by Oxford, Rain
He didn’t look at me or even show any sign he heard me. “Sir, Sujike-mor has arrived.”
“What is Sujike-mor doing here?” I asked. Sujike-mor owned a fair-sized kingdom not far from my father’s and had a habit of being the bane of my existence. Countless spies and assassins sent by him were caught by me, and several wars were prevented. My father was a ruthless ruler, but Sujike-mor was a worthless one. Again, neither of them heard me.
“Did he say anything about Mordon?” my father asked.
“He does not know your son has left. He is still making his threats.”
My father sighed, looking more drained and tired than I had ever seen him. “Good. The longer we have before they go after him, the better.”
“Your son should be helping you ward off this attack.”
I never saw Rojio look so worried before.
“What attack?” I asked. I knew they couldn’t hear me; I was pretty much talking to myself. Why can they not hear me? I was told my father was injured and he looks healthy enough to me.
This appears to be on the brink of the attack that caused his injury, Rojan answered me.
Regardless of my father’s disappointment in me, I cared about him and wanted him to live. I never doubted the story that my father had overstepped his boundaries and moved in on the wrong people, but that was not why I refused to return to help him.
I was afraid.
My father was a strong and sensible king once, I was told, before my mother died. But the man I knew was ruthless and sometimes careless. He trusted the wrong people and challenged those who were stronger. He needed someone there to protect him, to stop him from making foolish decisions. I was not that person.
My father was ashamed of me, but would do everything in his power to make sure I was king when he retired. I had always wanted him to be proud of me, but somewhere along the way, deep down inside, I must have given up. I could never be king, not even to make him proud, not even to protect him from his enemies and himself.
So this is before it happened? But I thought my father was the one who attacked someone else. I didn’t know Sujike-mor was involved. Can we stop this?
It has already happened. This is only a memory of time as it fades from the universe.
“This is not his fight, and Sujike-mor should never have gone after him.”
“Sujike-mor is trying to force you to uphold your contract.”
“The contract is invalid. That deal was struck before Mordon was born and had nothing to do with him.”
“Mordon may be distrustful and rebellious, but if you told him of the situation you have been put in---”
“Then he would agree to it, I know. And I would rather send him away and let him make his own way in life than guilt him into an arrangement made for someone else. Anget would have been happy, but Mordon is too… he has always wanted to make his own way in life. He would prefer to make a bad decision and suffer the consequences than allow anyone else to make it for him.”
“You are his father; it is your call to make.”
“I would hardly be his father if I did not want him to be happy.”
“When he was a child, you only wanted him to be alive. You would have sacrificed his happiness for his health.”
“And in that time I had my son to make me happy, but it never took away the pain of what I lost. I realized that life may not be worth it without happiness.”
“He would be a king.”
“He never wanted that, either. I blame Rojan for that,” he said.
I felt a gentle pressure on my shoulder and turned to look, only to find myself alone in a hallway. By the painting on the wall, I instantly knew where I was. Movement caught my eye and I looked at the little end table against the wall. I never knew why anyone put that table there, and many people have tripped over it or hit it, but no one actually moved it.
Sitting underneath it, chewing on one of the legs, was a little boy. Only about two, the boy nibbled on the wood with enthusiasm, while staring right at me. I couldn’t breathe.
The small child had one blue eye and one purple; I was looking at myself.
Fearing a paradox, I ran. The one place I would never find myself is my father’s study, so that was exactly where I went. I threw open the door, startling my father and Rojio. They both stared at the door, but neither could see me.
How can I open the door if I’m not really here?
“Shut the door and lock it,” my father whispered. Rojio did so as my father lit the lantern on his desk. Both of them looked much younger, but that actually made sense when I just saw a two-year-old me. “What was that behavior at breakfast?”
“The dragons, sir. They have sent a… message. They want you to bring Mordon to their clutch.”
My father glared. “Absolutely not! That is breaking their end of the deal!”
“Not unless they come into your kingdom. Actually contacting the child is not against the agreement. They seem to want to know how much he resembles Rojan.”
My father took a small statue off his desk and threw it at the wall in anger. My father’s strength in his reign was his ability to keep his calm. Even when he fought for more power, when he faced down his enemies, and when he made irrational decisions in his quest for power, he was always calm. He knew he would get his way and never let anyone rile him.
Rojan, what is going on? How do they know you?
“You tell the dragons to stay away from my son or I will kill them all. He is sago! My son will have nothing to do with them!”
“Yesterday, Mordon grabbed a pan off of the cooker with his bare hands. Nothing burns him. Last week, he bit the nurse when she tried to give him inoculations, and he left fang marks. You need to face what he is.”
“He is sago. If he ever believes otherwise, I will kill every last dragon on Duran, as well as the person who put those thoughts in his head.” The threat was evident, but Rojio was used to my father’s abuse.
“I have seen paintings of Rojan. If the dragons see Mordon, they will know it is him.”
“I will make sure they never do. Now, go and get my son. You will probably find him chewing on a table leg somewhere.”
“The future king of Mokii chews on wood.”
“Never scoff at my child. I will beat every drop of peculiar behavior out of him. He will be a proper and happy king when I get done with him. And if he starts sniffing things again, lock him in the dungeon.”
When Rojio passed me to leave, I felt a pressure on my shoulder, but I didn’t look. I watched my father until I knew the pressure was a hand. I turned, expecting to see nothing. Standing very close to me was a young woman, maybe a couple of years younger than me, but the light barely reached her, so I couldn’t make her out very well. She put her fingers to her lips and shushed me.
I turned to look at my father, but we had changed locations again. I was in a sunroom of all places. Funny; we didn’t have a sunroom at the estate. More importantly was that while my father was there, he wasn’t talking with Rojio. Sitting in a chair next to him was a woman I had never met, but whose face I would never mistake.
My mother sat there curled up on the chair as if without a care in the world. “What do you think?” she asked. Her eyes were the same purple as one of mine and her hair was light brown and flowed over her shoulders to her lap.
My father reached over and rubbed her stomach gently. “Mordon is a great name, unless it is a girl,” he said.
She laughed at his response. It was gentle and sincere, like a mother should laugh. I choked. This was my mother, still alive, who would die in childbirth. From her slim waist, I knew she was months off, and the only thing that ran through my mind was to stop her.
You will do nothing of the sort, Rojan growled at me.
“He will be a boy. He will be brilliant, brave, and loved by many.” Her smile dimmed and faded to a frown. She looked at my father as if he could make her fears go away. “I still cannot see myself in his future.”
&nbs
p; He took her hand. “Sujike has promised to help us. You will make it. If I had any doubt, I would find a way, even at the expense of the baby.”
She ripped her hand out of his. “Never. You must promise me now that even if you had a chance to save me, you would never risk our child.”
There were footsteps from outside, running towards the door.
I was standing in the forest, not far behind the castle grounds. The harsh panting of a little boy and his stumbling steps were the only sound. It was winter and dead leaves littered the ground, but there was no snow or ice, since Mokii was a fairly warm climate. Oddly, I felt disconnected and unaffected by the cold.
Once again, I knew as the boy ran passed me that he was a younger version of myself. He looked about four, and he didn’t see me. When the castle bells blared, I followed him, for I didn’t remember this and wanted to know what happened.
The child tripped and hit the ground hard. He rolled over onto his side, curled in on himself, and shivered violently. I could hear the guards searching the woods in the distance. Part of me wanted them to find him and make him warm, part of me wanted them to leave him in peace.
Having been in this child’s place, I wasn’t expecting the massive dragon that swooped down on him. Blood, the same dragon I had met in the Aradlin forest, landed with a quiet grace from his hiding spot in the trees. His tail whipped with agitation as he watched for the guards that were getting closer. He sniffed the child cautiously. The much younger me looked up and reached his hand out to pet the dragon, still violently shivering. This felt so familiar, but I was obviously too young to have remembered the details. When a shout was made that the boy’s tracks were spotted, Blood covered the child with his great wings and laid low to the ground, becoming completely still.
The guards, some familiar, some not, passed around the dragon as if they couldn’t see the huge beast. When they were gone, Blood folded his wing against his back and there were scorch marks on the ground. “Thank you,” the boy said. “What is your name?”
The dragon made a huffing noise.
“That is a funny name.”
In the blink of an eye, it was dark and we were in a cave. A fire was lit and the boy was telling the dragon about life as a prince from the eyes of a four-year-old. The poor dragon must have been bored out of his mind. I guess I had to be thankful Blood didn’t eat me.
“I should go now. My father will be very angry that I’m gone,” the boy said, standing up. The dragon stood too, and huffed. The boy smiled. “I can’t go with you, I have to go home. My father needs me. I will come back in a few days.”
The cave changed with a flicker. Instead of a four-year-old me, I was facing another boy who looked about seven, and a woman. The woman was gorgeous. She wore a long, willowy, dark green dress. Her hair was dark, blood red that lightened to fiery yellow underneath and towards her face. Her eyes were forest green, and her skin was fair. The glare she gave the boy greatly diminished her beauty.
The boy looked nothing like her; he had shaggy black hair to his chin and his eyes were vibrant blue. He looked very similar to me at that age, but he had single-colored eyes, his skin tone was a bit darker, and his facial structure was different. The light green tunic he wore over brown pants was charred and covered in dirt. He wore one dark brown boot, and his other foot, bare and scraped, was tucked discretely under the other. The boy sat on his knees in front of the woman and tried to look contrite, but was failing.
“You escaped your sister again,” the woman said. I felt Rojan cringe.
Is that kid you? I asked him. He didn’t answer, but I could feel his thoughts that, yes, this was Rojan as a little kid, in his person form. I guess I wasn’t the only one who got to suffer flashbacks.
“She was not teaching me anything important,” the young Rojan said.
“Manners are important! All of our people will look to you for guidance as they do your father, and you will not disgrace him with your insurgent ways.”
“Mother, I only went flying. How is that rebelling against Father?”
“You knew you had to be at the ceremony this morning after your lessons and you missed it on purpose.”
“I did, but no one wants to be at the ceremonies. The other dragons say they are outdated and theatrical. Marnd said that when he grows up, he will get rid of the ceremonies.”
“You are to never speak with that boy again; he is a bad influence on you. He will never have the right to ban the ceremonies. Dragons have nothing if not our tradition, and the ceremonies are an important tradition. You will understand them when you are older, like your sister.”
Dragon clutches are extremely protective of each other, Rojan supplied. If someone messes with one of the children, the entire clutch will fight to the death to defend them. However, when the child grows up, they lose all family bonds with their parents and siblings.
My sister never had that protective instinct. She has attempted to kill me many times by this age, and my mother was stubbornly oblivious. If I were less strong, less fast, less powerful, I would have been dead.
These were the days where dragons were well-known on Duran, when we were free. All of the dragons except for me, that is. I had to obey the promises made by my parents, just because of my blood. If it were not for my exceptional skills, I would have thought I was from another family. Where my sister and my parents loved the life of luxury, class, and tradition, I wanted to fly.
I wanted to dive from cliffs and feel the wind in my wings until I came so close to the water that I could feel the mist from the waves that crashed against the rocks. Then I would pull up at the last possible second so that only the tips of my wings would scale the water and soar straight up towards the moon. When no one was around I would breathe not fire, but lightning, just because I was the only one who could do it. I would fly in the daytime, when the clouds were scattered and change my scales in time to perfectly match the blue sky and the gray clouds. At night, I would disappear in the dark and practice my lightning over cities.
As he spoke, more to himself than to me, I recognized the feelings that crossed his mind from the memories. The feeling of being free… completely and utterly free. I understood in that moment how much I had in common with Rojan.
I was suddenly standing in a cave well-lit by the fires all along the edge of the room. The warmth and flickering flames made it feel extremely cozy, but the sound of the crying girl broke my heart. I did not know the sound, but I recognized it. The cutest little girl in the entire universe ran into the room and flung herself down on a pile of furs.
Following quickly behind was a man, tall and imposing, but not obscenely muscular. His hair was black and his eyes were deep, ice blue… Eyes that matched my blue eye… He sat beside the girl and rubbed her back. “Why are you crying, Ueme?” I may not have known the girl’s crying voice, but I knew his.
I was looking at Rojan, as an adult, in sago form, and by the pain I could feel from Rojan inside me, I could guess this was his daughter. God, she was adorable. She had hair the color of dark blood, but her eyes were blue, matching her father’s.
“Ohonu. She said that her father was killed. She said that hunters wanted to kill dragons and use our blood for dark magic!”
“Hunters will never make it into our clutch, child. Quiet, now, and sleep. Your mother and I are always watching.”
“But Regar is still not home! What if the hunters got him?”
“Your brother is fine, just out exploring. He will be back in a few days.” Even as he spoke, I could feel the truth. Rojan, the one sitting next to the child, was worried. The Rojan inside me was devastated.
Where is your son? I asked him. In this moment, while you tell your daughter that her brother is exploring, where is he?
I found him the next day. The hunters had trapped him and drained him of his blood and left his body in the forest. They killed my son.
Who did?
Sujike and his family.
I’m sorry for your
loss, I thought, knowing there was nothing I could say to help him over his pain. This was a memory; it had already happened. Rojan knew this, but he wanted so badly to try and save his son. I could feel his love for both of his children as if it were my own.
I made him regret it. Unfortunately, and fortunately, the universe is a tangled web. It was his wife who killed my son, so I killed her. I would never have killed their child, even as he was being raised to hunt my kind. You will hate me when you know the truth, he warned.
We are in this together, so I will get over it. What happened?
* * *
I was suddenly standing in the sun room again. Next to me was the woman who had appeared in my father’s study, and she was studying the people in the room closely. Sitting in the same chair as before was my mother with no signs of pregnancy. My father stood beside her, comforting her as she cried and glaring at a much younger version of our family doctor.
“You cannot be sure,” my father insisted.
“I am certain. Even she knew it; that is why she came to me.”
“What’s happening?” I asked the woman, expecting her to ignore me.
“She had a vision that she would die in childbirth, so she went to Mokomo and he confirmed it. She has been very sick for a long time,” she said.
Her voice was soft and sounded very similar to my mother’s. I studied her face now that it was light enough to see her and marveled. This had to be my mother when she was barely an adult.
“There is a very good possibility I can save her if we start treatments now. However, she will definitely lose the child.”
“Do it,” my father demanded even as she screamed over him. Her words were jumbled with tears, but she was obviously fighting for my life.
“Even if you could survive long enough to deliver, the unborn child will not.”
“He will; I can see it!”
“It is impossible. I’m sorry, but your only option is to accept treatment and survive,” Mokomo argued.