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In an upstairs room a young woman sat. The room was small and somewhat cramped. A modest shelf against one wall was filled with books of all sorts, so many that they were stacked on top and spilled onto the floor beneath as well. A smaller shelf held a scattering of various implements, bottles, jars, brushes, pens, bags of powder, boxes of dried berries and crumbled barks, everything an illuminator and scribe would need to create the many colored inks of his trade. Or her trade, perhaps, for it was a girl who sat at the large, slant-topped desk, hunched over a sheet of parchment, carefully writing on it with a quill pen.

Sunlight spilled over the pages, bringing the colored inks of capitals and illuminations to life. The two walls not taken up with shelves and clutter were pierced with large windows that let in the late morning light.

The girl formed each letter with utmost care, the sharp-nibbed pen moving slowly but confidently across the page.

Then did the Valiant Prince advance upon his loathsome foe. Yea, he did advance with courage great, and his sword, which gleamed most brightly, was held aloft. For he was boldly readied to meet whatsoever his Dread Foe should bring against him. And he was thus prepared by means of his Pure and Noble Heart, which had not any evil in it. And he did face that Evil Monster with Courage Pure.

With a sigh the girl straightened. She had reached the end of the page. A fresh sheet of parchment lay ready, but the next page would need borders, and an illuminated capital, before she could continue the story. That would take at least a full day, and she wanted to take a break before diving back into the work.

She rose, stretching luxuriously. She was no more than twenty, young and fair of skin and hair. Her eyes were blue. She would have looked the picture of an upper-class maiden, the daughter of some duke or baron perhaps, were it not for the fact that her simple dress was plain, unrelieved black, the dark color a practical measure against inevitable ink spills, and her fingers were stained and smudged, as no baron's daughter's fingers should be. Her name was Emilie, and she was not a baron's daughter, but the child of a squire who had never risen to knighthood. Had her family been wealthy she might have reveled in leisure among the upper class, for her rank, though lowly, placed her above the peasants. But her father was not well off, and so she worked for her keep, and thus was not quite considered a proper part of society.

And of that she cared not a whit, for she loved books, and drawing, and had taught herself the arts of writing and illumination simply for joy of them. She would rather write of balls than attend them, and would rather draw gorgeous gowns than wear them, and her father, indulgent and educated both, encouraged her in her un-noble and unladylike ways. That they brought in some small amount of coin was an extra boon.

As Emilie tried to work the kinks of her morning's exertions from arms and shoulders she heard a soft chime from the lower story of the house.

"Coming!"

She clattered down the stairs to the front room, which was half parlor and half office. The door to the street opened directly from it. When Emilie opened the door she found Sir Edmund Browning standing there. He was, as always, perfectly groomed and impeccably dressed in the latest fashion. He was also, as always, looking down at her with a slightly superior sneer. Even though he was trying to court her, he couldn't seem to wipe the haughty expression off of his face. She bit back a sigh of irritation, and resisted the urge to rudely ask "What do you want?"

"Yes?"

"There is a concert tonight, they will be performing the latest..."

Emilie cut him off. "I am far too busy to go to concerts."

Edmund frowned. "It will be after dark. You can't work," he sneered the word contemptuously, "after sundown."

"I can if I wish. Perhaps I will get a lamp, and do simple line work. Now, if you will excuse me, you interrupted an important project." She shut the door firmly, although not so quickly that she couldn't heard the little indignant sound that Sir Edmund let out on being so summarily cut off.

She hadn't even gotten all the way up the stairs when the door chime rang again. She sighed. If that insufferably arrogant man was trying again, she would give him an earful! But when she opened the door once again she found a tall, slender stranger standing on the doorstep. He was muffled in a long cloak, with the hood drawn over his head, so that she could hardly make out his face. She blinked at him silently for a moment, trying to gather her scattered wits.

"Good afternoon. You are Emilie, the scribe?"

"Yes sir," she managed.

"Excellent. I have book which needs copying. I am given to understand that you are skilled in the precise copying of diagrams and illustrations?"

Emilie nodded, suddenly on familiar ground, despite the stranger's odd appearance. "Yes sir. Accurate copying is my specialty."

"Excellent. The text must be copied carefully, and any unusual spellings should be preserved. The actual handwriting is immaterial, so long as the text itself isn't changed, but it is absolutely vital that the illustrations, diagrams, and charts be copied exactly as they appear, in every detail and particular! Can you guarantee it?"

"I can sir," said Emilie confidently.

"Very good. I want it reproduced on vellum, and bound in leather of good quality."

Emilie hesitated. "Vellum is very expensive sir."

The half-hidden face smiled, teeth gleaming in the shadow of his hood. "I am aware of that. I am quite willing to pay for it, and to pay you well for your work, provided I'm satisfied."

"I'll have to get the price of the vellum before I start sir. I haven't enough on hand to buy a full book's worth."

"That is fine."

"If you'd like to come in, and we can set a price, and I can look at your book?"

The stranger shook his head. "I believe this will cover all necessary expenses." He held out a handful of coins, and unthinkingly Emilie reached out to take them. When they dropped into her hand they were startlingly heavy, and her eyes went wide to see three large rounds of gold, stamped with an unfamiliar device. Any one of them would probably buy the required materials. "Here is the book," said the stranger, drawing a large but slender volume from his cloak. Emilie took it, feeling the brittleness of extreme age in the leather binding. "Will a month be sufficient time to complete the work?"

"Uh, it should be, sir," said Emilie, feeling thoroughly off balance.

"Very good." The stranger nodded. "I'll pay this much again when the book is done, if it's done to my satisfaction. One more thing, however," he added, his voice low and filled with sudden intensity. "Whatever you do, whatever you do, do not read anything from the book aloud. Not a word, you understand?"

Emilie nodded slowly, her eyes wider than ever. "Yes sir."

Without a further word he turned and left, stalking through the crowded streets. Emilie noticed that a path cleared around him, as if no one wanted to get to close to him. Slowly she shut the door. She looked down at the book in her hands. It was quite broad and wide, but couldn't be more than sixty or seventy pages thick, if that. The leather crackled as she shifted her grip on it, and several tiny fragments of the parchment inside fell to the ground. Handling it carefully she carried it upstairs and set it on her desk.

The cover was plain and unadorned, bearing not even a title. When she delicately opened the book, the first page bore large, block letters reading, "BEASTES OF POWERE". The subtitle below it, in smaller, spidery text, said "Being a collecioun of knowleche of hyr sundry poweres & also ye rytes to calle ye upon hym."

She turned another page, and found a drawing of a bird of some sort. It had once been colored, but the colors had faded and flaked off to the point where it was hard to be certain exactly what colors they had been. She smiled. It had been a while since she'd had a challenge like that. Finding good matches for the original, unfaded colors would be interesting. Under the drawing, block letters read "THE PHOENYX" Beneath that was more of the wandering, spidery writing, no doubt describing the legendary bird. Emilie didn't feel like trying to puzzle out the extremely archaic language just then. The page opposite held some kind of diagram, along with more text, but that was even less comprehensible. Still, she didn't need to understand it to copy it.

She set the moldering book aside and returned to the overwrought account of the Valiant Prince. That had only two pages left, she could finish it in only a few days, and then she could start working on the new project. She found she was looking forward to it.

---

Emilie set her quill pen on the desk. She ran a finger along the feather for a moment. She had had the pen since she had been a very small child. An ordinary quill pen would long since have worn out, no matter how carefully she resharpened it, but this one had never once grown dull. The plume that topped it was like nothing she'd ever seen. It was brilliantly colored, shading from a deep indigo blue at the base, through an intense emerald green, to a stunning golden yellow. She had found it, already cut into pen shape, when she had been only five years old. It was her greatest treasure, a tiny bit of strange magic in an otherwise completely ordinary life.

She picked up a large sheet of vellum and set it in front of her. The old book was set just to the side, where she could easily compare it to the new one she would make. To the other side was a carefully sketched diagram, showing where each page should go. She was going to bind the book folio-style, which meant that the pages would be created out of order, two to a sheet, but when they were folded and sewn together they would be in proper order. If she didn't botch it, that is.

She stroked the quill once more, but then picked up a pencil. She was going to do the title page with knotwork letters. Since the strange man had said the exact lettering didn't matter, she thought that adding capitols and decorative flourishes where she could was the least she could do. The three gold coins had more than paid for the vellum and inks she would use, and he had promised still more. She would try to give him his money's worth.

With a quick, steady hand she sketched out guidelines for an elaborate letter "B". It would be done in the Celtic style, made to look like an animal stretched out into a tangle of overlapping knots, with smaller knotted flourishes tucked into any open space. She gave it a bird-like head, deciding to make each letter correspond to one of the animals the book described.

Smiling happily she bent over the drawing, laying out the letters in pencil. When that was done she carefully inked them with black ink, then selected colors and began to fill in the spaces with vivid reds and blues. It went quickly, she had done Celtic style capitols so frequently she could almost ink them without bothering to pencil first. But for this book she would take all possible care. It must be perfect. It wasn't just the money, although that was part of it. But something about the book appealed to her immensely. She had paged carefully through it, looking at the many varied creatures, several times. Most were familiar, beings of legend that she had heard about all her life. Some were strange and new. A few were outright disturbing, while others were strikingly beautiful. Whoever the original artist had been, he had been very gifted. Emilie knew she could reproduce the drawings easily enough, there were techniques that made it fairly simple to do so, but they were better than anything she had ever drawn on her own.

As Emilie worked she caught a flicker of color out of the corner of her eye. Like the flapping of a bird's wings, it was a whirring suggestion of bright feathers. She lifted her head and turned to look at it, but there was nothing there. With a shrug she turned back to her work.

Slowly the new book began to grow, page by glorious page. Emilie had never made anything like it. It wasn't just the art, there was something else, something about the book that drew her. She found herself thinking about it even when she wasn't in her work room. She even began to dream about it. The creatures of myth gathered around her in her dreams, the phoenix, the unicorn, the dragon, the manticore, they circled and danced around her night after night.

The book was more than half finished the night she dreamed the serpent.

The dream began as it had often before. The creatures she had drawn paraded before her, and began to dance a ritual dance about her, each one moving and circling in a mystic pattern. Lines of light and power rose around them. She had dreamed this much many times, but now something new happened. The pattern shifted, instead of circling around her, it circled around an empty central point. The dancing creatures danced faster, and they began to sing too, or chant, or merely howl and snarl, the noise rising in a dreadful cacophony.

Emilie closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but it made no difference, the horrible sound penetrated. She screamed for them to stop, adding her voice to the clamor, but it made no difference, the noise went on and on and on. Then, in the dream, she looked at the patterns of light, at the dancing animals, and understood. She spoke a Name, and suddenly all was silent. Then the world exploded into brilliant light, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, the world was just the same, and yet everything had changed. At the center of the beasts' pattern hung a new creature, one she had not seen in the book. It was an immense snake, a reptilian head atop a long, slender body. But it was unlike any snake she had ever seen, for it was covered in feathers, and a pair of immense feathered wings spread out from its sides. The brilliant plumage was in every color of the rainbow, flickering and shimmering in indigo, sapphire, emerald, gold, ruby, carnelian and amethyst; beautiful, firey gemstone tones. Its eyes were crimson, the color of fresh-spilled blood, and they regarded her solemnly.

The serpent opened its mouth, and Emilie was certain it was about to speak. She waited in breathless wonder for the creature's pronouncement.

It drew in a breath... and she awoke, abruptly and shockingly, to find herself sitting up in her bed.

---

As Emilie finished dressing there was a knock at the door. She rushed down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the treads. At the bottom she grabbed the latch, then hesitated. Her father had mentioned that Sir Edmund had come calling the day before, while Emilie was at market. If he was there again, she did not want to see him. But it might be a customer. She wished there was some way to see who was on the other side of the door before she opened it.

With a reluctant sigh she cracked the door open and peeked out. Sir Edmund immediately put a foot in the door.

"Good day Emilie. I've come to invite you..."

"I'm not coming," she said sharply. "I won't be coming to any events that you might invite me to, not now, not ever."

His face darkened and he tried to wedge the door open further. Emilie leaned on it, managing to keep him from doing so. "You will never find a noble of better rank interested in a mere squire's daughter such as yourself."

"I have no interest whatsoever in rank," was Emilie's tart reply. "And none in you either." She was tired of trying to be polite. She was not sure she wished to wed at all, let alone be wed to a thoughtless, barely educated boor like Sir Edmund.

"So you want to be a spinster all your life, is that it? You won't stay so pretty forever. If you don't wed soon, then no man will want you."

"Spinster or not, it is none of your concern," she said, feeling her temper rise. She was getting entirely fed up with his superior attitude.

"I have wealth enough for you to give up this common work, and live like a true lady, if that is what concerns you. Surely you must realize..."

"I must realize nothing. And if you think I wish to give up my work, you know me not one whit. Now get out!"

"I will not be so easily denied," he said. For a moment Emilie was almost afraid. He looked very angry, and he might well be capable of violence. "I always get what I want, and what I want now is you."

The sheer gall of that banished Emilie's fear, and replaced it with a righteous anger. She stomped hard on Sir Edmund's foot, and when he yelled and jumped she slammed the door in his face and locked it. He pounded on it, his voice coming muffledly from the other side. "You'll regret this, you bitch!"

Emilie scowled at the door. So much for chivalry, she thought to herself. Then she shrugged and climbed back up the stairs. She had work to do. The bestiary wouldn't finish itself. And as she sat at her work table and put pen to the creamy vellum it was easy to forget about Sir Edmund. It was easy to forget about everything, for there was something compelling about the work. Sometimes she grew bored with a lengthy project such as this, but the book bored her not at all, even though she understood the extremely old-fashioned language only imperfectly.

Still, even without understanding, there was a kind of poetry in it. She found herself murmuring some of the phrases as she copied them. And every now and then she heard the whirring of wings, or caught a glimpse of feathers out of the corner of her eye.

---

As the book progressed, the wings seemed to draw closer and closer. Emilie often felt as though she were working in a dream. The edges of her vision were filled with flickering feathers, bright and shimmering and yet never there when she turned to look at them. It had been more than a week since Sir Edmund's last visit. And nearly that long since she had spoken to another human being. She hardly even saw her father anymore, all she could do was draw and write. The beautiful artwork flowed off her pen, she hardly needed her usual methods for assuring an accurate copy. She had even begun to skip the penciling and go directly to the pen work. The rainbow quill in her hand was one with the feathers that haunted her, and it poured out flawless art and lettering as though it were writing of itself and had no need of her.

Soon she began to forget to eat or sleep. She spent long hours in her workroom without venturing out at all. The world outside the room didn't exist. The room itself hardly existed either, only the book was real. The book and the gathering wings around her.

Then, when the book was all but finished, and when the wings seemed so close she was sure she could see them clearly, see the details of each feather that surrounded her, though never when she turned her head to look at them, she found the hidden page.

The final page had seemed to be a drawing of a unicorn, but that page was stuck to the actual last page, and as she closed the book that night the hidden page pulled free, revealing a new drawing.

Emilie stared at it. It was a serpent, covered in feathers, with a pair of immense wings spread out around it. There was no text with it, only the snake itself, stretching across both pages. The pigment had flaked a bit, but had not faded; the serpent was the rainbow color of her dreams, the color of the wings almost seen at the edges of sight. The color of the quill pen she held in her hand.

Wings suddenly whirred around her, the sound deafening. For a moment she thought the wings would close in around her and carry her away. The whole world was nothing at all but feathers.

Then, in an instant, sound and color both were gone, and she was sitting in her room, her ordinary room in the real world, sitting before an ordinary book made of parchment and ink and nothing more, and suddenly aware of hunger and exhaustion.

---

She slept deeply that night, and late too, for the day was well begun when she emerged from her bedroom. She ate heartily, and took time to speak with her father. He made no mention of her past week's absence, simply making the usual small talk about her work, and his, and his plans for the evening. He was going to a concert, indulging his love of music. She was invited, if she wished to go. But Emilie only smiled and said she had work to do. And when her luncheon was over she once more climbed the stairs to her workroom. She had one final drawing to finish, and the book would be done.

There were no wings around her as she worked, no whirring sound, no shimmering flash of color, but the pen still seemed to hold magic, for the rainbow serpent emerged onto the page with ease. It grew swiftly to completion, and as dusk deepened into dark that evening she lifted her pen from the final feather. It was done. She left the page open to dry. She still had to arrange the folios, and bind them, but it was done all the same.

She sat back, ready to enjoy the satisfaction of a finished project. But instead of the sense of accomplishment, there was a strange tension that vibrated through her. It was done, and yet it was not done. Something was left unfinished. She paged through the folios, but they were all complete, each diagram, each picture, each page of text exactly as it should be. Perhaps if she stayed up, and started work on the binding? She had worked through the night before, though not often.

A sudden whirr of wings came, and then went, the sound making her jump. There was a flicker of color at the corner of her eye, and she whirled to look at it, but yet again it vanished as she moved. "Who are you?! Show yourself!" she suddenly shouted.

Silence fell again, but the tension was still there. Emilie rubbed her temples. The silence seemed to be listening now, but it apparently wasn't going to respond to her shouted demand.

"I'm going crazy," she murmured. The silence listening? It was an absurd thought.

In the strange, listening silence, the sound of the downstairs door opening was very loud. She started. It was too soon for her father to be back from his concert. But who else could it be? She hesitated at the door to her workroom, then stepped back when a heavy, unfamiliar tread began to climb the stairs. Her heart raced, and she looked around for something that might be used as a weapon, but there was nothing. She had not even the usual little quill-sharpening knife, for her quill never needed sharpening. Perhaps she could stab the intruder with a pencil...

The door opened, and an all too familiar form stood there.

"Sir Edmund," she said flatly.

He smiled at her, and there was something in the smile she didn't like at all. She took another step backward. He advanced, and she retreated until she bumped into her desk.

"Emilie," he said.

"What do you want?" She somehow managed not to stammer with fear.

"I told you before what I want. I want you. If I can't have you to wife, I'll have you the other way."

"I'll scream for the constables."

"No one will hear you. I've... made arrangements."

"I'll tell everyone, and your reputation will be ruined."

His smile broadened just a bit. "No, I don't think you will." He continued to advance, until he stood close enough to touch her. When he reached out to cup her cheek she yelled and kicked him in the shins. His yelp of pain was satisfying, but when she tried to dodge around him and escape he grabbed her arm in a grip too strong to break. She tried to kick him again, but he twisted her arm until she nearly screamed from it, and she stopped kicking. Then he shoved her, and she stumbled forward into her desk, the parchment she'd left strewn across it crumpled under her hands. His hands were on her upper arms, pinning her down, and he pressed against her from behind. She could feel the heat of him, and she screamed again, and fought. He only laughed, and dug his fingers into her upper arms hard enough to leave bruises.

Then he released her arms, and for a second she thought she might break free, but he'd only done it so he could grab her by the hair. He pushed her head down to the desk, shoving hard. She tried to reach back and hit him, but there was no force behind it, she could barely reach him. His free hand went to the buckle of his belt, she could hear it. She bit back a whimper, not wanting to let him know how afraid she was. Then he yanked up the skirt of her dress. She fought more furiously, flailing and trying to kick at him, but he only pressed in closer, pinning her now to the desk with his body. Tears of terror and helpless frustration gathered in her eyes, and one dropped to the page beneath her cheek. It stood, a bead of liquid, on the feathers of the serpent. The ink was waterfast, and did not run. She felt strangely distant from herself as she noticed that detail, saw the way the droplet magnified the lines and colors beneath it.

Suddenly there were wings in the room again, whirring sounds and bright feathers. Sir Edmund let out a startled cry and looked around wildly.

They're real, thought Emilie. He can hear them too, they're real.

And yet at the same time she began to feel as though she were in a dream. A terrible nightmare that was changing to something else, as dreams sometimes do. Faintly, as if at a great distance, she could hear the cacophony of the beasts. Wings gathered dense around her, almost enough to see straight on, and the sound of their beating was deafening.

"What are you doing?" said Sir Edmund, and twisted his hand harder in her hair. She hissed in pain, but didn't answer. The dream-feeling was growing stronger and stronger. She hovered between the nightmare that was her reality and the dream she'd dreampt so many times. The cacophony of the animals grew louder still, drowning out Edmund's next shout.

And then she remembered the Name.

"Quetzalcoatl!" she cried, and with a burst of light that silenced the cacophony of the animals and the beating of wings it was there.

It was bigger than the room, impossibly immense, but somehow fit inside it all the same. At the sight of it Edmund's hand went nervelessly limp and he shrieked and stumbled back, his lowered trousers tripping him so that he fell to the floor.

The serpent's blood-red eyes regarded him solemnly. He trembled as he looked up at it, and scrambled backwards, towards the door.

The serpent struck, as swiftly as any viper, and caught Sir Edmund in its jaws. Then it bit down, with a horrible crunching down. He screamed once and then was silent.

Emilie could hear the snap of bones, and could see the blood and mangled flesh when it opened its jaws and threw back its head to gulp Sir Edmund's body further down. The sound was like nothing she could have dreamed, it was real, shockingly real. This was no dream. Not a nightmare, even. It was reality. The serpent was real, and Sir Edmund was really dead.

When it had swallowed him it turned its ruby gaze on Emilie. She shuddered under it, but neither screamed nor ran. Dream or reality, the creature had been summoned by her. She did not presume to believe she controlled it, but she felt that she was responsible for it. If it ate her, it would only be the consequences of her own actions. "Whatever you do, whatever you do, do not read anything from the book aloud." She remembered those words now. She had read the words, she had dreamed, and spoken the Name. Quetzalcoatl was here of her summoning.

The serpent nodded at her, as though to acknowledge her thoughts. Then, as in the dream, it opened its mouth to speak. It drew breath, and there was no waking to end the dream now.

It spoke.

The world ended in a flash of rainbow light and a thunder of feathered wings.

---

Midnight had just passed when a cloaked figure slipped in through the carelessly open door, following Sir Edmund's footsteps. It ascended the stairs with much more quiet and care. At the top it regarded the workroom. Scattered pages lay everywhere, and mixed with them were a few strangely colored feathers. The figure gathered pages and feathers both. The final page it picked up bore a drawing of a feathered serpent. The serpent coiled in and around itself, its wings spread wide, and riding upon its back between the wings, depicted in clear inked lines, was a girl in a black dress. She gazed up at the serpent that surrounded her, and her smile was the smile of one who dreams and is content never to wake.