by Marc Secchia
Her twin choked out a laugh. “Aye. Dragoness, I … I’m so very sorry … it’s all so –”
“It’s overwhelming. I know.”
Terror slowly leached away into a grieving, shaking aftermath, in which only emptiness held reign, as if a suppurating ulceration of the soul had been lanced and spilled all of its poison. Now, she needed healing. Quietly, the Dragoness-manifestation stepped forward and embraced her, blue to blond, fire-soul to dancing-soul. Could she say she was not afraid of the force of these emotions; worse, that she understood how blonde-Lia felt, for these were her very own, stifling fears? What emerged was inane, “It’s alright.”
“No, it is not alright! Not by any Island, alright! I tried to murder you – us!”
“I’m here for us.”
Humansoul’s arms tightened about her neck. “Promises are not enough. Nor are deeds, nor oaths, nor words, nor anything in all the heights and depths of our Island-World. Only love. Love must be enough, and that’s why I’m so remorseful. I’m a wretched Human being, Dragonsoul. An ungrateful wretch – curse this fate!”
They held each other desperately close.
After a very long time, Dragonsoul said, “Don’t look, but an Ancient Dragon just tiptoed up behind us.”
Chapter 7: Beyond the Mists
Grandion spiralled down from the heights above the Islands, troubled. In an Island-World where the natural order daily seemed to be supplanted by comets bearing Ancient Dragons, walking Islands, two-headed Dragons, giants and maniacal Empresses with a taste for golden Dragon blood, this latest phenomenon just made him feel dark-fires depressed. As best he could tell, a gigantic lattice of ice at least fifty leagues wide had been grown – there was no other word for it – above an area of deep Cloudlands out there, and if that was not Numistar’s work, then he was a lame ralti sheep and no Dragon.
She was fabricating trouble.
Then, there were the powerful, roiling disturbances beneath the Cloudlands. He had seen nothing, but he suspected the presence of Land Dragons, if not outright war beneath the smoky grey cloud layer. There was no sign of their ally, Tiiyusiel, who had brought Grandion and his Dragonwing thousands of leagues across one of the widest, most barren seas in the Island-World. Notably, the beautiful turquoise colour ended an estimated eighteen leagues beyond these Islands. Its boundaries traced the pattern of the two possible ‘paws’ which he and Hualiama suspected.
From a mile and a half above, the Dragon’s eyesight zoomed in on the group of Humans emerging from their meeting house. Where was the Blue-Star? He did not feel her. Anywhere.
Grandion’s wings stiffened into planks. Hualiama?
He was on the cusp of challenging the barrier of terminal velocity, when the awareness of another presence arrested him. Fra’anior? The Onyx was here? Hualiama! Panic seared his breast. Something had happened …
Grandion, my shell-son. I commune with the Blue-Star. She is well. Go and speak with Elka’anor.
The sevenfold voice had not finished speaking when Grandion plummeted like a stone, swinging his Storm winds into his wake as he dove. Speed! Acceleration! Were there Ice-Raptors, was the Island in danger, where were Mizuki and Makani … the weather! What if the weather rolled in … yet he refrained from calling for Blue-Star. This Dragon would hunt his beloved with greater cunning than she had ever imagined. Did they think him a fool, not to recognise her beguiling, coquettish ways for an invitation to the dance of courtship?
He would be the sky to her starlight. His was the palette upon which her brilliance would shine best.
* * * *
Hualiama-Hualiama, standing hand in hand, gazed at their shell-father as he filled the unknowable abyss beyond her soul space. He said, “Know I not what it means to chase love so relentlessly, it fled from mine paw? I have never erred more sorely in mine life, o precious shell-daughter. Please, if I must beg, I shall not stint in laying my pride low.” His thunderous belly-fires belied his words, but the warm yellow-apricot tenor of his eye-fires did not. His voice swelling in volume, he slipped toward ancient Draconic metre as he added, “Dost thou not grasp, o Blue-Star, o mine third-heart-treasure, how profoundly I do love thee? Dost thou? Must I speak it again? Must I write in aurorae upon the skies of this coming night?”
Blue-hair said, “I think you’ve mentioned it at least twenty times–”
“Multiplied by seven for the separate brains,” said blonde-Lia.
“– and again by three for each of your hearts,” added her twin. “Or do you have twenty-one hearts?”
The four heads watching them frowned identically. “Meaning?”
“We’re sure!” the Hualiamas chorused.
“AH!” he boomed.
“O father of all thunder and lightning,” said Human-Lia, her voice thick and unsteady, “you mentioned you’d been thinking through the whole … ah, Balance of fate … related to Shapeshifters. What are your thoughts now? Did Amaryllion make a mistake in gifting me –”
“A MISTAKE? NO, NO, NO …”
Each no shook her like the concussive breaking of nearby thunder, but suddenly the world muted about her. Gentling his voice, Fra’anior said, “Far from a mistake. The diametric opposite of a mistake. Thus mine fires, vast and all-encompassing as they must seem, grieve over what thou hast attempted this day; even as I seek with mine utmost to understand something of thy struggle. I can say little to alleviate thy heart’s angst, o my shell-daughter – I refer to both of thee, to all that thou art, and to the twofold oneness of thine souls. I want thee to know that thou art not only desired, but that thou art needed. Crucial, indispensable, is the vitality that thy bloodline shall add to the world of the Lesser Dragons. They shall understand but a little of the destiny shaped by thy wings’ flight, but I know they must thrive in this changing environment. Our Island-World faces a danger beyond all that thou canst imagine, Hualiama. Thou must the talon of mine paw be, and the voice of mine heart for this world. That is how needful thou art!”
“Father, we –” the Human girl clutched at inanities, while her Dragonsoul soothed the surging billows their shell-father’s passionate declaration stirred “– why did we sense Imbalance in the South? This feeling?”
Two of Fra’anior’s heads snapped about so fast, they thumped into another. Blonde-Lia’s chuckle strangled in her throat as she took in her soul sister’s expression; aye, she knew gut-wrenching dismay too, but her response was nervous laughter. Did Dragonsoul not –
I understand. Sorry. She squeezed Humansoul’s fingers. Why is our shell-father –
Her twin replied, It’s something terrible. Something even his seven minds did not anticipate. Just look at the clouds boiling around his body! The tempest, the lightning …
Fra’anior faced them in the panoply of a terrible storm, forming and intensifying before their startled eyes, but the Hualiamas sensed he was not angry. This was shock. A perturbation of the Onyx’s soul. A deep, fearsome danger even he did not fully understand.
“I must go,” four of Fra’anior’s heads growled suddenly.
“Shell-father –”
“I must! I cannot –”
“Are you Hualily?” The childish voice intruded from without, echoing as if speaking down a tunnel from an incomprehensible distance, yet close by. “Don’t be scared.”
“Go to her now.” Fra’anior’s words seemed wrenched from his very marrow now, almost frantic. “I will speak of this sense when I may, mine shell-daughter. This flight may not be easy, but I bid thee discover, live, breathe, celebrate … and above all, to dance!”
Dragoness-Hualiama’s eyes cracked open. “Aluki?”
The girl faced her, as fearless a mite as ever had stood within Sapphurion and Qualiana’s roost. She said, “Hualily, are you looking for Dragons? You won’t find any in the lake.”
She had come to the frozen lake’s shore to be alone with her thoughts. Part of her wanted to yell at the girl, but she knew she must not. Carefully bottling up her pyretic emotion
s, she said, “I am Hualiama, the girl you saw earlier. I can be a girl – or a Dragoness – when I want to be. I’m sorry I made such a mess of the first meeting between you Immadians in forty-one years.”
“That’s alright. You’ve the same eyes as the stripy-haired girl,” Aluki prattled blithely. “I don’t know about crystal Dragons, but I do know a place where the chimes come to sing. Shall I show you? Would that make you less sad?”
She held out her hand.
Thinking that walking paw-in-hand would be awkward, Hualiama offered her left wingtip in return.
“It’s very high up the mountain,” said Aluki, making a pretend-bashful circle with her moccasin-clad toe in the snow. “Could I be your Dragon Rider? Just this once?”
* * * *
Having never carried a Rider upon her back, Hualiama discovered that even the weight of an eight year-old child, as Aluki’s incessant chatter shortly revealed, was significant. Her Dragoness was powerful, but she was still just a hatchling working on her thirteenth foot of growth, with a hatchling’s softer, more flexible bones and wing-struts, and muscles that would take years to develop to full adult strength. Also, she would hate to drop anyone, but especially a child. That was one adventure she could do without!
Accordingly, she skimmed low over the dark green treeline crowning the ridge above the village, and slipped over the other side with a smoothing flexion of her wings, riding out an air pocket with instinctual ease. Aluki let out her breath in an unending giggle. “Faster!”
“Hold on tight!”
“I’m too frightened to let go!” the little girl trilled.
The Dragoness knew that feeling. How bittersweet it was to see her joy in life, and to know a Human girl’s soul-shadowing fear. If this were the tenor of her dark-fires, then she feared also that she and her Humansoul would have a proper fight one of these days. She wanted to roar, ‘Leave the living to me!’ Yet, that also could not be. If one died, both died. They were conjoined twins of the soul.
Meekly, Humansoul said, Can I leave the living to you for a bit?
Ironic. The heart knew no logic. She had wanted to kill herself to protect herself from Azziala, not realising that such an irrevocable action would have granted Azziala the victory – both over her daughter’s existence, and over the fate of the Island-World.
Only if you take over romancing our Grandion, she returned warmly.
Me? Romance a Dragon? Are we quite mad?
Always have been. Humansoul –
I know. That’s what I meant by ingratitude. You saved my life; this is how I repay you? Please forget those things I said. Forgive me.
Forgive? Already done.
And who could know the truth better than her own soul? Chuckling at these sweet lies, and the sweeter truths they wished to whisper to each other, the only Shapeshifter Dragoness in the entire Island-World flew up to the top of a lonely mountain with a passenger who was so breathless from laughing by the time they arrived, she slipped off Hualiama’s back and had to be rescued by Dragon-swift reactions.
Hualiama said, “Do your parents know where you are?”
“My great-grandfather does,” she said. “When I was small, Raptors killed my parents. I have little, but I do have some magic, I think. That’s why I brought you here.”
“Foresight?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
Part of her wanted to call the girl ‘special’, but she was wary of condescension. Hualiama glanced about swiftly. The mountaintop was flat across a roughly oval area four Dragoness-strides in diameter. Hatchling strides. The snow did not appear to stick much, only half an inch or so – due to the prevailing wind, she concluded. At the edge of the flat area, six-foot white-speckled granite columns of eight inches in diameter marked each compass point, with the smaller graduations in between marked with lower, slimmer columns, perhaps four inches in diameter and three feet tall. Runes and astronomical symbols covered the columns, and where she could see the ground, that too had been smoothed and inscribed with runes, arcs indicating planetary orbits and other esoteric knowledge. She could not read the runic script, and assumed it must be some very old form of Dragonish.
From beneath her fur-lined hood, tied neatly up to her throat, Aluki’s piercing blue eyes watched her. The girl was warmly wrapped, with fur-lined moccasins, heavy trousers and warm mittens in addition to her hooded jacket; she appeared perfectly comfortable despite the deep cold. A tiny chuckle escaped the Dragoness’ lips. Would Aluki melt near a volcano like Fra’anior? Noting an old, ice-rimed footprint on the west side of the circle of markers, she realised there must be a trail to the top that the girl had taken before.
Without preamble, the girl said, “We knew the flight to our Islands had become terribly dangerous, because the Ice-Raptors make it so. Our people believe they control the storms. They fly in on terrible storm winds, and that is why we must have protection. A Scale-Summoner’s job is to wrestle the scales from the far, far deeps and lift them onto our Island. We turn them into shelter and armour and weapons. Only Dragon scales can stop the cold fireballs from exploding our houses – you don’t ever want to be caught outside in a storm. It’s a very important job.”
“Aye,” Hualiama replied gravely.
“The cold fireballs destroy the scales. So there are never enough scales.”
“I see. But, is it the Raptors or the Chrysolitic Dragons who make those cold fireballs?” she asked. “We fought Raptors on the way here. They – well, maybe they did have cold fireballs.” Hualiama puzzled through her memories of Makani’s sudden injury, and the damage to Sumio’s frozen leg. She would have to ask the Grey Dragoness. “Aluki –”
“All Dragons are evil,” the girl stated flatly, “except you. You’re the first Dragon we’ve known who cares for Humans. Your Blue Dragon seems nice too. But my great-grandfather says some Dragons go bad. I suppose he’s talking about inside their heads. All of the Raptors are bad, but only some Dragons – that’s what I know. They go parrot – ah, parable – probababillibite …” She screwed up her face. “Help?”
“Uh …” Hualiama racked her brain. “Parasite? Did he mean a parasite?”
“Aye! Porasite!” Aluki enthused, without managing to sound at all certain of the word. Then, she put her fingers to Hualiama’s muzzle. “Shh, Dragoness. The chimes won’t sing unless you’re very, very quiet.”
Hualiama chose a spot next to the North-marker, and curled up as she had seen the larger Dragons do, muzzle to tail. Aluki hovered uncertainly for a second, but a soft invitation brought the girl to her in a trice, and she nestled against Hualiama’s right flank and shoulder, also facing outward toward the glorious sweep of Cloudlands and Islands. For a time, all that bloomed between them was the warmth of Human and Dragoness, and the child fell silent, giving Hualiama the time she sorely needed to be with her own thoughts.
She drank deep of the evening’s tranquil colours.
Dragonsoul communed with Humansoul as the twin suns set upon the Island-World.
The glimmering of the first stars entranced her. She sensed an affinity with their mysterious aura, their colour eluding the eye as the atmosphere applied its prismatic trickery to the passage of starlight through its lens. Balance was a lens. So was life itself. There was a richness in the Shapeshifter’s ability to see from two different perspectives, such as she imagined must be achieved by belonging to two different cultures and languages – but the differences were deeper still. Fire-life. Her very being was the manifestation of elemental fires. Humanlove was … what? Dance? Laughter? The light of her soul?
Vitality, her Human whispered, very sleepily.
We’ve had a tough day, she told herself. I’ll wake us if … ah, I don’t actually know how?
Humansoul slumbered.
What a curious life. How was she supposed to guide a warrior-Jin, or the bold siblings Brazo and Zanya, into this Shapeshifter heritage? Or … Grandion, were that possible? How should she deal with a suicidal aspect of her soul
? Tenderly. Try not to be frightened or affronted. Sing her lullabies. Blue-hair tucked the covers about her alter ego’s body and deposited a kiss upon her forehead.
Sleep, now.
If Grandion believed she possessed a strength-from-weakness power – how much weaker or lower could she imagine dipping than this day?
To face having to kill one’s own mother? Any white-fires, right-fires creature must find such a prospect … deathly. How could she ever learn to dance again?
* * * *
Flicker stationed himself in the mouth of his favourite warren, overlooking the city of Immadia from a height of two miles and three peaks back. The city was just a patch of twinkling lights in the semidarkness, all of its Humans hatches and doorways, window shutters and skylights battened down for the night – at least, he hoped so. Darkness gathered. Would it be a no-moon night, which occurred but three times a year, and then only for a few hours at a time? Aye. Jade waned quickly over the north-eastern horizon, and Yellow had not yet risen.
The stars would be magnificent.
Well, he had time. Flicker slipped inside in search of Gracewing, a pretty white female who had caught his eye earlier.
An hour later, having told the first batch of expectant mothers a lore-tale before finding a private roosting chamber with Gracewing, he returned to the entrance, located beneath a large boulder in the lee of a mighty cliff. He slipped out into the snows, aware that his wings and torso blended almost perfectly with his surrounds. Still, he instinctively checked for danger, a habit ingrained in any dragonet who had ever departed from a warren’s entrance. No hint of trouble prickled any of his seven senses.
Thin streaks of white coursed across the magnificent late evening sky. The expected meteor shower was dense and prolonged, as sharp as talon strikes of starlight clawed across the sky. His sharp dragonet-eyes, enhanced with his innate magic, tracked the closer flares as they shot toward Immadia Island. All missed. Each and every meteorite plunged into the Cloudlands around Immadia as though directed by an invisible blue paw. At last, Flicker smiled. His fears were unfounded. He had no doubt that the phenomenon would be repeated at Pla’arna, Herliss and Gemalka.