A Well-Timed Enchantment (2 page)

"
Bonjour,
" she whispered, never opening her eyes. Hello couldn't hurt.

He rattled off something else that went on and on. A second voice chimed in and Deanna looked in spite of herself. Another man had come out of nowhere to join the first. Tall, slender, young, heartbreakingly beautiful—which, actually, described both of them—this one was dressed in two-tone jeans and a black
Rock 'n' Roll Forever
T-shirt. He wore a sword, too, and although his hair had less green in it, it still had that glow-in-the-dark quality that made Deanna's head hurt. Who were they? Where was she? And most important of all, what in the world was going on?

The strange men stopped whatever it had been that they were saying and looked at each other as though to say,
Oh, no, not again. "Bonjour,
" the first repeated in his infuriatingly slow, over-enunciated way. "
Bienvenue.
" As in
Let's start at the beginning again.

"Look," Deanna said. "I don't speak French, so you might as well stop talking like I'm an idiot. Because no matter how slow and careful you talk, I can't understand you" She folded her arms defiantly. It hadn't been fair of her mother to drag her to France unprepared:
You'll pick it up,
indeed! Her mother accused her of not even trying, but what about the others? French people pronounced Deanna
Dionne
and smiled condescendingly when she corrected them as though she was the one who didn't know any better. Until they got it right, she wasn't giving an inch.

The men conferred in soft voices. Not French, she realized a moment before they stopped, something with different rhythms and cadences altogether.

"You're American," the one with the chartreuse hair said.

Deanna nodded eagerly "Y—"

"Twentieth century, I'd guess."

Her relief at hearing his accentless English evaporated.

"Nineteen-seventies or eighties," the other agreed. "Possibly nineteen-nineties: I lose track of time."

Deanna glanced at him apprehensively and was surprised to see that she had been mistaken about his shirt Actually it was navy blue instead of black, which was a natural enough mistake, and instead of
Rock
V
Roll Forever
it had the
No Smoking
symbol, which was not a natural mistake at all. "Who are you?" she asked. She hated the way her voice shook. This was worse than Sunday dinner with the entire Guyon family.

"Ah!" the one with the chartreuse hair said, pointing a finger at her. "Ah! Exactly! That is exactly not the question! The question is who are you?"

"My na—"

"And what," the second man cut in, "do you mean by going around throwing garbage into temporal loopholes?"

"I don't even—"

"Mucking up the astral planes," the first said.

"Destroying entire worlds without a backward glance." That was the second again.

Deanna had been taught that it was impolite to interrupt, but knew that was a rule adults rarely applied to themselves. She sat with her arms folded and waited for them to finish.

"Warping the fabric of time." The second man's shirt had changed once more. It was now purple, and bore the words:
iQue Pasa?
"High-tech in a no-tech continuum," he said. "Didn't you stop to think? Didn't you care?"

They petered off when it became obvious she wasn't going to try to answer, and the chartreuse-haired one prompted, "Well?"

"I have no idea," Deanna said, "what you're talking about."

"Idiot human," the other muttered, turning his back to her, just soft enough that Deanna couldn't be sure if she was supposed to hear or not.

"Your timepiece: your miserable, high-tech, world-altering, digital timepiece that you flung into the temporal loophole."

Deanna looked from one to the other. "My Mickey Mouse watch?" she asked. "That fell into the well?"

"Exactly."

Deanna was willing to believe she'd done something awful because she was always accidentally breaking or spilling things. Her mother would smile knowingly and call it "that awkward stage." It seemed as though she had been at "that awkward stage" half her life. But she couldn't see what her lost watch had to do with anything. "What about it?"

"
What about it? What about it?
Time twists, nature shudders, civilization as we know it crumbles and she asks WHAT ABOUT IT?"

"I have no idea," Deanna repeated, more loudly and less patiently, "what you are talking about."

The yellow-haired one sighed loudly. He still kept his back to her, letting his companion do the talking.

"The temporal loophole—"

"The well," Deanna interrupted, determined to keep the conversation at as normal a level as she could.

"You opened the gateway." Then, when she looked at him blankly, "Between the physical and the metaphysical worlds." He sighed grandly and rolled his eyes. "You wished."

The man with the green
Kiss-Me-I'm-Irish
T-shirt whirled around. "Or rather, you declared your intention to wish. And then—with the portals of sorcery open, with the powers of thaumaturgy invoked, attentive, and poised, with enchantment in the air, with incantations waiting to be completed—you ... you ... YOU ... dropped ... your ... watch."

"I'm sorry," said Deanna. "Did it hurt something?"

"Argh!" The man pulled his glowing hair and turned his back to her again.

"I didn't know it was really a magic well."

"Well, no," the chartreuse-haired man simpered. "Of course you didn't. It wasn't like it was obvious or anything."

"It wasn't." Deanna was beginning to get annoyed with these two and their know-everything attitude.

"Of course it was obvious. Even your cat could see it. Don't tell me you're admitting your cat's smarter than you are?"

The man in the T-shirt nodded.

Deanna pretended not to notice. She glanced at Oliver, who was a bristling huddle, watching the two strangers apprehensively. She remembered how peculiar he'd been acting by the well and shivered. "Where did the watch go?" she asked.

"Back in time. To the dawning of the technological world." He must have seen her blank look. "Just north of 1066."

"Just north...?" She decided not to ask. She had the feeling her next question was probably too obvious already. "So what?"

The first man sighed, loudly. "So here's humankind, poised on the brink of striking out on its own, putting its trust in logic, just beginning—just at the very beginning of turning its collective back on magic—when: wham!" He slammed his fist into his palm, making Deanna jump. "Something beyond all logic: an artifact, a talisman, a message from the supernatural; to wit: Here is magic; it exists, it's stronger than your nebulous science, put your trust here."

Deanna gulped. "My Mickey Mouse watch?"

"Now you've got it: You've just gone and changed history, kiddo."

"I
am
sorry," she said. "What exactly does the watch do?"

The man rolled his eyes again. "What does it do?
What does it do?
" He counted out on his fingers. One: "Some people will think it's a message from God—proof of an afterlife; others will be sure it's a gift from Satan. That means suicides both ways." He put out a second finger. "It falls into the hands of the religious leaders of the day. Debating the watch's significance, the medieval Church will divide against itself four hundred years too early. This means good-bye to the feudal system it should have fostered." A third finger. "With no central authority, everybody wants that watch. Even those who don't want it want it—can't let it fall into the other guy's hands, don't you see? That means wars." He tapped his fourth finger. "In the collapse of dynasties, key people don't get born. Result? No Renaissance to speak of. No Renaissance: no Age of Exploration. No Age of Exploration: no discovery of America." He'd run out of fingers on that hand and waved both hands in the air. "Not to mention the bubonic plague and how that'll last ten years longer than it should because nobody wants to risk harming the creature whose image appears on
your
watch."

Deanna gulped. "I
am
sorry," she repeated. She looked the two men over. (One with chartreuse hair, one with a pink T-shirt proclaiming
Suzuki Violin.)
"So who are you? Some kind of guardians of time?"

The one with the T-shirt rolled his eyes. "Is that what you think we look like?"

She didn't think he really wanted to hear what she thought they looked like and paused to consider. She concentrated on their beautiful, almost ethereal faces, on the one's fickle T-shirt and the other's gown which shimmered with otherworldly colors. "Elves," she said, before she was even aware of the word forming in her mind.

The first winced. "
Elves
has such ridiculous connotations—don't you think?—helping shoemakers and such."

"Though it is better," the second observed, "than some of what we've been called."

His friend ignored him. "We prefer Sidhe, even though that's Gaelic instead of Gallic, or fair folk."

"This whole thing is ridiculous," Deanna said. Where were her parents when she needed them? "This is absolutely ridiculous."

"Yes, isn't it? So we're sending you to fix the mess you've made, to retrieve your watch. To make things the way they were before."

Of course she wanted the watch back in any case; it was
her
watch, given to her by
her
father. But surely there was someone better suited. She said, "Look. If there were ... If you are—" She felt silly saying it "—'fair folk,' then you yourselves are magic. You can fix things back to the way they're supposed to be."

"1 told you she was dumber than the cat," muttered the T-shirted one.

"No," the other explained to her. "It's your world that is going to change, not ours. Besides, we don't have that much magic left. Magic has been disappearing for centuries, gradually, easily, gracefully. We've learned to make do with just a little. Sure, eventually we could right things. If we had the inclination and you had the time. But you have one day. Then things will start to change. History will begin to reshape itself. Do you understand? Twenty-four hours, and then nobody will even remember that the past used to be different. And you—you, little girl—won't even exist in that world. So you better do something about it quick."

"But how? I mean, even if I was willing—"

"Find the watch. Go back in time. Brave untold dangers. Destroy evil. Defend justice.
Find the watch.
"

This talk of destroying and defending was making Deanna nervous. "Where? I don't even know where to begin."

"Well, right here is a good place to start. We're in medieval France. What is this? Do we have to tell you everything? If it was easy, ducky, we wouldn't need you to do it."

The other, his red-and-white shirt bearing the message
COKE,
leaned closer to his companion and repeated, "I told you she was dumber than the cat."

"The cat?" the first echoed. "Do you think we should send the cat to help her?"

The other shrugged.

"Now wait a minute," Deanna said. "You're not sending anyone. I'm not going." She wasn't even sure she believed all this, and anyway she was expected back for lunch.

"Fine. Just be aware that you can't get home from here. Time here travels at a different rate." Then, to the other: "What good would a cat be?"

The more normal-looking one said, "It doesn't have to
be
a cat."

"Would you listen to me?" Deanna said. "I'm
sure you could find someone who'd be much better at—"

The first fair folk glanced appraisingly at Oliver, who arched his back and made a sound very like a growl. "Good thought. If nothing else, the cat can listen to her complain." He waved his hand. The air sparkled and snapped.

"Oh my gosh," Deanna whispered.

"Not bad," the T-shirted one said.

"Try not to mess things up too badly," the one with the chartreuse hair told her. "And remember: you have twenty-four hours."

Both began to shimmer, to fade. Deanna could see through them, to the trees behind them. Faintly she heard one ask the other, "So, who are you taking to the dance tonight?" The last thing she saw before they dissolved into nothingness was a lavender shirt with the words
Auf Wiedersehen.

Then she turned to Oliver.

Whatever Oliver was, he definitely wasn't a cat any longer.

What he looked like was a young man—a boy—a year or two older than Deanna. He had dropped to a crouch and was watching her at least as apprehensively as she was watching him. He was dark-haired but pale-skinned, his eyes the same shade of green as they had been ... before. Black rough-spun pants and shirt, vest of black fur (not, presumably, from a cat), a sword similar to the ones the fair folk had worn: his appearance was indeed vaguely ... medieval.

Deanna found herself dressed in a lilac-colored gown with matching slippers and hat. The hat, she thought, after examining it, looked like a dunce cap with attached scarf.

Oliver inched backward, as though afraid of her. Deanna remembered how he had leapt into the water after her, going against his nature to rescue her and she hated that something about her made him afraid. "It's all right," she reassured him, though she felt it was unfair that there was no one around to reassure
her.
"We're still friends. Don't run away; we'll never find each other again if you run away."

He hesitated, his large green eyes never leaving her face.

Deanna stepped forward, but stopped when Oliver looked ready to bolt. She fought the inclination to say, "Come here, Oliver, come on, boy." She was vaguely uneasy, looking at Oliver the timid but attractive youth, as she remembered Oliver the cat, who would put his head in her lap and listen—or at least not interrupt—while she talked of how she missed home, missed the way things used to be. She began to get angry, not at him, but at the two fair folk. They hadn't asked his permission to turn him into a human any more than they had asked her if she wanted to come here and go on this ridiculous quest. Just because it was the human and not the elfin community in danger—