One Realm Beyond

by Donita K. Paul

  “I won’t.”

  “Straight up. Straight down. Forty-two seconds.”

  “Maybe forty-one.” Bridger grinned.

  “You can ride in front, and I’ll hold on to you.”

  She shook her head. He’d never seen such a solemn look on her face. Not afraid, exactly, but definitely stubborn.

  Cantor reached in his backpack and pulled out a wide length of colorful material woven into a hat. He snapped it twice, then stretched it with two hands into a huge belt. “This will keep us on.”

  He showed it to Bridger, who nodded, then went to the dragon’s side. He threw one end over his back, ducked under Bridger’s belly, and looped the ends together with a silver buckle contraption. He pulled on it, tightened the slack, and tested it again.

  “All set. We won’t fall.”

  Drums rolled a steady beat, paused, and rolled again.

  “The soldiers’ wake-up call.” Cantor grabbed Bixby around the waist, tossed her up to the crest of Bridger’s shoulders, then scrambled up behind her. “Ready?”

  Bridger craned his neck around to look at his passengers. “You know when we went into the shop during the day, I was a stretcher.”

  “You’re saying?”

  “I don’t know if I know where the healer’s shop is.”

  “On the south wall,” squeaked Bixby.

  “Her eyes are shut,” said Bridger.

  “That’s probably for the best.” Cantor hugged her closer to his chest and caught hold of the colorful cinch. “Let’s go, Bridger. I’ll try to help pinpoint the shop. But I can’t do it from here.”

  “Right.” Bridger spread his wings, coiled the muscles in his legs for a mighty jump, and took a deep breath. “Up!”

  Cantor bent his head to speak into Bixby’s ear. “Up is a good choice.”

  He’d hoped she would relax a little. He thought he succeeded. At least she giggled.

  CLUTTER

  Bixby clung to the arm Cantor had wrapped around her waist. The thud as they landed on yet another roof threatened to bring her last meal up.

  She swallowed hard. “Are we here? Did we make it this time?”

  “Yep.” Cantor let go of her and slid away.

  She opened her eyes and gave a sigh of relief. In spite of Bridger’s optimism, finding the right roof had taken four tries. Even now she didn’t know how they had decided this was the healer’s shop, and she didn’t care. It was one of the flat-roofed structures that were part of the city’s wall and therefore part of the battlement, designed so soldiers could stand on these ramparts and shoot the enemy from above. That was good enough for her. She’d walk around the whole wall if she had to, as long as she didn’t have to endure the gut-wrenching leaping and plummeting one more time.

  “Look.” Bridger pointed to a huge nest. “Mizlark eggs. I love mizlark eggs.” He lumbered over to the round collection of old papers, twigs, stolen garments, and mud. Bixby held tight to the multicolored girth. The putrid smell as they approached almost gagged her. Bridger picked up a greenish egg bigger than a grapefruit and popped it in his mouth, shell and all.

  Bixby heard the crunch. “Yuck.” She threw her leg over his back and, holding on to the cinch to slow her descent, slid down his scales. “How can you eat the eggs of those nasty birds?”

  Bridger tossed an egg into the air, opened his mouth, and caught it as it fell. “This is the only time mizlarks are palatable. A roasted full-grown bird tastes like carrion, no matter what care you take in its preparation. You can’t use the feathers for anything. They’re sticky and smell like moldy socks. The birds sound out constantly with raucous voices. They leave dung in the most inconvenient places. And they harass farm animals. I’m surprised they haven’t been eradicated.”

  Jesha sniffed the nest from a distance, sneezed, and moved away, sitting on the far side of the roof with her back to Bridger.

  He popped another egg in his mouth. “But mizlark eggs are delicious.”

  Bixby gave a quick look around the skies, fearful of spying an angry flock of massive, gawky birds. “Why aren’t they here, guarding their eggs?”

  Cantor stood over a trap door he’d just opened. “What? And miss the opportunity to raid other birds’ nests and eat other birds’ young? Mizlarks seem to think stolen food tastes better than anything they can come by honestly.”

  “Right,” said Bridger as he downed the last egg. “And if someone is wailing over their loss, the lament provides dinner music to the brutes.”

  “I’m glad we don’t have any on Richra.” Bixby followed Jesha to the wall facing the outside of the city.

  Bridger sat and began picking his teeth with a claw. “You two are perfectly matched to be partners. Bixby has a ton of book-learning and city polish. Cantor has the knowledge of nature that can keep you alive in the wild.”

  He pulled a bit of something green from between his teeth and flicked it over the side of the wall. “And, of course, I am a superior dragon for Cantor. I knew when I first saw him that we’d fit. He emanates vibrations that meld with my own.”

  Cantor’s jaw twitched as he motioned for Bixby to join him. “Bixby and I are going down to the shop to do the packing Dukmee asked her to do. Why don’t you stay up here on guard? Let us know if you see someone coming.”

  Bixby waved to Bridger. He paused in his dental hygiene to wave back. He didn’t seem put out by Cantor’s cold attitude. And although she liked the odd dragon, she could see how he annoyed Cantor. Words were not going to change the realm walker’s attitude, but perhaps in time, Cantor would see Bridger’s worth.

  Bixby stepped down onto the top step of the ladder within the building. Darkness hid the remaining rungs. She sat on the edge of the trapdoor in order to dig through her hampers.

  “Here’s a light.” She passed a stick to Cantor. “Shake it and it’ll glow.” With another in her hand, she resumed her descent.

  “Ow, ow, ow!”

  Bixby popped out of the opening and ran to Bridger. “What’s wrong?”

  Cantor had raced to his side as well. “Be quiet! You’re going to wake all the people within blocks of here.”

  The dragon muffled his staccato exclamations with a hand clamped over his mouth. Blood ran from one pointed claw.

  “You’re bleeding.” Bixby pulled on his arm. “Let me see where you’re wounded.”

  The dragon moved his hand a couple of inches. Blood trickled from his mouth.

  “What did you do?” asked Cantor.

  Bixby turned angry eyes on her companion. “You could be a little more sympathetic.”

  “It’s a tiny trickle of blood. He’s not dying.”

  “He’s in pain.”

  Cantor gave an exasperated grunt and pulled the dragon’s hand off his mouth. “Show us.”

  “I stabbed my gum.”

  Bixby interpreted Cantor’s glance her way as, “See? It’s nothing.”

  “All right.” Bixby patted Bridger’s shoulder. “Let me look.”

  He opened his mouth. The toasted almond smell surprised her. Compared to the reek from the mizlark’s nest, the dragon’s breath was pleasant. Up close, his teeth sparkled white but looked too large for his mouth. His dark purple tongue had black ridges running from side to side.

  Bixby looked at Cantor. “I didn’t know dragons have black and purple striped tongues.”

  Cantor rolled his eyes and shrugged. “You haven’t been around dragons much, have you?”

  “I turned down an internship at Tondard Veterinary University.”

  Bridger groaned again. “Do you see the wound? It feels like it’s ten inches long.”

  With a gentle nudge, Cantor moved Bixby to the side. “It may be one inch, Bridger. You aren’t going to die.”

  “A puncture wound. They get infected. I need some medicine from the healer’s stock.” Bixby handed the dragon a rolled piece of cloth. “Hold this against your gum to stop the blood. We’ll look for something in Dukmee’s things to help.”

/>   “Thank you, Bixby. You’re kind.”

  The dragon pointedly did not comment on Cantor’s disposition.

  A rooster crowed.

  “Great!” Cantor pulled Bixby away. “Let’s go. We should get everything done before it’s time to open the shop.”

  Bixby climbed down the ladder first with Cantor following.

  He called down to her. “Do you have a list of things he wants? When did you have time to write it down?”

  “In my head,” she answered. Would now be a good time to tell him she remembered details for years? Clutter filled her mind. She knew what the visiting prince from an outlying province had for breakfast when he stayed with her mother and father six years ago. She could name rivers and towns and draw the borders of any map she’d ever seen. If she read a poem, she could recite it later. Sometimes her brain spun facts around and kept her from sleeping. No, she decided she didn’t want to reveal another one of her oddities.

  They walked to the regular staircase now that they were on a real floor in the building. “He packed a lot of things, but decided to have someone pick them up and bring them to him. And since he was going to do that, he decided to pack up everything. We just have to put them in containers. There are only a few extra things that he wanted specifically.”

  The next floor overflowed with abandoned furniture. The next level held piles of books.

  Cantor’s eyes opened wide as they wound their way through stack after stack of books of all shapes, colors, and sizes. “Does he want these packed?”

  Bixby wrinkled her nose at the layer of dust covering most everything. “No, his carrier will take care of the top floors.”

  As they passed a window where moonlight lit a patch of the corridor wall, Cantor took her arm and turned her to face him. “I don’t understand this. You speak of him as if you’ve known him for years, as if you’re familiar with his way of doing things. But you just met him, isn’t that right? How have you become so at ease with one another in so short a time?”

  Bixby closed her eyes and held her breath as if she could blot out the earnest, confused look on Cantor’s face. She hated explaining the ins and outs of her peculiar self. Only her mother slightly understood what it was like to be Bixby D’Mazeline. And that was because her mother was the source of many of her more startling attributes, only, in most cases, they appeared in Bixby a hundredfold.

  Bixby opened her eyes to see Cantor still studying her as if she would sprout wings and fly. “It takes a long time to explain something like this, and we don’t have the time now.”

  “I think you could talk while we work.”

  “Perhaps, but I’m very complicated.” She grinned a false grin, too big, too flippant. She could tell by his face that he wasn’t being cajoled into forgetting his question. “I promise to try to explain when we’ve settled somewhere.” Something flickered through Cantor’s expression. Another crown would have helped her discern what he was thinking. A guess would be that he didn’t expect there to be a time when they were settled. Probably just nerves.

  She started down the last staircase. “Don’t you think we should get this chore done before the King’s Guard comes for the healer? A lot of men are going to wake up with bad headaches, and they’ll want Dukmee to give aid.”

  She turned quickly and plunged down the wooden steps, her fancy boots clattering loud enough to wake all the other shop owners on the street.

  ON HIS OWN

  Let him go.” Bixby put a hand on Bridger’s shoulder. “We’ll run into him again, and maybe by that time, he’ll realize how much he needs us.”

  The dragon sighed. His cat wound around his legs. His constant strode the flat prairie road with determined steps. Away from him.

  Bixby patted his scales, trying to ease the pain of rejection. “He always said he was going to go on by himself and find his dragon.” She frowned at Cantor’s retreating back. In truth, she’d like to wring his neck. His Ahma might have taught him manners, but neglected courtesy. His Odem might have drilled him with ideas on chivalry, but neglected allegiance. He thought he was trained to be a realm walker, but he was underdone, half-baked, and short of cinnamon in his appleton pie. He’d learn soon enough not to slough off true friends in order to be able to stand on his own. He’d fall flat. That’s what. And nobody there to help him stand again. Foolhardy.

  “I’m his dragon.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  “He’s wrong.”

  Bixby had no words for the circumstance. In all her varied life experiences, she’d never been called upon to console a dragon whose constant didn’t acknowledge the relationship.

  “Let’s just give him some time.”

  A shuddering sigh rippled through the dragon’s back.

  Bixby leaned forward to get a better look at Bridger’s face. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

  That got a reaction. He stood straighter and frowned at her. “Of course not. I’m a self-respecting dragon, and though I am not one to think higher of myself than I should, I am aware of my duty to uphold a certain standard of behavior.”

  She nodded vigorously, glad to see she’d stumbled upon something to jar Bridger out of his gloom. “I knew that.”

  The dragon lifted his tail, looking much more lively. Bixby didn’t know how long this new spirit of zeal would last, so she decided to press her advantage. “We should be on about our business.”

  “Right.” Bridger smiled at her. Then the expression dropped off his face. “And that business would be?”

  Bixby lifted her arms and let them flap to her sides. “To find my dragon.”

  Bridger’s shoulders drooped as he turned to accompany Bixby. “I don’t believe he knows.”

  “Cantor?”

  Bridger nodded, every muscle in his face weighted down by dejection.

  “What is it Cantor doesn’t know?”

  The dragon stopped and looked back at the disappearing figure of a young man traveling the road alone. “That he very likely is the last real realm walker.”

  For a moment, Bixby thought Bridger had discovered her secret, that her realm walker days would be limited no matter how hard she tried to fit the mold. Her mouth went dry and she groped for words before she realized the dragon was far too absorbed in his own troubles to be referring to her. “What do you mean? There are many realm walkers rising up out of the populace. There are always plenty.”

  “No,” said Bridger, shaking his head. “Not real realm walkers.”

  Bixby laid a hand on his arm and pulled him toward her so she could see his face. “Are you trying to say there are false realm walkers?” Another question echoed the first, but she didn’t speak it aloud. It hit too close to things she wished to keep to herself. Are you saying I’m not a real realm walker?

  “Probably.” The dragon resumed his shuffling walk away from Cantor.

  “Where do you get your information? I haven’t heard any such rumors.”

  “Hatchlings. Or rather, no hatchlings.”

  “Baby dragons? Baby dragons tell you there are fewer realm walkers? Almost none?” Bixby slowed her pace to keep beside the somber dragon. Surely the hatchlings didn’t come out of the egg with news of the future. The only possible information they could impart would merely be their existence. “Are you saying someone is keeping track of how many babies are born?”

  “Baby mor dragons. No, no one is keeping track. We all just know. There hasn’t been a clutch of hatchlings in thirty-seven years.”

  A zing of understanding skittered through her being, the tiny thrill in strange juxtaposition to the solemnity brought by Bridger’s words.

  She skipped a few steps to catch up to Bridger’s long stride. “So the lack of baby mor dragons indicates the lack of realm walkers?”

  “Real realm walkers.”

  Somewhere she registered the emphasis, and a small part of her inquisitive mind demanded explanation, but important obstacles related to her own journey to become a rea
lm walker loomed too large to ignore. “If mor dragons have diminished in number, then how is Cantor going to find a dragon constant? How am I going to find a constant?”

  “I’ve got a sister.”

  Bixby stopped. “Where is she?”

  “In Tinendoor.”

  “Is she a shape-shifter like you?”

  “All mor dragons are shape-shifters.”

  “Like you?”

  The corner of Bridger’s mouth turned up, creating a self-conscious grin. “I’m the only shape-shifter like me.”

  Cantor looked back only once. Bridger and Bixby had shrunk in the distance, but they still watched him. A pang of remorse threatened to deflate his elation, but regrets couldn’t long stand against the thrill of freedom.

  Soon. He felt it in his bones. Soon he’d find his dragon, and when he did, they’d be off after the next milepost — he, inexperienced but eager, his dragon, beautiful, strong, dignified, and ready to right the many wrongs in the realms.

  While on Dairine, he’d chafed against the days before he could go to Effram. Now he looked forward to the return to Dairine and his first report to the council.

  And beyond that!

  Another trip to another realm. His future lurked just beyond a few more stops. He’d finish the mundane business of dealing with particulars, tedious necessities to conform to the standards. Then, he’d reach his first goal. He’d be a genuine realm walker.

  Then, then, then . . . then life would take off, filled with purpose, achievements, goals, triumphs, and satisfaction.

  He didn’t mind wagonloads of service as long as adventure acted as the wheels carrying the duty. He’d been born to be a realm walker. Primen had smiled upon him even as he was in the womb. His destiny was knitted into his fiber just as Primen’s gifts and talents had been woven into his character.

  Soon.

  He walked long hours each day, stopping at each little hamlet along his way, following leads gleaned from locals, searching, always searching. Each step brought him closer. Each day that passed marked one more off the time separating him from his dragon.