Sunshine in the Dragon's Heart

by Jaime Samms

  “Fair enough. And true for humans, I suppose. Except for the part about changing our appearance with a thought. I expect there are a lot of people who would really like to be able to do that.” Sunny leaned in and pecked his cheek, but Emile moved back. As gratifying as it was to feel the acceptance slowly untensing Sunny’s muscles, some things were easier to talk about without distraction.

  “Please.”

  Sunny nodded. “Sort of a rip-the-Band-Aid-off thing, huh?”

  Emile furrowed his brow, trying to work that out.

  “You know, now that I know you’re really not from around here, that whole puzzled look thing makes so much more sense. All I meant was that now you’re in it, you want to get the explanations over with. One fell swoop and all.”

  “Oh.”

  Sunny tapped one of the bandages on his foot. “Rip it off fast, get the hard, ouchy bit over with quick.”

  Emile nodded. “Yes. That exactly.”

  “Then have at ’er.” Sunny spread his hands wide and leaned back against the headboard, shoulder to shoulder with Emile. He picked up Emile’s hand again. “Amphibians.”

  “Gender.”

  “Your people don’t have it.”

  “Not the way you think of it, no. There are various things it is easier to do, physiologically, in one scale form than in another. For instance, fire. Growing scales thick and hard enough to withstand that kind of magic, the heat needed to create fire would make it difficult to float. They’d be heavy. You’d sink.”

  “And so a dragon with thick, heavy scales wouldn’t be a fan of the water.” Sunny eyed him, head on tilt.

  “Exactly.” He shivered, and Sunny appreciated that afternoon in the creek on a new level.

  “Anyway,” Emile continued, “scales like that are also basically incompatible with a growing body flexible enough to accommodate an egg pouch and growing eggs, or with having enough follicles to provide feathers enough for a comfortable and safely warm nest in which to incubate them, once they have developed.”

  “And once you pick, you can’t go back?”

  “It depends. Sires have hard shells—nearly impenetrable, in fact. Egg-bearers are soft.” He poked Sunny’s ribs. “Almost as soft as you, with feathers and down all along their backs. Most others are somewhere in the middle and can fluctuate at will.” He pulled in a breath. “A very few of us, who aren’t Egg-bearers or Sires, don’t care to fluctuate.”

  “As in?”

  Emile tried to smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I much prefer my hard scales and male skin form.”

  “And this is a problem?”

  This time the smile Emile produced was a grimace and, he suspected, filled with sharper teeth than usual. “It is when the future Sire of the House I belong to has other plans for me.”

  “Oh.” Sunny’s eyes got wide. “That’s—he can’t force you to—”

  “He—Hakko—is the dragon from my broodnest chosen to sire the next generation of dragons for my House.”

  “Like, the father?”

  “Not in the sense you use that word. Dragons require what you might consider three parents: one who offers the egg, one who donates the genetic material that will fertilize the egg, and one who lends their magic to the union. The Offeror, the Donor, and the Sire. All three are necessary to make the hatchling viable.

  “The Egg-bearer sometimes offers one of their eggs as well, but that isn’t a requirement for being a Bearer. In fact, many Bearers choose that path because they have no eggs of their own but have the capacity to carry a clutch for those who prefer not to. They are the one who carries the eggs, helps them hatch, and cares for the offspring. They are the nurturing part of the creation of new life.

  “Unlike Enclaves, where multiple broodnests are allowed in one generation and genetic siblings are not frowned upon, our laws dictate that every egg in a House’s broodnest must come from a different Offeror and each egg fertilized by a different Donor. This dispels the magical bloodline, keeping any one dragon from growing too strong, and keeps even small Houses like ours genetically viable.

  “Since Hakko is the oldest and strongest of us, he will be the one who lends his magic to the eggs once they have been given life.”

  “But he won’t be allowed to be the Donor for any of them.”

  Emile stifled a sigh. That was the idea. Hakko, though, had other plans. Ones Emile wanted no part of.

  “He wants not only my capacity to Bear the eggs for our House, but my eggs as well. I don’t trust him. Because we shared the safety of our Bearer’s egg pouch and broodnest, we are linked, through our magic, and”—he tapped his head—“in here. Sort of. He can’t make me do anything. But he can… suggest I forget why I didn’t want it. It’s… ugly.” He shivered. “Distance from him makes it easier to ignore his suggestions. I had hoped crossing the Fold would sever that connection.”

  “The Fold?”

  “The barrier that keeps our magic on our side, and yours on your side.”

  “We don’t have magic.”

  Emile frowned and studied Sunny. It seemed like he truly believed that. But then humans had always been an anomaly. “In any case, it has made it easier to clear my head of his ideas and see how dangerous those ideas were.

  “Hakko is head of one of the Ten Houses. He will have a single Bearer, and they will be life-mated. The Bearer of a House’s eggs carries a single clutch in their lifetime, and for many generations now, the eggs the House Bearer carries and the hatchlings they raise are never from the Enclaves under their protection, but from the Enclaves of the other Houses. It is the best way to share magical power, disperse genetic proficiencies, and keep the political peace.”

  “Because you are responsible for the offspring of someone else,” Sunny said.

  Email nodded. “It is in everyone’s best interest to care for the hatchlings well, knowing your own offspring are in the hands of others.” He frowned. “Hakko, and our Sire before him, make the other nine Houses nervous. It’s been difficult to convince them House Corcaird is a fit House for their progeny.”

  “Do you ever go back? To the Enclave where your egg came from?”

  “Many do, yes, once they are old enough and strong enough to leave the nest. There is a period of wandering, trying out our scale forms, experimenting, testing limits, seeing what skin fits us best, deciding what we want to do, where we want to call home. Many of us are drawn to the Enclave where our eggs came from, but there is a tight bond with our broodmates, as well, so when it comes time to settle, most choose an Enclave close to their broodnest.”

  “You are a long way from where your egg originated, I think,” Sunny mused.

  Emile sighed and looked sad. “Indeed.”

  “Why? If you belong to one of the ruling Houses, why would you leave?”

  Emile covered Sunny’s hand with his. “I’m getting there.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If you understand how the process works, perhaps you will understand why I—why it couldn’t work for me.”

  “Okay.” Sunny bit his lip, winced, and motioned for Emile to continue.

  “The Egg-bearer carries the eggs for all the Enclave—or House in my case—once the eggs have been chosen and fertilised. In an Enclave, every egg will come from a different dragon and probably be fertilised and magically enhanced by different dragons as well. In a House, while the eggs come from the other Houses, and are fertilized by other dragons, only the Sire can enhance them. At least, that’s how it is supposed to work. That will ensure some, at least, have the strength—the magic—to become the leaders of the next generation. They are incubated, nested, and hatched together, but seldom are there actual genetic siblings in a clutch. The age range of a single clutch might span as much as five years or as little as six months. And once the hatchlings have all reached their first shift, around the age of ten or twelve, the Bearer is free to leave the nest, bear another clutch, for those not bearing eggs for one of the Houses, or remain and continue to
care for the younglings.”

  “So… a Bearer might be carrying some of those eggs for five years?”

  “Hence my horror when you suggested that a soft-scale might take on the magic of fire-breathing. The danger to their eggs is—” Again, he shuddered.

  “Makes sense.”

  “Five years is rare. It happens most often when a House chooses a Bearer. The other Houses choose those from their Enclaves who will offer eggs or become Donors of the next generation. In return, the House that takes those eggs offers one of its own.”

  “Which creates a natural alliance between them.”

  “Exactly. An exchange. But the trials for the privilege of being the enclave to donate the egg are gruelling and can take years to complete. From the time the first egg is chosen and incubated, a House is limited by the length of time an egg can be carried in a kind of magical stasis to choose the rest. Larger Houses have more Enclaves to choose from, and so they rarely run into an issue.

  “Smaller Houses, like mine, are more likely to have many failures in the trials, and take longer to amass a viable clutch, since they cannot accept eggs unless they have eggs to give in return. A series of economic failures, natural disasters, and generally bad leadership decimated our House. It has taken a lot of work, and some very strict rule, to claw our way back into power. We are small still but have become a powerful House once more.

  “Bethakke carried Hakko’s egg for four years and three months. They were tightly bonded by the time he hatched. Bethakke loved him dearly, and Hakko was devoted to them. As a member of the Ten Houses, Bethakke was allowed only one clutch, small as it was, and they chose their successor before we hatched. Hakko never agreed with the choice. It was the one thing over which they fought, ever.”

  “Who did they choose?”

  “A born soft-shell called Ananth.”

  “And who did Hakko want?”

  Emile closed his eyes for a moment, but when he gazed at Sunny, the answer was right there, in the brilliant blaze of his eyes.

  “Why you? Are you his true brother? Genetically?”

  Emile shook his head. “Hakko came from one of Bethakke’s own eggs. I did not, but there is a distant genetic link between us that should preclude me being the Bearer of our clutch, if only to ensure that an egg of mine could never be genetically or magically enhanced by him. Had Bethakke known about it, they may never have agreed to accept my egg in the first place, and when they discovered it, the choice for Ananth as the next Bearer became obvious. To everyone except Hakko.”

  “Why not just choose a different Sire?”

  “Hakko was the natural choice. He has the power to lead our House despite the troubles we’ve had in the past. The next-best choice, Rokkan, hadn’t the heart to contest it. It is not an easy thing to go against generations of tradition and fight a formidable hard-scale to do it. Kozinikk, who was the Sire chosen to partner Bethakke and the one to lead our House before Hakko, was not one to be gainsaid.”

  “And I take neither is Hakko.”

  “Not easily, no. He chose me as his Bearer because any egg of mine would be as close to his own genetic offspring as he can get, and since it wasn’t coming from another Enclave, it would go undetected by the other Houses until it hatched. Then it would be too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Hakko was the product of the exact thing the mingling of House blood was supposed to avoid. Bethakke and Kozinikk were genetically very close. While their eggs came from different Houses, they still had mutual ancestors, and that gave them many traits in common, including a particular ability to harness enormous amounts of magic. Doubling any kind of magical ability like that makes it exponentially stronger in the offspring. That can be a good thing in some cases, but it can also be dangerous, depending what the magic can do.

  “That kind of match doesn’t happen very often, but it’s not impossible. We keep meticulous records, so we can avoid it, but the Sire that chose them for their roles obscured those records. No one realised what he had done until Bethakke and Kozinikk mated and produced a dragon with more power than any in generations.

  “When Kozinikk fertilised Bethakke’s own egg, they effectively doubled the strength of their power in the offspring they produced—Hakko. It isn’t at all unusual for a Sire and Bearer to fertilise one or two eggs of the Bearer’s. There shouldn’t be any danger in that, as Sire and Bearer should not be genetically related. Producing siblings is not prohibited, provided those siblings do not then reproduce in the same House or Enclave. But when Kozinikk’s Sire did what he did, he took that choice from them. There was no way for Kozinikk and Bethakke to know how closely related they were until the hatching process started, and by then, it was too late.” He looked up to meet Sunny’s gaze.

  “That’s what happened? With Hakko?”

  Emile nodded.

  “And you.”

  “In a way, though my egg came from another House, it turns out the genetics are close enough to satisfy Hakko, and too close for my comfort.”

  “So. You’re a what? Mega dragon?”

  Emile laughed. “Hardly, no. It seems Hakko benefitted most from the situation. He is very powerful. And very power-hungry. I—” Emile swallowed hard. “There is only so much power one dragon can hold in their body before it starts to warp the mind. I suppose that’s a necessary failsafe.”

  “Are you saying Hakko is crazy?”

  “Our House was once the most powerful House in existence. They did great things with their power. They did terrible things with their power. Those things brought about a cataclysm for dragons—the Dispersal—that flung them to the far corners of our world. It has taken hundreds of generations for us to regain any kind of stability. The Breeding Rules exist for a very good reason, and they have worked for countless generations. There is peace. Balance. What brought Bethakke and Kozinikk together should never have happened. Their Sire was banished when his manipulations were discovered. What Hakko is trying to do now is unconscionable and I cannot let him do it.”

  “Bethakke tried to fix things when she chose—the soft-scale you mentioned?”

  “Ananth. Yes. She couldn’t do anything about Hakko’s destiny. He was the strongest of our clutch. He will be Sire. But by choosing the softest, the gentlest, and the wisest among us for his mate, Bethakke hoped to mitigate his… shortcoming. Soften his edges, I suppose. And it helps that Ananth is in no way even remotely related to us in blood or magic.”

  “But he wanted you.”

  “He wants a hatchling who can begin a new dynasty. One as great as the Houses of old. But those Houses nearly destroyed us. They did destroy so much of our world, and so many other races suffered. If I took the role of Egg-bearer, I would be soft. Defenseless against him. Part of me wanted very badly to be that nurturer, to care for our young. I could have made that choice for any other Sire.” He shook his head. His eyes glittered, and he scraped at a fraying edge of a pillow sham with a nail that was so sharp it was almost a claw. “I couldn’t be that for him. I couldn’t take the chance I would bow to his persuasion and give him the egg he wanted. So I kept my hard scales, what you would call a masculine body, and refused his demands. When he started using his power to sway me towards his wishes, to take the choice away, I panicked. I had no defense against what he was doing here.” He tapped the side of his skull.

  “So you ran.”

  “To a world where my choice is no choice at all. Where I can just be exactly what I am.”

  “Um.” Sunny peered at him, head tilted to one side. “Dude.” He leaned over Emile’s hips and behind him to run light fingers down the scaled surface of his tail. “You’re a fucking dragon.”

  “Well. Yes. But here I am dragon no matter what form I choose to take. There, I am Hakko’s or I am… nothing.”

  “He’d cast you out?”

  “Oh, he would keep me. I would choose his gilded cage and say thank you, or he would shackle me with much worse.” The sadness in his sapphire gaze brok
e Sunny. “Is it still a cage if you don’t realise you’re caught? He has such magic, Sunny. I’ve seen him use it to ‘persuade’ others to his will, and they don’t even realise they’ve been snared. They follow him happily, completely unaware they once opposed him. At least here I can be dragon without being a dragon. I can be who I am.”

  Sunny nodded. “I wish—”

  “No. My one hope in coming here was to keep his power in check the only way I could. I met you. That is something I could never have hoped for. If you will have me knowing I am a dragon, then I cannot ask for more than that.”

  Chapter 23

  AND THAT—being a dragon—was something Emile was going to have to learn to hide in this world. Sunny seemed bemused more than anything, and maybe that was because outwardly, most of the time Emile looked as human as Sunny himself. Sunny wasn’t confronted with the otherness of Emile’s nature as much as Emile was bombarded with example after example of how different this world was from what he knew.

  The vacuum cleaner Sunny hauled out to suck up the glass shards of their coffee mugs, while fascinating, was just one more instance showcasing Emile’s ignorance of human technology. If Sunny eventually made him leave, he had little hope of blending into human society, and he knew it. He needed Sunny. More to the point, he wanted Sunny. But since that afternoon of revelation, he wasn’t sure the feeling was as mutual as it had been.

  Over the next few days, Sunny’s shock wore down to half-asked questions he often ended up saying he didn’t need answers to, start-and-stop conversations about what to eat or plans for the day, and Sunny muttering to himself as he worked his increasingly verdant and fruitful garden plots. If not for Fernforest, Emile might have not talked at all for hours on end. It began to feel uncomfortably like his home, where he was a concept—a bit of tradition and societal necessity—more than a person.

  Did Sunny see him as the idea of a dragon? A myth out of a fantasy story instead of a living, breathing, feeling being?

  The only positive thing to come from his accidental outing of his other nature was that now that he had stopped trying to suppress any signs of his scale form, his magic had stopped rebelling. If the occasional blush of scales formed when Sunny’s gaze lingered, Emile didn’t have to hide it, and that made it all the easier to keep the magic in check.