Mystic Dragon

by Jason Denzel

  Now he was gone, far away on the Continent. She hadn’t heard from him since her apprentice Trials. Her last memories of him were the few stolen kisses they’d shared the morning he left, just days after Grandmaster had taken her as his apprentice. It had been for the best, she supposed. Had he stayed, he would’ve been a distraction.

  Not that it had made it any easier to lose him.

  Pomella adjusted her cloak and set thoughts of Sim aside. She allowed her gaze to wander toward her fathir’s house. Usually, on a day like this, he’d be out working on barrels, or perhaps a piece of furniture. But an eerie sense of emptiness floated around the distant house. The windows were shuttered tight. More disturbingly, her once vibrant garden that surrounded the house was now nothing more than a trampled patch of brown weeds.

  Best to get through this as quickly as possible. Fumbling with the straps on her horse’s saddle, Pomella removed her staff. “Let’s go, Quercus. I want to walk the rest of the way.”

  Familiar scents danced around Pomella, bringing memory forth. The acrid smell from the tannery made her think of the time she and Bethy had snuck there in order to gobble honey pies. Goodness AnCutler’s farms, believed to be the oldest in Oakspring, still had the stench of countless generations of cows. Familiar as they were, Pomella wrinkled her nose.

  Word of her arrival caught fast, so by the time she’d walked across the few hills and approached the village a crowd of familiar folk had gathered to greet her. Pomella hadn’t expected to receive much in way of greeting. But here stood Goodness AnCutler and her husband, staring in wonder besides the Watcherman, Goodman AnGent, who patted his sweaty bald head with a handkerchief. Old Hinder AnMere glared at her through his one good eye. A few tykes—far too young to remember Pomella—hid behind their mhathir’s skirts.

  Pomella’s mind raced as to what she should say, but a familiar voice called out first. “Oh sweet Brigid, Pomella!” Bethy AnClure burst through the line of people and threw her arms around Pomella’s neck. The gathered crowd laughed and applauded.

  Bethy clung to Pomella’s neck, squealing high-pitched sounds of joy. Pomella hugged her back, unable to keep herself from laughing as well.

  “It’s been so long. I’ve missed you,” Bethy said.

  They pulled apart and Pomella studied her. Bethy’s red hair had grayed a bit, even at her young age. She’d cut it even shorter than she’d previously had it, as most women of Oakspring eventually did. Pomella remembered coveting her friend’s hair color when they had been children. Glancing down, Pomella immediately saw her friend was swollen with pregnancy. “Bethy! You have a wee tyke on the way!”

  “Aye,” Bethy said with an amused eye roll. “This’ll be my fourth. With my luck, the Saints’ll see fit to give me another boy. They haven’t spared me yet.”

  “Four!” Pomella said, eyes popping. “You’ve been blessed! I can’t wait to meet them. Who’s the lucky papa?”

  Bethy leaned forward conspiratorially, and for a moment she looked seven years younger, like Pomella remembered. “Danny AnStipe.”

  Pomella gasped. “Danny! Oh, Bethy, you married up!” she teased.

  Bethy’s girl-like smile slipped just a bit, but she continued, obviously trying to keep a positive tone. “I—I suppose I did. But, just so you know, I go by ‘Bethilla’ now.”

  Pomella realized, too late, the awkwardness of her comment. As young girls, she and Bethy had always joked about how they aspired to marry somebody from a higher caste. They would tease each other that the most handsome boys were always “a class above” and that if they married one of them they’d be marrying up. Considering Pomella’s new position in the society, the joke didn’t float as well anymore.

  “Bethilla. Yes. Of course,” Pomella said.

  Watcherman AnGent cleared his throat. “Lady Pomella, may we take your cloak and horse?”

  “You’re too kind, Watcherman,” Pomella replied. “But please. Call me Pomella. And this is Quercus. I’d appreciate it if he could have some fresh water and hay.”

  “Of course, Lad—uh, Pomella,” said the Watcherman. He bowed awkwardly and snapped his fingers toward a gaggle of young boys who lurked near one of the nearby houses. His threatening look summoned them in an instant. Before the bewildered boys could stare any longer at Pomella, the Watcherman gave them tasks: to fetch hay, lead Quercus, prepare a stall, and brush the gelding down.

  “Pomella?” came a voice behind her.

  Pomella turned to see the familiar warm face of Cana AnClure, Bethy and Sim’s mhathir. Her husband, Lathwin, stood just behind her, resting one of his meaty hands gently on his wife’s shoulder. Lathwin had grown a thick beard since Pomella had last seen him.

  “Dear girl,” Goodness AnClure said, her lined face shining with affection. “’Tis grand to see you. We’ve missed you and prayed for your health. You look wondrous. Radiant, even.” She dropped her gaze and wrung her hands. “Lathwin and I were just wondering if—” She opened her mouth to say more, but a sudden wave of emotion caught her.

  Goodman AnClure patted his wife’s shoulder. “We told ourselves we’d wait awhile to ask,” he said to Pomella. “But seeing you … it’s too much. Could you … Maybe, perhaps, you could tell us about…”

  “Sim?” Pomella finished. Saying his name out loud was like being bitten by a stinger-fish. She suddenly realized she hadn’t spoken his name in years. And she realized, too, that Cana and Lathwin had now lost two sons in their lifetime. First they lost Dane to the plague when Pomella was not much older than a tyke. Then they’d lost Sim, who, as far as Pomella knew, had run away with even less warning than she had and clearly never returned home. Now they only had Bethy and her children.

  “I last saw him seven years ago,” Pomella said, her face softening, “shortly after I was taken as an apprentice. He went with a friend to the Continent, to become a ranger. I’ve not seen or heard from him since.”

  Cana buried her face into her hands and burst into tears.

  “Thank you,” Lathwin managed. “We received only one brief letter. Jus’ a handful of words. Sim could read well, but not write.”

  “‘I am well and seeking my future outside Oakspring,’” Cana quoted. “That’s all he said. Those words’ve burned in my heart all these years.”

  “Nobody could tell us if he was even alive,” Lathwin continued. “After he ran off with you, we didn’t know whether he’d ever come home.”

  A lump rose in Pomella’s throat. As it always did when her emotions soared, the Myst stirred within her. Pomella gently cupped Cana’s face. “He was a hero,” she said. “He helped defend Kelt Apar from people with horrible intentions. His bravery won’t be forgotten.”

  As she spoke, she coaxed the Myst to arise and carry a memory from her mind to Cana’s. It was a simple memory, but one that hadn’t faded over the years. The memory was of Sim, smiling at her one last time as he left Kelt Apar. His shaggy blond hair tumbled down his forehead, framing his deep blue eyes. He wore a simple shirt, with a leather vest over it, along with brown pants and ankle-high traveling boots. He had a small bundle of clothes slung over his back, along with a sheathed sword—the same one his fathir had forged and Sim had left home with.

  It was the last time Pomella had seen Sim. She drifted the memory toward Cana on the wings of the Myst. As it settled into Cana’s mind, her eyes lit up with surprise. Her expression took on a distant look, as if the world around her had just melted away.

  “Keep that safe,” Pomella said. “It’s yours now.”

  Cana blinked back tears, and slowly brought Pomella into a hug. “Tell me he’ll return,” she whispered into Pomella’s shoulder.

  “He’ll come back to us,” Pomella assured her.

  Us.

  She hadn’t expected to say it that way.

  Pomella caught Bethy’s eye. A terrible fear gripped her chest, but she had to know. “Where’s my fathir? And my brother?”

  Bethy’s smile faded.

  * * *
/>   Wild marigolds and lilies grew upon his grave.

  Staring at those yellow flowers, devoid of other emotions, Pomella recalled the first time she’d met with the High Mystic in the central tower of Kelt Apar. There’d been marigolds in a vase atop the table that day. Strange, the memories that arose at unexpected times.

  She thumbed the familiar texture of her staff, letting the wind catch her cloak and hair. Only Bethy stood with her, along the slope of Reyman’s Hey, the hill where the villagers of Oakspring traditionally buried their dead. Pomella’s mhathir was there, too, right beside her fathir.

  “I-I’m sorry for your loss, Pomella,” Bethy said. “You must be devastated.”

  Sadness swam within her, but Pomella let it pass through her and beyond, not allowing it to take hold or linger where it would gnaw and do damage. “I’m a Mystic. To us, death is just another stage of life. It is a gateway to a deeper experience of the Myst.”

  She said the words, and betrayed no outward emotion. But she wondered if she honestly meant them. Shouldn’t there be more to how she felt? She wondered how Bethy saw her, standing at her fathir’s grave, having just learned of his death. No tears ran down her cheeks. She wasn’t clutching her staff with a white-knuckled grip. She felt nothing. Not even the numb feeling that comes from shock or sadness. If anything, Pomella felt balanced.

  “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” Pomella asked.

  Bethy bit her lip. “We didn’t know how to get ahold of you. And I … some of us … weren’t even sure you would want to know. You have to understand, Pomella. Don’t you remember? You hated him when you left. He smothered you. In the months and years after you ran away, he only grew more withdrawn. By the time he died, he hardly saw anybody. He didn’t even live in your old house anymore. We aren’t sure where he spent most of his days. The Watcherman says he’d been … dead … more than a week when he was found by the Creekwaters.”

  Pomella understood. It was more than what Bethy explained, though. The villagers of Oakspring were simple people. For all their lives, and the lives of previous generations, the commoners of her village lived in awe and fear of Mystics. By becoming one, Pomella had put herself out of their reach. No matter how much the High Mystic strove to make Kelt Apar freely approachable for all people, most days its paths and guesthouses remained empty. The people of Moth relied on the presence of Mystics but feared their attention.

  “What about Gabor?” Pomella asked. Her brother had been only twelve years old when she left for the Trials.

  Bethy fidgeted with the lace on her shawl. “He left for Sentry, heedless of the baron’s laws, along with the traveling merchants the spring after your fathir was found. Nobody has heard from him since.”

  Pomella closed her eyes and evened her breathing. It had broken her heart to leave her little brother behind. But she couldn’t be responsible for him. He’d still had Fathir, and the AnClures, to look after him. It wasn’t like he had been alone when she left.

  So she tried to tell herself.

  “Your brother became an angry young man,” Bethy went on. “He got violent a few times. He refused to work, and picked fights with his friends. Lissybette AnGrove, who was run’n the river with him at the time, came to me last fall saying her flow was late. Said she was ’fraid to tell anybody ’cause she didn’t want to marry him. She got her bleed’n a few days later, thank the Saints, but it just shows how people saw your brother.”

  Pomella sighed. How quickly the simple innocence of childhood was lost. She’d achieved her dreams of becoming a Mystic, but at what cost to others? Did her fathir and brother wilt in the shade while she stole the sun? She realized now why she’d avoided coming home. She’d known that everything would be different and that there wouldn’t be anything left for her anymore.

  “Thank you, Bethilla,” Pomella said, “for everything. I never had a chance to say that to you before. You were the one who gave me the push out the door, all those years ago.”

  Bethy looked away. “I’m glad one of us managed to get out. Most of the village wanted you to go. Looking back, it was as if we always knew it would be you. You never saw so many Goodnesses weave together a Common Cord that quickly to inspire you.” She gestured to Pomella’s faded green cloak. “Giving you the cloak was Sim’s idea.”

  “You could leave, too. I’m sure there’s—”

  Bethy shook her head and scoffed. “Have you really left us that far behind, Pomella? Look around. I’m a commoner, living on somebody else’s land, in little more than a thatch hut. I don’t know anything about the Myst, I’d be useless as a ranger, and I don’t want either. I have children to raise. You made your choices, and I stayed.”

  “But was it enough for you?” Pomella asked.

  “Yah, I guess it has to be.”

  They stood beside each other, not making eye contact. The wind shivered across the marigolds and lilies.

  “I’m very tired from my travels,” Pomella said, her voice even. “I’d like to rest. But before I retire, tell me, who petitioned the High Mystic for help?”

  “I did,” Bethy said. Pomella noted the iron in her voice. “It’s my boy Dav. He caught something.”

  Pomella frowned. Vivianna’s flamebird had mentioned a problem with the fay. “Caught what?”

  Bethy shook her head. “I think it’s one of those silver animals you used to go on about.”

  A chill ran through Pomella. She thought of Norana and the fay cat she’d banished. “Can you see this creature? Can others?”

  “Yah. Everyone can. We’re all scared of it. But Dav … he’s been acting different lately. Can you help him?”

  Pomella suppressed a wave of fear. She’d never heard of a fay being trapped by someone. She didn’t think that was even possible, even for a Mystic.

  “I’ll do my best. Take me to him.”

  * * *

  The warm smell of fresh bread wafted around Pomella as she stepped into Bethy’s home. Bethy bustled ahead, sweeping wooden toys out of the entryway with an exasperated sigh. The house was small, like all the others in Oakspring. Hand-placed stones encircled the foundation, with oak beams rising to support wooden shingles.

  Four faces turned to stare at Pomella as she entered. The first was familiar to her. Danny AnStipe had hardly changed in seven years. His face was still boyishly handsome. He brightened into a smile.

  “Pomella, welcome!” he said, coming forward and bowing. Two of his children cowered behind his legs, while the smallest one fussed to be held.

  Pomella opened her mouth to return the greeting, but a little boy crashed into her leg and hugged it. “Oh, hello, warrum,” she said. She patted the child’s back awkwardly.

  “Engle!” Bethy scolded. “Treat Mistress Pomella with respect!”

  Pomella didn’t bother to hide her smile. She freed her leg and crouched down face-to-face with the boy. He had a mop of his mhathir’s red hair, and a scattering of freckles across his nose and under his blue eyes.

  “You’re Engle?” Pomella said. The boy nodded. “You look like your mhathir. Do you like to explore the forest?”

  Engle nodded again, more vigorously. “Dav trapped a monster!”

  “Well, is Dav here? Can I talk to him?”

  Bethy walked over and roused the tallest boy from behind his fathir’s legs. Like Engle, the boy had red hair and freckles, but his eyes seemed distant, as if they weren’t focused on anything in the house. He stared in Pomella’s direction, but he may as well have been looking through her rather than at her. Several holes gaped along his line of teeth.

  “This is Dav, our eldest,” Bethy said, putting her hands on his shoulders. “Dav, can you tell Mistress Pomella what you found?”

  Dav shook his head.

  Still crouched on her knees, Pomella shifted so she faced him. “Hi, Dav. I’m Pomella. I’m an old friend to your mhathir.”

  The boy looked at his feet.

  Pomella leaned in and whispered, “Did you know that I’m a Mystic?”
/>
  Dav’s eyes widened and met hers.

  Pomella held up her palm and swirled the Myst above it. A handful of silver leaves, drifting like wind-shaken fog, descended into her palm. Pomella offered up her hand. “Go on; you can touch it.”

  The leaves were a simple illusion, conjured to offer a soothing sense of peace. Dav reached a hand toward the silvery leaves but snatched it away as his fingers grazed the edge of the fluttering shapes. He buried his face in Bethy’s skirts.

  Pomella let the leaves fade. “Do you have a secret you want to tell me?”

  Dav eyed her from behind the skirt. “Can you talk to animals?” he asked. He had a slight lisp, possibly on account of all his missing teeth.

  Pomella smiled. “I might. Do you have a special animal you want to show me?”

  Dav looked up at Bethy, who smiled and nodded encouragingly. “Go show her,” she said.

  “It’s over there,” Dav said. He pointed past the supper table toward the back wall that contained the family’s few dishes and large food chest. It took Pomella a moment to realize he was indicating outside, beyond the wall of the house.

  Pomella stood and took Dav’s hand. He led her out the back door and down the steps toward a clearing behind the house. About twenty steps into the yard, a gnarly oak rose up out of the ground. At the tree’s base a rectangular apple crate was turned upside down, pinning a burlap sack to the ground. The sack wiggled, as if something was caught inside.

  Pomella bent closer to the crate, peering as if she could see through the rough fabric. She focused her attention and stretched out her senses as she’d been taught, reaching with her mind and heart toward the contents shifting in the sack. “What have you got here, Dav?”

  The Myst swirled and trembled around Pomella. An animal, native to Fayün, lay in that bag, trapped, and probably terrified.