Dragonslayer's Return

"The bridges to Faerie are in your mind's eye," Gary muttered.

Diane looked up from her book. "What?" she asked, putting her mouth close to Gary's ear so that he could hear her over the drone of the 747's engines. As usual, the two found themselves sitting over a wing, with no view and the loudest noise.

"What Mickey said," Gary explained. "The bridges to Faerie are in your mind's eye. What do you think that means?"

Diane sat back and folded her book on her lap. She hadn't really considered the leprechaun's parting words in any detail, too consumed by the journey back to her own world and by the implications of all that she had witnessed. Like Gary on his first journey, like any who had gone over to Faerie, Diane found the foundations of her own world, and of a belief system that had guided her through all her life, severely shaken.

"Mind's eye?" Gary whispered.

"Maybe Mickey was saying that the bridges remain, and you'll be able to see them," Diane offered. Gary was shaking his head before she ever finished. "Mickey's been saying that the bridges are lessening - look at the woods out back of my mother's house. That place was a bridge to Faerie, once upon a time." Gary sank back into his seat, his expression sour, lamenting.

"Maybe the bridges are what Mickey was talking about when he said that your world, that our world, needed fixing," Diane offered.

Gary looked at her quizzically, doubtful but intrigued.

"Really, do you think you can make some major changes in the course of our world?" Diane asked. "Five billion people in structured societies - what, are you going to become President or something?"

Gary started to say, "It could happen," but realized that he was beginning to get more than a little carried away. In Faerie, he was the spearwielder, the wearer of Donigarten's armor, champion of a King. In this world, he was Gary Leger, just another guy going about his life, trying to get along.

"So what do you think he was talking about?" Gary prompted, thinking that Diane had a better grasp than he did on the reality of it all.

"The bridges," Diane decided after a short pause. "Mickey laments the passing of the bridges, and he wants you to make sure that they don't all go away."

"That would make our world a better place," Gary quietly agreed, resting back more comfortably in his seat. Diane smiled at him and went back to her reading.

A few minutes later, Gary popped forward, drawing Diane's full attention. "That's it!" he said excitedly, and too loudly, for he noticed that several nearby passengers had turned to regard him. He huddled closer and spoke more quietly as he continued. "We can show them," he said. "We can tell them and we can show them, and we can make them understand."

Diane didn't have to ask to figure out who this "them" that Gary was talking about might be. He was speaking of the general populace, speaking of going public with their adventures, perhaps even with the pictures of Faerie that Diane had brought back with her. Her doubts were obvious in her expression.

"We've got the proof," Gary went on undaunted. He nodded to Diane's travel bag, the one holding the cameras and the revealing film.

Diane looked there, too, and shook her head.

"They're unretouched Polaroids," Gary protested.

"Of what?" Diane asked bluntly.

Gary mused that one over for a moment. "Of the haggis," he said finally. "We've got a picture of the haggis in the King's clothes."

"That should get us on the cover of one or two tabloids at least," Diane replied sarcastically. "Maybe even on a daytime talk show, right next to the London werewolf."

Her sarcasm was not without merit, Gary fully realized. The most remarkable pictures they had were shots that could be easily faked, were images that didn't even compare with the ones in the lower-budget science- fiction movies.

"Mickey wouldn't have said it if he didn't have a reason," Gary huffed, growing thoroughly flustered. "There's a key to this somewhere. I know there is."

"Your imagination," Diane answered suddenly.

Again Gary looked at her quizzically.

"Your mind's eye, don't you see?" said Diane. "The bridges to Faerie are in your mind's eye." "We didn't imagine . . ."

"Of course not," Diane agreed before Gary could even finish the argument. "But maybe what Mickey was talking about, maybe the reason we're losing the bridges to Faerie, is because we, as a world, are losing our ability to imagine."

"The bridges to Faerie are in your mind's eye," Gary uttered once more, the words coming clear to him then. Diane leaned in close and whispered into Gary's ear. "And maybe we can open up someone else's mind's eye," she said.

Gary knew what she meant, had the answer sitting in his desk drawer in his apartment in Lancashire, Massachusetts, in the form of a book written by a man who had opened up Gary Leger's imagination. Maybe, just maybe, he and Diane could do the same for some other potential adventurer.

It was a seven-hour flight back to Boston's Logan Airport, and by the time the touched down, Gary had the first chapter plotted and ready for the keyboard.