Completely Smitten Part 40

"It takes a special request," Clotho said.

"Which we made before this century of debacles."

"Really," Atropos said, "it was just a decade or two of debacles. It only felt like a century."

"Still," Clotho said, "we checked. The dispensation remains."

"For Ariel," Darius said. "Who wasn't born yet."

"For your soul mate." Lachesis peered at him. "She is so well suited to you. She sees the magical edges. The familiar she found you came none too soon."

"Do you watch everything?" Darius asked.

"Goodness, no," Atropos said. "Only the good parts."

Clotho punched her on the arm. Atropos glared at her. Lachesis leaned over and separated them.

"We will share our lifespans," Darius said. It wasn't a question. He was only beginning to understand.

"You will share everything," Clotho said.

"Remember," Lachesis said, "you are our success story."

"Congratulations," Atropos said.

"You are free to go," Clotho said.

And together all three Fates clapped their hands. A bright light filled Darius's eyes, and then he found himself back in his own kitchen. The smell of spaghetti sauce threatened to overwhelm him. The noodles had congealed in the sink, and Munin was nowhere to be seen.

Darius leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. He felt dizzy and out of sorts. The world seemed like it had tilted somehow.

Ariel was his soul mate, and he had sent her away.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" asked a voice from behind him.

He jumped, then turned around.

Blackstone stood there, arms crossed, looking more ferocious than Darius had ever seen him.

Darius let out a breath. "Jeez, Aethelstan, am I glad to see you."

"Really?" Blackstone's voice was cold. "Have we met?"

"Yes, of course we have." Darius felt a shiver run through him. In exchange for ending his sentence, had the Fates taken away the last three millennia? Was he going to have to rebuild everything?

"I don't remember it," Blackstone said.

They ended his sentence. The chill Darius felt grew. He looked down at himself. No wonder the world had felt as if it tilted. It had. It had grown smaller.

His custom-designed house no longer fit him. He was too tall, too thin, too young.

"Hey!" he shouted to the Fates, hoping they could hear him. "You can't do this! It's too soon!"

But no one answered him. Blackstone was still staring at him. "You want to explain that little comment?"

Darius swallowed. Lovely. He hadn't expected this twist. "Aethelstan, it's me. Andvari."

"Sure it is," Blackstone said. "And I'm really Chauncey Blodgett, brought back from the dead."

"Who?" Darius asked.

"The greatest chef in Europe in the mid-Fourteenth--oh, never mind," Blackstone said. "What have you done with him?"

"Chauncey Blodgett?"

"No. Andvari."

"Nothing," Darius said. "I 'am' him."

Blackstone took a step forward, face dark, eyes narrowed. He looked very menacing--or he would have looked very menacing if he could have towered over Dar. But he didn't. Darius looked him directly in the eye.

"Andvari," Blackstone said with great precision, "has been my best friend for a thousand years. If he looked like you, don't you think I'd know that?"

"It would be logical." Darius was amazed at how calm he sounded.

Blackstone raised his eyebrows, his mocking look. Darius had always found these movements threatening, but they weren't, not really. Not when he could look at Blackstone directly, maybe even a little down on him.

Blackstone wasn't as large a man as Darius thought he was.

"So why are you lying to me?" Blackstone asked.

Darius sighed. This was going to be hard. No wonder the Fates were in trouble. Hadn't they thought about the effect his change would have on his world?

Of course they hadn't. They were only thinking in terms of crime and punishment. When they thought in other terms, they seemed to get themselves in trouble.

"Sit down, Aethelstan," Darius said.

"I'll stand, thank you."

"No, really," Darius said. "I'll make some more pasta, and we can sit down and discuss this like real people over a meal."

"I'm not hungry." Blackstone actually sounded petulant. "I want to know what you've done with Andvari."

"Nothing," Darius said again. "I 'am' Andvari."

Blackstone's lower lip jutted out slightly. "All right. In Fourteen-ninety-one, who convinced Isabella that Columbus's hare-brained schemes weren't so crazy?"

"You did." Dar's stomach was rumbling. He was going to eat, even if Blackstone wasn't. "I guarded the door while you met with her, and I even managed to convince Ferdinand that she was in the garden by making a ghost-spell for the s.p.a.ce of that afternoon. Every time he looked out, he saw her down there, but when he went down, she was gone. He was really annoyed. We almost blew it that time. If he'd caught you with her, you might have been arrested."

"As if that were a problem," Blackstone said.

"The Chief Inquisitor was one of us."

"Andvari used to say that." Blackstone had his arms crossed. "Obviously he's told you this story."

"Obviously," Darius said sarcastically, "since I couldn't have lived through it and remembered it."

He put more water on the stove, then cursed. He didn't want to wait to eat. Instead he conjured up a plate of pasta and then ladled sauce onto it.

"Andvari never wastes his magic," Blackstone said.

"Andvari has had a rough day," Darius said, "and it's about to get rougher. You sure you don't want some?"

Blackstone shook his head as Munin walked into the room. The puppy's tail started to wag when he saw Darius. By the time Munin had crossed the room, it looked as if his tail were a propeller forcing him forward.

"Hey, boy," Darius said, crouching toward him. Munin licked his face, then shoved his snout toward the plateful of food. Darius moved the food away.

Blackstone watched it all carefully. Familiars didn't get that familiar with other magical types. They were friendly, but not that friendly.

"So he's your puppy," Blackstone said. "Now this is all making sense."

"It's not like you to make things up," Darius said. "Nothing is making sense to you. You need my explanation."

Blackstone continued to stare at him. Darius sighed and set the plate on the table. Munin stretched himself to his full length, doing a dance on his short, stubby hind legs as he tried to reach the table. He wasn't even close.

"Please sit, Aethelstan," Darius said.

Blackstone still didn't move.

Darius sat down, reached for his fork, and then pushed his plate away. "I can go through story after story after story. Let's try Nineteen-twelve, when Emma's coffin fell overboard as they were trying to load it onto the 't.i.tanic'. You had to do a spell in front of huge crowds to prevent water from seeping inside, and then you had to make them forget we even existed, so we couldn't take the ship after all, which you always regretted, saying you could have repaired that iceberg damage."

"Everyone knows that story," Blackstone said.

"Except the Emma part," Darius said. "Or how about Ten-sixty-six? William is conquering, and I said we'd be better off in China. You'd never even heard of China, so I popped us to Beijing, which wasn't Beijing at the time, and into a restaurant--which you'd never even heard of before, because the Chinese were the people who invented restaurants--and you had rice for the very first time. I did that because I knew that the way to convince you of anything was to have you eat first and think later, which I've been trying to have you do ever since I popped back here--"

"Back from where?" Blackstone asked. His arms were still crossed, but he snuck a glance at the stove.

The sauce did smell good. Darius pulled his plate closer. "The d.a.m.n Fates, who aren't helping me at all right now!"

He said that last part loudly, in case they heard him. It would be easier if they heard him. They could explain everything to Blackstone. And to Ariel.

Oh, no. How was he going to explain any of this to Ariel?

"Why would the Fates help you?" Blackstone asked.

"Do you remember what you said when I told you I knew Darius?"

Blackstone's eyes narrowed. "Are you Darius?"

"I'm Andvari," Darius said. "And I'm--"

"You look like Ariel's description of Darius."

"Whom you don't respect," Darius said. "You've told me a thousand times that you think it's silly for someone to take three thousand years to fulfill a sentence as easy as that one. You've said there must be something wrong with a man who couldn't put together people who were meant to be together."

Blackstone sank into a chair. His cheeks were turning red.

"We weren't that close in the beginning," Darius said. "You thought I was a short, obnoxious guy, just like everyone else did. You didn't find out until Thirteen-thirty-three that I was Andvari, and that was only because that elderly Scandinavian woman pointed at me and screamed that I was a dead ringer for him. So I told you that story, and you a.s.sumed that's where I started. It wasn't, Aethelstan."

Blackstone's flush had grown darker. His mouth worked, but no words emerged.

"Somewhere in there--I can't remember the exact year-- I started to tell you about my past. Only I opened with, 'Have you ever heard of Darius?' and you launched into that speech of yours that has remained unchanged for over six hundred years, and I decided not to tell you. But didn't you wonder, Aethelstan, why I disappeared for ten days out of every year and never, ever let you come with me? You were surprised when you found out I had a home in Idaho. Didn't you think it odd that I knew someone you've never met, considering how long we've known each other?"

Blackstone was just staring at him. For the first time since Darius had known the man, he couldn't tell what Blackstone was thinking.

"Or do you just need proof?" Darius snapped his fingers and made himself look like the body he'd worn for years. It felt more comfortable to be small, but it also felt weird. This body wasn't the same. It felt like a construct--a suit of clothes. An ill-fitting one at that.

"See?" Darius said in his gruff, nasal Andrew Vari voice. "Now you recognize me."

Blackstone continued to stare at him. Then he looked at Munin, who was sitting on the floor, staring at the table, tail wagging. The dog looked completely unconcerned, just like a good familiar would. A good familiar would recognize his owner no matter what form the owner wore.

"Which is your normal form?" Blackstone asked.

Darius changed back. "This one."

Blackstone nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. "You'd better tell me everything, then."

So Darius did. He told Blackstone about the problems, the first meeting with the Fates, the part of the sentence no one knew. He told Blackstone how difficult it had been to be two different people at the same time, and how being small had changed him almost more than being a matchmaker had.

Then he told Blackstone about his most recent meeting with the Fates and how they had determined that his sentence was fulfilled.

Blackstone listened silently, occasionally nodding. At one point, he conjured a plate of spaghetti for himself and put sauce on it, pausing to give some tomato-covered meat to Munin, who ate it too fast to be grateful.

"And then I came back to find you here," Darius said. Then he frowned. "Why are you here?"

Blackstone shrugged. "I came to find out why Ariel quit."

"She quit?"

He nodded. "Said she couldn't stay, not after she embarra.s.sed herself like that. Said it was one too many times with you."

"Oh, jeez," Darius said, pushing away from the table.

The tiny chair he'd been sitting on nearly tumbled over backwards. He had to bend to keep it from falling. "I have to see her."

"Not yet," Blackstone said. "We're not done with this conversation."

Darius held the chair, staring at his old friend. He knew what was coming--he'd been dreading it for centuries-- but he always figured he'd have time to prepare for it, maybe even time to tell Blackstone the story before the change.