“Not a magical blue rose,” said the king with a wave of his hand, “but a real one.”

I considered saying that, always assuming I could do the spells correctly, the color on my blue rose would be as “real” as the color on this rose he had heard about. But I hated to argue with my king. “I’ve never seen a blue rose,” I said instead. It appeared I would be hearing quite a bit whether I wanted to or not, and I might as well be agreeable about it. “Some of your deep red varieties shade into violet, but that’s not very close.”

“That’s right,” said King Haimeric, then fell silent, staring into the fire.

I went into a reverie of my own. Maybe I wouldn’t have to hear about this rose after all. At Christmas one was supposed to feel congeniality and love for one’s fellow man, but I was instead having to fight against feeling dissatisfied with life in such a quiet little kingdom. I was just wondering if there were any Christmas cookies left, and if so if they had all become stale, when the king startled me so much that I forgot all about being grumpy.

“I’m an old man, and I’ve never been on a quest,” he said. “I think it’s about time.”

I was not an old man, in spite of the white beard which I kept hoping, in spite of all evidence, gave me an air of wizardly wisdom. But I had never been on a quest either. Perversely, when I had just been thinking Yurt was too dull, leaving it suddenly seemed too adventurous. The thought of leaving the royal castle, where we were comfortable and safe from the sleet, and starting off on some unknown but doubtless highly dangerous journey filled me with horror.

But the king said nothing more about a quest, and in the following weeks I decided it was just a momentary whim, brought on by the mention of the blue rose. But the idea kept nagging at the back of my mind. In the nearly ten years I had been Royal Wizard of Yurt, King Haimeric had never been gone from the kingdom for more than a month or so at a time, and, for that matter, neither had I.