“You must forgive me. Old men have a habit of lecturing the young and expecting you to be grateful for the privilege of our aphorisms. The truth is I sent for you because of what you did for me in saving the horses. I had some idea of thanking you for your undaunted courage, by offering you a fine dinner.” He narrowed his sparkling eyes, leaned closer to his guest. “But since then my thoughts have taken another turn.”
Meriwether looked on expectantly, wondering if he detected an ominous tone in the wizard’s words, but Franklin laughed. “Not during dinner, my new friend. I find speaking politics at a meal sours the stomach and causes indigestion. We shall discuss my idea soon enough, but first let’s enjoy our repast with some light talk. I trust that will prove soothing after what has been a very difficult day for both of us.”
Meriwether enjoyed, and endured, a dinner with a prodigious number of courses, a custom that he was sure Franklin remembered from his younger years when he had traveled across Europe, long before the appearance and destruction of Mr. Halley’s comet in 1759. “I confess I am ravenous, Mr. Lewis. Expending my magic as I did today drains the energy in my body, and my only recourse is to refuel. Hence, this glorious feast!” He piled his plate yet again.
To Meriwether the fare of this banquet had a definite feel of the frontier rather than the great houses of England or France. Meriwether especially liked the venison prepared with gooseberries, and a dessert that somehow managed to include turkey eggs.
“A noble bird, the turkey,” Franklin said. “Fed the first pioneers to the land, fierce in defense of its young. We should all be very grateful to the turkey.”
The dinner conversation led them through Franklin reminiscing about his early adventures in England, after magic had become apparent in the world to himself as well as a few other people, but before the Sundering cut off the colonies from the Old World. Meriwether listened, enchanted.
“I always say,” Franklin mused, “that the reason for my success is not the presence of great magic on my person, but more the great power of a mind inclined to natural science when applied to magic. I don’t know why no one else has considered magic that way throughout the ages. Magic is, in fact, very much like any other science, and can be learned with a little logical thought. Or a lot of logical thought.”
The dizzying variety of food and the endless clatter of dishes being removed went on for more than two hours. Meriwether was more than sated, utterly exhausted from the ordeals of the day, and fascinated by the company.
Finally, the servants cleared the table, and provided the men with glasses of brandy, leaving the decanter along with a deep dish of nuts in their shells. The brandy, a rare indulgence for Meriwether, tasted like golden sunshine on his tongue, finally cleansing the uneasiness that he’d had since the dragon’s mind touched his, that he was confined to some land of discomfort and cold from which he could never quite emerge. It was good to banish the feeling, which reminded him overmuch of the melancholy turns his mind sometimes took, rendering him incapable of any work or clear thought for months.
“I am sorry for boring you with my rambling, Mr. Lewis,” Franklin said, as he cracked two walnuts in his long, thin fingers that yet showed no sign of being withered with age.
Meriwether stifled an embarrassing yawn. “You didn’t bore me, sir. In fact—” He felt heat rise to his face, because he’d always been intrigued by people who had known the world as it used to be. “In fact, I was very much interested in the descriptions of France and England, before…you know—When they were still accessible.”
Instead of laughing, Franklin nodded in agreement. “I’m fond of saying that there is no such thing as knowing your own land until you travel abroad. Since the Sundering, we have formed several nations and experimented with various models of government in our world but I doubt there is enough variety to truly cultivate the mind by exposing it to the unknown. All the lands left to us are as recently colonized as our own, the landscape explored all the way to the mighty Mississippi. All our buildings, our food, our entertainment, are shaped by the exigencies of the frontier, and of newly conquered land. And here lies St. Louis, right on the very verge of the known.” He gave his guest a keen look. “I understand your interest in longing to see a world that had already been lost when you were born.” He considered for a moment, and made a sound with his tongue against his teeth. “But that isn’t the only world in need of exploration.” His eyes twinkled again. “Which brings us in a roundabout way to what I wished to talk about.”
Meriwether sat up, intently interested. “Yes?”
Franklin leaned back in his chair, cradling the glass of brandy between his hands. “I came to St. Louis, the edge of the frontier, ostensibly to give a lecture on magic. It’s a habit of mine, wherever I’m bound, because despite decades of usefulness and use, magic still scares the superstitious.”
“I saw that with my own eyes,” Meriwether said. “After the dragon fires were put out, I lay in the street, unconscious and untended, because the people were afraid I was somehow a sorcerer like yourself.”
Franklin chuckled. “Exactly the sort of superstition I meant! But it isn’t magic they fear, but the unknown. Before the Sundering, magic was the province of charlatans and swindlers, its study quite unbecoming to modern and civilized men of a scientific disposition. Magic, like science, can lead to great harm, and great ill. The same electricity I harness with magic can be harnessed by science and used either as a powering effect for devices—if an unreliable one—or to cause pain, harm, and even death.” Franklin set his glass down, picked up another walnut, cracked the shell, and delicately extracted the meat within. “Surely you know the same is true in your avocation, which I’m told is healing? Herbs with potent properties?”
“Yes. We say the poison is in the dose. The same herb that can relieve a condition can also kill a patient if the dose be too large. And sometimes the efficacious dose is so large, so near the lethal dose, we have to work by very small increments to avoid taking a life.” Meriwether found it curious to think of magic as botany.
“That is what my lectures were about,” Franklin said. “But coming here to address the French frontiersmen was something of a pretext, too.”
“A pretext?”
“I didn’t expect the dragon,” Franklin said, as though talking to himself, “or at least not in such a traditional form, considering the roots and manifestations of magic among our varied cultures. Now, I would not have been surprised if some magical beast, a great bear or some other animal native to these wild lands, had lurched out of the unknown to attack us. But I did not expect a dragon from old European folklore. It seems out of place, and it goes against my formative hypothesis…but I have been told of something very similar.”