“You knew him well?” I asked as Blair shrunk down to her hunched human form.
“Very. It’s Merlin who Grian came to for help when he came to find his true love, and Merlin who brought us together. I was working in Shull’s Earth Dragon Protection Society back then, before we found out about the Jupiter station and the Dragon Killer and the quest to release the incubi.”
I looked at her blankly. Apparently witches and wizards had their own history running parallel to human history, and I had a lot to catch up on.
“It feels like yesterday until I look at these hands.” Blair looked down at her fingers, then took out a pair of leather gloves from her purse and put them on. “Anyway, we don’t have all day to reminisce. Follow me.”
We made our way through the trees, moving at Blair’s slow creep, until we reached another gap in the forest. A small body of water emerged, only ten feet in diameter and more like a watering hole than a lake.
“What is this?”
“It’s a hole filled with water.” Blair looked at me strangely.
“Right.”
Blair led me to the edge and looked down. “Typically an Artist cannot change any aspects of himself, but water is the loophole. With the right amount of power, an Artist can use the surface as the canvas and his own reflection as the subject. How do you think Merlin lived for so long? It wasn’t just his longer lifespan and his magic, but also small changes he made in this very water to keep his ancient limbs functioning.”
I removed my pencil from my pocket and rolled it between my pointer finger and thumb. My mom had the same habit, and I imagined her rolling her space pen as she looked through her notes on the living room couch, a glass of red wine in her other hand. No matter how much noise I made crashing pots or watching reality TV, her eyes always stayed glued to those lined pages. Perhaps she liked it better in there, where space concepts were static and predictable—unlike her son.
She may never speak to me again, I realized. Yet my hand moved toward its reflection all the same.
“Not so fast. Once an Artist makes a change like this one, it cannot be reversed.”
I stared down at my reflection. The boy in the polo seemed like even more of a stranger at that moment than he had ever been, and I imagined straightening out the curly blond hair and pulling it down past my shoulders to my chest. I pictured the way my chest would look with breasts, and the feminine curve of my new hips. That was me, the real me, and if I was only going to live a few more days, I wanted to do it as myself.
“Ready?” Blair asked.
As an answer I brought my pencil up to my head and my reflection did the same. Like an architect sketching the plans for a new building, I drafted my new body with rapid strokes. Faster and faster my hand moved, until, with a last line of my dress, I completed my masterpiece.
The girl looking back at me through the water’s still blue screen smiled. Her hand moved to her purple sheath dress, and then the empty place below her stomach where her other parts had been.
“How do you feel?” Blair said.
“Like me.” My voice was the same, but then again, I’d always had a feminine voice. “Thank you, Blair.”
The old woman put her arm around my waist, which, with her hunch, was closer to her head. “Thank you for letting me help. I’ll tell the Council of your change, and besides them, no one will ever know the difference. We dragons were told two pieces of information: 1) an Artist had appeared at Merlin’s house, and 2) there would be a war to close the portal. I’ll need a name to tell them, though, if you have one in mind.”
A name? In all my imaginings, this was a detail I had never considered.
“Let’s see.” Blair reached her hand up to my chin, now round instead of defined. “You’re radiant and unique. How about Lumi, short for Luminosity?”
“I love it.” I stared back at my reflection. “Pleasure to meet you, Lumi.” But I wasn’t just meeting her; I’d been her all along.
Through the gap in the trees, I spotted what looked like a fleet of spaceships approaching the Mansion.
“I’d recognize those pieces of junk anywhere,” Blair said with a cackle. “Those are Captain’s old ships, carrying King Grian and all of his Dramanian warriors.”
Behind this convoy followed a monstrous dragon made of metal and glass. Larger than any of the ships, the manmade creature must have had a wingspan of over a hundred feet.
“And they brought Draki,” Blair cooed.
“That creature’s name is Draki?”
“Indeed. Our very large, very loved, child-in-a-killer-dragon’s-body. As Ambassador I suppose I’d better get to the Mansion to greet them.”
Back we flew, Blair’s wings flapping even faster and stronger now that Grian was on the other end of our flight. Her love for him was obvious, and it thrummed in every beat of her body.
This was how Lacey felt about me, I realized, and I never even gave her a chance.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake with Rochelle, I vowed. That night, I would tell her who I really was.
Chapter Seven
THOUGH KING Grian was in his sixties, he had aged well. As he stepped off the hunk of junk otherwise known as a spaceship, he adjusted his cape and then walked down the ramp with no assistance. Grian had somehow retained his blond hair through the years—perhaps Sun Dragons could not lose their telltale brightness—but the strands were flecked with white. His tanned skin stood out among so many pale Northeasterners and the even paler Dramanian people who followed him. The transformation from ashen humans with jet-black hair to Bone Dragons suddenly seemed much more believable.
“Grian!” Blair held out her arms, and King Grian scooped her up and spun her around like they were high schoolers at a dance instead of aged leaders.
Blair looked at the Dramanians filling the yard. “And where’s Philip?”
“He stayed home to care for matters of the state in my absence. Though we have a lot of warriors on Draman, we have many more women and children who need looking after. My two daughters included, of course.”
“And Prince Jeremy?”
“Here, Blair!” A young man in his midtwenties stepped out of the ranks of soldiers. He had the same dark hair as the rest of the Dramanians, but in the middle of his head was a stripe of blond.
“Oh, Prince Jeremy, how you’ve grown. Why, I remember visiting Draman and playing sand monsters when you were just a boy.”
“And I believed you too! It took me three years to venture into the desert after your tales of the vicious monsters who lived there. And who is this lovely girl you’ve brought with you?”
I looked behind me. What beautiful girl? The only people standing in the distance were the Council members waiting to greet Grian and the butlers and maids in their traditional garb.
“What is your name, Miss?” Prince Jeremy looked directly into my eyes, and I realized, finally, that he spoke in my direction.
“Oh. It’s Luk—Lumi.” I couldn’t believe I was actually talking to a real Dramanian.
“Lumi.” Prince Jeremy rolled the name around in his mouth. “What a beautiful name.”
“Like luminosity,” Blair explained and then gave me a wink when no one was looking.
“The energy emitted by a star per unit of time, not to be confused with brightness,” I added, in case the word was different on Draman.
“Beautiful, bright, and brilliant.” Prince Jeremy put his arm out for me to grab. “Perhaps you will accompany me during my Mansion entrance, Lumi? I could use a little extra star quality as I impress your great leaders.”
He had confused me with a witch, but I didn’t bother to correct him. Instead, I took his arm, and we followed King Grian and Blair as we led the soldiers to the Mansion entrance. Prince Jeremy seemed at ease with a woman on his arm, unlike the bumbling, awkward boy I’d been around Rochelle. He’d probably had a lot of practice. Though he looked nothing like his father, the sharpness of Jeremy’s hawklike features and the silkiness of his
chin-length black hair probably had the girls swooning back on his planet.
There had been no time for Blair to explain my transition to the Council, so as we approached, they assumed I was one of Grian’s daughters.
What a pleasure to welcome the great King Grian, Prince Jeremy, and Princess… I’m sorry, which daughter are you, dear? Lettie signed when the convoy got close enough.
“Oh no, she’s not a Dramanian,” Blair butted in. “In fact, you must be aging, Lettie. Don’t you remember having a meeting with Lumi this very morning?”
Lettie looked at me blankly, and then, when she put up a hand to cover my clothes from view, the confusion passed. She signed something to the other two Council members without subtitles, and they nodded eagerly at her words.
Our group walked into the Mansion, past the butlers and maids standing with their hands behind their backs in a professional pose. When I looked closely at their faces, however, Rochelle was not among them.
“Lumi, you must excuse me,” Prince Jeremy said when we reached the inner stairs. “There are important matters of the state to discuss with the Council, and I am not sure if I can bring just any witch—”
“She’s not just any witch,” King Grian butted in to save his son the embarrassment of writing me off. “In fact, she’s not a witch at all. She’s an Artist, and to our knowledge, the last of her kind. So perhaps give her your chair, and you can wait in the hallway for our verdict. Or apologize?”
Prince Jeremy flushed bright red, which looked strange against the paleness of his skin. In fact, when embarrassed, he looked like any boy from Earth.
“My apologies, Lumi.” Prince Jeremy bowed his head. “I was not aware—”
“Don’t worry. Until forty-eight hours ago, neither was I.”
For the second time in one day, I headed to the Council’s private chambers, and Prince Jeremy followed me without saying a word. On the way I saw a redhead conversing with a guard in rapid, worried speech. Directing my steps in their direction, I caught the last few words.
“If you find him, let me know. I’m worried.”
Guilt overwhelmed me. Though I was finally happy in my body, I had not really considered how the transition would make Rochelle feel. After all, I had been the one to ask her to be my girlfriend, albeit unintentionally. And now that I saw her in person, the truth seemed like the last thing I wanted to tell her. I would have rather pretended to be dead. She really liked Luke—had worried and fussed over him—and now I had to tell her that everything she believed about him was a lie?
“Oh, hey.” Rochelle had noticed me staring, and now she was walking over to talk. Had she recognized me? I wondered with every step she took. Was she angry?
“Hey.” My mouth wouldn’t make any other words.
“I’m looking for my boyfriend, Luke. He’s the one they found at Merlin’s cottage last night, and I’m just so worried that something happened to him. He has curly blond hair, and he’s wearing a polo and khakis. At least that’s what he was wearing when he went missing. He’s really smart, so when you meet him he might go on about space or an invention from the 1900s or something. He doesn’t have magic, and you know how confusing and even dangerous a few skyscrapers of witches and wizards can be for a normal human.”
Normal human. Of all of the possible classifications she could have given me, “normal human” was the least accurate. According to the revelations of the past two days, I was neither.
“I’ll let you know if I see him,” I promised. “He must be a really special guy for you to look so hard for him.”
“He is.”
If hearts could ache, mine would have. Poor Rochelle, who walked down the hallway to the next group of witches and began her plea again. She would be heartbroken when she found out, and so would I.
“…AND THEN Luk—Lumi—will close the portal to the incubi realm, successfully trapping them there forever. As the last of the Artists, she will die with the knowledge that no incubi will ever walk the face of this earth again.”
In the silence that followed Bert’s speech, all eyes turned toward me.
“You are willing to do this?” King Grian asked me. He had the kind of stare that seemed to bore inside of me, as though he could see the answer written on my heart.
“I will do what I must.”
“How can you ask this of her?” Prince Jeremy asked the others. “A life is something to be celebrated, not given up. Or are things so different here on Earth?”
“We have no choice.” Aaron looked down at his hands. “Merlin predicted such a crisis with the incubi portal, and he also foretold that an Artist might have to sacrifice himself or herself to close it.”
King Grian had not moved his gaze from my face. His eyes scrunched, as though he was trying to remember a movie title or actress but couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
“Wait a minute…,” he trailed off. “The smell of dirt and river water. ‘From you we were born, and for you we will die.’ ‘Rise up, rise up.’”
Prince Jeremy and Blair exchanged a look, and I wondered if King Grian’s age had been noticeably affecting his behavior.
“Grian, are you all right?” Blair asked, but the king did not move his gaze away from me.
“Have you been to see the Maker?” King Grian asked me.
“You mean the giant sequoia in the middle of the Igreefee camp? I almost flew into her while on the back of a large Igreefee bird-human.”
“Then I don’t understand it. Shayla said the last one would come, and that she would bring the war with her. But here you are, with your war, and Shayla has not risen.”
She would bring the war. But I had not been a she on the outside at that point, and Shayla had not emerged from her leaves and branches. Could the Maker have predicted my change before I was even born?
Of course she could.
The Council members, Blair, and I exchanged a knowing look.
“I propose we return Lumi to Shayla’s hideout,” Blair said. “Perhaps this time, we will find the answers we’re looking for.”
“I’ll take Lumi,” Prince Jeremy offered.
“On your boney skeleton?” Blair snorted.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind.” I smiled shyly at Prince Jeremy. “I’ve never ridden a Bone Dragon before.”
Blair rolled her eyes. “So Earth Dragons are just old hat now, eh? Come on King Grian, let’s get our fleshy bodies in the air before Lumi sees Prince Jeremy’s changing process and changes her mind.”
While we had been in the meeting, the Ice Dragons had arrived and taken up residence on the Mansion lawn. Unlike the Earth Dragons, Bone Dragons, and Sun Dragons, Ice Dragons did not have a human form, so they would require a large amount of space and a lot of meat prepared by the Council’s best cooks. As we stepped through the door to the lawn, trays of raw beef and pork and chicken were carried around us by exhausted waiters.
“Why don’t the Ice Dragons have a human form?”
Prince Jeremy shrugged. “Not sure. The Maker just didn’t make them that way, I guess. Perhaps the early species did something to anger her? They were given Pluto, after all… not exactly the top of the planet food chain.”
Whatever the reason, the Ice Dragons were still a magnificent breed. Slightly larger than an Earth Dragon, the Ice Dragons were formidable beasts. Their sweat formed icicles that dangled from their white scales, and these icicles broke off and sliced into the ground like a sword into its sheath. Like Clydesdales, their thick lips chomped and drooled, though what dropped to the ground were snowflakes instead of spit. I wouldn’t want to be underwing during one of their flights, that was for sure.
“The Igreefee will not like their inclusion,” Prince Jeremy said with the same awe that I felt. “After all, they did have to trap the Ice Dragons in the North Pole for years because of the trouble those beasts caused to humans. But now is not the time to divide the dragon races; there are more important things at stake.”
“I don’t know what
you’re referring to,” I feigned. “Oh, right, that little ‘demons set lose to destroy the Maker and all of her creations’ bit.”
“Nothing a little dragon fire can’t solve.” Prince Jeremy jested, but his eyes seemed troubled. Did he think our chances of winning so low?
Blair’s warning had been correct: the Bone Dragon transformation was not a pleasant thing to watch. Skin peeling away from bone and organ like the skin of an apple at the edge of a blade made my stomach turn, and the gutting of the space between the ribs forced my eyes away to the less gory fall sky.
Not pleasant, I know, Prince Jeremy said. We dragons might seem similar, but we’re also quite different; even our human forms are human in name only.
“So you’re not human?”
We are. But Draman’s human and Earth’s human are like polar bears and grizzly bears. They look quite different, but they’re still both bears. And yes, they can mate, in case you were wondering.
I blushed, though luckily Prince Jeremy was too busy transforming to notice.
“How do you know so much about Earth?”
My father admires this planet immensely. I doubt you’ve had time to learn our history, but my father is the true ruler of not just Earth but all of the dragons in this universe and beyond. Even we Bone Dragons lived on Mars a long time ago but yearned for Earth like a wolf longs for the moon. Something about this planet is just irresistible.
This time, his dark eyes found mine from the center of a completely stripped skull.
“We should follow the others.” I used his leg as a step up, and gracefully I hopped onto his back. My dress bunched at the space between my legs, and I hoped no one would be looking up as we ascended. “During an incubus attack that may or may not happen the minute we leave the wizard’s safety spell, I want as many fire-breathers around me as possible.”
But there was no incubus attack. In fact, the ride to the Igreefee camp was strangely silent. For a long time Prince Jeremy and I did not speak, the sound of his wings the only interruption to the serene ride. Finally, he spoke, and the voice in my head startled me.
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