by S R Ahuja
He shook his head and pointed at an enormous gray and red boulder at the base of the fire side of the valley. Jade hadn’t noticed it before.
As she watched, she realized that it was actually moving, pacing back and forth just at the edge of the fiery side. In a moment, Jade could make out the swish of a very long, thick tale swiping back and forth with each step the creature took. On either side of its back there were two black wings folded against its body.
The dragon had large bumps along its back that led all the way up to its head. It was hard to gauge size from such a distance, but Jade felt certain that if she had been right next to the dragon, the dragon would have been able to fit both her and Peter in its mouth several times over.
As she watched the gray and red beast, he howled in frustration and sent up an enormous plume of bright orange flame straight into the sky. She understood now why Peter had landed them amongst the snow, but what she didn’t understand was what was preventing the dragon from barging over onto their side. Would the snow extinguish its flame?
“I see it,” Jade whispered to Peter, “but why is it just pacing?”
“Which one?” he whispered back.
“The dragon.”
He rolled his eyes, “Which dragon?”
“What do you…?” Jade trailed off as her eyes caught the movement on the white, icy side of the valley. Almost as large as its counterpart, there was another enormous dragon pacing through the ice and snow, but this one was pure white, so pale it was verging on blue.
When the fiery dragon was done sending up flames, as if to answer him, the ice dragon turned its head skyward, opened its mouth, and breathed an enormous puff of white clouds into the air.
“Faex,” Peter mumbled under his breath. Without saying a word to her, he grabbed Jade around the waist and rolled with her toward the nearest evergreen. Jade couldn’t even open her mouth to ask what he was doing because great mounds of snow and ice were falling into her face with every roll. They ended right up against the trunk of the tree, Jade lying flat on her back and Peter lying on top of her.
“Hey!” she finally yelled once they’d stopped rolling. “What…!”
But he cut her off. “Tace!” he whispered fiercely.
“What does that…?”
“It means stop talking.”
Just as Peter was speaking, she started to hear it. He crouched over her, covering her entire face with his arms, so she couldn’t see what was making the sound, but she heard it coming from all directions. It was a kind of swishing sound like the sound of a paper airplane flying over your head, but it was always accompanied by a thwack of something hitting the ground.
As suddenly as it had started, the sound stopped. Peter rolled off her, and she heard a few more quiet thwacks. She looked around. Everywhere, sticking up out of the snow, there were thin blades of what looked like glass. They sparkled in the dim starlight.
Looking up, Jade saw them woven through the branches of the tree above her. Finally, she looked at Peter, who was not paying her any attention at all. He was grimacing as he pulled at something behind his back. He grunted and gasped when it came free. He dropped it behind him, but Jade saw the splatter of red hit the white snow. She stared up at him from where she sat in the cold, wet snow, and her eyes grew round as dinner plates, and then they filled with tears.
“It’s ok, Jade. I’m fine,” Peter assured her even as he wiped the blood on his tattered shorts. “It was just the one, ok? It could’ve been way worse.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I swear, I’m fine,” Peter repeated.
Jade nodded again, and then she finally spoke. “You saved me.” It was barely more than a whisper, but she knew he had heard it.
“Don’t make a big deal about it,” he whined. “I was just keeping a promise.”
“Why does that dragon blow glass instead of fire?” she asked, looking back into the valley where both dragons were pacing once again.
“It’s not glass,” he said. He grabbed one of the shards from the snow at his feet and held it out to her.
She let him drop it into her outstretched hand. It was cold and smooth as she’d expected, but the moment it touched her skin, it became slippery. She watched the water start to drip over her fingers as the shard slowly got smaller and smaller.
“It’s ice,” she gasped.
Peter nodded. He creeped up to the top of the valley again, and Jade followed his lead. They both lay there on their stomachs in the snow watching the dragons pace. The ground was wet with snow, but there seemed to be something magical about the cloak because although she felt the wetness of the snow seeping into her nightgown, she herself never felt cold.
“Why do they just pace?” she whispered to Peter.
“They’ve done that forever. Long before even I was here they’ve done that, so we only have the legend now.” He paused like he was trying to decide whether or not to continue.
“Tell me the legend.”
“I don’t know…” Peter trailed off, smiling, purposefully teasing her.
“Please, tell me the story, Peter,” she begged.
“Oh, all right. Because you asked like such a nice little princess,” he patted her head gently. It made her blood boil, but she kept her mouth shut. “I’ll tell you the story. Legend has it, long ago, the two dragons you see before you were just small little lizards. No bigger than the palm of my hand.” He held out his hand to demonstrate. “They were both warm little creatures, not hot like fire nor coldblooded like a normal lizard, just warm like any other little baby animal. They were friends. Some legends say they were brother and sister; others say they were lovers. As they grew up, the two little creatures were very close. They had no one but each other for company. They lived for many hundreds of years and never really stopped growing, which is why they are as big as those monsters down there.” He pointed down into the valley.
“But as they grew,” he continued, “they became very competitive, always trying to beat the other one at everything. One day, the girl beat the boy at an ordinary flying race, just from one end of Avalon to the other. The boy was very sour about it, like always, and the girl had no trouble rubbing his loss in his face. She teased him and insulted him. Of course, the legends don’t say what she said, but it must have been something awful because when the male dragon opened his mouth to shout something back at her, all that came out was a ball of rage so concentrated that it became a ball of fire. It unfurled its way out of his mouth like a whip. The female was light on her feet, but she was not fast enough. The fire scorched her wings off. She couldn’t fly, but she ran from him as fast as she could.
“If you look, you’ll see that her wings never grew back,” Peter said, pointing down at the ice dragon below. Sure enough, she had wings, but they were skeletal and looked like they wouldn’t support a butterfly let alone a giant beast like herself.
“The fire dragon, realizing what he had done, immediately regretted it and went in search of her. Meanwhile, the female dragon had run far from her friend. She had run straight up the Draconis Mons to the very top. When she reached the top, she fell over the edge of this pit and tumbled down to the very bottom. The walls were too steep for her to climb, and she could no longer fly, so she had no way out. She had plenty of food and water, but all she could do all day everyday was to pace and think about the fire dragon. She began to seethe, letting her own anger grow cold and turn to hate. Eventually, it stopped raining in the valley as every ounce of water turned to ice.
“When the fire dragon eventually found her, she had allowed her hatred to fester so long that the process could not be reversed. She opened her mouth to breathe fire at her friend, but instead of fire, ice shot from her mouth like arrows. The fire dragon, who still had his wings, dodged the projectiles. He came to rest on the opposite side of the valley, face to face with her.
“The moment they looked into each other’s eyes, they were at a stalemate. The fire dragon could h
ave destroyed her with one belch of flame to melt her icy scales, and the ice dragon could have destroyed him with one perfectly aimed shard of ice to the heart, but neither made the first move. The fire dragon’s hot fury and the ice dragon’s cold hatred were rooted so deeply now that they could never be removed, but somewhere else, rooted just as deeply if not more, was the love they had once felt for each other. That love, however distant, stops them from making the first move to kill the other. So, they pace. Forever. Neither one willing to kill the other nor let the other win.”
Jade stared at the giant monsters below her. “How long have they been there?” she asked Peter.
“No one knows exactly. As long as the Nine Sisters have been here, since before King Arthur ruled the Northmanni World. Maybe since the very beginning.”
Her heart felt heavy in her chest. She felt pitied these beasts. Yes, they were huge, evil creatures that would try to kill her as soon as they saw her, but the way Peter told the story, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.
“Come on,” Peter said, grabbing her hand again. “Let’s go do something fun. Want to go swim with the mermaids again?”
“No, let’s stay a little longer,” Jade whined. “I want to watch the dragons.”
“They’re just dumb animals. They’re boring. You got to see them, now let’s go do something fun.” He tugged on her hand, finally pulling her gaze from the monsters.
“I don’t want to,” Jade said, and threw his hand away.
“Well, I’m not staying here,” Peter said firmly.
“You wouldn’t leave me,” Jade said confidently. “You promised, remember? You promised I wouldn’t get hurt.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t leave you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around here and do nothing all night.”
Peter grabbed her hand again and pushed off roughly from the ground. Jade wanted to tell him to wait, but before she could even open her mouth, they were in the air again, soaring away from the beautiful white and red giants on the ground below. She thought she saw the red dragon open its mouth in their direction as though it were about to blow fire at them, but the next instant they were both obscured by trees, and she couldn’t see fiery snout nor icy tail of them.
“Peter!” she called. She was certain he must have heard her, but if he did he ignored her and just kept flying. Possibly he didn’t want to bother slowing down just to hear her clearly, but Jade thought it was more likely that he didn’t want to hear what she had to say at all. She kept her mouth closed for the rest of the flight, allowing her anger to slowly rise to a boil by the time they had reached the castle once more.
When her feet touched the soft rug in her room, Jade removed her cape with one hand, flung it across the foot of her bed, and dove under the covers. Pulling the blanket up to her chin, she rested her head on the pillow and closed her eyes.
“Jade?” Peter asked uncertainly. “What are you doing?”
Without opening her eyes, she replied, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I’m sure you don’t really care anyway. You may leave now.”
“Why wouldn’t I care?”
Her eyes did open this time and she sat up to glare at him, “You don’t really care what I want, and you don’t even want to listen to what I have to say. You just want me to ooh and aah at the wonders you show me and then shut my mouth and leave you alone otherwise. Well, that’s fine. And that’s exactly what I’ll do from now on. Shut. My. Mouth!” She spat each of the last three words at him slowly, trying to let each word soak up the venom of her fury before they hit him.
“What? All this because I wouldn’t slow down to listen to what you wanted to tell me? Don’t be such a girl.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the window frame.
She wanted to scream she was so angry, but she knew that would wake Menelwen and possibly Sir Jack too, so instead she whispered.
“It’s not just that. This is the second time that you just took me somewhere you wanted to go, didn’t pay any attention to what I said or what I wanted, and then when you were done, you just took off. I’m just happy that this time you took me with you when you ran.”
“You were the one who wanted to see the dragons!” he said, stepping away from the window, unable to hide his frustration under a calm exterior any longer.
“Shh!” Jade shushed him. “You and I will both be in trouble if they find you here. Why don’t you just leave,” she said, falling back onto the pillow and turning away from him. “I don’t want to play with you anymore.”
She didn’t look at him again, but she could feel his absence when he left. Finally, she let the angry tears escape. She held her pillow to her face and screamed into it. That boy made her so furious. He was without a doubt the most selfish person she had ever met in her entire life. She couldn’t believe anyone could be as selfish as him. She made a vow right then that she would never leave the castle with him again.
Chapter XI
Unicorn
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After a few minutes of angry crying, she sat back up. She was too wound up to sleep, so she hopped out of bed and went to the window, brushing her face clean of the tears as she went. The ground was about thirty feet down. There was no way she could leave through her window, but she needed to get outside. Her anger and frustration were making her feel trapped. Quietly, she went to the door and peaked out.
Menelwen’s door was open, like always, but the lights were out, so she must be sleeping. The next door was much farther down the hall and it was closed. That led to the servants hallway. Even farther down, Jade knew, was another door that led to the knights’ sleeping quarters.
She ran back to her bed to grab her cloak and shoes again before returning to the door. She doubted very much if anyone would hear her tiptoeing through the castle, but fear held her foot a moment longer.
She didn’t know what the penalty would be if she was found wandering the castle, or worse, the grounds, in the middle of the night.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the hall. She walked as quickly and quietly as she could through the castle. Along the way, she passed several closed doors but didn’t hear any movement. She knew there would be two guards outside the front doors, and she guessed there would probably be someone, a servant or a guard, at the door from the kitchen into the garden. She slipped into the library and walked straight past all of the books to the very back. There was a small desk there and an even smaller window at the base of the ceiling a yard above the desk. Carefully, Jade climbed from the chair onto the desk. Standing on her toes, she could just barely peer through the window.
She undid the latch that held the window closed, letting a cold blast of wind in, and slowly hoisted herself up onto the ledge. Outside, it was about a ten foot drop to the ground. She lowered herself out of the window until she was hanging on to the outside ledge by just her finger tips, but even then she knew her feet were still several feet above the ground. She didn’t look down. With another deep breath, she let her fingers slip from the ledge.
Her feet hit the ground with a sudden jarring impact that shook her teeth in her head. Her knees bent, and she fell backward, falling onto her back.
Jade didn’t move for a moment, just feeling the cold air dance across her face. As she sat there, breathing in the cool night, she realized too late that, in her hurry to escape from the closing walls of the castle, she had no plan to get back inside. The window was much too high for her to reach from the ground.
he sat up straight, tasting panic at the back of her throat. Looking around herself frantically, she saw a very large boulder just a few feet away from the window.
The rock was as large as she was. She didn’t stop to wonder how or why it was there; she just counted it as her first stroke of luck that evening. She jumped to her feet and ran to the rock. Even with Jade pushing against it with all her might, the rock didn’t budge. She tried for several minutes to push the boulder just far
enough so she could use it to climb back inside, but to no avail. She stopped, fear rising in her throat again. There was no way Jade could move the rock on her own, but maybe she didn’t have to.
The Nine Sisters may not be teaching her how to use magic, but she was beginning to understand how it worked just from hearing the stories. There was magic in every part of the Land of Avalon, just waiting to be used, if she could figure out how. She remembered that day in school when Helena had dropped the tiny stone onto Edward’s head. Helena had been staring, glaring at him like her gaze could physically pierce his skin. Well, Jade was staring at the rock, but it hadn’t budged. Still, she couldn’t just give up. She had to be missing something. She placed her hands against the rock again and closed her eyes.
While she pushed with all her might, she imagined the rock moving forward – it didn’t move – she pushed with her hands while imagining a thousand warriors all pushing on this one rock – she thought she felt it shudder – a dragon was standing behind it and smashing it forward with its tail! She rolled the rock one inch forward. Jade didn’t pause. It took what seemed like hours, but eventually she had rolled it far enough that, when she climbed on top of it, she could reach the windowsill once again. Finally, she stopped to gasp in some much-needed air. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath until then.
Once her breathing returned to normal, she climbed up on top of the rock and peered into the library. Sufficiently satisfied that she would be able to get back into the castle whenever she was ready, she jumped down.
She looked around herself, wondering for the first time since sneaking her way through the castle what she should do next. She had the whole world, all of Avalon at her finger tips, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Back at home, in the Northmanni World, Lali always had ideas for adventures. Usually her adventures ended up getting Jade in trouble, but one of those adventures was just what Jade needed. She considered going to the nest of fairies in the Forest, but she knew immediately that that was a bad idea. The fairies were tricky little creatures, but they were all incredibly loyal to the King. He had hundreds of spies amongst them who would report back to him immediately if his daughter showed up in their nest in the middle of the night. No, that would not do.