Burn

by Patrick Ness

  “Hello,” the man said, rolling down his window. “Can you direct me to the Dewhurst farm?”

  He seemed so friendly, so confident, that Sarah found herself on the verge of answering, before Kazimir interrupted. “Who might be asking?”

  The man still smiled, his little girl watching seriously. She had a book with her. Little House in the Big Woods. “I read that,” Sarah said. “The Long Winter was my favorite, though.”

  “Mine, too,” the little girl said, quietly.

  “Well, now, see?” said the man. “We’re already friends.”

  “People who say that out loud tend to be no man’s friends,” Kazimir said.

  The man stuck the tip of his tongue on his top lip, as if thinking, then Sarah saw him turn to his daughter and raise his eyebrows. The little girl shrugged, and her father—if that’s who he was—turned back to her and Kazimir.

  “I’m wondering,” the man said, still friendly, “if you two in particular might be people who could tell me a little something about dragons.”

  Kazimir and Sarah exchanged a look, then he surprised her by saying, “That depends upon how committed you are to stopping one.”

  It had only taken Malcolm four different cars to get all the way to Bellingham. All four drivers had been single men. One of them tried to convert him to Christianity, and two of the others had asked for sex, one obliquely, circling into it through jokes and small attempts at dirty talk, but the other had unzipped his fly and taken himself out before they were five minutes down the road. “You want a ride, you gotta pay,” he’d said and tried to force Malcolm’s face down. A blade held at the man’s jugular was good for silence for another twenty miles, but the whole thing left Malcolm feeling so dirty—for the man’s actions, for his own, however “justified” they might be—that he made the man drop him off long before the promised destination.

  What was wrong with this world? There were no dragons. Did men think they needed to take their place?

  Fortunately, the fourth man just seemed decent. “I used to travel by thumb,” he said. “I remember it being less fun than I thought it would be.”

  “You’re not wrong there, sir,” Malcolm had replied.

  After a pleasant final leg of more than two hours, the man had dropped Malcolm off at a phone booth in Bellingham. The man leaned out of the car as Malcolm left it and said, simply, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, son.”

  “Me too,” Malcolm said.

  He waited until the man drove off, then went into the phone booth and took out the phone book. He was playing a very long shot, but if there was even a chance, even the remotest chance, he had to try. This town, near the border with Canada, had slipped from the mouth of the Mitera Thea more than once over the years, in enough subtle ways that Malcolm came to understand that it was from here he probably came, where his parents were lost, where a Believer—the Mitera Thea always said it was herself—had found him and adopted him into the life of the church.

  He was also working on a hunch from a single name mentioned a single time over his seventeen years of life, when the Mitera Thea had a rare cross moment with him, saying he was lucky she didn’t send him back to the “vicious distant relations of poor dead Mr. and Mrs. Ottaviano—” She had caught herself and stopped, refusing any further entreaties from him and never making the slip again.

  But he had never forgotten.

  Ottaviano wasn’t a common name.

  There was one, just one, in the Bellingham phone book.

  He walked to the address given, sure it would be a mistake, sure that the phone book would be out of date or that, even if not, this would clearly be a “vicious distant relation,” but he went anyway, to a tidy little house in a nice neighborhood, watching it from across the street.

  He hadn’t been waiting more than half an hour, when the front door opened, and Malcolm watched himself walk out.

  “Here’s another stranger in my house,” Darlene said, handing a coffee to the man who’d identified himself as Agent Dernovich, “Federal Bureau of Investigation, ma’am.” She handed a hot chocolate to the little girl he had with him, so obviously his daughter she may as well have been wearing a name tag.

  “I’m sorry to put you to trouble, Mrs. Dewhurst,” he said, “but I’m guessing my appearance at your farm might not be all that much of a surprise?”

  “A day after a dragon flew across my property?” Darlene said, sounding almost amused to the ears of Sarah. “A day after my dead daughter walked right up to my door?”

  “Yes, ma’am, that sort of day.” He took out a little notebook. “I’d like to ask you all a few questions, if I may.”

  “We agreed to an exchange of information,” Kazimir said. “That does not mean we just answer your questions.”

  “I didn’t agree to anything that I recall,” Darlene said.

  “He knows things,” Sarah told her. “He might be able to help us.”

  The man had been surprisingly forthcoming about the threat of a dragon and his endeavor to stop it. He was looking for anything, any answer, any help, that would prevent the disaster of the mountain town from happening again. Kazimir had unilaterally decided the need was “too great to equivocate” and asked the man inside.

  “Help you what, exactly?” Darlene asked.

  “Stop a clear and present danger to our lives, ma’am. And I do not say that lightly in front of my daughter.”

  “That’s okay, Daddy,” the little girl said, glancing up from her book. “I saw what it did to Pinedale.”

  “That town in the paper?” Darlene asked. “You were there?”

  “It’s our home,” the man said.

  “Was,” said the little girl, firmly looking at the pages of her book. Her father placed a gentle hand on the back of her head and stroked it once.

  “So you saw her firsthand,” Kazimir said.

  The agent perked up. “Her?”

  Kazimir smiled. “As I thought. You know less than you promised.”

  The agent smiled back. “I see. Clever.” He cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps we should start with what I do know, and then you good folks could fill in any gaps.” He took a deep breath, then jumped in the deep end. “What if I told you this wasn’t the only universe?”

  The shock was visceral. Malcolm moved behind a rhododendron so he would not be seen. He thought he might actually faint, so at least he could do it in the privacy of a bush.

  The Other Malcolm locked the front door, and came down the walk, spinning the key ring around his finger. He was beefier than Malcolm, almost strapping, clearly having been better fed recently. His hair was a touch longer, too, enough to have a style to it, with a combed-back front.

  His aspect, however, was the most different. There was no furtiveness. No subtle but constant checking of his environment. No tension in his body in case he needed to spring suddenly toward or away from a threat. This Malcolm carried himself with a distracted lightness, a phrase no one would have ever used to describe the Malcolm who’d been trained his entire life to kill.

  And what even of the name? This Other Malcolm would have a proper name. A name given from birth. Malcolm suddenly ached with all his heart to know it.

  “Excuse me?” he said, before he even knew he was going to.

  The Other Malcolm started at a voice emerging from a bush. “Who’s there?”

  Malcolm cursed himself. This was the worst possible choice for an approach, but he had no time and there had never been any question about his bravery.

  He stepped around the bush, faced himself, and said, “Do you know me?”

  “We’ve known of the other universes for about a decade,” Agent Dernovich said. “Since we started investigating satellite technology.”

  “Those machines that are supposed to fly around the world one day and spy on us?” Darlene asked.

  Agent Dernovich grinned. “Yes, ma’am, among many other things. Communication, television signals, eventually we’ll even put men up
there. Then onto the moon.”

  Darlene snorted. “And pigs will fly.”

  “Dragons did fly,” Sarah said. Darlene gave a little scowl but didn’t offer a rebuttal.

  “Well,” Agent Dernovich sighed, “we started sending out test signals. Not just through the radio towers that carry everything now, but out there.” He gestured up toward the ceiling. “This was a one-way test, mind you, bouncing signals off the moon, seeing what trajectories we needed, et cetera. We weren’t supposed to hear anything back.”

  “But you did,” Kazimir said.

  Agent Dernovich nodded. “First we thought it was just echoes because they were so similar to what we were sending out. But on closer look, they weren’t exact matches. Which was impossible.” He lowered his voice, as if remembering the awe of it. “On certain frequencies, we were hearing ourselves, our own voices, but saying and sending different things.”

  He paused, clearly for the effect. “On one of those frequencies, men and women talked about dragons as if they were the most normal thing in the world.”

  The Other Malcolm backed away, one hand still gripping his key ring, perhaps in case it needed to be used as a weapon.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Malcolm said.

  “Damn right, you won’t.”

  “I’m too far away for you to lunge effectively,” Malcolm said. “I could tip you off balance and overpower you with punches to the head.”

  “So you do want to hurt me?”

  Malcolm held up his hands. “The exact opposite.”

  “How do you have my face?” the Other Malcolm asked. “Is this some kind of stupid joke? Did Terry Haskell put you up to this? Because I told that bully—”

  “I don’t know who that is. My name is Malcolm.”

  “I don’t know any Malcolms.”

  Malcolm sighed. This really couldn’t be going any worse. “I am you,” he said, simply, deciding to go for bare honesty. “If your circumstances had been very different.”

  The Other Malcolm still looked angry. “I don’t have time for this. Lunch is almost over, I have to get back to school.”

  “You’re in danger,” Malcolm said. “We all are.”

  “From whom?”

  “Did you read today’s newspaper? The little town that burnt to the ground?”

  “So? So what? Sometimes volcanoes erupt. Why do you have my face?”

  Malcolm closed his eyes. If he’d had proper time to plan, how would he have gotten through to this person? This version of himself one hair’s breadth and a universe away? How would he make him believe? And most important, what was the very fastest way to do this?

  “When I dream, I dream of men,” he said, quietly, eyes still shut. “When I love, my love is for men.” He opened his eyes. “Does this seem like the truth of you, too?”

  The Other Malcolm looked horrified, and now here was Malcolm’s own familiar furtiveness, one that made Malcolm curse himself for coming to find this boy who had maybe even been happy just moments ago.

  “You need to get out of here,” the Other Malcolm said. “If you come near me again, I will hurt you. I’m a hell of a lot tougher than I look, believe you me.”

  “Oh, I do,” Malcolm said. “You wouldn’t believe how well I know.”

  The Other Malcolm started backing away, his fist with the keys up. It was so gentle a threat that Malcolm actually felt a little glimmer of humor. But there was nothing humorous in the boy’s face. He backed up and up, before finally turning from Malcolm and starting to stomp away.

  “There’s a boy who could love you,” Malcolm called after him. “A boy you could love.”

  The Other Malcolm stopped, but didn’t turn around.

  “He’s called Nelson,” Malcolm said. “I think he needs your help.”

  “Imagine that,” Agent Dernovich said. “A world with dragons in it, just flying around like birds. Of course, being who we are, we built up an entire scenario should one ever cross the boundary between universes.”

  “Was that the only scenario?” Darlene asked.

  Agent Dernovich looked somewhat abashed. “We have ninety-four in total. An incursion by a real, fire-breathing dragon isn’t actually the most alarming possibility.”

  “Oh, my.” Darlene sat down on her chair.

  “Okay,” said Agent Dernovich. “An exchange of information. Your turn.”

  Sarah and Kazimir exchanged a look. “Shall you or shall I?” he said.

  “You should,” Sarah said. “And you know where you should start.”

  Kazimir sighed heavily. “Fine,” he said. “We both come from one of your other universes. One where I am a dragon.”

  There was a silence in the room, as even the little girl looked up in surprise.

  “You don’t really look like one,” Agent Dernovich said.

  “I was what was known in our world as a Russian blue. Smaller than the red you saw destroy your town, but perfectly capable of doing so should I choose. Which, I hasten to add,” he said to their looks of alarm, “I never would. And neither would any other dragon in our world. We have lived in peaceful if somewhat uneasy coexistence for centuries.”

  “You’re a dragon,” Darlene said, clearly not believing him.

  “In sheep’s clothing,” Agent Dernovich said.

  “That is apt,” said Kazimir. “I changed shape as I came into this world. You can imagine my surprise.”

  “Are you who Kelby meant by a ‘teenage assassin’?” Dernovich asked.

  “No,” Sarah said, “that’s someone else who you don’t need to worry about.”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “But Kazimir’s telling the truth,” Sarah said. “I knew him, know him as a dragon. My father hired him to work on the farm. He saved my life from our world’s version of your Sheriff Kelby.”

  “He was just a deputy in our world,” Kazimir said. “Clearly some universes had the good sense not to promote him.”

  “Was?” Agent Dernovich said.

  “I ate him,” Kazimir said, “after he tried to murder this young woman and the Japanese boy.”

  Another silence at this.

  “But perhaps we are getting offtrack,” Kazimir said. “Let me tell you about our Goddess.”

  “There are more worlds than this one,” Malcolm said. “And I come from one where I made a huge mistake.”

  The Other Malcolm was watching him again, but warily, like he might jump at any second.

  “Nelson helped me.” Malcolm felt his voice choking. “He was tender to me. I can remember the smell of him. The touch of his skin.”

  The Other Malcolm’s eyes grew wider. “You can’t talk like this. You can’t talk like a queer here.”

  “It’s what happened,” Malcolm said. “I feel like I loved him in the short time we spent together. And then I brought him into danger.”

  “How?”

  Malcolm swallowed and met the Other Malcolm’s eyes. “That’s for me to find the solution to. But here, Nelson may be in trouble. From his family. They’ll throw him out when they find out what he is.”

  “So would my family. So would most people’s.”

  Malcolm frowned. “Not where I come from. Parts of it anyway. The world changes. It keeps on changing. It’ll change here, too.”

  “Those are just words.”

  “Maybe, but Nelson is real. And he could love you. You could love him. But whatever happens, he deserves better than being thrown out into the world alone.”

  “Then why don’t you go to him?”

  “Because I have my own Nelson to save.”

  “Your what?” Agent Dernovich said.

  “Goddess,” Kazimir repeated. He paused, obviously reluctant. “It is forbidden to tell this part to humans. More than forbidden. A taboo so strong it is almost physically difficult to break it.”

  He closed his eyes, took a breath, and said, “She created us. Before memory. She brought us into our world and probably many others. But not this one.” He loo
ked at Agent Dernovich. “Not yet.”

  “Oh,” Agent Dernovich said, his ease and smile disappearing for the first time. “Oh, dear.”

  “It is an old story, the oldest,” Kazimir said. “Assumed by most of my kind to be fable, assumed by me for most of my very short life.”

  “How old are you?” Sarah asked.

  “Just under two hundred,” he said. “A mere babe. And rare for our world. A stripling like me comes along once a century, perhaps. But I was taught the story of she who created us all. Who burst through the walls between the universes and channelled the magic that brought dragons into our world. She saw a place where dragons would rule, because she is what all gods and goddesses are. Creator and Destroyer. She set out to annihilate humans, and very nearly succeeded.”

  “There’s nothing I learned in history about this,” Sarah said. “Even in archaeology.”

  “The archaeology of it is . . . yet to be fully discovered, let us say. There is probably awkwardness coming to the dragon/human relationship when you start finding things out, I imagine.”

  “Not anymore,” Sarah said. “There’ll be war now. She’ll get what she wanted.”

  Kazimir looked very troubled. “Yes. Destruction of man. Which in the willful blindness of a Goddess, she refused to see would be the end of dragons, too.”

  “How?” Agent Dernovich asked.

  “That, I will not tell you, but rest assured, all mass destruction is eventually mutual. We knew we had to stop her.”

  “How did you convince her?”

  Kazimir laughed. “Convince? Good grief, no. One does not convince a Goddess. A Goddess takes no advice. She does not change her mind unless she chooses to, and she has no interest in what her creation might think of her. No, there would be no convincing. She had to be defeated.”

  “And she clearly wasn’t,” Agent Dernovich said.

  “I beg your pardon, she clearly was,” Kazimir said. “Or you and I would not be having this conversation. She would have found your world considerably sooner than yesterday, and trust me when I say, it would be a very different place. You cannot kill a Goddess. If you think dragons are immortal—”