by T. J. Klune
“I can imagine. It must be difficult, jumping through the years like that.”
It almost looked like he shrugged, but since he didn’t have shoulders, I couldn’t be sure. “I guess. It’s hard to make friends that way, given that they’d probably all be dead by the time I woke up again.” His eyes widened. “Not that I want friends or anything! I don’t need friends. I don’t even want friends. Friends are way lame.”
“Sure,” I said easily. “I totally get that. Friends are difficult, sometimes.”
“Right?” he said. “And even if they aren’t, they don’t live. One time, I made friends with a squirrel right before I went to sleep and thought I could keep it with me. When I woke up the next time, it was nothing but bones.”
“That’s… a really sad story,” I said. “Dude, what the hell.”
“Now you see why everything is about pain,” Zero moaned. “No one understands me, not even squirrels who die on top of me and leave their stupid bones for me to find when I wake up. I mean, who does that?”
“That damn squirrel.”
“Right? That damn squirrel. Whatever. I didn’t need him. I didn’t need anyone. I still don’t. I have my trees and flowers. That’s all I need.”
“I think everyone needs someone,” I said quietly. “It helps. In the long run.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked off into the dark forest around us.
“I need them,” I admitted. “The others. Maybe not Ruv, but then I don’t know him. He’s… not a part of us. And I don’t know that he will be.” I didn’t think that was any slight against him. It just didn’t seem like he fit. I thought maybe he needed to find his own path, if he ever decided to break away from Vadoma. But that didn’t seem likely.
Zero mumbled something that I couldn’t quite make out.
“What was that?”
He sighed the weary sigh of the put-upon. “I said, Kevin seems all right. And the unicorn. And maybe the giant.”
“Have you… ever met another dragon before? You didn’t seem surprised to see him.”
“Aside from the star dragon? No. I don’t think so.”
I frowned. “What about your parents?”
He chuckled bitterly. “How can you not know anything about dragons when you travel with one? Ask your Kevin. He should tell you.”
He had a point, though I wasn’t going to let him know that. “What do you think about the knight?”
Zero huffed. “He’s full of himself.”
“Yeah,” I said fondly. “But he’s pretty awesome.”
“You love him, huh?”
“I do.”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, and I was sure he wasn’t going to say what he wanted. But then he blurted, “What’s it like? Being in love?” Then he groaned and turned his head to the side, curling his face against his serpentine body, hiding himself away.
I blinked at him. “Um.”
“Forget it! I don’t know why I asked that.” His voice was muffled. “I don’t care about stuff like that—”
“It’s pretty great, if I’m being honest.”
“It is?” he asked, unfurling himself, eyes wide. He moved closer until I could feel his breath on my arms. “Like, okay. Just… what’s great about it? You should tell me. Not that I care about that at all. Or anything.”
I tried to keep the smile from my face. I didn’t know how well I succeeded. It would be just my luck that my fourteen-year-old emo snake dragon was also a closet romantic. It seemed par for the course. Yeah, he fit. Somehow, he fit. “Well. I guess it’s… it’s the moment, you know, when you wake up first in the morning. You open your eyes and your thoughts are muddled. You’re still partly asleep and you’re warm and don’t want to move, but you know you have to get up anyway. So you stretch and it feels good, but your arm hits something next to you and you look over and… there he is. Still asleep. And it’s the first clear thought you have, and you think, Hello. Hello there. Hi. I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re next to me. And then for some reason, he must feel you watching him, because he wakes up too, you know? And he’s blinking and looks all soft and beautiful and then he sees you and he smiles. Like all it takes for him to be the happiest he’s ever been is to see you there. Next to him. That’s… that’s what’s so great about it. That’s what it feels like.”
Zero was quiet for a long time. I let us sit there, next to his trees, lost in our thoughts. Me thinking that that’s something Vadoma could never understand. The love I had for Ryan. She could never know what it meant to me. What he meant to me. I felt sorry for Ruv, sure. But I would never give up something I’d worked so hard for. Vadoma wouldn’t win. Not in that respect.
Then Zero sighed and sounded just like any other fourteen-year-old I’d ever known. It was really rather startling. “That’s so cute,” he squealed. “Oh my gods, I want that. That’s what I want. Like, forever.”
I laughed. “What about your plants? The trees?”
“I can do both! I could. I know I could. You gotta believe me!” But then, amazingly, his eyes began to fill with tears. “But—but….”
“Oh no,” I groaned. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I am absolutely terrible when other people cry. I get so damn awkward that—”
“But no one will ever love me!” he wailed, throwing his head back and twisting his massive body until he lay on his back. “I’m going to be alone forever!”
“Oh,” I said. “Noooo. Noooo, of course not.” I leaned forward and patted the side of his head clumsily. “There, there. Oh, you. You’re just… swell.”
“Swell? I’m swell? I don’t want to be swell! I want to be in love!”
“O… kay. Uh. It’ll happen. When it happens? To you. It’s like, um. Your plants here. They. Grow. Like love does?”
“Wow! Thank you so much for the sound advice! Gosh, what would I have done without you!”
“Oh my gods.”
“Not that it matters, anyway,” he grumbled. “S’not like anything is gonna happen.”
“Oh. Come on, you. You got this. Why would you say that?”
“Have you seen me? I scare everyone.”
“Oh,” I said. “Noooo. Of course not. That’s not—noooo.”
He hissed at me, hood unfurling partially, spikes rattling.
I squeaked, “Kill it with fire!” Then, “I mean, wow. You’re—if only I was, like, seven years younger. And single. And a dragon. And into that.”
“See! I scare everyone!”
I tried to be as stern as possible. “You’re a little young for that, don’t you think?”
“No! No, I am fourteen years old. I know what I want!”
“I don’t think so, Zero. I’m pretty sure you’re not thinking very clearly about this.”
“I am thinking clearly! You just don’t understand what it’s like to be my age!”
“Uh, I was your age once.”
“Yeah, when the giant yaks roamed the earth. That was like, forever ago. You don’t get what it’s like to be a young person. My feelings are real and valid and everything I say comes from my life experience.”
I snorted. “Yeah. Life experience. Okay. Because you have so much of that.”
He glared at me upside-down. “Whatever. I don’t need this. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Now, you listen here, young man. I will not sit here and listen to you disrespect me like this. If you think that you’re going to talk to me like that, you’ve got another—”
“I don’t care! You don’t know me. You don’t know my life. You’re not even my real dad!”
“What? That hurts, Zero. That hurts. Do you know what I’ve done for you? I’ve—oh my fucking gods. What the fuck am I even talking about?”
“You’re trying to stifle me as a person!” Zero cried. “I am an individual. You need to respect that! I will spread my wings and fly, and there is nothing you can do about it!”
“No,�
�� I said, standing up against the tree. “No, no, no. I am not going to turn into Gary and Kevin. I swear to the gods. This is some weird freaky-deaky parental magic shit or something. That’s all it is!”
“Maybe I’ll go out and find someone right now,” Zero growled. “Because I can do what I want.”
“Oh no you won’t,” I snapped. “You don’t know what kind of strangers are out there—how are you making me do this?” I slapped my hand over my mouth, trying to keep myself from vomiting more parenting all over the place.
“You can’t tell me how to live! I am a free spirit. I go where the wind blows!”
I had to resist the urge to tell him that I knew what I was talking about, that I’d lived a lot longer than he had, and that he should listen to me. But I realized how that sounded, and I hadn’t come here for this. For any of this. I didn’t need to be a parent to an emo snake dragon, especially when Kevin thought said emo dragon was his little brother while also thinking he was my stepfather.
I really needed to sit down and make a pros and cons list about the choices I’d made to get to this point.
“Look.” I dropped my hand, trying to regain control of the situation. “You’re… neat. You’ll find what you want with who you want when it’s time. Not before. And not before I ask you for your help.”
He cut off his whining almost immediately and opened one eye to look at me. “My help.”
I sighed. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Oh. Do I?”
“Zero.”
“Mr. Wilds.”
I groaned. “My name is Sam. And yes, you know. The star dragon. What did the he tell you?”
“Maybe that’s private.”
“Zero.”
“Your face gets really red when you get mad.”
“I’m not mad,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You sound kind of mad. Or constipated. I don’t know which.”
“Look. I just… we need to know.”
“What will you do for me if I help you?”
“What?”
He rolled over and laid his head near my feet. “It seems like you need me for this. What will I get if I help you? The star dragon said I had a choice. Said there was another too.”
And that… well. That’s when I stopped playing games. I told him what Morgan told me. About Myrin. About the end. About why he’d had to lock away his only family into the shadow realm. About what it meant to forsake a cornerstone once found. The corruption in the soul that came from it. The malice in the heart.
Zero remained silent while I spoke, understanding that I was no longer interested in placating him. He looked shaken by the time I’d finished. My voice was hoarse, and it was like I’d heard it all over again for the first time. I hadn’t said anything to anyone about this, not even Ryan. Randall and Morgan’s secret had become my own, but I was tired of bearing the weight.
It was quiet for a long while after I’d finished speaking.
Then:
“You’re serious.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you really need me?” His voice sounded small.
“Yes.”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But it must be something.”
“He told me. That a boy wizard would come. That he would need my help. That I would need to make a choice. That I could choose to help you. That I could choose to help the other. Or I could do nothing.”
“And he hasn’t been here? The other.”
Zero shook his head. “No. Just you.”
“Those are some serious choices you have to consider.”
“They are, aren’t they? I asked him what I should do. What was the right choice to make. Do you know what he told me?”
“No.”
“He told me that a dragon’s heart is a wondrous thing, capable of love and hatred. Of death and destruction. That there were dragons who had rained fire down from the sky. That burnt lands until they were nothing but ruins. That killed because they could, leaving nothing but wastelands behind them. And even though I was young, even though I didn’t know very much about the world, I knew that was wrong. That I could never be a dragon like that. I never wanted to be a villain. I just wanted to make things grow again. So I flew as far away as I could, far away from everyone else, and found a place that looked like a wasteland. That looked like it had already been burned and destroyed. And I stayed here to prove to myself that I could make it beautiful again, even if I could never be beautiful myself.”
Ah gods, how my heart ached.
He looked out at the forest around us, the trees swaying in a breeze, the birds that sang melancholic songs, the lights from actual fireflies, blinking lazily in the dark. “It was my gift,” he said quietly. “I thought it was my gift to a world that had lost its way. That if I could make a little corner of it better, then I wasn’t going to be like one of those bad dragons. That I could be one of the good guys. Does that make sense?”
“More than you could possibly know,” I said honestly. “You’re very smart. And very brave.”
I thought maybe he smiled at me, though it was hard to tell. He could have been just flashing his fangs, the cheeky bastard. “I don’t know about all that.” He hesitated. Then, “Are there… bad dragons?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “There aren’t many left. You’re only the second I’ve ever met. But maybe. I think that if you’re intelligent, if you can form thoughts in your head, there’s a chance that you could be a villain. And dragons are smart. So there might be some that are bad.”
His tongue flicked out. “I don’t want to be bad.”
“I don’t think you are.”
“If I help you, do you think I’d… do you think I’d be doing good?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you don’t know how yet.”
“Yes.”
“You’re asking me to take this on faith, wizard.”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in it? Do you believe in your friends? In your family? Do you believe in yourself?”
And I didn’t hesitate when I said, “Yes.”
“Your eyes,” he said. “They’re glowing. They’re…. It’s so pretty.”
I felt it coursing through me. “Red, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what that color is?”
“What?”
“I think it’s the color of your scales.”
He gasped. “Really? But it’s… it’s so. It’s so—”
“Beautiful,” I finished for him.
He reared up slowly, curling his body underneath him, eyes flashing in the dark. From the earth below that he’d created, those little lights began to glow again, flashing weakly at first, but then becoming stronger and stronger. He towered above me as the lights rose around us. Those musical notes I’d heard when they touched me before were louder this time around, more vibrant. More real. I didn’t know if they were in my head or if they echoed throughout the dome, but the song they sang was bittersweet and heartbreaking. I could feel Zero in them, feel his doubts and insecurities, his loneliness and desperation. I thought maybe this was a test, that he was showing himself to me, showing me all the different pieces that made the whole of him, the sum of his parts. And it made me wonder if he was seeing the same in me, if he was getting all of my pieces. If he was, what did he see? What did I show?
I was smart.
I did stupid things.
When I loved, I loved fiercely and with my whole heart.
I didn’t make friends easy. A lot of people liked the idea of me, but that wasn’t the same as liking me.
Sometimes I thought maybe Morgan had made a mistake and I couldn’t be what he thought I was.
I worried that I was going to disappoint my parents.
I was scared that one day Ryan would look at me and think he’d made a mistake.
I was angry at Randall, angry at Morga
n, and I didn’t know how I was going to get over it. But I had to. I knew I had to and that they didn’t deserve my ire. But I didn’t know how to get past it, even knowing what Morgan had told me.
I wanted to keep my promise and help Gary find his horn. I didn’t know how to do that.
I wanted to keep my promise to give Tiggy a family he could call his own.
I wanted to believe my grandmother, that I was chosen for a reason.
I didn’t know how to do that.
I wanted to believe that Myrin could be saved, that he could be the person Morgan and Randall had loved again. That he could be a brother again. A cornerstone.
I didn’t know how to do that.
I wanted to believe that I could do this. That I could save Verania. That I could save the world. That the faith the King and his son had in me were not misplaced, that any villain that rose in opposition would be struck down because it was the right thing to do, that good would always triumph over evil.
I wanted to do what was right.
I didn’t know how to do that.
“You’re very conflicted,” Zero said, eyes glittering in the light of his magic. “Is that how it is to be human?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been anything else.”
“You’re very brave. Like a hero.”
“So are you.” Because he was. Yes, he was a pain in my ass, but I had a feeling that anybody worthwhile would always be a pain in my ass.
“If I did this,” Zero said, “if I helped you, would you help me?”
“To do what?”
“Make the world beautiful,” he said. “I want the world to be beautiful again.”
I smiled up at him. “I think I can do that.”
He leaned forward until his face was inches from my own. His slitted nostrils flared, and he said, “The star dragon told me you would be good. And kind. A little foolish, but that your heart would be as big as a dragon’s. Do you know what he told me about the other?”
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
“He told me the other was your opposite. That he would bring this world to its knees. That he would lord over everyone and everything. I don’t want that. I just want to grow my trees and flowers. So yes, Sam of Wilds, I will side with you. Because of your dragon heart.”