by Lucia Ashta
I didn’t think. I set off at a dead run.
17
I skidded to a stop, breathing hard, but doing my best to do so quietly. It was unlikely anyone would notice me, but if they did, a bad situation would get much worse.
I inched toward Rosie. I couldn’t see her, but I could tell more or less where she was from the breeze her stunted wings threw off. It was also easy to guess since, even when she flew, she didn’t stray far from my side.
So softly it was little more than breath, I whispered, “Don’t fly anymore. Stand quietly by my side.”
No one but Rosie would hear me, but still, my heart thumped a few times until I realized no one had looked our way.
We were far enough away from the shadow people I’d seen in the village, going about the tasks of community without any idea of the stand down that was taking place beyond their village. We were out of sight of any of the shadow people’s dwellings, and beyond the forest that nestled the village. Here the landscape was hard and rough. Gray crags split the steep walls along one side of us, and an even steeper precipice threatened a swift death below.
But if death arrived this day, it was more likely to be from Yoon or any of the members of the Dragon Force he’d apparently managed to recruit to kill Rane and me.
Yoon, surrounded by dozens of the Dragon Force, stood face to face with several of the shadow warriors, with Luma in front. There were more Ooba than shadow people, but the men and women behind Luma didn’t look particularly worried about the disparity, so I decided I’d try not to be either—but I had no luck at it. I could be wrong in how I was reading what I perceived as emotions crossing their shadow faces, or it could have been all for show. No matter how different our people might be, they’d understand that signs of weakness were dangerous in situations like these.
Yoon wouldn’t know the capabilities of the shadow people any more than we did. Better to have him imagine the worst of the people who rode dragons when we couldn’t.
Luma spoke aloud in that language I didn’t yet understand. To my ears, it sounded like a snarl, which menaced immediate repercussions if he didn’t comply with her request.
Language barrier notwithstanding, I understood what Luma was demanding. Surely, Yoon did too.
Yoon held Traya roughly by the arm. I feared for my sister’s safety, but it didn’t look as if she did. She looked ready to tear Yoon’s eyes from his head, and I wondered at this side of her I’d never glimpsed before. Maybe Dean had more reason to include her in the Dragon Force than I’d previously realized. I’d assumed that he’d ultimately done it for Rane and me, for our father even. But now I was considering that maybe he’d seen something in Traya not even I had.
Her expression reminded me of a wild beast. If I’d been Yoon, holding her against her will, I would have been worried about what would happen when I had to let her go. She looked as if her attack would be swift and... successful. My lovely, gentle sister, with her long-sweeping hair and pleasant features reminded me of a she-dragon.
I stared. Rane, who stood between the two opposing forces, appeared uncertain whether he should stand with Luma or attempt to snatch Traya back.
Luma repeated what she’d said before. Four warriors, three men and one woman, stepped forward to flank her—and back up her threat.
Nervously, I looked to the skies, searching for swarming dragons. None yet, but that didn’t mean Luma wouldn’t call on them if she wished.
Luma might be a girl, who looked to be my age, not quite a woman, but nearly there. Yoon had severely underestimated her if he assumed she’d be a pushover as many of us were in the Ooba tribe.
She took two steps forward. The shadow warriors moved en masse and stepped with her.
Yoon didn’t retreat, nor did any of the dragon forcers behind him. But some of them were starting to appear worried, perhaps finally unable to hide the concern they felt.
Confident no one would notice me in this scene, I edged closer. Yoon, with his accomplices, was pressed against a steep wall of unyielding rock. Luma and her people had their backs to their village.
“Move no further!” Yoon called. “Or I’ll kill her.”
I gasped—couldn’t help myself. Kill her? Kill innocent Traya for nothing more than being my sister? At least, I assumed that’s what this was all about.
I didn’t need to worry though. No one heard my outrage over Rane’s. He yelled, “How dare you, you sniveling pile of stinking dragon poop! You let her go this instant, or you’ll answer to me... for the rest of your very short life.” That Rane so loosely threatened death was an indication of how furious he was. He took the protection of his family seriously, deadly serious. I’d never heard him that angry. I was, however, certain that he meant to carry out his threat. He, the boy who was almost a man, who’d never hurt a living creature purposefully in his life.
Yoon, with his unnaturally pale hair, believed Rane’s threat too. It was obvious in the way he flinched before he caught himself.
Rane clenched tight fists and started moving toward him. Yoon pulled Traya in front of him, so that she would shield him from Rane’s anger. Of course, it wouldn’t work.
Rane stomped, quickly closing the space between him and Yoon, until Luma ran over to him and grabbed his arm. He snapped it away from her before calming. He glared at her, with anger meant for another.
Then followed moments of quiet and intensity in which I realized that Rane and Luma were communicating.
Whatever Luma told Rane was enough to convince him to be more measured in his action. I knew Rane well enough to assume that nothing would have calmed him to that degree other than a solid plan to take Yoon down and make him pay for his transgressions. Luma had something planned, which Rane believed had a good chance of securing Traya’s safety.
Good. Whatever it is, I hope Yoon pays. The creep. I’d never liked or trusted him. My instincts had been spot on.
Rane didn’t advance on Yoon anymore, but neither did he retreat back to where he’d been. My twin suddenly looked taller than I remembered him.
“I’ve told you, Rane,” Yoon said with a calm that made my skin crawl, “it’s not this sister I want. Get me your other one, and you’ll discover I’m open to a trade.” His smile bordered on wicked, and I wondered how he’d hidden this side of him for so long. How he’d hidden it from someone as perceptive as Dean, or Shula, assuming that the woman shared Dean’s trust in the man.
I looked to the dragon forcers who stood with Yoon, but none of them saw his expression. Yoon was putting on this show for Rane, Luma, and her people, not the Ooba. It seemed that the Ooba had been manipulated for so long that they only perceived what their leader demanded.
“There’s no way in hell I’m ever going to turn over any of my sisters to you, so—” Rane said.
“I don’t need you to turn over this sister. I already have her, don’t you see?” He spoke to my brother as if he were an imbecile, and whatever calm I’d managed to wrap around myself vanished. “Let me lay it out for you in the simplest of terms that you might understand. I am a defender of the Ooba people. You and your freak of a sister, who can turn invisible and who knows what other witchery, are very plainly twins. Twins. Twins are forbidden because they’re a danger to our people. Therefore, as a defender of the Ooba, it is my responsibility to eliminate any dangers to us, which means you and your other sister. I have no need for this one.” He shook Traya to punctuate his statement. “Just give me what I want, and I’ll let her go.”
“You must be out of your freaking mind.”
“You’re twins. You can’t expect to live. You shouldn’t want to live, not when it threatens the well-being of your entire tribe.”
Rane’s caramel-colored face turned a shade of scarlet I’d never seen on him. I imagined it was a lifetime of pent-up frustration and a sense of injustice wanting to burst forth to pummel the self-righteous words from Yoon’s mouth. But Rane was smart. As hotheaded as he might be, he knew how to check himself when the
risks were too great to do otherwise.
I watched my brother take in deep breaths and force his fists unclenched until his normal coloring returned to his face. With a look of forced patience, Rane said, “Look Yoon, we don’t need to be on opposite sides. We’re from the same tribe, by the oasis. Of course I want the Ooba tribe to thrive and do well. It’s why I’m a part of the force, to protect our people. But your actions now are misguided. They’re based on fiction, not reality. They assume that Pumpoo told the truth, when we now have proof that everything he ever told us was a lie, a manipulation—”
“We have no such proof. Pumpoo might be a lot of things, but he’s brilliant. He’s led our people into prosperity. He’s warned us of the dangers of twins, and you and your family have clearly worked to circumvent the well-being of the tribe. You’ve put all of us in danger.”
“Prosperity? You can’t be serious. If Pumpoo brought prosperity to anyone, it was to himself. He has only his own interests in mind in all his actions.”
“Then you don’t know the man.”
“I fear it is you who doesn’t know the man. Twins are no more dangerous than any other set of siblings.”
It was something we had no proof of, but the only argument we had to support our survival.
“We have only your word for it,” Yoon said, “and we have the word of every chieftain our people has ever had to the contrary.”
“We’ve only had two other chieftains before Pumpoo since we left the Original city, and they were his family. They very well might have been as self-serving as Pumpoo. Who knows why they actually want to rid themselves of twins?”
“Because Pumpoo looks out for us, and before him, his ancestors. He makes difficult decisions no one else wants to.”
Rane shook his head, strands of his long dark hair coming loose from the binding that fastened it back at his neck. “What happened to you, man? You weren’t acting like this when Dean was around. When Pumpoo first revealed that he would oppose us, you sided with the Dragon Force, not him. Or was that all a manipulation? To bring you to this very moment to carry out his bidding?”
I was glad Rane had asked. I’d been wondering too. Yoon was one too many contradictions for my comfort. I didn’t understand him, and I didn’t feel safe around people with dubious motivations.
“All the choices I make are always for the good of the Ooba,” Yoon said, and I could tell he was lying. Confirmation of his deceit rang through my body, my intuition singing. “If my behavior seems inconsistent to you, that’s only because I didn’t realize twins, the most dangerous of all threats to our people, had survived Pumpoo’s dictates.”
“You seriously believe twins are the most dangerous of all threats to the Ooba? Calling Pumpoo’s sentence of immediate execution of an infant a dictate is deranged.”
“You and your twin are simply a risk too great for the Ooba to take. I must do my duty and eliminate you, as must all those who stand with me. As dragon forcers, we don’t do what we want to do, we do what we have to do.”
Some of the forcers who stood with Yoon nodded, but more looked uncertain. That was a very good sign.
“Why did you oppose Pumpoo earlier? Was it just a show? Are you in league with him?”
That’s right, my brother, I thought. Pin him down. Something wasn’t adding up.
“Pumpoo revealed a side of him I wasn’t aware of, and I was no longer certain of his intent. That’s why I sided against him.”
Ah, there was some truth to what Yoon said. But there had to be more….
He continued, “Now I see that he was putting the well-being of the Ooba first as it concerns twins. And so I will carry out my duty. Am I going to have to take out this sister to get to your other one? It’s up to you, Rane, but I’m done waiting. The longer I—we—delay in carrying out the wishes of the Ooba, the more danger we put them in.”
I wanted to question if the Ooba tribespeople would really wish to kill two people simply for the circumstances of their birth, but in the end, I didn’t dare. The Ooba had followed Pumpoo’s orders for so long, it was entirely possible that even after he turned them into monsters against each other, they might still believe the teachings he’d so effectively ingrained in them.
“It’s nonsense—”
Luma cut Rane off with a hand on his arm. He faced her, and communication I wanted desperately to hear, but didn’t, took place. At the end of it, he nodded curtly, with a quick glance in my direction. Did Luma realize I was there? I hadn’t thought I was close enough for her to feel me. Not even Rane had.
Then Luma did something strange. She tilted her head in Yoon’s direction. It was hard to be sure, given that her head was one constantly moving swirl of shadow, but I thought her gesture was directed at me.
She stepped behind Rane and quickly looked in my direction, widened her eyes—or so I thought—and gestured her head toward Yoon. Then, as if all she’d been doing was adjusting her hair, she flipped her long mane and moved away from Rane.
I thought what Luma was telling me was that I, the invisible girl, should use my advantage to get Traya away from Yoon. But in order to do that, I’d need a distraction.
On cue, Luma started talking loudly to her people. Yoon stretched his neck, trying to understand. The shadow people started moving on Yoon in a cagey way, making slow progress.
If this was the distraction, it wouldn’t work for long before Yoon took their approach out on my sister.
I started moving, mindful of Rosie next to me. Where were the other forcers, the ones smart enough not to join sides with Yoon? Why weren’t they interfering? And how much longer would it be before Dean, Shula, and Dune returned? I imagined they’d have a swift way of putting a stop to Yoon’s antics, and I wanted Dean to see him for who he truly was.
“Stay back,” Yoon was yelling, aware the shadow people wouldn’t understand the content of his warning. “Don’t come any closer,” he warned, “or I’ll be forced to hurt her.”
Luma and her shadow people cramped the pale dragon charmer even with several body lengths still remaining between them. The hard crag on one side, and plummeting precipice on the other, shortened the feel of the distance.
A restrained look of panic swept across Yoon. He released the hand he had on Traya to put both hands up in the universal sign suggesting restraint. With Traya almost entirely covering the front of his taller and broader body, he held her with his wrists and put his hands up.
That was as good of a chance I was going to get.
I moved Rosie to my other side, and stepped right next to Yoon, carving out a space for me and the dragonling between Yoon and the other dragon forcers.
I wrapped an unseen hand around Traya’s wrist, which hung against her side.
My sister didn’t even flinch.
18
I gripped Traya’s wrist and panicked. I was close enough to Yoon that he’d feel any misstep on my part. Heck, he was close enough to feel my breath if I didn’t calm myself.
But that wasn’t the biggest problem. My biggest problem was that now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d been as desperate as my brother to get Traya away from the pale-haired creep, and I’d moved to honor Luma’s direction to rescue Traya.
The shadow warriors’ distraction was loud. They’d managed to secure Yoon’s full attention. He didn’t sense me—I wasn’t even sure he was aware enough of what went on in the unseen to sense the ripple I caused within it.
Leading the dozens of shadow warriors with her, Luma continued to advance on Yoon and the forcers who chose to stand with him. They weren’t moving fast, but they already felt far too close for comfort. The tension was roiling. If the shadow warriors reached Yoon before he released Traya, there’d be hell. It was a promise, and I could feel it ringing through the din, even if I didn’t understand Luma’s spoken words any more than Yoon did.
It was my job to get Traya out of there before the forces collided. She’d be hurt if I didn’t, if for no other reason th
an she was in the middle of it.
But how could I get her out of there? My sister possessed a calm I lacked. She did nothing to suggest I was standing next to her, holding her arm. The element of surprise was our great big advantage. I just couldn’t figure out how to get Traya away from Yoon even with surprise. He clenched his arms around her, pinching in at her waist. If he moved his arms suddenly, he might hit me. And then the game was well and truly over.
Luma shouted something again. Behind her, her people’s expressions grew even more severe, their step, though light across the ground, more determined. She flicked an urgent look at me, eyes wide again. If I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, then she was telling me to do whatever I was going to do. It was now or never.
Yoon released one hand from Traya—thankfully the one on the opposite side of where I stood—and unclasped the strap, which held a mean-looking blade in place.
He didn’t even look down to do it. He’d done it hundreds of times. His eyes fixed on the threat that approached, he started to pull the knife from its sheath.
In seconds he’d have it at Traya’s throat.
I was out of time. I acted.
I tugged on Traya. I pulled on her so hard that she slipped through the hold of Yoon’s arm.
He reacted faster than I anticipated, reminding me that whatever I might think of him, he was still a dragon charmer. He had the reflexes to prove it.
He grappled to recuperate his hold on Traya with one arm while securing his grip around the knife’s haft with the other.
Traya, who kept her wits about her, realized where I was, and where Rosie would be too. She spared a moment to reach ahead of her at thigh height. When she felt the dragonling, she went the other way. As soon as she cleared Rosie and me, she ran.
Yoon lunged at her. He was faster than I’d accounted for. He started to grab at her shoulders when he tripped over Rosie. He recovered quickly. While Traya ran, he stretched and latched onto a thick strand of hair.