by Jenn Polish
“And you have nothing to thank me for; it’s quite the other way around.” She locks her gaze into mine. “Sadie.” I return her small grin and rub my hand over my jaw again. Not too much pain, but it’s still slippery with Iema’s blood.
Evelyn shudders. I look away from her then, overly conscious of how close we’ve been standing.
“So uh…your friend, she’s gonna be okay, I think. They’ve got good healers in Lethe.”
Evelyn nods, stepping back from me slightly and wrapping her arms around herself. I have the sudden impulse to replace her arms with mine, to warm her. To wash her friend’s blood off her. I’ve been where she is—when I was drenched in Zaylam’s golden insides—but I can’t tell her that. She was probably sitting comfortably in some stone Highlander building while her people were slaughtering mine that day. I shift my weight off my left leg.
Evelyn swallows. “Yes, she’ll be all right. Thanks to you.” A pause. “What were you doing this close to the Forest anyway? I hear the faeric resistance is strong here.”
There’s disdain in her voice when she mentions my real people, and my heart sinks. “I could ask you the same question.”
She stares at me, her head tilted off to one side. “I suppose you could say I needed to get away,” she offers, her gaze so intense I almost step back. Almost.
“This is your idea of a getaway? Roaming the edges of the faeric Forest with two overeager soldiers?” I rub my jaw again absently.
She scoffs softly, her chin raised. Wind shakes the trees above us, and she pulls her cloak tighter around her body. “Iema’s not overeager. Just Reve. And he has reason to be, he’s been…they’ve both been…charged with my protection. You still haven’t answered.”
I shrug. “Wanted to just think, I guess. Your protection? They’re not doing a good job of it, leaving you here like that.”
Evelyn half smirks. “It’s also their job to obey me.”
“You some sort of dignitary? How many harvests have you got, anyway?”
“Nearly seventeen.” Her shoulders straighten up even more, like she’s offended that I asked her age. I grin.
“Same as me,” I tell her, which isn’t technically true. I haven’t lived seventeen harvests—faerie young ones age much faster than nons until we become nears, when our growth evens out. I grew slower than most faeries, but faster than most nons. Which means we wouldn’t have been age-mates as young ones, but since my growth has evened out in tune with hers, we are now.
I open my mouth, wanting to ask her what she means about needing protection. Does she imagine she needs protection from us, from faeries? I glance up and down at the deep white fur of her cloak and the shiny, almost slippery material I only remember from my young-one days in the Highlands; I’d have to patch it up for the woman who lived with the man we’d worked for. Evelyn must be from the Highlands Proper with such expensive clothes and promised protection from not one, but two soldiers.
I take a breath, but she beats me to it.
“I need to go,” she tells me. “Check on Iema, make sure she’s all right. But I…” I raise my eyebrows at her. She shifts her feet and looks up at me through hooded eyes.
The bottom of my stomach drops out. I don’t have the wide-set eyes, the flattish ears, the pinched shoulders, and curved legs that most Grovian faeries have. So when other girls look at me, they only roll their eyes. They only whisper. They only laugh. Sometimes, they only spit at me, like Reve had done.
They never look at me like I could be…attractive.
My heart thuds a strange rhythm.
“I should be…around these parts more often in the coming seasons. Perhaps we could…” She wets her full lips. “Perhaps we could meet at the Lethean Inn, tomorrow after sundown? For a meal?”
I stare. She tumbles on, somehow with grace and confidence. “And I’m sure Iema will want to thank you, of course. For rescuing her from that Lunara-forsaken animal trap.”
I hear Lerian’s voice screaming in my ears, telling me to accept, to get all the information I can out of the prissy, spoiled non. To squeeze all the information I can out of her and then laugh about it later.
Arrogant non, she’d call her, even if she is Izlanian. She’s still a non. And she’s got the protection of non soldiers. Definitely has great info. Go get it, faerie, Lerian would tell me.
But Evelyn’s eyes are wide and the white puffs of her breath are lingering with my own in the small space between our mouths. My throat catches, so I clear it and nod, humanly.
“Sure,” I tell her. “You uh…you gonna be okay getting back there tonight? I can take you there now.”
She smiles sadly, her eyes lowered. “Reve would hardly approve. I’ll have to give him the slip tomorrow night.” She purses her lips mischievously and I swallow, not knowing what to say.
“Thank you again…Sadie.”
Without warning, the Energies tear around us, so hard I stumble off-balance. There’s a low rumble, and she’s gone.
A snap spell.
“Must have gone to one expensive learning pod,” I mutter to the trees around me, none of whom I know personally. “They don’t let us snap from place to place until we’re basically elders.”
“Really?” I hear being tapped out, muffled, on the snow behind me. “That’s the part of that conversation you’re thinking about right now, Sadie? Not the parts where she’s clearly a high-ranking Highlander and she wants to go on a date with some Grovian low-life that she thinks is human like her.”
I turn and crouch in front of my quivering rabbit friend. “Careful, Osley. You’re starting to sound like Lerian. And the Grove’s only big enough for one of her.”
Que lowers quer ears down to quer sides, and I sigh, heaving out a huge white cloud as I look around us. At the pool of bloodied snow that Iema left behind. At the footprints Evelyn made.
“Can she stay our little secret, Os? Just for now?”
Que stares up at me intently, quer nose twitching slightly. “Can who stay our secret?”
I grin and stand shakily. “Let’s head back to the Plains. Everyone’s probably back by now, probably flying out about where we are.”
Osley thumps an affirmative and hops softly beside me as I limp in the direction of the Plains.
It takes us a long while, but we reach the protective, invisible barrier that surrounds the Plains without further incident. I glance down at Osley. “You ready?”
“I’m not the one covered in human blood,” que stamps out, nose twitching.
I stick my tongue out at quer but get quer point. I scrunch up my eyes and tug at the Energies, feeling Iema’s blood dry and crust off of me almost instantly. Getting blood off my body—a spell I’m a little too good at.
Plenty of practice.
I grimace at Os and step forward through the barrier, letting it squeeze my lungs before releasing me into the secret home of the Grovian dragons and Lunavad trees.
A massive expanse of knotted Lunavad trees and a smattering of dragons—the survivors of the Kinzemna massacre—sift into view before the barrier’s tugging of the Energies lets my eyes focus on the people closer by, in front of me. My growns hovering close together but just far enough apart so their wings don’t interfere with each other. Mom’s got her arms over her chest, and they’re wearing the same facial expression, except for Mama’s arched eyebrow.
Somehow, I feel the danger of being in trouble as much now as I had when Reve was standing over me, ready to hit me again.
Zaylam’s hovering low over my growns, her massive magenta wings flapping lazily, just enough to keep her in the air. The long jagged scar on her furry underbelly is just visible, and I wonder if Iema’s going to have a scar like that on her arm.
I can tell by the sparkle in my hatchling dragon’s crystal eyes that she’s both relieved and amused by my predicament. Her snout, which would be tucked all the way into triangular face if she were really upset, is slightly turned out with bemused curiosity at what my punishme
nt will be for running off.
Beneath the three of them, Lerian stands on the ground, her hind horselike hooves pawing aimlessly at the snow.
I clench my jaw and rip off my cloak despite the cold, letting my midnight-colored, star-speckled wings free. I groan in relief as they expand themselves, and I crouch down, sitting back on my haunches. I stare up at my not-so-welcoming party as I stretch out my left foot, bending my toes all the painful way back.
“Well, you’re kinda screwed this time, Sade,” Lerian tells me unconcernedly, eyes darting between my mothers and me.
“Yeah, wouldn’t have seen that coming,” I deadpan, but my mind isn’t on the Plains.
My mind is on Evelyn.
Chapter Three
“SOME HELP YOU were,” I singsong up to Zaylam as we finally give my growns the slip, assuring them that yes, I’m fine (possibly true, though I haven’t really sorted it all out in my head yet) and no, nothing significant happened (totally untrue, but they’re the ones who let me lie so much with all this spying, so I’m not going to take blame for being good at it). I don’t think Mama totally bought it, but with that high, soft voice of hers, she stemmed Mom’s teary tirade about how could I run off alone like that, I could have just shared my feelings with them, on and on.
They all believed me when I waved off Lerian’s invitation to come sleep near her in the Underlands, claiming to be too tired to go anywhere. That part’s completely true.
As Zaylam and I fly up to get to our hatchling tree’s canopy, I look out blearily over the Plains. No plant-life sprouts from the snowy, parched ground except the massive Lunavad trees, branchless most of the way up their knotted trunks until they bloom out into a circular, mushroom-shaped canopy. The dragons that aren’t flying around—the only space in Lunav they can still do so freely—are hanging almost batlike from their hatchling trees’ canopies, the elders singing melodies and the youngers chirping in harmony. Zaylam’s the youngest of the youngers left in the Plains, though. Combine the Kinzemna massacre with the mandatory Slicings that destroy faeric Dreaming, and death meets an inability to be hatched in the first place.
At this rate, there won’t be any more songs in the Plains. Because there won’t be any more dragons.
I sigh and run a hand through my short hair as we fly, trying to see if I can trace one of Jorbam’s limbs from the bumpy, root-patched ground all the way up her main body, where each of her roots joins with dozens of other tendrils to twist and coil, ropelike, to form her trunk.
My gaze flickers, and I wind up tracing a root back to Banion instead. Where a solitary dragon-hatchling bulb glows in purple fluorescence, hanging from his canopy. Banion is my little sibling Aon’s hatchling tree, just like Jorbam is mine. But the dragon bulb won’t hatch. Not now. Not since Aon’s been Sliced. Not since they opened quer brain and ripped away quer ability to Dream.
My wings tense up and I lose height. Immediately, Zaylam swoops directly underneath me, extending her long, magenta neck up. She croons at me, eager for me to wrap my arms around her so she can take me the rest of the way to Jorbam. I concede; my wings are feeling pretty heavy. I let myself drop and settle with my legs straddling the spot where her shoulders slim out into her neck. I won’t be able to do this when she gets older, so I take advantage of how she’s still small.
For a dragon, anyway. Her face alone is still wider than my waist. She takes a steep, sudden drop, making me feel more weightless than I ever could with my own wings supporting me. I whoop loudly—she turns her face back to me and her snout is fully elongated with glee—and earn myself several scandalized glares from dragons like Harlenikal and Archa, who think the most resonant music is made exclusively by dragons. They don’t look at me, exactly, though; more like they look past me. Only my hatchling dragon looks directly at me; everything else, all the songs and all the harmonizing, is always addressed to the Energies.
Zaylam glides somewhat ungracefully to a stop just under our hatchling tree’s canopy. She lowers her neck so I can slide into a small gap between Jorbam’s thick branches where her deep green, piney leaves don’t grow. Zay slips her talons into her own special gap between the ropelike tendrils of Jorbam’s trunk, and I nuzzle my face into her knotted bark, breathing in deeply.
“Is there anyone you haven’t angered today, Sadie?” Jorbam’s bark rumbles in a pattern I’ve understood since I first Dreamed her when I was a young one in the Highlands. The Dream forged the hatchling connection between us and allowed Zaylam to start growing in her sap. Some faeries Dream their hatchlings before their Slicing; people assume that’s what happened with me. They’re wrong.
I grin and run my fingers over the grooves in her bark, almost in a hickory-tree pattern, like the veins in Zaylam’s wings. “You’d never be mad at me, Jorbam, though, right?” She takes her time processing the vibrations of my speech and eventually rumbles softly in response. Her laughter.
I cuddle closer into Jorbam’s canopy, shifting my body so I’m firmly lodged between her trunk and two of her thickest branches. Harlenikal flies by, low, close to us. She doesn’t know I can Dream. Mostly, nobody does. If they did, I’d be locked away in the Pits. Or dead. Or my whole family dead. My little sibling… I change the subject rapidly.
“Remember when you were hatched, Zay? Your bulb hung right there.”
Zaylam hums and Jorbam rumbles softly, remembering with me.
It had been a fluorescent magenta, and when I was a young one—about a season after we started living in the Grove—it had swollen until even Jorbam’s strong branches nearly couldn’t hold it anymore.
What I didn’t know then was that dragons don’t break out of their bulbs and leave the shell behind. With dragons, their bulb shell becomes their wings.
I watched, a few branches away, my body moving in time with every motion the hatchling made. I’d been Dreaming her growth, and I knew she was ready to come out. We were already, through that Dreaming, synced. Without that connection, she couldn’t have been born.
When the hatchling’s body twitched left in her bulb, I twitched left into Jorbam’s leaves. When she moved as though to try to flex her wings, even from inside them, mine stretched up and out. I hit my head on Jorbam’s canopy a couple times because of it. And on and on, until finally—with a chorus of dragons singing above us—a body, small for dragons but already so much bigger than me, slipped unceremoniously out of the bottom of the bulb. The fine, mauve fur of her underbelly was slicked down with Jorbam’s sap that nourished the hatchling inside the bulb, damp and shimmering like I imagine the fur of a baby dolphin in our ocean, the Flowing, or a gryphon in Izla would be.
Like most dragons, our hatchling emerged singing. There were no words yet—they would come later—but her quavering tones vibrated in every bone in my body. My wings took flight of their own accord and took me forward. I didn’t know why, because I’d never seen a dragon hatched and no one had ever told me, but somehow I knew what to do. Probably all that Dreaming.
The little dragon, dripping with sap and kind of wrinkly in the places where she was more fleshy than scaly, was hanging from the remains of her bulb—of her wings. Seeing them stretched out with the sunlight shining through them, I realized with a tiny gasp that they had the same veiny patterns as Jorbam’s hickory-style bark. All three of her eyelids were wide open. Her eyes were the color of the Flowing during sunup, and when they met mine, her voice stopped quavering.
I smiled tentatively. I’d never made eye contact with a dragon before. Her snout—hatched retracted all the way into her triangular head—elongated slightly, and then it came out so fast that she nearly hit me in the face. I backed up, but couldn’t stop grinning.
“Zaaay. Lammm,” she sang, proclaiming her name for the first time. She was still hanging from her massive wing sprouts, unable to give herself the upward thrust she needed to transform the bulb she was hanging by into her wings. I took a deep breath in and aimed my exhale at her wing sprouts, hoping I was faerie enough to give her t
he magic contained in fae breath.
I was.
Zaylam’s body rose as she pulled down, and with a snap, she was soaring. Her bulb had separated into two magnificent wings, the rest of Jorbam’s sap spilling to the earth far below. I wrapped my arms as far as I could around Jorbam’s trunk; our hatchling had taken flight.
Now, the memory and the calm of both my hatchlings’—both tree and dragon—presence surrounds me and lulls me into relaxation.
Above us, dragons harmonize endlessly, and beneath us. I let my body relax. Usually we sleep in different trees, outside the Plains. Closer to the Gathering, where the Forest meets the Underland in a big clearing with most of our public communal spaces. Mom and Jax’s infirmary is at the southernmost edge of the Gathering, so Mama, Aon, and I tend to sleep near there. So Mom has only a short flight to come home from after a long healing session. And, I think sometimes, even though neither of them says it, so Mama can keep an ear out for Mom while she works.
I let my body relax because, in the Plains, Mama doesn’t have to tighten the Energies around me before I fall asleep to keep me from flailing around if I Dream. In the Plains—on the two nights for every six sunups that the Hands allow us to sleep here—I can rest without restraint, without the Energies tugging on me so tightly I almost always have trouble making magic in the early mornings.
In the Plains, Zaylam and Jorbam’s bodies shield me from the view of any faeric traitors, like Tacon, that might be in the Plains and could give me away. And non patrols can’t get into the Plains; not with the Lunavad trees’ barrier around it, shielding it both from view and from entrance.
So I let my body relax; I let my ribcage expand so much more than it can when Mama’s magic is holding my muscles tightly in place, all so I don’t die. All so I don’t lead to their deaths.
I let my eyes close, and I slip into sleep.
I don’t Dream every night. Not every night is there a creature that passes through my exact Energy level. But tonight, there is. At some point in the early sunup, when my breathing has deepened enough for me to slip into complete unconsciousness, consciousness returns.