How dare them? They took advantage of a moment of weakness to scurry away like rodents. That’s what humans do. Now the brothers are running toward their base to warn the others about me, and the humans will crowd the forest armed with hundreds of metal weapons and their unnatural chemicals. They’ll want to trap me in metal bars and rip me into parts, as they have done to many of my sisters. The other Witches have passed on their blood to me, and today I honor their deaths.
The humans will never catch me. I’m the howling wind. I’m the storm, and they’ll all die before they can take another breath. I stretch my shadows, run them thin and far, merging myself into the breeze. The leaves tremble as the wind tears through the trees. They crash, catching in flames, because I’m made of fire, and my anger burns.
I find the brothers easily, two dark spots in the greenery. I’m everywhere, and humans will never be able to hide from me again. The clouds condense in the sky in dark swirling shapes. I descend on the ground, the scorched grass and trees bending with the force of my presence. The brothers run and stumble on their feet. Rain pours over us.
I walk slowly. I have no rush. They’re mine.
The younger boy disappears under broken trees, but the older one stops. He turns to me, his fists clenched, his hair like dark water running down his cheeks. “You take me. Let Kyle go.”
“Humans never ask for permission, do they?” My voice echoes in the rain. “So don’t you tell me what I can take.”
“Please.” His lips tremble, either from cold or fear.
“You want my pity?”
“I want to save my brother.” He raises his hands up and kneels to the ground. “He’s young and innocent.”
“Your innocent brother has a collection of bugs. I saw him dissecting a bird once. You think I haven’t seen him in action?” I let my shadow fingers travel to him, cast him in darkness. “Humans destroy everything.”
“We do?” His lips curl in a grimace. “Look around you, Witch.”
Maybe it’s the spite in his voice that brings me back to myself, or maybe it’s the truth in his words that makes me stop. I collect my shadows, and the clouds clear.
Trees lie at my feet as far as the eye can see, smoke rising from their dead, charred corpses. Because I set fire to the forest with my anger, and then I doused it in water. Hot tears brim at the corners of my eyes, and that’s when I feel the heat in my center. Dark blood spills out of a hole in my stomach, a wound that could only be caused by a human weapon.
It makes no difference. I’m already dead inside. I killed the forest, and the forest is me.
The younger boy called Kyle, the innocent one, creeps out of the shadows of the fallen trees. He drops a metal weapon to the ground. It falls without a sound.
We all do.
Ariane Felix was born and raised in Brazil. She left her job in computer science and moved to Texas in 2011 to pursue a career as a writer. She spent her childhood rummaging through her brother’s closet—where she thought books came from—and now writes middle grade and young adult novels that bend toward the weird and the creepy.
Loyalty and Honor
Valerie Hunter
As soon as Corliss stepped onto the green, she knew something was afoot. Talking was prohibited, but glances and eyebrow waggles were exchanged at rapid rates.
Clearly it hadn’t been the day to skip breakfast, but how could she have known? Besides, extra sword practice was time better spent. She’d find out the news soon enough.
Corliss glanced at Ezry beside her, but he didn’t look at her. Usually he joined her early morning sword practice, but he hadn’t today. She was getting worried. The closer they got to Second Year, the more distracted he seemed.
Kerwin strode across the green, and everyone stood straighter.
“As many of you know, a dragon flew over the kingdom last night for the first time in two years.” Kerwin’s words boomed straight into Corliss. “Before the next full moon, I mean to train you in the ways of bleeding a dragon.”
Corliss grinned. This was how she would get herself on the top of the Second Year list, prove herself worthy of being a knight.
Kerwin lectured on dragons, and Corliss did her best to memorize every word. Some of it she already knew. Dragons only came out at a full moon. Their blood could cure almost anything, but it had to be taken from a living dragon.
She learned some things, too. A dragon’s fire was hotter than any forge, its teeth sharper than a sword. Bringing it down required enough arrows to ground it but not kill it, and then a brave squire to approach the downed dragon and bash it on just the right place on the skull to knock it unconscious before its exsanguination.
Corliss pictured it. She had a little trouble imagining the dragon since she’d only seen drawings, but she could easily see herself doing the bashing and the draining, being a hero.
Kerwin ended his speech with, “It takes a special squire to put down a dragon. One who is skilled and brave, patient and smart. One who truly embodies the knight’s code. I wish you all the best of fortune.”
The squires trooped off the green and then immediately began buzzing. Corliss turned to Ezry. “It flew over the boys’ barrack? Did you see it?”
He shook his head, looking miserable and exhausted.
Someone nudged between them. “Lucky you didn’t get killed out there, Ez,” Wati said in a way that implied he wouldn’t have cared if Ezry had. “If we need bait for this hunt, we know who to use.”
Wati kept walking. Corliss turned to Ezry. “What’s he talking about?”
“Later,” Ezry said, jaw tight.
They had aerial target practice with Kerwin. Corliss and the other squires had used the bows before, but at stationary targets or a heavily armored knight charging toward them. This time, to practice what it would be like to shoot a flying dragon, Kerwin had a man throw fowl from the high tower.
Corliss had been passable at the previous archery lessons, but hitting the birds seemed impossible. Fortunately, not many of the other squires did better, so she didn’t feel like a complete failure. Besides, they had nearly a month to practice.
The day passed without an opportunity to talk to Ezry. She couldn’t find him at dinner, so she sat with Adira instead. She and Adira had grown up at the same orphanage, had been the only two to have been accepted into the kingdom a year ago, she as a squire and Adira as a physician’s apprentice.
Corliss told Adira all about the dragon, but the longer she talked, the deeper Adira frowned, until finally Corliss was forced to ask, “What?”
“Dragons, dragons, dragons. You sound like Abba. Remember her? Working herself into a tizzy whenever she saw a horse?”
It was Corliss’s turn to frown. Abba had been all but simple. “I am not—”
“You’re worse! A horse was never going to kill Abba.”
“I’m not getting myself killed!”
“I had to copy over the castle death registry for the past decade. Do you know how many squires were killed by dragons in that time? Thirty-seven. And I bet every one of them didn’t expect to get killed.”
Corliss didn’t think that was a terribly large number, but she didn’t say so. Instead she said, “It’s my job.”
“Maybe. But you don’t have to sound so excited about it,”
Corliss didn’t respond. Adira just didn’t understand.
It was evening before Corliss finally got Ezry alone. “What’s wrong?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well. And then last night …”
“What happened?” she asked when he didn’t go on.
“I had a nightmare, and I woke up outside.”
“Outside the barrack?”
“Outside the castle wall! The guard found me at dawn, after he’d lost the dragon.”
She tried not to dwell on the embarrassment of that, or the fear. “I didn’t know you sleepwalked.”
“I don’t! Never before, anyway.”
“What did you dream about?”
> Ezry looked away. “I think it was the dragon.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe you really saw him.” It made her feel shivery inside to think of Ezry half asleep and defenseless seeing the dragon.
“I don’t think so. I’ve had the same dream for weeks, it was just worse last night. And I don’t actually see the dragon. I just … know it’s there. It’s like I’m flying with it.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound particularly frightening to Corliss, but then again she wasn’t the one who’d woken up outside the castle wall.
“Every time I wake up from one of those dreams, I’m scared,” he said.
She shook her head as though it might clear his words from her ears. They’d agreed that they’d be knights no matter what. Knights weren’t afraid.
“It’ll be all right,” she said, cutting him off before he could say anything else. “We’ll kill the dragon, you and me. We’ll be heroes.”
Ezry didn’t answer, but she pretended not to notice.
Every day after that, their training revolved around the dragon. In addition to the aerial archery, they practiced bludgeoning melons, pretending they were a dragon’s head. There was a knack to it—hard enough to dent the rind but not to break it. Most of the squires couldn’t perfect it, but Corliss was good at it, and so was Ezry.
They trained late in the evening, too, in darkness, so they’d be ready. Sometimes Corliss could barely contain her excitement, but Ezry continued to be morose.
“You still having trouble sleeping?” she finally asked him.
He shrugged, which she knew meant yes.
“Maybe you should visit Adira. She could give you a sleeping draught.”
“I don’t want to sleep more,” he said. “When I sleep, I dream, and the dreams—”
“Don’t say they scare you!” she interjected. She could hear a harshness in her voice that she hadn’t quite meant to be there, but she didn’t apologize. “Don’t you remember how we swore we’d be better than all of them?”
Ezry was an orphan like her, though he’d come from a different orphanage. All the other squires were the children of knights or minor nobles in the kingdom. They had been pages since they were small and seemed to know everything. They had wanted nothing to do with Corliss and Ezry, so the two kept getting thrown together. Soon enough Corliss had realized that Ezry might be a little quieter and clumsier than she was, but he had the same fire within, the same doggedness. They were going to be knights no matter what anyone else thought of them, and there was no room for fear.
“The Second Year list is in two weeks,” she reminded him. “We’re going to be at the top. That’s all that matters.”
“Is it?” he asked.
She grabbed his arm. “You know it is,” she said, and walked off before he could say anything else that would make her feel like she didn’t know him.
The day before the full moon, Kerwin called them to the green and assigned squads for the dragon patrol.
Ezry wasn’t next to her. Corliss hadn’t seen him all day. Maybe he’d finally gone to see a physician. He’d have to be better tomorrow, though. He couldn’t miss the dragon patrol.
Kerwin called her name as a bludgeoner and drainer, with Rayla and Wati as her archers. They were assigned to the eastern woods. Corliss tried not to think of having to share her glory with Rayla and Wati, neither of whom she particularly liked. They were good archers; that was all that mattered.
She didn’t hear Ezry’s name. Was he that sick?
After they’d been dismissed, she caught up with Amil, one of the least annoying squires. “Where’s Ezry?”
Wati shouldered in. “You didn’t hear? Your Ez deserted. Disappeared over night, the coward.”
Panic spread through Corliss. “He must’ve sleepwalked again. He could be hurt somewhere—”
“Not unless he sleep-packed all his things and sleep-made his bed.”
She wanted to deny it, to stick up for Ezry the way she always did. But there was nothing to say. He’d left, and he hadn’t even told her.
She shut away her thoughts. She could do that, almost. That was the focus it took to be a knight. To have an awful day, to be betrayed by your closest friend, and to keep going and pretend nothing had happened.
That evening Adira found her outside the barracks. “For you,” she said, holding out a small contraption with sharp teeth and a long tail of tubing. “I got it from the head physician. He uses it for draining blood-fever patients, but it should work on a dragon. Maximum efficiency. That is if the dragon doesn’t kill you first.”
“Thanks,” Corliss said, ignoring the part about possibly being killed.
“Did you know there’s a school of thought about where dragons go between full moons?”
Corliss had no idea what Adira was talking about, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so.
Adira told her anyway. “It’s thought that dragons are just regular people, and the moon transforms them.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
“I found two books about it, including one by a man who saw it himself. He wrote all about a dragon-woman he knew.”
“Fairy tales,” Corliss said. “Why are you reading about dragons, anyway?”
“I read when I’m worried. Sometimes knowing things eases my mind.” She paused. “It didn’t this time.”
“You don’t have to worry about me.”
“No? Because someone should. You want to talk about fairy tales? You’re the one who seems to want to live in one.”
“I don’t—”
“Do you know how many squires actually become knights? It’s a very small number.”
“I know that. I’m not an idiot.”
“No, but sometimes you need to open your eyes. You act like all it takes is some bravery and skill, and you’ll be all right. And sure, that’s something. But it takes luck, too, and when have we ever been lucky, Cor?”
Corliss clenched her jaw. “Luck got us here, didn’t it? We could have been maids or worse, like all the rest.”
“But we’re still expendable, just like we were at the orphanage. It’s the same for me as you. Half the apprentice physicians fail in the first year, and I know I won’t do that. But the rest get sent to work in the fever wards, and most of them die of the fever themselves. Just like all those squires getting killed by dragons—”
“It’s called life, Adira! Sometimes people die! At least we’ve lived first!”
Adira shook her head. “We’re just the kingdom’s puppets, and you can’t even see it. You’re just blindly loyal—”
“I can see just fine. I can see you’re a white-livered craven! Leave the kingdom if you want. As for me, I don’t need luck, and I’m not a puppet. I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”
Adira stared at her, and Corliss wanted to apologize, to tell her they were really meant for Ezry, who wasn’t here to yell at. Instead she marched off and didn’t look back.
The entire next day felt wrong. Corliss wasn’t scared, but she didn’t feel like herself. When evening came, she was the last one in the courtyard. It was her job to drive the wagon with its load of bottles. She imagined all of them full of dragon’s blood, herself triumphant.
She followed Rayla and Wati, who were on horseback. They rode to the edge of the forest, the full moon producing an eerie light. Rayla and Wati took their positions in the blind they’d already made. Corliss left the wagon at the forest’s edge and crouched, looking at the sky.
Time crawled. Corliss stayed somewhere between rest and alertness, ready to spring to action but in the meantime nearly sleeping.
And then a crash, so close it lunged into her ears. She reached for her sword, and was shocked that it was actually firm beneath her fingers.
This was not a dream.
Something was in the air above her.
Corliss couldn’t breathe for staring at it, had never seen anything as glorious, as magnificent, as that drag
on in flight, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
When the arrows hit, she bit her lip to keep from yelping. She had forgotten about Rayla and Wati, forgotten her own task. She let go of the sword and felt for Adira’s contraption in her cloak pocket, then collected jars and her bludgeon, all the while watching the dragon.
It had been hit, but it didn’t fall. The arrows rained on it, and it twisted, jolted, staggered, still aloft, bellowing now, first just a noise, anguished and indignant, and then a stream of flames that made Corliss flinch even though it was nowhere near her.
She heard another scream, human this time. Wati? Corliss squinted through darkness and chaos as the dragon let one more breath of fire go in the direction of the blind before hurtling to the ground, thrashing and writhing against the dirt.
Rayla and Wati had done their job. Corliss could hear Wati’s muffled cries retreating as Rayla dragged him away. It was up to her now.
She stood still for a long moment even as her mind screamed at her to move, to drain that dragon dry before it died. Little puffs of flames came out of its mouth with each tortured breath, and her stomach burned with the fear of it.
She moved, finally, because she was a squire, and this was her job. She wasn’t going to be some wash-up, some coward.
She approached it from behind, bludgeon tight in her hand. The dragon had seemed so large in the air, but on the ground she could see its body was hardly bigger than her own, though its tail nearly doubled its length. Its wings were impressive in span but delicate; she could see the moonlight through them in a way that reminded her of the stained glass in the cathedral windows.
She counted three arrows, one in its wing and two in its back, all of them quivering as the dragon continued to thump around. Was it her imagination, or were its movements getting weaker? Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to give it a quick hit to the skull ….
Just that quickly, the dragon reared, nearly hitting her with its wings as it bellowed fire into the sky. Corliss tried to retreat, but there was nowhere to go; the dragon was enormous again, a whirlwind of wings and tail and noise, and she was going to die, going to—
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