After he left, she sat in the tiny room at the keep she used for an office and scowled at the wall. From the Master’s description she recognized that the offender was Judith, but what in the World had she been doing in the aerie? Everyone knew dragons were difficult, chancy creatures whose handling had to be left to experts. Even if someone didn’t know that, it was obvious that a fire-breathing monster with an eighty-foot wingspan was not something to be approached as casually as a pony. These people from Wiz’s world might be strange and more than a touch fey, but they were intelligent and they did not appear suicidal.
Well, speculation gets me nothing, she thought, rising from her desk. The thing to do is find Judith and have a talk with her.
That and give orders to the guardsmen that the team is not to be allowed free run of the castle, she added as she went out the door.
It took Moira the better part of an hour to find the miscreant. She was standing on the parapet looking so utterly miserable that Moira’s carefully prepared scolding died in her throat.
“My Lady, are you all right?”
“Oh, hello Moira,” Judith sniffed. “No, I’m fine.”
“Forgive me, but you seem upset.”
Judith smiled wanly. “I was just thinking that you should be very careful what you wish for because you may get it.”
“My Lady?”
Judith turned toward her and Moira could see she had been crying.
“You heard what happened this morning? When I went to see the dragons?”
“That was not wise, My lady. Dragons are dangerous.”
“Yeah. Dangerous, nasty-tempered, foul-smelling beasts.” She took a sobbing breath. “Up close they’re not even pretty.”
“I am sorry if they frightened you, My Lady.”
“No, they didn’t exactly frighten me.” She smiled through her tears. “I probably scared the dragons worse than they scared me. I guess I’m really mourning the death of my dreams.”
She sniffed again and smiled with one corner of her mouth. “Funny isn’t it? I’m thirty-three years old and I’ve still got dreams. Or I did until I came here. I believe in romance. Not so much the boy-girl kind as, well—romance.”
“Romance?” Moira asked, puzzled.
“Yeah. Castles, dragons, knights in shining armor. All that stuff. And then one day they all come true. And you know what? They’re all about as romantic as a Cupertino car wash.”
Moira thought about it for a minute.
“Why should it be otherwise? People are people in your World or mine. As best I can see they all have the same wants and needs.”
“Yeah, but it was supposed to be different! Does that make any sense?” Judith asked miserably.
“In a way,” Moira said. “I am not what you call a romantic person, but I think I understand somewhat.
“You know they tell the story of Wiz and I throughout the North.” A quick smile. “We are heroes, you see. Figures of romance.
“But what we did was not terribly heroic and it wasn’t at all romantic. Mostly I was very frightened and cold. Wiz was too angry that I had been stolen to be heroic. We both did the best we could and by fortune it worked out well.”
“So what you’re saying is there is no romance in the world, in any world?”
“No, but I think there is another element, one that comes between the doing and the hearing. That is what turns something frightening or wearying or utterly miserable into a romance. I think that element is in the mind of the teller.”
She paused and looked out over the battlements to the fleecy clouds. “I think you confuse what is outside with what is within you. The dragons, or the freeways, those are the external things. It is not the deeds or the things that make a romance, it is what you do with them inside yourself.
“My lady, do you remember the day you arrived, when the dragon cavalry swept over the keep? You made us see them in a way we had never seen them before. I think that is the real secret of romance. Not places or people, but the ability to look at the World and see the romance that is there.”