by Lucia Ashta
I never understood this, as I longed to feel the sun against my skin. Whether it was the heat of the Suxle or the Auxle Sun, or even the eerie purple glow of the Plune Moon, to them I wasn’t invisible. Their rays shone upon me. They treated me the same as any other, and I longed to experience proof of that equality.
I spotted the shade, with its bright red tones, and the emissary who struggled to hold it steady down the treacherous mountain trail. I also saw the chieftain’s violet pants walking beneath the shade. What I didn’t expect to see was two girls nearly running down the path to stay ahead of the chieftain. They were too close to him to be certain to escape any comment about their tardiness, although they wouldn’t theoretically be tardy when the attendees would have had to wake before the sun to find out about the meeting.
Even as I experienced inexplicable relief that girls would be joining the group I desperately wished to join, I couldn’t shake the shock.
I wasn’t the only one. Rane was trying to coach his features into passivity, but I could tell he was as stunned as I was.
I had no idea how Traya had managed to escape Mother and what must have been her attempts to dissuade our older sister from joining the Dragon Force. Mother accepted that Rane would join. Our father had been part of the elite dragon charmers, and our missing older brother had been his apprentice. Rane would follow in their footsteps because that’s what men with any inclination toward dragon training in our tribe did.
But women were different, and Mother would have resisted Traya’s involvement. I hadn’t realized Traya possessed such courage. She was the one to always help Mother, to ease the burden of a family such as ours.
Yet here she was, and a swell of pride, maybe excitement, rolled through me at the same time as my palms began to sweat. Traya was putting herself not only in the path of the dragons, but also the chieftain. And next to her, doing the same, was the girl Rane liked.
Traya and Yana took their seats at the very back of the crowd a minute before the chieftain took his up front. I prayed his scrutiny would escape them as much as I hoped it would avoid me. I was tougher than Traya, I always had been, even if now she was making me wonder who my sister really was, and why she’d never revealed this side of herself before.
Any chance to wonder ceased the instant the chieftain cleared his throat and prepared to begin.
5
The chieftain was a small man, but he made the most of his slight stature by positioning himself at the highest point in front of the sacred pools. He was a man who liked to be seen. Everything about him was intended to broadcast that he was the most important person of the Ooba tribe.
His back was perfectly straight, his attire impeccable. The village women took turns cleaning his clothing. He proclaimed it a sacred honor. I declared it ingenious manipulation. Whatever it was, no one denied the chieftain the honor, especially not Mother, with all she had to hide.
His clothing was colorful when no one else’s was. The pigments used to create his clothes came from rare plants, and none of the tribespeople was allowed to harvest them without his permission. It seemed that even the omnipresent dirt and dust obeyed his will and didn’t dare tarnish his outfits.
He drew out the silence of the dragon trainers, who waited for him to speak. He seemed to feed off their attention, waiting until he’d garnered enough anticipation to make it worth his while. If he was anything, he was a showman. I wondered, was he also a charlatan? But I suspected I was alone in that query. Plastered across the faces of all dragon trainers and hopeful apprentices was the appropriate level of reverence. Even Rane’s expression mirrored that of his neighbors.
For once I was grateful the chieftain couldn’t see the expression I wore. My eyes narrowed in suspicion. With him in front of the pools, I was noticing something strange, something I’d never detected before. Perhaps it had never been there, but I suspected it had, and something about the pools allowed me to see beyond the ordinary.
While we waited on the chieftain, energy traveled from every one of the people gathered there to him. It was faint, but I was certain of what I was seeing, and I wanted desperately to grab hold of Rane and Traya, and interrupt whatever the chieftain was doing.
The edges of the tribespeople blurred and bled. Energy, essence, something of which I had no concrete understanding, trailed from them, crossing the open space until it reached the chieftain, who absorbed it. He behaved as if nothing unusual was happening, but he must have felt it. If it wasn’t intentional, he must sense such a great influx of energy.
He must notice, and if that were the case, what did that mean? What did that say about his true intentions toward the people of Ooba? I’d never liked him, and I’d long thought there was something... off about him. But this? I’d never imagined he’d do something as extreme as this. Whatever this was, it was bad, and I didn’t need any training in the ways of energy transference to realize that.
The glow around him grew stronger as he absorbed more energy from those present. I noticed my jaw clenched, but I couldn’t seem to release it. I wrestled with the need to interfere, to do something, anything, even though I had no idea what I might do to stop something I didn’t fully comprehend.
The chieftain drew a deep breath, and colorful, bright swirls of essence, which didn’t belong to him, filled his lungs. I opened and closed my fists, forcing myself to disobey my instincts and stay put. Never had it been so hard to allow the shadows to swallow me.
I was the only one there whose essence wasn’t escaping my body toward the vacuum, who sucked it all in.
When the chieftain finally spoke, shivers ran through my body, and I experienced a concerning revulsion. This isn’t good, this isn’t good at all. I might not be able to put words to what was happening, but I could feel it. I never ignored my instincts; I knew better.
“Thank you all for coming. I’m glad you were able to make it,” Chieftain Pumpoo began.
I bet you are, I thought. Even my brain was tense against his invisible actions, the ones only I, the invisible girl, could see. Fitting, I supposed.
“It’s for a very important purpose that I’ve gathered you here today.” The group as a whole leaned forward, wanting to learn more. The chieftain was a master at what he did. “A purpose to which I hope you will all be able to rise.”
He took long pauses between his statements, allowing the anticipation to build.
“You’re here this morning because you have an affinity for working with the dragons, those most sacred of beasts. As you know, the sacred purpose of our people is, foremost, to protect the dragons. To keep them from harm from any outsider.”
There hadn’t been any outsiders in Ooba for hundreds of years.
“But our purpose is also to train with them, to tame them, and the highest of all honors, to charm them. Many of you might not realize why this is so important.”
He let his words hang in the air. A few of the novices fidgeted as they suppressed their need to know. The chieftain, with his unsettling blue eyes, scanned the crowd. “Your jobs are the most important of all because we aren’t safe in Ooba.”
Several of the novices, including Traya and Yana, startled. The older tamers and charmers didn’t.
“Though I’ve been able to maintain our safety for more than a millennium already, and my ancestors for several millennia before me, there is no guarantee that our safety will continue.” He paused. “In fact, it seems that danger is coming. Soon.”
What little energy continued to leave the dragon trainers to enter the chieftain ceased then, as if the communal shock and apprehension could halt what they didn’t realize was happening. Even I found myself playing into his theatrics. How does he know danger is coming? Tell us!
After the longest pause yet, he said, “The greatest seer of our time has foreseen it.”
What? What has this seer seen? Waiting was almost physically painful. I had to restrain myself from pacing the way my body wanted. I needed to do something to let off this tension.
But like everyone else there, I was rooted to the spot, waiting for this man to finish spinning his tale.
“She has seen into the future of the Ooba people, and she sees a great threat coming across the horizon, across the rock plains.”
“When, Your Greatness? Has she seen when this threat arrives?” Yoon, a dragon charmer, dared to ask. The charmers were the elite members of the Dragon Force. They were admired throughout the community, and it seemed that gave them a certain leeway with the chieftain, who didn’t censure Yoon for interrupting.
“She has not, only that it will be in my lifetime.”
So much for Ma’s sense that Pumpoo was dying. If the threat was coming during his lifetime, then I wished he might live for a long time still. Well, maybe I did. After seeing him sucking in everyone’s life force, I wasn’t entirely sure. Which was the greater threat? The outside threat the seer foresaw, or the threat from within, where the chieftain could do as he wished with the Ooba people with complete impunity?
“Does she foresee what the threat is?” Yoon followed up, and Pumpoo raised a hand and smiled. His smile almost convinced me. It appeared genuine, like he was the friendly leader of our tribe, in this with us all the way. I wanted to believe him. It would be so much easier if what I’d witnessed weren’t true.
Pumpoo said, “Please be patient, Yoon. I understand your concern as I also share it. I’ll explain all that I know if you give me the opportunity. This seer is renowned for her visions. She is the great-granddaughter of the seer who told us of the danger of twins and spared us from the destruction they would have otherwise brought.”
Even my breathing stopped.
“But the threat is upon us, despite our precautions in eliminating the danger by doing away with all twins born to our people.”
“Doing away with,” a gentle euphemism for killing infants before they were allowed to live out their first day outside the womb. My heart thumped so intensely I thought someone else might hear it and discover me, a forbidden twin, hiding in plain sight. I looked to my brother. I could see the tension rolling off his body. But no one else would. No one would ever imagine that my likeable brother was half of a problem.
“The seer has had a vision in which twins arrive across the rock plains and bring death and destruction to our people.”
So I’m not the threat to our people? I’m not the bringer of death? Or were Rane and I going to wipe out the Ooba? We might approach our village across the rock plains any day.
Pumpoo said, “The twins who come to destroy us will take the dragons with them.”
The deepest silence yet settled across the crowd. Not even Yoon appeared capable of questions.
“We are to protect the dragons with our lives. We’re their sworn protectors. We cannot allow these twins of death to take them from us, to rip from us our sacred purpose.”
It was no longer clear whether these were the chieftain’s words or the seer’s. No one there seemed to care about the difference.
“We’ll train harder than ever before. We’ll become the best dragon tamers and charmers in existence.” It didn’t matter that when Pumpoo said ‘we’, he didn’t really include himself. He was whipping into a frenzy those before him, those who would risk their lives every day to fulfill his wishes.
“We’ll defeat these twins of death whenever they arrive, and we’ll keep the dragons where they belong. With us. With the Ooba people.”
Nods and murmurs of assent disrupted the careful silence the Dragon Force had maintained.
“This is our destiny. This is what we’re meant to do as a people. Now is the time when we’ll become the people we were always meant to be. Since we left the royal city of Origins to find safety from persecution here, amid the mountains, home to the dragons, we’ve trained and prepared, but never have we trained like we’ll need to now.”
More nods swept across the crowd. Even Traya’s long dark hair bobbed up and down with the rest of them.
“Every single one of you who came here today is meant to be here. The Something Greater has brought you here today to be a part of destiny.”
Traya and Yana shared a look.
“All of you sitting in front of me in this moment are now officially part of the Dragon Force. Those of you new to dragon training will apply yourselves to the task with the dedication such a sacred purpose demands of you, with the urgency I’ve outlined.”
Enthusiastic assent was evident across all the bright and shiny faces, even Rane’s.
“You’ll work harder than you ever have before. You’ll give it your all. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Greatness.” The chorused reply sent another shiver across my bare arms and legs. I wasn’t cold, despite the cooler breeze that always swept through the canyon, which housed the sacred pools.
“Those of you who’ve already dedicated yourself to dragon training, you have my thanks for your years of commitment. But now you’ll work harder still. You’ll give your everything to your personal advancement, and also to the new trainees. There is strength in numbers, and we’ll need all the numbers we can get.”
“Yes, Your Greatness.”
Yoon added, “It is our honor to do your bidding.” A few of the dragon trainees, tamers, and charmers added their agreement with more head nods. Dean, however, did not. I looked to the man with the unusual light brown hair, but his expression betrayed nothing of what he was thinking.
“Very well. I’m pleased by your promise of dedication. You’ll be the salvation of our people.”
“You are the salvation of our people,” Yoon said, to a chorus of agreement, and another shiver from me.
Chieftain Pumpoo smiled and accepted Yoon’s comment with apparent humility. If my suspicions were right, it was anything but.
He said, “The salvation of the Ooba people will depend on all of us doing our part. The Something Greater has put me in the position to guide you, and for that I’m grateful, that I may do my part to fulfill the greater purpose of the Ooba. But it will take all of us coming together as one unit to defeat the threat of the twins.”
Calls of Yes and Aye popped up across the crowd.
“There’s more,” Pumpoo said. “The seer has foreseen one final element. To save the Ooba people, not only must we learn to tame and charm the dragons as we’ve been doing for centuries, we must learn to ride them.”
Jaws dropped open all across the Dragon Force. For some reason, my gaze found Dean. He alone looked as if he’d anticipated this. Even Jore, Chieftain Pumpoo’s preferred emissary, was unsuccessful in hiding his surprise.
“To spare our people from the evil the twins will deliver, we must ride the dragons. I trust you won’t let me down. You won’t let our people down. Our very survival depends on every single one of you here. You’ll begin your training today.”
On that terrifying note, Chieftain Pumpoo uncrossed his legs and rose. Jore leapt from the ground, and the two other emissaries present reached for the bright umbrella and moved, as quickly as decorum allowed, to shade the chieftain, who was a head shorter than any of them.
Without another word, the small man with big messages began the trek back up the mountain trail.
No sound beyond the flow of the water of the sacred pools rang out across the crowd until the chieftain and his shade began to fade into the distance. Then bedlam erupted, marring the serene message of the water: There is peace where there is natural flow.
The chieftain had dragged every single one of us there into a flow of his own making.
6
Not even Rane, the one person I could usually count on to think of me, looked for me. He wouldn’t have been able to do so openly, I realized, but I could always tell when he was feeling for me.
The chieftain’s words sucked Rane into the carefully crafted environment of hysteria, along with the rest of the Dragon Force. There was little that unified a people so well as an external enemy, one they could focus on amassing their strengths against, and Chieftain Pumpoo had deliver
ed precisely that.
The enemy now had a face—it had two. Twins would deliver devastation to our people unless we stopped them, and the dragons were our way to prevent the seer’s vision from coming to pass. Rane, Traya, and I were the only ones there to understand that twins weren’t inherently evil. The circumstances of our births alone didn’t guarantee that our character and intent would align with the prophecies.
But no one else there was aware of that; it was apparent from the words exchanged. The energy of the dragon trainees whipped into something greater than it had been when the chieftain was there, and it was all aimed at one target. Twins grew more evil with each conversation.
Never had I felt more exposed and vulnerable. Never before had I been this grateful I was invisible to the eye.
A good while passed during which I believed Yoon was allowing the new members of the Dragon Force to blow off some of their agitation. Until I realized Yoon only appeared to be in control, and it was Dean and a reserved woman, Shula, who were the ones to take action to funnel the trainees’ determination in the right direction.
When Dean spoke, he didn’t raise his voice. Even though the conversation was loud, his voice carried an authority much like the chieftain’s, and everyone, even the rest of the charmers, quieted to hear what he had to say. “That’s enough,” he started. “You heard what the chieftain had to say, we have no time to waste. For those of you who just joined us today, you have far more to learn than you anticipate. Dragons are more dangerous than even the outrageous tales told around the fire have led you to believe. If you’re to survive your dragon training, you’ll need to be sharp and alert at all times. So I say this once and once only. If there is anyone here who isn’t prepared to dedicate their entire lives to dragon training, with full acceptance that there’s a possibility, a probability even, that you’ll die in service to the Ooba people, then now is your chance to leave. There’ll be no judgment cast if you decide to go. Dragon training isn’t for everyone, and even if you think it’s for you, it still might not be.