Scales and Flames

by Catherine Banks

  He sighed and repeated himself, stumbling on the words as he followed her instructions to speak Kadirai. “Na feira?”

  “Go sit down, and I’ll be there in a moment.” Counting to ten in her head, she surveyed the rest of the room and pretended not to notice Tamor staring at her. Finally, she broke the tension and approached, leaning over him. “Remember, patience is important. Wait for your turn.”

  “Nare, venaredahn,” he sighed. Yes, teacher.

  She traced her finger over his work. The spindly letters reminded her of winter-bare tree branches, lacking the confidence that came with time and rote practice. But despite the uncertainty, the shapes were accurate and evenly spaced. “This is quite good. Do you see how you’ve left space between each letter?”

  “I thought I was—"

  “That is very good,” she replied. With the unexpected praise, Tamor’s smile split wide, forming a dimple in his cheek that reminded her of her own daughter as a chubby baby. “Continue to write this way.”

  “I finished all my exercises,” he said. He looked around the room. “Did I finish first?”

  “It’s not a race. If you’re done, you should get some more practice,” she said. His shoulders slumped. “Since you finished your letters, practice writing your mother and father’s names. That is very important.”

  He didn’t pick up his crayon. “Mama said there’s a war again. Is that true?”

  Her stomach plunged into the floor. “There is no war, sweet child. Work on your letters.”

  “But ma—"

  “Do not show disrespect to your teachers,” she said, letting a slight edge creep into her voice. Just enough to let him know she was serious. If she’d been training Tamor as a soldier, she’d have put his face in the dirt for ignoring her instructions.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  But his words lingered in her mind, conjuring shadows from the past and nightmares about the future. Across the low table from Tamor was a conspicuously empty seat where Erimah had once sat, twirling the end of her elaborate braid with her left hand while she wrote with her right. Dyadra even rearranged the cushions in the child’s absence, but the other children refused to move into the seat, treating it like a sacred memorial.

  Dyadra and her students at the Academy belonged to a small diaspora of dragons living in Las Vegas, Nevada. About thirty miles into the desert stood the Broken Stone Gate. The human world was oblivious not only to the presence of dragons among them, but to the mystical portals connecting their world to the dragon world of Ascavar. The Gates, scattered all around the world, were protected by small contingents of dragons called Gatekeepers. Dragon communities gravitated toward the Gates.

  Several months earlier, Broken Stone Gate had come under attack. Such an attack was unprecedented in modern times, over a hundred years since the end of the Great War. Rumors abounded, but Dyadra had gotten something close to the truth when she helped with the rebuilding and addition of extra security. The Gate had been attacked from this side, allowing a large enemy force to enter into Ascavar undetected. They had then launched a massive attack on Farath, one of the biggest and best-fortified cities in Ascavar. The Kadirai had eventually been victorious, both in defending the city and reclaiming the Gate, but everyone on duty at Broken Stone was slain. Erimah’s mother, Kerassan, was among them. With the death of the child’s mother, Erimah’s father had moved away, saying he had to start somewhere new.

  Dyadra understood the need for fresh starts, to distance oneself from painful memories. As far as the other teachers and the Academy’s head knew, she was simply a dragon nearly into her third century of life. Like many of the first generation of dragons who settled permanently in the human realm, she had left Ascavar after the bloody war that devastated the landscape and decimated their people. That explained her unusual breadth of knowledge and familiarity with an older form of the language than most of their contemporaries.

  What they did not know was that Dyadra Macias was once Kaldirah Bladewhisper, one of the respected and feared Arik’tazhan, the elite warriors who put an end to the war once and for all. And while she assured young Tamor that war was out of the question, there were whispers on the wind. The brutal attack on Broken Stone Gate probably wasn’t an isolated incident. But that wasn’t her concern.

  Not anymore.

  Taking on the name of her long-deceased grandmother and her half-human husband’s surname, she had distanced herself from the endless politics and power games of her kind. But it was natural to wonder, especially when it spilled into her life as it had with the Broken Stone Gate. When the rebuilding began, Dyadra and her husband, Will, had assisted with reconstructing the magical protections, making it far stronger than its first iteration. She wouldn’t say such a thing with the blood of its guardians still staining the ground, but the Gate should have had better protections to begin with. With the last stones laid in place and the protective wards complete, she left it in the hands of the Gatekeepers and returned to her quiet life in the suburbs of Las Vegas.

  Still, it was tempting to tell the children who she was, especially when Tamor got up from his seat for the forty-third time. Miss Teacher was patient and tolerant. The Silent Tempest of old would have plucked him from his feet and thrown him back in his seat where he belonged. Smiling a bit at the thought of his shocked face, she headed him off and silently pointed back to the cushion where he belonged. His shoulders slumped as he retreated again.

  “Venaredahn?” a tentative female voice called. She turned to see Madasei standing at the small table at the front of her room. “Na ko…” she started in Kadirai. Frustrated by the lack of words for modern technology in Kadirai, she switched to English. “Your phone is ringing.”

  Dyadra smiled. “Thank you,” she said as she walked toward the front of the room. The number on the screen belonged to her next-door neighbor. She couldn’t deny the utility of the smartphone, but she hated that everything became an emergency. After declining the call, she set the phone back on her desk. As the phone returned to its lock screen, a message popped up under the Missed Call notification. Her daughter’s name caught her eye. There was a missed call and a text from her daughter below Eileen’s missed call.

  Allana: something’s wrong, there’s someone in the house

  Her blood went cold in her veins as she swiped at the phone’s screen. She had just gotten to Allana’s message when the phone rang again with her neighbor’s number. Her mouth went desert-dry as she answered it. “Hello?”

  “Dyadra? This is Eileen, next door?” Her smoky voice was shaking. “Your…I don’t know how to say it nicely. Your house is on fire.”

  “Hold on,” Dyadra said calmly. After checking that Tamor wasn’t following her out of curiosity, she stepped into the hall and closed the door. Drums echoed from the music room down the hall, punctuated with joyous shouts and the thunderous pounding of feet on hardwood. “My family?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I wish I knew—"

  “Do you see my husband or my daughter?”

  “I don’t see anyone,” Eileen said. “Just the fire trucks. Honey, are you going to—”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” As she hung up the phone, she walked back into the classroom to grab her bag, then left the classroom. A chorus of confused voices rang out behind her.

  Tamor’s voice called after her. “Venaredahn? Miss Macias?”

  She ignored him, heading for the stairs. Her brain was a tangled mess, trying to fit this unexpected piece of information in with the rest of her understanding. All she could think of was the fact that they’d bought brand new batteries for the smoke detectors just a few weeks ago after the low-battery beeping kept her and Will up all night. She knew logically that didn’t prevent a fire, but she was stuck on that package of nine-volt batteries. These things weren’t supposed to happen.

  In the lobby, a pretty young woman sat behind a computer typing an email. Dyadra crept up and said, “Livia, I have an emergency. I need you t
o figure out what to do with my class.”

  The woman looked up at her and frowned in concern. “Oh no, is everything—"

  “I just need you to figure it out, please. I won’t be back today.”

  Livia sighed. “Okay, I hope everything is okay.”

  Without looking back, Dyadra stepped into the blistering sunlight of a Nevada afternoon and called her husband’s number. It rang four times before going to his voicemail. She did the same to Allana’s phone. No answer.

  Perhaps they’d been out of the house when the fire started. Perhaps they’d left their phones trying to evacuate safely. There were logical explanations.

  But the message from Allana kept ringing through her mind. She swiped back to it to reread it: there’s someone in the house. There was no other message, and the last message she’d received from Allana before that was got an A on my biology exam about four hours earlier.

  The sky stretched above, cloudless and brilliant blue. Once upon a time, she’d have leaped into the air, transforming into her dragon form in seconds to fly on wings of silver scales. She would close the distance to home in a matter of minutes. Now, that was out of the question. Even if there weren’t thousands of humans to gawk at her and broadcast the unexplainable sighting to all their friends on Facebook, it was difficult for her to transform, and doubly so to transform back. Her last battle to defend her people had left her nearly dead, and while the healers had been able to put her back together, she’d never been exactly the same.

  As she got into her car, she called Will again. Still no answer. Nightmarish scenarios flashed through her head, but she refused to let them overwhelm her. Panic would not make a helpless idiot out of her.

  By the time she reached their modest neighborhood, she had called Will and Allana each sixty-seven times, redialing at every moment she could without endangering herself on the road. A monstrous plume of black smoke twisted into the air like a tower of shadow. Flashing red and blue lights reflected from the surrounding houses. The smell of smoke and something chemical bit at her nose, masking the familiar scents of her neighborhood. The foreign smell and the sight of the harsh lights made her feel unwelcome, as if she’d been drawn into an alien landscape where her home used to be.

  Her heart thumped as she turned down their street. Emergency vehicles formed a blockade about two houses down. Their rotating lights were slightly out of sync, creating a disconcerting strobe. Dyadra parked in front of a neighbor’s house and got out.

  Despite the chaos, she was physically calm. One thing at a time. If she thought about it all, let all of it sink in at once, it would drown her. She had to find her family. A thread of fear snaked through her belly, but she ignored it. What was around her?

  Smoke overwhelmed her sharp dragon senses. It invaded her nose with its acrid stench and coated her lungs with dry dust. The air was filled with gray haze, dimming the bright colors to a duller echo of themselves. She walked purposefully toward the house.

  A dozen humans formed a semi-circle at the barricade of lighted vehicles, all taking turns peeking between the vehicles to gawk at the scene. One turned as she approached, said something, and three more turned to see her. She recognized one of them as Eileen, her next-door neighbor who’d called with bad news. Her lined face was a mask of horror. “Oh, Dee, it’s just—"

  “Not now,” Dyadra said. Eileen protested as she walked past them, sliding between the noses of two firetrucks. The woman let out a squawk of protest and began whispering to the others.

  A man in an oversized, soot-streaked coat approached her. “Ma’am, it’s not safe.” He reached out as if to touch her. She looked past him. Several of the firefighters had a hose connected to a hydrant a few houses down. It sprayed a misty jet of water onto her smoldering house. The flames were nearly extinguished, but her house was destroyed. The outer shell was jagged and broken, as if a monstrous creature had bitten huge chunks out of it. The once pale blue exterior was charred black. They’d spent hours agonizing over that color. Robin Egg blue was the one they’d finally agreed on. Ruined. “Ma’am, you need to stay back,” the firefighter said.

  Dyadra pushed past the man, walking closer to the house. The heat turned the water in the air to steam. The humid air coated her skin, encasing her in dread. She inhaled deeply, trying to dig past the scent of smoke. A hand closed on her arm, and she whirled to see the firefighter holding her. “This is my house,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, his face creasing in concern. “You need to stay back. For your own safety.”

  She didn’t have time for his well-meaning interference. She grasped his forearm lightly and leaned in, holding his gaze. It took nothing at all to latch on to his human mind. With a deceptive gentleness in her tone, she pushed her will into him. “Leave me alone. I’ll be fine on my own. Tell the others if they ask.” There was only a faint hint of resistance when she said I’ll be fine. He had an instinct to protect, and disliked being told not to do so. She respected that.

  His pupils dilated, then contracted to normal size. With a nod, he released her arm. “Just be careful.”

  “Did you find any bodies?”

  He shook his head. “They managed to sweep the house before it was completely consumed, and there was no one inside that we found.”

  That we found.

  “You’re certain?”

  He nodded. “I can’t promise, but we’ve got protocols for searching. We didn’t find anything.”

  She nodded. “Leave me in peace.” The man scurried away, shouting directions at one of the men with the fire hose. A few of them gave her strange looks, and one started to walk toward her like he was going to intervene. The one she’d pushed waved him off, and they left her alone.

  Something stirred in her belly as she surveyed the smoldering ruin of her home. A curious blend of grief and rage twisted together in a knot, awakening the primal fury of the dragon within her. For a moment, she wanted to let the human skin slip away, revealing the hard scales and vicious claws of the Silent Tempest, to rain down destruction on whoever had done this.

  Perhaps the moment would come. Not yet.

  Narrowing her eyes, she surveyed what was left of the one-story home. Will’s black car was in the driveway, curiously untouched by the fire. The familiar sight wasn’t comforting, not with the charred remains of their home behind it. Based on Allana’s troubling text, she’d been home with him. Then who had been in the house? And were they responsible for the fire?

  She drew a deep breath and coughed as the thick smoke coated her airway. Like pulling apart thick layers of fabric, she sifted through the smells, letting her stronger dragon senses take over. The smoke was the strongest scent, but everything else still existed beneath it. The hint of cut grass lingered there, a fresh, leafy smell. There was the sharp stink of feces, where one of the neighbors had let their dog relieve himself in the front yard without cleaning up. And there, as familiar as her own reflection, was the scent of her husband. Pleasantly musky and earthy, with the electric smell of dragon blood running through his veins. And their daughter, who smelled similar to Will, but with a stronger note of dragon. She drew them in deep, wrapping her mind around those scents, as unique as their fingerprints. For a split second, her throat clenched with emotion. What happened to them?

  Focus.

  What was absent was just as important as what was present. She smelled her family, but she didn’t smell burnt flesh. And Dyadra had smelled plenty of burnt flesh in the war. It was a uniquely awful smell, one that she would have detected immediately. It wasn’t here, not even a hint of death. That absence was cause for hope.

  Like a dog on the trail of a tantalizing scent, she turned from the house, focused intently on those teasing threads. She hurried past the firefighter, brushing off his attempts to get her attention. The scents were easier to follow as she left the burning house behind her. Her pace quickened to a jog as she hurried past her car, still parked in the middle of the street. They had been here,
and not long ago.

  A hand closed on her arm, and she instinctively whirled, closing her fingers around a thin forearm. Her neighbor, a few inches taller, winced in pain and stared down at Dyadra’s grasping hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Eileen said. Her penciled-in brows were furrowed in concern.

  Dyadra released her. The pale white imprint of her hand was outlined on Eileen’s papery tanned skin. “What is it?”

  “I told the firemen, but I think they were more focused on putting the fire out.”

  “Told them what?”

  “Someone was at your house right before it started,” Eileen said. “I was…checking my mail,” she said. Her eyes flitted away. A lie. The woman was a snoop and a notorious gossip, but Dyadra would entertain any information that led her to her family.

  “Who?”

  Eileen shrugged. “A truck. Like a small moving truck, about the size of a U-Haul? The smaller one, not the great big one. You know?” Dyadra nodded. “It caught my eye ’cause I didn’t think you all were planning to move, so I watched it for a while. There weren’t any markings on it. No logos or anything.”

  “And it was there just before the fire?”

  Eileen nodded. “Your garage opened, then closed, and the truck left. Maybe five minutes later, there was a loud noise. Shook the houses around, like lightning had struck real close.”

  Something had detonated inside the house. “Did you see any people coming in or out of the truck?”

  “By the time I noticed it, I think it had been there a few minutes,” Eileen said. “And I heard it start up, but by then whoever was driving was already inside.”

  Dyadra’s mind moved quickly, cutting through the noise and clutter like a sharpened blade. “I want you to call me if you hear or see anything else. But stay in your house.”

  “Do you need to call someone? Where will you stay? Dee?”

  Dyadra hurried back to her car and took out her phone. She hesitated, then called the number that would entwine her once again with the politics of her people.