by Zoe Chant
“Allow me to introduce myself.” The man turned back to Bird and met her eyes as if the others weren’t even there. His soft voice resonated through every nerve in her body as he said in a light manner that did not quite mask a curious formality, “I am . . .” She got the odd feeling that he was about to say something else, before he murmured quickly, “I am Mikhail Long, Visiting Professor of Art History.”
Now she knew his name. Mikhail Long. It was just a name, yet it felt strangely significant. Her throat went dry, her heart thumped, and every cell in her body tingled.
“Say what?” Godiva asked in her loud squawk.
That shattered the moment, and Bird could breathe again. How very odd. A single glance from a man she’d only just met, and she felt like a teenager again.
Mikhail turned, smiled, and in a different voice altogether, said, “I’m a professor currently connected to the local university, tasked to survey yon caves for possible finds, subsequent to the recent earthquake.”
Yon caves, Bird thought. He didn’t just look like a knight from a fairytale disguising himself in modern clothes, he talked like one too.
Doris said, “Those caves are strictly off limits, I thought.”
“Indeed,” he replied. “The ground is considered unstable pending further examination by your state authorities. I looked in briefly just now, and though I don’t believe it’s going to come down, it would be unsafe for playing around in.”
“There’s nothing authentic in there,” Godiva said. “Those caves have been scoured out by party-hearty teenagers, all the way back to the psychedelic trips under the influence of Maui Wowee in 1969. How do you think I got here?” She cackled again.
Mikhail’s eyes crinkled as he smiled her way. They looked even more silvery in the light reflecting off the sea, now that the sun had come up. But no one had silver eyes. They must just be a very pale gray...
“You may well be right,” he said to Godiva. “But I’m still obliged to investigate, before the authorities decide whether to board up the site entirely. I was taking a preliminary look around when I happened to see the four of you, and, ah, leaped to incorrect conclusions. I apologize once again.”
He made a slight, graceful old-world bow. As he straightened, his grip changed on the walking stick. Bird saw that the handle, which reminded her of a sword hilt in the swashbuckler style, was actually a dragon head.
“Well, you can be forgiven for those conclusions,” Doris said briskly. “Since we were doing our darndest to make it look real.” She pocketed her cell. “We’d better move our patoots from the scene of the crime. We don’t have permission to be here.”
“Ah, so you’re filmmakers?” Mikhail said, once more turning his gaze to Bird. “This is California. I should have guessed.”
For just a moment, Bird felt as if her entire body had been outlined in light. Then she looked away. Surely he was just staring at her because of her ridiculous appearance, splattered in fake blood and wearing the world’s most hideous tie.
“No, we’re writers,” Doris said. “Godiva here is G.T. Hidalgo, the famous mystery novelist.”
As Doris spoke, Bird shuffled through the sand to where she’d left her jacket on a rock. She pulled it over her gory shirt, then yanked off the yoga wrap and shook out her wild graying curls, hopefully hiding the worst of the sticky red on her neck and cheek.
“I’m Doris Lebowitz, only famous if you happen to like cookbooks and cooking for one,” Doris went on. “Jen there is Jennifer O’Keefe, award winning journalist.” Jen’s pale skin flushed, but her sober expression didn’t change. “And Bird here writes and illustrates wonderful children’s books.”
Wrote, Bird thought.
“Bird?” Mikhail asked.
Bird looked up, to find that once again he’d turned to face her. She couldn’t keep herself from one more peek at his eyes. It wasn’t just her imagination: they really were silver.
“Bird is her nickname,” Doris said.
Doris stopped there, knowing how Bird felt about her name. Ordinarily Bird sidestepped that question, but with Mikhail looking at her, she felt compelled to explain. “My parents named me Bertie. My last name is Worcester. Spelled with the ‘rc’ instead of the double ‘o’ but otherwise pronounced the same.”
“The same as . . .” Mikhail looked blank.
“Surely you’ve heard of Bertie Wooster, gentleman of leisure, and his brilliant valet Jeeves?” Godiva put in.
He obviously hadn’t.
“The Inimitable Jeeves?” Godiva went on. “Right Ho, Jeeves? Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen?”
Godiva was obviously ready to recite the entire list of novels to the bewildered Mikhail, so Bird forced a laugh. “They’re books by an English writer, P. G. Wodehouse. And nobody I knew in school had heard of them either. ‘Bertie Worcester’ wasn’t a clever literary reference to them, it was just a very dorky name that stuck out during the time everyone else was Cathy or Debbie or Judy.” She cut her babble short and took a reluctant step back. “Anyway, I go by Bird.”
Mikhail took a small step toward her, smiling. “I have to confess I am ignorant of much Western classical literature.”
Bird knew they should leave, but she found it so difficult to turn away from that smile. It was so . . . so warm. “There’s nothing to feel bad about. Not everybody can read everything. Especially if books aren’t your interest.”
“Ah, but they are, as well as art. As it happens, I just published one—though I promise not to bore you talking about it.”
Godiva hooted. “Believe me, there isn’t anything about writers going on about their own work until the cows come home that we haven’t experienced.” She swept a hand to take them all in, and added, “Bird, here, is also an artist, I might have mentioned.”
Bird had thought she was already as red-faced and hot, but at that it felt like her ears were on fire. Godiva was being so talky! Bird then wondered if she’d been too talky, and hadn’t realized it. It was this feeling she was getting every time she looked at that man, as if she’d entered a cold cabin and discovered a bright fire whose warmth reached into her bones.
Mikhail’s smile had dimmed. He stepped back. “I should not keep you any longer.”
Bird had the distinct feeling he was talking to her—asking her if she wanted him to go.
She found herself wishing he would stay, but she didn’t know how to say so. She kept her gaze on her sticky red fingers as she fumbled with the zipper of her jacket.
To Bird’s surprise, Godiva announced, “We meet every Friday in the back room of the bakery, and hey, look! Today is Friday! Writers of any type are always welcome. We’ll all be there at seven, if you’re interested.”
Once again Mikhail made that slight, quaint bow, full of quiet dignity. Bird found it intensely attractive.
“Thank you.” His gaze flicked toward Bird. “I shall attend.”
He couldn’t possibly have agreed just so he could see her. But as he turned away and began to walk toward the cliffs, she thought, What harm could there be if I pretended he did?
She hadn’t felt this giddy for so long that she was. . . go ahead and admit it, she told herself. You’re not hurting anyone, and no one has to know.
She was enjoying it. . .
. . . as long as he didn’t look at her.
He was turned away, so she let herself memorize his chiseled profile, the grace of his walk. The silver ponytail hanging between his straight shoulders.
I’m going to draw him, she decided. Oh, she’d disguise him. He’d be a prince or an elf or something else handsome and mysterious. No one but her would know who it really was.
Godiva dug her cane into the ground at the base of the path. “All right, campers, sing out when you want a halt. You know I’ll be ready for one.”
They made their slow way up the winding path, stopping frequently. Nobody spoke until at last they reached the top, then leaned in a row against the fence to catch their breath.
Final
ly Doris said, “Not criticizing, just commenting, but you invited a total stranger to our writers’ group?”
Godiva shrugged, giving Bird a meaningful look. “I thought he was interesting. And hoo boy, he’s easy on the eyes. Plus, props to a geezer our age humping himself down here with nothing more than that cheap-ass cane. He’s got to have some grit to him, I figure, and maybe another guy with some grit will help corral Bill Mansplain.”
Bird would never have called that dragon-head cane cheap. It looked like it belonged in a museum. But then, she reminded herself, Bartholomew had told her many times that she had low class taste. Anyway, the cane was definitely going into the drawing . . .
Jen murmured in her quiet, mellow voice, “I thought he was interesting, too.” She spoke so rarely the other three faces swung her way. “And I liked the way he smiled at Bird.”
Once again, Bird’s face flamed. “He was probably laughing at me, with my boobs covered in fake blood, and this awful tie.”
Godiva gave a disbelieving grunt as she started toward her car, which she’d left parked illegally beside the path. “If that smile was making fun, then I’m an armadillo. C’mon, campers, I hear coffee calling me. Pile in.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Bird said, unlocking her bike.
Her trick knee twinged painfully after that long climb, and she felt sticky and overheated. But she was glad to be alone for a few minutes. It was so strange, to feel so . . . unsettled around a man. She’d thought that part of her long dead. Safely dead.
But try as she might, as she biked along the familiar back streets of the little town, she kept seeing those silver eyes, and his smile. His lean, strong body, which made everything he did attractive. That bow that made him seem as if he’d stepped out of another, more elegant time.
If she was that set on returning to her hormonal teenage years, she might as well give in and let her imagination roam freely. She only had one skill, the ability to draw what she saw. She could paint him, and give him the beautiful setting that smile, and that body, deserved. After all, it was the only way she’d ever see him again, because he sure wasn’t coming to a writing group with an old bat like her in it...
No. That was the self-pity express. Already been there, done that, and they don’t award a T-shirt.
She cut it off at the pass by reminding herself of what she liked about her life. It was a good life, and one she’d made herself, bit by bit, friend by friend. Her cottage was tiny, but she’d decorated it and made it her own. So she had to scrape a little at the end of every month and be careful the rest of the time, but she had her health, and good friends, and a lovely environment. Best of all, her kids were back in her life.
She’d tuck silver-eyed Mikhail away among the Beautiful Things in her memory bank. There, she was positively rich. Whenever she woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, or if her knee was extra-cranky, or memory of Bartholomew hurt her, she took out those images one by one. They never failed to restore her.
As she turned her bike onto Via Royale, the town’s main drag, she reflected that every detail about him was so very . . . vivid. She could call up every detail, not only of him, but his surroundings. For example, after his unexpected appearance, she was quite certain that that the only footprints on that beach had belonged to herself and the other three women. It was as if he’d materialized out of thin air.
Ah, well, she thought as she coasted her bike up to the bike rack by the coffee shop. No doubt there was some perfectly boring explanation.
TWO
MIKHAIL
Mikhail Tadeusz Kosciusko Tian-Long, Dragon Knight, Sentinel of the Imperial Peace, Defender of the Realm of the Eastern Heavens, and currently masquerading as a Professor of Art History, stood alone on the strand, leaning one hand against a towering pillar of stone, the other gripping his swordstick.
He should have been inside the cave, but instead he gazed out over the sea. Ordinarily his kind of dragon found peace from water and the vast canopy of the sky, preferring to live near oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. Ponds, if necessary. But there was no peace for him now even so close to the vast Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the early morning sun. After all these many years, in the twilight of his life—
We have many more years left, his dragon interrupted his thoughts, somehow uttering a thundering snort without making any actual sound. The man who currently went by the name Professor Mikhail Long still wondered how his dragon managed to do that.
Mikhail had long since ceased to care about his age, which made him phenomenally successful on the sort of dangerous missions that younger dragons eager to work their way up the hierarchy insisted they should be chosen for, and then frequently failed to complete. But few of them possessed the experience and detachment that made him both successful and very, very dangerous.
He had been dispatched on yet another mission whose possible dangers he was not thinking about now. Instead, he contemplated the staggering irony of suddenly, against all possible odds, finding his mate now.
Twilight, hah. We have MANY years left, his dragon’s thought continued, with smug satisfaction, And now so does she.
Mikhail stepped to the edge of the towering rock, leaned out, and lifted his gaze to the four women toiling slowly up the switchbacks. His eyes snapped to the last of the four. All he could see was her back, and above that, a wildly curly thatch of graying dark hair. Every line of her evoked a powerful tenderness that hollowed him behind his ribs, leaving him veering between laughter and wonder.
“She’s human,” he murmured.
She is ours, his dragon retorted, as always arrowing straight to what was important. And we are hers.
He watched from behind a rocky outcropping as she disappeared at the top of the trail, his heart constricting. But there could be no doubt that they were mates. Whatever else you could say about it, the mate bond was as unsubtle as it was inarguable. It sang through his bloodstream, forcing him to fight the urge to run up that path just to get another glimpse of her . . .
Bird.
The mere thought of her name made him smile at the ever-changing sea, a smile that changed to a wince when he recalled taking that other hapless woman down in an air-to-ground drop that easily could have been lethal. It would have been, had he not felt in that split second of transformation between dragon and human that his target had no violent intent. He’d pulled back with all his strength, like a jet throwing the engines in reverse, and merely laid his sheathed sword gently over his target’s shoulders.
It was then that he, confused, had chanced meet Bird’s laughing eyes. Their inner power had poured through him with the strength and beauty of sunlight on water.
Bird. What a perfect name.
The after-image still sparkled in his mind, incandescent with the brilliance and complexity of her emotions, which he’d felt through the mate bond.
His mind seemed to have frozen more solid than the great blue-white wastes in the far north, cold even when the sun hung motionless in the sky. But his inner dragon hummed with pleasure.
Eh?
In all his years he had never heard his dragon hum. A sound midway between a single note sung by a vast choir and a jet engine, it could only be called a hum. It resonated through him as he glanced around.
There was no one in sight. The only evidence of the encounter was the footprints in the sand, now slowly smoothing away under the incoming tide.
He’d gone to the cave to scout before dawn, to limit the possibility of being seen. But he’d only just entered it when he’d felt the urge to check the beach behind him. And that was when he’d seen two people looking on as a tall person struck down a curiously compelling small one. Mikhail had leaped into action, hoping against hope that he hadn’t been too late.
And he hadn’t been. In fact, it seemed that he wasn’t too late for a great many things he’d thought he’d long since missed his chance at.
His dragon’s hum deepened and roughened toward the jet e
ngine end of the spectrum. Our mate is the most important thing in our life now. We must learn how she feels about us!
Of course she is, Mikhail replied. But she is human, and she did not recognize the mate bond for what it is, much less the telepathic link. It would be dishonorable to read her mind without her awareness, much less her consent.
The dragon was silent, but the vast harmonics of the hum harshened down to a subsonic rumble.
Mikhail walked to the barbed wire fence and the signs with gigantic red letters warning off trespassers. He glanced around once more to ensure that no one was watching. As a mythic shifter, he had no need to undress before shifting, but he didn’t want to seem to vanish before some startled human’s eyes. But no one was there. He leaped into the air, transforming into a dragon and becoming invisible in the blink of an eye.
He sailed high over the rusted barbs, then drifted down the rising morning breeze toward the caverns to find the rock fall that had revealed . . . something . . . hidden for uncounted years.
His dragon’s hum intensified. It can wait a little longer. Let’s go find our mate and show her our glory!
Stop right there, Mikhail replied. Consider the humans we have encountered over the years, and the disguises we’ve assumed to protect knowledge of the shifter world. What do you think is going to happen if I knock on her door—which she has not offered to reveal—and tell her that she and I are bonded for the rest of our lives, and by the way, I’m a dragon?
The rumble stopped. The dragon sank down below Mikhail’s consciousness, probably sulking. No, make that definitely sulking. His dragon, usually cool and calm as a winter lake, facing danger with preternatural patience, was as impatient as a . . . a nestling, with his desire to be with their mate now.
Mikhail did not pretend to be good at personal relations with humans. His life had not required him to be. By order of the empress, he had joined together with another dragon and produced a son, a duty to make certain the clan did not dwindle. And then he and his assigned partner had parted on terms of professional good will and gone their separate ways.