by Jaime Samms
So maybe he wasn’t exactly speaking truth. A healthy, happy new brood of dragons would speak to success, after a fashion. However, once raised, once they fled their broodnest, there would be nothing left for Emile but the boredom of books and leisure he didn’t want. Nothing for him. Nothing to build a life on. He could well understand why the Egg-bearers of the Ten Houses were often the first of their generation to choose the oblivion of the stars. At least the Bearers of the lesser Enclaves could have more than one brood. As a Bearer for one of the Ten Houses, he would be allowed only one.
He tried not to believe that Hakko had more sinister plans for him. The Corcaird House was a small one—powerful and respected, yes, but small. Hakko couldn’t do much to change that. Not without more power than he possessed himself. The fastest if not the best way for a small House to grow was also the one way their laws prohibited. One dragon had to be stronger than all the rest. The only way for that to happen was if that dragon was the product of a Sire and Bearer who shared a magical lineage. Creating and fertilising such an egg was forbidden.
And yet, Hakko was an extremely powerful dragon. That strength made Emile wonder about the whispered rumours that Bethakke’s mate had secretly done just that to create not only Hakko, but maybe Emile as well. It didn’t bear thinking about.
And yet. Hakko was a very powerful dragon….
“Yeah, that would kind of suck.” Sunny’s sympathetic voice once again drew him away from that unpleasant contemplation.
“It was, as you would say, not so awesome.”
“What did you do?”
Emile considered that.
“I mean, I basically know nothing about you.”
That was truer than Sunny could possibly know. But how to explain his former responsibilities had entailed seeing to the comfort of a man who never seemed satisfied with Emile’s best efforts, and who would never accept Emile’s flight?
“I guess there’s the argument that if you were desperate enough to hide out naked in my shack, there’s probably a reason you ran away from your old life and that you maybe don’t want to talk about it. I can see that.” Sunny let out a breath, stroked a hand over Emile’s hair, but there was a new tenseness in him now that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I get it. I do.”
“But?” Emile asked, frantically searching his memories of the scant human artefacts and written stories he’d been able to find while avoiding Hakko’s notice. He needed to explain where he’d come from, why he was here, how he’d arrived on Sunny’s doorstep, and not sound like he was hiding anything. Impossible, knowing as little as he did about modern human society.
“You’ve lived with me a while now. I have no reason to kick you out that I can see. But you understand why I’d be curious. Maybe even a little worried. Like if cops are going to come knocking on my door looking for a criminal, for instance. Or if someone even nastier were to come looking for you?”
“In your experience, criminals tend to hide out naked in old forest huts to escape the law? Is that a thing around here?” Deflect. Good strategy. Because he’s going to just forget all about the fact he has no reason to trust me if I continue to avoid answering the simplest of questions.
Sunny snorted. “Hardly. Still—”
“Still,” Emile conceded, thinking of nothing he could use to explain his situation, “after all you’ve done to help me, you’d like to know where I come from and why I’m here now.”
“My helping you doesn’t hinge on you telling me anything,” Sunny assured him. “And it never will.”
“So curiosity, then?”
“Concern. You’ve been wearing my shorts strapped on with some rope and wandering my house barefoot. You’re more hippie than I am, and that’s saying something. I have no issues sharing my clothes and my books and my food. But I worry. Maybe you aren’t going to want to hang out here in the forest with me forever. Maybe someone is going to come looking for you eventually. I’d like to know if I should be protecting you from them if that happens, or….”
When it was clear he wasn’t going to continue, Emile finished the thought for him. “If you should be protecting them from me? Or protecting yourself from me?”
Sunny grunted, hand still moving lazily through Emile’s hair. “Ferny likes you. I’ve learned to trust his instincts about people. As far as I know, he’s never been wrong.” He sat up, forcing Emile to sit as well, since he was all but sprawled on top of Sunny.
When he met Sunny’s gaze, the intensity of it should have been unnerving. It was just… steady. The unwavering patience soothed the bubbling magic Emile could feel pushing to get free as they moved away from one another.
“Will you settle for an admission that I left an untenable situation to which I have no intention of returning? And that there is no reason your law would be looking for me? That I can assure you.”
Sunny inclined his head. “If that’s all you want to tell me, then yes, I’ll have to settle.” He did smile, though, and a tightness in Emile’s gut eased. His magic rose, enthusiastic and bright, and he had to grapple it back.
“Thank you.” If his voice sounded strained, Sunny didn’t seem to notice, and a few breaths later, the magic tamed once more. Maybe someday he could tell Sunny more. Or, if he managed to get a handle on the magic plaguing him, he might keep his secret forever. As if in response, the fiery energy fanned high, and it was all he could do to hold in a gasp and wish it would make up its mind if it liked Sunny or wanted to burn him.
“Awkward segue, though,” Sunny said after a moment, and Emile tilted his head. “You know that phone conversation I had with my sister?”
The phone itself was an interesting bit of human technology. Emile hadn’t encountered cell phones in his furtive studies. He’d quickly realised most of the information his people had about this side of the Fold was grossly outdated. While the concept of long-distance communication wasn’t alien to him, he and his kind simply eschewed the technical aspects for magical ones.
“Well, as much as I dislike cities and people in general,” Sunny said, “I did sort of promise her I would visit her. It’s been… a while since we saw each other.” A wave of hurt and loss washed over Emile, accompanied by the deep shadow in Sunny’s eyes.
Emile reached over and brushed his fingers over the back of one of Sunny’s hands. Some of the pain in his expression eased, and he offered Emile a weak blink of a smile.
“We were pretty close growing up. Are close, except….” His frown and another wave of pain told Emile clearly that whatever had happened, Sunny wasn’t prepared to talk about it.
If he was willing to endure that kind of hurt to be by his sister’s side, though, the relationship mattered to him. Emile barely remembered most of his broodnest companions other than Hakko, who had hatched right next to him and helped him from his shell, and Ananth, the last to hatch and much smaller than the rest. Ananth had stayed by their Bearer the longest, listening to Emile’s dreams of leaving the broodnest and never returning. He had thought to find understanding with Ananth, given that they had the same affinity for their soft scales that Emile had for his hard ones.
When their Bearer finally succumbed to their desire to join the stars, Emile had felt Ananth’s ache and sadness. It had pained him to feel that loss, but Ananth had never asked for his help, nor wanted his support in their grief. It had been the one time Emile ever remembered seeing Ananth’s hard-scale form. As beautiful as they were in razor-edged gold and bronze, it hadn’t lasted long. Ananth had shifted to their soft form and taken flight, that final warning to Emile their last communication before Ananth was gone.
So Sunny wanting to go to his sister’s aid was as foreign to Emile as cell phones and plastic. He was so lost here. Helpless, really, caged even more surely than he had been at home, through his own sheer ignorance.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, face tightening into a frown. He watched the coffee in his mug tremble, concentric rings forming on th
e surface. The magic, forced down for so long, burned deep and hot. He could feel the scales rippling under the surface of his skin and fought to keep them there.
“Emile.” Sunny took the mug from him. “What is—”
Emile’s bones ached with the tension of wanting to change. The magic railed against his control, simmering hotter with every breath, flaring with every doubt that assailed him. The breech, when a lick of his magic curled up through his net of restraint to wrap itself around his restless dragon-heart, was a searing flash of pain over every inch of his skin.
Emile vaulted from the couch.
The tiny cabin, the closed door, Sunny’s proximity all crowded in on him. He couldn’t breathe. In seconds he’d flung open the door, headed for the bridge and the woods beyond, no thought in his head but that he had to free himself from his constraints, not even knowing exactly what those constraints were.
“Emile!” Sunny pounded after him, the hollow thump of his footsteps reminding Emile of the sound of a dragon walking over a brownie nest as Sunny ran down the yard after him. He called again, even as Emile ducked into the cool green shade under the trees. Water gurgled under the bridge, but the sound quickly died with distance.
Air brushed over his skin, soft and shaded, a crisp ruffle of a breeze. Grateful, he pulled it into his lungs, closing his eyes as he finally slowed and breathed in the woods. The smells of warm earth, emerald shade, blue-and-gold air washed through him. Fernforest barked somewhere behind, spurring Emile back into action. He took a narrow path at a quick jog, hoping the forest and its inherent magic would help him get a handle on his own.
As if in answer, the forest herded him, opening up as he moved, swaying back together in his wake. He soon found himself across a clearing and on the edge of the brook by the willow where Sunny had first followed him so long ago. He skidded to a stop.
Just on the other side of the fast-flowing stream, the pulsing undulation of the Fold curling over itself, enticed his magic to rise. Emile moaned, the pull of his magic to the familiarity of that leaking from the Fold calling to his dragon.
The water, though, was too wide to cross and moving too fast. He followed it until he was once more sheltered, this time by the intertwined arms and fingers of spruces and pines. The creek laughed up at him, bright even in the deep, mossy shade of these prickly trees.
A spruce nymph morphed out of its tree’s shadows to bare spiked teeth in a leering smile. He flicked green-and-rust clawed fingers in Emile’s direction, catching his cheek with a lightning-fast caress that drew a drop of blood. His eyes widened, the faceted depths unfolding like a dried pinecone.
“Magic is drawn to magic,” Emile told him, and the nymph bent its long neck to one side. “Sorry if I pulled you from slumber.”
A shiver rustled the nymph’s needles in a muted rattle, and he offered that toothy, salacious smile again. The invitation was clear. Magical beings were inherently compatible on many levels, and it wouldn’t have been the first such dalliance Emile had. His dragon half rumbled, restless and hungry for the infusion of magic such a coupling would bring.
A sunshine-bright memory of Sunny splashed through Emile’s mind.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
His dragon rumbled.
The nymph shrugged with a shiver of needles and tiny twigs.
The creek bubbled and roiled, merriment flooding over Emile and the nymph, who vanished back into the dimness, needlelike fingers at his lips. That only made the creek laugh harder, water splashing upward in tiny fountains.
“Laugh it up,” Emile growled down at it—at them. Glittering sprites hovered over the surface of the water, giggling and flicking droplets of water at him. They were dazzling and mesmerising, playful but deadly if you didn’t know they were there or didn’t understand their game. They found everything funny. And if they didn’t, they simply rolled over it to wipe the ground clean of whatever distressed them.
Amuse them, and they let you remain. Anger them, and there was no stopping their wrath. Not even dragon fire could withstand the ire of a pissed-off water sprite.
Emile usually gave them a wide berth. Now they demanded his attention. The sparkle they threw into the air sprinkled down over him to the tune of their tinkling laughter. His magic slipped its bonds so quickly and thoroughly he was jolted fully into scales and feathers, wings unfurling to smack against tree branches.
Ow! The sound of his reptilian grunt carried through the sudden stillness of a forest holding its breath. A flutter of needles sprinkled down over his hide, tickling where the scales were the most sensitive along the edges of his feather ruff, making him shiver where they tumbled along the hypersensitive membranes of his wings. The bright-fire burn of the transition faded almost instantly, and he settled into the dragon, pulling his wings tight against his back to protect the delicate skin.
With a soft huff, he dropped to all six feet and slipped, near silent, between the tree trunks along the bank of the ever-widening creek. As he turned, peering back in the direction of the house from the deepest, purpling shadows, he saw it—the golden glow almost too bright to look at.
Sunny. The thought sprang, a complete package of man, light, comfort, excitement, want, into his head. A heady moan crawled up his throat, rumbling out to roll along the forest floor, a wave of magical sound and heat. Leaves curled and tumbled in its wake. Grass shivered. A long-dormant deposit of devil’s paintbrush seeds sprouted to life, pushing the orange-tufted flowers into the open in the wake of the magic pouring from him. The forest drew in another collective breath and held it.
At the edge of the trees, Sunny stopped. For a long moment he peered into the forest. Puzzlement showed on his face, as if he’d noticed the aspen leaves behind him frozen midtremble, and the utter silence under the striped shade of the pines. He cocked his head, and the soft thrum of his voice drifted into the shadows. “Emile? Are you there? Please. Let me help.”
As if released from a spell, the forest rustled back to life.
Next to Sunny, Fernforest yipped, then trotted gamely into the brush, path unerringly leading to Emile’s hiding spot.
Emile gave himself a mental shake. As if he trusted the dog to lead him, Sunny turned in Emile’s direction and began walking.
His footsteps were slow. He glanced from side to side, as if he couldn’t see Emile’s brightly patterned scales flashing red, orange, and fuchsia under the deep green of the forest canopy where sunlight filtered through and bounced off him.
He’d heard that humans couldn’t see what they didn’t believe in. That nymphs and sprites and dryads walked free here because humans couldn’t wrap their minds around their existence. That humans saw shadows and light patterns rather than living, breathing creatures of magic and lore. The thought that Sunny could look right through him, not believe he was real, hurt like nothing Emile had ever experienced.
A shudder sent razor-edged shards of magic coursing just under his skin, and it was all he could do to hold back the bellow of pain. As it was, the trees around him recoiled, their dryads feeling the burning splash of magic like acid. The forest shuddered with him.
Sunny stilled, frozen in the maelstrom of shaking leaves and branches. Needles rained down around him, caught in his hair, and stuck to sweat-damp skin. Then the wave of raw magic passed, absorbed by water sprites and tiny flower feys. The world stilled as quickly as it had flared up.
“Emile?” Sunny called. His tone was soft, pitched to coax a frightened, shy animal out of hiding.
It almost worked. Emile took a step, another—then remembered if Sunny did see him, discovering Emile slithering from the woods on six legs, with a muzzle and fangs, would terrify him. With a thought he was in his skin so fast, the burn fading to the localised scrape of twigs and stones on his palms and knees. He scrambled to his feet, leaning on a tree to catch his breath.
A spiky, rough branch-arm draped over his shoulders, sheltering and protective. He laid his forehead against the tree, silently thankful f
or the nymph’s support.
The change always took his breath away, but unlike his experience trying to keep the magic—and the change—at bay, letting it happen left him energised. Clearly his magic liked the power flowing freely on this side of the Fold. At least, it did when he let it have some freedom.
Carefully, he lifted the nymph’s arm from him and took a step. Something soft cushioned his footfall, and he looked down at the not-inconsiderable pile of pink feathers and iridescent scales littering the forest floor.
“That’s going to be troublesome to explain,” Emile muttered. He glanced back at Sunny, who had stopped at about the same spot near the edge of the stream where Emile had earlier. Rather than lifting his face to breathe in the breath of the forest as Emile had, though, Sunny was frowning at the forest floor.
“Emile?” He bent, picked something up, and Emile groaned. Sunny held the shorts Emile had been wearing when he’d run for the trees. Until that moment, he hadn’t really noticed his nakedness. “What the hell?”
Chapter 12
EMILE MELTED back into the shadows. He couldn’t walk out of the bush naked. Again. Certainly Sunny would already be concerned that he had fled in the middle of a conversation. There was no telling what he might think of this.
Behind Emile, the nymph shifted, a faint movement of shadows and tree limbs swaying slightly against the breeze. Emile glanced at him. Eyes in shades of bark and pinecone gazed back; then the nymph turned his attention to the creek. He raised an arm in the water’s direction and tilted his head.
“No,” Emile whispered. “I can’t.”
The water sprites laughed at him, splashing his feet, muddying the bank. He took a step back, damp soil squishing up between his toes. Sunlight splashed over his bare ass, and he scurried back into the shadows. Deciding to take a swim was as logical a reason to have doffed the shorts as anything, but it wouldn’t explain why he’d run in the first place.