A Greater Calling
Meriwether woke up wet. Unfortunately, this was not an unknown experience for him. Having learned from a young age to procure and use magical healing herbs, he had often slept out in the open in the woods of his native Virginia or Georgia. In the hot and humid summers, he often took a midafternoon nap on the verdant grass beneath the pines. More than once, too, as he slept, a thunderstorm would soak him through and he’d awaken in sodden clothes facing a long walk back home.
But this was an entirely different situation. Instead of the blue Virginia skies, he blinked and gazed up at a gray-black sky. Instead of the woods, he was in the middle of a city, a burning city. It reeked of manure, soot and fire. The insistent ringing of a bell made Lewis’s head pound. He woke up fully to see a bucket brigade attacking a fire that engulfed the roof of Government House. He turned, rolled over, saw that he lay close to a charred pile of remains. He must have got water tossed on him while—
With a shock, the entire scene came back to him, the unlikely wizard, the dragon.
He sat up, which made his head swim. It wasn’t like him to swoon like that, to remain unconscious even when doused with water. Normally when he got soaked through, he woke up. He’d had to fight his mind before, but never his body, which had stood him in perfectly good stead, no matter what he demanded of it.
“Easy, Mister,” said a voice just behind him, and he turned to see two men eyeing him warily. He might have been concerned if they looked at all ill-dressed or shady, but they appeared to be prosperous men of St. Louis. “We thought you’d lost consciousness because of the magics.” The man’s voice had a trace of a French accent. “And we didn’t know what succor to give.”
“But how do you feel?” the second man asked. “Are you also a wizard?”
Meriwether surprised himself by laughing, a short sound between a bark and a cackle. “No, I’m not a wizard. Definitely not.”
“Then you are in the retinue of the great man for other reasons?” asked the first man. “We saw you fight the dragon alongside Franklin.”
With a start, Meriwether understood their assumption. If they thought him to be one of old wizard Franklin’s traveling companions, maybe they had left him lie unaided in the mud of the street, doused with the water used to extinguish the fires, because they were afraid to approach.
Much had changed since magic had returned to America, and undoubtedly many such changes had been beneficial to society. He knew that some places had devices powered by magic that did the work of men, thus making slaves unnecessary. But despite their familiarity with the arcane changes in the nearly half century since the Sundering from the Old World, people still feared magic—and well they should. A single gifted individual, if trained and of a disposition to do such a thing, could level half a city.
Meriwether grinned ruefully as he caught traces of apprehension in the men’s eyes. He picked himself up, looked at his sodden clothes. “No, no,” he said, in an easy tone. “You’ve got me all wrong, my friends. I only just met the great man, by happenstance and desperation. I’m not traveling with him. In fact, I arrived yesterday, and I’m staying at Chez Marie Bayard’s.” The men exchanged a look at the mention of the comfortable but undistinguished hostelry; surely, the wizard Franklin stayed in far more exotic and expensive lodgings. “I just came here hoping to catch a glimpse of him at work, not fight a dragon beside him!”
The joke must have caught up with the men. The first chuckled, and the second said, “Some glimpse you got, Monsieur.”
“Indeed.” He drew himself up and swayed against a sudden dizziness. “Meriwether Lewis from Virginia. For years now, I’ve been the personal assistant and household healer to Thomas Jefferson.” Jefferson’s name might have been unknown to the men, but he wanted to emphasize the location and the respectability of his position.
They came forward to shake his hand, and then offered to help him to his lodgings. He accepted their help, thankfully. As night fell and the last of the scattered fires were doused, the city assumed a carnival aspect. Townspeople gathered on the street, discussing everything that had happened. Meriwether heard comments as they passed by.
“Three dragons—three!”
“And all the houses around Government House set alight and all burned to the ground, not a bucket of water in sight.”
Meriwether felt the water trickling down his back, his coat drenched from the efforts of the bucket brigade, but he decided not to contradict the gossipers. Other comments were as outlandish, ranging from declarations that a whole group of magicians had come to rescue the town from dragons, to those who insisted that several carriages—and horses—had been incinerated in the square.
His head was still dizzy, and he wondered if it was an after-effect of proximity to magic. He couldn’t forget what he perceived as the voice of the dragon in his mind, and he wondered if it was correct that he would meet the monster again, and under what circumstances. Though he was a natural scientist at heart, Meriwether did not look forward to the opportunity.
Finally, his new friends delivered him to his hostelry, in a building that had once been a commodious colonial house. The building permitted a large common room in the front, and several small rooms on the second floor. Meriwether parted from the men at the door, with much enthusiastic hand shaking and much apology for having been the cause of such trouble, while the men in return assured him it had been no trouble at all. They apologized in a roundabout way for not having intervened on his behalf earlier, before his clothes got, surely, ruined by the water and the mud.
He entered the warmth of the inn’s crowded common room, which at nightfall had the aspect of a dining hall mixed with a tavern. Men sat at tables, arguing, laughing, talking about the day’s remarkable events, playing cards. A large haunch roasted in the vast fireplace, filling the air with a smell of burnt fat and meat. For some reason, it hit him wrong, perhaps too near a reminder of how close he and Franklin—not to mention the two terrified horses—had come to being roasted meat themselves. Meriwether felt his gorge rise, choked it back, and hurried toward the narrow stairs that climbed up the left side of the room to the upper rooms.
A voice called out to stop him, “Mr. Lewis, if you will?”
The hosteller’s younger son, a twenty-year-old gentleman with an uncertain complexion, pushed his way through the crowds in the common room. He must have been doing his turn as the ale dispenser, as he wore a stained apron and smelled strongly of beer. “Pardon me, sir,” he said, out of breath, reaching Meriwether after frantic progress through the closely packed tables. “Pardon me, but the wizard has sent word that he’d like to talk to you.”
“The wizard?” He stood near the stairs, dripping, aware that eyes were turning toward him. Waterlogged, muddy, and singed, he was not fit to be seen in society.
“The wizard Franklin, sir. He called for you, sent word right here to the inn.”
Meriwether realized he sounded thick-witted. “For me?” Granted they had risked death together to save the horses from the dragon, but how did old wizard Franklin even know who he was, much less where he stayed? And how could he get a messenger here so quickly?
The innkeeper’s son nodded. “Yes! His secretary is waiting to lead you to where the wizard stays. It’s not too far, but he does want you to come right away.”
For a moment, like a madness, he considered refusing. Here he stood in sodden clothes, shivering with cold, ravenously hungry yet queasy, desperate just to stretch out in bed. And yet, Franklin had been so confident that he would accept the invitation he had left his servant here to wait for him.
Meriwether had been eager just to catch a glimpse of the ancient, powerful man, hoping even that would give him something to brag of in his old age. How could he refuse actually meeting the legendary wizard? And at Franklin’s own request?
While his thoughts spun, the innkeeper’s son waved forward a well-dressed man—much less flamboyant than Franklin—and now Meriwether felt even dingier by comparison. The manservant clutched a hat with a modest crown and a sensible brim; he wore a somber black jacket and knee breeches, both of precise cut. He bowed slightly to Meriwether, and to his credit, managed to stifle any look of dismay or disdain. Straightening, he offered his hand. “My name is Albert Middleton, sir, and I have the honor to be Mr. Franklin’s secretary. The wizard has sent me with the hope I might procure your presence at his dinner table tonight.”
Meriwether bowed and then clasped the proffered hand. “It would be an honor.” He plucked at his disheveled suit. “But you must grant me the grace of a few minutes to change my attire.”
“Of course,” Middleton said. “We wouldn’t wish to put your health at risk by having you travel about town in soaked clothes. I shall wait.”
Meriwether ran up the narrow staircase to his room. He would just have to pretend to be fresh enough to listen to Franklin and memorize his witticisms.
After undressing, he was not surprised to find he was soaked to his smallclothes. Fortunately he had traveled with two other suits of clothes, one a buckskin shirt and pants, with matching rugged boots, fit to go clambering around the wilds near the Mississippi River, as he’d expected to do. The other, a respectable set of evening attire, much like the one Middleton wore.
He changed quickly into the suit, but picked up the overcoat he’d brought for more adventurous work. Though perhaps not as presentable, it would keep him warm in the freezing night outside, and the wizard had seen with his own eyes how Meriwether had ruined his more presentable overcoat.
Returning to the common room, he joined the manservant, who briskly led him through the darkened streets of St. Louis. “I’m afraid we must walk, sir,” Middleton said apologetically. “Mr. Franklin’s carriage…”
“Indeed, I was present when it…ah…became incapacitated.”
“Mr. Franklin has described how you helped rescue his horses, though one of them has not been returned to him yet. He suggests he might put the word out that the beast is infused with a magical spell that will kill anyone who has acquired it illegally.”
Meriwether hesitated, deciding how to phrase his question. “And…does it?”
The manservant shook his head. “I’m afraid not, sir, but people believe Mr. Franklin can do practically anything, and so he often makes use of their superstitions rather than his own powers of magic. Magic is not the working of miracles with no cost and no limit, despite what the public believes, and therefore he enjoys making fun of such fancies. His horses are a matched pair, and he would very much like the missing one returned to him.”
“I see.” The opening presented himself. Lewis asked, “Speaking of the cost of magic, I trust Mr. Franklin was undaunted by the use of force he hurled against the dragon? And that no mishap has come to him?”
“Oh, my master is very well indeed. He collapsed, as often happens when he expends so much magic at once, but it is nothing to worry about. After half an hour of recovery, he’s as well as may be. He was in the house and planning his dinner with you in no time. He sent me to you straightaway.”
“If it’s not an imposition…How did Mr. Franklin find me? Was it some sort of identification spell?”
The servant continued to stroll along at a brisk pace. “Oh, he sent several of us from the house to enquire at the plaza. It wasn’t difficult to learn you were the out-of-town gentleman staying at Chez Marie Bayard’s, and in turn I ran to your lodging. I’d only just arrived when you came into the common room yourself, sir.”
From these points of information, Meriwether decided that he must have been unconscious for more than an hour, unusually long considering he had suffered no direct injury. He also decided that, even though guided by his newfound friends, he must have walked to the inn slowly indeed, or perhaps by a very roundabout way.
They reached a very large house, and Meriwether paused to drink in the details. Other than its size, the house looked as raw and newly built as the others around it, but it was lit with a warm and dazzling glow that suggested every chandelier in the place must be lit. Meriwether realized it must be a wealthy house, or Franklin himself was paying the enormous expense for the candles. Just how rich was the most prominent wizard in the American territories?
As they approached, a liveried servant opened the door. He was as well dressed and as well mannered as any at Monticello. Another servant rushed forward to divest Meriwether of his coat as soon as he stepped through the door. “No hat, sir?”
Meriwether touched his head. “I lost it in the tussle with the dragon.” Alas, it was his only hat.
Several more men in livery bowed, and conducted him past exquisitely appointed drawing rooms to a dining room that he imagined rivaled anything in the richest houses in lost Europe. The dining table alone, set with numerous candelabra each blazing with multiple candles, could have seated fifty people without crowding.
Now, though, the table sat a single man dressed in bright green velvet. He filled a chair at the far end of the table, but the numerous candles shed enough light to clearly illuminate the neat, longish white hair and the wrinkled and smiling face of Ben Franklin, which Meriwether had seen so many times in woodcut and painting.
Stepping into the dining room, he bowed. “Mr. Franklin, it is a pleasure to meet the foremost wizard of our age.”
A chuckle answered him. “I’m sure it is. You did meet me before, Mr. Meriwether, even if we had no time for introductions, as we tried to keep my horses from becoming roasted—for which I thank you. Please come in. I’ve taken the liberty of having a place set for you up here, next to me.” He gestured to his right side, where there were indeed plates and silverware laid out. “Pardon my presumption, but when you get to be nearly a hundred, one no longer wishes to gaze across a vast expanse of table, let alone conduct a conversation by shouting.”
Meriwether hastened to the place prepared for him and sat down. True to legend, Franklin’s gaze was indeed filled with humor, but also acute as he peered through his spectacles.
Unfolding his napkin, and making minute adjustments to his silverware, more to disguise the fact that he was aware of being scrutinized than for any actual purpose, Meriwether said, “It is an honor to be invited to dinner with you, sir. I came to the Government House and joined the crowds there in hopes of catching a glimpse of you. I did not expect—”
Franklin interrupted him with a chuckle. “Neither did I expect to be attacked by a dragon. Life, young man, is a series of surprises, and those of us who survive have to learn to profit from and benefit from them.”
“Yes, sir,” Meriwether said, not sure what else to say.
“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.”
The old wizard leaned forward. “You see, my…observers, as varied a number of persons as you’d care to know, have been receiving reports that the inhabitants of this unknown land, from wild men, to fur trappers, and everyone in between, have been witnessing disturbances. Tribes that were once friendly to white men have vanished altogether, or else have become hostile. One of my informers sent verified reports of a large beast that kills men and sets fire to forests, and of other incredible creatures that some say are like the primal things that walked the land before the Deluge. One can only guess what miracles and nightmares remain to be found in the unknown territories of the Americas, the unexplored vastness beyond the Mississippi.”
He adjusted his spectacles. “We might find a tribe of Welsh Indians, as the intrepid Welsh were said to have sailed this way, long ago. Or lost Viking tribes, who settled here long before the Sundering. I don’t believe all the reports of strange beasts and marvelous happenings though.” Franklin paused, and picked up his brandy snifter. “Or rather, I didn’t believe them, but I am beginning to change my mind. I occurs to me that given what has happened to this world since the comet changed the rules of science and magic, perhaps I should not assume that the same parameters of natural science apply any longer. So many strange things we thought were legends have returned to this world.”
Meriwether thought he understood, and he respected the still-inquisitive mind of the century-old wizard and scientist. “So, you wished to come to the border of the unexplored territories to find out what they might harbor? Are you…are you sure you’re up to such an undertaking, sir?”
He knew he would very much like to explore that immense land. What plants, what animals would he find there? What things arcane and strange, legendary creatures made manifest? Meriwether itched to find out for sure, but his resources were lean. His father had died young, and his stepfather preferred to favor his own progeny, so Meriwether had to work for a living. He could never afford to hire the men or purchase the equipment and supplies for such an expedition. As for tramping by himself all over the unknown territory, as he often did back east, he doubted he would long survive either wild beasts or encounters with the natives in the unexplored, arcane territories. The Cherokees were long friends of his, excellent sources of knowledge about herbs, but who knew what strange and bellicose people lived beyond the river?
He realized that Franklin was making a face. The wizard said, “You are exactly right, Mr. Meriwether. While I might try to convince myself that such an undertaking to the wild lands would be exciting, I find I have grown too fond of my own creature comforts.” He took a long sip of his brandy. “I am convinced it is a worthwhile endeavor. But not for me.”
“Who, then?” Meriwether asked. His heart was suddenly pounding.
Instead of answering the question, Franklin seemed to fall back into the lecture he had intended to give in the square outside the Government House. “As you know, young man, since the Sundering we are confined to these territories by the magically created barrier that cuts us off partway out into the Atlantic. For nearly fifty years, we have not been able to sail to England, or even know if an England still exists.” He narrowed his eyes. “But we know from tales of fur trappers and the accounts of Portuguese and Spanish sailors in older times, that our land of America extends, perhaps largely unbroken, all the way to that other ocean, known as the Pacific Ocean, which in turn gives route to China and India…from whence, after a long voyage, it would be possible to once more reach old mother England and the civilizations of Europe.”
Meriwether found himself caught up in the idea. No ship had been able to sail east to Europe for half a century, since the comet arrived. But sailing west…
“Assuming Europe is merely cut off rather than destroyed, I confess I wish to know what they’ve discovered about magic, how they have created useful techniques for the benefit of mankind. All of the sorcerers like me in America are like isolated natural scientists, with no comparative information. Like science, magic benefits from more minds on the task, more people to discover what makes it work and how.”
He lifted the decanter, removed the stopper, and refilled his brandy glass, then Meriwether’s. The younger man didn’t even remember finishing his brandy, though he could still taste the warm glow in his mouth.
“I never thought of the need for a worldwide investigation of magic,” he said.
“That is because you were born to this smaller, more confined world. When you hear an old man like myself speak of England or France, those other lands are like descriptions of fairyland. You cannot know what it was really like, my dear Mr. Lewis. Coffee and tea both thrive in Virginia, and if people say it isn’t as good as what they remember from India or China, that is just old people talking.”
Meriwether nodded. The old wizard continued, “We find ourselves here in a very limited world. People will have children, and those children will need farms to support them. We’re already seeing that food is sometimes very dear in the eastern territories, the crowded original colonies. If we don’t make a push to find and tame more land, America will become as crowded as Europe, and with such crowding comes a certain calcification of the mind.” He made a gesture as of closing a book. “The mind which despairs of new horizons in the world will find no new territory in the realm of thought, either.”
Meriwether frowned. “I am somewhat confused, sir. You insist on the importance of exploring the unknown lands to the west, but who would you wish to take on this role?”
Franklin laughed. He’d chuckled or cackled before, but this was the first time Meriwether heard him laugh without reservation. It shook the room and reverberated from the silver and crystal on the sideboard. Even the lights of the candles trembled. “I wish the lands explored, Mr. Meriwether, but I have no intention of doing it myself. Now, if I were twenty years younger, I might brave it. Although I age more slowly than most people, I do still age. I’m too old, my reflexes too slow, my body too full of its own crotchets to undertake such a thing. And why would I need to, now that I’ve made your acquaintance? I was never like you, a man of woods and streams, a man of adventuring in the wilds and learning much from plants and animals. No, I am too much a part of cities, of older civilization.”
He raised his brandy snifter to Meriwether in a toast. “If beer is proof that God loves us and wishes us to be happy, then brandy is proof that he loves us very much indeed and wishes us to be overjoyed. Though there have been some experiments with vine growing and even distilling a passable sort of homemade whiskey, this land does not yet have the capacity to make any fine liquor that rivals Europe’s centuries of tradition.” He laughed again, just as sincere. “Yet another vital reason for us to find a way back to England and France.”
He seemed amused by his own comment, then grew serious again. “While we have a great deal of knowledge that was preserved here before the Sundering, not to mention what we have discovered on our own since, what we do not have is…” He rubbed his thumb across the fingers of his right hand, as though feeling some soft and precious fabric. “What we do not have is the sense of time and history from those places, the deep knowledge of human civilization. If America remains isolated, we will be impoverished. In addition to needing room and cropland for our people, in addition to needing to learn what the rest of the world knows about magic, we desperately need that weight of history for our people, lest it be forgotten. Because history is the teacher of the future.”
Absorbed in his own thoughts, Meriwether found himself daydreaming about all those unexplored lands. “I wish there were a way to do it, sir, with all my heart.”
“There is, my dear young man. There is.” Meriwether sat up straighter, and the old wizard continued. “I told you that I came here to see how things stood on the frontier, maybe to hear from the fur trappers who venture into that wilderness. What if it is possible to cross the Mississippi and travel the width of the continent all the way to the Pacific? It was truly just a dream, but one that took hold of me. I imagined I would give my cycle of lectures, talk to the natives of St. Louis, for I’m as fluent in French as in English, and learn from them how big the enterprise would be, how enormous the undertaking. For I intended to finance it myself.”
Seeing Meriwether’s expression, he sniffed. “Do not look at me that way, Mr. Lewis! Thanks to practicing magic for almost fifty years and financing highly successful magical instruments—among other endeavors—I am fabulously wealthy. It will be nothing for me to make sure you have the necessary resources to lead, staff, and supply such an expedition.”
Meriwether could barely speak. “I?”
“You, Meriwether Lewis. Once I saw how you endured the attack of that dragon, and once I learned your name, I did some investigating. I got in touch with some friends through—” He frowned slightly. “Well, through magical means that I don’t care to disclose. I like your past, Mr. Lewis—your army record, your knowledge of woodcraft and plant life, your easy and amicable relations with the Cherokee, your interest in the unexplored. Find people to go with you, buy boats, supplies, weapons, and organize an expedition. Be optimistic, and be curious. I want you to cross the uncharted territories, hopefully all the way to the Pacific. You, alone, could open a way back to civilization for all of us.”
Meriwether tried to demur. “I have…I have sometimes fits of melancholy that render me quite unable to work or—”
Benjamin Franklin nodded. “Well, you’d be free to choose your companions and maybe a co-captain to the adventure, someone perhaps who understands your quirks and is willing to compensate for them?”
Meriwether’s mind blurred, and he suddenly heard an echo of the dragon’s words, “We will meet again, son of Wales.”
But he was too excited about this prospect to pay it much attention. He grabbed hard at the edge of the table, and said, his voice sounding wavery and strange to his own ears, “But—”
Franklin snuffed his concerns. “I will promptly write to Jefferson, whom I know from correspondence. I will convince him to dispense with your services for a few years. I assure you, you will be well compensated for your efforts both before and after the expedition.”
“You mean it, then?” Meriwether was half-sure he would wake up once more back in the square, soaked in bucket-brigade water. “You mean to do this thing?”
“I mean for you to do it. We must make friends with the natives in this vast unknown territory, and we must discover what lies in it, for our very hearts and souls. If the nearby Missouri River will, as I expect, provide an easy route to the Pacific, and if the Pacific isn’t also blocked by the magical barrier, we shall find our way back home.”
Franklin set the snifter down. “Let me send for maps, and I’ll give you my thoughts on how such an expedition should proceed, and you will begin to contemplate what you’ll need in the way of help and provisions, horses, boats, guns. Then, if you agree, we shall start making all the arrangements.”
Meriwether nodded, still too dumbfounded, too dazzled by the immense prospect before him to actually speak. The old wizard sent for the maps and rearranged the candles to illuminate them.
They talked long into the night, and Meriwether fell into a sort of dream, a combination of exhaustion and excitement. Deemed too weary to return to his own inn, he fell asleep in a spare bedroom in Franklin’s borrowed house, and he dreamed of vast open lands, of never-seen mountain ranges. His vivid dreams were barely disturbed by the dream-memory of wings that flapped like enormous rugs, and the sense of the dragon that was like a cat pursuing a mouse.
Then the dreams got lost in a welter of lists and half-awake ideas of what he would need for the expedition. Meriwether woke up standing by a desk, barely conscious but penning a letter to his good friend, Captain William Clark, under whom Meriwether had served when he was first in the army. He could think of no one else with whom he’d rather share such an adventure.