“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.
My Dearest Julia,
I promised I would write to you and tell you of these, my adventures, in hopes that they might amuse you, or at least give you some idea of the momentous enterprise in which I’m involved.
Until recently, I believed I was settled in my ways and had quite abandoned the adventurous life, as I told your esteemed parents when I asked for permission to court you with an eye toward making you my wife. But a month ago, I received a letter from my old friend Meriwether Lewis, whom I’m sure I have mentioned in conversation before. My friend happened to be in St. Louis when the great wizard Benjamin Franklin visited, when the unexpected dragon attacked and set fire to parts of the city. The commotion was reported in many newspapers throughout the land, and the eyewitness reports are quite indisputable.
After my friend Meriwether assisted the old wizard during this battle against the remarkable creature from myth, Franklin was so impressed that he hired Meriwether to lead a bold expedition into the uncharted arcane territories west of St. Louis, perhaps even to find a path all the way to the Pacific Ocean, if it still exists after the Sundering.
Meriwether invited me to accompany him as his partner on the expedition. He wrote me a letter filled with perfectly sensible points and making a strong case to go out there. This, Franklin insisted, was a possible means—via the western sea—to sail back to Europe, and it was also an unparalleled chance for civilized men to study the native fauna and flora, to learn about the rest of our land, in which we now find ourselves stranded.
Those reasons alone should be sufficient, but then, other things transpired, related to the dragon attack and other similarly profound events occurring near St. Louis.
It seems that someone or some arcane force fueled by magic is uniting the native tribes west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, making them hostile to Europeans. Franklin doesn’t know if it is an evil person, creature, or force, but that will be part of our duty to investigate.
I apologize for not writing you sooner, but I have been overwhelmed with purchasing and organizing supplies for such an enormous undertaking, funded by Franklin himself. I am due to meet Meriwether in St. Louis in another month.
I know you will chide me for risking myself on this mad enterprise before our wedding, but I promise to do my best to return to you and keep our engagement. Though we encounter perils and adventures, I will be back to claim your hand, my dearest.
I will send letters when I can if we send couriers back east, for I know your curious mind will wish to know of all the new things we find and the dangers we vanquish.
Yours in fond regard,
William Clark
—Letter from William Clark to Julia Hancock,
April 28, 1804
Heroes Assemble
Meriwether Lewis had stripped to his shirtsleeves—and the shirt a humble homespun one bought recently—as he supervised the assembling of men and supplies, ready to go into the wild. By supervising, mostly it meant waiting around till Clark should arrive.
For weeks, as the men trickled in by one and by two, Meriwether had found them lodging and franked their expenses, both in daily living and in materials for the expedition, from the largesse dispensed to him by Benjamin Franklin.
Each of the men had suggested additions to the expedition and things they should take, from well crafted, watertight wooden boxes to oilcloth, from dried meat to trading goods.
Meriwether now walked between the boats, where these various goods were being stowed and a stand, upon which he kept his ledger, which had become blotted from many a hasty note made with an ill-trimmed quill.
In fact, Meriwether realized his hands too had become blue with ink.