“I don’t even know what to say.”
“No need to say anything, Wylie Petford, we have much to do,” There was an urgency in his voice, so she willed herself to become smaller. She shrank to the size of a mouse, so she could crawl through a hole in the wall and make her way outside where she would prepare to take to the skies.
Chapter Twelve
“Magnificent, Wylie. Now, just flap your wings, and they will lift you into the sky where you will adapt to your surroundings.” The impish voice came from the Dracosinum which had hung itself around her neck of its own accord the moment she had demanded to be smaller.
The stench of the filthy street invaded Wylie’s tiny dragon nostrils with all the fierceness of an invading army.
“Goodness, it is positively rank down here!”
“Well, then I suggest you take to the skies where you belong. Can’t very well balance good and evil from the ground.”
“No, I don’t suppose that I can.” Fly to the sky. Her tiny body rose from the ground, her newly acquired, enhanced eyesight able to make out the shape of every creature that moved on the broken streets of Lugwallow, then expanding as she rose higher and higher. Soon she could see Dobbinsturn, then Kinnemore, then all of London was within her sight.
“Too high, let’s drift lower. Stay in sight of each city so that you can attend to problems as they arise,” came the voice from the Dracosinum.
“Quincy, what exactly do I do now?” The cool night air flowed over her face, and she sucked in a deep breath. There was nothing quite like it. She knew now why airship pilots enjoyed the skies so thoroughly. Now that she had experienced it, she wasn’t sure if she ever wanted to leave. Walking about on the streets felt so dreadfully dull by comparison.
“First of all, you must return to Earth daily before the ‘Time of Dragons’ ends. That’s what your Dracosinum is for, it measures your dragon hours. It’s a requirement. Secondly, pay close attention to your dragon intuition. It is precise and it will guide you when nothing else does.”
“My what?” she asked. Baring her teeth made for a fearsome sight, but Quincy knew it was merely a look of surprise on a very new Dragaleth.
“Your dragon intuition. If you stop talking long enough, you’ll pick up on it. It’s much like the instinct that tells you right from wrong. Only it will most likely encourage you to fly this way or that; you just need to follow it.”
“Well, all right Quincy, if you say so.” Teselym Wylie stopped talking for a time and simply drifted happily over the city, and then, like magic, an urging in her mind willed her to fly north as quickly as possible. She followed the feeling, flying past all that was familiar until she came to Leeds. Her mind went so many which ways here; she could barely keep up. She was first led to a dank alleyway which smelled horribly of urine.
A drunken man was forcing a woman against a wall, and though Wylie could smell the scent of other men on her, it was clear this man’s drunken advances were not wanted. The woman was crying and pleading with him to leave her alone. Unsure of how to handle the situation, Wylie willed herself invisible, dove down, and grabbed the man by the head as carefully as possible.
His muffled screams from inside her mouth continued while she flew deep into Kinnemore Parish where she dropped him quite abruptly.
He stood up and staggered about, his eyes searching the skies for whatever had picked him up. The sudden flight had sobered him immensely, and he shouted apologies as he ambled around, trying to figure out where he was. Wylie laughed at his stupidity and hurried back to the prostitute she had rescued from him. She could smell her from twenty-five miles away, and as she grew closer, she spied the woman walking back to the brothel she must have called home.
The madam of the house gave her quite the berating when she showed up as Wylie could hear her crying and explaining what had happened. The man who had tried to take advantage of her had robbed her before doing so.
“Never mind getting her money back, you must balance good and evil, not fix every wrong in the world,” Quincy admonished, reading her thoughts again.
“How do you do that?”
“I told you, I’m a piece of the gods here to help you and balance you out. How can I do either of those things if I don’t know what you are thinking? Now, back to work,” he ordered.
Not that his prompting was needed. Already in her mind’s eye, Wylie could see a small child crying. She followed the intuitive directions in her head until she found him. At first glance, she thought he was alone, but then the scent of death invaded her nose. She shrank down until she was mouse-sized again and found a way into the house. Pneumonia, the child’s mother had died of pneumonia. Though how Wylie knew that was just as much a mystery as everything else she had experienced so far.
“Call it your god-sense.”
“What, now?” she asked.
“Special knowledge granted to you that no one else has because you are the Teselym.”
“Why do I even bother?” she muttered.
“I know it’s all a bit much, Wylie-girl, but you can pretty much be certain that over the next century or so, you’ll discover you have a great many amazing capabilities.”
“I beg your pardon? Century?” Assuming she had misheard.
“Yes, providing you don’t get seriously ill or injured, the Dragaleth have a much longer lifespan than humans do. Your human body will retain its youth much longer as well if that’s any consolation.”
“I can’t process this information right now; I need to help this little boy.” With that, she grew larger until she was the size of a large house cat. She appeared before the boy, opalescent as ever, and willed her scales to glow. The little boy backed across the floor to get away from her, evidently afraid of a cat-sized dragon that glowed white.
“Don’t worry William; I mean you no harm.” She put on her friendliest voice, speaking with the utmost gentleness.
“W—w—what do you want? And how do you know my name?” he stuttered.
“I only want to help you. Will you let me help you?” She came nearer to him, and he reached out his hand to touch her, petting her silky scales with childlike gentleness. He nodded in agreement to her question, and she grew a little bigger. Now the size of a dog, she sat next to him.
“Do you have any other family, child?” He shook his head. The sound of his stomach grumbling reached her ears. “Oh, you poor dear. Let us find something to fill that belly, and then I’ll take you somewhere safe, okay?” He nodded his consent.
“Are you an angel?” little William’s trembling voice asked.
“My goodness child, far from it. Just someone who wants to help. Come unlatch the door for me, and I’ll take you somewhere where you can be fed.” He nodded again, and she followed him through the house out of the front door. Once on the street, the boy began to shiver.
“Climb on my back, William.” He looked unsure but did so anyway, and when he was safely between her shoulder blades, she willed herself to grow larger and her scales to rise up around him so that he was protected from the elements of the wind and cold as she ascended into the skies.
“What do I do now, Quincy? Do I take him to an orphanage?”
“Good grief, no! Those places are positively dreadful. I happen to know a deserving family, follow my direction.”
“Very well Quincy, you know better than I.”
He guided her out of London, over the water, to Ireland, to a quaint little cottage that sat alone on an Irish hillside.
“This family has known great sadness over the past few years, having lost all three of their children to one sort of hardship or another,” Quincy explained.
“Then how do you know he’ll be safe here?”
“The gods have promised them no more loss.”
The statement caught her off guard and irritated her at the same time.
“Then why allow for the loss of children at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to protect the lives
of children than allow them to suffer needlessly?”
“It would seem that way, and though I don’t quite understand their reasoning, it does illustrate the point that children, until they reach a certain age, are not evil. Children are naturally good. They do not do things out of hate, spite, or evil nature. At least, the majority of them. To protect them all from the natural disasters that occur, or illness would inherently throw things out of balance.”
“That makes no sense!” Wylie contested.
“Yes, well... Take it up with them when you meet them.”
“When I meet them?” she exclaimed.
“Yes, after you die, you will meet them. Goodness, did you not know that’s what happens?”
Wylie’s head was spinning from everything she had been told.
“Let’s just take care of this young man and then we can talk more about what is to come,” she said. Not wanting to worry the boy, or have him find out too much, she came in close to the cottage Quincy had directed her to and landed gently on the ground, tucking her wings in tight, and scratching at the door with her claws. Then she shrank quickly to the size of a mouse again as they waited for someone to answer.
“Goodness… who could be here at this hour?” came a man’s voice from inside.
“I haven’t the slightest clue, Daniel. Hurry up… get the door,” a woman replied. The man named Daniel opened the door and looked out with a lighted candle.
“Well, what have we here?” The little boy Wylie had rescued stood shivering on the porch. “What’s your name, boy?”
“William.”
“Well, William… where are your parents?”
“I don’t have any. My mother died.” He was shaking, and Wylie wished the couple would hurry.
“Are you hungry, boy? Come inside and have something to eat.” Daniel put an arm protectively over the boy’s shoulders and led him indoors. From her position on the ground, Wylie could see the face of his wife, fresh with tears. She knew instinctively that William was going to be just fine with this couple. The door closed, and the outside went dark once more. Wylie grew larger and rose back up into the sky.
As Wylie spent the night flying nearly worldwide, helping those that she could, she discovered more about herself and her abilities. Her last discovery of the evening was her capability for flash-flying. She needed only to hold the Dracosinum in her talons as she thought of a destination and she was transported there in the wink of an eye.
The wonderment and excitement were overwhelming, and her human emotions barely had time to process the sensations of the night before the sun was rising over London, and she needed to get back home.
Quincy flew ahead of her, enlarging in size so that he could show her some features of the Dracosinum while they flew home,
“When the hand reaches this spot on the Dracosinum, it’s time for you to go home, or you will be stuck wherever you happen to be at that moment in your dragon form. Your human body will be like stone at home and unable to be awakened. We have learned from experience that could prove to be disastrous for your human body. To an outsider, it would look like you are dead.” It didn’t take Wylie long to piece together why that could be a problem.
Wylie stopped flying mid-air, hovering above the city. “Oh dear, I certainly don’t want that happening.” She held the Dracosinum in her talons and willed herself home, and the next moment, the soft musky scent of her father invaded her nostrils. She was in his room, her body lay exactly where she’d left it on the bed. Seconds later, she felt the tingling run through her body that she had felt when she had changed into the Dragaleth. She experienced the floating sensation again as she glided over to her body, landed on her chest, and the next minute she was sitting upright and breathing, as human as ever. She glanced around the room, aware of how bright everything appeared. Is it morning already?
“Not quite, Princess. We return every morn’ just as the sun is peeking over the hills. Just as we have for the past three weeks.”
“What?”
“You began transforming the night your father died.”
“No! It can’t be true!” But just like a floodgate being opened, the moment she said it couldn’t be true, she remembered back beyond just the last few nights. It was true and something else she now knew, the blue floating apparition she became as she transitioned from human to dragon was a flame. Not a ghost or an apparition, she had been experiencing the flame every night since her father’s death.
“Not a flame exactly, but certainly very like one. That is your soul, your spirit, your essence. It stays the same, your human form is just a shell. Your dragon form is just the potential you have, neither of these things is actually who you are. So the floating flame, as you call it, is your inner being. It’s you.”
“Why did I not know this?”
“Must I repeat the rule?” he said in exasperation. “You had not yet come into the knowing of your other half,”
“Yes, yes, okay. I get it. It wasn’t revealed to me until I knew my purpose, embraced my destiny, that sort of thing.”
“Quick one, aren’t you?”
“Quincy, I’m mentally exhausted from trying to absorb all this new information. I haven’t the energy to spar with you right now. I’ve got my human day to attend to and you can sit around and be snarky with yourself.”
“I shall return to the Dracosinum until you require my assistance once again.”
“So, your mouth does stop running at some point? Is that what you’re telling me?” she said with a bit of her own snark.
“Of all the female humans in all the land, you’re the one I get stuck with?” he retorted.
“I could say the same of you, of all the pieces of the gods, you’re the one I get stuck with? Surely they have a superior piece of themselves that would have done me a better service than running its mouth all the time.”
“Touché,” Quincy replied.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to attend to.” She slid off the bed and began to prepare for the day ahead.
Chapter Thirteen
Wylie had awakened feeling more at peace than she had in a long time. Missing her father was something she was gradually learning to deal with. Knowing that he had been a Teselym, working to balance the good side of a precarious world was a consolation to her. Now that it was her purpose as well, it made her feel connected to him somehow. It was almost like he was watching her along with the gods, and one day she would see him, and they would discuss all the marvelous things they had seen.
Wylie felt perfectly able to cope. She would get out of bed and live life just as adequately as before. She still needed to earn a living and eat. Those were factors all human life could be certain of. Today, it was something she was grateful for. Apparently allowing her human body to rest while she flew during her dragon hours, was all the rest she needed.
Life would resume as normal as possible, and Wylie would don her nearly knee-high boots just as she always did, buckling them tightly. She would make her way into Dobbinsturn and take care of Chaos and his stable residents.
Lord Adrian’s mournful eyes invaded her mind just then, and the vision almost stole her breath away. One of the drawbacks to being human. Wylie knew she must try very hard not to allow her affections to run away with her again. She would not allow Adrian to fall on her behalf. She prayed that he would stop coming to see her while she worked in the stable. She didn’t think she would have the fortitude to turn him away again if he did that. Her eyes grew misty at the prospect of not seeing him or embracing him ever again, but it was only right and proper. As a Teselym it had become even more important that she didn’t overstep her limits with him.
The realization that she now had only nine days to figure a way out of her housing situation loomed over Wylie’s head as well. If only Judith’s father was a reasonable man. If only he could see that he was being merciless, driving many families to move from the very homes that generations of th
eir relatives had grown up in. It made no sense to her. It was heart-wrenching to think that so many of her friends would be moving away shortly.
Get a grip on yourself, Wylie. You have to right this wrong. You will figure it out! She stood tall, after fastening her laces and smoothed her corset down, tucking it into the waistband of her black straight leg trousers, ensuring it fit her delicate frame tightly.
“Yes, I will right this wrong. I have to.” She snatched her well-worn, but serviceable, leather utility belt, buckling it at her waist and fastening the smaller strap around her thigh. She slipped the derringer into one of the pockets on the belt, certain she would never leave home again without it. She was grateful for the kindness of strangers and hoped to return the favor to Mr. Webster one day.
The journey to Dobbinsturn passed very quickly as she was preoccupied recalling memories from the night before and wondering about the little boy she had rescued. She sincerely hoped he would form a strong family bond with the couple she had left him with. Lord Adrian’s house greeted her with peaceful familiarity, and she found herself excited to see Chaos and his stable mates. Perhaps she would take Lilly out for a ride, she had not taken the mare out in a while, and she doubted Lord Adrian gave her sufficient exercise, as he seemed to favor Chaos.
No matter, I will attend to the others today. Chaos always has my attention. It probably has to do with my love for his master. She sighed heavily, wondering how she’d gotten stuck with the cards she’d been dealt.
When Wylie arrived at the manor, Lady Judith and Lord Jameston were out in the garden talking to Lord Adrian’s housekeeper, Miss Davenport. Miss Davenport carried a basket and was cutting flowers for the house. Wylie bypassed them without so much as a glance and hurried to attend to her duties. No matter what situation they were in at the moment, it still saddened her heart to see her former friend.
Wylie desperately needed to stay in focus today and not be distracted by other situations that were lurking. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead as she headed for the stable, wishing she was holding the Dracosinum and could just teleport herself there instantaneously.
The Dragon Lady (The Dracosinum Tales) Page 10