So then why did he feel like he was? Why had he woken up in the middle of the night three times in the past week, gasping for breath, reaching for - something, the dregs of a dream that immediately slipped away, no matter how furiously he tried to hold the images in his mind. He’d even tried keeping a dream journal under his pillow, on the off-chance that maybe he could write them down and trick himself into remembering it that way.
But nothing. Just - a feeling of yearning. A feeling that he was forgetting something, missing something. Something he was supposed to do.
“Take a walk with me?” Mason asked his sister Saturday evening, after trying and failing to take a nap for almost an hour.
“Sure,” Madeline said, looking up from her book. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Mason said with a sigh. Madeline sighed and pouted sympathetically, familiar with the bothersome sensation that had been keeping him up nights.
“That’s okay,” Madeline said, giving him a reassuring smile. “We’ll figure it out together. We can go on an adventure!” Mason chuckled and shook his head, following his sister downstairs and outside.
It was warm, heading toward proper summertime. It was Mason’s favorite season, by far - the sunshine on his face was reassuring, comforting. Familiar. The twins walked in companionable silence, wandering their way through Destiny City.
He didn’t realize until he got there that he was making his way to the park - the same park where he’d chased that monster the other day, the one that was chasing Logan the Mauvian. He’d only been there for a second or two, but…
It was this park where he’d found his stick. His magic stick. The stick that let him run so fast, jump so far…the stick that made him powerful. It clearly hadn’t come from any of these trees, but he didn’t have any idea where it had come from.
The twins wandered their way through the the park, off the path. Mason led them away from the parents with children, the college kids playing Frisbee, and the noise of the city. Mason didn’t know exactly where they were going, but finally they came to a little clearing, with nothing but trees in every direction. For just a minute, at that moment, in the twilight hour - it felt…
Magical.
Mason closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He held his hands out in front of him, and thought of his magic stick, remembering how it had felt, the weight of it. A second later, he felt it for real, clutched in his hands, and his outfit had changed - the same outfit he’d worn that night with Logan.
He’d told Madeline about it. About what had happened. He could tell she didn’t quite believe him, the same way she hadn’t quite believed him when he’d told her what happened the night he met Halia, but he hadn’t been able to show her, not after Halia had told him not to transform at home, because of the energy….aura…signal….thing it sent up.
He heard Madeline release a soft little breath, and turned to look at her, a hesitant, shy little smile on his face.
“I told you it was real,” Mason breathed, and Madeline nodded slowly.
“You…you did. It is,” she agreed, vaguely dazed, but not running and screaming, so it could’ve gone worse. “This is…Mason–”
“Blarney,” Mason corrected automatically, and they both blinked in surprise.
“What?” Madeline said, frowning slightly in confusion. “Barney? Like, the dinosaur?”
“Blarney,” Mason repeated, a curious lightness in his chest as he said the word. He liked the way it sounded, the way it felt in his mouth. “I think–I think that’s my name. When I’m…like this. Blarney. Page of Earth.”
“...Okay,” Madeline said slowly, eyebrows rising to her hairline. “Okay. Okay, um…Blarney. This is incredible,” she said, reaching to touch him, but she caught herself, like she was afraid to. Blarney’s heart panged - he didn’t want her to be scared of him. She was his sister, no matter what his name was.
“It’s okay,” Blarney said, catching her hand with his, gloved though it was. “I’m still me. I can just…do stuff now,”
Madeline smiled hesitantly and squeezed his hand. “Stuff like what?”
“...I don’t really know,” Blarney admitted with a chuckle. “Yet. But…” Blarney glanced around them, at the strange, beautiful little glade they’d found. “I think…I think there’s something I need to do.” Blarney looked back at his sister and squeezed her hand again. “And I think I need you to be with me when I do it.”
“Anything,” Madeline said instantly, a broad grin on her face, eyes shining with something that might have been pride. “What do you need to do?”
That was a good question. Blarney looked from her to the glade to the stick in his hands, then took a few steps away from his sister. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and opened his mind - what was it that had been trying to get his mind’s attention? What did he need to do?
“I pledge my life and loyalty to Earth, and to Blarney.
I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”
The words flowed out of him, as easy as a song, as easy as breathing, as easy as nothing, like he’d known it all along, even though none of those words had ever been uttered in that order - or in some cases at all - by Mason, they were written on his heart all the same.
The breeze kicked up. Mason’s heart felt like it was going to crack in two. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, when he opened his eyes, but–
“Ma–Blarney?” Madeline’s voice, tiny and scared, made him jump. It came from behind him, and he turned to see Madeline standing there, eyes wide with surprise. “Where–where are we? What did you do?”
“I…have absolutely no idea,” Blarney answered, voice barely more than a whisper as he looked around the place they had landed. Landed seemed to be the operative word; there was no way they were still in Destiny City. It sounded different. It smelled different.
It also looked different. They’d been in an empty corner of a city park a few moments ago, and now they were standing in front of… what may have been a castle, once upon a time. Now it was nothing more than ruins, reclaimed by nature almost entirely. But Mason could see it - he could see the bones of the thing beneath it, a great monster of a monument, sprawling.
Waiting.
It was waiting. For him. It had been waiting a very, very long time, too.
Mason tried to take a step.
Instead, he threw up.
“Mason!” Madeline squeaked, darting over to his side, catching him before he could fall face-first into a pile of his own vomit. “Are you okay? What’s happening? Is this a bad place? Are you dying? How do we get home? Mason!”
“Blarney,” Blarney croaked, allowing Madeline to assist him to a sitting position. His head was spinning, and for a second he thought he might actually pass out, but his fingers caught in the long, tangled grass beneath him, and he pulled on it, gently - and it grounded him. He could almost feel the earth sigh beneath him, a familiar sound; he didn’t think he could walk yet, but he didn’t think he needed to. Instead, he squirmed a bit away from his sister to fully lay down on the ground, ignoring her startled protestations until she quieted and finally joined him there.
“Are you okay?”
It was a long moment before he answered. He was watching the sky - it was a different sky than the one in Destiny City, somehow. He wasn’t familiar enough with the constellations to know if it was actually different - if he had magicked himself and his sister to fully an entirely different planet or plane of existence, but it was still, in some way, different than what he was used to seeing when he looked up at night.
And it was nighttime now; it had fallen right about when he had. He could see stars beginning to twinkle to life, a million billion miles above him. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the wind, shush-shushing him, like it was trying to lull him to sleep.
It should have been bizarre. He should have been as tense as his sister was next to him. He should have been freaking out.
But he wasn’t. For the first time since that first night he’d come across a monster - a youma - he was…
Calm. He felt like he could breathe. Maybe for the first time ever, he could really breathe.
“I’m perfect,” Blarney finally answered, turning his head to look at his sister. “I’m home.”
–
It was, objectively, insane. They stayed there laying in the grass and weeds until Blarney felt well enough to stand, and when he did, Madeline followed him. He approached what had been a castle, in some long-since forgotten time. Madeline lit their way with her phone - his had disappeared in the transformation. He’d have to remember to ask Aruna about that next time he saw her, because he couldn’t just be out here without a way to communicate with people…
Blarney was not a very good tour guide. He kept stopping every three seconds to study something - to nudge away some weeds to get a better look at a crumbly bit of stone, or brush away some dirt to try and glimpse if anything was beneath it. There never was, not really - anything that may have held a clue as to what this place was, or who lived there, had long since decayed or otherwise disappeared.
“You know what’s weird,” Madeline whispered. He didn’t know why she was whispering, but he couldn’t say he didn’t understand - the dark combined with the pure strangeness of the place leant itself to hushed voices. “I don’t hear anything but us.”
“What do you mean?” Blarney asked, squinting at her in the shadows.
“I mean,” Madeline said, “I noticed it before, when we were laying there, and it’s only gotten weirder. There’s no birds or critters or bugs or anything. It’s quiet.”
Blarney stopped. Frowned. Listened.
…She was right. It wasn’t just quiet, it was dead silent. There wasn’t a hint of extraneous noise anywhere, not from a distant highway, a family of badgers living deep below the ground, not anything.
For the first time, Blarney felt - uneasy.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
“It’s supposed to be…alive,” Blarney said, a frown creasing his face as he looked around. “You’re right, it’s weird, but it’s weird because it’s supposed to be…it’s not supposed to be so…” Blarney paused, the word constricting his throat. “It’s not supposed to be so dead.”
That’s what it was. This castle, the deserted land all around it - it was dead. Or it had been, maybe until the second Blarney and Madeline arrived; Mason knew he hadn’t imagined that feeling, that flicker of electricity that had run through him. The one that felt like seeing an old friend for the first time a long, long time.
“I think…I think I’m supposed to help this place, Mads,” Blarney said slowly, and so seriously that Madeline didn’t even remember to look surprised or dubious about his statement. “I think I’m supposed to…bring it back.”
“Bring it back,” Madeline repeated. “How, exactly, are you supposed to do that?”
Another good question. “I…don’t really know. Yet,” Blarney admitted. But I think…” Blarney looked at his stick–his staff. It wasn’t just a stick (albeit a magic stick). It was something…more. “I think I can figure it out.”
“Okay,” Madeline said, clearly putting aside eight or ten things she wanted to say instead. “Can you figure out how to get us home?” Madeline glanced dubiously around and hugged her arms around herself. It wasn’t cold, not really, but Blarney understood the gesture - he had no idea how long they’d been here, but clearly Madeline felt they had spent enough time…wherever it was they were.
“I’ll give it a try,” Blarney said with a chuckle. In truth, he wanted to stay longer - he wanted to stay forever, kind of, and explore every little corner of this place. He wanted to figure out how it worked, figure out what it would take to bring this place back to its former glory. He had so many questions.
He looked around them again, and once again that feeling pulled through him, a soft wave of affection, like a gentle hug. Reassuring. Patient. It could wait.
“One lap. Just to get a feel for the size of the place,” Blarney said, pleadingly, the words tumbling out of him before he’d consciously decided even to speak. He got the feeling that this place didn’t want him to leave any more than he wanted to leave it. “And then we can go home. I’ll figure it out, I promise. One lap?”
Madeline raised an eyebrow at him.
“C’mon, Mads. I’ve never been magic before. Please?” Blarney gave her his best puppy eyes, and she relented, throwing her hands in the air.
“One lap. And then we go home, even if I have to figure out how to call an Uber from here.”
That made Blarney laugh, and he hooked his arm through hers as they began to walk through the space - it was big, bigger even than Blarney had thought initially. How he could tell exactly what was and wasn’t his - because that’s what this place was, his - he didn’t really know, but he followed the feeling.
He was just turning a corner when his foot–kicked something. Something that made a very distinctive clink noise when it hit the tip of his boot. It wasn’t the dirt or stone that they’d been stepping on and around for the rest of their exploratory lap.
“What was that?” Madeline asked, turning her phone to shine the light in the direction the noise had come from. She scanned it back and forth, and Blarney jumped when something glinted in response. Madeline froze and Blarney went toward it, leaning down and pushing through the overgrowth until his fingers caught on…
“It’s a ring,” Blarney said, brushing the dirt away from the treasure held in his hand. Madeline joined him, peering over his shoulder curiously. It was golden, and shiny even through the layer of dirt and grime that covered it. He brushed his fingers over it, revealing a deep green stone with an engraving of a deer head, complete with antlers. It matched the symbol on his boots. Carved into the ring itself was the same circle-and-cross pattern that Blarney found on his outfit.
Logan the cat had said it was a symbol of Earth.
“Uh,” Madeline said. “Look, I know I’m not…I know you’re apparently the magic one in the family, but uh…off the top of my head, I can only think of one story about finding a ring with stuff on it, and that story does not end–oh you’re putting the ring on. Of course you’re putting the ring on. Why wouldn’t you put the ring on.”
To Blarney’s disappointment/relief, he did not turn invisible. Nor did he become intimately aware of a super-powerful fire-eye, which was reassuring. Instead, it just felt…
“It’s okay,” Blarney said as he stood up. He flexed the hand with the ring, experimenting with it. It just felt right. “It’s part of… this. All this whole thing,” Blarney said, gesturing around them. “This is mine. Or…I’m its. We’re…connected, somehow, I think. I can feel it. This is just…part of that connection, I think.”
Blarney held his ring-hand up more directly into the light of her phone, studying it more closely; why did he get the feeling this was more than just a pretty accessory, a shiny little treat for him? As Blarney brushed his fingers once more over the gem at its center, something clicked, and Blarney blinked in surprise as blueprints appeared before him; he couldn’t quite make out what exactly they were blueprints for, but he got the gist: this was not just a ring. This was a ring that could have things added to it, improved, changed as necessary. As for what it could do beyond look pretty on his finger…
“Can I borrow a piece of paper?” Blarney asked. Neither of them had brought their backpacks with them, but if he knew his sister, she would always have some kind of pen and paper on hand, even when they were exploring the ruins of an ancient castle in a land that time forgot. Without question, Madeline removed a glittery purple pen (of course) and a small notebook like one old-timey reporters used from her back pocket, and handed both to Blarney. He glanced around, locating a decently-sized and mostly-uncrumbled stone to use as a hard surface, and sat down before it, scribbling out a message on a piece of paper, which he then tore out of the notebook. Glancing dubiously from the ring to the paper, he shrugged to himself and then pressed the ring into the paper, hard - hard enough to leave an indent of the stag-head symbol behind.
In a green-gold flash, the paper disappeared into thin air. Blarney beamed.
“Knew it,” he said. He didn’t know how he knew it, but knew it he did - assuming that Halia had received his test message, anyway. He’d have to text her when they got home. Or, if he was lucky and this thing worked the way he thought it did, she would have already texted him. He’d just been thinking he needed a way to communicate with people…
And his new home had provided one.
Home.
It was a strange word. Home was Destiny City, but home was also…here, in this desolate, dead, forgotten place. Blarney took one final look around, then let his gaze return to his sister, who was staring at him, slightly agog, in response to his little trick with the ring. Regardless of where they were, home was his sister, too; no matter how much it had knocked the wind out of him, he was glad he had - even accidentally as it was - brought her with him, his first time here. He would not have been able to be as calm, as curious, as thoughtful as he was without her there - that, he knew for a fact. He would’ve panicked without her; even now, even powered and unpowered as they were, she made him better.
“See, no cursed Elvish kings coming after me,” he said, breaking the contemplative silence before it went on too long. “No immortality…probably. I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one, huh?”
Madeline did not look completely convinced, but it wasn’t like she could tell him he was wrong; neither of them knew anything, not really, but of the two of them, he was the one with the magic stick, and now a magic ring.
“If you say so,” Madeline said finally with a sigh. “Just don’t blame me when you start hacking up a new nickname for yourself or turn into scary Bilbo in Rivendell.”
Blarney’s laugh was loud, and would have echoed back around them, if there were anything for the sound to bounce off. They made their way quickly back to what Blarney could only assume was the front of what had been the building, more or less where they’d found themselves upon arrival.
“Okay. How do we get home?” Madeline said, looking back at him. “My phone’s about to die and I really don’t want to be stuck here with no light.”
“The sun will come up eventually,” Blarney said with a good-natured roll of his eyes. He was reasonably sure of that, but… well, he could be wrong, in a place that had no bugs or birds or apparently any living things. At her look, he smiled sheepishly and held his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, okay. Let’s go home.”
Blarney stepped away from her and closed his eyes, listening to the silence around them. Not all silences sounded the same, and Blarney saved the sound of this silence deep in his heart. He took a moment to say thank you - and to promise that he would be back - and then let out a deep breath, letting the images of Destiny City swirl through his brain. He thought of home, home, home, and then…
And then they were there, in the same place they’d departed from, however many hours earlier. The same sensation of exhaustion and nausea overtook Mason - and he realized he was, in fact, Mason again, not Blarney anymore, his outfit having melted away in a soft breeze and a swirl of green leaves, leaving his regular clothes behind in their place.
“That was…” Madeline trailed off, and Mason nodded. There really weren’t any words to describe that experience; his heart ached to go back already, in the daylight this time, and start seeing what it needed. What he needed to do to bring it back to life, to make it…
To make it a home.
“That was,” Mason agreed, exhausted. Destiny City seemed somehow impossibly loud in comparison from where they’d been, and Mason immediately had a headache, in addition to a stomach ache. This park was not the same as his castle - they didn’t have the luxury of safely staying there for an indeterminate amount of time. Anyone could wander by. Any thing could wander by, looking for an exhausted knight and his innocent sister to eat.
Well…if they did, Mason realized, he could defend them. He could protect them, and this place, from whatever evil tried to do harm to the goodness here. Like Logan had said, he was powerful now.
Even if he didn’t feel so powerful. He was trembling a little, actually, but at least he hadn’t actually thrown up this time. Laying down didn’t have quite the restorative effect it had had before, wherever they were then, but it was certainly preferable to trying to remain upright, so horizontal he stayed, at least for the time being.
He looked down at his shaking hand and was surprised to see that the entire outfit hadn’t disappeared. The ring remained, but it had taken on the quality of a simple, smooth, shiny, lacquered oaken ring, the lines of the tree it had come from as unique as a fingerprint. If he squinted, he could almost make out the symbol of Earth there in the squiggles…
Or maybe he was just. Dizzy. He let his hand drop and stayed there, head pounding, body trembling faintly, until Madeline finally pulled him to his feet and helped him struggle home. She helped him up the stairs and into his bed, going so far as to tuck him in, like she’d done when they were both little enough that they should’ve been getting tucked in by adults. She brushed her hand through his hair, smoothing it into place, and Mason felt his whole body relax under her touch. She was humming quietly, some lullaby half-remembered from their childhood - though who would’ve sung it to them, he had no idea.
He wanted to say something - he wanted to thank her for coming with him. He wanted to thank her for everything she’d done for him. He wanted to tell her that wherever he went, she would always be invited to come with, that he would never leave her behind, no matter how many powers, sticks or rings he stumbled his way into possessing.
But he was bone-tired. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow, and he would tell her all of those things tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
For the first time in a month, Mason slept soundly, dreamlessly, and well.
((wc: 4069))
