“Interesting,” said the king. His voice was raised. “And interesting that your journey from London has led you up here, of all places, right into the very territory where the dragons have been sighted.”
“I’m not sure I understand what connection you’re trying to make,” I said. “We’ve been here six months and never seen or heard anything about dragons.” I thought about the sudden typhoon of smoke that had engulfed me that day in spring. I glanced at Prince Edward, who was looking at me aghast that I would address the king so brazenly.
Simon cut in. “With respect, Your Majesty, it was I who brought us here. I have an uncle who passed away and left me the smallholding we currently reside on.”
“An uncle who was killed in a dragon attack.”
“Well I—yes. The nature of his demise was never confirmed, but that was what I had been told. There are always rumors, but nothing we have ever seen.”
King Edward nodded, impatient, then stood up from the table. “One of my most difficult, recent tasks is making sure that the rumors of dragons remain just rumors. I’ve got a war in Wales, now one in Scotland, and always the French, the Jews, revolting Londoners, money nowhere to be found—the last thingI need is mass hysteria over the supernatural, or worse yet, some symbolic cause for rallying. But lately I fear things have gotten too obvious to ignore.” The king looked at me while he spoke. He was contemplating something. He stood silently and watched me.
“Why did you say the wordplastic?” I asked quietly. “How do you know what that is?”
He smirked. Then he reached into his pocket and retrieved a small brass key on a chain. Prince Edward silently observed this—gone was his attitude, instead he was merely perplexed by what was going on, evidently out of the loop. The king inserted the key into the wooden box on the table, which unlocked with a click. He opened the lid but I could not see inside from where I was sitting.
“The dragon appears when there is no moon,” said the king. “And no stars. Sometimes during the day, oftentimes at night. It masks itself with smoke—with a thick burning cloud that covers the land in darkness, washes the earth with an acid rain. That cough you have—that’s an unmistakable sign you’ve been exposed to it already, to the whiffs of its fires, which pour across the country from its Satanic bowels. The magma is unstoppable—the few who’ve lived to record their testimonies speak of whole villages washed away by it, whole hillsides flattened and rivers split, all mixing into an ashen murk that eventually cools into a barren earth. And inside that earth, inside that filthy regurgitation, there are tiny revelations. Strange metals, glass, melted formulations that suggest a curious diet not of this world.”
The king scanned the room, then finally reached into the wooden box. From it he retrieved something foreign and strangelyshaped, translucent and twisted, but which only took seconds for me to realize were the unmistakable, charred remains of a plastic bottle of Diet Coke.
I recoiled in my chair, made a guttural sound of shock. I felt ill. Simon and Prince Edward leaned forward and looked closer. The bottle was a mangled mess on the table. It had been twisted, was half melted, and looked like a washed-up jellyfish, but the label was still there, with the red lettering, white and gray, a gray bottle cap, black nutritional facts, recycle me please, a slogan and a promotional contest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“You seem disturbed,” said the king.
I felt the same shock of displacement I felt when I first arrived in Greenwich. Chills ran through me.
“You recognize this object?”
“It’s a Diet Coke bottle,” I said, fighting nausea. The old words were like forbidden incantations. “Coca-Cola. It’s a drink—it’s. It’s unbelievable.” I laughed from disbelief. “It’s a beverage. A fizzy drink.”
“From where you’re from.”
Simon spoke up again. “He’s a time traveler, Your Majesty. George appeared in Greenwich nearly a year ago. He’s from the future and I believe him. I’ve sworn my life to protect him as his servant and helpmate, and I know him to be a decent man, he has nothing to do with this. I love him.”
The prince, who remained obediently mute, raised an eyebrow.
“Time traveler,” repeated the king. This threw off his rhythm and he didn’t know how to proceed. He scowled and looked back and forth from Simon to me. Then he broke into a wry smile. “And whose reign did you time travel from?”
“King Charles,” I said. “The Third. And before that there was his mother, Queen Elizabeth. The Second.”
The king looked amused more than anything. “Do I capture Scotland?”
“Yes,” I said. “Kind of. Well. I don’t really know if you do it, but eventually yeah, kind of. I don’t know my history very well.”
He laughed. “You’re too indecisive for this party trick to be believed. Time traveler or not”—he grabbed the Diet Coke bottle and pointed it at me—“thisis all I know. This matches the materials retrieved during your capture, materials that up until now had only been linked to reports of a dragon. Netlike fabrics that melt into black tar, that emit a noxious blue smoke, that poison the air. Now whether this dragon takes the form of a conspiracy by revolutionaries, Danish invaders, French warships, I really don’t care, but what I do know is that I have you, George, and now I find myself in the curious predicament of having tracked down a man who seems innocent enough not to have tried to hide his whereabouts. My men were able to follow your trail of traded goods in a matter of days. They’ve been observing you for weeks. And perhaps because of that, I’m going to allow you to return to your homestead.”
Prince Edward, Simon, and I were all surprised at this. I felt a wave of relief.
The king continued. “You’ll return there with my son, the Prince of Wales, who will watch and observe, along with an encampment of troops. And on the night of the next black moon, you will hunt this dragon down and bring it under your control. I’ll know this is done by the silence of Yorkshire and the word of the prince. And if I so much as hear a rumor about anotherdragon attack, then I’ll know who to bring my sword down upon.”
I was lost for words. Prince Edward seemed surprised as well, as if this was his first time hearing of his father’s plans. I tried to reason with the king—I truly had nothing of value to offer. Simon and I had established our little pocket of agrarian peace, and the sudden appearance of a Diet Coke bottle, while truly unnerving and bewildering, had nothing to do with me. What help could I possibly offer? Was there another time traveler out there somewhere? And if there was, what was I supposed to do about it?
“You’ll find the dragon and put a stop to its attacks,” the king repeated. “And if the slightest foot is stepped out-of-bounds, believe me, my son and his men will dispose of you, your boy, and raze your land to ash.”
The prince spoke up. “Father, I will appoint Piers Gaveston to the head of my cavalry to accompany—”
The king sprang immediately across the table and threw a cruel backhand that connected squarely with the prince’s face, knocking him back in his chair, nearly tipping over. The prince recoiled in shame, covering his face and blaring red, trying to suppress tears.
“The Gaveston sodomite will not be accompanying your party. He’ll be joining me at the front in Berwick against the northern invaders.”
