by N. M. Howell
Raesh’s mouth hung slightly open to complete the look of utter bewilderment on his face. And for the first time since Andie had met her, Carmen was at a complete and total loss for words. Both she and her cousin simply stared at Andie dumbfounded.
“I’m sorry. I guess I could’ve said hi first. It’s just that I’ve been holding it in all day and didn’t have anyone to tell, so I figured I could tell you two here at dinner. Then, I was waiting on you to show up, Raesh, and when you came in my wall just kind of crumbled and I spat it out. I’m really sorry. It’s just that even though you’re both so different from me, you both seem like you can be trusted.”
Carmen’s look changed some, becoming more of a look of warmth, but with deeper concern than confusion. But she still couldn’t speak.
“Okay,” Raesh finally said. “How can we help?”
“Really?”
“You said we look trustworthy, right? Trust us,” Carmen said.
“Thank you,” Andie said. She tried to formulate her thoughts enough to explain what was going on to them without sounding like a complete crazy person. “Okay, so. I’ve been having these dreams. Dreams unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I used to call them weird, but they’re more than that. They’re like something from another life. Totally terrifying. And I mean real, paralyzing fear. In the dreams, there are these voices. These otherworldly voices. I don’t know what they’re saying or what they want, but when I was down in the archives today, I heard those same voices making the same whispers. They were behind some door down there. I didn’t see who was making the voices or anything, but I know what I heard.”
Andie took a breath and let it out slowly as the weight of what she had been hiding lifted from her shoulders. She then added, “don’t bother mentioning that the archives are a restricted area. I know that already.”
Raesh and Carmen shared a look and then watched Andie. She waited for one of them to speak.
“So, what do you think?” she pressed when no one spoke.
“Honestly? I don’t want to make light of your problems, but I think maybe you’re reaching,” Carmen said. “And just hear me out. I think you’ve got a lot going on back home and in your past, and you also just moved to Arvall—which we all know is not kind on the nerves—and started your first year at the Academy. Not to mention, the school board’s little entrance exam. I don’t deny that you might’ve heard something down there, but I don’t think it was voices from your dreams. I think you’ve been expecting too much of yourself.”
Andie sighed. Of course, they didn’t believe her.
“Andie, I’m more worried about you getting in trouble,” Raesh said. “First, you missed almost two weeks of school, then you’re looking up books you shouldn’t be, then you’re walking around a restricted area. I think you’re pushing your luck. And I agree with Carmen. I think you’re just under tremendous strain.”
“So, neither of you believe me?”
“It’s not that we think you’re crazy or anything, it’s just that you’re asking us to believe something pretty big,” Carmen said.
“If you hear it again, or if you find something, let us know,” Raesh said. “And above all, watch yourself.”
At that exact moment, Marvo happened to be walking by. When he heard Raesh cautioning Andie, he stopped dead.
“What does he mean ‘watch yourself?’” Marvo asked.
Even though she barely knew him, Andie suddenly felt like she’d disappointed him. He was beginning to feel like the extension of her dad in Arvall City. She couldn’t even meet his eyes.
“Andie, if you’re into something you shouldn’t be, you need to step away. I’m not your dad, and I’m not trying to be, but you’re beautiful and bright and you’ve already had so much happen in your life. You’re here to go to the Academy, learn, and go back home to be with your father. Anything outside of that is a distraction. I don’t want to meddle in your life, and I know you’re an intelligent and capable young woman, but I’m asking you now, to stay within the lines. Your father made me promise to watch over you. I know you don’t want to upset your father.”
“You’re right,” she said, feeling even worse. “I’ll be sure to watch myself.”
Marvo didn’t move. He just kept watching Andie, probably waiting to see if something would show in her face to indicate that she was being less than truthful. Yet, when Andie finally met his gaze, he seemed convinced. He smiled the same warm smile his son had inherited and walked away.
Inside herself, Andie wondered if she was truly going to watch herself or if she had been lying to everyone, including herself.
Or maybe she truly was just crazy and overwhelmed, and she had imagined the whole thing. Somehow, she doubted that.
As night crept nearer, Andie decided to lay down early. She’d been trying to study practically all day, but her mind simply wouldn’t focus. She couldn’t stop thinking of those voices ringing through the dark of the archives. Talking to Raesh and Carmen had assuaged her some, but she couldn’t tell if it was the two of them that helped her or the fact that she talked to other human beings. On the other hand, the conversation had actually made things somewhat worse. They’d rattled her so much that now she was unsure of what she’d heard. It was an institution of magic, after all, and it was centuries old. Those voices—were they even voices, or just noises in the walls? —could have been anything. They might even have been real people. She’d never opened the door. What gave her the right to draw conjectures?
Of course, none of that worry went away just because she wanted to sleep. For a long time, she lay there, anxious, confused, and yet still incredibly hopeful. She really wanted to start over, to let go. She was still holding onto hope that she would find some books in the University that would tell her something about her past and her blood. She wanted to know more about herself, her powers, and who she was supposed to be. Maybe then, she could decipher her dreams. And whether those had been voices or not in the archives, she wanted to know more about them, too.
She reached under the bed to retrieve Dragons. She flipped through the book, skimming the mix of legend and fact, tracing the incredible sketches of dragons with her fingers and feeling a void in her life where the totality of the history of her bloodline should’ve been. There was something in the back of the book, too. A sort of makeshift family album that her dad had put together for her just before she left. She flipped through those pages, too, stopping once and again to read some of the words her mother had written on a picture or in a letter. She looked through the pictures, seeing herself as she truly was in all her dragon blood glory; colored hair and eyes and all. It was the dragon side she’d been forced to keep locked away inside. She almost didn’t recognize herself anymore.
Sometime later, she finally fell into an uneasy sleep.
Chapter Eight
Time passed. Hours became days and days became weeks. Andie settled into a rhythm and things began to go well. There was school, Raesh, Carmen, Marvo, breakfast and dinner at the restaurant, and a lot of good days. The time passed quietly. Andie finally got to a place where she could focus on her studies and do good work. She never missed class, never turned in an assignment late, and had gotten excellent marks in every class. She was slowly meeting more and more new people, and even knew quite a few well enough to call them friends, but Raesh and Carmen were her best friends. They were simply right for her.
Things with her dad at home were pretty good, too. He hadn’t gotten any worse and had even improved some, and they’d been in contact much more. The only part of her life that still wasn’t right was the voices she’d heard. For the most part, she’d been able to move on from the things she couldn’t change, but there was something about those voices that just wouldn’t let go of her no matter what she did. She’d gone back to Leabherlann many times, and even tried to get back into the archive. She never found anything, though.
She’d nearly given up, then something happened in her History of Modern Magic cl
ass.
“Good morning, ingrates,” the professor sneered. “I want you all to know how thrilled I am to be here with you, again, for another wonderful day of unrewarding and futile attempts to give your minds shape and your lives purpose. Look at you, already burnt-out and you aren’t even old enough to have been really chewed up and digested by the filthy, malicious, maggot-ridden world that wants you dead or dying. Cheers.”
The professor for that class was cynical, to say the least. He also often smelled of booze. He was a self-proclaimed nihilist and he clearly hated his job. It was anyone’s guess why he continued to come to work. He was so uninterested in his students that he had never even allowed them to know his name. He cared nothing for order or work in general. He alternated between long periods of no classroom work or homework at all to consecutive days of grueling, soul-crushing work. He was undeniably brilliant, but arguably the most unpleasant, offensive, pessimistic, and angry person in Arvall City. Of all Noelle, even. Maybe even of Shaeyara, itself.
“So, I’m sure you’ve been wondering about this giant blank space in your syllabi. That is, if you haven’t been rendered completely worthless by your inability to comprehend the nature of this course and your age group’s general bewilderment. We’ve now come to the point in our class, excuse me, my class where it’s time to learn about dragons, dragonborn, dragon blood, dragon magic... so on. All things dragon. Yay.”
Andie couldn’t believe it. She sat bolt upright in her chair and almost screamed from sheer excitement. She’d spent weeks scraping everywhere for even a hint of dragons and now it looked as if everything she ever wanted to know was about to be delivered to her without the least effort.
“Oh, by the way, the school board and the city council and the major governor and the chancellor and every other person whose designation makes them feel important doesn’t want you to learn this. Screw them.”
Andie was ecstatic. This was one of the reasons she’d most wanted to come to school. She didn’t think she could sit still, she was so excited. She readied her pen and notepad.
“Let’s start with a basic summary even you degenerates can’t fail to grasp. Dragons were gigantic, ferocious, man-eating beasts who plagued the world for thousands upon thousands of years. During their time, there was no such thing as peace. No such thing as safe. They took countless lives for no reason at all. They were a curse and demonic presence on the earth, and the best thing they ever did for us was die off from inbreeding.”
Andie’s excitement faded. She’d been so overzealous that she’d actually written down everything up to “safe.” She couldn’t understand what he meant. She thought he had to be playing a sick joke or twisting the truth.
“The worst thing they ever did was manage to get their blood into human bodies, creating the most obscene and dangerous abominations in history. I’m talking about an entire race of people who were angry and evil. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even people. You societal rejects aren’t too much better, but who am I to judge...”
This wasn’t right. She just kept thinking to herself that this wasn’t right.
She knew her people, her heritage, had been persecuted and hunted throughout history. She knew that her having dragon blood magic was enough to get her killed. But she had been sure, so sure deep in her heart, that there must have been some great mistake in history. How could an entire race be evil? She didn’t feel evil. She knew her mother wasn’t evil. She was sure there was more to it than what the world has been led to believe. There must be.
“Luckily for you human stains, the world was purged. The dragons and their foul human spawn were all eradicated. The dragons were killed by some mysterious method that has been lost to history, but we know how the dragonborn died. Hanging. Drowning. Evisceration. Decapitation. Several unsightly and shockingly grotesque spells. The culling wasn’t gentle, and we know for a fact...”
Andie didn’t want to believe it, any of it. The professor went on and on about the dragons and the dragonborn and all the atrocities they committed. For a while, Andie was totally set against his philippic, but the more she listened, the more she began to wonder. What did she really know about the dragons and their keepers? All she knew was the very little contained in Dragons and the stories that her dad had told her. But he’d admitted time and time again over the years that he’d never known anyone with dragon blood other than her mother, who knew next to nothing about their long heritage.
Was it possible they had been completely unaware of the truth? After all, the entire world had banded together to annihilate the dragons and all of the dragonborn people.
There had been no international effort like that in all of recorded history. There must have been a truly great evil about for every living soul on the planet to want them gone. Andie thought long and hard about what she knew of dragons, which was essentially nothing except that they were massive, powerful, and extremely dangerous. Then the worst possible thought came into her mind. Could her parents have outright lied? Maybe the dragons and the dragonborn truly were evil.
After class, feeling completely heartsick and nauseous all at the same time, Andie returned to the University’s vast collection of books to make one final, fleeting attempt to find some more information. Even though she remembered how the professor had said everyone was against this subject being taught, she held hope that there was at least one volume somewhere in there. Of course, without Carmen there to provide access, she couldn’t even take the elevator to the bloodlines floor. Fortunately, she ran into Yara.
“Hey, Andie. Wow, you look like total crap.”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks,” Andie half smiled and rubbed her neck awkwardly. “It’s just that I’ve really been trying to find something in here and I’m not having any luck. I’m just going to give up.”
“Maybe I can help,” Yara said, smiling ear to ear. “What are you looking for?”
“Honestly? Something on dragons or the dragonborn.”
Yara caught her breath and inadvertently took a step back. For a moment, she just stared.
“Carmen told me you might be interested in something like that,” she said. “Please just tell me it’s for an assignment or something.”
Andie nodded quickly. “Of course, what else would it be for?”
Yara eyed her suspiciously but then nodded. “Okay. Look, I don’t know much, but I do know they keep some books in the back. Some stuff they really don’t want any students to see. Down deep in archives, hidden. You might find some interesting things there. There are old, damaged books there, but they also hide things there. Every now and again, a student sneaks down to find a ‘dirty’ book. I’m not sure what they mean by dirty. Anyway, I just saw a professor come out. Maybe the door is still open. Try giving it a good push.”
“Thank you, Yara. I’m kind of going out of my mind here.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Yara walked away slowly, as if afraid of something she’d done, while Andie hurried off to find the entrance to the archives. She walked so quickly she almost ran. She didn’t even slow down when the heads began to turn, but she did remember that she was wearing the icon and she wasn’t sure what kind of surveillance the thing provided. The last thing she needed was the school board sending someone to check on her. Yet, she couldn’t stop herself from moving toward the archives.
She finally reached the door and, just as Yara had said, it gave when Andie pushed it. She looked around the space to make sure no one was there and just managed to see two professors talking in excited whispers behind the first bookcase. She crouched low behind an abandoned desk and waited for them to leave. She realized how heavily she was sweating and how quickly her heart was racing.
“Calm down, Andie,” she whispered to herself. She took a deep breath to calm herself and calm her breathing. The last thing she needed was to be found there. Or, even worse, to be questioned about why she was so agitated.
Within a few moments, the professors were on their way out and Andie
was alone. She crept into the room and closed the door behind her. The archives, though intimidating and poorly lit, were as breathtaking as they had been on her first visit. Even in her heightened excitement, she had to take a moment to appreciate the place.
Now that she wasn’t being distracted by trying to follow the siren’s call, she could focus more precisely on what was in the room. The main path through the archives was a raised wooden bridge of sorts, with stairs leading up or down to the sections the path ran beside. She’d almost completely ignored the collections to the left of the bridge the last time she was there. There were haphazard piles of books that must have been at least forty feet tall, and careless stacks of paper thrown about on the tables and the floor, as if someone kept meaning to organize, but seemed to forget each time a new stack came in. It didn’t look to Andie like anyone had organized those archives in decades. Without even knowing where to begin, Andie walked about halfway across the massive bridge, took a set of stairs to the lower floor, and began rummaging through the shelves.
She must’ve been there over an hour, searching and taking down, and guessing. She’d had no luck, not even a hint of what she’d wanted to know. She couldn’t help wondering if she’d have had better luck by calling Carmen. She needed someone else down there to help her look, but if some professor walked through, she didn’t want Carmen getting in trouble over something so stupid.
It was quite a while before she found something that she thought might prove worthwhile. A large, dusty tome with an embossed dragon on the cover. Her heart nearly skipped a beat as she ran her fingers over the textured cover. Behind it were three more books with similar markings on the front. She couldn’t help but laugh out loud to herself, easing the tension she had felt build in the pit of her stomach since she arrived in the archives. But just as she was flipping through the opening pages and getting excited, the bells rang to signal that the University would soon be closing for the night.