‘I didn’t run away, I had the courage to go.’
‘And your sister had the courage to stay.’
Dorissa, squirming in his arms, looked at Menilly then closed her eyes. Menilly felt a shimmer in the air, felt her sister’s pain. She restrained herself from moving.
‘But you did not bring what I sought. Even though I arranged for you to find a job and then lose it, even though I employed you, even though I dropped hint after hint, you did not go home again. You did not look for the milkmaids and at first, I did not know who or what they were. Only that they were linked with you.’
Dorissa wrenched herself away and he overbalanced a little, stumbling on the stones.
‘What are you talking about? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Your sister knows, don’t you Miss Menilly?’
Menilly gasped.
‘You see, you’ve worked it out. It was the language which confused me. Words in a dead tongue are not always easy to identify. Some seemed to have no modern translation.’
‘I told you to let me see the original,’ said Dorissa.
‘Oh that would never have done. But Miss Menilly, tell us what you remember.’
‘No.’
‘Oh I insist. After all, you are twins. Dora is the eldest and I am very fond of her, but you will do as a back up wife, if anything should happen to her.’
Dorissa shook her head but Menilly sent her sister a tiny nod, a minuscule smile. She could sense Whisper and Thought flying between the sky-riders. The shuffling was increasing.
‘Mother used to tell a tale of the queen, the last queen of the dragon people,’ she said after a pause. ‘The queen had a crown and it was called the Ruby Bride and the Milky Maids. If she wore it, she could control the sky-riders. They would obey her and no-one else. They would destroy anyone in her path. Well, Mother would get that tatty old coronet out of the moth-eaten velvet bag and we’d parade around in it pretending to be the queen. It’s a fake. It’s a bit of tin with some glass.’
Mr Beringer grabbed at Dorissa again and she danced away from him.
‘I am afraid you’re wrong. I had it checked while we were travelling here. It is silver, ruby and opals. Milk opals. It was the coronet worn by the last queen of the dragon people, your ancestor. Dora is the rightful queen. With the coronet and with Dora, I can control the dragons. And by controlling the dragons, I can control the country and the empire and then… perhaps the world. And you would not get it for me Dora. You would not do the simple thing and go back home and get it. And so I had to bring your family here. Had to pay some yokel brats to kill some stupid little shadow dragon and spur your brother into stealing the family treasures and coming to the city.’
‘You! You killed her!’ shouted Endrin.
‘Be quiet boy, it will go better for you if you learn to obey me now. There is no great gain without a small loss. Mr Stinson is no doubt a pleasant fellow, Miss Menilly, but the dragons are hungry and he will make a fine meal for them. Put the coronet on Dora. Put it on. Or let me put it on for you, my precious queen.’
He grappled with her, holding her hands down as she tried to stop him placing the crown on her hair. Henchmen restrained Endrin and Evelira. Another stood on Mr Stinson. Menilly stood without a struggle.
‘Let him do it, Dorissa, trust me.’
The sisters locked eyes again. Mr Beringer settled the dirty, battered coronet on Dorissa’s head and stood back.
‘Your majesty,’ he said and bowed, ‘now, address your dragons.’
Dorissa straightened and turned to the skyriders. She said nothing, staring into their eyes. All four stepped forward. They looked from Dorissa to Menilly, then to Endrin and Evelira. They bowed their heads.
‘See! They know their queen! Now! Beasts! Behold your king!’
Mr Beringer reached for Dorissa and kissed her. She pushed him away and turned back to the dragons. Over their heads, Whisper and Thought appeared.
No-one spoke but every mind filled with words so powerful they were like a voice: ‘dragons do not bend to the will of humans. We will do as we see fit. Only humans are foolish enough to think that possessions give them the right to control.’
In the next second, all six dragons breathed deep and then exhaled with a blast of fire. It engulfed Mr Beringer and the henchmen. The trap door caught alight. Their screaming, flaming forms fell into the tumbling, icy, brown waters and disappeared.
There was a pause. Then with a roar, the sky-riders wrenched their shackles apart, blasted a hole in the wall and turned to Evelira. She bowed, then climbed onto the back of the foremost dragon. For a while, the sky-riders blinked on the edge of the hole at the daylight they had never seen, and then one by one stretched their wings, first dropping then rising to soar into the snowy sky and fly westwards towards the distant mountains.
Dorissa, her hands shaking, took the coronet from her head, crushed it under her foot and dropped it into the river below them.
‘That’s the end of that nonsense.’
Thought, fully visible, settled in infinite blackness on her shoulder.
‘Let’s go home,’ said Dorissa.
‘Which one?’ said Menilly.
‘Wherever has the three of us in it,’ said Dorissa. ‘That will be home.’
Epilogue
The shops window displays were being changed, decorated with holly and scenes of snow last seen in the city fifty years ago, before the chimneys doubled in number, before the steamway was built. Pretty images of the year the River Tymis froze right across, and carriages struggling in snow were printed on the newly fashionable cards people were sending each other for Lightday.
For all the weather’s efforts, there was no chance of the Tymis freezing across now. Barges ran up and down, the soot continued to fall, the city continued to burn and consume whatever would power the things which made modern life demanded.
In two days it would be Lightday.
Dorissa, Menilly and Endrin tip-toed towards forgiveness in Eight Sisters Avenue. Menilly had bought a goose and spent most of her time in the kitchen with Sally preparing food for the feast. While the city was relatively warm, the countryside was clogged with snow. There had been one telegram from Evelira saying all was well, but since then, even the steamway could no longer get through from the countryside. No decisions about where ‘home’ was could be made for at least a week. Since the authorities had been too distracted by the breach in the dungeon wall to notice people sneaking out of what was effectively the front door, all seemed to be well. Mr Stinson, his head still sore but keeping quiet about the dragons, had been invited for Lightday dinner.
Endrin sat in the warm sitting-room and watched Thought and Whisper play tag around the tree Menilly had bought and decorated. It was another new fashion, this time from abroad and quite pretty. Dorissa said they would have had presents under it, only there had been no time to buy any. Endrin sighed, watching his sisters’ dragons nipping each others’ tails. There should have been a third one playing with them, but Misty was dead and no-one ever had more than one shadow dragon.
There was a scratching under the tree. Thought and Whisper stopped chasing each other and landed on his shoulders, nudging him forwards. He got up and walked over. Mice probably. He’d have to tell Dorissa. She wouldn’t put up with it. Maybe they’d get a shale dragon to hunt them.
He peered into the pot where the tree had been planted. In amongst the roots was a sort of nest and in it… an egg? It was rattling. It cracked and rattled, rattled and cracked and suddenly split open.
Nothing came out. Nothing: just a deep blackness deeper than night, deeper than an ink well, deeper than silence. Nothing came out, staggered a little, then stretched his wings, stared up into Endrin’s face and puffed a tiny flame.
No-one ever had more than one shadow dragon. No-one except Endrin.
The End
Author’s Note
Bio:
Paula Harmon was born in north London but sin
ce the age of eighteen months has lived in small towns and villages, waiting to meet a dragon.
So far, they’ve been elusive, but somehow or other, one or two have sidled into her books: ‘The Cluttering Discombobulator’, ’Kindling’ and ‘The Advent Calendar’. When boring things like earning a living allow, she is working on two novels (neither of which have dragons in) and would be doing better if she didn’t keep getting side-tracked by ideas for other stories (some of which do). She has yet to meet a dragon in real life (unless she counts the nasty ones that masquerade as people) but is sure that it’s just a matter of time until she does.
Author links:
Website: www.paulaharmondownes.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Paula-Harmon-Downes-912406582182849/
Twitter: @paula_1964
As Stars Align
Gina Wynn
Day Nine
On the ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me…
As Stars Align
Gina Wynn
Light Sci-Fi
When she takes a position searching deep space for her new boss, Bob, Eve Cardinal isn’t entirely sure what she’s actually looking for.
Anomalies, Bob says.
After a new constellation she found the previous night has disappeared the next day, Eve blames Bob’s technologically advanced equipment….or at least her own ability to work with it.
But when the constellation seems to reappear with each of the stars in a different position, she can’t help but wonder if this is what Bob has been wanting her to find all along.
And if it is, what next?
As Stars Align
Eve pressed her eye more firmly to the telescope so scientific she still didn’t know what all of the gadgets and gizmos attached to it did. The cluster of stars she’d seen the previous night didn’t seem to be there anymore. She turned to her desk and rifled through the notes Ryan had made for them to present to Bob. The diagram he drew had to be here somewhere. No one lost a new constellation in the timeframe of twenty-four hours, and with Bob’s expectations, they couldn’t afford to.
She looked through the telescope again, hoping maybe she’d accidentally had her eye closed or something. But no such luck. Just one big, black space. She fumbled her mobile phone from her back pocket.
Ryan, her…well, her something—one-night-stand, frenemy, co-worker something—answered after the sixth or seventh ring.
“’Lo.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, Ry? You’re asleep at”—quick glance at her watch—“one-thirty a.m.? What? Did last night wear you out?” She suppressed a sigh. Ryan claimed tiredness too often and usually left her with the brunt of the work. It was just typical the shady bugger had actually been at work to take half the credit on the night of their first discovery, though.
He muttered something that sounded a lot like she wouldn’t have wanted to hear it anyway, then went quiet again.
“Ryan? Have you fallen asleep while I’m just here waiting for you to say something?” She lifted her shoulder to clamp her phone in place while she shuffled through their paperwork.
“Mmph.”
No, not asleep, but not really with her, either. “Ryan, I’m serious.” She stopped and searched for her most authoritative tone. Whining at him would not elicit the required reaction. “I can’t find that constellation we wrote up yesterday.”
That got his attention. “What?”
“It’s just not there anymore.”
“It’s not there…in the sky?” His words were muffled again, but incredulity laced his tone. “Look. Hold on. I’m getting dressed and coming straight in.”
She pressed the button on her phone to disconnect the call, then checked the tiny area of space again. He’d be pissed if he came all the way back into work only to refocus the telescope and find those damn stars just hanging out in the sky.
The door banged against the wall exactly twelve minutes and forty-seven seconds after her initial call to Ryan, and he raced into their shared office space. “What do you mean, they’re gone? Stars don’t just vanish. They die, but not nine of them, and not all at once in less than a day.”
She motioned to the telescope. “Here, take a look for yourself. Maybe once we finally figure out how to work this thing we’ll get better results…although that might mean you turning up for work every night you’re supposed to.”
He bent to press against the eyepiece and she relaxed against the back of her chair, enjoying the view. What a fine backside, regardless of the arsehole living inside his body. It was almost a shame he’d found time to slip back into his clothes before racing to their warehouse in the middle of quiet countryside.
“You’re right.” He puffed out a breath. “You’re bloody right.”
“Of course I’m right. Don’t you think I’d know if I hadn’t seen just a black, empty...space up there. I wouldn’t drag you from your pit for nothing.”
He looked again. Then he blew out a gusty sigh and turned his attention to the same papers she’d made a mess of on the desk. He grabbed a white sheet from the sheaf and held it up in front of his face. “It’s all here. The exact pattern, the sizes...well, the best we could do in the short time we saw them for, anyway. Our own little constellation, and now it’s just gone.”
“I know. You’d think with all this technology Bob provides we could have kept a handle on a few new stars, right? I mean, it’s not like new constellations are found every day.”
When he turned to her, confusion was written plainly across his face. “Seriously. And they don’t just disappear, Eve.”
She shrugged as weariness overtook her. “I know, but what do you suggest happened?”
He laughed without humour. “I don’t know. I really don’t, but I suggest we don’t tell Bob—at least not yet. He’ll ask what we’ve been drinking. Hell, I’m wondering that, myself. Did we drink last night?”
Eve shook her head. “Not a drop. But what now? We have all of this research, all of these measurements, for nothing.”
“Okay...what could we have missed? What should their position be now? Did we plan for any of that? Did we forget the basics and not work out their trajectory? Is it the same time? We’re missing something. We have to be. Did you go deep enough?” He shuffled through the pages again, his movements desperate.
“I looked all over the sky before I woke you up, Ryan. I went deep, I went deeper. I didn’t forget anything.” Eve crossed her legs, before fidgeting into a fresh position. “I hate to say it, but this might actually be hopeless. I don’t have a clue what to do next, and reading the documents over and over is just an exercise in futility. I mean, this has never happened before, surely? And we need to come up with something new to report to Bob. He’s going to want to know what we’ve spent the last two nights working on.”
Ryan stalked over to the large picture window at the back of their strange office arrangement and looked up into the sky. Away from streetlights and the glow of a city, it practically sparkled. “For God’s sake...nine stars. A whole new constellation. We were going to be famous. Bob would have paid us that fortune he keeps dangling like the world’s biggest carrot.”
“Had you already bought your Porsche? Named the constellation after your mother? Aww, widdle baby.” Not for the first time since they’d met, his poor-me attitude annoyed her.
“No.” He snapped the word. “I haven’t done any of those things. Now, if that’s your attitude, and this is all you woke me up for, I’m going back to bed. In fact, I’ll probably take tomorrow off, too. There’s no way we can come back from this. No way at all. And I bet Bob’s even more creepy when he’s angry. I don’t know if I’ll bother showing up ever again.” He shook his head and strode from the room, pulling the door to slam closed behind him.
Eve picked up the paperwork. She should shred it before Bob found it and she was booted off the project. That said, if Ryan really did quit, she might not have much project left. But her bonus and, to
a large extent, her wages depended on success. She’d promised her boss if something new was happening in space, she’d find it, and now she had no proof at all. They should have taken the pictures last night, but dawn was approaching and Ryan plead tiredness, as usual.
Stupid Ryan.
Selfish man.
He just couldn’t be bothered to dig out the instruction manual for the telescope-on-steroids that Bob had provided them with. At the thought, she smoothed a hand over its cool surface. Bob said it was the latest technology—all singing, all dancing. Better than anything NASA had at their disposal. And, while she would usually have laughed at such wild claims, something in her boss’s icy demeanour convinced her he was probably telling the truth.
She shuffled the paperwork about the new constellation one last time. Bob had a very specific recording method for them to follow.
Nine. Although she’d accused Ryan of already naming the constellation, she’d started to think of them as her Nine Ladies Dancing. Like she could somehow conjure the entire song from the stars. Something about their far away twinkle made her imagine them taking their places at a grand ball. Christmas was her favourite time of year, and what better opportunity than December to find something magical?
She laughed a little. So much for nine being her favourite number. Nine reasons to be tossed out of Bob’s programme, more like. And she didn’t want that. Not when the new space race wasn’t happening on board a shuttle or a space station hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface. It was happening behind closed doors in a giant adapted warehouse with tech like she’d never seen before, under the radar, away from human scrutiny. The three of them – Eve and Ryan under the constant prodding and direction of Bob, were reaching out, going further than humans had ever been, really seeing what was out there. And the quest was on to find something new, to make every other space finding insignificant.
12 Days of Christmas: A Christmas Collection Page 23