrie was there, then held out his hand.  "Li," he said without smiling.

Guthrie shook it, glad for a mundane touch in the midst of a moment he could only think of as surreal.

Looking distracted, Li said, "I can hear your thoughts, or some of them, I should say - especially when you think about me."

After a moment of puzzlement, light dawned and Guthrie realized that Li's impossible words were meant to answer his earlier
question.  He opened and closed his mouth several times guppy fashion, trying to ask any one of the zillion questions swimming
around his swamped brain. Perhaps, he thought, I'm suffering concussion.

Then Li's qualifier, "when you think about me", finally sank in and he stopped, right in the middle of the mouth-open phase of
his guppy act. He recalled precisely the thoughts he'd entertained when he'd first spied Li's compact, sculpted form from the
air.  Glad that his brown skin would hide his blush, he said, "Oh," and thought it best to let the topic cool.  

He sat down on a flat rock, not so much because he was tired as to gain additional contact with something solid.  The black mud
around his feet oozed.  The ravine was damper and greener than he would have expected for the Okanogan in summer.  A wide
stream cut through the canyon – deep, judging from the black water and dark sound.  He supposed that might explain the
damp.  The whole place seemed ghostly, with its shadowed river and columns of mist billowing from the ooze.  But it looked,
smelled, and felt like rock and dirt and green stuff, and it hung around the edges of normal.

That was more than Guthrie could say about the castle - now vanished without a trace.  Or about Li - now sexy without a shirt,
and standing next to him.  And the big-green-lizard-looking-thing-with-scales-and-wings-and-a-spiky-crest that reclined about
fifty yards away - that was farther from normal that it would ever be possible to get without Dorothy's ruby slippers.

Guthrie cleared his throat, tightened his ponytail, and rubbed at his eyes and knees, all in an effort to strengthen his hold on
reality.  He reminded himself that he was a sensible guy, twelve-foot wingspan notwithstanding.

However.

He'd come upon a strange sight in familiar country.  He'd been knocked out of the sky by an explosion like fireworks with music.  
He'd crashed onto the head of a man clad like a Pict, who read his mind and then told him not to worry about a dragon because
it was green.

How could he expect to think at all, never mind sensibly?

But he was thinking.  He was examining the way Li's muscles moved under his sun-kissed skin.  He was wondering how well a
handful of that thick, gold-tipped chestnut hair would serve as an anchor in a critical moment.  He caught himself falling into the
memory of his first look into Li's hazel-gold eyes, pondering the subtle twitches of his full, curvy lips.

Good lord, Guthrie, you're disgusting, no discipline at all.  Surely, if ever there was a time when he should marshal his thoughts
toward other things, this was it.

He made it a general rule never to transform where anyone could see, but it didn't matter now.  He'd still been a bird at first
impact with Li, so the man knew all about his shape-shifting.  Besides, was metamorphosis any stranger than castles, dragons,
and mind readers?

                                                                                             ***

"What are you doing?"  Li's full attention was draw to the tall man - Guthrie, he'd said his name was - when the patterns of his
energy shifted.  

At Li's question, Guthrie rose from his crouched pose and sighed, rolling his well-muscled shoulders.  He sat down again,
reclaiming his seat on the rock, and then re-banded his hair in its queue, blinking his eyes as if exhausted.  "I thought you could
hear people think?"

"I can," Li said.  "But usually I don't.  You've no idea how distracting it can be."

Guthrie made the guppy face again, which Li thought endearing, and then he said, "I'm leaving.  I think I'd better just fly home
before things get crazy... crazier."

"I know,"  Li nodded.

"What do you mean, you know?  You just said... "

"But you can't, or at least I don't think you can."

"Can't?"

"This isn't Earth."

"Earth?"

"This isn't Earth."

"Wha... ?"

"Okay, let's start over.  Where were you before you fell on my head?"

Guthrie's eyebrows and thumbs pointed up.

"Yes, but what sky?  Earth's?"

"Uh... yeah?"

"And you saw a castle right?  And then there was a blast, and you fell and here we are, right?"  Li waited for the dawn of
enlightenment.  When Guthrie gave a narrow-eyed nod, he went on to explain.  "The castle belongs to a Witch whose name is
Georgina Boudreau.  She brought her castle to Earth as a base of operations in order to plunder and defile your world."

"Plunder and defile?"

"Sorry," Li said, and slashed a hand through the air, "I have no time to spend thinking of less dramatic clichés.  What you
need to understand is that the blast - which was probably the result of the Witch's spell colliding with Jedrek's... "

"Jedrek?"

"An important wizard - "

"Wizard?"

"Stop interrupting!  Anyway half the time, when they face off, he gets soft-hearted because they have a history and she catches
him with a surprise offense - "

"Like in football?"

" - and then he barely mounts his defense in time.  The spells collide and some disaster - like this - usually follows."

"And I need to understand what?"

"When the spells crashed, it blasted us out of that world to this."

"Which is?"

"Good question," Li said, rubbing a forefinger over his chin - a habit that often helped him think.  This time, it only reminded him
that he needed to shave, so he resorted to pulling his right ear, which never failed to wake brain cells.  "It could be a number of
places, but as far as I know the only world where Green Dragons live outside a zoo is Knuth.  That's my home, and Jedrek's.  
Georgina's too, for that matter."

"I'm stuck here?"

Li patted the big man's shoulder, hoping to stop the panic he saw rising before it got into full swing.  "Relax, it's temporary.  
When we find the wizard he'll be able to get you home."

"Can't you... ?"

"No, sorry, I haven't got that kind of magic.  It won't be any problem for the wizard though.  Just stick with me, for now.  We'll
work our way downstream."  He nodded toward the river and hooked a thumb to indicate direction.  "We're sure to come out on
a lake or an ocean eventually.  When I get my bearings, we'll high-tail it to the wizard's house.  There's a fair chance that's
where he landed after the blast, and he'll be looking for his socks, anyway."

"Looking for his socks... "  Guthrie gripped the sides of his rock with both hands.  "What if he didn't land there?"

"Let's not borrow trouble."

"Okay," Guthrie said, standing up, blowing air, and getting loud.  "How about this for trouble we already have?  A huge dragon
happens to be camping between us and downstream, where we hope the wizard, good lord, is looking for his socks!"

"Yes, but as I said, it's Green."   Guthrie's sarcasm irked him, but he understood the man's distress.  From what he
remembered of the folklore, Earth didn't have any dragons at all, although they might have had, in the distant past.  He
suspected the Okanogan and probably the whole State of Washington was short on wizards, too.  And Earth folks (discounting
a few physicists) had no inkling about vortices and interworld travel.  Too bad, but the man would just have to trust him.  What
else could he do?  

Sure that Guthrie would follow, he walked toward the massive emerald creature who had curled herself into the canyon, blocking
the space between the cliff and the creek.  "She's thinking about food," he said, wanting to keep Guthrie in the loop.

"Huh?"

"I can hear her thinking, remember?  Besides, food is what dragons are always thinking about.  Seems she's got her supper
waiting."  He dropped his voice as they moved closer.  "They cook their food alive, you know."

Guthrie opened his mouth, and then closed it again when a fly buzzed close.  After a moment, he asked, "So, you mean
dragons really breathe fire?"

"Yes, Guppy... er... Guthrie.  At least the Green ones do.   Whatever this one's caught, she's hiding it with her body.  That's
why she's curled up to look so small."

"Small!  She's the size of a mountain.  She could hide a horse - good lord, the whole seventh cavalry - in there!"

"Umm... I don't think it's a horse," Li said, pulling his ear.  "But it is something big, maybe a deer or a calf.  It's something she
hasn't eaten in a long time.  She's trying to remember how to cook it."

"Pardon?"

"You know, how hot to breathe the flame, how many passes to make, at what speed.  Dragons like their meat hot, but bloody.  
The Greens in particular are smart enough to be specific about cooking.  Stupid about everything else, but that might be to our
advantage."   

They came even with the curve of her back, and Li motioned for Guthrie to keep still.  Then he crept forward, stepping over the
spike that tipped the dragon's tail.

"Blessed sunlight!"  It was a whisper, but it was louder than Li had intended.  He was thankful the dragon was preoccupied.

"Blessed... ?"

Guthrie's echo was silent, but Li heard the thought.  He crept back a few steps and crouched behind a boulder, where the
creature couldn't overhear, and told Guthrie what he'd seen.  "She's got Jedrek!"

"Got Jedrek?"

"This is bad, Guthrie.  This is very bad."

"Bad?"

Li rolled his eyes.  "Yes, bad.  I had thought I could just plant a thought or two, convince her to take her meat elsewhere - you
know, tell her about the flies and the ants and everything.  They hate bugs."

"Bugs?"

"Stop doing that."

"Sorry."

"Dragons hate bugs, especially Greens do, because they're selfish about food and don't want the bugs to steal any of it.  But it
will hardly solve things if I convince her to take Jedrek away and eat him elsewhere, now will it?"  Li pulled again at his ear, harder
this time.  "She's already got him levitated and sleeping, that means her enchantment is complete, and she's ready to start
cooking any minute."

"Levitated?"

"Guthrie!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Li!"  Guthrie threw his hands wide.  "Every time you speak, you say something totally incredible.  Whoever
heard of dragons and wizards except in bedtime stories?"

"Might I remind you that you turn yourself into a big black bird and fly?"

"That's not like this.  It's nothing at all."

Li stopped pulling his ear and reached over his shoulder to draw his longbow from its sleeve on his back.  "Nothing," he said,
adding a snort as he bent the bow to receive the string.  "Don't lie."

"Okay, it's something, but it's not dragons.  At least I'm a bird that really exists."  Guthrie ran a finger along the silk-smooth
wood of Li's weapon.  "Beautiful," he said, to Li's surprise.  "What are you going to do, shoot her in the tender spot?"

"For now, your birds exist.  But not for long, perhaps?"  Li closed his eyes and worked a spell over the arrow with his hands.  
When finished, he said, "What tender spot?  I'm not going to shoot her at all - it wouldn't help, and Green's aren't bad sorts of
dragons, really. They just have large appetites."

"Good point!"

The comment confused Li, who at first thought it referred to the hunger of dragons.

"Yes," Guthrie went on, "we Condors are endangered.  But dragons never did exist."

"Step back," Li said, ready to test the bow's tension.

"So, what are you going to do with the arrows?"

"Dragons do exist, here."  Even to his own ears he sounded annoyed.

"Which is where, exactly?"

"Guthrie, there isn't time for this.  I've got to focus on getting Jedrek safe."

"Then tell me, how are we going to get him out?"

Li noticed the 'we,' and appreciated it.  He looked up to meet the tall man's eyes, thinking fleetingly that sometimes a stranger
wasn't a stranger at all.  He smiled and gave a slight nod of recognition before he went on.  "I've placed a hover spell - please
don't ask," he held up a hand, palm out.  "It's just what it sounds like.  I've placed a hover spell on these arrows.  I'm going to
try to tease the dragon away from Jedrek and over that cliff."  He pointed downstream to a spot where the canyon folded in to
funnel the water into a narrow channel between sheer walls.

"She'll end up in the river," Guthrie said, arching an eyebrow.  "I've heard dragons hate water.  Will it kill her?"

"If you don't think dragons exist... never mind."  Li closed his eyes and shook his head.  "They don't like water at all, but it
doesn't kill them.  It shrinks them.  In the river, she'll be the size of an ordinary salamander."

He had the first arrow loosely nocked, and now he peered around the boulder at the dragon and listened in.   She was still
arguing with herself about how best to cook Jedrek - apparently she hadn't eaten a human in decades.

"Really? A salamander?"  Guthrie tugged at his ponytail.  "Won't she be mad?  Won't she just climb out and turn right back to
dragon size?"

"Don't worry.  Her memory is short and, as I've said, she's stupid.  She'll be mad that she can't breathe fire to cook the
tadpoles.   She won't think of getting out of the water for quite a while.  Long before that happens we'll wake the wizard and
he'll whisk you back to Earth."

Thinking of that, of Guthrie gone, back to Earth for good, a wave of - disappointment, maybe - washed through Li.  He didn't
like it; it was a chink in his armor.  In any case, they didn't have forever, and he'd run out of patience.  It was time to shut up
and save the wizard.

He shook his head.  "No more questions."

Li, the famous Knuthian Golden Warrior, crept up the sloped foot of the canyon wall to some low brush that gave him both
cover and a chance at a clean shot.  It was tricky because the beast's big snout was very near the hovering, horizontal wizard.  
For his plan to work, Li would have to place the arrow directly before her eyes, between her face and Jedrek's flowing grey
mane.  The clearance was inches.

To hesitate is to lose, he mentally quoted, and started his shot swiftly, following through in smooth motion.  Look, pull, release.

The dragon reared her head back and snorted smoke and sparks.  The arrow was too close to her eyes for her to see it without
double vision, and Li hoped that would add to her anxiety.  He waited, and just when she bunched her muscles to lift a forefoot
to knock the annoyance away, he made his second shot.  The second arrow knocked the first away and came to a spinning stop
in the air about ten feet farther on.  As Li had planned, it was just confusing enough to frustrate the dragon, and the new
arrow was just far enough away to get her moving.

She rolled onto her belly, narrowly avoiding Jedrek, and slid forward, wanting - in true dragon fashion - to make sure it wasn't a
food source before she blazed it to ashes.  Li repeated his maneuver twice more, each time taking the arrow a little farther than
the last.  With the third arrow, she got to her feet and walked.  She thundered after the fourth in a rage.

Despite the distance being almost out of bow range even for Li, he placed the fifth arrow precisely inches beyond her reach from
the cliff's edge.  She reacted, leaping before she looked, and her great green bulk heaved out into empty air and dropped like
lead.  Fortunately, the river below was deep.  She splashed down with a sound like crashing cymbals, and spray-painted a
rainbow for Li and Guthrie, who had - in the joy of the moment - taken hold of each other's hands.

Awkwardly, Li disengaged and busied himself unstringing his bow and stowing it in his pack.  "Would you do me a favor?  Fetch
my arrows, except the last one, of course, that's lost.  And I'll get the one near the wizard."  He flashed a grin at Guthrie,
whose eyes were wide with dazzled admiration - or so Li let himself think as he watched the tall man set off without a word.

When he got back to the wizard's side, however, he was disappointed.  With the dragon out of the way, he'd expected the
enchantment to fail, but Jedrek still slept soundly in mid-air, snoring in contentment.   Li couldn't see his face - the dragon had
floated him high enough for Li to walk under him, if his grey robes hadn't been flapping in the way - but a flash of metal told him
that the old man was smiling broadly enough for the sun to catch his gold tooth.  Apparently his dreams were not the sort that
would wake him screaming.

By the time Guthrie came back with his arrows, Li had sunk down onto a rock, elbows on knees and chin in hands.   "I am not
sulking," he said.

"I didn't say you were."

"You were thinking it."

"Fine, you're not sulking.  What are you doing?"

"I'm thinking things over."

"Right," Guthrie said, but Li heard him think, "Definitely sulking."

Guthrie held out Li's arrows to give them back.  "What's wrong?"

Sulkily, Li stowed the arrows in his pack.  "Well, just look at him!"

Guthrie walked over to the wizard and looked down at him.  "How can I help?"

Li scooted to the left, making room on the rock, and Guthrie sat next to him.  They talked for a good ten minutes, running
through every idea that came to mind.  "Okay," Li said, rising.  "Let's just try something."

They tried calling Jedrek's name, but they both knew it wasn't going to work.

They yelled, "Help," thinking the wizard's protective instinct might wake him.

Nope.  

Li wormed his mental way into the old man's dreams to plant a wake-up thought, but Jedrek had defenses even in sleep.  All Li
got was disgusted.  "You do not want to know," he told Guthrie, "what sort of dreams make an old man smile in his sleep!"

Guthrie sounded the cry of the condor in Jedrek's ear.   Li jumped out of his skin.  Jedrek snored right along.

They tried pulling the wizard to the ground.  He bobbed a little when they put their weight into it, but bounced right back when
they eased up.

Li brainstormed, "Maybe we can pull him along behind us and take him home.  His own magic is bound to overcome the dragon's
spell, once he's there."   They tried.  First they both pulled, then they both pushed, then one pushed and the other pulled.

"This is so frustrating," Guthrie said.

"Tell me about it!"

They pulled and pushed harder.  Guthrie tackled him with a barging shoulder.  Li got under him and pulled like an ox, putting his
back and muscled thighs into it.  Through it all, Jedrek slept and didn't budge an inch.

Breathless, they sank onto the rock, back to back, and sighed in unison.

Soon, Li was up and pacing.  The problem, he decided, was his own distraction.  He was paying too much attention to Guthrie's
entertaining thoughts. I'll block his brainwaves so I can think better.  There's got to be an answer.  

Meanwhile, Guthrie sat on the stone, hands folded between his knees, eyes on the ground, brow scrunched, right foot tapping.  
Abruptly he stood, stepped near Jedrek's slumbering head and peered at the old man's face, his eyes level with the tip of
Jedrek's nose.  After a moment he held up his hand, breathed into his palm, and sniffed it.

Li's plan to ignore him failed miserably, but in the effort he'd lost the train of Guthrie's thoughts.  So, he had to ask, "What are
you doing?"

"Checking my breath."

"What... what are you doing?"  Li repeated the question.  Perhaps it hadn't taken the first time.

"I'm going to kiss him."

"Kiss him?"

"Like in the fairy tales.  It's worth a try right?"

"Fairy tales?"

"You know, enchanted princess sleeping, the prince comes along and has to kiss her to wake her up - or is it a knight?  Happily
ever after, yada yada."

"He's not a princess."

"It's worth a try."

"And you're not a prince, or a knight."

"I was in the army."

"It's not going to work."

"It's worth a try."

"If anyone is going to kiss this wizard, it will be me."

"You're too short."

"I am not short!"

"Well you're not tall enough to kiss him!  I'm going to have to stand on tiptoes as it is and I top you by close to a foot."

"Fine.  Just do it, then."

                                                                                             ***

Guthrie hesitated, put off by the cold shoulder Li had turned toward him.  Finally, he shrugged and cleared his throat, ready to
do the deed.

He stood on tiptoes.  He closed his eyes, then changed his mind and opened them.  He stood back flat on his feet, wondering
how much of a kiss was necessary to break a sleeping enchantment.  He would have asked Li, who seemed to know more about
magic in general, but the look of him standing there, back turned and arms folded, did not invite conversation.  He decided to
try a peck, and if that didn't work, he could embellish on a second attempt.  He cleared his throat again, got back up on his
toes, and leaned in with pursed lips.

His face flattened in the air, smushed against something hard, cold, and invisible.  Moving only his eyes, he glanced at Li, who
had turned around to face him and now chuckled behind his fist.  Guthrie raised his eyebrows in mute inquiry.  What, he
thought, is the joke?

                                                                                             ***

"You look like you're kissing a window pane."  When Guthrie backed away, unpursing his lips, Li realized it wasn't really all that
funny.  "It's a force field," he said, straightening his face.  "I stopped you because he's waking up."

Guthrie looked at the wizard, who hadn't twitched.  "How do you know that?"

"He's making tiny noises in his throat.  He does that before he wakes up."

In the next instant, Jedrek did wake up, with fireworks.  Li heard a crack, saw a flash and a vanishing wizard, and then they
became engulfed in dust and smoke.  The two men had no time to discuss the event, because a millisecond later they were
blown away on an aftershock.  The secondary blast took them skyward and then down over the same cliff from which the
dragon had leapt.

They came to rest, covering heads with hands against falling debris, on a narrow ledge about fifteen feet down the cliff face.

                                                                                             ***

The first thing that Guthrie saw when the dust cleared was Li brushing himself off in a brisk, businesslike manner.  He glanced
Guthrie's way, turned toward the cliff face, squatted down, and said, "Climb up."

Guthrie understood what Li intended, but he was reluctant.  "I don't want to hurt you."

Li stood up, sighing.  "And I don't have time to argue - "

"We," Guthrie said.  "We don't have time."

" - so I'll say this only once.  These are the choices, you can climb on my shoulders, and I'll stand up, and you can get up on the
ridge from there - "

"How are you going to stand up with all my weight on you?"

" - or I can grab you by the belt and simply toss you."

"Whoa!"  The thought left Guthrie breathlessly intrigued.  He decided not to remind Li that he could fly.

"Choose: climb or toss."

"Well, for now... " he smiled, "climb."   Once he was atop the ridge, he lay down, slithered up to the edge, and beckoned to Li
with an outstretched arm.  "Can you reach?"

"Of course not," Li answered.  "I'm too short."

That might have been sarcasm, but Guthrie tried to be encouraging.  "Are you sure?  I can go find a branch or something to
drop down to you, but that might take a while.  Why don't we just try it?"

Li's look could have frozen a volcano.  With a finger-wagging gesture, he said, "Move."

"Move?"

"Over.  Move over."  Bewildered, Guthrie obeyed the wagging finger and scooted a few feet to the right.

Li paced off the length of the ledge, and then returned to where he'd started.

He dropped into a forward roll, ended the motion with feet planted at the very edge, sprang up on momentum, gripped both
hands on a thick root three feet from the crest of the ridge, swung all the way around, let go on the second upswing, back-
flipped in the air, twisted, mule-kicked, and came down two-footed next to the still-prone Guthrie.

Sadly, he bounced once on the landing.

Guthrie stared.

Li stared back, offering a hand to help Guthrie stand.

When Guthrie could speak, he asked, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?"

"Say again?"

Guthrie stared in silence some more, for so long that Li started to pull his hand back.  Just in time, Guthrie took hold of it and
pulled himself smoothly upright, his muscles rippling with the motion.  A smile of appreciation fled across Li's features - just for
a second, but Guthrie caught it.  Straight-faced, they walked side-by-side away from the ridge.

They kept silent, except that twice Li muttered, "Kiss him... that's just brilliant."

They undertook a search for Li's pack, weapons, gear, and supplies, which had been scattered in the shock wave.  It was slow
work, but the pile of found things grew.  After a time, while bending to pick up an empty, leather-sleeved canteen, Guthrie
cleared his throat.  "You're in love with him."

                                                                                             ***

If Li had never read a thought in his life, he would have known immediately that Guthrie's statement referred to Jedrek.  He
thought about denying it, but finally he said, "Hopelessly."

"He's straight."

"Plumb line."

They continued their chore, stooping or reaching here or there to pick up an arrow, gather candy wrappers, pluck a pouch of
trail food from a branch.  They enjoyed surprising success, and soon they had gathered nearly everything.  Guthrie cleared his
throat again.  He made a couple of false, guppy-like starts, and Li smiled.

"Look," Guthrie said.  "I know this hasn't been the best of circumstances, but... well I've enjoyed this... with you... this... "

Li let himself follow Guthrie's thoughts.  He could actually see the words queuing up and Guthrie dismissing them, one at a time.

Bickering... no.  Frolicking... no.  Foolishness, heroism, folderol... no.  Mayhem, perhaps insanity...  

Li decided to be kind.  "Let's call it flirting," he suggested.

"Yeah," Guthrie smiled, "let's."

Loretta Sylvestre