by Ruby Sirois
“Get that fucking smug look off your face before I punch it off.”
He raises his hands in a gesture of peace.
“You want me to tell you it’s all going to be okay? That the hero gets the girl? Kittens, lollipops, K-pop music videos?”
“I want you to not be a damned asshole for once.”
“Eh,” he shrugs. “You came to the wrong dragon.”
Whoumf. Whoumf. Whoumf.
Leathery wings beat at the icy northern sky, climbing their way up to the green-pink-gold curtains of the aurora borealis. Leaving the rich scent of earth and pine forests behind, the air thins into ice and ozone.
It’s as if I’m outside of my body, watching.
Sharp silver teeth glint in the starlight. Slitted eyes reflect the brightly colored sheets fluttering like wide silk banners through the sky. A roar of draconic pain thunders through the wisps of clouds, Thor’s hammer thrashing against heaven’s anvil.
I soar higher, the ice suspended in the air scratching at my scales like glass crushed to dust. I want to escape the ground. Escape my memories. Escape my mind, my life.
Flying wildly, aimlessly, I shoot blasts of fire through every obstruction I come across. Wings folded like a diving hawk’s, I hurtle to the ground, setting tracts of land, countless buildings, bridges on fire before ascending once more. I am wild with pain, and the destruction I leave in my wake is the price of it.
Am I a beast? A monster? Then I will act the part.
Everywhere I go, everything I see, I turn to flame and embers and ash.
Am I a beast? A monster? Then I will embrace it.
There’s no use denying it. I was a fool to think I could hide it.
All I can do is stay on the wing, to escape the hurt I caused her. To escape the look of betrayal in her eyes.
But there’s nothing I can do to escape her words. To escape the memory of disgust sparkling sharp as crystal shards in her eyes.
No matter what I do, she’s in my heart.
And no matter what I do, I can’t escape her—or myself.
23: Emelie
“Are you sure this is necessary?”
Despite everything, the idea of a ritual, a binding and a banishment, makes me deeply uneasy. It feels so wrong to me, and I don’t know why.
I fiddle with the bottom of the ritual candle in my hands, picking at it nervously. A piece of wax crumbles in my fingers, falling to the floor in a mess of black crumbs.
No one notices. I spread them around with my toe to hide the evidence.
“The only way to defeat Ragnarr Thoringr is to bring him to the sacred circle and force him to submit.”
Annika finishes packing her bag with the accoutrements of ritual: candles, incense, specially prepared charms and tools of power.
“Only then will you be truly released from your bargain with him. Only then will you truly be free.” She pins me with a gimlet stare. “Isn’t that what you want?”
I open my mouth. Hesitate. Words catch, die in my throat.
“Fy fan,” she says with disgust. “What’s wrong with you? You’ll be free of this horrible bargain. You should want to be free of him.”
I press my lips together, and she shakes her head.
“But you have a soft spot for a dragon, don’t you? Feelings. For Ragnarr—fucking—Thoringr.”
Annika spits the accusation, spits his name as if the words taste of poison.
The coven stares at me accusingly.
My face grows hot.
I don’t want to admit it to them, but of course I have feelings for a dragon. I can’t deny it any longer; not to them, not to myself.
Of course I have feelings for Ragnarr, who sees me for everything I am, loves every part of me inside and out, just as I am. Should I really want to stamp these feelings out, to magically banish him from my life, when he’s what’s brought light to it like no one else ever has?
This all feels like blasphemy. Like I’m selling my soul and getting nothing in return but a few trinkets: a string of broken beads, a few diseased blankets.
“I just—I can’t help it,” I say lamely.
I can’t explain to my coven why I feel the way I do. I can’t think of anything else to say that won’t sound just as bad, if not worse. How can I explain to them what Ragnarr means to me? How he has changed my life, my business, the very way I think of and view myself?
To them, it is perverse.
And it should be perverse to me, I know—but I can’t quite make myself believe it.
Yet that doesn’t change what Ragnarr is. What he’s done. Who he’s betrayed. He deserves nothing less than banishment, than defeat. Nothing less than to have his ashes ground into the dirt, just as he ground the ashes of millions of witches into their graves under the heel of his boot.
I swallow a lump in my throat. Gather my resolve.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say grimly. “It doesn’t matter what I want. We have to go through with this anyway.”
The late evening sky is streaked with crimson and gold, and the summer sun is huge and low on the horizon. Light streaming through the pines splashes long amber stripes across the forest floor like war paint.
My coven has gathered around Ragnarr’s runestone in the clearing, and they arrange the tools of ritual in their appropriate places.
Everyone knows their role, and my coven-mates’ faces are flinty with purpose, with fear, with determination. Familiars of half a dozen species prowl and slither and flap nearby, seeking out the hidden ley-lines of power buzzing beneath the loamy earth and where best they can contribute to their witches’ parts in the ritual.
Yet I hang back. Whimsy is tight around my feet, his body tense and nervous, almost quivering with energy. He’s unwilling to stray far from my side, as if by his presence he will keep me safe. Out of all the familiars, he is the only one who has encountered Ragnarr, and he is not looking forward to a showdown with him.
Whimsy knows just what’s at stake, and how dangerous my dragon can be.
“I don’t like this, Emelie,” he says, his voice low so no one else can hear. “He won’t like this. We shouldn’t do this.”
His tail is fluffed out, huge, and the long guard-hairs along his spine stand on end.
“I don’t like it either, Whimsy,” I whisper back, my heart pounding in my ears, “but it has to be done.”
It is a deadly undertaking, with much that can go wrong. Anything, everything can go wrong.
Better witches than we have tried.
Have died.
And not one of us are unaware of that fact.
All we have are small tokens and charms, our familiars, and the power of our united energies and small magical gifts. Not everyone believes it will be enough. I’m not sure I believe it’s enough, but of all of us, Annika is the most determined.
It doesn’t seem like there’s any turning back now.
A hard wind, unseasonably cold, swirls through the clearing, soughing through the summer-full trees. Venus shines steadily from her place low on the horizon to the east, where the full moon is rising round and tawny as a tiger’s eye.
We gather in the circle, all seven of us.
“It’s not too late to stop this,” Linnea says nervously, looking from face to face. Kajsa, her cormorant familiar, is perched in a nearby pine. She spreads big black wings. Shrieks like a lost spirit.
A thrill of gooseflesh pricks at my bare arms.
“Are we truly prepared to go to battle with Ragnarr Thoringr? What if things go wrong?”
Linnea doesn’t need to mention her daughters; I know they’re on her mind.
“It’s a little late to have second thoughts now,” Karl says.
“But are we able to win?” says Rebecka, taking Linnea’s side. Her eyes are wide with fear. “If we don’t have a chance—”
“We do have a chance. We have a weapon,” Annika says. “My secret weapon.”
Annika pulls out a small disc in triumph, brandishes it fo
r the whole coven to see. It dangles from her hand on a thin golden chain.
The token is similar in size to the one that hangs from my neck. I squint—and feel a shock of recognition.
I taste bile in the back of my throat.
The gold is scratched and battered, but the seal—Ragnarr’s seal—is clear and unmistakable. Any lingering hope I had that this—all of this—had maybe all been a huge, hilarious misunderstanding evaporates completely.
“You see, Emelie?”
I wish desperately that Annika wasn’t so very, very right. And even that small act makes my heart ache in my chest like a carving knife has sliced it in two.
“Ja, I do.” My voice is small.
I want to weep. To scream. To run.
“And you understand why we have to do this? Finish what we started?”
I choke back tears. The betrayal, his betrayal, his lies and deceit… it all washes over me, overwhelms me until I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. I only nod. My vision blurs as the tears flood down my cheeks. Annika takes me in an embrace and I sob into her shoulder.
“It’s so easy to be taken in,” she says, her voice quiet.
“That doesn’t reflect badly on you. But that’s what Ragnarr Thoringr does. He lies to get his way. That’s what he did to my ancestor, and that’s what he’s done for a thousand years. He will do—has done—anything to wreak his revenge on witch-kind. Don’t take it personally.”
I want to argue, to deny what she’s saying. How could it all have been just some horrible plan for revenge for something that happened so long ago? When it felt so real? When it felt so good? When he made me feel so loved?
“I really believed him,” I say, voice choked. A fresh sob escapes me. “I thought—I thought that—”
“Shh, it’s not your fault. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. That’s what dragons do, and that’s why we stay away from them. Try and take comfort in that.”
She means well, with her words, with all of this, but I just cry harder.
I hate it. I hate her, and I hate her for saying it. Most of all, I hate him.
Fy fan, I hate him.
I hate Ragnarr for how beautiful he made me feel. For making me believe him. In him.
That I was worthy. Desirable. Lovable.
Beautiful, perfect, sexy.
I hate him for all of it, for all of his lies.
I’m not attracted to you anymore.
Go away, Peter, damn you to hell.
Are you a häxjävel or a goddess, little temptress?
Another knife-twist in my heart, even deeper than Peter’s.
Was Ragnarr ever really attracted to me? Did he mean any of the things he said, was the passion in his eyes the truth?
Or is Annika right? Oh, gods—she must be right.
This is what he does. What he’s done for hundreds of years. Lie, steal, manipulate, betray. Someone so filled with hate for witches can’t possibly have any other motive.
It all meant nothing to him.
I meant nothing to him.
Gods, what a fool I am.
I steel myself, set my chin. Annika is right. This must be done.
Whimsy bristles, sensing my resolve. He doesn’t like what’s coming.
“Fine,” I say, opening my bag and pulling out the tools, candles, and crystals necessary for my part of the rite.
My fingers are cold and my movements jerky, uncoordinated. I’d not wanted to participate, but I see now there is no other choice.
“Let’s get this over with.”
“Ragnarr Thoringr, we call thee!
Son of Thor, we command thee!
Ragnarr Thoringr, appear before us!
Son of Thor, bow before us!”
* * *
The traditional words of the calling and binding ritual, once so reasonable, so normal and natural, are now anathema. I hate that my coven-mates dare to speak to my Ragnarr that way, as if he is a simple forest imp or recalcitrant spirit to be commanded, lorded over.
A great dragon, a son of Thor, commanded like a naughty schoolchild.
It feels sacrilegious, perverse.
Utterly wrong.
But I shake myself, determined to see this through—come hell or dragonfire.
I raise my chin, add my voice to the chant.
I cannot let myself be weak now. These words will lend me their strength. They must.
Even if I am damned forever by them.
* * *
“Hear us now, O son of Thor!
Come to us and heed our call.
Obey, ye dragon, evermore
Till moon is sun and sun doth fall.”
* * *
Even the cold wind falls dead and silent, and a dark expectation, a foreboding hangs in the air like the silence moments before a bomb detonates. Every witch and their familiar holds still, our eyes flicking back and forth out into the gloaming.
It is a darker waiting than that first time alone here in the dusk—a held breath before a dive into black waters, a promise of horrible things to come.
My fingertips are ice, my bare skin pebbles in the chill air. Even Whimsy is still against my leg, his silky coat the only bit of warmth I feel at all.
A sound like thunder in reverse—a rolling boom, then a crackling and roaring, filled with wrath, ending on a high-pitched shriek like an oncoming train.
“Häxjävlar!” He roars. “You dare to command me?”
The sinuous curves of his draconic form are limned in electric blue, sparking around the edges with fury.
Ragnarr grows hill-sized, mountain-sized—a magnitude larger than the first time I met him. He rears up, and his enormous head blocks out the stars like an iceberg. He screams, and it is the sound of a hurricane: cyclopean, unstoppable. It is the terrifying voice of a god whom only the greatest of fools would dare to challenge.
He makes as if to strike, poising like a snake. Quivers with fury, with a predator’s lust for the kill, but then—a slight hesitation.
Has he seen me? Is that why he held back—or is he just trying to pick out the tastiest-looking victim first?
My heart twists painfully in my chest. I feel like I’m the one who has betrayed him, not the other way around. I am a terrible person, and I don’t deserve to be loved—least of all by someone like Ragnarr.
I open my mouth to scream. I don’t mean to cry his name. I don’t mean to articulate anything but fear and despair and desperation, but it is ripped out of me by a force greater than myself.
“Ragnarr!”
24: Ragnarr
“Ragnarr!”
Emelie’s voice reverberates through the trees.
Its echoes bounce from far-off hills, like the aftermath of a bad dream. It’s tinged with panic, with soul-deep pain, with regret. With bitter resolve.
It is true. It was Emelie I saw.
My head whips around, sick embers rise in my throat. I never dreamed that she would be here for something as vile, as antagonistic as this so-called banishment, but I was wrong—dead wrong.
My draconic vision is myopic, blurry, but there is no doubt it is her aura glowing there in the midst of them, a gleaming artwork of gold lodged in the stinking mud of a river bottom.
Nej! My Emelie, here—with them. With them. She is here with them, attempting to command me, to banish and bind me.
Just like Fröja, Emelie has felt my love, my desire, my need for her, and yet now she casts me down into the mud like trash. Like the least and most lowly of trinkets.
Again.
My worst fears have been realized. My heart shrivels to nothing, my love turns to bitter ashes in my mouth. The world crumbles around me, and all I want to do is burn the cruel splinters of it to embers. I throw my head back and shriek my rage and pain to the heavens, meaning to bring down the very stars in my despair.
* * *
“Heed us, O son of Thor!
Banished from this world be thou!
Obey us, O son of Thor!
* * *
The coven’s chanting grows louder, and the prick of their energies is the irritating scratch of a thistle burr—insignificant, but annoying nonetheless.
“You dare attempt command me?” I scorn their arrogance. “You fools haven’t a chance.”
My head whips through the power of their sacred circle as if it’s spun of spider-silk and dead leaves. I lash out with one forepaw, feel the tiny heat of a body before it’s thrown across the clearing. Again, and another goes flying.
All at once, they panic. Screams as häxjävlarna realize they’re gravely overmatched.
They run, scattering.
I laugh as their terror.
They look like ants whose nest has just been kicked. Their magic is just as laughable. My head lashes from side to side, trying to follow. I want to gnash their bones to dust. My jaws snap, again and again. But my rage-reddened vision is poor in the gloaming and my teeth miss their mark, close once, twice, thrice on empty air.
I sense them amongst the trees around me like the faintest of fireflies. They’re attempting to regroup, to continue the ritual. I sense rather than see the energies they raise, a faint shimmer, a bending of space, like the rippling in the noontime air over stones in desert heat. But it is as inconsequential. I shake off their magic like water droplets, letting it roll off my diamond-hard scales and drip back into the earth whence it came.
A movement, shades lighter than the charcoal smudge of a pine trunk. I pull in my form, manipulating it, shrinking and rearranging my great size to a more agile one.
I crouch, pounce: I’ve captured one. She struggles, hissing and spitting curses, but she is trapped beneath my claws like a mouse. My nostrils flare as I sample her scent: this is the one called Annika, their high priestess.
Her skin is cold, moist, repugnant. Hate radiates from her like the throbbing of a half-rotted tooth.
My claws tighten, digging into her flesh. I bare my teeth, smoke seeping from my jaws. Lower my head to her throat. I want to feel her bones crunch between my teeth. Feel the ripping of her flesh. Drink the hot iron of her life’s-blood, let it run down my gullet.