Brand spankin' new, never before seen (except on TG Storytime earlier today). I'll be posting this here at the same time as I do on TG Storytime and DeviantArt. Hope you enjoy.
Chapter One - The Dragon
I’d been flying for hours, longer than I should have been. I needed to find a place to sleep, or else I’d land somewhere on accident and somebody would find me. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere… There!
A large field, with a small lake. It was at least seven miles away from a town, and didn’t look too important. Hopefully, I could get some sleep there. My eyelids were already trying to forcibly close themselves on me, so I really needed to sleep. That lake would come in handy when I woke up, too. I was always thirsty after sleeping.
I made my landing and curled up a good fifty feet from the lake. I tucked my tail underneath me. If I didn’t, it had a habit of twitching while I slept. The sun was just starting to creep over the mountains when I closed my eyes.
It couldn’t have been twenty minutes later when I heard something nearby. I opened my eyes and saw a boy in the lake. The boy was too busy washing himself in the lake to notice me, it seemed. I couldn’t exactly blame him. I was lying down, sleeping when he arrived. It must have been the cool splash of water that he made when he decided to dive in that woke me up. I didn’t move, though, I simply laid there, and watched him. The innocence of youth… Not something his kind afforded mine. The boy climbed back out of the lake, ready to jump again.
Something moved. Oh, crap… It was my tail. I must have moved in my sleep. Sometimes, my tail has a mind of its own, especially when I’m trying to sleep. My tail hit the ground, shaking the ground and sending the boy face-first into the water. He surfaced a moment later and looked around. He noticed me for the first time, and crawled out of the lake. Would he run? It would be kind of funny if he did, seeing as he was naked. Humans hated being seen naked when they weren’t making babies.
The boy walked over to me and realized for the first time just what it was he was looking at. If he’d never seen a dragon before, I could understand his surprise at finding me near a lake in the middle of a field, but this was a common place to find us resting. Maybe he’d just never seen a dragon up close. That was common, too. I’d only ever seen a few humans up close, so the feeling was almost mutual.
I flared my nostrils a little, singed the grass near my face. The boy jumped back just a little bit, but his curiosity must have gotten the better of him, because he didn’t run. Instead, he leaned a little closer to me, studied me. I fully opened my eyes, which startled him again, then lifted my head up. My neck was long for my age, something I’m sure my parents would mention, if they were still alive.
“You’re being pretty rude,” I said, lowering my head again to look him in the eyes. It didn’t come out the way I expected it to. Clearly, I was still too tired to sound as annoyed as I felt. “I was sleeping.”
“I didn’t even see you there, until you opened your eyes.”
I chuckled. “Don’t know much about dragons, do you?”
“Only what I’ve read in my dad’s journals.”
“What’s that?”
“Pretty much boils down to dragons are dangerous.”
I wasn’t that surprised. It was the reason my kind were hunted, after all. “I look dangerous to you?”
“You just burned grass.”
“That’s what I do when I snore.” I moved my head closer to him. “Wanna see what happens when I’m tired of humans asking me questions?”
“So, are you dangerous?”
I shook my head. “Not to you. I don’t wanna make an enemy out of humans.”
The boy sat down in front of me. How did such soft skin deal with such hard ground underneath it? I had scales, and the dirt and grass around me still made it feel like I was sitting on a thousand tiny rocks.
“You’re not like the dragons my dad told me about.”
I laid my head back down. “There aren’t any dragons like the ones your dad has told you about.” Leave. Leave. Leave. “Why are you staying here if you think I’m dangerous?”
“You said you’re not.”
“It’s what I said, yes, but you’d be an idiot if you just assumed I was telling the truth.”
The boy stood up. “I can tell you’re too weak to stand, let alone kill me.”
“I know,” I growled, “I was sleeping.” I closed my eyes and pretended to get back to sleep. Hopefully it worked.
It didn’t. “Why are you sleeping here? The whole town uses this lake.”
That opened my eyes. I stood and looked around. There wasn’t anybody else in sight, thankfully. I knelt down and looked him in the eyes again. “What do you mean the whole town?”
“Well, mostly just the kids. We like to swim here.”
“Nude?”
“I like to skinny dip.”
“When will they be here?”
“I don’t know, it’s early. Some of my classmates might be here later.”
I leaned closer to him. “Do you any place I could go to get some sleep? I’m still exhausted, I was flying for almost an entire day.”
He smiled. “I do, actually.”
I wasn’t pleased at all with his ‘hiding place’. The boy instructed me to fly to the northeast, then come back south. When I arrived where he told me to go, I discovered a small town by the ocean, an ocean I hadn’t known was nearby. I could have found a nice, peaceful cave to sleep in.
In fact, a cave was exactly what I did find. A cave by the ocean, with a tunnel that led to a building, looked like the shed to a house. A few minutes after I got there, the boy walked inside and quickly shut the door, then did the same to a door that covered the tunnel I’d just come through.
“You can sleep here,” the boy said, sitting down on a pile of farm equipment. “My dad hasn’t been home in a few months, we haven’t heard from him in awhile. I’m about the only one that uses the shed.”
“Why?”
“Well…” He sighed. “My dad hunts dragons.”
I snorted out a laugh. “I should’ve guessed. So why do you want to help me sleep?”
He shrugged. “I’m interested in dragons. Dad hunts you, I’d like to study you.”
I curled up on the floor. “We’re not that interesting. We fly, we eat, we sleep, we crap. Other than the flying part, you humans do the same thing.”
“That’s not all you do. I couldn’t see you when you were sleeping in the field, and you’re pretty hard to miss.”
“That’s something humans don’t know about us. We’re like… How do I put this? We’re like chameleons, in a way. We can camouflage ourselves when we sleep, but only when we sleep.”
“Why would dragons need to camouflage themselves?”
I closed my eyes. “Because we want to sleep. And speaking of, you’re supposed to be letting me sleep, remember?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ll be back in a little while to open the back door for you. Just don’t make a whole lot of noise, okay?”
I yawned. “I’m too tired to… Make…” I couldn’t even finish my sentence before I was out like a light.
Why did I smell fire?
I opened my eyes and saw the ground near my face was now burning. I quickly blew on it in an attempt to put it out, then stamped on it with my left hand. It hurt, but it didn’t take long to put it out that way. Yet another involuntary thing with me, one that had gotten me caught many times. I wasn’t lying when I’d told the boy that I burned things when I snored.
There was a rattling at the door to the tunnel. I lifted my head and watched the door. Did any of the boy’s friends know about the tunnel? Was his father, the dragon hunter, finally coming home? Crap. I couldn’t deal with that. He’d probably killed older, more experienced dragons than me.
The door to the tunnel opened, and the boy came in, carrying a fishing pole and two buckets. He quickly shut the door to the tunnel and set one of the buckets down in front of me. “Here, I thought you might be hungry.”
I looked in the bucket and saw three fish. Three small, wriggling, very puny fish. “Thanks,” I said. It was, sadly, a bigger meal than I’d had in days. “You got a stick?” I asked. He walked over to the corner and pulled what looked to be a simple metal rod out.
“Will this work?”
I grabbed it and shoved one of the fish onto the end, pulled it toward the center, then did the same with the other two. “Got one for you?” I asked. He pulled another rod and did the same to his fish as I’d done with mine, except that he only had two fish. I took his from him, and handed him mine. “You’re the one that caught them, you get more.” I coughed up a little fire on each rod and cooked the fish, something I did every time I caught fish.
We ate in silence. I ate slowly. I was hungry, but I knew it’d be awhile before I got another meal like this, so I took my time. The boy ate just as slowly, for whatever reason he was doing so. Maybe he didn’t get too many meals, either. No, he was too well built to be underfed. Maybe he just wanted to share a meal with me, I dunno.
I set my rod down and laid back down. “Thank you,” I repeated. “I haven’t eaten so much in awhile.”
“Why not? You’re… Y’know, huge.”
I glared at him. “Thank you for that most helpful comment.”
He laughed. “You talk like a girl.”
“I’ve been told that.”
“Are you… Gay?”
I glared at him again. “That’s not a question to ask when we’ve barely known each other a few hours.”
“So you are?”
“If you’re asking if I’ve been with female dragons, the answer is no. I haven’t been with male dragons, either.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know many more of my kind. Most of us are dead.”
“I know. I’ve read my dad’s letters and journals.”
“Let’s not talk about that.” I stretched a little bit. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“Kineas. My parents call me Kenny.” He moved a little, but not a lot. “What’s your name?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have a name. My parents were slaughtered before they could name me.”
“How old were you?”
“Less than an hour.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. You didn’t have any reason to know. You might not have been born by then.”
“How long ago was it? I’m eighteen.”
“Oh. In that case, you would have been a year old.”
“You’re only seventeen? I thought you’d be smaller at that age.”
“I am small for my age. I’ve seen a few dragons that are younger than me, but bigger.”
“So,” Kenny said, “what kind of name do you want?”
“Huh?”
“You need a name, after all. What would you want to be called?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. I hadn’t put much thought into it.”
“How about a simple name?”
“How about you name me? You’re the closest thing I can call a friend, so go ahead and find a name for me.”
He stood up and reached into a drawer over on the west side of the room, then walked back over to me with a notebook and a pencil. “I’ll make a list, and you pick which one you want, okay?”
If I had human skin, I’d be turning what humans called ‘red-faced’. “I don’t know how to read.”
“Oh. Yeah, that does make sense. Sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“Okay, an easier way to do this… I have a c…”
“What?”
“I said have again. My cousin died six months ago, he was on the front lines of the war with the Seles Plains tribe.”
“Sorry.”
“No. I just haven’t been able to accept it yet. Riley was like a brother to me. My dad’s not home a lot, my mom doesn’t really care too much about what I do as long as I’m not getting myself into trouble, and Riley actually paid attention to me, actually talked to me.”
I could tell this was painful to him. I’d never known anyone that I had that much of a connection to. I envied him for it, all the while being sorry that his cousin had died. Hell, the person I knew the longest was Kenny.
“So, do you mind the name Riley?” he asked.
“Are you trying to replace your cousin with me?”
He shook his head. “Not really, but it’s not a bad name, right?”
“No, it’s fine. If you want to name me Riley, that’s fine.”
He smiled. “Cool. Now, if you don’t mind me treating you like a dog, I’ll go get you a collar, okay?”
I lifted my head and glared at him. “You’re joking, right?”
“Of course I’m joking. Jeez, you act a lot like a girl.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He walked over to the door. “I’m gonna head home for now. My mom is probably wondering why I’m still fishing. I’ll be back later if you’re still here, okay?”
“Okay. I’m still a little tired, so I’ll probably stay. Nobody’s gonna bother me, will they?”
Kenny shook his head. “Nope. This shed is pretty much ignored, since a lot of people here respect my dad. He’s the only one besides me that uses it.”
“Okay. Thanks, Kenny.”
He nodded. “Yep. See ya later.”
I laid my head back down and closed my eyes. The last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep was the sounds of children playing in the town
Riley! Riley! C’mon, wake up, we’ve gotta go!
Was Kenny actually talking, or was I dreaming? I couldn’t tell right away. I tried to open my eyes, but it was difficult. Why did I feel sleepier than I had earlier? I was struggling to open my eyes, and that had never happened before. What was going on?
Wake up, Riley!
There it was again, like the sound of a distant train horn, you think you hear it but you’re not quite sure until it happens again. Kenny was calling out to me. Why did he sound like he was so far away? The shed wasn’t that big. I kept trying to open my eyes, but I just couldn’t. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone was holding my eyelids shut.
“Get away from him!”
Things were clearing up. I could actually tell that Kenny was close by. I still couldn’t open my eyes. What the hell? I tried to lift my left arm, but it felt numb. Everything about me felt numb, right now. I tried to push past it, to get up anyway. I managed to make it to my feet, but I was shaking, and I fell back down quickly.
“He’s not going to kill anyone!” Kenny shouted. I managed to open my eyes and saw a shape in front of me, standing there with their arms spread out. I imagined that was Kenny, trying to protect me from someone or something. I couldn’t hear or see anyone else, though, why? “Just leave him alone! He’ll leave!”
Finally I heard someone else: “Out of our way, Kineas, or else!” Another shape stepped into view, someone taller than Kenny. “What would your father think if he saw you keeping this beast as a pet?”
“I’m not a pet,” I said, though my speech was slurred. Had I been drugged? Did the people of this town have something that could drug a dragon? What the hell was I gonna do? I tried to shake it off, to get myself back to at least fifty percent, but it was difficult. “Let me leave, and I won’t hurt any of you…” I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down, I was gonna fall down… I could practically feel the floor already.
The other shape pushed past Kenny and pointed something at my face. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I didn’t really care, either. This guy wanted to kill me, and I didn’t want to die. I tried to build up some fire in my throat, but I was too weak, whatever they’d used on me was too damned good. “Your kind killed my son, scaleface,” the man said, “don’t think I’ll let you just walk out of here.” He knelt down in front of me and did something that I couldn’t quite see thanks to the glaze over my eyes. “I’m gonna carve ya, stick your head on my mantle and your wings over the empty bed that used to be my son’s. But not until after you’ve felt real pain.”
I bared my teeth. “You’d kill me for something I didn’t do? By your own logic, I should kill you for the harm your species has done to mine, softflesh.”
I felt something now. There was something in my hand. It was obviously a dagger or a knife, but the drugs were still disorienting me, so it felt more like a spear. I went to pull it out, but the man in front of me twisted it, and it hurt. I screeched, a sound that would normally hurt a human’s ears, but these people were clearly driven to see me dead. It looked like Kenny covered his ears, though.
The fire was building in my throat. I reached out for Kenny and pulled him to the ground, then spat as much fire as I could possibly muster at the dark shadow group ahead of me. It was about then that my eyes started to focus, and I swatted away the guy that had stuck his knife in my hand. I pulled the knife out and dug it into the floor beside him. “I told you to let me leave, and you’re gonna do just that, understand?”
I turned around and made my way through the tunnel to the ocean. I dipped my hand in the water and let it soothe me. It stung like a bitch. I couldn’t stay there, though, and needed to leave. The only problem being that I could barely keep my focus on anything to fly, I didn’t know how to swim, and if I tried to walk away, I’d likely be hunted down and killed within a couple hours.
In no uncertain terms, I was screwed.
I heard a noise and turned back toward the cave. It was Kenny, roughed up but otherwise unharmed, and I might have done that to him when I pushed him down. “You probably shouldn’t be here,” I said. My speech was starting to get back to normal. I still sounded somewhat drugged, though. “They’ll probably wanna kill you for harboring me.”
He shrugged. “I surprised you don’t wanna kill me.”
“You didn’t do anything to me. I don’t see the point in hurting people that don’t deserve it.” I laid down. I knew I didn’t really have the time to, but I needed to. I kept my hand in the water, it was helping. I’d heard stories from what few other dragons I’d met that water had special properties to us. Whether or not that was true, I didn’t really care at the moment. It was at least psychologically helpful.
“I know some place you can go, if you can manage to fly,” Kenny said as he sat down beside me.
“They won’t come after me?”
“I told them not to. Told them my dad wouldn’t harbor a dragon, but if one asked to leave, he’d let it.”
“Is that true?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. I hope so.”
“Me too.” I turned to him. “So, where can I go?”
My hand still hurt like a sonuvabitch, but I managed to keep moving. Kenny had led me up a series of short paths to a forest on the outskirts of the town. There wasn’t a lot of space between the trees, but I kept following Kenny to wherever it was he was leading me.
I distinctly remembered Kenny saying I’d have to fly somewhere. “I thought you said we’d have to fly.”
“I forgot about her summer home, sorry.”
“Summer home?”
“Yeeeeeaaah, she’s kinda weird.”
“Why am I almost afraid of this?”
“No, no, she’s cool. She has a lot of fun using potions.”
“Potions? She’s a magic user?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve never seen her use any actual magic, just potions.”
“And you’re sure she’s safe?”
He smiled. “C’mon, Riley, it’ll be fine.”
“I still don’t even know what’s going to happen here, y’know.”
We continued through the forest, where I knocked down more trees that I was too big to fit between. Finally, we found ourselves at the doorstep of a small cottage that looked like it would barely fit Kenny, let alone anybody else.
Kenny knocked on the door, and the whole time we waited, I looked around the forest, hoping not to find some of Kenny’s neighbors following us. My hand was still sore, and since running required I be on all fours, that made running away from anyone practically impossible. This forest was so dense, I’d never be able to fly out.
The door to the cottage opened and a thirty-something woman appeared in the doorway. “Kineas, Kineas, Kineas… What have you done this time?”
Kenny was pretty obviously flustered seeing this woman. I had to admit, for a human, she wasn’t all that bad to look at.
“Can we come in, Sharena?” Kenny jerked a thumb at me. “He needs a place to hide for the night while his hand heals up.”
The woman - Sharena - moved out of the way. “Please, I’ve always enjoyed entertaining the company of dragons.”
Kenny walked in first, then I poked my head inside. On the outside, the place barely looked big enough to be an outhouse, but on the inside, it was more than twice the size of Kenny’s shed. “What’s going on here?”
Sharena smiled. “Trade secrets, sweetheart. Just come on in, okay? I promise you’ll fit through the door.”
I sighed. I don’t know why she thought I’d fit, because I was clearly bigger than the door. I moved a little bit of me in, and then I was suddenly in the middle of the room and Sharena was closing the door behind me. She walked over to what looked like a small drink bar and poured a drink into a glass. “So, Kineas, what can I do for you today?” she asked.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, interrupting Kenny from answering her question.
“A simple spell, even Kineas could do it, if he just tried.”
“So you are a magic user?”
She took a drink of whatever she had in the glass. “Everyone on this planet is a magic user, even dragons like yourself, it’s just that only a few people have the ability to cultivate enough mana to use the bigger spells.” She walked over to me and held her hand against my forehead. “You’ve got quite a bit of mana in you, Riley.”
“Sharena,” Kenny said, walking up to us, “wait a sec, how did you know Riley’s name?”
She was still smiling. “I can read your friend’s life through his mana, I can see his pain, his fear, his fury, his sorrow and his joy. You’ve had a relatively difficult life, Riley, even for a dragon. You were only hours old when your mother died, is that correct?”
I nodded.
“It was eight years before you met another of your kind, and the one you met was the white dragon.”
I nodded again.
“The white dragon?” Kenny asked.
“Your father doesn’t speak of him in his journals, Kineas, something I asked him to do. There’s only so much a young boy can learn about dragons before he starts to hate them, all because of the white dragon’s actions.”
“Every dragon knows who the white dragon is,” I said, “he’s a monster, born from pure hate.”
Sharena continued: “If the white dragon wasn’t around, humans and dragons would be able to live in harmony. He was the first of your kind to draw human blood, correct?”
“Only after he decided to kill my parents.” I took a deep breath. I was getting too angry.
“How’d you meet him?” Kenny asked.
“I was bathing in a lake near a small town. I don’t remember the town’s name anymore, and the town’s not there anymore. He tore it to shreds, burned it so far into the ground that the grass can’t even grow anymore.” I looked over at Kenny, who looked horrified. Sharena was right, thanks to this very story about the white dragon, he’ll probably start to hate us. Hopefully not me, though. “I don’t know how many people survived, maybe just me, a boy my age and his sister, and the white dragon.”
Sharena nodded. “I remember that day. I was there. So was Kineas’s father. We were hunting the white dragon, and we just barely managed to make it out of there alive.” She walked back over to her drink bar. “I don’t have anything to outright heal your hand, there’ll always be a scar, but I can make it look and feel years old.” She took two bottles from under the bar. “And I have something else for you, as well.”
“What?” I asked.
“Obviously, you’re going to stir up quite a bit of racket anywhere you go by virtue of just being a dragon. If you drink this,” she held up a bottle of orange liquid, “you’ll be hidden. By all accounts, you’ll be a normal teenage human. You’ll be able to move freely.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you choose. Should you decide to acquaint yourself with the finer points of potion making, you could make yourself a reversal potion quite easily within a week with simple things from your local pharmacy. Just, for the love of all things sacred, don’t forget the drain cleaner, it’s one of the most important things, and too many would-be potion makers decide to skip it, it causes their basements to explode.”
That was just… Yeah, I was confused. “Is this gonna hurt?” I asked.
“You’ll fall asleep within seconds, and when you wake up, you’ll be a new human.”
“And the other one?”
She held up the bottle with light blue liquid. “This is the one that will heal your hand. I suggest you take it first, since it’ll take effect immediately.”
I took the bottle from her hand and gulped it down instantly. It tasted funny, but I didn’t feel anything. “Nothing’s happen - “ I was cut off by a sharp pain in my hand. It hurt about as much as the knife blade, and it was concentrated right on that spot. I screamed, loudly, and nearly fell onto my side. It was sheer pain, and it wasn’t stopping.
And then it did. It didn’t hurt anymore, and it really did look and feel as though I’d gotten the wound years ago. “You didn’t say it’d hurt,” I said, wiping away the pain sweat I’d worked up.
“Sorry, sweetie. You’ve got a pretty low pain threshold for a dragon, Riley.”
“I’ve noticed.” I wiped more sweat from my brow and then looked at the orange potion she had in the second bottle. “I’ll be indistinguishable from any other human?”
“No one will be able to tell the difference.”
“Not even if I step on a scale? I weigh a lot, y’know.”
She smiled again. “This is magic, sweetheart, it can do much more than people think. You step on a scale, you’ll weigh no more than the average teenage human.”
I took a deep breath. “So, what am I gonna look like?”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
“This scares me, y’know.”
“You’re one step closer to human already, Riley, just take the next one.”
I took another deep breath. Take the plunge, take the plunge, take the plunge… I took the bottle with the orange potion and poured it into my mouth. After one quick gulp, I set the bottle down on the table beside me, and then I was on the floor with my eyes glazed over, and I was out like a light.
Chapter Two - The Knight
I was ready to draw my blade the second someone came into view. The hiding spot I'd picked was out of the way, but that didn't mean an attendant wouldn't step in for a smoke or something. I didn't want to kill anyone, but I couldn't afford to be seen. I needed to rest, but the odds that I'd be able to while looking out for anyone were slim. My nearly ten hour trek from one continent to the next was a mistake.
I closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment. I needed just a quick rest. Twenty-five seconds of sleep wouldn't be a problem, would it? No. I could afford that. I just needed to keep track of time. I opened my eyes again a moment later, feeling no more rested than I had been before. The idea that I could get any rest at all was likely a mistake. I should have known that.
I felt it when the train hit something on the rail. There shouldn't have been anything on the rail. I stood and nearly fell over when the train came to a sudden stop. That wasn't good in any way. I needed to move, to get off the train. I kept a firm grip on the hilt of my blade and slipped between the multitude of boxes in the train car.
They were fast. I counted six of them, all dressed in black. I could tell they were here for me. One of them slashed open the crate I was hiding behind, only to find me gone. I flicked on my flashlight, making him look up, smiled at him, then swung my sword and lopped his head clear off. I sprung from the ceiling of the train car and took out another one of them, bisecting him from right shoulder to left hip.
The other four rushed me immediately, but they weren’t difficult to kill. A severed head, a broken arm and impaled chest, a pair of legs kicked out from underneath a man I cut in half, and finally a simple impalement. When I was done, four more carcasses laid among the two that were already there.
I sheathed my sword and used a crate to brace myself when the train suddenly began to move again. Great. Whatever the found on the tracks must have been cleared off. Oh well. It just meant we’d get to wherever this train was going, finally. I didn’t even care what the destination was, I just wanted to be gone.
The train came to a more controlled stop somewhere. I could hear people outside, one of them mentioned a dragon. The outer door of the train car opened, and I ducked out of sight again. I had to decide whether or not I was going to hop off the train here - and potentially kill this man - or get off elsewhere.
“Can you believe this? Somebody dumped some mannequins back here!” The man picked up one of the limbs. “Good ones, too. This really looks like blood.”
Another man pulled himself into the train car and looked around at the bodies. “These aren’t mannequins, dumbass! Somebody greased these guys!” The second man pulled out a radio. “We’ve got… I don’t even know how many corpses in the eighth car, looks like they were chopped up, we need security here.”
Crap.
I got ready to draw my blade, but then I heard shouting from outside. The two that had gotten in the train car jumped out and went of to see what it was. There was cursing, and fighting. Dammit, the war hadn’t followed me, had it? I drew my sword and rushed out the car after the other two.
It was worse than I thought. It wasn’t the war that had followed me. It was him.
He was one hundred and forty feet tall, at least twice as long and I don’t know how wide. Colored bone white, with a great deal of blood splotched around his body, as if he painted himself with it. His eyes were solid black, with small white dot pupils that always looked like they were staring at me. His head was horned, like he’d been spawned by a demon rather than a dragon. Plumes of fire burst from his nose every time he took a breath. Across his left eye was a scar, though it was hard for me to believe he’d ever been injured in any way other than self-inflicted harm. Another scar adorned his stomach, this one larger, more recent.
I jumped upward and toward the nearest building. It had been quite some time since I saw this dragon. I’d been fourteen when he tracked me down and slaughtered my sister. How could he have found me now? Was he stalking me? What could he possibly want with this town?
The dragon lifted his head and opened his mouth, letting out a roar that I was too familiar with. I stood there, like I always had, just like that day. I couldn’t move.
Crap!
I dropped my dragon toy down the stairs and quickly stumbled after it. How could I do that? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Mom grabbed me by the arm and stopped me from falling on my face. “I thought I told you to go to bed, young man,” she said, a playful tone in her voice. Mom rarely ever reprimanded me, even when I did something wrong.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.
“So why were you playing in the hallway?”
“Because Circi wouldn’t let me play in our room.”
“Maybe because you and your sister need some sleep, sweetie.” She walked down to the landing halfway down the stairs and picked up my dragon, then tossed it to me. I fumbled with it for a second, but I didn’t drop it again. “Now go to bed, okay?”
I nodded, then turned around and started to walk to my room, but I stopped when I heard the front door rapidly open and close. I heard panicked voices. Dad was home! I bounced down the stairs and saw him arguing with Mom. What was going on? He pulled his sword and sheath off of his belt and placed them on the table, then grabbed a suitcase from the kitchen closet. What was going on?
“Dad?” I asked, stepping away from the stairs.
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Cres, go wake your sister up, we have to leave now.”
“Why?”
“Don’t question me, Cres, we just need to go!”
Dad didn’t yell at me often. In fact, this was only the second time in my life that he had yelled at me. The first had been when I touched his sword the first time. Whatever was going on, this was serious.
I ran up the stairs and opened the door to my bedroom, which I shared with my older sister, Circi. She wasn’t a heavy sleeper, so it took me little time to wake her up. “Dad says we need to go,” I said, “he won’t say why.”
“Dad’s home?”
“Yeah. He says we need to leave. He sounded worried.”
The ground started to shake. What could be causing that? What was going on? I followed Circi downstairs and then she was pushing me back up the stairs. I only caught a glimpse, but I watched fire burst through the front door.
And I heard screams.
The ceiling suddenly caught on fire. I ducked, like I’d been taught in school. Why was everything burning? Where was this fire coming from? I followed Circi into the bedroom, where she opened the window and looked down. “Okay,” she said, turning back to me, “we need to jump, Cres.”
“But, Mom and Dad…”
“I’m sure they made it out, but we can’t get out downstairs, so we’ve gotta jump out the window, okay?”
“But we don’t have anything to land on!”
“I’ll go first, and I’ll catch you, but you’re gonna havta jump when I tell you, understand?”
I nodded, then watched as she climbed into the window, then jumped down. I quickly rushed to the window and looked out and down to see if she was okay. I didn’t want to think of the alternative. I watched her crawl out of the bush that Dad planted outside his study. Good. I didn’t want her to be hurt.
“Jump, Cres, now!”
I climbed into the window and took a deep breath. I just had to jump, that’s all. It wouldn’t be hard. I just had to jump.
The heat on my back made the decision for me. The fire had spread to the bedroom, and everything was burning up, popping, crackling. I let go of the sides of the window and felt gravity doing its work. I fell, and landed in the bush, just as Circi tried to catch me.
She pulled me out of the bush and brushed me off. It didn’t look like I had any cuts or anything, so I was okay. The smoke was billowing out of the first floor windows, and I could tell nothing on that floor would be exempt from the fire’s rampage. I hoped Mom and Dad got out before it got too bad.
Circi grabbed my hand and pulled me around the house, where we saw that it wasn’t just our house, but the majority of the neighborhood and the town, as well. There were fires everywhere, and not everyone was lucky enough to make it out of their homes. I saw more than one flaming corpse hanging half out an upstairs window.
“Circi! Cres!” Mom shouted from somewhere. I spotted her before Circi did, and Dad was there as well. They were running toward us. Time slowed to a crawl for just a moment as a giant foot came down in between my parents and me. I looked up and saw black eyes with white pupils staring down at me.
The eyes turned from me to my parents, and then a roughly half-circle shape appeared in the blackness underneath the eyes. The half-circle was red-orange, and then it opened further. The red-orange in the half-circle spread outward, in a cone-like shape. It grew, and grew, and grew, and then encompassed my mom and dad.
Heat spread from the cone, but I was frozen solid, watching my parents burn.
The fire shooting from the dragon’s mouth stopped almost as quickly as it began, and the dragon moved on, torching the rest of the town.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. I simply sat there, on my knees, looking at the charred remains of my parents. Hours passed, and I didn’t move.
I couldn’t move.
That same dragon was standing in front of me yet again, staring at me yet again, scaring me yet again. Thanks to that roar, I just couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and tried to find something else to focus on. It wasn’t easy. No. Not just difficult. It was impossible. There was only one thing I could think of anywhere around me, and it was the dragon.
“You!” I shouted, hoping my voice sounded less like a frightened boy and more like a man who could actually fight a dragon. “Have you been following me?”
The dragon looked in my direction again, but didn’t say anything, or move, or do anything other than stare at me. It was like he was looking through me, somehow, like he knew something about me that I didn’t.
He was taunting me.
I remembered that I had my sword drawn, the sword that had been my father’s. It had been the only thing spared when the house burned down that day. It was the only memento I had of my entire family.
The dragon stood on his hind legs and spread his wings. He roared once again, then flapped his wings and took off. The wind from his flapping wings nearly knocked me down, but I braced myself, and when the dragon was gone, I felt my heart rate return to normal.
I looked around the train yard and saw several warehouses on fire, with people dragging bodies out of them. So many dead, all thanks to that dragon, who may very well be following me.
Crap.
The sun was setting as I made my way through the Seles Plains, using the railroad tracks as my one and only guide. It’d be too difficult to see the tracks, soon, thanks to the clouds that were about to blot out any moonlight I’d potentially get. I looked around, hoping to find some place to rest for the night.
An arrow flew past my head. I drew my sword and prepared for the oncoming assault. My muscles tightened up, ready for the battle. The Plains Tribe always hunted in groups of six or eight. There would be two archers, one on either ridge surrounding me, and between two and four lancers. There’d be a single swordsman, who’d be the one to engage in single combat, and then finally one commander, who’d be kept out of the fight.
I looked to the ridges, but there was no one there. My eyes roamed downward and to the left, where I saw something that looked like a cave. The sun was almost down entirely, so my night vision would be kicking in soon, but for the moment, I could barely see the cave. I took one step off the tracks toward the cave, and another arrow nearly hit me in the back of the head. I spun around and held my blade ready.
I hadn’t been expecting a lone girl who didn’t even look a day older than me. “All the money you’ve got, and your fancy sword,” she said, ready to loose the arrow she was aiming at my head. She was clearly one of the Plains Tribe, going by her clothes and her war paint. The war paint was a recent addition to the Tribesmen, based more on old myths and legends than on whether or not it really frightened their targets. She was wearing a cloth skirt, a bikini top and a pair of combat boots that looked to be a size or two too big.
There was something odd about this girl, though. I’d met many Plains Tribe women, older and younger than this girl, and none of them seemed as… confident as she seemed to be. Something about this girl told me that if I didn’t comply, that arrow really would be in my face.
I slipped my sword back in the sheath and unclipped it from my belt, then knelt down and set it on the ground. As I did, my free hand went to the knife hidden and sheathed on my boot. I stood up and held the drawn knife in my hand, then tapped the side of the blade against my arm. “You sure I can’t block it with my knife?”
She smirked, then disappeared into a light puff of smoke. Now that was quite the trick. I knelt down again to grab my sword, and then I was suddenly looking up at her arrow pointing straight at my eye, that smirk still on her face. No wonder she seemed confident, she could move faster than anyone could see.
I just wasn’t too happy about an arrow in my face.
She said, “If you thought I’d missed you earlier, you’re wrong, I just prefer not to kill people when I can rob them.”
“You’re pretty good.”
“No, I’m pretty broke, and I need your money. Your sword would just be a bonus.”
“How do you do that?”
“This is a robbery, buddy, so I hope you understand that I’m not here to answer twenty questions.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“And I’m bored, so either gimme the money and the sword, or I’m just gonna leave.”
“Really? You’re trying to rob me, but if I don’t give you anything, you’re just going to walk away with me alive?”
“Y’know, that is actually a major hole in this story. Hrm… I guess I could kill you, but you could have a family somewhere expecting you. On the other hand, you’re walking the train tracks at night alone and you’re packing a sword, so odds are good you’re a loner, meaning I could grease you right here and now and nobody would ever know or probably even care.” She drew the arrow back further. I had little time to act. “Option one or option two?”
“Is there a three?”
“There’s barely a two.”
“No three?”
“Two’s disappearing as we speak.”
“I like three.”
“Option two has officially been taken off the list, so I guess you’re gonna get that arrow in the head you asked for.”
I slammed the knife into her foot and quickly grabbed for the arrow she was about to lose her grip on. I just barely managed to stop it from going into my eyeball and pulled the bow from her hands. “Yep, option three.” I stood up and smiled at her. “Works every time.”
I sat against the cave wall, carving the core out of an apple that I’d found discarded along the tracks. The girl was beside me, playing with her bow. I would have tied her up if I thought it would actually do anything. She was calm now, didn’t seem like she wanted to rob me anymore. Maybe she’d just been lonely.
I cut out a chunk of apple and threw it in my mouth. “What’s your name?” I asked.
She looked up from her bow in surprise. “What?”
“Your name,” I said, slipping another chunk of apple into my mouth. “Everybody’s got one.” I cut out one last chunk of the apple then tossed her the half I didn’t eat. “Mine’s Cres.”
She pulled her own knife - much bigger than my own, I noticed - and started taking chunks out of the apple. “Sarika.”
“Nice name.”
“It’s the only thing I remember from my mother. The last thing I heard her say.”
“What happened to her?”
She closed her eyes. This was painful to her, I could tell. “I was only five when it happened. We were crossing the ocean between Qinata and Seles. My father was rowing the boat, my mother holding onto me. I remember the water around the boat started to heat up, like… Like somebody turned on a stove burner and we were the ones boiling. I looked at my dad, and it was almost like he knew exactly what was coming.”
“How do you know?”
“The look on his face. He seemed… Resigned to it. Not even three seconds before it happened, he closed his eyes, and I watched a tear fall down his cheek. That was when the fire shot straight up, out of the ocean, and incinerated my dad. I grabbed for my mom, and she held me as close as she could. I started crying, and she whispered things in my ear. She tried to soothe me, but it didn’t help.”
She reached up and wiped tears from her face. “You don’t have to tell me anymore if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll tell you.” She took a deep breath and then continued: “Its head rose out of the water first, those eyes… Black as the night. Its scales were a kind of - “
“Bone white,” I finished for her, “with spots of blood all around him as if he painted himself with it.”
Sarika’s eyes were full-on watering now, and I could tell that mine would likely follow. “You’ve seen it, too? The white dragon?”
I nodded, slowly. “I was nine, he took everything from me. Destroyed my home.” I picked up my blade from beside me. “This is all I have left of my mother, my father and my sister.”
“It’s not just us he stole lives from, I’ve met a lot of people who’ve lost friends, loved ones and homes to the white dragon.” She unslung her quiver from over her shoulder and unzipped a special pocket. She pulled three arrows from the pocket, arrows with very unique heads. “These were given to me by a man who lost his children to the white dragon. He was no good with a bow, but he could make arrowheads.”
“And he gave them to you?”
She nodded. “I don’t rob people who’ve lost stuff to the white dragon.”
“Only three?”
“He said they came from a special kind of sword, the only sword that’s injured the white dragon. He only had enough material for three arrowheads.”
“You mean somebody’s stood in front of that beast and stopped pissing their pants long enough to hurt him?”
She nodded again. “It’s hard for me to believe, too, but I could tell he wasn’t lying.”
I took the arrows from her and examined the heads. They were plain, simple triangles with sharp points. The man clearly understood that whoever tried to kill this dragon with these arrows wouldn’t give two shits whether or not they had a special design. I tossed them back to her. “Does the dragon have a weak point or something?”
She shook her head. “Not unless you count the eyes, but I’m pretty sure he told me to aim there because they’re eyes.” She returned the arrows back to her special quiver pocket. “I only ever saw the white dragon one time after he murdered my parents. He was too far away for me to do anything, and I still wasn’t as good with my bow as I am now. I don’t remember where I was, but it was eight or nine years ago.”
I stared at the fire. She could have been there, my hometown. “I saw him today,” I said, my voice low. “He stared at me like he knew exactly who it was he was looking at. Like he’d made it his personal quest in life to track me down and hurt me.”
She whispered, “Sorry.”
I tossed the apple core at the fire, causing sparks to shoot out. Sarika pulled back a little. “It’s time I make it my quest to hurt him. I’m tired of running away from him.” I looked over at her. “I could use your help, seeing as you obviously know how to handle yourself in a fight.”
She nodded. “Nothing would make me happier than to see that bastard’s head lopped off.”
“Thank you, Sarika.”
“What few friends I have call me Sari,” she said.
“Thank you, Sari.”
“No, thank you for asking me for help. Nobody’s ever done that before.” She set her quiver down on the ground. “Now, do you mind if we start this quest tomorrow? I need some sleep.”
I choked back a laugh. I tossed some dirt on the fire to kill it, then closed my eyes so that I could get to sleep.
Ready for more of Parallel Quests? It took me forever to finish this damn pair of chapters, but I finally got 'em done.
Chapter Three - The Human
Riley? Kenny’s voice asked me from somewhere. Great, was I having some weird out of body experience? What happened last? Oh, yeah, I should be waking up as a human now. I felt light-headed, so either I was ridiculously drunk or my head really did weigh less. Considering how blurry my vision was, I was leaning toward the former.
I reached for something to help me up, and found a hand reaching out to me. It felt weird, so I was willing to accept that something had happened to me. It wasn’t until I saw my own hand that I realized something had happened to me. It wasn’t my scaley hand that grabbed whoever was helping me up, it was a very human hand that I was looking at.
So it worked? I tried to say. I heard the words, but they didn’t sound like my voice. If I were thinking clearly, I’d probably realize that my voice really wouldn’t sound the same, considering I’d just changed from dragon to human.
“Oh, it worked, honey,” Sharena said. “Are your senses coming back?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, with a minor groan.
“Good. I have to tell you something important, though.”
“What?”
“You’re not exactly male anymore.”
Well, that explained a few things that weren’t common for human boys, like the feel of my hair partway down my back or the lack of something swinging between my legs. “Is there a mirror around here?”
“Before that, take these,” she was holding a bundle of clothes out to me. Suddenly, I felt slightly embarrassed. I was a human girl now, and there was a human boy my age in the same room with me. He was getting to see a naked girl, he was probably enjoying the experience. I looked over at Kenny, and realized he was looking away from me. Either he realized the awkward situation, or he didn’t like girls.
I took the clothes and looked around. “Is there somewhere I can change?”
“Of course there is.” She pointed to a door that I hadn’t noticed before, but this woman was a magic user, so there might not have been a door there earlier.
I thanked her, then walked into the room she’d pointed at. It was a plain bedroom, with a very basic bed, dresser and mirror. I took a deep breath and walked over to the mirror and looked at the new me for the first time. The human girl I saw in the mirror was darker skinned than Kenny was, and about an inch or two shorter than him. I’d been six feet tall before, but now I had to be about five foot seven. I didn’t often look at human girls, so I couldn’t really tell if my breasts were too large or too small. They felt large to me, but they were also new to me.
I brought one hand to my nipple and lightly touched it. It felt really weird. I pulled my hand away quickly, because it felt too weird. This whole thing felt too weird. Maybe I should have just taken my chances in my normal form. I turned away from the mirror and looked at the bundle of clothes that Sharena had given me.
I pulled out the underwear first and held the article in my hand. It felt… Weird. Soft. I’d never worn underwear, but I’d seen enough humans (well, not too many) taking off their clothes to swim that I knew how to put on their clothes. I sat down on the bed and slid the underwear up my legs. My legs were long, it felt weird. Weird described this whole experience. I stood back up and pulled the waistband over my hips. I looked in the mirror again and the image still looked odd.
I found something to cover my breasts and it looked confusing to me. How the hell was I gonna put this thing on?
There was a knock on the door. “How’re you doing, honey?” Sharena asked.
Should I ask her for help? Did I really even need to wear this? “I’m... “
The door opened and I was suddenly joined by Sharena. “I kinda figured this is where you’d get stuck.”
I blushed. “What… Um… What even is this?”
She smiled. “It’s a bra, sweetheart, and you’re gonna want it in the long run.” She took it from me and told me to hold my arms straight in front of me. She put one arm through one strap and one arm through the other and then pulled it onto my chest. To say it felt weird would be both an understatement and a broken record at this point, but that’s exactly how it felt. “Okay, now reach behind and I’ll guide your hands so that you can hook it by yourself.” I felt her hands take mine and then I was grabbing the two ends and hooking them together. “There we go, now we’re all taken care of, and the excitable teenage boy in the other room won’t be getting a nose bleed every two minutes.”
I looked in the mirror again and the girl in front of me had an uneasy look on her face. I couldn’t even begin to describe how odd this all felt.
“Thanks,” I said. My voice sounded distant, like I wasn’t really in my own body, and to an extent that was true.
“Sorry about this, by the way.”
“Huh?” What was she apologizing for?
“The potion I gave you was an accident. I grabbed the female potion by mistake.”
“There’s different potions for different genders?”
“Well, you can’t use the same potion for different genders, silly.”
“Is there some reason you can’t give me the male potion now?”
“If I were to give you the male potion now, it would cancel out the female potion and return you to dragon form, then neither potion would work on you again.”
“That seems… Odd.”
She sat down on the bed in front of me. “Magic is a very picky thing, especially potions. Things need to be exact, and that means that the ingredients in one potion can counteract the ingredients of another, even if those ingredients are similar or even the same.”
Was she telling me the truth? I couldn’t tell. It really shouldn’t matter to me, either, since my choices were hide as a human and live or take my chances as a dragon and likely die. Not good odds. At least I looked like any average human girl.
Sharena placed a hand on the rest of the clothes. “The rest of the clothes are a simple pair of pants and a shirt. When you’re all dressed, see me about some shoes. I think I’ve got a pair of boots that you should be able to wear.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to manage a smile.
“No worries, sweetheart.” She stood up and grabbed my hand. “If it weren’t for Kineas, I’d probably just leave you in the forest and naked.”
“Really?”
She shook her head. “No. I just like to let Kineas think that I’d do that.”
“He seems to like you.”
She smiled. “Well, he should. He’s my step-son.”
If it wasn’t for the mirror, I’d have never seen my confused look for the first time. It looked funny, actually. “If you’re the wife of the town’s greatest dragon slayer, why do you live in the woods?”
“That’s a trade secret, young lady, and if you’re a good girl, I’ll let you know one of these days.” There was my confused look again. “Oh, c’mon, it’s just a little mom humor.”
“Why were you so willing to help me if your husband is a dragon slayer?”
She traced the scar on my hand. It looked smaller now that I was human. “Get your clothes on first, okay? If you’re going to be my adopted daughter, I’m going to have to let you in on the family secret.” She smiled again, then walked out of the room and left me alone.
I sighed. Family secret? I was just a dragon in hiding who had to pretend to be a member of the family, why would I really need to know the family secret?
I reached for the clothes and pulled the pants on first. Wearing underwear alone was strange, but feeling fabric all over my legs was just… It felt even weirder. I ran my hands up my now clothed legs and shivered a little. How was I ever going to get used to wearing clothes?
I pulled the shirt over my head next. The front of the shirt was open a little bit, showing the tops of my breasts and the… Area in-between. I’m sure girls had a word for it, but I didn’t know it. I took another look at the human girl in the mirror and saw how awkward and unsure of herself she looked.
I took a deep breath and left the bedroom. Sharena and Kenny were both sitting on a couch that I hadn’t noticed before. Clearly these trade secrets of Sharena’s were all over the house. In fact, the place looked more like a house and less like what I assumed a gay bar would look like.
“Riley, please sit down over here,” Sharena patted a chair in front of the couch. I walked over to it and sat down. Yet another awkward feeling in a day full of awkward. Sitting on rocks felt normal to me, but soft, comfy chairs was nothing but different. “First thing, here,” she handed me a pair of boots, just like she said she would. “Do you need any help getting them on?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve seen humans do this before.”
“That’s good.” She crossed one leg over the other and placed her hands in her lap. “Now, it’s time to let you in on the family secret.”
“Why?”
“Riley, you’re a member of this family. Even if you weren’t in hiding, just being a friend of Kineas would make you a member of this family.”
“Then how is this still a secret?”
She laughed. “Kineas doesn’t have as many friends as he lets on.”
Kenny rolled his eyes. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?”
“As I was saying, you’re a member of this family now. Kineas’s father, Irvine, is a dragon slayer.”
“I know that part already,” I said.
She gave me a somewhat amused/annoyed look. “I wasn’t finished, young lady.” I could tell she was enjoying that. “Irvine knows that there are dangerous dragons and not-so-dangerous dragons. Ever since before Irvine and I were married, he’s brought the not-so-dangerous dragons to me, and we’ve helped them survive in the world.”
“You run a dragon underground railroad?”
She nodded. “Yes. Most dragons harbor no ill will towards humans, so Irvine and I set up the D.U.R. so that these dragons can - “
I cut her off. “Did you just abbreviate that as D.U.R.?”
“If you’re going to tell the “dur” joke, I’d save it. Kineas thought it up years ago.”
I looked down at my feet. “Okay. You can go on.”
“As I was saying, Irvine and I set up the dragon underground railroad so that we could help the dragons that aren’t dangerous.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you know when a dragon isn’t dangerous to humans?”
She sighed. “It’s not easy. Not many of them are like you.”
“Like me?”
“Riley, I can read you. I pointed to the bedroom over there and you went in there instantly. I could tell from the moment I saw your face that you’ve lived in a house before, correct?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“How old were you?”
“About four…”
“Mommy! Mommy!” the girl shouted. I tried getting up and moving, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. The girl poked at me with a stick. I sort of made a noise, but I could barely hear it, so odds were good the girl couldn’t really hear it, either. “Mommy! Itsa doggy!” I would have corrected her, but understanding human and speaking human were two very different things.
An older woman, probably in her forties, came over to the girl and I. I was fairly certain this was the Mommy the girl had called over. “Blodwyn!” she said, with a very… Stern sounding voice. “That’s not a doggy, baby girl, that’s a dragon!”
The girl - Blodwyn - looked up at her mother with wide eyes, then back to me. “Really? Can we keep it?”
“Baby girl, please, don’t touch it, okay? It looks hurt.” The woman reached down and picked me up. I nuzzled up against her and enjoyed the comfort of not having to move on my own for now.
The woman carried me into her house, where Blodwyn hopped up on a… A… A thing for people to sit on. Her mother set me down on something flat and wooden in front of the girl. I looked over at Blodwyn, who looked concerned. I tried to smile, but I couldn’t.
The woman touched me on the side where something had hit me. I didn’t know what the man had been using on me, but the thing that hit me had been thin and long, with a sharp point at the end. The pain shot through me again, causing me to groan. The woman clamped her hand over my mouth, which I tried to push away, but I couldn’t. I was too weak to do anything to stop her.
“It’s okay,” she said, “I’m not going to hurt you.” I wanted to tell her what a good job she was doing. My side was killing me more now than it had been when I landed behind her house. “Can you talk?”
Blodwyn giggled. “It’s a dragon, Mommy! Dragons can’t talk!” If only I could talk. I’d make that girl eat her words.
Her mother smiled and squeezed her hand. “That’s not true, sweetie. Can you stay here with our little guest while I get the first aid box?”
The girl nodded. “I will, Mommy.” I watched the woman leave the room and then looked over at the girl, who was smiling widely at me. “You’re cute,” she said, “I hope you stay here and live with Mommy and Daddy and me!”
I rolled over and sighed. I tried to go to sleep, but it just wasn’t working.
“Do you have a mommy like I do?” Blodwyn asked. I turned back to her and shook my head. “Do you have a daddy?” I shook my head again. “You don’t have a mommy or a daddy? That’s so sad…” I saw tears building up in her eyes.
I tried to slide myself across to her, but it was difficult to move. She reached out to me and helped me along, and I curled up in her lap. It was comfortable. I needed it.
By the time the girl’s mother returned, I was asleep.
“Blodwyn and her family pretty much raised me.” I looked down at my feet. “I left them when I was about seven, and I haven’t seen them since.”
Sharena was still watching me with very studious eyes, while Kenny looked like he was about to fall asleep. Great. I wish I’d known this story would bore him. Sharena smacked him on the arm, rousing him out of his near-sleep experience. I giggled lightly, not even loud enough for me to hear.
“Did anyone aside from Blodwyn’s family know about you?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. I was the family secret then. It wasn’t unusual for me to be sleeping on the couch, and then woken up and asked to move into the basement closet.”
“You let them do that to you?” Kenny asked.
“Actually, they let me do that. I didn’t really want to be out in the open.”
“You mean, you wanted to hide?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Especially after the white dragon showed up. It was either hide, or die.”
Sharena was still examining me, almost like she was… Testing me. What was she thinking about me? Why was she watching me so closely? It was starting to creep me out. My natural response was to hug my knees to my chest, which I’ve seen human girls do before.
Sharena turned to Kenny. “Take Riley into town, okay? Show her around.”
I said, “I can’t.” She and Kenny both turned toward me. “They heard my name. Isn’t it gonna be kinda suspicious if a girl named Riley shows up the same day as the dragon named Riley?”
Kenny turned to Sharena and said, “She’s got a point.”
She rubbed at her chin. “Yeah.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
Sharena sighed. “For now, you stay in the house. I’ll bring you some books to read - “
Kenny cut her off. “Um… She doesn’t know how to read.”
She sighed again. “You never learned how to read?”
I rolled my eyes. “I was a dragon. Kinda hard to hold a book, even though I was small for my age.”
“Fine, I’ll bring you a radio. Kineas will help you learn to read. You’ll need that for school when I get you enrolled in a few days.”
“Why do I have to go to school?”
She smiled. “No step-daughter of mine is going to stay at home while her brother goes to school.” She squeezed my shoulder as she passed by. “Besides, you’re seventeen years old, there’s plenty of people your age to meet at school.”
I heard myself gulp.
“In other news, the white dragon was recently sighted at a train depot ten miles north of Endawa this afternoon. Casualty numbers are unknown, but we’re told they number low for a white dragon sighting.”
I kept looking at the book, but the words weren’t exactly turning into something I could read. I sighed. School. I had to learn in less than a week what real humans got seventeen years to learn. Even the comic books that Kenny brought in weren’t helping. Pictures didn’t help me understand words.
“The casualties came mostly from a passenger train returning from the war, as the depot was understaffed. We’re told that the trains stopped at that depot because of commotion in the cargo train, and the Imperial Guard believes that the white dragon was going after something in that train.”
The bed felt too soft. It’d been years since I last slept on a bed, but it still felt too soft. Or, was I too soft? I still had scales the last time I slept on a bed. I sighed. This whole thing was getting… Irritating.
“That was Imperial News at Five. A few stories they didn’t touch on, I noticed, were the heist in Kepton last week. One of the thieves, a Jaide Farson, was arrested, but he’s made mention of a partner that he’s not going to give up. What’s being done about this partner? Are the Imperial Guard going to hunt this guy down? Or am I gonna havta take out my dagger and take this punk out myself?”
There was a knock on my door. I flipped the radio’s power switch to off. “Come in,” I said. My voice was still strange to me, but I was getting used to it.
Kenny walked in with some kind of board game. “I thought you might need a break from your reading practice.”
I set the book down on my night stand. “If you can call this practice. I’m still not getting anything.”
“Don’t feel bad about it. Some people have trouble learning how to read.”
“That’s not making me feel better. I have to fit in at your school, and I bet most of your classmates know how to read, don’t they?”
He sighed. “Yeah, they do.”
“How’s it gonna look if your sister doesn’t know how to read?”
“They’re gonna know you’re adopted, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Is it common that adopted kids don’t know how to read?”
He set the game down on my bed and pulled the top of the box off. “Let’s just change this conversation and get to the point where you relax, okay?” He pulled out the board and set it in front of me. “Now, the goal of the game is to buy properties with money and try to bankrupt the other player, okay?”
“That sounds like it needs reading.”
“It does, but I can read the cards for you.”
“You’re not gonna cheat, are you?”
“Of course not. Believe me, I have no reason to cheat.”
“I’d never know, y’know.”
He smiled. “I don’t feel the need to cheat when I’m playing against my sister.”
“I have this one question, though. Why do you call Sharena by her name if she’s your step-mom?”
“She and my dad didn’t get married until a couple years ago, and my birth mom is still alive, in town.”
“Why don’t you live with her?”
He shrugged. “She’s not… When my dad started hunting and helping dragons, she got jealous of all the time he and Sharena spent together. Sharena’s been my dad’s best friend since they were kids, and dad knew Sharena used magic, so he knew exactly who to go to the first time he found a harmless dragon.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Mom left him, told him never to look at her again, and just threw her wedding ring at him.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“Yeah. Dad and I moved in with Sharena a couple weeks later, and they got married a few years after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “My mom clearly wasn’t in it for family. Dad loved her. He mainly married Sharena so that she could be my legal guardian in case something happened to him.”
“So, your dad doesn’t love Sharena?”
“I didn’t say that, he just loved my mom more than she loved him.”
I felt sorry for him. Here, I didn’t have any parents, and I felt sorry for him because his parents had such a complicated relationship. It was starting to remind me of Blodwyn and her family.
“He’s not a pet!” Gwyneth shouted. Blodwyn was sitting on the couch beside me, petting me. I wouldn’t mind if they did treat me like a pet, honestly. “Don’t treat him like one!”
Byrn shook his head. “He’s a dragon! He’s not a person! He basically is a pet, all he does is play with Blodwyn and sleep!”
Gwyneth looked irritated. “What else do you expect him to do? Don’t you know what people would do if they found out he was here?”
I lifted my head a little. “What would they do to you and your parents if they found me?” I asked Blodwyn.
She shook her head. “I dunno. But Mom makes it sound bad.”
I laid my head back down on the couch, like a sad dog. Or, at least what I thought was a dog. I’d never seen one, but Blodwyn described them to me once. Her parents were doing nothing but yelling at one another, and it was making me feel horrible, because they were arguing about me.
Blodwyn patted me on the head, then went to the bathroom. I slipped off of the couch, walked to the door and sighed. I didn’t want them arguing about me, and I didn’t want the family hurt because of me. I loved Blodwyn and her family, but I needed to be gone for them. I opened the door, walked outside, and never looked back.
Chapter Four - The Thief
“Where are we going?” Sari asked. She was walking on the rail, perfectly balancing herself. I had to give her credit, that was a pretty difficult thing to do. I was simply polishing my knife, which was something I did whenever I woke up. I was honestly surprised that she was still with me, and hadn’t just robbed me in my sleep.
“At the moment, we’re just walking the tracks. I don’t know where to go, exactly.” I pulled a canteen out of my pack, took a drink and then handed it to her. “Just because we started this quest doesn’t mean I know how we’re gonna do it.”
She gulped down a little more of my water than I expected her to. “Really?” she asked, sarcastically. “And here I thought you knew everything we’re gonna do.”
I glared at her. “It’s not just that I don’t know where to go, I don’t even know where we’re headed. It’s not like I grabbed a map or anything.”
She passed my canteen back to me. “We’re headed for Endawa,” she said, “a nowhere little town..”
“Do you live there?”
She shook her head. “Nope. But I’ve been there, though. I hid out there for a couple days after my ex and I pulled this job in Kepton.”
“You had a boyfriend?”
“I had an ex boyfriend. We were together for about three days, then we were partners in crime.”
“What did you steal from him?”
She glared at me. “Nothing. He got caught, I didn’t. It was that simple. What’s it matter to you?”
I slipped my hand to my sword hilt. “I like to know who it is I work with. It’s kinda the reason I’m alone.”
She smirked. “Sucks to be you, then. Everybody should have friends.”
I had friends, once upon a time. Hell, I used to have a family.
I put those memories out of my mind. It wasn’t good to dwell on the past. Especially my past. I moved my hand away from my sword and relaxed myself. Sari was walking ahead of me, and didn’t notice.
I felt something in the tracks. I knelt down and placed a hand on the track, and then I stood back up. “Move.”
“What?” Sari asked.
“Something bigger than a train is on its way.”
I spotted and small ditch just ten feet away, and bolted for it. Sari was there before I even had a chance to slide to a stop. We waited, a good twelve minutes later, something big rolled past us on the tracks. It wasn’t going fast, likely due to its size. It wasn’t like a normal train, and looked more like a castle on rails. Every third car, there were soldiers standing guard, very familiar looking soldiers. They were wearing the same gear as the six men that attacked me the day before.
We watched it pass, and once it was finally gone, I climbed out of the ditch, followed by Sari, but I wasn’t paying much attention to her. Those soldiers came after me, and they were guarding that train. I needed to find it.
“You seemed pretty fixated on that train,” Sari said. She was filing her nails with a small knife.
“I’ve seen the guards before.”
“Know any of ‘em?”
“No, but I’ve killed some of their friends.”
“Those are Royal Escorts, which means that train had a member of the Imperial Family on board.” There was something in her voice, some sort of recognition, and something else that I just couldn’t figure out. “Who’d you piss off up high to get Royal Escorts after you?”
“Who said they were coming after me?”
She smirked. “You were the one who said you killed some. Royal Escorts don’t leave the sight of a member of the Imperial Family unless they’ve been ordered to kill somebody. Everybody on the continent knows that.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what I did, unless you count sneaking on board a train to avoid the fighting.”
“You mean, you’re not a soldier?”
I shook my head. “Not a legit soldier, no. I’ve seen my share of fighting, against both.”
The look on her face told me she was much the same way. Granted, she was a thief, so that made quite a bit sense. Just going from one town to another would probably put her up against different soldiers. But there was something different about her. She had some sort of recognition when it came to the Royal Escorts she mentioned.
We came to a small lake, a little less than ten miles away from the town. I knelt down by the lake and splashed some water on my face. It had been about six weeks since the last time I had a real shower, but light bathing in lakes kept me from smelling like rotting wood on a hot day.
Sari pulled off her top, wiggled her skirt off, took off her boots and jumped into the water. She swam around for a good five minutes, almost like she was part fish or something. “C’mon, jump in!” she shouted, once she finally surfaced.
I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
She blew me a raspberry. “Why not?”
I shook my head again, then looked toward the town. “So, whaddya know about that place? You said it’s called Endawa?”
She did the backstroke over to the edge of the lake where I was standing. “It’s a nowhere town, nothing really interesting to do, nobody special to steal from. I hid out here once, and the Imperial Guard never thought to look for me.” She pulled herself out of the lake and pulled a small towel from a pouch on her quiver. “There’s this neat pharmacy, though the lady who works there is kinda… Creepy, to say the least.” She turned toward me. “Her kid’s pretty hot, though.”
I sighed. “That it?”
“Kinda. I doubt we’ll run into him, but have you heard of the dragon slayer Irvine?”
The name sounded familiar, but I didn’t know it. “I don’t know.”
She pulled her panties back on and gave me a weird look. “You’d know if you heard about him. Most of the dead dragons on this planet are courtesy of him. Both the Selen Empire and the Tameran Republic treat him with more respect than they do their own royalty.”
“What does he have to do with this town?”
“He lives here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “A tiny place like this produced an amazing dragon slayer?”
“And your hometown produced a guy who can actually beat me in a straight fight. Don’t assume.” She put most of her bikini top back on, then turned her back to me. “Wanna tie me down?”
Part of me wanted to know why she couldn’t do it herself, another part of me really didn’t care, and the third (typical red-blooded male) part of me rationalized, Cres, it’s a hot girl asking you to put her bikini on her, just do it. Although I didn’t see Sari as potential dating material, she was a damned attractive girl.
“Whatever,” I said, as if it didn’t matter to me. I spotted a dark red circle under her left arm. “What’s this?”
“Huh? Oh, that’s my birthmark.”
“It’s not very big.”
“Birthmarks don’t need to be big, Cres.” I finished tying off her top and then handed her quiver over to her. She reached into it and pulled a rubber band out of a pouch, then tied her hair into a ponytail. “Okay, ready to go?”
“I have been,” I said. “You’re the one who derailed us by going for a swim.”
She blew me a raspberry again. “Whatever,” she said, mocking my tone of voice from just a minute ago. I shook my head.
The nowhere little town that Sari described was actually pretty busy. People were milling about, children playing in the streets. That pharmacy that Sari had mentioned before had kids running in and out of it, with the owner chasing a few of them out for playing in the aisles. On the rooftops, there were men sitting in ballistas, aiming at the sky. This town was both enjoying a lazy Saturday and preparing for war at the same time.
I walked into the pharmacy. There were only three people inside aside from me, the woman who owned the place, a boy my age and a cute girl my age, who was sticking close to either the boy or the woman.
“Looking for anything in particular?” the woman asked.
“Just came in to buy a drink. Um… Quick question: Do you take Republic currency?”
She sighed. “We’ll take it, yes, but I’ll have to give you Imperial change. We don’t often get Republic money here.”
I grabbed a bottle of soda and brought it up to the counter. The girl was eyeing me, like she recognized me or something. I didn’t recognize her, but I’ve met a lot of girls in the past two months. Maybe I saw her at some point.
“This it? Nothing for your girlfriend out there?” the woman asked. She nodded toward Sari, who was standing outside, looking annoyed.
“She’s just a friend, and no.”
She walked over to the cooler I’d gotten my soda from and set another one down beside mine. “It’s on the house.” She also tossed on a couple of granola bars. “It’s a little rude to bring a girl like that along and not buy her something.”
“Thanks,” I said, with a slight bit of sarcasm.
I paid for the drinks and granola bars (even though she told me that Sari’s were free) and left the building. Sari gladly took her drink and snack and munched away at it loudly. I sighed. Some girls.
“Hey! Sarika!” I heard from somewhere. Sari and I both turned and I spotted this boy running toward us, a big smile on his face. My hand drifted to the hilt of my blade, because something about him didn’t feel right.
Sari didn’t look pleased to see him, either. She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him into an alley a few feet away. I followed her, after making a quick look around. Something told me he was being followed. “What are you doing here, Jaide?” she asked. “You got caught.”
“They let me out, for some reason.” He glanced over at me. “Who’s this guy?”
I was about to answer, but Sari cut me off. “He’s Cres. And he’s none of your business.”
Jaide raised his hands in a back off gesture. “Okay, okay. Good luck with this one,” he said, directing the line to me and pointing at Sari, “she can be pretty feisty.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, you still didn’t answer my question.”
“Yeah, I did. They let me out.”
“No, they didn’t. The Imperial Guard [i]never[/i] just lets somebody go.” She drew her knife and put it to his neck. “Who’s got your leash?”
He pushed her away. “I got loose, okay? Nobody’s got their claws on me.” He readjusted his collar. “I really snuck away from them, okay?”
“And you just happened to come here?”
“We were gonna meet up here, remember? I took my chance that you’d still be here.”
I grabbed him by the collar this time and shoved him against the wall. “Why’d you shout to her in the middle of a crowded street if you weren’t trying to clue somebody in that she’s here? If you were alone, you would have come up on her quietly.”
“Dude, nobody can sneak up on this girl. She woulda gutted me if I’d tried.”
Sari let out a small groan. “Please. Your aftershave would have told me who you were right away.” She folded her arms under her breasts and stared him down. “But Cres is right. You’re not here because you wanted to catch up with me after escaping. How many of them, and where are they?”
“I’m telling you, nobody is following me. What do I gotta do to prove it to you?”
I watched him closely. There were things about him, things that I couldn’t tell if Sari was noticing. His eyes were darting back and forth, between me and her. There was sweat on his forehead, and his hand had moved to an empty sheath. He wasn’t carrying a sword, but I couldn’t tell if he had a knife.
I grabbed his arm and pulled his hand away from his sheath and slammed him against the wall. “What are you doing?” I demanded, never raising my voice but keeping it authoritative. Something hit the ground when he hit the wall. I knelt down and picked it up, a pocket knife. “Why were you getting this out?”
“I always have that out. It sits in a holder in my sleeve, you knocked it out when you slammed my hand against the wall!”
Sari kneed him in the crotch. His eyes bulged, his hands went to groin, and then he fell over, unconscious. “Pick him up.”
“What the hell did you do that for?!” I nearly shouted.
“This way, we can rent a room at the inn and question him there. The idea that people could be watching us out here is giving me the heebies.”
I sighed. Something told me today was gonna be a longer day than it already had been.
“Was that the kid from the pharmacy?” I asked, setting Jaide down on the bed. He’d been squirming a little in the bag, but that wasn’t anything another well-placed kick from Sari hadn’t cured. I considered asking her where she’d gotten the large burlap sack we’d stuffed him into, but decided against it. That quiver of her’s seemed to have more than just arrows in it.
“Looked like him. Maybe his mom’s pharmacy is just a part-time gig.” Sari shut the door and locked it. “Now, let him out of the bag.”
I untied the knot and pulled the bag off of Jaide, who was still mostly unconscious. He stirred a little, but didn’t wake up. “You’re not taking this too personally, are you?”
She glared at me. “You’d be taking this personally if your ex-partner ratted you out.”
“What’d ya steal that he’d actually turn you in for?”
She sat down on the other bed in the room. “We didn’t actually get anything. The job went bad.”
“Then what were you going after?”
“Fruit.”
“Seriously?”
“Look, I’m a thief, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart, okay? Kepton’s a poverty trap, and the Imperial Guard were transporting crates of fruit through the town like it was some sort of show. Jaide and I were gonna steal the fruit and give it to the people.”
“Robin Hood would love you.”
She glared at me again. “Shut up, okay?”
I pulled some zip ties from my belt and tied Jaide’s wrists. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. So why’s this Kepton place so bad?”
She relaxed, then cleared her throat. “Early in the war, the Empire was drafting people to fight. Anybody who wouldn’t go found their way to Kepton, which was outside Imperial territory. When the war got bad, and the Empire started annexing the rest of the continent, that meant Kepton fell under Imperial rule.” She looked toward the window. “Everybody who wouldn’t go to war was there. And once the Imperial Guard found out about it, they didn’t just drag the draft dodgers off to war, they torched the place.”
“How many died?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Too many, as far as I’m concerned. Ever since then, Kepton’s been a shanty town, and treated like it’s one of the Empire’s greatest conquests.” She looked over at Jaide, then stood up, walked over to him, and grabbed him by the collar roughly, waking him up. “What did you tell them, Jaide? Did they let you go to get to me?”
He pushed her off using his shoulders. “They didn’t ‘let me go’, okay?!” He snapped the zip ties off. “I got away from them, and they weren’t Imperial Guard. I don’t know who they were, but they knew about you, about your… Abilities.”
I drew my blade and put it against his neck. “Did you tell them about her?”
“No! They already knew! ‘Lead us to Sarika’, they told me. I don’t even know how they knew your name.”
“I saw Imperial Guard snatch you, so how did these other guys get you?” Sari asked, moving my sword away from his throat.
“The Guard threw me on a train, and then these guys in swanky suits came into the car and started asking me questions. I swear, they looked like they crawled right out of a fancy party.”
“How’d you get loose?”
He sighed, then rubbed at the back of his neck. “One of the Guard came into the car with a meal for me, and I knocked his helmet off of him. After that, I just barely got away from some Royal Escorts. I don’t know when, but they moved me to a different train, coming from the Republic. I musta been out cold when they did it. When the train came to a stop - “
I cut him off. “The white dragon was attacking the train yard,” I finished.
“How’d you know?”
Sari answered, “Because Cres killed the Escorts that were chasing you.” She turned to me. “Looks like you didn’t do anything to piss them off.”
I ignored that. “You came straight to Endawa right after the depot was assaulted, didn’t you?” I asked Jaide.
He stood up from the bed. “Yeah. I took my chances that I might actually see Sarika here, and I waited. I haven’t even gotten any sleep, save for those times you knocked me out.”
Sari coughed out a laugh. “If you’d walked the tracks a couple hours later, I’dda tried to rob you instead of Cres.” She pulled some more zip ties off of my belt. “I’m gonna tie you up again, and we’re gonna leave you here.” I saw something out the window. I moved over to the window and saw several of those Royal Escorts. Who had they followed? Me or Jaide? “We’ll send somebody in to find you, and you tell ‘em we left for the Republic, got that?”
“Too late,” I said, “we’ve got company.”
“What?”
“Escorts. Seven of them. At least.”
“Were they following you?” Sari asked Jaide.
“I don’t see how!” he shouted.
I picked up Sari’s quiver and bow and handed them to her, then pulled my knife and cut the ties off of Jaide’s wrists. I handed him the knife. “If I find that in either me or Sari, your head will be in a very small box.”
They gave us no trouble until we reached the front door. I looked around for the kid from the pharmacy, but there wasn’t anybody here. There were only six rooms in the place, it wasn’t really big enough to hide in. Jaide was right behind me, and Sari behind him, ready to loose as many arrows as she needed to.
The idea that these Royal Escort guys were here for Sari had crossed my mind more than once in the three minutes it took to get from the room to the front door. Somebody had wanted Jaide to tell them where she was, whether that was because of what they’d done in Kepton or maybe even because of what she could do, I didn’t know or care. I hadn’t known her long, but I was still going to protect her from being captured by the Empire.
The streets were empty now, almost as if everyone had been ordered back into their homes. The very idea of this made me uneasy. I motioned for Jaide and Sari not to move, then slipped my blade back into the sheath. I stepped out into the street slowly, carefully. I looked up and down the street and watched as the Escorts moved into position on the rooftops ahead of me.
I looked back at the inn and saw that Sari had moved into position, just like I told her. She had come up behind the Escort on the roof of the inn and impaled him with an arrow from behind. Clearly these guys didn’t know the concept of body armor. The Escort she killed made no sound, so the others didn’t know what had happened, because they all trained their bows on me.
I motioned for Jaide to join me, then grabbed him by his shaggy yellow hair. “Lookin’ for him?” I shouted. “He’s with me. You want him, you gotta go through me.”
One of the Escorts jumped from his vantage point and drew a sword. “We’re here for Sarika.”
“What do you want with her?”
“That’s not of your concern.”
“Shame. Damn shame.” I tilted my head to the right, and an arrow flew right into the Escort’s covered face. I pushed Jaide back toward the inn just as several arrows from their side were loosed on us. I made my way to the Escort’s body and relieved him of his bow and quiver of arrows. I wasn’t as good a shot as Sari, but I was manageable.
I didn’t stop moving. I sprinted for a storefront about six doors down from the inn. I didn’t even realize it was the pharmacy until I broke through the window at the front. That girl was there, but otherwise the place was completely devoid of people. I motioned for her to keep quiet, then I drew my procured bow back and loosed an arrow at one of the Escorts at about the same time one of Sari’s arrows hit him.
I had no view of Jaide or Sari, though every now and again, I could see an arrow hit near an Escort. I couldn’t tell if she was missing on purpose or because she was constantly moving. The Escorts were moving, too, which suggested to me that neither side was really capable of hitting the other right now. I drew another arrow and took aim at an Escort that landed on the ground in front of the pharmacy. He drew his bow and fired an arrow at me, but I dodged it. I was about to shoot him, but Jaide jumped on him and blood flew from the man’s chest.
I turned back to the pharmacy girl and asked, “You got a ladder to the roof?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Today’s my first day.”
Shit… I hopped over the broken windowsill and ran out to Jaide, who was still tearing the Escort to shreds. None of the remaining Escorts were focused on us, which told me they must have cornered Sari. I grabbed his shoulder. “Hey!” I whispered, “C’mon!” He turned from the body he was mutilating and I almost didn’t think I was looking at Jaide for a moment. His face was less human and more wolf-like, and his hands had grown razor-sharp claws. “What the hell?!”
He pushed my hand away from him and stood up. “You never asked,” he said. “Where’s Sarika?”
“What the hell are you?”
“Ask when we’re not fighting Royal Escorts, and I’ll tell ya.”
I sighed. “Fine. Now, let’s go find Sari and get the hell outta town.”
Almost as if on cue, Sari screamed. We both looked in the direction of the scream, and I saw someone dressed in Escort clothing falling from the building across the street from the pharmacy. I didn’t think, I simply ran, and dove to catch her before she hit the ground. There was an arrow sticking through her leg, blood flowing freely. I looked up at the roof of the building and saw a single Escort looking down at us, and then several more joined him.
I’d seen seven before. I’d severely underestimated the number.
I ripped the arrow from Sari’s leg, causing her to cry out in pain, then I turned to Jaide. “Think you can distract ‘em?”
He rubbed at his cheek. “Gladly. Get her outta here.” I nodded.
I moved, sprinting off in the direction opposite from where the Escort’s were. I heard the sounds of fighting, and knew almost instantly that they were going to make it as slow and painful for Jaide as they could. I’d treated him like shit, and now I was indebted to him. Dammit, the irony.
I came to the edge of town, literally. It was a cliff, and down below was nothing but water. Sari was unconscious, so I couldn’t ask her if she was ready for a swim. I took a deep breath, and then an arrow clipped me across my left cheek. I felt blood seeping from the wound, and my decision was made. I jumped, and braced myself for the inevitable landing.
The water was cold, and painful when I landed. I kept hold of Sari, but it was difficult. This fall would have woken me from the dead, but she was still out cold. I envied her. The current was strong, and nearly split us apart more than once, but I held her tightly. I tried to swim against the current, into neutral territory, but in the end I couldn’t.
I lost consciousness as I watched the Escorts reach the cliff, one of them carrying Jaide over his shoulders.
And I thought the last chapter took awhile to finish...
Chapter Five - The Next Day
I swept up some glass and dumped it into the waste basket that Sharena had brought over to me. The glass replacement workers were busy putting in the new window. I sighed. Me a couple days ago, those guys yesterday, what would happen next? The only good thing about this whole thing was that nobody seemed to care about ‘that dragon that Kineas was hiding’ anymore. Nobody was really paying any attention to me, anyway, but at least some people might not connect ‘Riley the dragon’ to ‘Riley the teenage girl’ now.
Those Royal Escorts (as Kenny had called them) had left with their prisoner shortly after they lost the other guy. I was just happy that they didn’t ask me any questions. I wouldn’t even be able to answer the questions I’d heard them ask Sharena. For whatever reason, they seemed to believe that Sharena might know who the three suspects were.
“Riley,” Sharena called from the checkout counter. I propped my broom up against the wall by the front door and picked up the waste basket. I wanted to dump it into the trash can out back. “How’s your reading coming?”
“It’s been two days.”
“And?”
I grabbed a pill bottle from the shelf closest to me. “I can read hydro, and the rest is gibberish.”
“Has Kineas taught you how to spell your name yet?”
I nodded. “I’m doing pretty good with the alphabet, yeah.”
“Good. There’s a man out back with a shipment of medicine, can you go sign for it?”
I nodded again. “Yeah.”
“You’re doing pretty good after two days.”
I smiled. “Thanks.” I walked to the back door and reached into my pocket for the keys. The short one was the house key, the long one was the prescription cabinet key, the medium one was the back door key. I was grateful Sharena only gave me three keys to deal with. I set the waste basket down beside me and noticed - almost stupidly - that there actually was a ladder to the roof. I guess if I’d known that the night before, things would have happened differently with that one guy.
I sighed. He looked so familiar. I couldn’t figure out where I recognized him from. I shook my head and tried to focus on something else. I needed to sign for some medicine. That was all I needed to focus on.
I unlocked and opened the door, and Kenny was standing there, talking to the guy who had brought in the medicine. Kenny looked like he was having a great time talking. “Oh, here she is,” he said, turning his attention from the medicine guy to me. “Ortzi, here’s my sister, Riley.”
“Your mom adopt her, or something?” Ortzi asked. He looked a little older than Kenny, though somewhat thinner. He was taller than Kenny, most definitely. “Nice to meet you,” he said to me, slightly bowing. Sharena had told me that some men bow to women, whether they’re royalty or not. I hadn’t met any yet, save for this guy.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said, trying my best not to sound surprised or anything. “I’m supposed to sign something?”
He shook his head. “Kenny took care of that. Don’t worry.” He picked up a box sitting on the ground beside him and passed it over to me. “Don’t drop it, it’s kinda heavy.”
“I can tell,” I said, after nearly dropping the box. “What’s in here, anyway?”
“Lots and lots of breast enhancement cream.”
I wanted to ask why anyone would want to have bigger breasts, but something told me this was a human culture thing that I’d just have to learn as time went by. Another question I wanted to ask is why a pharmacy would carry breast enhancement cream, but we had so many different kinds of potato chips that it was easy to understand somebody wanting it. I wondered if there was breast reduction cream, because that would help me in every way.
“Where are you from, Riley?” Ortzi asked.
“Oh, uh… Eberson. It’s out in the neutral territories. Kenny’s dad was there, dragon hunting, and he adopted me and put me on a train here. I was gonna get kicked out on my own a couple days later, because the orphanage doesn’t keep most people past their seventeenth birthday.” That was starting to become second nature, and I’d only told three people before Ortzi.
“How long ago was that?”
“I got into town a couple days ago.”
“Huh. Cool. How do you like it?”
I smiled. “It’s nice having a family, even if it’s an adopted one.”
Kenny walked over to the door and opened it for me. “Sharena’s probably waiting to stock that stuff. Tell her I’ll be back inside in a few minutes.”
It almost felt like he was trying to force me away from him and Ortzi. “Um, okay. Nice to meet you, Ortzi,” I said, smiling a little.
I walked back inside and set the box down by the door to the store floor, where Sharena had made a square out of tape for me to know where the ‘stock check area’ was. She was being extremely patient with me, considering she was used to Kenny helping her out, and he knew where everything was.
I walked out onto the store floor and saw that the store was empty. No customers, no Sharena, not even the guys replacing the window up front. I sat down at the chair beside the door to the back room and grabbed the one of the books that I was using to practice reading. They were children's’ books, but I didn’t mind. If I didn’t start somewhere, I’d never know how to read. I was getting to the point where I could read about half of the words on the page, and the pictures sort of helped me figure out the rest.
“Excuse me,” a voice said from in front of me. They surprised me, whoever they were, and I nearly dropped my book. I set the book down and saw a man who looked vaguely familiar. “I’m here to pick up my prescription.”
It took me a second, but it was his voice I recognized. This was the man who had stabbed me in the hand the other day. I made sure my scarred hand wasn’t visible to him, for fear that he might connect me to, well, me. “Hello, sir,” I said, hoping my nervousness didn’t shine through. “Um… There’s a slight problem there.”
“What’s that, is my prescription not in?”
“That’s kinda the problem. I don’t know. I’m new here, and I only just started learning how to read.”
“And Sharena put you in charge of watching over the pharmacy? Is Kineas here?”
“He was out back, talking to a friend.”
“Well. We’re in a bit of a bind young, um… I never got your name.”
“Riley.”
“That’s an interesting name for a girl. Pretty name. Kineas has a cousin by that name, are you her?”
“No, Kenny’s cousin was a boy, and he died. I’m his sister, his - our - dad just adopted me last week, and I just got here a couple days ago.”
“Hrm,” he mumbled. “Well, I’ll check back later today to see if Sharena’s back in. Thanks, Riley.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding in. I couldn’t tell if he was suspicious of me or not, but I was glad he was gone. I nearly collapsed back into my chair and felt the relief wash over me. I had to get used to him, though, otherwise he might figure me out later, if he hadn’t yet.
I was about to grab my book again, but I nearly fell out of my chair when Kenny said, “I don’t think Ortzi believed you.” He looked down at me and asked, “What?”
“Don’t just sneak up on me like that!”
He chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was possible to sneak up on a dragon.”
“For one, I’m not a dragon at the moment, I’m no different from any other human. Two, you’re not supposed to say that out loud. And three, dragons get snuck up on all the time, or at least I did.”
He nodded. “Oh. Why are you so jumpy right now, anyway?”
“You remember the guy who stabbed me in the hand?”
“Torkel?”
“His name is Torkel?”
“From what Sharena tells me, he was mocked when he was younger.”
“Well, he was here to pick up a prescription.”
“It’s not due in until tomorrow.”
“He seemed to think it was due today.”
“Huh. Sharena told him last week it’d be in tomorrow.”
“You’re not putting me at ease.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I couldn’t tell if he recognized me or not.”
“You mean if he somehow connected the awkward and cute five foot seven girl to the roughly seven foot tall dragon that he stabbed in the hand?” When he said it, it sounded stupid that I’d even be nervous about the guy recognizing me, but I still couldn’t help it. “Did he see your scar?”
I shook my head. “I kept my hand under the counter.”
“Even so, Sharena’s potion made it look old, so even if he does connect you to you, he’s gonna havta come up with some reason to justify that scar looking like it does.”
“It’s already common enough that people think dragons heal faster than humans, so I don’t think it’d be too much of a stretch for him.”
Kenny hopped over the counter and walked over to the door. “I don’t think you’re in any trouble. When Dad gets back, he’ll back your story, and then everybody will believe it, it’s that simple.”
“You say that like you expect him any day.”
“I do, actually. Dad pops in randomly, runs the inn for a couple days, then hands it right back to me.” He flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED and locked the door. “Now, c’mon, let’s get home.”
I was confused. “Doesn’t the sign say we’re open from eight to six?”
“You mean you still can’t read it?”
I shook my head. “No, I mean, why are we closing early?”
“Oh, because it’s dinner time and Sharena wants us back home.”
I sighed. Being a human was still gonna take getting used to.
“Nobody thinks Sharena’s weird for living in the woods?” I asked, trying to ignore the creature that was doing its best to annoy me. It was… Odd. About the size of a house cat, with a similar face, but instead of fur, it was covered in feathers.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot that we haven’t told you that yet.”
The feather cat was rubbing up against my leg. “What?”
“Technically, we don’t live in the woods.”
“Then why are walking home in the woods?” That cat was desperately trying to make me pick it up.
“I like the walk. You mean you’ve never noticed that there’s a house just down the road from Dad’s inn?”
“Not really.”
“That’s the house.”
“We walk home in the woods when we live a block and a half away from the pharmacy?”
“I told you, I like the walk.” It looked as if he noticed the cat-thing following me. “What is that and why does it seem to like you so much?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I knelt down and the cat stopped rubbing up against me, and instead just looked up at me. I reached out to pat it on the head, but it swatted my hand away. I tried again, slower, and this time it let me touch it before putting its paw on my arm. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”
And to my surprise, it said, “I know.”
I fell backwards, landing roughly on a pile of sticks. “Did you just talk?!” I screamed.
It glared at me. “That’s a cheeky thing for a dragon to say.”
Fear gripped me. “You know what I am?!”
It nodded. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t be much use to you if I didn’t.”
“What… What are you?”
“I suggest we continue this conversation elsewhere.” It licked its paw for a second. “It’s dirty out here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You can’t even tell me what you are?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re inside.”
I looked up at Kenny, who shrugged. “It wants to go inside, I guess we go inside.”
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll go inside.”
“You two are a little late,” Sharena said, pulling an apron off. She looked like she’d just finished cooking something, so despite my concern over the feather cat that I was carrying into the house, I was a ready for food. Sharena was a very good cook. “You didn’t get lost on your way home, did you?”
“No, Riley just found a talking cat,” Kenny answered.
She looked at the cat in my arms and looked about as confused as I felt about it. “That’s… Do you even know what you’re holding onto there?”
I asked, “You mean, other than a feathered cat that talks?”
“A creature like this hasn’t been seen - Did you say ‘talks’?”
The cat answered for me. “She did.”
“You’re not actually the creature that you look like, are you?”
It shook its head. “No. I’m one of the conduits.”
“Riley, set it down.” I did as I was asked and set it on the counter. It sat there, cleaning itself like a cat would do. “Who are you here for?”
It stopped cleaning itself for a moment to look over its shoulder at me, then turned back to Sharena. “Your daughter.”
I pointed at myself, like an idiot. “Me?”
“She’s powerful, even more so than most.”
I repeated, “Me?”
Sharena ignored me. “You’re aware that she’s a dragon, correct? Dragons are on the lowest end of the magic spectrum.”
I asked, “Didn’t you tell me I had a lot of mana in me?”
Again, I was ignored. “There’s something special about her,” the cat said, “hence why I was sent to this plane of existence.”
“Do you have a name?” Sharena asked.
It shook its head. “No. Name me if you wish.”
She looked over at me. “Riley, since he’s your conduit, do you want to name him?”
I practically shouted. “Why isn’t anybody paying attention to me?!” Everyone - the cat included - was looking at me like I was nuts. Kenny looked like he was about to burst into laughter, and I really couldn’t blame him. “Now, when I got here, you - “ I pointed at Sharena, “ - told me that everybody has mana, but not everybody has enough for it to matter. You explicitly told me that I had a lot of mana. Now it’s like only certain people have mana at all, and that it’s even rarer to find a dragon that has mana.” I paused to take a short breath, then once again shouted, “Explain this stuff to me! This time, Kenny did burst into laughter.
Sharena sat down on the couch, and I sat down beside her. The cat jumped up on my lap and curled up. It felt weird, but I’d never had another animal sit in my lap when I was a dragon.
“I understand your confusion,” she said, starting the conversation, “yes, everyone on the planet has mana, and yes it’s mostly related to whether or not your body houses enough mana that makes you a true magic user. The difference is that most of the magic users out there aren’t mages. A mage can conjure the dead, summon forth mythical beasts and everything a simple sorceress like me can’t do. I deal mostly with potions and common spells, like making the house seem like it’s in the forest rather than a block and a half away from Irvine’s inn.”
I asked, “How come nobody mentioned that to me earlier?”
“You never asked, sweetie.” She put on a warm smile. “Dragons are similar to sorcerers and sorceresses, and even before the white dragon appeared, there weren’t too many who actually practiced magic. It’s a little difficult for some dragons to mix potions, y’know, and so they mainly stick to common spells.” She pointed to the cat. “He is the difference between sorcerer and mage. And only one dragon has had a conduit, an ancient dragon that was rumored not to have any descendants. Since the ability to become a mage is passed on from one generation to the next, then that would mean you are a descendant of that dragon.”
“Okay, so I’m descendant of the only mage dragon, and I’m powerful enough in magic that I can do… What, exactly?”
“Pretty much anything,” the cat answered. “And I’m the proof of that.”
I turned back to Sharena. “So, why does a mage need a conduit?”
She patted the cat on the head. “A conduit is your connection to pure mana. Mana that common people have access to is filtered through the world’s conduit, and intentionally made weaker.”
“The world has a conduit?”
“The world is a living being as well, Riley. Mana is what keeps it together and what gives life to all of its beings. That’s why everyone and everything has mana within it. Pure mana, on the other hand, can kill someone who tries to access it without a conduit.”
“So, there are ways?”
“Dangerous ways. Deadly ways. To tap into pure mana without a conduit, you’d need to use a spell that few have ever been able to find, let alone wield appropriately.”
I looked down at the cat. “If you hadn’t shown up, how would I have known I could tap into pure mana?”
It licked at its paw. “Perhaps you would have destroyed a city, or a country. The world’s conduit creates beings like me when it feels a creature capable of pure mana manipulation has been born.”
“I’m seventeen. So, shouldn’t you have shown up seventeen years ago?”
“Humans need to come of age before their conduit is born. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same with dragons.” It curled up again. “But so few dragons have been capable of mage power, so I don’t know.”
“The question,” Sharena said as she stood up, “is this: Is Riley capable of dragon level power or human level power?”
“Is there a difference?” I asked.
“That dragon that you’re potentially a descendant of? Rumors exist that it shaped the continents. If your mana is decided by your being a dragon, there might not be a limit to what you can do.”
I gulped. Loudly.
I laid on my bed, the cat sleeping by my head. He was a quiet sleeper, unlike Kenny, who I often heard snoring through the walls. I sighed. So, I was a mage, or, I could be a mage. And a very powerful one, too. That concerned me. What if I couldn’t control my own magical power? What if I ended up hurting the people I cared about?
“Who do you care about?” the cat asked. I looked over at him, and he looked as if he hadn’t been sleeping beside me.
“What?”
“I’m asking the question. Who do you care about? Until a few days ago, you were a dragon that flew place to place and hadn’t even seen your first adoptive family for years.”
“Sharena and Kenny are my family now, so I care about them.”
“Why?”
“Whaddya mean why? Kenny gave me shelter when I needed to sleep, and Sharena’s hiding me and treating me like her daughter, why wouldn’t I care about them?”
“If it wasn’t for Kenny, you wouldn’t have been found the other day.”
“If it wasn’t for Kenny, I’d have died the other day. I would have flown until I couldn’t fly anymore, and I would have fallen unconscious - not to mention out of the sky - and some people would have killed me.” I sat up. “I’m just in hiding, I’m not dead. I don’t care if I have to be a human to survive, I’m happy I’m alive and because of that, I care about Kenny and Sharena.” I leaned closer to him. “Is it really that hard to understand?”
He just sat there, staring at me, then said, “Mithra.”
“What?”
He nodded toward the comic book that was sitting on the night stand. “That character there. According to the cover, his name is Mithra. I like it.”
I sighed. “I still don’t have reading one hundred percent down, y’know?”
“You can’t read?”
“I’m getting better, every few words is okay.” I laid back down. “Wait a second.” I turned to look at him again. “You knew I was a dragon but ya didn’t know I couldn’t read?”
“Just because I know everything about you doesn’t mean I know everything about you.”
Chapter Six - The Beach
Water. All I saw. All I heard. All I smelled. All I felt. All I tasted. It filled my mouth, my nostrils, my ears. If not for the fact that I knew I still had a mouth, nostrils and ears, I would have sworn I’d died and been reincarnated as water.
I surfaced and spat out some water, then tried to orient myself to swim. The current was almost stronger here than it had been when I’d jumped off the cliff. I looked around and tried to find Sari, but she wasn’t anywhere near me. I tried to swim again, but it was difficult. It was like the water was… Guiding me. I stopped trying to swim and concentrated solely on keeping my head above water, and it was almost as if the current slowed.
No, it wasn’t my imagination, the current had slowed. I was able to wade through the water now, and made my way toward what looked like the beach. It was deserted, but I needed land. I made it to the beach, crawled out of the water and collapsed. Every part of me ached.
I stared up at the sun above me, and watched as it arched across the sky. The moon replaced it, then there was someone standing over me.
“Sari!” I coughed out, my mouth drier than it should have been, considering I’d crawled out of the ocean. I grabbed at her, and then realized it wasn’t Sari at all, it was a completely different girl, somewhat taller, with scruffy green hair.
“What are you sorry about?” the girl asked.
I let go of her and backed away. “No,” I said, feeling like sand was falling out of my mouth. “Sari is my friend, we jumped into the ocean to get away from people trying to kill us. Is she around here?”
The girl shook her head. “I haven’t seen her.”
“Who are… Who are you?”
She shook her head again. “I don’t really have a name. I live here, I grew up here.”
“Here?” I looked around at the beach. It seemed to go on as far as the eye could see. “There’s nothing here.”
She nodded. “I know. It gets pretty lonely here. I don’t get to talk to anybody.” She rubbed at her arm. “How long are you gonna stay here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see any way to go. And Sari might wash up here, like I did. I don’t want to leave her.”
“You like her?”
Suddenly, I felt slightly embarrassed. “Not… Not in the romantic sense, if ya get what I mean.”
“Do you hate her?”
“What? No. What? She’s my friend. She’s looking to kill the white dragon, and I want to do the same.”
“What’s the white dragon?”
“You’ve never heard of the white dragon?”
She shook her head. “I’ve lived here my whole life, surviving on salt water and dead fish.”
I sighed. This wasn’t gonna get me anywhere. A sheltered life didn’t even begin to explain this girl. I sat down on the beach and looked out at the ocean. “So you’ve never met anyone who mentioned the white dragon?”
She shook her head again. “No. I haven’t seen anybody in a few years. Nobody comes to the beach anymore.”
“How do you stand it?”
She sat down beside me and rested her head on my shoulder. It felt weird, but not entirely unpleasant. “I always knew somebody would show up again. So I’ve just kept waiting.” She put her arm around my waist. “I’m glad I was right.”
I had gone at least seven miles along the beach, and it didn’t seem to end. Sari was nowhere to be found, but I had so much more of the beach to travel, I could only hope I found her before she decided to leave without me. The beach seemed unnatural, like there was someone beside me at all times, despite the fact that the girl had fallen asleep a little while ago.
I was starting to get weak. I fell forward, then rolled over onto my back. The night sky was clear enough to see most of the constellations. It looked peaceful, quiet. I heard the ocean crashing into the beach, and I almost wanted to fall asleep. I felt my eyelids slowly closing, and relief began to wash over me.
I forced myself to open my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. Had to find Sari. I threw her into the water while she was barely conscious, if she died, it’d be on me. I got back to my feet and continued on my path toward the opposite end of the beach. The place had to end somewhere.
I continued to walk, and walk, and walk. For hours, I walked, and still I found nothing. No sign of anyone or anything, not even a shack somewhere. The only things on the beach were me and the girl who claimed she lived here. I turned around and made my way back to where I’d come from. Maybe if the beach didn’t end one direction, it would end the other.
“Where are you going?” the girl asked. When had she come up behind me? I’d never heard or seen her. I turned and saw she didn’t look happy, but actually looked concerned. “Weren’t you at least gonna say goodbye before you left?”
I shook my head. “I’m not leaving. I’m looking for my friend, she should have washed up here by now.”
“Oh, you mean that Sari girl you were talking about? I know where she is.”
“You do? But before you said - “
She cut me off. “That was before. She washed up while you were sleeping before.” She giggled. “You don’t expect me to just spend time around you, do you?”
I sighed. It was no use asking her anything else, she’d just give me more vague answers. “Is she okay?”
The girl nodded. “She’s a little weak from all her wounds and can’t get up, but otherwise, she’s okay.”
Sari was groaning a little when the girl led me to her, obviously in some serious pain. At some point in time, the girl had set up a tent, with some small cot that looked like it had just been bought somewhere. “Why’d ya havta drop me like that?” she asked, then coughed. “Swimming doesn’t come easy to me, y’know.”
“Actually, I didn’t drop you and I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.” I sat down beside her. The other girl was busy picking up seashells on the beach. “How you doing?”
“I’m sore,” it was an obvious lie, but I was glad that she could at least pretend to be okay, “but that’s it. You?”
“I’ve had a splitting headache since I washed up, but that’s about it.” I sat down beside her. “Sorry about what happened in that town.”
She shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Cres. So, where we go now?”
“I’m not sure. We need to rest up, first, especially you. After that, maybe that girl can give us directions to the next town, or something.”
Sari sat up, winced, and then laid back down again. The current must have screwed her up worse than I thought. “Does she seem kinda odd to you?”
“She grew up here, she said. Doesn’t even have a name.”
“Huh? Yeah she does, her name’s Kalena.”
“She told me she didn’t have a name.”
Sari shrugged. “Well, she grew a name sometime between when you washed up and when I did.” She coughed a little. “It’s not like I named her, or anything. Maybe she heard it somewhere before we showed up and decided she liked it.”
I rubbed at my chin. The girl had had plenty of time to tell me she had a name now, and she still hadn’t. Something was just weird about her. I stood up and left the tent to find Kalena, wherever she was.
She was sitting at the edge of the beach, her legs in the water and her arms keeping her from falling back. The sun was starting to set on the horizon, and the water looked an almost mind-entrancing shade of orange. I walked over to her and sat down beside her, but I couldn’t tell if she even noticed me. Her eyes were closed, and she sounded like she was humming.
“Kalena?” I asked. She didn’t respond, which made me wonder if she even heard me in the first place. “Kalena?” I repeated, just a little louder.
“Shh.” She raised her index finger. “Can you hear it?”
“What?”
“The water.”
“It’s just water, it’s not a living creature.”
She looked at me as if she’d just been told the sun will never shine again. “How can you say that? Water grants life, Cres. If it weren’t for water, none of us would be here.”
“Yeah, I get that, but my point is that the only sound it makes is that of ocean hitting the - “ Why it hadn’t hit me sooner, I didn’t know. “I never told you my name.”
“Huh?”
“You just called me Cres, but I never told you that was my name. And Sari only said my name after you were out of the tent.”
Kalena looked nervous, frightened even. She stood up and backed away from me. “I… I’m sorry…” She turned and ran, faster than she should have been able to on the beach.
I stood and watched as she retreated into the horizon, then sighed. This was getting weirder than I wanted it to be. I turned back toward the sunset and saw that the sun had been completely replaced by a moon far larger than it should have appeared. That was when it hit me that it had been nightfall when Kalena told me Sari was here, and the sun was beginning to rise when we’d gotten to the tent.
Whatever was going on here, Kalena was the center of it.
“So what do you think is going on?” Sari asked as I checked the bandage on her leg. Kalena may have been a little strange, but at least she knew how to bandage a wound. “I’ve met magic users with potions that create illusions, y’know.”
I finished my inspection. “I imagine you stole said potions from said magic users?”
“No. That was how they got away from me without losing a single coin.”
I coughed out a laugh. “Right.” I stood up and walked over to the edge of the tent. “You didn’t tell her my name, did you?”
Sari shook her head. “No, I washed up, she brought me to this tent, wrapped my leg, told me her name and then said she was gonna go get someone. I didn’t know it’d be you.”
“I’ve never heard of an actual mind reader before, though I’ve heard stories. Maybe that’s what she is.”
“Be careful, if she is. We’re partners, y’know, so I don’t want you getting hurt or anything.”
I nodded. “Yeah, right.”
I wandered the length of the beach, hoping to find Kalena somewhere nearby. Just as I’d noticed before, there seemed to be no end to it, and that made me consider the possibility that this was all an illusion even more. Miles upon miles upon miles of beach, as far as the eye could see, and I didn’t think I saw anywhere near this much beach before I passed out in the water. Was Kalena doing this on purpose, or was something else going on?
I kept my blade ready, on the off chance that I’d have to fight someone or something. I didn’t want to hurt or scare Kalena, but if this wasn’t her doing and something worse was hiding somewhere, I needed to be on my guard.
I watched the sun pass again, just another day or night or whenever it really was. Had the time truly passed at all while I was here? It felt like I’d been here for days, but at the same time, I didn’t feel like I’d experienced full days here.
I heard something, I couldn’t quite tell what it was. I stopped and looked around, then listened for a moment. Crying? Was I hearing crying? “Kalena?” I called. If she was the one crying, then I could get answers. My hand drifted to the hilt of my sword. “Kalena, I need to talk to you.”
“Go away!” she shouted from wherever she was. I still couldn’t see her.
“Please, I need to know what’s going on here. How did you know my name?”
“I said leave!”
“Can we leave? Where even are we, Kalena?”
“This isn’t want I wanted…” she said, her angered tone replaced by depression. “I just wanted…”
I knelt down and closed my eyes. Maybe if she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d show herself. “What did you want?”
Something gripped my neck. I opened my eyes and saw Kalena, her eyes bloodshot and full of hate. Her hands were around my neck, but that wasn’t what it felt like, it felt like sand was grabbing me. I struggled to grab my sword, but something blocked me, something that felt like more sand. I struggled to take my eyes off her face, but I had to see what was stopping me from pulling out my sword. There was nothing there! I felt the sand, but there was nothing but air.
My vision was starting to double, and it was getting hard to breathe. I grabbed Kalena’s arms and tried to pull her off of me. Even her skin felt like sand, and I kept losing my grip on her. My eyes started to cloud over a little bit, everything blurred into pure white.
I had no concept of waking up, suddenly my eyes were open and I was sitting up. I just added it among the many weird things that were happening on this stupid beach and took in my surroundings. I was sitting in a cave that looked out on the beach, probably a quarter mile above it. I stood up and walked to the edge and looked down on the beach, but I recognized no landmarks.
There was a sound behind me, a fire. I turned around and saw Sari and Kalena, Sari asleep and Kalena just sitting there, looking depressed. Both of them were wrapped up in blankets, but Kalena was reaching out to the small campfire she had going. Sari looked like she’d been brought there and set down, then covered with the blanket.
I drew my blade and cautiously walked toward them. Kalena’s eyes flicked toward me, then returned to looking at the fire. “You’re not really holding that,” she said, a sombre tone to her voice.
“What?”
“You and Sari both already figured out that none of this is real, it’s not like it’s hard to figure out.”
I lifted the sword and looked at it in my hands. It felt real, it looked real, but according to her, I wasn’t holding it at all. That couldn’t be right, even if none of this was real.
“Your mind fills those details in,” she said, and that cemented my belief that she was a mind reader. “You know what holding your sword feels like, so your mind tells your hand that you feel your sword.”
“What am I actually holding?”
She stood up and drew the blanket tight around her. “Your dick, for all I care, it doesn’t really matter.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sighed. “Why are the cute ones so dumb? I’m not real, this cave isn’t real, the beach isn’t real.”
“So I’m hallucinating?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re experiencing this, but it’s not real. Same with Sari. You’re both laying on the real beach, completely unconscious, just like you have been for the last few hours.”
“Hours? That’s all this has been?”
“Time passes differently in your head than it does in my world.”
“And what is your world? Why is it nothing but a beach?”
“My world is all I know. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d never left the beach. I am the beach.”
Kalena slept against the cave wall. It was the first time I’d seen her sleep in the days - hours - that I’d been there. After dropping her bombshell, she’d sat down next to Sari and went right to sleep, leaving me alone with my thoughts - which I guess was all that this place really was anyway.
I held my hand out toward the fire. I felt warmth, real warmth. Could some mystical beach cause that? And if it could, how would we leave? Everything looked and felt real, so how would I know whether or not I’d left this weird beach world?
I stood up and walked over to the entrance to the cave. There were some natural steps leading from the cave to the beach, which made it easier to go back there. I wandered the sandy shore for some time, or no time, depending on which perspective I was thinking of at any given time. This place was weirder than it had any reason to be.
I found a rock on the ground, the first one I’d ever seen on the beach. I picked it up, felt its weight. It was only the size of a small fist, but it weighed significantly more. I turned it over in my hands, then positioned myself to throw it, but then I felt sand grip my hand.
“Don’t,” Kalena said, taking the rock from my hand and playing with it, almost as if it had no weight at all to her. Then again, considering she was supposedly the whole beach, that shouldn’t surprise me. Everything about this place surprised me, though. “Throw this out there, and I’ll never remember you.”
“What are you talking about?”
She touched my forehead. “You keep all your memories here.” She touched the rock. “I keep all of mine here.”
“That’s the only rock I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“That’s because I can choose what I want to keep and what I want to remain vague.” She waved her hand and the sand shot upward, taking the shape of an abnormally large sand castle, complete with giant yellow flag sticking out of the top of each tower. “Somebody used to live in one of these. I don’t know who, and if I did, the odds are good they haven’t been here recently.”
“They used to live in a sand castle?” I asked.
She scowled at me. “No, stupidhead. They used to live in a real castle, and that’s my point.” She waved her hand and the castle disintegrated, every grain of sand dropping to the ground in an instant. She waved her hand again after touching the rock, and the sand once again raised upward, this time in the form of my house. Unlike the sand castle, the house wasn’t just some poor construct that looked like it was made of sand. If I hadn’t seen it created myself, I’d think somebody transplanted my house to the beach. “If I didn’t have this rock, your house would just be sand in the shape of a house, like that castle was.”
I walked up to the house and touched it, felt it under my hand. “It feels real…”
Kalena walked up to me and put her own hand on the house. “Because you remember how it feels. It feels real to me, too, but only because you remember how it feels.” She held up the rock again.
“You mean all of my memories are in that rock?”
“Every last one. From the day you were born to the day the white dragon destroyed your home to just a few days ago when you met that girl.” Suddenly, Kalena morphed, into the spitting image of the girl from the drugstore. “Something in your mind connected her to another memory, but I can’t tell which one or why.”
“How do you do all this?”
She changed back to her ‘normal’ form, or at least the form that I was used to. “Near as I can remember, I was born at least seven centuries ago, from the memories of a young girl named Kalena.”
“So that name didn’t come from nowhere?”
She shook her head. “No, it can just take me awhile to remember it. She died here, on the beach, when her father beat her to death. As her body deteriorated over time, her soul sank deeper and deeper into the stand, and made me.” She sat down against the wall of my house. “All I remember is the pain, the horror that Kalena felt. I don’t remember her mother, or any bright parts of her life, and every time I try, it just makes the pain hurt more.”
I held out my hand for the rock, and she gave it to me. “Why is mine the only one here?”
“Because of your sister. Your memories of Circi are so pleasant, and so pure. They’re the happiest things you hold on to.”
I knelt down beside her. “And you want memories like that, too.”
“I do. It would make this place a little more bearable.” She slipped her hand through the sand. “There haven’t been people here in over a hundred years, all because of the reputation the beach… that I’ve garnered. If I remember you and Sari, then I won’t be alone anymore.”
I finally sat down. “Kalena, the only way you can have happy memories is if you try and make them yourself.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy for me. The only way I can meet people is by knocking them out and invading their minds. I can’t leave the beach when I am the beach.”
“You can’t make a physical form outside in the real world?”
“No. I’ve tried. Do you know how fast people run from a girl made of sand who looks like a long dead person?” She let out a dry, sad laugh. “Can you imagine how many memories would be here if people stumbled upon me the way you guys did?”
I leaned my head back against the house. “I understand, but at the same time, they’re just memories of people’s memories.”
She nodded. “I know. But when that’s all I can have, I’m not gonna complain.”
I had nothing to say to that. She was right. “I’m sorry,” was about the only words that my mouth could form.
“It’s not your fault.” She took the rock from me again. “When you guys are in here, in here,” she pointed at her head, “that helps me feel more like me instead of just the lonely girl on the beach.” She hugged the rock to her chest. “You two and all the people you know are my friends.” She looked at me. “And long after you die out there, you’ll be alive in here.”
“That’s kinda creepy.”
She giggled. “I said that to be creepy.”
I laughed now. She reminded me of Circi in a way. Maybe it was intentional, maybe she was using my memories of Circi to make me feel better. Either way, I didn’t care. I felt better, that was all that mattered.
“Your wounds should be healed by now,” Kalena said, helping Sari to her feet. “One of the people who happened upon the beach a couple centuries ago was a healer, and he passed his touch onto me when he died, so I’ve been healing you since you washed up.”
“Wow, that’s nice,” Sari said, with a slight sarcastic twinge to her voice, “I don’t suppose you put some gold in my bag, too?”
“When you wake up, go twenty paces straight ahead of the way you’re facing. Some pirates left that there long before I was born, and never came back to claim it.”
I patted her on the shoulder. “Thanks, Kalena. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a little weird.”
She smiled at me. “I’m sorry for leading you on as long as I did. It’s been so long since I collected any memories that I forgot how long it took to do it.” She held out a piece of paper. “Here, take this. When you wake up, it’ll be in your bag.”
“What is it?”
“A letter, from me. I don’t want you to read it yet.”
“Why not?”
“Wait until a moment when you feel really down, and really defeated. If you guys are going up against that big dragon I saw in your memories, I bet you’ll feel that way at least once. No offense.”
“None taken,” Sari said, “we know it’s practically a suicide mission, but we’re still gonna kill that piece of shit.”
“I hope you do. I’ve seen what it did to Cres’s family, and it was horrible. And I saw what it did to yours, too.”
Sari looked slightly nervous. “Um… What else did you see?”
“I saw everything, but don’t worry. Cres has things he’s hiding from you, too.”
I wasn’t too sure I liked that Kalena knew our entire life stories, but she wasn’t lying. There were things I didn’t want to tell Sari, and the idea that there were things Sari didn’t want to tell me wasn’t a surprise.
Sari hugged Kalena, which surprised her as much as it did me. “You’ve got friends, Kalena, don’t worry. We’ll always be your friends.”
“Um… Thanks, Sari. That means more to me than you realize.”
“Just don’t forget us, y’know?”
“Never.”
I slipped the paper in my pocket and pulled Sari back. “Okay, Kalena, we’re ready to go.”
She nodded. “Don’t miss me too much, because I won’t have a reason to miss you. Hopefully, I’ll see you both again some day.”
“If we survive our mission, this’ll be our first stop,” I said, smiling at her.
“I’m gonna havta admit, it’ll be tough for me to realize that you’re the real you guys when that happens.”
Sari took Kalena’s hand. “I’m gonna do something now.” She touched Kalena’s arm at the joint, then traced down her arm and made a small circle in the palm of her hand, then capped it off with a poke. “That’s a sign of sisterhood in the Plains Tribe. You’ll know it’s the real us when I do this to you again, because your memories of us would know that’s the only reason I’ll have to do it.”
“Okay, I’ll remember that.”
“We’ll be back, Kalena,” I said, “I know we will.”
She smiled. “Okay, guys, you ready?”
“I am,” Sari said.
“Me too.”
“Then as soon as I’m done talking, you’re going to wake up in the real world - “
My eyes shot open, and I sat straight up in less than a second. Sari was already up, away from me a little ways, digging into the sand. “Hey! There is treasure here!”
I coughed out a slightly sand-filled laugh. I must have ended up with sand in my mouth at some point. “I think she’d know if there was treasure here.”
“I know, I’m just sayin’, is all.”
I stood and brushed sand off of me. It almost seemed as if the sand shifted when it hit the beach, like Kalena was accepting part of herself back. In a way, I guess that was true. I picked up my sword and walked past Sari, pulling her to her feet. She was almost like a kid in a candy store, counting all the gold she’d stuffed in her bag. I whispered, “Thank you, Kalena,” just before we left the beach.
And I just barely heard, “Thank you,” as a response.
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.”
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.”
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.