This story takes me too goddamn long to write. I wonder if that's why I love to write it... Huh... Now I'm questioning things...

Chapter Seven - The Many Firsts

“Don’t worry about the reading thing,” Sharena said, handing me a brown paper bag. “There are more than a few people your age that can’t read, and they had years of practice.”

I sighed. “That’s not exactly comforting. That just tells me I might go years before I actually have a good grip on reading.”

“Oh, you’re doing fine.”

“I don’t feel like I’m doing fine. Three days of trying to get a handle on this, and all I’ve got is a few words.” I grabbed at the hem of my skirt. “Plus I’ve gotta deal with this.”

“Sweetie, you look wonderful.”

“I’m only just used to pants and a shirt. It feels weird to wear a skirt “

“You look like you’re dealing with it well,” Kenny said. I didn’t even notice him walking up to me, when did he get there?

“It’s not easy.”

Sharena smiled. “Kineas, don’t deny her pain, understand?”

“I’m not,” Kenny said, leaning against the counter. “It’s just interesting seeing a dragon in a skirt.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m a human right now.”

“How would you look if you were still a dragon wearing that uniform?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. It would probably look goofy.”

He turned to Sharena. “Is there some way we could do that at some point? Maybe slip her some elixir that lets her switch between human and dragon?”

I shook my head. “No. I’d sorta like to keep the fact that I was a dragon a secret, seeing as the whole town tried to…” I then chose my words carefully, “tar and feather me?” I sort of asked, glancing at Sharena. She nodded. “Yeah, Tar and feather me.” I picked up my book bag. “Did humans really do that to people?”

Sharena nodded. “Humans aren’t a very civilized species, despite how much we claim to be.”

“Okay, what about my mage power? Does that have to stay a secret, too?”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “It would probably be the best option, sweetie. It’s not uncommon for people your age to know magic, but being a mage isn’t common at all, let alone around here.”

I sighed. “So, I have to be completely unassuming and average. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

“You’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.” She smiled.

I nodded. “Yeah. Fine. I’m gonna force myself to be fine. If I’m not fine by the end of the school day, then tomorrow I don’t go to school.”

Kenny made a noise. “I dunno about that. That’d probably be more suspicious than you just being the weird new girl.”

Sharena rolled her eyes. “Either way, the two of you need to get to school.” She walked over to the front door and I saw the forest outside. Again. “If you don’t go now, you’ll be late.”

---

“Why do you risk being late for school just to have a scenic route through the woods?” I asked Kenny. Mithra was walking beside me, trying to get my attention. I picked him up and held him.

“We’re actually closer to school with the woods.” Kenny had gotten a carrot from somewhere, and suddenly I felt hungry. “I think you’re gonna like school. It’s easy, even if you don’t know how to read.”

“How does that make it easy?”

“Because you’ve got me to help.”

Mithra climbed onto my shoulder, which put me off-balance a little. “You think they’d actually let you help me?”

“I don’t see why not.”

I sighed. “Help would be great.” I glanced at the feathered cat on my shoulder. “I’m not entirely sure you can come, though.”

Mithra yawned. “I don’t intend on staying.”

Kenny laughed. For some reason, it made me smile. It was sorta funny, I guess. I had a feathered cat that could talk sitting on my shoulder while I walked to school. Yeah. Funny.

The walk itself was pretty uneventful. Kenny was right in that walking from town, where the house actually was, to school would be a greater distance. The place was huge, compared to most buildings in town. It was actually bigger than the inn that Kenny’s dad owned. Sharena had told me that kids from at least six towns around us were enrolled there, so I assumed it was the only school for teenagers around.

Kenny led me into the fenced-off school yard, then it occurred to me to make sure Mithra wasn’t with me. I couldn’t see him anywhere, so hopefully he was back at home. I walked around the yard, in between the other kids. Nobody looked at me funny, though it felt like they all were. If this was what it felt like being the new kid at school, then I felt a great deal of sympathy for everyone who dealt with this.

I found a spot by the door to the building and sat down, making sure to keep my knees together like Sharena showed me. Skirts were funny things, neither easy nor difficult to adjust to, just different. I hugged my legs to my chest, waiting. Kenny said that a bell would ring to tell us when school would start.

“Square root of seven twenty-nine is twenty-seven… The kingdom’s war with the north raged for thirteen years…”

I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a girl sitting on the ground with books and papers surrounding her. I could tell her parents had come from a continent to the east, or maybe she’d come from there, too. She would write things on the paper around her, then glance at one of her books and write something else on another paper.

The bell that Kenny mentioned rang, and the girl struggled to pick up all her stuff. I walked over to her and started to pick things up with her. She looked up at me with surprise, so I flashed her a smile. “You looked like you needed help.”

She nodded. “Yes, yes, thank you.”

I was about to respond to her, but Kenny grabbed me by the arm and dragged me inside. He led me into the building, down a set of stairs, through another hallway, and finally into a room where a woman was sitting behind a desk.

We waited for about twenty minutes before the woman at the desk looked up at us. “The principal will see you now.”

Kenny motioned for me to follow him into an office, which I did. In the office sat a man who looked to be around Sharena’s age (human ages were difficult for me to determine). He was writing something down on papers, but I couldn’t tell what.

“Mr. Endawa, it’s nice to see you.” The man looked up. “This would be your sister, I assume?”

Kenny nudged me toward the desk a little, so I took that as my cue to talk. “Yes, sir. My name is Riley.”

He looked back down at the paper. “Riley Endawa,” he muttered to himself as he scribbled something on the paper. “I’m told you have a hard time reading.”

I wanted to groan, but I didn’t. I was hoping I’d be able to go the day without anyone knowing that. “Um… Yes, sir.”

He nodded, for some reason. “Nothing to be ashamed of. At last report, approximately one-third of our students have trouble reading, most of them from the prestigious families around here. This letter from your father,“ he held the letter up, “tells me that you come from a poor village in the Plains nation, a village that was recently ravaged in the war.” He set the letter back down. “You’ll be put in classes with Kineas, he’ll help you along.”

I nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

He made a motion with his hands, like someone shooing away a rat. “Now, off to class with you.”

Kenny grabbed my arm again and yanked me back out of the principal’s office, then out into the hallway. “Well, that was easy,” he said.

“For you maybe. I felt… Unwelcome.”

He shrugged. “That’s just Principal Leifsson. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just not all that, well, friendly.”

“I could tell.” I pulled my hair away from my face. “You don’t have difficult classes, do you?”

He shook his head. “No. Plus, you’ll probably like gym.”

“Gym?”

“Yeah. Physical education, we pretty much just run and play sports.”

I sighed. “This sounds like it’s gonna be more difficult than I thought.”

---

“Remember, draw from your heart. Put down on the paper what it is you feel.”

The teacher - Mr. Rothun - passed me about the fifth time since Kenny and I got to class. I had the distinct impression he was trying see if I left my blouse open enough for him to look down it, but he was also peering around the guys like that, too. It was probably just nerves hitting me, since nerves was all I could even concentrate on right now.

I was better at sketching than I thought possible considering I’d never done it in my life. For whatever reason, I couldn’t keep the idea of drawing dragons out of my mind. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. That girl I’d helped outside was sitting beside me, and she was drawing dragons, too, but her’s looked different. Mine actually looked like what real dragons looked like, whereas hers were goofy-faced, with little arms and no wings.

“How come it looks like that?” I asked her.

She looked surprised. “Oh, um… Where I’m from, we celebrate dragons instead of fearing them. We have festivals and one of the years of our lunar calendar is the Year of the Dragon.”

That seemed surprising. A culture that celebrated dragons? “You mean, everything the white dragon causes doesn’t turn your people away from dragons?”

She shook her head. “No. Dragons have been a part of our culture since our first emperor. He swore allegiance to the dragons, and told them that Huaxia would always be a place of safety for them.” She drew a symbol down in the corner, away from the dragon. “This is the symbol for Dragonland.”

龙置

It looked less like chicken scratches to me, but it still didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t read the common language, I sure as hell couldn’t read whatever it was she was writing. Whatever language Huaxia wrote with, it was sure pretty, though.

“Endawa,” Mr. Rothun said, looking in my direction. The problem was that Kenny was sitting right beside me, and we of course shared the last name. “Show me your art.” He tapped the corkboard (Kenny told me what it was) beside him. Kenny and I each looked at one another, confused. “I’m sorry, the shorter, more well-endowed Endawa in the room.”

I gulped. That meant me. I stood up, walked around the room, and made my way to the front of the classroom. I took grabbed a thumbtack off of the corkboard and tacked my dragon drawing on the board. “I don’t know if it’s any good.”

Mr. Rothun looked it over and rubbed at his chin. “Good? This is fantastic, Ms. Endawa.” The corkboard was on wheels, and he moved it closer to the ring of tables that we sat at. “Can anyone tell me what this is?” he asked.

Somebody on the other side of the room raised their hand. “It’s a dragon.”

Mr. Rothun walked over to the chalkboard (Kenny also told me what that was) and picked up one of the erasers. He threw it at the boy who had answered. “Wrong!” He walked back over to the corkboard and smacked my drawing. “This is photorealism! This is the kind of artwork you only find from those who have practiced day-in/day-out for their entire lives! All of you should strive to this level!”

Suddenly, I felt even more nervous than before. I didn’t want to be praised, I wanted to be the girl in the back of the room that nobody talked about. “It’s not really that good, is it?”

He walked over to a bookshelf that I hadn’t noticed until now and pulled a large red book down. “This is the artwork of the famous Oakfinder, a Dwarf whose level of art few have been capable of reaching, even after decades of work.” He set the book on the lip of the corkboard. “Ms. Endawa has done so.”

Dammit, this really wasn’t helping me. I felt nervous as hell.

“Return to your seat, Ms. Endawa. Create for us another masterpiece.”

I walked back to my seat feeling more nervous than I had when I’d been called up. I sat down, then slumped down in my seat. Kenny just smiled as he kept working on his drawing of the house. “I think you’re the first person he’s singled out since school started.”

In a sarcastic voice, I just said, “Gee, thanks.” I picked up my drawing pad and pencil. “This is not how I wanted my first day to go.”

“Enjoy it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I enjoy it, I get people’s attention. I don’t want anybody’s attention.”

---

The next class was a history class. Today, specifically, the teacher was talking about Endawa village. It was the only word on the chalkboard that I could read, which wasn’t exactly a great thing. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the teacher kept morphing back and forth between forms. Starting at one end of the chalkboard, she’d be a human, then she’d become a coyote, then she’d become some odd furry thing that I’d never seen before but looked to vaguely humanoid. She kept talking in the common tongue, though. That was good.

“As we discussed last week, the Endawa family established the village over five hundred years ago, by Arcturo Endawa the First. His son, Arcturo the Second, was the one to begin the family’s dragon hunting heritage, by killing the dragon Nazarenus, the remains of whom currently provide the village’s center fountain.”

That surprised me. I didn’t know there was dragon in that fountain. How’d they make a fountain out of a dragon’s remains? I nudged Kenny. “Did you know the fountain was made of dragon?”

He shook his head. “I thought it was quartz, honestly.”

The teacher changed into a monkey-looking animal now. “Many believe that it was Arcturo the First who named the village after himself, but it was in fact his grandson, Bhaltair Endawa, who defeated the Qinatan conqueror, Osamu Nakajima, who the village was named after. It was named in his honor of his sacrifice. His wife, Osamu’s sister Riko, was the one to suggest the name.”

I whispered to Kenny, “I didn’t know you were part Qinatan, either.”

He shrugged. “It hasn’t exactly been obvious in the family for generations.”

“Kineas!” the teacher shouted. She had become a large bird that I’d never seen before. “You and your sister may already know your family history, but that does not make class an excuse to chat. Please pay attention!”

I raised my hand. “I’m adopted, so I’m sorta learning this all for the first time, ma’am.”

“Then I expect you to listen!”

I shyly lowered my hand. “Yes, ma’am…” Several of the other kids in class let out quiet laughs. Of course, I embarrassed myself.

---

Gym class alone made me wonder just how long I would be able to stand going to school. The locker room experience was odd enough, as I wasn’t used to changing my clothes in front of other people, even if they were other girls. When I was handed the gym outfit, I nearly doubled over in laughter as the shorts would cover almost nothing and the shirt only came to just above my belly button. The outfit came with its own special one-size-fits-all bra that was supposed to keep my breasts from flopping around.

The outfit wasn’t uncomfortable anymore than it was just odd to wear for someone who’s only worn a limited amount of clothes in their life. I felt like I was wearing less then when I had the skirt on, probably relating to the fact that the shorts pretty much just covered my underwear. If not for the shirt, I’d feel like I was parading around half-naked.

The girl beside me, who I semi-recognized from art class, handed me a small thing that looked like a circle. “What’s this for?” I asked.

“Rubber band to tie your hair back. Trust me, you’re gonna need it.”

Ii took the thing - the rubber band - and then realized I had absolutely no idea how to tie my hair back as she suggested. “Um… Can you do it for me?” I asked, shyly.

She looked surprised, but nodded. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t think about it, you’ve probably never done this before.”

I wanted to tell her that she was more right about that than she thought she was. I didn’t, but the thought was still there. She took me into the restroom that the locker room had and did it in front of the mirror, so that I could see how it was done. That relieved me greatly, and I told myself I’d practice at home.

I looked odd with my hair tied back the way it was. If I looked at myself straight on, I could see a minor family resemblance to Kenny. I wondered if anybody else would notice it, because I wasn’t supposed to look like Kenny and I shared any DNA. Then again, I wondered if anybody even cared. So far, everybody was treating me like I’d always been there, like I was just another girl. Even when I had screwed up in history and art, they weren’t treating me like I was something new or even foreign.

“How good are you at dodgeball?” the girl asked.

“Huh?”

“Dodgeball, it’s a game where people throw red balls at each other. Whoever gets hit can’t play anymore.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never played it.”

“Well, I hope you’re a pretty good shot, it’s almost always boys vs. girls and the boys usually win.”

I watched her walk out of the locker room and prepared myself. Judging by what she’d described, I’d seen people play dodgeball before, when hiding in a forest once. The idea of being hit by a ball didn’t sound great, but if it was a game that people played, it looked like I was gonna havta play it, too.

I followed everybody else out of the locker room into the gymnasium. The room was big, mostly white, and had an orange floor. The guys were spilling out from their locker room, as well. Kenny was already out, sitting on the large bench… Thing… That I didn’t know the name of on the one side of the room.

The teacher walked across the room, a clipboard in his hand. “Alright, everyone, you know the drill. Girls on the left, boys on the right. I want two volunteers.” He pointed at Kenny and I. “You two.”

I leaned close to Kenny. “How are we volunteers if he picked us?” He shook his head. I followed Kenny over to the teacher, who checked some things off on his paper.

“Distribute the balls,” he said.

Kenny pulled me over to a cart kinda like the one we kept the stock in at the pharmacy, but it was filled with red balls. “Coach likes them in a straight line, for some reason,” he said. We pulled the cart to the center of the gym and he started on one end, I started on the other, each of us setting a ball down and then going back to the cart to get another. By the time we got to the center, there were fifteen balls lined up. I walked to one end of the girl’s line and Kenny walked to one end of the boy’s line.

The coach blew on a whistle. “Go!” Everybody scrambled for a ball and several of us - boys and girls alike - were knocked out almost instantly. I managed to jump out of the way and threw a ball straight at Kenny, not even realizing I’d aimed for him. The ball hit him in the head, and knocked him on his ass. He just smirked when he realized I’d been the one to eliminate him.

A ball whizzed past my head, forcing me to my feet. I grabbed another ball that had hit the floor and threw it blindly, hitting a red-headed boy in the stomach. I rolled out of the way when another ball hit the wall behind me (when I’d gotten close to the wall, I didn’t know). I grabbed that ball and hit a tan-skinned guy with a weird tattoo on his face.

I ran for another ball, jumped for it, and was just about to grab it when a ball hit me in the face. I was thankful that I was already on the floor, otherwise I would have landed pretty hard. The coach blew his whistle again. “Rios!” he shouted. I sat up and saw him patting the girl who’d given the rubber band on the back. “It’s about time the girls won a game.” He started moving the balls back into the center of the room. “Line up! half and half!”

The red-headed boy helped me up. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Half the boys and half the girls on either side.” He smiled. “I’m gonna be on your side. I don’t want you to hit me in the face again.”

I smirked. That was actually pretty funny.

---

I felt tired. Kenny never told me that school would be as exhausting as it was. Of course, a lot of that probably had to do with the four games of dodgeball we played in gym. My face still hurt a little from taking so many hits. I was almost dragging my feet as we walked home.

“You looked like you had a good time,” Kenny said.

“Huh?”

“At school. You looked like you were having fun.”

I nodded. “I was, kinda. It was nice to just be around other people.” I looked around the forest for the house, but I didn’t see it. Granted, most of the forest looked the same, so for all I knew, we weren’t anywhere near where the house was. “Nobody treated me like I was the new girl, which was nice.”

Kenny smiled. “There were some guys in the locker room talking about you.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Hey, Kineas, is your sister available? or Where’d your dad find such a hot girl like that to adopt? You’re actually getting more than a few guys interested in you.”

The idea of that concerned me. I hadn’t really put any thought into guys being attracted to me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if I was attracted to guys. The idea wasn’t repulsive, or anything. I’d never really been attracted to girls, though I’d hardly met any female dragons in my life. I’d barely met any male dragons, either. I could actually count the combined numbers of both on one hand.

“The best one had to be when somebody asked Can your dad find me a girl like that? I think everybody laughed at that one.”

I said, “Wow, a boys’ locker room is full of way more talking than I expected.”

“Not as much as my friend Kaui says your locker room is nothing but talk.”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah, there’s a lot of it. I wasn’t paying attention to most of it.”

“Aw… I was hoping some of the girls said something about me,” he said, laughing. After a minute, he stopped. “Um… Wasn’t the house here this morning?”

I looked around. This actually did seem like the part of the forest where the house had been. “I thought it was.”

He sighed. “I guess that means we’ve gotta walk back to town. Maybe Sharena’s too busy at the pharmacy and didn’t have time to do the spell.”

“We should probably get there to help then, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Wanna race?”

Despite my exhaustion, the idea did seem kinda fun. “Why not?”

---

The pharmacy had a Sorry, We’re Closed sign on it when we got into town. I was actually kinda proud of myself for being able to read the sign, maybe I was getting better at it faster than I thought. There didn’t seem to be anything special happening in town, so Kenny and I continued on our way to the house.

As we approached, I saw two figures in the house, shadowed by the lights. One of them was Sharena, but I couldn’t tell who the other one was. When I pointed it out to Kenny, he got excited. He ran to the house, threw open the door and shouted, “Dad!”

I followed Kenny into the house and saw the man standing there. He was relatively young-looking, but there was an unmistakable family resemblance to Kenny. The man wore a sword on his back and had yet to set down a large bag that he was holding, but he was too busy ruffling Kenny’s hair and looking happy.

“Hey there, squirt. You been keeping the inn running while I been gone?”

“Yeah. Oh!” Kenny ushered me closer. “You two haven’t met yet.”

Kenny’s dad put his hand on my shoulder. “You must be Riley. Sharena’s told me a lot about you already. Name’s Irvine, and for as long as you’re livin’ with us, I’m gonna be your step-dad.”

~o~O~o~

Chapter Eight - The Next Leg of the Journey

“Do you even know where we’re going?” I asked. Sari was a little ways ahead of me, powering forward like she had a destination on her mind. “Have you even been to this continent?”

She shook her head. “Nope, but I know herded animal tracks when I see them and I see them right here.” She pointed at the ground beside her. “We’re on farmland, and that means there’s a farmer and a place to hole up for the night.”

I sighed. “You’re assuming this farmer won’t just try to behead us when he finds us on his land.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me and smiled. “No, I bet she won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because this is her husband’s land, and he’s not here right now.”

I was too tired from all the walking to even bother asking why she was specifying a female farmer. Wherever it was we were, I didn’t know if women ruled these lands or men. Hell, I didn’t even know where we were. Pleasant looking place, lots of woods. Lot of maple trees, I noticed. I reached for my canteen and went to take a drink, but it was empty. Great.

The walking finally ended when we came to a rather tall chain link fence. It stretched out to either side of us, so I couldn’t see where this farmer’s land truly ended. I heard some cows in the distance, but that was the only real clue that I was on farmland at all. I drew my blade and touched the fence with the tip. Nothing happened, so the fence wasn’t connected to electricity, if this farm even had electricity.

Sari looked over at me, then shrugged. I returned my sword to the scabbard and gripped the fence. “Looks like we climb,” I said. I began my ascent and made it about halfway when I realized that the fence seemed to be growing. “Do you see that?” I asked.

“What?”

“Is this fence getting taller to you?”

“No. Why are you yelling when you’re right next to me?”

I looked down. Right next to her? I was a good fifteen feet up. I took a step down in descent and found my foot on the ground, exactly where I’d started my climb. “What the hell?”

She looked at me funny. “What?”

“I’d gotten halfway up the fence, I know I did.”

She groaned. “Oh, man, we’re not still stuck on Kalena’s beach, are we?”

Another voice answered, “I’d say not.” I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a kid, probably about ten or eleven. Chin-length hair and delicate features confused me as to whether this was a boy or a girl. Their accent was odd, one I hadn’t heard in awhile, and I couldn’t quite place where. “You’re on me farm.”

I drew my blade again, but I found flowers instead. Sari started laughing. “Um… Did you mean for that to happen?” she asked.

I threw the flowers away and reached for my sword again, but this time I couldn’t even get a good grip on it. I turned to the kid. “Alright, what the hell is going on here?”

The kid smiled. “I’ll take ya to me pa. He’ll let ya know.”

I looked over at Sari, who shrugged once again.

---

Sari and I were led to a house that didn’t look big enough to support two people, but once we were taken inside, it was suddenly the size of a small fort. Magic houses always seemed to be bigger on the inside than they were on the outside. I noticed a humanoid figure on the second floor, but it just looked like the figure was standing there.

There was a sound in the room to my left. A puff of purple smoke escaped the room, then someone coughed. I backed away from the room, then the door to the room opened. The man who left the room was tall, at least seven feet. He had a large beard, covering at least half of his body length. He wore a cloak, and pulled back the hood to reveal his very bald head.

“Welcome, welcome. Cameron tells me ya were caught out by the fenceline. How can we help ya?”

Alright, now I was confused. The kid had made it seem like we were in trouble. “Well…,” I said, “We don’t exactly know where we are.”

He coughed out a laugh. “Oh! Just passin’ by, are ya? Well, don’t be shy, yer welcome for the night.”

Sari didn’t look at all convinced. “So, where are we?” she asked.

“Vesperia. Specifically, the most southern province, on the McGregor farm. Me name’s Sheamus McGregor, and this is me little girl, Cameron.”

I looked over at Cameron and saw her blush. She didn’t seem to like being called little girl.

“Where did ya both come from?” Sheamus asked. He pointed at Sari. “Yer from the Plains Tribe, aren’t ya?” He was suddenly holding her bow. He hadn’t reached for it, it was just in his hands. If this guy wasn’t a sorcerer, then I was hallucinating. “Fine craftsmanship. Your parents got this from their parents, did they?”

Sari took her bow back. “Don’t,” she said, her voice ice cold. “And no. I got this from the tribe leader that my father left me with.”

“Ah. It’s a fine weapon, no two ways ‘round that.”

“I know.”

I drew my sword and held it out. “What can you tell me about my blade?” I asked. There wasn’t anything he could say that I wouldn’t already know, but I felt like testing him.

He took the sword and held it in his hands for a moment. “It’s sharp. Forged in Qinata, I think they called this a katana, once upon a time. Not that it’s got a name now.” He inspected the hilt. “Carvings. A language not passed human tongues in centuries, if at all.” He handed it back to me. “Where’d ya find that, lad?”

“It was my father’s.”

“Where’d he find it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. When he died, it passed to my sister, and then to me.”

He nodded, knowingly. “Where ya from, laddie?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

He knelt closer to me. Suddenly, I felt shorter than five-foot-nine. “Not true, boy. Ya came from somewhere, ya gotta keep holda that.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, where’d ya come from?”

I pushed his hand away. “It doesn’t matter. It’s gone, it’s not coming back.” I returned my blade back to its scabbard. “Now, you offered help before.”

“Aye.”

Sari grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me out of earshot of Sheamus. “What the hell was up with that?”

I whispered, “Testing him.”

“Why?”

“Something feels off about him.”

“You mean other than the fact that he’s a sorcerer?”

I shook my head. “He ain’t just a simple sorcerer, Sari. There’s something else here.”

The man began to clap. I reached for my blade. “Yer a smart one, laddie.” He was suddenly closer than I thought he was. “You too, lass. You put the pieces together faster than the laddie did.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not a sorcerer. I’m not a conjurer.” I drew my blade and prepared to fight, but he was gone again. His hand was suddenly on my shoulder. “You can put that away, laddie. I’m not gonna hurt ya.” My sword was suddenly floating in the air. “I’m one o’ the last mages in these parts.” He sat down on a chair in front of me, one that hadn’t been there before. “And me little girl over there is the other.”

I kept one eye on my sword, the other on him. “You haven’t exactly been up-front with us, so why should we trust you?”

“I coulda killed ya the second ya set foot on muh farm, laddie. But, I know what yer here for.” He waved his hand a moment and my sword was sticking into the floor. I didn’t reach for it, but I was ready to if the need arose. “Yer goin’ after the white dragon.”

---

Sheamus sipped from a cup I didn’t see him pick up. “Word came from a friend o’ mine lives in Endawa village. He’s one them whaddya say mind communicators.”

Sari raised an eyebrow. “Mind communicators?”

“Them who speaks to a person’s mind. Ye never know when they do it, they just do. And they have seen yer thoughts, friends. They told me all about yer run in with the Imperial Escorts, and where ye fell into the water. I knew it was only a matter of time before ye showed up here. The white dragon’s a menace to the whole world, and if yer determined to take the bastard down, I’ll do all I can.”

That almost seemed like too easy a fix. “What all can you do to help us?”

“Not much, sadly. Me conduit’s been dead for many a year now, and me power’s not what it used to be. Tappin’ into mana’s a little dangerous without a conduit, so all I’ve got are simple conjurin’ tricks for the most part. A wee bit of teleportation magic that I don’t use too often. There’s but one thing I can give ya, and that’s me wee girl.”

I looked over at Cameron, who didn’t look too happy at what was being proposed. “Why?” I asked.

“She’s not been given her conduit yet, though it could happen any day now. Either way, she’s capable of enough to help you. We’ve talked it over, and while she’s not happy with the idea, she’s willin’ to go with you.”

Cameron spoke up. “Not happy is an understatement, dad. I’m just agreeing because I know it’s what’s best.” She turned to Sari and me. “You’ll let me join ya, right?”

I pulled Sari to a corner of the room. “What do you think?” I asked.

She looked as though she wanted to say ‘no’. She looked back at the girl, then back to me. “She’s a kid.”

“I’m sorry, are you eighteen yet? We’re kids!”

She shook her head. “Yeah, and we’ve kicked a lot of Royal Escort ass back in Endawa. All we know about her is that she’s a mage who doesn’t have a conduit yet. That doesn’t help us and I don’t want to be responsible for her.”

I couldn’t blame her for that, but at the same time, Sheamus was offering to help us without knowing anything about us except our mission. Something about that seemed genuine to me. I walked over to Cameron. “You don’t have a conduit, what can you do now?”

The girl shrugged. “Simple tricks. Like what I did with you and the fence, earlier. Dad says if I’ve got anythin’ of me mother in me, I’ll be good at summonin’.” She rubbed her left arm. “But I cannae guarantee that, sorry.”

I turned to Sheamus. “You’ll need her, laddie. And she needs you.”

Sari walked over to me. “Look, I think we can manage with just the couple of us, we don’t really wanna separate you from your daughter.”

Sheamus stood, grabbed my arm and pulled me into another room. Sari came to follow us, but he shut the door before she could get into the room. “Yer not takin’ her from me, yer takin’ her for me. You cannae let her know this, lad. Without me conduit, me magic sucks me life force.”

“Why haven’t you told her?”

“She’s young, twelve years. I won’t make it to her thirteenth. She needs someone to take care of her, lad.”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I can’t promise her safety.”

“No, ya can’t, but ya can promise me that she won’t see me wither and die here. That’s all I need, laddie, and that’s all I ask.”

For the first time since Sari and I got there, I really saw the old man that Sheamus had become. Clearly, some of his power was concentrated on staying rather young looking for his daughter’s sake. If I had met him like this, I would have assumed him to be a seventy or eighty year old man, almost about to die.

For the second time in recent memory, I met somebody who wasn’t at all what they seemed.

As if I’d dreamed the whole thing, the man returned to his younger form. I realized that I had no real choice in the matter. “I’ll take care of her.”

Sheamus nodded. “Thank ye, laddie. Do your best.”

---

I stood there, holding the pack full of food that Sheamus had given to us. He was busy saying his goodbyes to Cameron. She was full of tears, and I didn’t blame her. Sari was beside me, sharpening her arrowheads. I hadn’t told her what Sheamus had told me, though I would eventually. I’d tell Cameron, as well. Hopefully, the girl would understand.

“Ya need to be on the lookout for that conduit o’ yers, sweetheart,” Sheamus said, patting her on the head. “You’ll know it when ya see it.”

She nodded. “I know, dad. I read yer book.”

“Good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather-bound book. “Take it with ya. You’ll be usin’ yer mana like a pro in no time.”

She smiled and took the book from her father. “I’ll miss ya, dad.”

“And I’ll miss you, Cameron. Yer as pretty as your mum. Ya be good, now.”

She nodded again. “I will, dad.”

“Good girl. Now get goin’.” He turned to Sari and I. “There’s a town about fifteen miles south, you’ll be back in the Empire then. White dragon sightings should take ya where ya need to go.”

I held out my hand. “Thank you, Sheamus,” I said.

He ignored my hand and hugged me instead. It was the kind of hug my father would give me, once upon a time. The kind of hug a father gives a son when he’s proud of him. No words were exchanged, but none needed to be. I returned the hug and then Sari, Cameron and I began our trek southward. I took one look back and once again saw the old man that Sheamus truly was. That was the last I saw of him.

---

I knelt down by the river we’d begun to follow and splashed some water on my face. Sari and Cameron were a few feet away, in the river and washing each other’s hair. It looked like they were having fun. I reached into my pack and grabbed my canteen. I filled it with river water, and then took a long drink before filling it with more water. The sun was starting to get low.

I wondered if now would be a good time to tell them about Sheamus. Cameron hadn’t said so much as a word about her father since we left the farm, and I couldn’t tell what Sari was thinking about the whole situation. It wasn’t too different from when her own father died. Would she be angry at Sheamus for hiding the truth from his daughter and me for hiding it from both of them?

The possible negatives outweighed everything.

I splashed some more water on my face and then nearly reached for my blade when something grabbed at my arm. I pulled my hands away from my face and saw that it was just Sari. “In the water, Cres,” she said, yanking even harder on me. With how I was crouched beside the water, pulling me in wasn’t too difficult for her. The riverbed wasn’t too deep, not even waist high. I was drenched, but I’d been pulled in rather than getting in of my own free will. Hopefully, there was a place to do the wash wherever we were going.

“What’s on your mind?” Sari asked. I noticed for the first time that she was topless. “Please tell me it’s not the boobs.”

I laughed. “Trust me, you’re not my type.” I brushed my hair back with my hand. “Just… Things.”

She glanced around me at Cameron, who was resting in a part of the river that seemed a little deeper. “I’ve gotta ask you what her dad said to you in that room.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m… Worried about that.”

“Why?”

I lowered my voice. “Don’t tell her, okay?”

“What happened?”

“Sheamus is dying. He wanted us to take Cameron so that she wouldn’t see him die at home.”

I saw shock in her eyes. She scratched at her left arm. “Ya mean… He probably died right after we left, didn’t he?”

I nodded. “I think he did.”

“What do we tell her? She’s hoping her conduit comes along any day now and that we can swing back to her farm to show her dad.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Believe me, it’s on my mind.”

“Cres, we’ve got to tell her. As a teenage girl who lost her dad, I really think she needs to know.”

I half-walked/half-waded my way to the edge of the river and leaned up against the bank. “I know. I don’t know how to tell her.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “Just tell her. Don’t hide it from her.”

I sighed. “You’re right. Goddamnit, you’re right, but at the same time… This is more pressure than I signed on for.” I took off my jacket and threw it at my bag, then pulled my shirt off. “I’ll tell her.” I walked over to Cameron and pulled her out of the water. “I need to tell you something.”

“Is it about Dad?”

I nodded.

“He told ya, didn’t he?”

I was suddenly confused. “How did you know?”

She looked down at the ground. “Dad’s book. Whole section there on what happens to a mage without a conduit. I didn’t tell him I read it.”

I knelt down in front of her. “Is that why you agreed to this?”

She nodded. “I dinnae want him to worry about me. He wanted me away so I dinnae have to see him die. I’m kinda glad, actually.” She started to tear up. “I don’t know if I coulda… I’ve been livin’ with me dad me whole life, watchin’ him die woulda killed me, too.”

I put my arms around her. “I know. I promised your dad I’d take care of you as best I could, even though our aim to take down the white dragon could probably lead to all of us dying.”

She nodded. “I know. Dad wouldnae have left me with ya if he thought it was gonna happen, but I know it could.”

I broke off the hug. “If we make it out of all this alive, we’ll come back to give your dad a proper burial.”

She wiped the tears from her eyes. “He’ll just need a headstone. Mages don’t leave bodies when we die, we just fade away.”

I was about to say something to her, but I spotted movement in the trees. My blade was across the river with my pack, Sari was closest to it. I grabbed Cameron and jumped into the river, carrying her as fast as I could. I stopped when an arrow grazed my left cheek, embedding itself in the riverbank in front of me.

“I’d stop there, if I were you,” a man’s voice said.

---

“What have we got here?” the man asked. “Couple love birds takin’ a bath in my stream?” He let out a laugh. “She’s a might young for you, son.”

I turned around after setting Cameron on her feet. The man wasn’t alone. There were at least five others with him, all of them dressed in green hunting clothes. Two of them - neither the leader - held bows, drawn and ready to loose. Getting to my sword never felt more necessary. I motioned for Cameron to stay behind me.

“My name is Bikendi Ola, and these are my Hawks. That is my stream you’re standin’ in, and I’m not gonna let you use it.”

I remained calm. “You’d kill a little girl?”

“Kill her? Naw. She’d be useful for other things.” He raised an arm. “When my arm goes down, so do you, friend.”

“And then so do you,” Sari said, her voice louder than I thought it would be. I turned around and saw her standing on the river bank, aiming her bow at Ola. She still hadn’t had time to get her top back on. “And I’m one hell of a better shot than either of those two bozos is.”

Ola smiled. “Ooh, ooh, ooh. You are a fine piece of meat, sugar tits. Where were you hidin’ when I caught up to your boyfriend here?”

She tightened her draw. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t drop you now?”

I kept my gaze on Ola. He didn’t stop smiling. “Yeah, there’s a helluva reason, baby.” His smile widened, and I knew damn well why.

“Sari! Down!” I shouted. She let herself fall into the stream as arrows came from behind her. Without their original target to hit, the arrows continued their trajectory into the bowmen that Ola had beside himself. Sari was beside me now, her bow drawn again. I had to admit, she looked pretty good soaking wet.

Ola simply laughed. “Oh, that’s good, babe. Tell me, does havin’ the milk jugs hangin’ free there help with your aim or no?”

Sari leaned closer to me. “Please tell me I can kill him now.”

“Just a minute,” I whispered. Louder, I asked, “So, do you still have the advantage?”

“How would I have lost it? Or are you forgettin’ my men on that side with the bows pointed at you?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t forget them, no.” I tilted my head to Cameron. “What’cha got in your bag of tricks?” I whispered.

She simply nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two bowmen turning around and aiming their bows downward at the ground. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but it seemed she made them believe that the stream was behind where they were standing, so they adjusted accordingly. I would have preferred she kill them or at least knock them out, but that might have been asking too much of a twelve year old girl.

But they weren’t the only ones affected. The other two men beside Ola were looking around as if they were blind. One of them drew a knife and swiped randomly at the air. Ola was furious, but unaffected by Cameron’s tricks. He drew his sword and jumped into the stream.

“I’ll gut ya, ya little shits!”

My own sword had somehow gotten in my hand. I looked over at Cameron, who nodded. The girl was about as good as her old man was at moving things. I pulled the scabbard off and handed it to Sari, who took Cameron’s hand and pulled her away from what was about to happen.

“I’mma kill you, and then take the girlies for myself,” Ola said, a vicious smile on his face. “And then I’ll take ‘em back to my place and let the rest of my boys have ‘em, too!”

I lunged at him. Our swords clanged against one another as he parried my attack. I kicked him away, then swung at his head. He ducked below the swing and attempted something similar on me, aimed at my stomach. I blocked his attack and rammed my shoulder into him. I made another swing, drawing blood from his sword arm, but not taking him out of the fight. He made a hard upward swing and caught my chin with the tip of his sword. It wasn’t a large cut, but enough to sting.

He brought his sword back down, moving closer to me. I brought my blade up and blocked him, then I took the cheap shot and brought my knee up into his crotch. My momentum knocked him down, into the water. He managed to land on a sandbar big enough to keep his head from going under. He took a blind swipe at me, but I parried his blow. I knocked the sword out of his hand and brought my own to his neck.

“You’re going to leave my sisters alone, asshole, and I’m gonna make damn sure of it.”

I pulled my sword away from his neck, pointed it downward and brought it down into his crotch. He cried it in pain, his voice going high-pitched. The men that Cameron had blinded were looking around, trying to figure out where their boss was, while the bowmen loosed arrow after arrow into the ground in front of them, likely assuming that they were hitting or missing me.

I walked over to Cameron and Sari. Sari looked understanding, and nodded. Cameron looked frightened. “I didn’t want to do it,” I told her.

She nodded. “I know, it just… It surprised me, is all.”

I helped them both onto the riverbank where our stuff was. “Let’s get going before those four realize what’s happened.”

The sun had finally dipped below the horizon. The shadows almost looked as though they were watching us.