by Shana Abe
“You’ll have to leave.” I tried to find the words in French. “Se cacher. Se masquer. After this. All of you. For as long as the war lasts, you’ll have to hide like animals, because if they do this for one man, they’ll never rest if it’s all of them.” I swiveled about to find Armand. “Will you tell her?”
He looked at me, at her, and then at the trees. Slowly he shook his head.
“Armand,” I pleaded.
“She thinks you’re an angel.”
I laughed, and felt my own tears well up.
“She thinks you have some holy power to end this,” he said. “And you don’t. You don’t, Eleanore.”
“It’s not holy,” I agreed. “But it’s something.”
“It’s your life,” he said through his teeth. “And I won’t let you imperil it for this.”
I disengaged my hands from the woman’s, climbing to my feet. She sagged in place and watched me without blinking.
“Not for this,” I said to him. “But for your cause, it’s fine.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. This is our path, Mandy. This is where we’re supposed to be. You know I’m right, because you’re the one who charted it for us. Didn’t Jesse insist we leave last night? He knew we’d end up here. We’ve been tapped on the shoulder by the stars themselves. Gifted with powers we don’t yet fully even realize and have done nothing to deserve. Do you truly doubt what has to come next?”
He still wouldn’t look at me. I went to him and wrapped my arms around him, resting my forehead to his chest.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom—
The sparrow now was his heart. I covered it with one palm.
“ ‘All beasts must have courage.’ I’m not an angel of any sort. But what am I if I refuse this woman? What am I then?”
“Only all that I love,” he answered finally, low.
“Thank you.” I stepped back. “I’ll see what I can do to earn that.”
He spoke a few words to the woman, who answered in her raspy babble.
“It’s not a large company,” Armand interpreted. “The village is small and starving, so most of the soldiers moved on last month. Only a core group left. Rifles. Bayonets. Cannons. They plan to execute the remaining menfolk within the hour.”
“Find the rest of her people,” I told him. “Tell them they’re going to need to hide.”
He arched a brow at me, a right proper lordling once more. “I rather imagine they already know.”
“Good. I’ll be right back.”
And this time, for the first time, it was I who kissed him on the cheek.
Then I Turned to smoke, and the woman cried out (“Un miracle!”), and I swept over the top of the forest to find the source of all those shells.
She vanished in a spiral of pearly gray, gone from his view so quickly it was as if she’d never been there. It felt, oddly, as if a part of him had ripped away with her. As if he’d lost an arm or a leg or an eye.
An old saying from his childhood popped into his head: In the twinkling of an eye.
That’s how it was. Lora was gone from him in the twinkling of an eye. He might never see her again.
“God will protect her,” said the woman, crossing herself again.
“No, I was supposed to,” Armand replied, but in English, so she wouldn’t understand. He looked back at her now, trying not to hate her, her bony emaciation and her tear-streaked horsey face and the damned sprigs of daisies printed on her dress that might have once been pretty but were now just dirty and brown.
“Where are the villagers?” he asked.
“The men are being kept in the millhouse—”
“No. Everyone else.”
She nodded. “I’ll show you. This way.”
He followed her through the brush, ignoring his racing heart, ignoring how his body felt alien and sluggish. Ignoring, most of all, the constant, itchy whisper in his head that kept repeating, over and over, Shed this skin. Shed this skin. Finish this life in the twinkling of an eye.
They’d set up their artillery at the end of the main road that sliced through the village, not bothering to conceal themselves or move to a safer position because, after all, they didn’t have to worry about retaliation. Half the buildings were already in flames—the source of all the ash—and what was left was a cratered disaster. A scruffy yellow dog picked its way around the pits, tail between its legs.
The soldiers weren’t firing very quickly, taking the time to laugh and chat in between loading and shooting the cannons. There were about twenty men, but only half seemed to be working. The others were standing about and sharing what looked like jugs of wine.
The screams of the children had begun to die out. I hoped it meant Armand had found them, was moving them to a safer place.
One of the drinking soldiers spotted the dog. He pulled out his pistol and took a shot; the bullet struck a wall and sent chips of plaster flying. The dog yelped and tried to run.
I’d had no firm plan. I still didn’t. But when the soldier grinned and raised his rifle this time to aim again, I materialized as a naked girl right beside him.
“Bonjour,” I said, and punched him in the face.
I was smoke before the other men had finished whipping about, guns up. They weren’t laughing now, by God. They were shouting over each other, and the man I’d hit was shouting loudest of all.
I Turned behind them, standing against a stack of wooden crates filled with shells.
“Over here now,” I called in English, and ducked behind the crates when all twenty of them aimed their weapons at me.
“Cochon!” I yelled, which I was almost certain meant swine in French.
“Menj a fenébe!” I shouted next, and I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded insulting.
And just as they were pounding toward the crates—because, even drunk, they weren’t stupid enough to fire at them—I Turned again, stole above them, and became a dragon next to the cannons.
A dragon in daylight. I’d never done it before, but I didn’t have time to celebrate it now. If I’d glimmered by moonlight, by day I was afire, nearly too bright to behold. I lifted my tail (my lovely sharp tail!) and swiped it at the nearest cannon, flipping it over, the wheels of its base broken off, a nice big hole in its side.
I found the eyes of the dog-shooting rotter and sent him my own evil grin.
All the men screamed. About a quarter of them peeled off and pelted away. The rest began to fire.
Smoke, dragon, smoke. Two cannons gone. Three. I was Turning more quickly than I’d ever done, but still the bullets zinged by me, some bouncing off my scales. When they came thick as flies I knew I had to stay as smoke; a lucky shot between my scales could kill me.
I made myself sheer and silent and drifted over the remaining men, a natural part of the smoke-choked sky.
There was still one cannon and fifteen soldiers to go.
The problem was, now they knew what I wanted. Two men were hunched over a tall black box that emitted an unmistakable electric hum; one cranked a handle as the other shrieked into a mouthpiece.
The others had rallied around the cannon, round-eyed, fingers on triggers, scanning the sky.
“Listen to me! Listen to me, all of you!”
The horsey-faced woman was standing in the doorway of what looked to be a decrepit granary that had been long forsaken to the woods, medieval thick-cut stones eaten over with moss and wild ivy. She was holding up both arms, her raspy voice gone strident.
Armand couldn’t discern much beyond her. He had the impression of bodies crammed in the space past the doorway. Of children sniffling, old men with creaking bones, women in kerchiefs, babies squirming. The stench of fear and feces rippled out, engulfing him. He cupped a hand over h
is nose, then forced himself to lower it.
“We have been saved,” the woman announced, solemn now, and backed up so that Armand could take her place.
He took a step forward, straining to see through the darkness. Why was it so opaque?
Whoever was in there, they were quiet as a tomb. All he heard was breathing, theirs and his own. The rise of nervous heartbeats. An infant suckling. Blood pulsing through veins—
“Who are you?” called a woman, and as if her question had lifted the shadows from his eyes, he could see her now, see all of them, in a clear blue, almost otherworldly illumination. The darkness melted back and he was faced with close to fifty people of all ages and shapes and sizes. All of them filthy. All of them greasy with sweat.
But for one. There was one face that didn’t match any of the others. A girl in the far back, half hidden behind her grandmother, perhaps. She had long reddish gold hair and a face as white and clean as—
“Sweet mercy! His eyes!” cried someone.
“What is it? What is that light?” whimpered someone else.
“Is it witchcraft?”
“The devil!”
“Not the devil, but angels!” claimed the horsey woman at his shoulder. “Do not fear! I told you God would deliver us!”
“No.” Armand was tired and jittery and his skin felt like it’d been crisped with hot coals and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to lie. It was too late to pretend now, and anyway, what these people wouldn’t witness firsthand, they’d hear about over and over. “Not angels, not devils. We’re English. We are dragons.”
“Drákon,” gasped the redheaded girl, and slammed back hard against the wall behind her before she disappeared into thin air.
Disappeared. No smoke. Only gone.
In the twinkling of an eye, he thought absurdly, exactly as the crowd flared into panic.
Here’s the thing about cannons.
They’re worthless without their shells, aren’t they? Without the bombs to fire, they’re just big, bulky, useless contraptions of metal.
I Turned into a girl behind the crates, lifted a pistol one of the deserters had dropped, and began to unload rounds into the wood.
Chapter 22
I found the village men trapped in a large stone building with a waterwheel attached, a river running brown and stagnant beside it. It was a mill, about a mile from where I’d just taken care of the rest of their company, and the dozen Huns guarding it had obviously heard the commotion. All those shells exploding at once—it might have been heard all the way to Prussia. Even as smoke, it felt like my ears were still ringing.
They were armed to the teeth, these blokes, rifles pointing in every direction, bayonets flashing. I became a dragon in front of them, plain as you please, and whacked my tail against the ground.
It was almost as earthshaking as the shells going off.
Only one of them thought to charge me. The others, happily, simply scattered. A couple actually jumped into the river.
As soon as the lone soldier noticed he had been abandoned, he skidded to a halt, halfway between me and the potential shelter of the mill.
I stalked toward him, twitching my tail. He was stocky and short, a patch of blond whiskers on his chin. I opened my wings and reared up, and he was too dumbfounded to even fire; he only stood there with his mouth hanging open, gawking up at me.
So I flicked him with a claw. It knocked him back to the dirt in a stir of dust, his rifle jarred free. His helmet rolled away down the lane, hollow as a tin can.
He was out. I Turned to girl, ran to the millhouse door, and strained to hoist free the heavy slab of wood that sealed it shut.
“Bonjour,” I called breathlessly through the door. At that point it was the only French my scrambled brain could remember. “Bonjour, bonjour!”
As the first of the village men began to edge past the doorway, some small, shamed remnant of Iverson flushed through me; I was young, I was nude, they were all males, and I was supposed to be a lady.
I Turned to smoke.
Their fields were burned, their village was rubble, and even behind those stone walls I had no doubt they’d heard all the ruckus. Surely they’d figure out for themselves that it was time to flee.
Besides, I had a strong and uneasy feeling it was time for me to return to Armand.
I followed the fragrance of his blood.
In my smoke form, I didn’t have what I’d term an actual sense of smell, yet I could recognize certain aromas. Like everyone, Armand had his own unique scent (sea salt, pine woods, lemon and clouds and spice) … yet what I chased now wasn’t that. It was him but not him, more an essence than a scent.
It had a heat to it, a coppery tang, which felt to me like urgency.
I flew first to the last place I’d seen him, that anonymous spot in the woods where we’d run into the women, but of course he wasn’t there. So I floated around until I felt him again: a dull tugging to the west. That ominous sensation that I needed to hurry.
Ash settled upon the crowns of the trees twitched upward as I passed, an acrid dry flurry. I dropped down lower, into the heart of the forest, weaving swiftly around trunks and boughs, because he was down there somewhere and I was getting closer, closer—
I found him. He was slumped against a log, head down, along with a pair of girls with messy braids and patterned skirts. One was holding his face. The other rifled through the knapsack, half its contents strewn along the ground.
Blood stained his forehead, his cheek. Blood made a scarlet river down his neck.
The sight of it did something to me—and that scent, that dreadful scent, so copper-hot. Rational Eleanore vanished; animal Eleanore swelled with rage.
He was hurt. He was bleeding. They were hurting him—
I became a person at his side and backhanded the girl nearest me, the one holding him. She sprawled flat, red palms to the sky.
“Stay away from him,” I hissed, and lunged for the second girl.
She squealed and dropped the knapsack, clambering backward on her hands and heels like a stranded crab, but before I could reach her my ankle was caught.
“Lora! No! They’re helping!”
I was snared, hopping in place. When his hand fell away I stumbled forward to my knees, catching myself with both hands. I glanced back at him with my hair in eyes; he’d collapsed against the log again. He was breathing hard, watching me. The blood was flowing from a gash above his left eyebrow.
“They’re helping,” he repeated, making certain I understood.
I got up, pushed the hair from my face. I brushed the leaves from my body, then walked over to the girl I’d hit and pulled her to her feet. She was younger than Armand and I. Both of them were. I’d guess they were around twelve or thirteen, bony thin and fragile like the pleading woman had been.
Her cheek was pink. I hadn’t struck her as hard as I could have, but I’d still meant it. She stared up at me with her lips compressed and something that might have been hatred in her eyes. Or terror. Or awe.
“Sorry,” I tried. “Er … je m’excuse.”
“Pardon,” she answered, short, and pushed by me to return to Armand.
“What happened?” I asked Armand, following her. The second girl slunk cautiously closer, picking up the knapsack again. “Who did this?”
“Do you remember, once upon a time, telling me never to let anyone see me as a dragon?”
I stopped probing at the gash, shocked. “You Turned?”
Without me? Without me being there or knowing it or feeling it—
“No. But I told them what we are.” His lips smiled; it looked ghastly. “They didn’t appreciate it much. Bit of a riot ensued. Somebody has rather good aim with a rock.”
“You told them we’re dragons. Come to
help. And they stoned you.”
“Dragon,” sighed the red-palmed girl, as deeply and irrevocably besotted as only a twelve-year-old could be. She stroked her hand down his cheek and smudged the blood to his chin. “Un prince de dragons.”
“Well, my prince, it looks like you made at least one friend. Good thing you haven’t lost your touch with the ladies.” My voice sounded harsh even to me. The skin around his wound was shiny hard and swollen. Beneath all that gore, it was turning a nasty shade of beet.
If he lost too much blood, if the blow had injured his brain—
I kept talking so my fear wouldn’t show.
“Why’d they even believe you?”
“My eyes.”
“Oh. And then you … what? You fought them off?”
“Then,” he said dryly, “I ran.”
“You still have the pistol. Why didn’t you shoot them?”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Because I’m not like those soldiers. I am a nobleman. I don’t shoot unarmed people.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right gallant of you, your grand magnificence! Do be sure next time to remind them of how principled you are as they beat you to death—”
“Ici,” interrupted the girl with the knapsack. She lifted up the cotton wool, along with a roll of bandage, and trotted over. I took them from her with blood-sticky fingers and realized a few things at once: that I was the eldest and presumably most responsible person here unharmed; that despite my exasperation with Armand, my body was sapped and my reason gone to mush; that I had no clue what to do next.
Bind the wound, my mind instructed. That’s what I’d seen Deirdre do over and over, wasn’t it? Bind the wound, stop the bleeding.
I pressed the pad of cotton in place, seized the besotted girl’s hand, and made her hold it there while I wrapped the linen bandage tight around his head.
As I worked I felt something soft settle over my own shoulders and back. Jesse’s shirt, the one I’d slept in. The knapsack girl had crept up and draped it over me. I’d completely forgotten I was nude.