by Deiri Di
Mari flung the windows open.
WAAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAAAARRRWAAAAAAARRR
"TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF!'
Mari pulled open a drawer and grabbed a kitchen towel. She fanned the air with it, trying to push the smoke out the window and clear the air enough for the alarm to quit fulfilling its one and only duty.
"TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT OFF TURN IT-"
WAAAAARR-
The fire alarm silenced itself.
"What in' the Hell's blazes do you think you are doing, child?"
Something didn't smell right.
There was another smell, a new smell of – oh no the kale!
"Don't ignore me! I might not be your biological mom, but I'm the only mom you've got, so I won't be taking any of that sass!"
Mari flung open the oven.
The kale chips, specifically the middle bits, were still green, but all the outside edges were blackened beyond salvation.
Complete and utter failure.
She reached out with the hand towel to grab the tray out of the oven.
"You won't ignore me!" Cathy pushed her shoulder.
Mari staggered forward into her oven. Her hand, mostly protected by the towel, reached out to help her catch her balance with the racks. Her elbow was not so lucky. She could smell as well as hear the outer layer of her epidermis sizzle as it caught up against the oven wall.
"OW!" Mari yanked back. "Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!"
She rushed over to the sink, switched on the cold water, and stuck her elbow under it. The most important thing in the case of a minor burn is to put it in cold, not icy, water. The cold water conducts heat away from the burn and reduces swelling.
"Oh, don't be such a baby," Cathy said. She picked up the dropped hand towel and pulled the kale out of the oven, setting it on the stove to cool.
"You... I'm burnt! IT HURTS!" Mari shouted back at her step-mother. How could she be so callous? "IT HURTS A LOT!"
"You've ruined whatever you were trying to make. It looks terrible."
"You look terrible!"
Her elbow looked terrible. The burn was pretty small, though. It didn't cover a significant portion of the joint, which was good because if it did, she would have to go to the hospital even if it was minor. Joints were more fragile parts of the body.
"Mariposa! Don't speak to your step-mother like that!" her dad snapped from the kitchen door. "That was rude!"
Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh. No. No no no no no.
"But she-"
"There is no excuse!"
"But my-"
"Mariposa, there is no excuse! You apologize right this instant, or you will go to your room without dinner."
"I'D RATHER STARVE!" Mari jerked the tap shut and stormed out of the kitchen. She stomped her way up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her.
On her bed was a pile of pamphlets.
She picked one up, then another.
They joined the military pamphlets from every single branch.
"Miss Kitty!" Mari called out. "Come here, Miss Kitty!"
The dragon lifted her head out from Mari's sock drawer. She grabbed onto the edge of the drawer, perched for a moment, then launched. She wobbled as she flapped her way down onto the bed.
"Miss Kitty," Mari held up one of the pamphlets and pointed at it. "Fire."
Miss Kitty inhaled, the red cracks to her molten magic glowing brighter through the thin layer of her black leather scaled skin. She spat out a small bit of fire. It wrapped around Mari's hand.
The pamphlet caught fire.
"What a good girl!" Mari smiled.
She could still be burnt, just not by dragon fire.
She dropped it in the metal wastebasket and held up the next one.
"Fire!"
Three pamphlets later and reality checked back in.
WAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRWAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR
There was a fire alarm in her room too.
Mari flung open the window to her room. Argh! How could she have done that again, a second time? Why did these things keep happening to her?
WAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRWAAAAARRWAAAAAAAAAAARRRR
Her dad burst into the room, fire extinguisher in hand. He pointed it at the blazing wastebasket, and within a few seconds, the magical yet very real blaze was put out by modern science.
"What were you doing?"
Mari held up the next unlit pamphlet. "Burning these."
"What in the world made you think that was a good ide- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Her father pointed at the bed with the fire extinguisher.
Miss Kitty hissed and crouched low.
"A raccoon? You have a RACCOON in your ROOM?"
"Her name is Miss Kitty."
"Mariposa, this is the last straw! This behavior has to stop right-"
Miss Kitty launched herself at Mariposa's father.
Her dad squealed and jumped backward.
"NO!" Mari intercepted. She snatched the dragon out of the air, pulling her close against her chest. "BAD DRAGON!"
Her dad stood there, the fire extinguisher held out in front of him like a shield. After a long moment of silence, he spoke very quietly. "You think that raccoon is a dragon?"
Mari looked at him.
He just walked in on her, setting things on fire. If she told him the truth now, if she tried, yet again, to do something that always failed, he could decide to have enough. Instead of being there for her, like he never really was, he would have enough evidence of her mental illness to have her committed.
"No," Mari lied. "It's a cat."
"You can't keep a raccoon as a pet. You can't set things on fire." Her father said. "These are things you can't do."
"You're right," Mari nodded. Then she held out her burnt elbow. "Just like Cathy can't push me into the oven when she’s upset with me."
Her father looked at her elbow.
"You must be mistaken," he said. "That is some sort of misunderstanding."
The words were like daggers into her already bruised heart. The last bastion of safety, the father who was never quite there for her when it came to things he couldn't see, wouldn't be there for her for things he could.
"You misunderstood something."
The click of the door shutting behind him echoed the one that closed in her heart. This wasn't her home. This would never be her home again.
Mari was alone.
Miss Kitty yawned, canines glinting in the fluorescent lights.
[ 11 ]
"Don't let your hair drip into the fish tanks," Mrs. Brown said. "I don't need your conditioner poisoning my fish."
Mari pulled out Benjamin's green bandana that she had left tied to her backpack and used it to restrain her hair. Maybe when she jogged to school, she just shouldn't wash her hair. Or she could always steal her step-mother's hairdryer.
There was a new knot of anger in her chest when it came to Cathy.
It tangled itself in with the grotesque lump that was already there.
"What happened to your elbow?" Mrs. Brown gently lifted Mari's elbow, taking a closer look at the wound. "Child, why hasn't this been taken care of? This is a serious burn! Come with me."
Mari followed her into her office, a small cubbyhole at the back of the lamp-lit room filled with green and growing things. The office itself contained piles of paper that had no apparent purpose other than to take up space and not be thrown out. An avocado seed sat on the windowsill, suspended in water with three bamboo skewers stabbed into its sides.
The fat round end sat in the liquid and split open, a root crawling out of the seed and into the moist light.
Mrs. Brown rummaged in a drawer for the first aid kit.
"Tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened." What pertains to the family stays within the family, her father always said. Though Mari wasn't so sure about that anymore. Her step-mother pushing her into an open oven didn't seem like something she should have to hide.
Mrs. Brown gave her a look.
Mari had
been drugged, kidnapped, and stabbed. She had fallen in love with a boy who betrayed her, who was stuck in a place so dark that it threatened to pull her in with him. She had been imprisoned and nearly frozen to death.
She'd killed a man.
She'd watched another man die because of her dragon.
This burn, this little piece of unintentional violence, was nothing.
The things that had happened to her were so horrible and so far outside the "normal" human's experiences that there just wasn't anyone to talk to. People had a harder time processing things that they had no personal experience with, they just didn't know how to empathize.
No one would believe her.
Well, maybe Benjamin would believe her.
But he was too lost in his own mind to listen.
This burn, though, this little moment of darkness simply piled onto the stack of things she didn't know how to process, how to talk about.
Yet she also did.
"My step-mother pushed me into an open oven," Mari said.
That is all she had to do.
All she had to do was speak.
The words fell out of her mouth, taking their gravity from her heart and offering the burden to the other's ears. "I don't think she meant to hurt me, but she didn't act like she'd done something wrong. She got mad at me. Then my dad took her side. He told me I was the one who was wrong."
Mrs. Brown placed a warm hand on her shoulder.
"I can't tell you what to do or think about this," Mrs. Brown said. Her voice carried a sympathy, a warmth that Mari hadn't heard in a long, long time. "In our lives, we each face our own individual challenges. Some of them hurt pretty badly. We have to make our own choices about how to deal with them. Despite the fact that people often try, no one can tell us how to live our lives or how to deal with the pain and stress that enters into it."
"What you're saying is you don't know what I should do."
"What I'm saying is that you have choices, and it is up to you to decide which choice you will make." Mrs. Brown pulled her elbow under a bright table lamp and inspected it closer. "Your first choice, which I highly recommend doing, is to go to the ER and have a professional help you with this."
Mari remained silent.
"Your next choices are harder. You're a legal adult. You don't have to stay in an abusive situation, and you don't have to involve social services to escape it. But you can also choose to stay. You can let other people dictate your life, or you can take action to direct your own path. You can go to college, join the military, or travel with the Peace Corps. You can get a job and move out. You can keep your parents in your life, or you can cut them out and find a new way to live. You have all these choices. All you have to do is make decisions. You do that by thinking about what it is you want."
What did she want?
"My step-mother wants me to join the military. I don't want to."
"Then don't."
It really was that easy, wasn't it?
She was the one who got to decide what she did with her life.
"I don't want to live at home anymore. I want to live somewhere where people can't find me where I can get away from all of this and be near nature."
If she wanted to train a dragon, she needed wide open space.
There were just too many fragile people in the city.
Mrs. Brown grabbed a pad and wrote something down.
It was directions to an address.
"It's a self-sustaining collective commune called Wind Chimes."
What the heck was that?
"What is a collective commune?"
"A group of people who live and work together for the good of the whole. They share public space and activities, like gardens, gyms, and meals. The idea is that you can maintain individuality while also progressing together as a group."
Mari tried to make sense of the idea. "What about the competition? People can't work together. They have to compete for jobs and food and stuff."
Mrs. Brown shook her head. "We currently have the resources, technology, and knowledge so that every single person on this planet can have their basic needs met. You don't have to compete to survive. Competition can lead to new innovation, but active participation in a cooperative environment takes things to a whole new level."
"I don't need a new level." Mari hesitated. There was one thing she needed that she didn't have. "I need to be safe."
"You'll be safe there. They take in endangered youth. It is a participatory living situation, so you are expected to take care of yourself and be of service to others, but they won't contact your parents. Just give them my name, and I'll vouch for you."
"Thank you." Mari gripped the lifeline made out of paper.
"Now you take the rest of the day off school and go to the hospital."
Mari had every intention of doing just that.
But time ran out.
#
Chase waited for her by the oak tree.
His shoulders were hunched, hands shoved into his pockets as if he could bury himself down into the ground and sleep through the cold winter of his life.
Mari gripped her backpack straps a little tighter, squared her shoulders, and walked over to him. She could do this. She wasn't going to run away from a conversation.
Plus, she could still feel the oak tree.
She could feel it reaching up to the sun, shifting in the ever-changing currents of air that danced their way across the surface of the earth. She could feel its roots reaching deep and wide. She could feel the sense of calm, the sense of the present moment, of existence in the right here, right now.
The spell was long gone.
Touching it, accessing the magic instead of destroying it had changed Mari's understanding of the world. It had changed her. She felt the oak tree as if it was an extension of herself as if she was an extension of it as if they were both fractal patterns branching out in the infinite glory of life's creativity.
Her sense of self had expanded to include the tree.
At any moment, she could reach out and merge with it.
Now all she needed was to get through this without anyone else dying.
Miss Kitty slithered out of her backpack, up onto her shoulder, and launched up into the oak tree. She vanished up into the branches. The chittering of a squirrel ended in an abrupt squeal.
Mari tasted the rich iron of blood in her mouth.
The tree wasn't the only thing that was herself.
"You have to go," Chase said. "Please, you have to leave. They're here."
"Where?"
"They know the dragon is in the school. They found out that much on their own, but they don't know it is you for certain. They're searching the campus as we speak. You need to get out of here, now, right now."
Mari stood there and just stared at him.
Didn't she have more time? Why wasn't there more time?
Why didn't he just tell them that she had the dragon? Why didn't he simply use her to feed his demons, so they didn't devour him?
"Why didn't you tell them I have her?"
There was a more important question.
She knew without a shadow of a doubt that Chase was a dangerous man. He had protected her, sheltered her through the assassination attempts. He was intelligent. He knew more about dragons than she did. He was skilled in the ways of violence, and he knew where she lived.
If he wanted to, he could have simply killed her.
So why didn't he?
"Why haven't you just killed me?"
Chase looked at her as if all the stars in the sky had gone black and she was the moon lighting the world in the solitude of his darkness. The small flame of her heartbeat flickered in the mirrors of his eyes, reflecting back the only light in an entire life lived in the darkness.
How does one give love when they grow up without it?
"Didn't you hear me? Get the fuck out of here," he snarled.
Mari took a deep breath.
She could leave. Sh
e could run. Nothing held her back, nothing tying her down except for the slender thread that held her to the not quite an elf, not quite a human who stood before her. She could leave him behind, follow the lifeline of that handwritten address, and find a new way to a new kind of life.
Or she could make a different choice.
"Come with me?" she asked.
Chase stared at her, his eyes widening with shock.
He held his breath for one agonizing moment as pathways to futures he'd never seen before flashed in front of his eyes. Mari had made a choice. She'd chosen to forgive him, to accept him as a companion on the journey. She'd chosen to accept him and all of the turmoil and danger he'd bring with him.
Chase had his own choice to make.
A tingle ran along her skin as a wave of magic cascaded through the area.
They would never stop hunting him.
If he came with her, she would never find peace.
Without him, she could escape into the mass of humanity.
His choice was painted on his face.
He was going to let her go.
"Oh, how delightful!" A familiar voice cried out.
Mari had waited too long.
She should have run.
"You've been hiding something, Prince Chase," Lady Silvia smiled. "Once again, it seems a certain little toy is in the middle of the game."
The elven lady was ephemeral in her grace. Every gesture, every length of movement was another brush stroke in the artwork of her existence. She was beauty in motion. She carried cruelty in her veins.
Lady Silvia had tried to kill Mari before Vladmir could so she could win.
It was all a big game to them.
Lady Silvia's guards surrounded them. The elves weren't even bothering to try to hide. There they were, in full armed regalia, dozens of soldiers.
Yet, there was no one else around to see them.
"I'm not a toy," Mari said.
"That's right," Lady Silvia said. "You're trash we forgot to throw out."
"She is mine. Mine to keep, mine to let go." Chase stepped in front of her. He gestured, and with another jolt of magic, a sword extended out of the nothingness. "Mari, get the fuck out of here already."
"Your pet can run," Lady Silvia gestured. Another dozen soldiers stepped around the borders of the building. "But you can't. Vladmir, he was a true Prince. His blood was pure, clean. He would have made an excellent consort or a rather exciting King. You, on the other hand, are nothing more than a perversion. Are you prepared to die?"