And So He Took His Vorpal Sword in Hand

April 26, 2023

WLLC:2473

Jabs goes bonkers during my lunch break, which is kind of a bummer. I had actually made something nice for once soda bread, just like my mom taught me, and cured salmon. But I’m barely off the clock, leaving the unicorn herd I had been checking the voice boxes on, when the sound of shrieking metal emanates from the Dragon’s Den down the lane. Shrieking metal is never a good thing to hear in a theme park; it’s an especially never-good thing to hear in a fantasy theme park with a giant mechanical dragon as an attraction.

I turn on my heel and immediately trip over the untied laces of my boot. The tools inside my paltock clatter around, the wrench jamming into my ribs. I flip on my back and wrestle the offending boot back on my foot as roaring echoes out of the Den.

Jabs is supposed to roar. I should know: my mom designed him, and I built him. What he’s notsupposed to do is burst through the mock cave entrance of the Den and charge out into the sunlight, scaring the pretzels out of a seagull’s mouth.

This is bad.

I scramble to my feet and sprint toward the Den. I don’t hear any screams of pain and the building itself isn’t damaged he’s programmed well, the sensors are working to help him avoid obstacles, just like Mom noted in her blueprints. An untimely spark of pride lights in my chest, adding a dash of sweetness to the cocktail of adrenaline and panic in my stomach because oh no oh jeez he’s headed down the street toward the Castle. The monster-truck-sized robo-dragon is making his merry way to the most popular show in the most crowded part of the park. Besides the traumatized seagull, no one is here at the Den, but allthe guests are at the Castle to watch Róisín’s princess act.

“Brogan!”

Midge has the headpiece of her bull costume tucked under her arm as she races out of an employee passage to catch up with me. Sweat drips down her face and matts her hair to her forehead.

“I heard the roaring,” she gasps, little legs pedaling to keep up with my long strides. With his head start, Jabs is ahead of us by maybe forty feet. “Where’s he going?”

I grimace. “The Castle. Róisín’s act.”

Midge’s eyes nearly bug out of her head. “Her dad is going to freak.”

Which, yeah. A giant robot dragon beelining for his daughter is enough to make any father nervous. But listen, Róisín’s dad is a real piece. You wouldn’t expect a theme park owner to have his picture next to the definition of “money-obsessed cartoon villain,” but he’s there, front and center. It’s a miracle Róisín turned out as nice as she is. Her dad sort of hates me something something “overpriced toy mechanic” (I get paid minimum wage) that “just tinkers with nuts and bolts” (I keep his theme park attractions operational) but Róisín stops by my workshop after her shift to say hi anyway.

“Where’s security?” Midge asks, recentering my focus to the current snafu.

“I can handle it,” I say. No need to call security with their stun-guns and bad attitudes. Last time a unicorn twitched a little weird, the head of security had taken a baton to her head like he was trying out for the Yankees. I can’t let that happen to Jabs. I glance down at Midge and find her looking back with a knowing expression. My voice breaks and I hope she chalks it up to the fact that we’re sprinting when I say, “Please.”

Jabs continues down the empty lane, crushing a stray soda can under one massive foot. Midge swears a blue streak.

“Fine,” she says. “I was gonna quit anyway if I had to keep wearing this stupid bull suit. Might as well go out with a bang.”

I’m about to profess a breathless gratitude when she grabs my elbow and yanks me sideways into an employee door tucked behind a bush. Darkness converges over my head as Midge drags me down some steps.

“What wasn’t this underground section shut down?” I ask, working through a map of the park in my head.

“Yes,” Midge says. “It’s my workshop now.”

She shoves me into a room and flicks on the lights. When the spots fade from my vision, I see a cramped basement packed with seamstress paraphernalia: thread and bobbins scattered around, bolts of fabric leaning on every surface, dress forms halfclothed and crucified with pins, elaborate costumes hanging on the old pipes, and an ancient sewing machine that looks like it could be enchanted or cursed with equal likelihood.

I know Midge is a costume designer, know the historical inaccuracy and shoddy craftmanship of the park costumes make her want to tear her hair out. But she’s a costume designer the same way I’m an animatronics engineer: passionate, driven, capable and entirely bound by a lack of money that forces us to work at a revenueobsessed theme park just to have any sort of budget for our work. This though, this is…

“Incredible,” I breathe. She’s got medieval dresses, Victorian navy uniforms, pirate outfits, and a suit of armor she’s currently tossing at me. I catch it, swaying under the weight of the cuirass. “What…?”

“You have to fight him,” Midge says, digging through a pile of props and returning with vambraces, gauntlets, and a shining helmet. “Put these on.”

“Why? Fight who?” But I’m already following her directions and clambering into the armor, because Midge usually knows what she’s doing and I definitely don’t.

“Fight Jabs,” she says, huffing as I struggle with the gauntlets before whacking my hand away and strapping them for me. “You don’t want security to smash him, so you have to turn him off. But there’s no way we’re not getting fired if you just do it and he collapses in the middle of the park. And your thing with Róisín isn’t going to save you.” She emphasizes thingwith a capital T in her voice.

I straighten up. “What thing? Róisín? There's no thing.”

Midge yanks me back so she can keep affixing the costume armor. “Uh huh.”

I turn my face away, wrinkling my nose as heat crawls up my neck. There isn’t a thing. Sure, we hang out before the jousting matches, and a little after, and sometimes she runs a change in her routine by me first, and yeah, I made her an animatronic dove for her birthday because that’s her favorite bird. Maybe I did it just to make her laugh. She has a really nice laugh. Whatever. That doesn't mean we have a thing

Even if I maybe want us to have a thing.

“You need to make it a show,” Midge continues, ignoring my mini romantic crisis on top of my massive yousetamotorizedcreaturethesizeofacarloosecrisis. “Pretend it’s part of an act. If it’s popular ”

“ it’ll bring in more people,” I finish, “which is more money.” Róisín’s dad won’t fire us if we boost his attendance numbers through the roof. “Midge, you’re a genius.”

“I know,” she says, tightening the last strap. “Now get your butt in gear, Lancelot.”

She shoves a sword and shield into my hands. The grip seems to nestle in my palm, the shield the perfect weight. This is genius. This is insane. This is Midge saving my skin and Jabs’s plating.

I get my butt in gear.

By the time I reach the Castle through the old tunnels, I realize a few things: running in armor, even costume armor, absolutely sucks ; there are far more people in the square than I realized; and Jabs is awholelotbiggerwhen I have to fight him. That’s not my big buddy anymore, my mom’s design I worked so hard to follow. That’s a fiveton metal dragon I may or may not have programmed with the Smaug scene from The Hobbitplaying on audiobook.

He wasn’t supposed to break past the bolted supports though, all right? Yeah, I built Jabs to be able to function on a wireless generator, and maybe I sort of kind of illegally siphoned off some of the animatronics budget funds to add sensors so he’d avoid obstacles and react to humanoid shaped body heat, so potentially he couldstomp around and interact with people, but that doesn’t mean I wanted those functions to be tested during my lunch break at a busy theme park, or that I wanted to fighthimabout it. But here I am and there he is, barreling toward the Castle gates…

…where Róisín is royal-waving at families and children.

At the growing clamor of the crowd she turns, red and gold trim on her dress sparkling in the sunlight, and sees the guests parting like the Red Sea to give Jabs a highway straight to her. I want to holler at them for just lettingthat happen, but as phones pop out, I realize Midge’s idea is already working. They think this is an act. Róisín, for her part, is staying remarkably calm; whether that’s her acting degree or just terror freezing her up, I don’t know.

Jabs is honing in on her heat signature, thirty feet away and closing, tooclose to Róisín, I need to divert his attention from her now, so I burst out of the crowd and skid straight into Jabs’s path. His glowing eyes latch onto me, limbs locking to pull a hockey stop. I stumble backward out of his way.

“What ” Róisín gasps behind me. “What is happening? Who are you?”

Oh, right. She can’t see my face through the helmet. That’s a good thing. If she thinks I’m one of the jousting act knights she’ll probably have more confidence in my ability to win than if it was just me as myself.

“If you wouldn’t mind, your highness,” I say, hopefully loud enough for the phone recordings to catch, planting myself between her and Jabs as he regains his balance, leg hydraulics compressing. “I’ll take care of this. You’re in no danger.”

Róisín scoffs. I want to explain, but there’s no time, so I flip my sword once and start forward. I’ve barely taken a step when she grabs my arm and turns me, her gaze searching the visor of my helmet.

“Don’t break the dragon,” she says. “He’s important to someone I care about.”

My mouth goes dry. She ?

“Go,” she says, and shoves me toward Jabs, who is upright now, head swiveling to relocate a target.

Right. Okay.

I holler what I hope is a battle cry and charge, zigzagging to get into the sensors’ scopes. Jabs lifts his head and his entire body shifts to face me. I dodge past his chest plating, almost tripping, and shift my grip on the sword, swinging it in front of me a few times to get a feel for the balance. Thevorpalbladewentsnicker-snack , I think, hearing my mother’s voice reading the poem to me, and I give a sort of choked laugh. I wonder if this is what she expected back then, designing Jabberwock the Dragon, too expensive to build when we were busy paying hospital bills to keep her with us, the blueprints hung above her worktable for years, until her son scraped through college just to get a minimum-wage job at a theme park so he could construct a mechanical eulogy.

Jabs bobs his head (Headbanger.exe) and shuffles his feet (Cotton_Eyed_Joe.exe) in response to my movements, dragging me back to the present. The hammer of my pulse joins the sound of the crowd’s shouts, all banging around the inside of my helmet. I just need to get to the back of his neck so I can reach the input device. The problem is that the back of Jabs’s neck is approximately eleven point seven feet in the air, thirteen point five feet when he stands with legs fully extended. But the vorpal blade went snicker-snack, goddammit, and I’m not letting security scrap my dragon.

I dash for Jabs’s tail and he side-steps, swinging said tail in a loop (I forgot about Jump_Rope.exe), then he dives for the triangular end of the appendage to start a circular chase (I also forgot about Golden_Retriever.exe). I’m in his way though, so he swerves at the last moment, body plates shifting. One of his sensors is bound to get damaged with all this moving I didn’t exactly place them with battle strategy in mind and I’d rather not get hit by a stray claw. Or worse, his wings might extend, and then we’d really be dancing with disaster.

I feint to the side, make Jabs think I’m going right so he avoids, then I dash for his back leg. I’m faster than the sensors even in the armor, which means I make contact with his leg, but I also didn’t think I’d get that far so I end up slamming into it and grabbing the thing like it’s a tree trunk. I hustle to shimmy my way up. Jabs makes a creaking noise, unsure of what to do when the human shaped heat signature is on him. My boot—the laces untied again—gets caught on the edge of a plate and is pulled off as I climb, falling away in the chaos.

I scrabble for a grip on Jabs’s knee, say “Sorry about this, dude,” and launch up to grab onto a spinal ridge plate. I swing along his side, legs pedaling before I use the momentum to propel myself farther up his back. Then it’s a bucking bronco situation as Jabs whirls around, fog hissing out from his nostrils (I_Wish_My_Neighbors_Would_Stop_ Vaping_In_The_Hallway.exe). All his programs are running perfectly, which is cool but also not, because I’m being thrown around like a ragdoll instead of eating some nice soda bread and salmon during my lunch break like I had planned.

One last, straining push later and I’m straddling his back at the base of his neck, swinging the sword around for show with one arm while using the shield to block my opening the panel covering the input device. I slide it sideways and find the controls, lunging for the power button. My hand pauses just before though, because Jabs has stopped spinning and now swivels his head to look at me.

Sound fades out. I shove the visor of my helmet up for a clearer look at Jabs’s face. His glowing LED eyes meet mine, and for a second I think—I know—I see more behind them. A warmth. I’m not sure if it’s me or Mom or something all his own, but I realize it doesn’t matter. All I care about is that it’s there.

“You did great, buddy,” I say, patting his neck. “Fight you tomorrow.”

I switch him off and his leg hydraulics hiss as he sinks to the ground, coming to a heavy rest. I snap my visor back down, taking a breath, then hop off Jabs to stand next to him and face the crowd. My legs are shaking, arms too, but when I raise the vorpal blade into the air it’s with certainty.

The crowd goes nuts . Even more insane than I could have hoped.

The cheering is way too loud in the helmet, my panting making it all humid. I’ll have to talk to Midge about that. She’ll probably get, like, TikTok famous for this outfit and go on to be a crazy cool designer, but I hope she’ll tailor some more armor for me before she leaves.

I search the crowd for her. She’s short, so I’m not exactly optimistic I’ll find her, but then I catch sight of a bull costume standing atop the Sword in the Stone rock (made of plaster). She’s leaning on Excalibur. Even from this distance and through the visor, I can see her grin. I wave, wild and giddy, and hope she can see mine too.

“Hey, hero.”

Róisín appears at my side, holding my missing boot in her hand. “Is the dove you made me going to rampage too?”

I gape. “How’d you know it was me?”

She flips the boot over and taps the heel, where there’s a splatter of dried, sparkly silver paint. “I helped you paint the unicorns. Or did you forget knocking over the paint can when I said you had nice eyes?”

I had actually been trying to bleach that incident from my memory, but maybe it wasn’t the worst thing ever.

The crowd is still losing its mind, the applause growing louder as Róisín pushes up the visor on my helmet. She drops the boot and leans closer. “Looks like the new act is a success.”

The weak laugh I let out is a little hysterical. “God, I hope so.”

“I’ll talk to my dad,” Róisín says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and waving to the cheering people.

“Thanks,” I say, then, feeling braver in a suit of armor and having just slayed a dragon, I add, “You know, Midge said my ‘thing’ with you wouldn’t save me.”

Róisín pulls back enough to look at me with raised eyebrows. “Do you have a ‘thing’ with me?”

“Maybe not a capital T thing,” I say, “but I was hoping for a lowercase thing.”

She laughs (it’s a really nice laugh). “Well, I think it’s a thing to kiss the princess after you save her.”

“For the act?”

“No,” she says, and kisses me.