Charles

  I’m not cut out to be a teacher. I’m not cut out to be Prime Minister either, but that’s at least up my alley: ten years as a union organizer followed by fifteen as an MP have prepared me for politics. But children—God damn! I’d thought that fatherhood might have helped me there, but I’d never had to raise more than two at a time. Today I’ve just taught 150 of them in five batches of thirty.

  At the end of the day, what I get for my trouble is a cot on the floor of the Canadian Tire Centre, which has been serving as an emergency shelter since the heat stopped working. The cot is new; I used to sleep on the floor. But suddenly I’ve become a pretty popular guy, and people are falling over themselves to offer whatever amenities they can; while I like to think I’m a pretty humble man, I’m not about to turn down a cot after spending two nights in a quinzhee.

  I’m just on the cusp of falling asleep when I hear a voice: “Excuse me? Mr. Oakes? Uh—Mr. Prime Minister?”

  I force my eyes open. There’s a woman standing at the foot of my cot; she’s white, late-thirties, wearing a cream-coloured parka. In a past life, she was probably a soccer mom—not generally my supporters, but these are interesting times.

  “Yes?”

  Suddenly I feel the blunt pain of an apple bouncing off my forehead. “Stay the hell away from my child!”

  No sooner has she shouted than have half a dozen of my neighbours leapt to their feet to restrain her; the situation has the potential to get ugly, so I sit up in bed and raise my hands in a calming gesture. More impromptu defenders hold her in place, facing me.

  “How dare you teach my daughter witchcraft!” she screams. “You dancing monkey! Cavorting with the Whore of Babylon in Rideau Hall!”

  “Get her out of here!” orders one of my rescuers—a trim white man with close-cropped sandy brown hair worn in a military style. Like a large proportion of the people here, he’s in a wheelchair; a great many able-bodied people have already fled the city.

  “These are the End Times!” I hear the woman shout as she’s led away. “Is your soul ready?”

  “Make sure you don’t hurt her!” I call after them, knowing the risks of mob justice.

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Prime Minister,” says the man in the wheelchair. He extends a hand. “Randall Griggs, Ottawa Police Department. Well, used to be at any rate.”

  “Chuck Oakes,” I reply, handing him the apple so lately tossed at my face. “Dancing monkey for the Whore of Babylon.”

  Griggs seems to find this funnier than it is. “Well, witchcraft or no, I’m grateful for a bit more food around here.”

  I accept his praise with a nod. “Thanks for protecting me, Randall.”

  “No problem. Though may I offer some advice?”

  “Go ahead,” I reply, hoping he’ll be quick about it.

  “You can’t sleep out in the open like this now that you’re Prime Minister! I mean—staying at a shelter when you’re some no-name backbencher—uh, no offence—is one thing. But you’re the head of the Government now!”

  “The figurehead, anyways.”

  “Yeah, sure, but the point is that you’re in the spotlight. And while most people here feel the way I do—”

  “There’s a fair number who want to do me harm. Point taken.”

  “That’s right,” replies Griggs. He looks a bit uncomfortable and wheels up next to me; then, in a low voice he adds: “Like what that loony-toon back there said; not specifically about you, but the Rapture, the Antichrist, the end of the world—I’ve heard a lot of folks talking like that around here.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Not really; I’m Catholic. We don’t buy into that ‘Rapture’ crap. But I can tell you that, with everything that’s going on, there’re a lot of people who would never have even considered the idea before who suddenly think it sounds pretty reasonable.”

  “I wish I could say I disagreed.”

  “Well, you’ve worked one-on-one with these Tinkerbell types, haven’t you? Do they seem like the Devil?”

  I think about it for a moment, trying to see past my revulsion at Elestrine’s behaviour before answering. “No. Or at least, I don’t think so. I mean—they can be cruel…murderous; they can do evil things. But—well—no more cruel or evil than some things humans have been known to do. And some of them can even be kind, or at least…reasonable, I guess? Honestly, they seem…like people.”

  Griggs reflects on this. “I wish they felt the same way about us.”

  There’s a lull in the conversation, so I ease myself back into lying position. “Anyways, Randall, I’m pretty tired, so—”

  “There’s one other thing I wouldn’t mind bringing up with you, if it’s alright.”

  Of course there is. I pry my eyes back open to hear what he has to say. “Yeah?”

  “Well—don’t get me wrong; the apples are great, but—there’s this rumour going around that you knocked that poncy General of theirs on his ass.”

  In spite of my exhaustion, I find myself chuckling. “You shouldn’t believe every rumour you hear,” I say. “Except that one. That one’s absolutely true, and, to answer your next question—it felt damn good.”

  Griggs’s eyes dart from side to side. “Actually, that wasn’t going to be my next question. See, some of my buddies and I, well, we were hoping you might teach us how you did it.”

  I lean up on my elbow. “You want to fight them.”

  Griggs looks uncomfortable. “There’s talk of a resistance. Right now, you’re our single biggest hope for fighting back.”

  “I slightly inconvenienced one man because I had the element of surprise,” I whisper. “And the surprise was as much on my part as on his. It’s hardly a weapon of war. And I’m not even sure that I know what I did!”

  “Well, with all due respect sir, it’s a hell of a lot more than anything my buds in the Forces managed during the war. And we don’t need to fight them in the field—that’s not how resistance movements work. Slightly inconveniencing them and slinking back into the night doesn’t sound like much, but it’s how guerrilla wars are fought. And it’s better than nothing! At least until—”

  “Until you come up with something better.”

  “Yeah.”

  I lay a hand on his arm. “We are in a very precarious position here,” I say. “We’re utterly at their mercy. I’m not sure that upsetting the applecart—”

  “Maybe our focus should be on not being at their mercy!” Griggs snaps, just a little too loudly. “Sir.”

  I sigh. “I’ll consider it.”

  “That’s all I ask.” Griggs wheels back a bit and then raises his voice back into a deliberately audible range. “Anyways. What I was going to recommend as far as your security is concerned is that a couple of my buddies and me take shifts guarding you while you sleep, okay? If you’ll agree to it, that is.”

  I’m too tired to want to discuss the idea further. “Sounds good,” I mutter, burying my head in my pillow.

  It takes over an hour for me to get to sleep.

  *

  “Go on then,” says Cloutier imperiously. “Put some back into it! We need apples for all thirty-seven million of us!”

  I stroll into his factory, ringing my cowbell ineffectually. “The children are supposed to have school now,” I say. I look down at the rows upon rows of them lining the factory floor, piling bushel upon bushel of apples into baskets. They don’t seem to be paying attention to me.

  “They’re a bit busy at the moment,” says Cloutier, coming up alongside me. His silk top hat sits so awkwardly upon his antlers that I’m afraid it might fall off, but he shows a remarkable balance upon his hind hooves.

  “My hands are cold!” complains one of the children, a little boy with a runny nose.

  “They’ll be a whole lot colder on the street, boy!” exclaims Cloutier, kicking the kid up the backside with a cloven foot. The boy whimpers and skulks away.

  “You shouldn’t treat them like that,” I say. “They’re only children.”

  “They’ll lay the blame on the one who named him Paul d’hiver,” replies Cloutier sagely. He lights a cigar and proffers another to me in his hoof. “Care to join me, Mr. Oakes?”

  “Aren’t you worried about what it will do to your body?”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Cloutier puffs and then exhales a smoke ring from his muzzle. “Capital idea you had to use child labour, old sport. Nimble little fingers; good for detail work.”

  “I was…trying to educate them,” I say. “They have an easier time with the magic. They don’t know how the world is supposed to work.”

  “Plus, they teach each other!” enthuses Cloutier. “You teach one lad, he teaches ten of his chums! It’s our very own pyramid scheme. Absolutely imperial! I had no idea you had it in you! Are you quite certain you won’t join me in a cigar, dear fellow?”

  “The children are our future,” I say, not quite certain why I’m reciting such a vomit-worthy cliché.

  “I’m afraid, old bean, that you will find that the children are their future!”

  I turn my head in the direction he’s looking, out into the almost-unbearably bright carnival procession that’s taking place outside.

  “Go on and join them, old bean!” calls Cloutier, taking a bite out of his cigar. “I’ll only dock most of your wages.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me twice. If nothing else, it’s at least a nice respite from the factory floor and the stench of smoke-filled backrooms.

  I find that the street is a riot of colours under the blazing sun; endless rows of market stalls stretch off in both directions, full of people in masks selling all manner of things. Between them, a parade of jugglers, stilt-walkers, and acrobats makes its way down the street, all under a banner reading “OTTAWA TIEND DAYZ”.

  “Fish! Fresh fish!” a vendor calls.

  “Nuclear weapons! Getcher nuclear weapons here!” exclaims another.

  “Dignity! How about a bit of ethically sourced dignity to brighten up your life?”

  “Hey buddy, you come here all the time,” says a hotdog vendor next to me. “Here, have one on the house.”

  The “hotdog” he offers me turns out to be a woolly mammoth trunk on a bun. I grimace at it in distaste. “I think I’m still on hunger strike,” I tell him. “Sorry bud.”

  “You sure? It’s the best part!”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Sucks to be you.”

  Don’t I know it.

  I continue on against the tide of the parade and find Rupi Dhaliwal wearing a purple tailcoat a few thousand kilometres down the road. “Make way,” she commands, “for her highness her Excellency Elestrine Berit-Ardra av-Dahuyn, Princess of Truesorrow and Governor General of Canada, as well as the vice-regal consort, or so he would like to think, General Jimbo Audan!”

  The announcement sounds a little off to me. “Are you sure his name is ‘Jimbo’?” I ask. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “It’s just a name,” replies Rupi with a shrug. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I thought that nothing was ever just a name.”

  Before Rupi can answer, I take note of Elestrine moving in behind her, dressed in a cheap Halloween devil costume and brandishing a plastic pitchfork. Awyrel runs out in front of her, dressed like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and takes me aside.

  “Please at least try to be frightened of her,” Awyrel begs. “She’s put an awful lot of work into her disguise, and I don’t want to ruin her big day!”

  “I—um—I suppose I can try,” I stammer.

  “But she is frightening!” someone insists. I turn my head and am not surprised to find Byron McFeely, today manning a ring-toss counter and dressed like a carny.

  “That’s the spirit!” exclaims Awyrel, beaming so brightly that McFeely instinctively scurries away under the fridge in my first apartment.

  “Is this some sort of mythopoeic nonsense?” I demand, turning back to Awyrel. “Because that’s really not my domain.”

  “It’s my domain now!” insists Jimbo Audan, catching me off guard. He licks his oversized lollipop menacingly. “Mine by right of conquest!”

  “Odd name for a Fairy,” is all that I can say.

  “Be off, little carpenter,” he says with a shooing gesture. “We don’t need your lot anymore.”

  “I’m a lawmaker these days.”

  “We need those even less,” Jimbo sneers.

  “You’ll need a good lawyer,” I say bitterly.

  “Just leave him be,” says Awyrel, leading me off with a hand against my back. “No need to pick fights you have no chance of winning.”

  “Maybe you should ask the Wizard for some courage,” I suggest.

  “I’ve already gotten what I want from the Wizard,” she replies, leaving me alone behind one of the market stalls.

  There’s a beach at least; beautiful sapphire waves lapping against the white sand. It’s a nice respite from the weather we’ve had lately.

  I feel a tug on my sleeve and look down to see a little girl, brown-skinned and maybe six years old by her appearance. She says something urgent to me in a language I don’t recognize.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  She rolls her eyes and tries again. “Pardonnez-moi, monsieur, avez-vous vu mon petit fils?”

  “Non, désolé.” I reply.

  “I coulda swore I just saw him,” she says, wandering off.

  “I hope she finds him,” I mutter to myself.

  I walk along the beach for a while, watching the water funnel down into a whirlpool, seemingly without bottom. Well, you don’t see that every day.

  “There’s a whole other dimension down there,” I mutter. “But this one is strange enough these days.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s Florida for you,” says Meaghan, placing her hand gently on my sunburnt arm.

  I can scarcely believe how beautiful my wife looks in the light of the sun—her black hair, her olive skin; my heart breaks to see her. “Oh God,” I whisper. I wrap my arms around her and run my right hand down her back, playing with the straps of her swimsuit. This feeling, our bodies pressed against one another, I never want it to stop. “I’ve missed you so much,” I tell her, kissing the nape of her neck.

  Meaghan seems unimpressed by this. “Well then you should have come with us,” she says, pushing against my chest.

  “I did! The kids wanted to take a holiday down here and here we are!”

  Meaghan looks at me quizzically. “This isn’t Florida.”

  “No, it’s not,” I realize. “I’m still in Ottawa, aren’t I?” I look out at the enormous whirlpool on the horizon. “I didn’t even know we had an ocean.”

  “This isn’t Ottawa, this is Weyburn,” Meaghan insists. “We’re making for the border.”

  There’s a pause.

  “I’m dreaming,” we both say at once.

  “You’re really you, aren’t you though?” she asks.

  “Last time I checked,” I say. Suddenly, I realize the implications. “You’re alive! We’re sharing the same dream!”

  “How is this possible?”

  “How is anything possible?” I reply with a rush of excitement. A thousand thoughts jockey to be the first out of my mouth, succeeding only at tripping over each other at the starting gate. Finally, all that I can manage is “So, how have you been?”

  She gives me a look that I have never seen on another human face: that mixture of surprise, dumbfoundedness, and consideration that only a wife can give her husband. Then, before I can utter another word, she pulls me in and kisses me passionately on the lips.

  “Don’t leave me again,” she says, finally pulling back after what feels like too short of a time. “Please. Meet me in the States.”

  I blink salt tears from eyes. “I can’t,” I say, and suddenly the beach seems a great deal less sunny than before. “I’m needed here.”

  “We’re dying,” she says flatly. “I haven’t eaten in three days.”

  That, I realize, is something that I can help with. “Listen,” I say. “And pay attention, because I don’t know how long this dream will last. I can teach you to feed yourself, but you need to—”

  *

  “Mr. Prime Minister, you need to wake up!”

  I open my eyes to see the face of Randall Griggs. A chorus of snores sounds from all around us.

  I groan, blinking the sleep from my eyes. “For heaven’s sake, what?”

  Griggs nods toward the foot of the bed, and only then do I become conscious of Awyrel watching from the shadows. She’s dressed in a hooded cloak, presumably so as not to attract undue attention to herself, or perhaps just so as not to wake anyone with her luminescent skin.

  I sit up with a start. “What are you doing here?”

  Awyrel approaches and addresses me in a low whisper. “Her Excellency, the Governor General, requests an audience.”

  I ease back onto the cot. “Tell her Excellency that I have had a very long day.”

  “She knows,” says Awyrel, her tone uncharacteristically stern. “You need to come with me. It’s urgent.”

  “You might not know it to look at me,” I mumble, burying my head defiantly in my pillow. “But we mere mortals need our beauty sleep.” I close my eyes and try to picture my wife, Meaghan.

  “She wants to negotiate terms.”

  I look up at her. “Terms?”

  “For acceding to your demands. She wants to feed your people.”

  “In return for what?”

  Awyrel purses her lips. “That’s why she wants to meet with you, Mr. Oakes. It is… delicate.”

  “He’s not going anywhere if he doesn’t want to,” declares Griggs, crossing his arms across his chest.

  “It’s alright,” I say to Griggs. “If it absolutely can’t wait…”

  “It can’t,” insists Awyrel.

  I yawn. “Alright then,” I say, rolling laboriously off the cot. “Let’s be on our way.”

  *

  I’ve never flown on the back of a dragon before; I’m not eager to do it again. Like so much that has transpired over the past few weeks, it is a great deal less fun than it sounds—like riding a rollercoaster, except that you have no valid reason to assume it’s been engineered for your safety, and rollercoasters don’t generally have a habit of eating their passengers. Thankfully, it’s not far to Parliament.

  “Come along then,” says Awyrel, leaping effortlessly off the monster’s back. She pats the dragon—whose name, apparently, is Igrox—affectionately on his leathery muzzle.

  I half-dismount, half-fall from the dragon’s flank, landing in a snowdrift. Suppressing nausea, I rise slowly to my feet. The darkened Parliament, lit only by the glowing tendrils of bluish frost now snaking around the Peace Tower, swims dizzyingly before my eyes.

  “Oh,” says Awyrel, perceiving my condition. “Sorry. I suppose that must be disorienting for you. Igrox is not like one of your airplanes, is he?”

  The tide of dizziness gradually ebbs and my eyes all-too-slowly decide where they are supposed to be. A thought occurs to me: “How do you know about airplanes? They were out of commission by the time your people invaded.”

  “I make a point of familiarizing myself with human culture,” Awyrel replies, offering me a hand. “To better advise her Excellency.”

  “Well, you seem to know your shit at least,” I say. “Pardon my language. And here I had you pegged for a handmaiden.”

  “The Princess is quite capable of dressing herself,” Awyrel replies. She looks toward the main entrance. “Shall we?”

  I follow wearily as Awyrel heads toward the Senate Chamber, leading Igrox by the reigns. His claws click against the hard marble floor, sounding like a cross between a large dog and an army of women in stiletto heels.

  When we reach it, the Senate Chamber—which, by this point, might more properly be called a throne room—gleams in the reddish light cast by the starscape on the ceiling. The sole exception is Elestrine herself, bathed in a bluish halo in the middle of the room, roughly where the order table once stood.

  Igrox takes a running leap from the entrance and glides on his leathery, aerodynamically useless wings over to the throne, leaving me to face Elestrine directly.

  “How delightful to see you again, Chuck,” she says with a smile more alarming than disarming.

  “Chuck”? I think. I didn’t realize we were on a first-name basis. Whatever. “Awyrel tells me that you’re willing to accept my demands, Excellency.”

  “After a fashion,” she says, still smiling creepily. “Although, from what I’ve heard”—she shoots a glance toward Awyrel—“you seem to have figured out how to feed your people on your own.”

  Awyrel hangs her head in something very much like shame.

  “No matter,” says Elestrine, gently tilting her servant’s head up. “I have decided that famine is in no one’s best interests.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” I monotone. “Excellency.”

  “Yes, I thought so,” she replies. “You may go Awyrel.”

  “With respect, Excellency, wouldn’t it be best if—”

  “Go.”

  “Yes, Excellency.” Awyrel curtsies and exits through the door, leaving me alone with the princess and the dragon.

  Elestrine turns back to me. “You’re getting what you’ve asked for, Chuck,” she says. She smiles again. “Are you not pleased?”

  “Yes, Excellency,” I say guardedly. “Though I…can’t help but wonder what brought about this sudden change of heart.”

  “Love,” she declares simply.

  “Love?” I repeat, scoffing slightly despite my best efforts.

  “Yes,” she says. “My love for my subjects; my subjects’ love for me; and of course,” she lays her hands—delicate, but deceptively firm—down upon my shoulders. “Our love for each other.”

  My back stiffens in recoil. “Oh.”

  “You see, Mr. Oakes—Chuck—I am desirous that this colony should exist harmoniously—Fae and human, Canadian and Everglacian, united by ties of love.” She looks into my eyes. “Do you not want the same thing?”

  “It—certainly appeals more than the immediate alternative,” I mutter. “But what do you want in return?”

  Elestrine laughs musically. “Oh, a trifling thing, Chuck. A simple token of the newfound kinship between our peoples.”

  “And…what would that be?”

  Elestrine produces a ring from the folds of her dress. “Charles Oakes,” she intones. “Will you marry me?”