Deelind and The Icefire

by Lance Dempster

  Her body and the dragon baby were melting into each other. The sensation of fire and ice repeated as she changed between human and dragon form. Just when she thought she could take it no more she shifted into dragon form and remained that way.

  ‘We are now one,’ said the crisp voice in her head. Gentle snowflakes swirled around the mental voice. Her mind recoiled in shock as the new presence crashed through her. Dizziness and nausea gripped her. She shivered and shook, breathing in and out in short gasps. Her muscles trembled and her mind spun. It had been a tough day. She could be forgiven for thinking she might be going mad, couldn’t she? ‘No Deelind, not crazy but chosen,’ replied the clean, soothing voice.

  Seemingly unable to talk, she mentally pleaded, ‘What is happening to me?’

  ‘We have melded. You will be fine once you are used to there being more than just you in this physiology. Let me help you.’ The presence poured strength into her new body and soothing, cool, calm into her mind as she adjusted to the unfamiliar sensations. It was disorienting looking through these new eyes. They were dragon eyes and yet still her eyes at the same time. She could see the two adult dragons were no longer asleep. Instead they were standing in front of the fireplace, one breathing blue fire over them while the other breathed red fire. The two dragons towered above her. Her? Them? This was so confusing.

  ‘Mother and Father have given their blessing,’ said the voice, now filled with warm sunshine reflecting off snow.

  ‘What will become of me? Uh, us?’

  ‘Once we have completed the melding, we will begin our journey together.’

  ‘Hear me, my daughters, Zara and Deelind, for this is the last time we may ever talk,’ said Erline, her voice crackling with age. ‘Your path ahead is hidden and dark. I can sense that it is fraught with danger, death and deception. The choices you make will affect the balance between light and dark, Princess Lee and her half-brother Taric, and will determine our fate. Failure to make the right choices will doom us all. To aid you I give you the gift of camouflage. When you need it, it will serve you.’

  ‘My gift is my courage,’ said the male dragon in a deep rumble. Deelind’s bones ached with the weight of eons in his voice.

  The blue flame disappeared as both adult beasts collapsed on the floor. The female dragon dragged herself over to the large male and laid her head next to his. He turned his head and gave a slow, big wink to Deelind and Zara, touched noses with the female and passed away.

  She could feel sadness and pain run through Zara. ‘He has gone,’ said Zara mentally. The warm sun in her words had disappeared, the sky clouded over and the snowfall thickened. ‘We must leave Mother to mourn.’ Deelind found herself walking towards the cave entrance.

  ‘Why has he gone?’ she asked, feeling an overwhelming urge to reassure and comfort Zara, anything to lighten the snowfall laden with sadness.

  ‘He was an ancient one. By giving us his courage, he gave the last of himself,’ replied Zara, withdrawing into herself and lessening her presence. Understanding, Deelind asked no further questions.

  * * *

  At the cave entrance, Deelind could see the sun coming up and the noise of waking dragons was deafening. It was time to take stock of what had happened. Looking down, she gasped. It was one thing to feel she was dragon; it was quite another to see it. Her claws were a matt white that edged towards the colour of mist but not quite. Razor-sharp, they curled with the sudden intense desire to sink them into flesh. Those could prove useful. Images of Spike flashed through her mind.

  The underside of her body was layered in large, white scales that winked with sparks of colour as if sunshine reflected off ice crystals. Twisting her head around, she saw that her back and the top of her tail were blanketed in soft, pure white feathers. As she opened her wings, her eyes widened. Her human arms were now her wings. They were beautiful, long and leathery, covered with the same white feathers on the top. Deadly, ice-white claws tipped the ends of her wings. It was a strange sensation having wings for arms and she found she could move her wing claws like human fingers. She tested out her tail by sweeping it from side to side, then stretched out her legs. They were certainly strong and solidly built. Her new body felt healthy and strong, her muscles well defined and flexible.

  A dragon, she thought to herself with amazement and not a little pride. I’m a dragon. No more kitchens for me! She jumped up and down and discovered that, without much effort, she could jump to twice her human height. She flexed her wings. Her dragon was newly hatched, but she felt strong. Maybe she should wait and ask Zara, but she wanted to fly so badly. Fervently hoping that flying was instinctive, she launched off the ledge while letting out a deafening roar. One of her tail feathers caught on the edge of the cave entrance. She felt a pinprick of pain as it was pulled out, but it wasn’t enough to distract her from the feel of the wind under her beating wings, keeping her aloft as she headed into the valley. She had no idea where or what she was going to do but it didn’t matter. All she wanted to do was to fly and never stop. Mug was wrong and Tom right. Why would you want to be a moler and tunnel underground if you could be a dragon and soar overhead?

  Everything felt so perfect, intense and unreal. She was a dragon. It was as if this had been her destiny all along. She flew around the valley, flapping hard, then gliding, suddenly finding warm air currents under her wings and being lifted high without moving a muscle. All she had to do was slightly tip her wings and she would glide off in another direction.

  She tilted her head slightly. She could hear the dragon cacophony getting louder behind her. She banked hard right, making a tight, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. To her surprise she nearly flew into a group of dragons that seemed to be following her. She darted hard left and down towards the valley floor. The wild dragons followed. She turned her head and saw more and more dragons following her.

  ‘We are a noisy lot. Little wonder they call a group of us a “thunder of dragons”,’ said Zara with a snort, her voice laced with ice crystals flickering joyfully on tree leaves. ‘The wild dragons are drawn to us.’

  ‘You are back,’ Deelind said, startled. She realised now that she had felt Zara’s presence quietly watching her flight. ‘I am sorry you lost your father.’

  ‘Father was old. It was his time, but I will miss him. While I was waiting for you in my shell, Father would let me fly with him through our bond link. We could connect psychically, and the link allowed me to see through his eyes, but it took great concentration for us to hold the connection. It helped pass time and I got to know father well. I was able to learn so much from him. The valley has felt his passing. Out of respect to Mother, queen of the wild dragons, we must send these dragons back and leave the valley or they may choose us to be their new queen.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Like this. If I might take control for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She felt Zara’s presence surge forward as she spoke. It was a strange feeling. She guessed this was how a passenger in a racing car felt, going along for the ride of a lifetime without any control. Zara flew hard and fast ahead, then turned and faced the dragons, hovering; she let out four controlled roars, then turned upwards and flew away from the thunder of dragons. Zara’s presence eased back and Deelind felt control of her body return to her.

  While they flew up and out of the valley, Zara said, ‘I had to wait for you before I could hatch. I did not think that was ever going to happen. Why has it taken so long for you to come to me?’ Clouds collected in her voice and thick snow fell through dark tree boughs.

  ‘I know even less than you do,’ said Deelind, anxious to dispel any hurt. ‘This is all so new to me. I only found out about this world yesterday. Or was it the day before? Why do you sound and feel like snowfall?’

  ‘Oh well, in time, it will all become clear to both of us. Regardless, we are, at last, now one,’ said Zara, and the clouds and snowfall dissipated. ‘In answer to your question, the properties of snow and i
ts environment are my magical signature. For those that are magic enough to hear it, it will underlie my dragon voice in dragon form, and it will be there in any telepathic conversations. As a featherlite when we communicate telepathically with other featherlites we will hear their melded voice. So, we will mentally hear their human voice and sense their dragon’s magical signature. It is unique to each featherlite, much like your fingerprint.’

  Deelind blinked. To think, a few days ago she had not even believed in dragons and now she was one with a magical signature.

  ‘We are not simply a dragon but a featherlite,’ said Zara. The fresh air in her voice was crystal-clear and sharp as she observed Deelind’s thoughts.

  ‘What is a featherlite, then?’ she said, wondering if any of her thoughts would be private.

  ‘Nothing is private when we are both awake and we share memories as needed,’ said Zara. ‘I can see from your memories that you know some of this already but your friend, Mug, didn’t get the details quite correct. A featherlite is a melding of two species. One species always has the dragon form and the other can be any other creature. When the featherlite is whole, it retains the traits and abilities of both the original forms. The dragon half is similar to the wild dragons and both can breathe fire. However, unlike the wild dragons, we must meld with our other half to survive. If a hatched featherlite dragon does not meld within two days, it dies. Wild dragons can be ridden by humans; however, featherlites won’t tolerate it. Can you imagine how undignified that would be?’ said Zara in disgust and snow caught on rough bark. ‘We are, of course, more intelligent than the wild dragons.’

  ‘Breathe fire?’ she said, feeling her eyes widen.

  ‘Yes. We will talk more later. I must sleep now. The melding has exhausted me,’ said Zara, her voice filling with a clear, starry night shining down upon a land covered in a soft blanket of snow.

  ‘Sleep well,’ said Deelind and she could feel she was now alone.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE COTTAGE ATTACK

  Deelind was tired, too, but she wanted to fly just a little longer. Caught up in her conversation with Zara, she hadn’t noticed how high they had climbed. They were so far above the Tor that for human eyes it would look like a small dot on the landscape, yet with her excellent eyesight she could see everything perfectly.

  Not believing what she was seeing, she blinked two or three times. Where she would have expected to see the back side of the Tor, instead the land dropped into a cliff face, forming part of three large valleys. These must be the valleys Mug spoke about. If she positioned herself above the manor house looking out over the valleys, the left-hand valley behind the Tor, the one she had just flown out of, must be Dragon Valley. The far right-hand valley with the farmlands was Moler Valley. That left the middle, heavily forested valley which had to be Brakenhill Valley, as there were signs of a village and dwellings.

  Each valley had its own river flowing down the centre. The moat that flowed around the manor house in the outside world was in fact only a semicircle of water that then flowed off the edges of the cliff in the hidden world. The left waterfall poured down into Dragon Valley, forming the valley’s river, while the right waterfall cascaded into Moler Valley, forming that valley’s river. Magic had to be used because it was clear that the water in the moat did not flow in one direction, as equal amounts of water poured down the cliffs. The Brakenhill Valley river source was much higher than the Tor moat and fell as twin waterfalls from the top of the Tor.

  The tips of mountains poked through a blanket of clouds at the end of the valleys. The clouds gave way when the mountain range split off into separate ranges, isolating each valley. Surely she would have noticed that she lived near a mountain range? Trying to wade through the fog of disbelief, she exhaled sharply and admitted to herself that nothing was normal here, and becoming a flying, fire-breathing dragon was about as far from normal as she could get.

  She could see Brakenhill Tor, her gran’s cottage, and the stream that ran next to it and Buttercup town itself, as well as towards the north to Blackthorn Farm.

  Frowning, she looked closer at the farm. Like a disturbed ants’ nest, people were rushing out from the farmhouse in all directions, each carrying buckets on their shoulders filled with plants.

  The farmhouse looked remarkably like the manor house, but was just one storey high. She had never been to that side of the town and seen Blackthorn Farm. One of her promises to Gran was that she would keep away from the north side of the town and it had been easy to keep since it was where the Drake family, Blackthorn’s army and the Thorn gang lived. Black smoke poured out of the chimney, forming a dark cloud over the farmhouse, obscuring her vision.

  She gracefully turned back to Buttercup and then southwards. The southernmost part of the town was where the school and hospital were, but, in front of them, towards the middle of Buttercup, were the high street shops centred around the town square along with the town hall. The town square had a wondrous, old oak tree in the middle of it with benches wrapped around it, and today tired shoppers were sitting on the benches with shopping bags propped up against their legs as they enjoyed a drink or a snack they had purchased.

  A large convenience store, petrol station and the fire station were in the eastern part of the town, while the western side had the sports fields and farming land. The town had two main roads running through it. One road went east to west with the manor house in the west and then led to the coast. The other main road went north to south, starting at Blackthorn Farm and heading through the town and continuing south.

  Spotting the Tor again, she was surprised to see that the estate was as big as a village. Not only that, but it looked completely different to how she had imagined it. A small stone wall that she had never seen before, began at each end of the moat and ran up the sides of the hill dividing the estate into a front and a back half. The two halves couldn’t have looked more different. The front half of the estate had well-kept open fields, with the manor house that she visited every day partially embedded into the hill. While that approach to architecture was unusual, she already knew that it was the back half that was more complex and startling.

  She decided to investigate the very top of the Tor further. The front section which faced her gran’s cottage and Buttercup town was grassed. She could see a semicircle of buildings cleverly built into and hidden under the grass. These buildings faced onto a well-tended playing field in the centre of the top of the hill.

  At the far end of the playing field, two large dragon statues were perched above the cliff face, facing out over the back of the Tor and Brakenhill Valley. At the base of the statues, a rainbow stream poured out of a disguised opening and flowed in both directions around the base. The streams fell over the cliff on either side of the statues, creating two perfect waterfalls pouring down into the bottom of the cliff, forming the Brakenhill river that looked like a horizontal rainbow meandering its way through the valley. Scattered along both banks of the river was a village. She dropped down to take a closer look.

  A large oak tree stood on an island in the middle of the river. A stone bridge just past the end of the island connected the two sides of the river. The river’s water sparkled with rainbow colours as the currents flowed in and out of each other. There were cottage-style houses dotted around the village, tree houses, and a cobbled road which linked the different dwellings. The footpath ran from the bottom of the Tor all the way through the village and out into a forest.

  An image of the dead blackbird Deelind had trodden on flashed through her mind. A shiver travelled down her long dragon spine. Urgency filled her as she sensed that she needed to head home now. She circled back towards Buttercup town and pumped her wings hard, travelling fast. Her sharp dragon eyes caught sight of fireworks coming from what should have been Blackthorn Farm. All she could see now was a large, black cloud spreading over the farm and heading towards the northern part of Buttercup.

  Black creatures burst from the cloud, their sle
ek, long bodies twisting and curling as they streaked through the sky. They were held aloft by a large set of wings in the middle of their bodies. Their forked tongues flicked in and out of their snakelike faces, as if tasting the air around them. Their eyes glowed yellow with flickers of burnt orange. Small, black scales covered their body and their two legs and two arms were tipped with vicious-looking, blood-red claws. They looked like things that had flown out of the deepest and darkest place in Hell.

  Fireworks were shooting out of the black cloud and heading in the direction of the manor house estate. For a moment she watched the dazzling display, but then, to her horror, she saw that the fireworks were heading straight for her gran’s cottage. A burning ember landed on the old, dry thatch roof and burst into flames.

  ‘Gran!’ she cried out as she headed straight for the cottage. Her human instinct kicked in so hard that she felt herself shifting back into human form. Now naked and falling like a stone, her mind scrambled to think of a way out of the trouble she was in.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed, certain she was heading for her death.

  ‘You have about thirty seconds to learn how to transform,’ said Zara calmly and quietly with gentle snowflakes touching soft skin. ‘Relax and focus. Remember when we were melding. We went back and forth from human to dragon many times.’

  Focus? She was falling out the sky and Gran… Gran! Urgency filled her.

  ‘Focus or we die!’ snapped Zara. The wind blew hard and thick, heavy snow flew down at an angle. ‘Give control to me or work with me.’

  The strong tone worked. Pushing the panic down, Deelind forced herself to obey. With Zara’s help she quickly focused on being a dragon again and how she felt when she was a featherlite. She felt the transformation back to dragon. All she had time to do was stretch out her wings, slowing her fall a little. She saw sunflowers rushing up to meet her and she hit the ground hard. The air was knocked out of her. She could not move for a few seconds and lay there gasping, struggling to draw in air.