Twist nearly shuddered when he caught sight of the look on Idris’s face, as the djinn had watched him and Myra speaking. Idris looked at once frightened and grim, with an intensity of taut emotion that was staggering. The djinn seemed to notice Twist’s attention and glanced away from him, though his expression didn’t soften very much. Twist would have spoken to him to ask what had happened, but the gypsies continued to take him along, farther into the camp.
Twist and the others hurried deeper into the gypsy camp, heading toward one of the larger, circular tents that stood to one side of the wide but cluttered clearing. The gypsies around them stopped what they were doing to stare after Twist and the others with cold, intent, feral eyes. Twist unconsciously held Myra’s hand tightly as they followed Jonas, Luca, and the two who had been guarding the entrance to the camp, thankful to know that most of the Vimana’s crew and a powerful djinn were at his back. Even knowing that Jeffery was there as well, with a cool head and logical perspective in all things, was a comfort to him.
Coming within a few steps of the tent, Twist could begin to make out what was inside through the opened swaths of fabric at the front. There appeared to be a great deal of golden candlelight inside, despite the midday sun that filtered gently through the forest branches high above them. Twist could see a wide circle drawn in the bare dirt floor of the tent and thought he spied a pile of thick iron chains lying to one side of it.
“This will be all over soon, darling,” Myra said sweetly, giving his hand a gentle pat. “Then you will be as right as rain, I’m sure.”
Twist’s hand moved with a sudden jerk, shoving Myra roughly away from him. He turned in shock to see her stumble and fall to her delicate clockwork knees in the dirt, just outside the tent. She let out a gasp of fright and tried to right herself as she looked up to Twist, bewildered, her pretty purple sari sullied by dirt from the forest floor. Twist opened his mouth to apologize for the bizarre and deplorable accident.
“Your simpering turns my stomach!” Twist heard himself snap at her. “Leave me the hell alone, you silly little wind-up tramp.”
Myra looked back at him in dismay. Twist felt his face, heedless of his own sudden horror, take on a sneer.
“Twist?” Jonas asked, turning him to better look into his eyes.
The moment their eyes met, Jonas gave a painful sound and reeled away from Twist as if he’d been struck, covering his face with his hands. Luca steadied Jonas while the others reacted with their own confusion and shock. Twist felt himself smile horribly even as he realized that he had lost all control of himself.
“That’s not Twist!” Jonas gasped, his voice thick with fear.
“Damn, you monkeys are slow,” Twist heard himself sneer.
Harman and a few others came out of the tent to see what the trouble was, but before they could speak, Twist snatched an old, leather-bound book out of Harman’s hands and tossed it into the nearest campfire. Harman dove for it, but Twist moved faster and kicked the man savagely to the side.
Hands fell on Twist from behind, but he felt himself turn to throw elbows and fists faster and with more violent accuracy than he had ever seen. In a single moment, his body had felled four more gypsy men that were each twice his own size, and Howell as well, while Twist desperately tried to slow his limbs, to move away, to scream, but his body disregarded each and every order he gave it. No matter how many more men came to try to subdue him, his Sight never responded to their touch, and they never managed to even slow him down.
Twist was helpless but to watch as he saw himself fight off every attacker. He couldn’t warn anyone as he took hold of a burning log from a fire and threw it into the nearest tent. He couldn’t look away as his hands struggled to break bone and tried to kill. He felt his muscles burn under the strain of his lightning-quick and forceful movements, and his fists went bloody and numb.
A sudden wave of stinging white light splashed over him and finally stilled his limbs. Twist fell to the dirt and nearly lost his senses as his skin burned white-hot. Hands fell on him again, but this time his body didn’t protest. Twist felt himself lifted swiftly and carried away into shade and the golden glow of candlelight. His dull mind suddenly realized that his lips were moving into the shapes of the words he actually wished to say.
“I’m sorry…” he muttered, his voice weak while consciousness threatened to slip from his numb grasp.
“Hurry,” Twist heard Jonas say as he felt himself dropped to his knees on the dirt. “I can see it starting to move again.”
“Darling, can you hear me?” Myra asked fearfully, suddenly kneeling before him. Twist felt hands pull his arms out to his sides as cold metal was clamped around his wrists.
“What’s happening?” Twist struggled to ask. His words came only with great effort.
“They are going to help you,” Myra said, her face too full of fear to show him any certainty.
“Back away,” someone said to Myra, taking her by the arm to move her.
In her place, a small, open glass vial was placed in the dirt just before where Twist now knelt. His eyes flitted quickly around him; he had been placed inside a complete circle, drawn heavily in the ground, inside the large tent. Candles sat along the circle’s edge, filling the space with their haunting light, and a number of strange talisman-like items—feathers, bits of dry bone, stones, and other things—also sat in the dirt around the circle. Twist’s hands tried to move, but he found that both of his wrists had been chained solidly to the ground beside him.
“You stinking little worms!” Twist felt himself bellow in rage as his arms struggled to free themselves. “Release me! I’ll eat you all whole!”
“Be quite, beast,” a woman said from close behind him. Her voice was strong and clear but sounded aged and was colored with a thick accent.
“Unchain me now,” Twist felt himself respond with vicious hate, “or I’ll eat all of your children first.”
The woman behind him spoke in a language Twist couldn’t understand. Her tone was low but strong, and the words began to sound like a chant. Twist felt himself let out a howl of rage as his limbs fought furiously for freedom. Myra was still standing before him, though well out of reach, and appeared to be about to cry. Jonas moved to her side, taking her into his arms and turning her face away.
The chanting grew in volume as Twist felt his skin burn once again. His limbs thrashed and fought against the chains, but the metal held fast. In a moment, his body began to stop fighting while his breath fell short enough to make him faint and his heart thundered.
“No!” he heard himself gasp desperately. “You can’t!”
His mouth moved to say more, but his voice fell quiet as a sudden rush of fire washed up Twist’s spine. He watched through blurring vision as a glittering, blue, smokelike substance lifted off of him into the air. The woman’s chanting grew louder and faster, and the blue smoke turned to fly swiftly into the tiny glass vial before him. Twist felt wave after wave of burning energy wash over him and then lift away, each one taking a heavy weight away with it.
In a few moments, his breath began to return to him. He realized that his body was slowly falling under his own control once again, while the little vial filled with the glittering blue smoke. It didn’t seem long at all before the last wave of energy tingled over him and then lifted off, falling into the vial with all of the rest. Someone moved quickly, shutting the top of the vial with a cork, and Twist heard the woman behind him go silent.
The final wave of energy had taken an enormous weight off of Twist as well, making him feel nearly weightless. He took in a full breath, marveling that he’d never tasted air as sweet, but before he could let it go, his vision went dark and his senses left him completely.
When Twist returned to consciousness, it felt to him as if days had passed. He heard soft voices around him and opened his eyes into a dim world lit by gentle golden firelight. Innumerable silver stars hung in the black sky above him, surrounded by the softly swaying branches of dark
treetops high above. Though he felt warmed by the fire, the air was damp, cool, and wandering languidly over his exposed hands, throat, and face.
He lay on a blanket on the ground, with something soft under his head. There was a familiar weight over his left side, and he could feel the soft buzz of Jonas’s presence in the base of his neck. When he tried to lift his head to get a better picture of where he was, Myra sat up close beside him—her spirit hidden from him, but her clockwork form glinting softly in the firelight—confirming his assumption that she had been lying beside him, with her head on his chest.
“You’re awake,” she gasped, peering down at him with worried, blue-jewel eyes. “Darling, how do you feel?”
To Twist’s great relief, his own voice responded to his plea. “Much better, thank you.”
He tried to sit up—a somehow Herculean task—and Myra helped him. His found his body aching from overuse and his mind still a bit more fuzzy than he’d like, but he seemed to be generally all right. One thing he noticed immediately, however, was that he still felt nearly weightless. The dragon’s blood must have been a heavier burden than he’d realized after carrying it for so long.
“It’s good to see you awake again,” Jonas said, appearing at his other side with a smile.
Twist felt reassured to see the blue-violet color in his eyes, knowing that Jonas could easily see if he really was himself once again. Twist had been lying near the large fire in the center of the camp, and there were others sitting around the large campfire with him—the Vimana’s crew, Idris, and Jeffery as well as Luca, Harman, and other gypsies—but everyone was now staring at Twist with curiosity or concern.
“Does he look all right, Jonas?” Myra asked him anxiously.
Jonas smiled to her. “He looks perfectly fine to me. There’s nothing on his skin now.”
“Oh, thank heavens,” Myra said with great relief, turning to Twist again. She lifted a hand to stroke the edge of his face gently, spilling her delight over his Sight. Twist indulged himself a moment to enjoy the feeling before he looked to Jonas again.
“What the devil happened to me?”
“The blue bastard possessed you,” Jonas said grimly. “They told us that it should have taken months for it to get that much control, but we think your Sight gave it a lot of help.”
“Did I…” Twist found he couldn’t finish his question as his eyes moved over the gypsies around them. He had seen his own hands move so viciously against them. Looking down at them now, he saw that his knuckles were wrapped in bandages, and he felt a dull ache beneath them.
“That was quite something to see,” Idris mentioned with a smile, “watching the little clockmaker from London beat the hell out of a troupe of gypsies.”
Many of them gave the djinn a worried look.
“You didn’t do anything, Twist,” Jonas said, shooting a disapproving glance toward Idris as well. “It was Big Blue. And no one is very badly hurt.”
Twist nodded, taking the news gladly. “I’m so sorry. I tried so very hard to stop, but…”
“I know,” Jonas said, putting a hand on his shoulder. Twist felt his friend’s concern in the chilly, calm, white fog that followed his touch. “No one blames you, Twist. I’m just glad that Mama had a spell handy, and we didn’t have to hurt you to get Blue to stop.”
“He should be able to bear the name of it now,” a woman said thoughtfully.
Twist looked up, recognizing her voice as the one that had spoken the strange chant that had lifted the dragon’s blood from him. As Jonas had said, it was difficult to guess at her age: she could have been fifty years old, or seventy, or as unseemingly ancient as Hala or Zéphyrin. Her long, once-dark hair was now mostly gray and hung over her shoulders like a lion’s mane. Her stature wasn’t tall or bold, but she looked far from frail and was dressed in a multitude of things: a gray dress-like blouse over dark trousers and boots, with a colorful vest, a long shawl, a wide belt that held many small pouches and hanging things, far too many bracelets of colorful glass and string, along with a few necklaces, and rings on nearly every finger.
To Twist, however, it was her wolfish, clear, gray-blue eyes that caught at his attention. The woman’s strangely still and haunting gaze seemed able to look directly into his soul and root out all of his deepest secrets. More than any human being he’d ever met, the woman sitting on the long log with the other gypsies struck him as ancient, powerful, and formidable. He instantly understood all that Jonas had told him about Mama, and that she probably could keep a whole clan of gypsies free, happy, and together. She stared at Twist thoughtfully for a long, silent moment before she spoke again.
“Dragon,” Mama said pointedly.
Twist flinched under the word, expecting the usual sensation to ripple angrily over him, but nothing happened at all. An astonished smile broke over his face at the relief of it.
“You say it,” she ordered him, a slight smile at the edge of her lips as well.
Twist complied, speaking the dreaded word himself, and still felt no reaction to it. Myra cheered brightly, and Jonas gave him a hearty pat on the back.
“Now, say the dragon’s name,” Mama told him, stilling their revelry.
Still nervous to do so, Twist spoke it softly. “Kazan.” When, yet again, nothing at all happened, he took a deep breath and spoke again, more strongly now. “The bastard’s name was Kazan. Good heavens, I don’t feel anything at all when I say it now. I don’t know how to thank you,” he said to Mama, unable to contain his smile.
“You can let me keep this,” she said with a grin, holding up a little vial of gently glowing blue liquid. “Nearly all of the dragons have left the Earth. This is now the rarest potion in the world.”
Twist looked at the vial with a mixture of loathing and unease. The blood appeared to move on its own, as if desperate to escape its delicate glass prison. “Oh, please. Keep it,” Twist said, fighting a shudder. “Take it far away, and never let me look on it again.”
Mama laughed lightly and slipped the vial into a pocket.
“And now,” she said with a new weight to her voice, “to the next matter.”
“What next matter?” Jonas asked.
Mama looked back at Jonas silently for a moment, appearing suddenly somewhat nervous. Twist’s heart began to beat quickly, fearful of what sort of terror it took to make this woman feel nervous. When she looked back to Twist, he had to force himself not to flinch under her intent gaze.
“I need to talk with you two,” she said, rising to her feet. “Alone.”
“What about?” Jonas asked, clearly just as confused as Twist.
“Come along, Jonny,” she said, gesturing for him to follow as she began to walk away from the fire. “You too,” she added to Twist. “Everyone else, just wait here a moment.”
“But this is finally getting interesting!” Idris complained.
Mama shot him a cold look that—to Twist’s great surprise—silenced the djinn.
Jonas and Twist shared a glance, but found no answers in each other, before they got to their feet to follow her. Myra appeared horrified at the thought of letting Twist walk away without her, but Twist gave her a gentle smile and tried to slip away. Arabel put her hand on Myra’s arm, offering her a comforting look, and Myra sat down beside her silently.
Twist followed after Mama and Jonas without complaint. As far as he was concerned, this woman had saved his life and the lives of his friends. Whatever she wished to discuss, Twist owed her a moment of his time at the very least. He tried to calm himself as they walked away from the fire and into one of the wooden carriages.
The inside of the carriage looked like a small, cluttered room to Twist, with a raised mattress atop built-in cupboards against the far wall, a handful of unmatched trunks along one side wall, and a small wooden table built into the other. There were two chairs and a loose trunk already sitting around the table. The table itself had a colorful cloth laid over it, and a few crystals, a metal bowl, and a number of small gla
ss bottles placed to one side.
Mama sat in one of the two chairs at the table and gestured for Twist and Jonas to sit as well. Jonas took the trunk sitting to her right, while Twist took the chair facing her. Mama cleared a few of the odds and ends away and then clasped her hands on the table, looking up at each of them. Twist and Jonas remained silent, unsure what to expect, as she clearly seemed to struggle with how to begin.
“Jonny,” she said finally, looking to Jonas, “do you know about my Sight?”
“You have a Sight?” Jonas asked, obviously startled by the news.
Mama smiled and nodded. “I don’t like to make it too well known that I have one. I can see…a certain kind of creature and its magic. I can see it as clear as day. Always have.”
“What sort of creature?” Twist asked her.
“I can’t say,” she responded with a heavy breath.
“Do you mean,” Jonas asked, frowning now, “you don’t know, or you won’t say?”
“I won’t,” she answered. “These creatures can hear all we say, wherever we are. I have warded this camp for years, keeping us all hidden and silent to them. But I will not call out their names now. Doing so might just get through my protections. And besides, there are always our dreams to worry about.”
Jonas gave a sigh, his jaw tight. “Are we talking about funny little winged folk?” he asked, his voice thick with skepticism.
Twist guessed that Jonas might mean fairies. Jonas had once said that the symbol on Twist’s watch was a ward against fairies—the same symbol that stood at the entrance to the camp.
“They’re hardly funny,” Mama responded. “And only some of them have wings.”
Family Page 13