Wind Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Why?”

  “To see your reaction, and to see the way you control anger when you’re under a great deal of pressure. I, too, expect a certain code of conduct from a mate.” He waited until I acknowledged his comment with a grumble of acceptance. “We should dive. Are you prepared?”

  No, I thought. I wasn't prepared to see what waited for me at the bottom. Still, I said, “Yes.”

  Firan looped his tail once around mine. I hesitated, then finished the twining to bring our bodies flush together. My stomach flopped as he closed his wings about me and we dove.

  Wind rushed by my ears, whispering a roar of hush, hush. When I’d first taken to the skies that morning, I felt as if I’d been throwing myself into a vast nothing, but now, after all that had happened over the course of this flight, I knew my initial impression had been wrong. I’d thrown myself into an ocean, where I was buoyant and supported.

  What I’d done before today didn’t feel like flying. Not compared to this freedom and unity, as the ground rushed ever nearer and I could make out individual tree branches.

  His wings strained to break our free fall. We'd been going fast, perhaps too fast, and I was very aware that if a wing tore, we could both crash. We levelled out and he said, “Go.”

  I released, fell a second, then flipped and beat my wings in time to catch a brisk current sweeping off the cliff side and pushing upwards, perfect to lock wings and glide with a pair of steel-eyed eagles. I glimpsed Caledon's color as he sprung after me. I adjusted my wings to soar over the lake, urging the wind on and on in its race to the other end of the valley. It was a high current, a stiff current, one that chilled despite the summer sun, one that rattled in my ears so I could hear nothing.

  At a glance underneath my belly, I saw I was losing Caledon. The taste of a spell-caster’s signature rode the current along with me. Flashing out my tongue, I inhaled it again. My own honeysuckle, yes, but also of mint and the scent of concrete after a rainstorm.

  Firan was a wind elemental, like me, but it was a surprise to know he had chosen to help. Why?

  I glimpsed him flying towards a slow-moving Mordon. If he was going to hurt Mordon while Caledon chased me, Firan was going to learn a thing or two later. But first: Caledon.

  He’d taken advantage of my slowed pace, and his nostrils flared with every determined row of his wings.

  Doubling my own effort, I led him in a hard, fast race across the lake.

  Now that we were in the open on a straight shot, his larger wings had the advantage against my dainty proportions. Besides this, he held himself with the poise of an endurance runner, every muscle taut, not a movement lost, someone who had experience with long flights and pursuits.

  Despite the turbulence I intentionally created behind me, he stayed inches from the fine tip of my tail. It was advance an inch, lose an inch, all the way to the edge of the lake.

  We passed over shrubs and short trees, were level with the canopy. Then I dipped down.

  Branches beat my wings and shoulders. I targeted the small gaps, relied on the winding path the wind whistled through the trees with. Branches snagged fine little rips into my wings, one knocked me on the back.

  Writhing faster, I avoided the rest as best possible, taking advantage of the thin bursts of breezes before they petered out of existence. I heard heavy crashing behind me, the sound of Caledon colliding with far more branches than I did.

  Pain battered across my body, but I wanted to stay here as long as Caledon would.

  A pillow of air guided me back into the open sky. Freedom at last, the wide open sky with its larger currents and uncongested spaces. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Everywhere hurt. Wing membranes stung with their hairline tears, an ache over the shoulders, even a dull throb on the side of my head.

  Caledon broke into the open air, bloodied and plainly enraged.

  My pulse jumped at the sight of him. If I’d thought I’d seen him angry before, I hadn’t come anywhere close to seeing the capacity he had for pure rage. His scales were raised along his neck, shoulders, and down his spine and tail. Wings fully extended, the membrane was stretched too tight. His scales too raised. Intimidating as it was, he’d damaged his ability to master the sky with increased wind resistance and a reduced capacity for filling his wings.

  Tauntingly, I called at him, “Mordon would have waited up here for me to come out,” and then I sprinted across the lake again on a swift air current.

  Caledon was close behind.

  Some of his scales had smoothed against his hide, others were still raised to snag against the current. His wings he had relaxed, but not enough. As I watched our shadows dodge and dart over the uneven mountainside below, I knew it was a matter of time before Caledon regained control over his emotions. In this flat run, he was destined to eventually overtake me.

  The pain in my whole body was slowing me down. Though I'd started with an advantage, Caledon got closer. And closer. My heart pounded. My muscles screamed. I could feel how near he was to grabbing my tail.

  I'd flown us low over the lake to catch its currents as air moved over the water's surface. Any fault at this height would be dangerous. There was a thin curtain of air over the lake, but it was a downdraft as warmer air from above lost heat to the water below.

  How cold the water was, I could only guess that in the shallows it was fairly warm, but in the dark pit of its glacier depths it would be just above freezing. Temperatures which were dangerous for dragons.

  A glance over my wings. Caledon had closed the gap and was advancing along my tail.

  A bolt struck out of the sky, a blur of motion that I caught out of my peripheral vision. It hit Caledon cleanly between the shoulders. He couldn't even make a sound as his wings crumpled and he swooped, his victor giving a keening cry as he banked towards me.

  Only a wind drake could move like that.

  Firan.

  It took Caledon a mere two seconds to fill his wings again, but that was too late. His head struck water. He lost momentum, wings beating against the water with wet slaps. Floundering, gasping, because the cold was a shock. By the time he got up, I would be gone with Firan.

  Unless Firan had done anything to Mordon, that is.

  I waited for the green to near, feeling the wind stiffen as we advanced from the coldest part of the lake. Air was drawn towards the shallows, drawn towards the heat.

  Firan came alongside me, keen eyes studying my body. “Are you ready for another dive?”

  My temper flared at the question. I snapped at him. “I saw you go for Mordon. What were you doing when you left?”

  To my astonishment, Firan laughed. “Giving you the chance to claim your favorite. I transferred energy to him. The favorite is always badgered and heckled, but everybody likes to see a happy couple in the end. So, can you take him on another dive?”

  Mordon's appearance cut off my answer. I rushed to him, thrilled that he was fine, that though he was tired, he was less beat up than Caledon was after his encounter with the tree canopy.

  For a few seconds, I broke off from my course and returned to Firan, so elated that instead of thanking him, I gave high, excited shrieks. Firan laughed, and I swooped for Mordon again. He grasped me by the claws and drew me against him.

  I rotated my head to Firan. “Why?”

  “We are all together in this world, and we need to be good to one another. If you can make life a little better, we will thrive instead of survive.”

  “I've heard that before.”

  “It comes from an old philosopher. Now, on with you.”

  Mordon beat his wings and started us for a final flight.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  With the victor goes the spoils, and so it was with me.

  I knew that wasn’t exactly the way it was phrased, but whatever. Tradition would demand that I fly home. We landed to use a portal instead, going to Gudovan’s lodge for reasons I wasn’t wholly sure of and was t
oo exhausted to care about. In the hall, those who had met me emerged to speak for the few minutes between my arrival and my departure.

  Caledon had disappeared. I didn’t know where to, and I didn’t care.

  “That was an intense sprint,” Firan said. So it seemed; everyone who had participated were wearied and many had bruises spanning their arms and necks. One had a black eye. It seemed that there were a few fisticuffs to determine the order of entering the flight. Glyka smiled as I drank the water she offered.

  “An acrobatic flight brings on the hunger,” she commented casually.

  I gave a chuckle. “I’m so tired,” I said. “I could fall over now.”

  “Hold off on it as long as you can,” she advised mildly. “Or you’ll be sleeping throughout the day for a whole week before you can correct it.”

  The others came to see me in high spirits. Gudovan plainly did not want to see me go, and made a scene of helping Mordon with his portal. The way they treated him was intriguing, a mixture of pranks and badgering and laughter. What should have been a ten minute job turned into a full hour, with frequent delays stemming from mischief-makers dodging in to erase sections of his chalk. Progress was finally made when I stood guard with a walking stick to strike any grabby hands. It worked well enough until a stiff breeze cut through the chalk.

  “Firan! Stop that.” I brandished the stick in his direction, but knew that I couldn’t advance on him without leaving Mordon open to others.

  “What are you going to do to force me?” Firan asked, his eyes merry with laughter.

  “You’ll lose your rank for the second egg, Uncle Firan,” Mordon said without ever looking up from fixing the lines.

  The threat made Firan go serious. “You are definitely doing uncles?”

  “If Fera wishes to clutch-bear.” Mordon moved onto the final section without any further annoyances.

  “Second egg?” I asked.

  “He earned it. Do you think the honor should go elsewhere?”

  Seeing Firan’s expression, I smiled and admitted that I didn’t know the importance of the second egg.

  “The firstborn will be largest, the second will be golden or bronze in eggshell as well as scales. It’s considered to be desirable,” Mordon said. “It seems the least we can do, considering that his influence on the flight.”

  I did agree with him. Firan had been instrumental today. And he did seem pleased with the egg assignment.

  How many other egg placements did Mordon have in mind? I didn’t want to hold this discussion in the middle of the uncles in question. One thing I did feel was relief. The concept of swollen ankles and morning sickness associated with live-bearing did not appeal to me. Nest and Nieve would ensure that everything went fine, though I wasn’t sure how to feel about being confined to my dragon body for so long. Quiet in the room calmed me, made my eyelids droop and my legs wobble.

  After this threat to demote Firan’s egg, the other males quickly realized that they’d best help Mordon along. In next to no time, the portal was ready, good-byes were said, and we were returned to my fire-watcher home where I struggled to stay awake.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I made coffee. Coffee so strong it put a lot of espressos to shame. And I took it by the shot glass because it felt like the right thing to do. Mordon joined me, wincing at the harsh bite of the drink. He'd been hiding out in the spare room in order to follow me, and he'd been returned at the foot of my bed as if he were a cat who enjoyed attacking feet. It didn't seem real, but I still had the letter.

  A bird sang outside, heralding the arrival of my coven.

  As soon as we returned home, I called for a meeting with Barnes, Lilly, and Mordon. We’d been in my house for all of three hours before the others were available to show up. My body ached, my shoulders and arms with a fierceness that made lifting anything feel as if my muscles had been turned to jelly. Still, I tried to focus on the others and keep my mind alert. Mordon brought me tea. It tasted herbal, and familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger down on where I’d had it before.

  Barnes put Death's invitation down. “The date is tomorrow.”

  “I know,” I said. “We've got to find out what will happen, and do our best for damage control. What is it that’s even happening tomorrow? Is there anything on the schedule?”

  Barnes nodded. “It’s the Full Sturgeon Moon Fair and Carnival. There will be two companies of carnies there, and all the local booths and businesses.”

  I imagined all the hazards that could bring with it. “Sound like a perfect recipe.”

  Lilly frowned, the action wrinkling her nose a little bit. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Death’s big party at a carnival? What else do you think mass murder looks like?”

  Lilly blinked in astonishment. Not at what I'd said, but how I'd said it. Perhaps a little too surly. She said, “Shouldn't we be stopping Death instead?”

  I reminded myself it was a reasonable assumption, even I'd wondered it before recent events. “Death doesn't kill people. He's a ferryman. He takes spirits and shows them to the place all other spirits are. If he doesn't do it, then we end up with lost spirits in the form of ghosts, poltergeists, hauntings, who know what else. The ones you know about are a result of his lateness or them refusing to go. Imagine if he didn't take them.”

  “I get the picture,” Lilly said. “What are we to do now? We can't call off the event. Even anonymous tips aren't all that anonymous. Besides, if someone is determined, they'll just reschedule.”

  “We need to find out what is potentially so dangerous. In the likelihood that we can't find that out, we need to be prepared with an evacuation plan—a safe one.”

  Barnes nodded. “We know the Market in a panic. Madness.” His handlebar mustache twitched. “Bottleneck.”

  Mordon was stroking his chin. “An ideal kill zone.” His eyes met mine briefly. “We need to set up exits.”

  “Lilly?” I asked. My position as being banned from the Market would make advanced preparation unwise for me.

  She nodded, twisting a curl around her finger. “There's a safety commission who would probably agree to do it if we let them brag about the benefits of caution and regulations. Cole would not like it, but why would he object?”

  “I can call in favors to check the grounds beforehand, but first I want to know one thing, Fera. Why? Why do you think this will happen?”

  A pause settled over the room. It was now or never. “Do you remember I asked about Cole's son?”

  “Taken ill at an early age. Disappeared. Why?”

  “Because I've seen him. Barnes was with me, but you weren't, Lilly.”

  She nodded. “Barnes wrote me.”

  I continued, “And I've told Mordon. The short of it is, Cole has dedicated at least a lot of his efforts to waking him up. Right now, he's working on the theory that by physically holding Death hostage, Cole can demand the ferryman return his son's soul.”

  Another silence rang out between us. Mordon saw the flaw immediately, though he took his time before saying, “But Death would be both hostage and courier. It can't work.”

  “No, it can't. But everyone assumes that Death kills. The concept behind the hostage idea isn't illogical until you know Death and the ferryman are the same entity.”

  “Tell me how you reached this conclusion,” Barnes said.

  “When we saw the boy, there were traces of Unwrittens everywhere, but Cole clearly went to great lengths to save his son. Obviously, Cole thought that he had exhausted all normal, legal recourse and pursued instead his last hope—the lost magic. As a distraught father, he did not care he was indulging in dark magic. If he could cure his son, he would be happy.

  “Unfortunately, the very nature of what the Unwrittens did was meant to be erased as well as how to do them. Forgotten. Scratched from history, and then from legend. Cole found out the hard way that Unwrittens were largely misrecorded, sometimes what the purpose of the spell was became misplaced
or unrecognizably transformed. He had to experiment to discover the real spells and what it was that they did. Most, if not all, of what he's done in recent events were mistakes on the misguided path to save his child.”

  “Wait,” Lilly said. “You can't mean that. Not with everything he’s done”

  I shrugged. “He may have intended some of it, but trust me, those Unwrittens are nearly impossible to predict.”

  “He created a giant conglomerate Immortal out of composite souls, Fera.”

  “Not intended.”

  She pouted and continued, “Destroyed the Wildwoods.”

  “Another Unwritten gone wrong along with manipulation from his Immortal.”

  Lilly crossed her arms. “Don't tell me he didn't intend to kill Railey?”

  “Nope. She stuck her nose into a dangerous experiment and took me with her. Actually, the only thing I think that he intended to do was bring Death to life.”

  “In order to ransom him in an exchange that is impossible to actually do.”

  I resisted the urge to wave my arms around to make a point. “But Cole doesn't know that. He believes it will work, and since Death escaped him thanks to us, Cole now thinks the best way to trap Death is by staging a mass murder. Death must go, even if he knows what is planned for him.”

  “Isn't that a bit extreme?”

  Barnes said, “Not if he can blame it on another party. It's a two-fer-one, knowing him.”

  I said, “And if he tried killed a small number of people—”

  “He has.”

  “—then he must know Death is either very sneaky or calculating enough to let a couple souls wander as a price for his own freedom. The Greater Good argument.”

  Barnes frowned. “So, Cole must make the price too high for Death to ignore. How many wandering ghosts would it take before Death feels he has to be there to help out however he can?”

  I nodded. “We have to minimize the loss of life, and stop Cole from capturing Death.”

  “All while Leif is gone and you're wanted for arrest.”

  Even I had to admit that wasn’t going to be easy.