Finding Harvey
Kat Lucas
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Archetype Cards: The Tomboy and The Dandy
Key Words: Old photograph, dragon, wings, fan, blood, sacrifice
She couldn’t find him.
Harvey’s apartment was locked and no amount of knocking or ringing the doorbell could open it; he didn’t turn up at the university, even at fencing practice, which he never missed; he was not seen at any of his favorite fast food joints down the street from the university. In fact, no one had seen him in the last two days and everyone urged Clara to notify the police.
She couldn’t notify the police. At least, not yet. There was one more place she hadn’t searched, a place that the police and most people would even consider, let alone know about.
And that was why, after her classes and a meeting with her basketball team, she stood in front of one of the lockers in the corridor of a building they once frequented as college freshmen. For the most part, it looked like just any old locker: rusting in places, with chipping paint in others, and a smattering of rude graffiti. It was secured with a combination lock that looked as if some curious students had been trying to crack the combination to it. But even if someone had been able to guess the code, all they would see was dark, empty space.
Clara pulled her wallet out of her jeans pocket and drew an old photograph with worn edges and folded corners from inside. In the photo were two children: a girl with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a boy with hair the color of chocolate. The photo was taken while they were dueling with each other in a playground with plastic blue toy swords. Both children were smiling, each one beaming with confidence that he or she would best the other.
Today was not a day for smiling. Clara turned the photograph over to reveal four numbers. To most people, that was the date it was taken. But to her and Harvey, it was the combination of the lock. Her fingers deftly twisted the dial until the lock opened with a satisfying click.
Sure enough, the locker door opened to reveal cobwebs and bits of gathering dust on the bottom, nothing more. She stared at the interior before glancing to her left and right. A student near the right end of the hallway was too preoccupied with hefting several books out of her locker to notice Clara making a big show of sticking her head into her own locker.
As the other girl’s footsteps died away, Clara, while still hunched over, took her pencil case out of her shoulder bag – black with red and white stripes, crammed with several pens, pencils, and highlighters. But instead of taking any of these out, she found a folded fan.
The fan made a snicking sound when it opened, all metal and bamboo. With a swift motion and a bitten lip, she cut her palm neatly and squeezed her hand to coax the blood out. Then she placed her bloody palm onto the back panel of the locker, holding it there with barely any change in her expression.
A faint nimbus of light traced the outline of her hand, glowing and growing in intensity until Clara had to squint, and finally shut her eyes. Suddenly, the back of the locker ceased to exist and was nothing but a rectangle of bright white light, and she lost her balance, tumbling forward with a gasp, seeing nothing but the light. She didn’t expect to hit hard, grimy metal on her way down.
Clara, still clutching her things, tumbled onto an old bed whose sheets needed changing and which didn’t have a single pillow. That bed was not the only thing in the room she found herself in; there were shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls, an open cupboard with bottles and jars, a large bronze cauldron in the middle of the floor, and an ornate mirror mounted upon the wall. On the wall behind her, against which the bed rested, were painted patterns and runes surrounding a space which was the exact shape and size as the locker back in her school. The window was open, admitting carefree birdsong, a cool breeze, and the smell of grass.
The door at the far end of the room opened just as she sat upright, running her hand through her shoulder-length hair before folding her fan. A bearded old man with salt and pepper hair and a monocle stuck his head through the gap between the door and the jamb and yelped before hurrying all the way inside, his purple and golden robes trailing along the floor.
“Oh! Clara!” He wrung his hands, sighing with relief. “About time you got here, Harvey came through—”
“I know, Grandpa,” she replied, digging through her bag and setting aside the fan, a bottle of water, and an atlas, along with a smaller, simpler pouch.
“You have to find him soon,” intoned the old man, reaching up to unearth a first-aid kit from the mishmash of bottles of differently-colored liquids and jars of what looked like tiny bones and body parts. He passed the kit to Clara. “He mentioned that he wanted to find a gift like no other for a woman he loves…Rhoda? Fiona?”
“Donna,” she corrected as he continued searching for other odds and ends to give her that might help. “He can’t stop talking about her—”
The man nodded, letting out a low breath as he packed her pouch. Then he hugged her around the shoulders briefly, a soft look in his light blue eyes. His voice was anything but soft, with a note of urgency. “Yes, yes, which is why you have to go. Now. I saw him looking up the migration patterns of the crystal dragons.”
As soon as he let go of her, Clara stood up.
“Take care,” he added. “And, those wings should help you find him.”
She stared at him in askance and then started twisting around, touching her back and instantly feeling two small sheets of paper attached between her shoulder blades.
There was an almost mischievous twinkle in his gaze. “Did you really think I’d give them to that nutty, love-struck friend of yours?”
That nutty, love-struck friend of hers was inside a cave, battered and bruised, and backed into a corner with a rapier that had been snapped in two and pockets full of glistening crystals as colorful as a handful of assorted jellybeans. He struck out at a green dragon the size of a ten-wheeler truck with the broken basket hilt before tossing it aside and trying to reach for a convenient rock with a trembling hand instead. All the while his terrified brown eyes never left the dragon’s bright yellow ones as he raised the rock to throw it.
The dragon yelped in pain, the howl making Harvey clap his hands over his ears, dropping his only decent weapon before he could even let it loose. It fell onto a patch of more crystals, shattering them on impact. But his opponent paid the destruction of its treasure no heed; it had turned around – a tight squeeze in the cave – to roar and bare its fangs at a new enemy. Harvey stood on tiptoe and tried to see around the behemoth while attempting to find a way out.
He froze in his tracks when he saw a black and blue figure fly into view, wielding something flat, white and rounded in each hand. The dragon opened its mouth to try and take a bite of the figure, but the latter zoomed away, out into the open, leading it on. It stomped outside the cave with a snarl, its scaly, spiked tail swishing in its wake.
Harvey ducked, hands over his head and crystal shards beneath his elbows. A tail spike scraped the backs of his hands, but thankfully did no damage to his head. He felt the ground under him rumble with each step the dragon took as it left its domain, but Harvey paid that no heed and ran after it. He was torn between doing something to help Clara, who was flitting this way and that, slashing at the dragon’s face, and staying quiet and taking care of himself, at least for the moment. After all, he was unarmed and would probably be more of a liability. Clara answered that question for him; she gestured with her fan toward a grove of trees to his right before somersaulting in midair to evade a snapping jaw.
This time, Harvey needed no second bidding and ran full tilt toward the trees, standing behind the thickest tree trunk he could find and peering around it to watch what was happening. But it didn’t take long for Clara to finally move away and flee toward the grove, while the dragon retreated back toward its lair, no longer howling or stomping – although it would be nursing several cuts and scratches on its face for quite a while.
She swooped down into Harvey’s hiding place, falling forward as she landed. The wings on her back were sheets of ordinary paper again, borne away by a breeze. Though both her fans were in disarray and she had a long scratch down one leg, she was otherwise fine. He dropped to his knees with a moan.
“You saved my life.”
Clara was already rummaging through the first-aid kit her grandfather had given her. It was a mixture of modern items like gauze bandages and antiseptic, and other, stranger things such as small vials with turquoise and purple liquids and knobby, hairy roots.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t go looking for you? I can’t believe you wanted to give Donna crystals from a crystal dragon. There’s a reason why you need a license to mine those.”
“She wanted a gift – ow, that stings – that no one had ever given her before,” he answered, gritting his teeth as Clara began to bind his hands. “And she said that if I really loved her, I’d be serious about looking for something like that!”
Clara narrowed her eyes, her mouth a grim line.
“You know what I think? Donna’s got it all wrong.”
“What do you mean? She can do no wrong!” Any further dramatic declarations were cut off as Clara began working on the scratches on his right arm. Once she was done, Harvey added loudly, “And I do love her, I – “
“That’s what you said about what’s-her-name last week. Queenie?”
“Princess,” he corrected.
“Yeah, that prissy diva who keeps telling me I should act more like a girl, grow my hair out, wear more dresses, etc.” Clara rolled her eyes and looked down with satisfaction at her shirt – complete with a giant fighting robot on the front – and jeans. “Acting like a girl doesn’t help me survive while I’m here.” She stared pointedly at Harvey. “And neither does acting like an idiot.”
“Hey!”
“Harvey, I don’t think Donna loves you,” she said slowly. “I mean…she’s asking you to get her something to prove you love her. That’s not how it works. Ugh, I’m giving you the exact same lecture I gave you last week. Honestly, what is up with some girls?”
He didn’t answer that question. “But…I do love her. I really do.” There was a pleading note in his voice.
“Even if you do, she can’t make you do stuff for her like that,” said Clara as she began tending to her own scratch. “Look, my point is, she’s not worth risking your life in a crystal dragon’s crystal cave. I could think of someone else who’s definitely worth that much.”
“Who?”
She grinned. “You.”
Harvey looked as if he was facing a crystal dragon again – only this time, he was more confused. “Huh?”
“You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” Clara patted his shoulder and then chuckled. “What did you think?” She recoiled in mock horror. “Don’t tell me you thought…”
He kept a straight face for two seconds before breaking into laughter. “Sorry, I guess I’m still acting like an idiot.”
About Kat Lucas
Kat Lucas is an aspiring lawyer, an aspiring galaxy overlord and an occasional pianist. She infiltrates conventions incognito, and her favorite character to cosplay is herself. She also enjoys animated movies, chocolate of just about any incarnation, and pretending to be witty on the Internet. For 12 years she went to an all-girls’ school where she discovered the joy of writing and the escape it provides when life proves more difficult than fiction.