“I’m Dramanian too,” I interrupted, but neither of them seemed interested in my bone structure.
“Mom and Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” Victoria finally hissed, and Benita, after adding one final line, put the notebook away.
“Sorry, honey. You know how important this is to our pet project.”
“Which is what exactly?” I asked, my tone less than friendly by this point.
“Space creatures with human features,” Roger explained. “Now I hate to pry, but do these mixed features happen to mean that the members of your species are all intersex?”
“Inter what?”
“Intersex. Have chromosomes or genitals or some other aspect of both sexes. Not definitively male or female.”
I was tempted to cover my body with my hands protectively, but fought the urge. I didn’t mind the new term, but listening to people talk about my private areas made me want to either hide or transform into my dragon form and blow a fiery retort into their faces.
“Dad, please stop talking,” Victoria said, cutting off whatever further explanation he was about to offer before it began. “I swear, I can’t take you anywhere.”
“Well, if we’re not here to meet these beautiful creatures, then what are we here for?” he asked, finally turning to someone other than Sara Lee and I.
“We are looking for leads on new robot technology,” Dena said. “Apparently some robots are going to become very, very scary in the next twenty years. We need to find out who makes them, or else things are not going to go so well for the human race—or any other, for that matter.”
“Can you describe these robots?” Benita asked.
“Well,” I said thoughtfully, “I’ve only seen them up close once, but they have a ranking system much like your human army. You know, generals and captains and all of that, only they use X’s to mark their place. They’re the size of humans—actually a bit larger—and they move like humans too. Most of their inner workings are covered by metal plating, but I did see some wiring in the gaps.”
“So they look like the robots in any action movie,” Roger said doubtfully. “Not sure that will help us narrow things down.”
“According to Mani,” I continued, trying to remember everything I could, “the robots were first used in your government to try to stamp out the wizards and Igreefee. They first emerged after his memories were brought back by the sorceresses, though he fell into a coma that made it impossible to get much information out of him.”
“Then how would they know to….” Roger trailed off, then shared a look with his wife. “You don’t think,” he said at the same time Benita said “it can’t be.”
“These robots,” Benita asked. “Did you see anything in their eyes? A blue light, maybe?”
I tried to think back to the moment I stared their leader in the eye.
“Come to think of it, I actually do remember a blue glow. Why? Does that mean something?”
Now everyone except Sara Lee and I shared a knowing look.
“Blue light definitely means something,” Victoria said in a low voice. “It means magic.”
Chapter TWENTY
SARA LEE
THAT NIGHT, Allanah and Dena built a bonfire in their backyard around which Roger, Benita, Victoria, Nimue, and I sat on old chairs with mold in the cracks. Every few minutes, one of the wizards would shout out a suggestion for a robot-building suspect, immediately followed by a chorus of no and absolutely not. Roger and Benita had a running list of possible clues, which, considering they had been debating and deliberating for hours, was not very long. Since the sketching that morning, Nimue had seemed to be seething quietly, while I just felt too awkward to draw attention to myself.
“Nimue, can I talk to you inside for a minute?” I finally broke in when the group fell into silence.
“Sure,” she said, seeming happy to get away from the group. Back in the house, I motioned for her to take a seat in the kitchen.
“Listen,” she started before I could say anything, “if this is about last night—”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Oh. What, then?”
Now that she’d brought it up, I did want to talk about last night, but I tried to focus on the matter at hand.
“This might sound outlandish, but hear me out. I realized when the wizards were speaking earlier that we’re not just looking for any old magical creature.”
“Of course not. No regular old magical creature would have the power to do something like this in the first place.”
“That’s not what I mean. Doesn’t it seem like a strange coincidence that the robots appeared right after Merlin’s transformation? Almost as though they had come to stop the sorceresses but arrived too late?”
“Yes, I guess that is weird—”
“And then later, they came to our planet but seemed totally disinterested in our people. We were a pit stop to Balu—and to Merlin.”
“Huh. I guess I never thought—”
“And right before we left, didn’t it seem like the ships were specifically targeting Merlin?”
“Wow, you’re right. Who would hate Merlin enough to do something like this? We’re talking hundreds of years of vengeance, or more.”
This is why I needed her; as our princess, Nimue was the only one with access to our books and folklore, and she had been the only one to spend any alone time with Merlin before the attack. If anyone could figure out what old character could hold such a grudge, it was her.
“According to the stories, the Lady of the Lake was the only one who ever hated Merlin,” she said thoughtfully, “and considering she helped revive him, that line of thought won’t get us anywhere. But legend does mention more than one Lady of the Lake, so maybe Nimue had a sister or something?”
“Possibly, but why wouldn’t she have mentioned her?”
“No clue. By the way, why are we having this talk in here instead of out there?” She nodded to the bonfire.
“Because they can’t know that Mani is Merlin,” I reminded her. “If we slip up, we could set off some kind of chain reaction where they figure out who he is and everything turns out differently. You wouldn’t want to separate Merlin and Lup by accident, would you?”
There was that silence again, so full of meaning without using a sound. Maybe I was being overcautious about mentioning Merlin, but if I couldn’t be with the person I loved, then I certainly was going to do everything in my power to make sure Merlin could.
“Maybe the sorceresses didn’t know about this other person?” Nimue continued finally. “Or at least didn’t know she was a threat. With the original Nimue, Pamuya, Donoma, and Quanuk, there’s enough water women to worry about.”
“And the Mother,” I added.
“Who?”
“The woman who gave me the stone when I fell into the lake. You know, the one who made me a Secret Keeper and gave me the stone.”
“This ‘Mother’… did she happen to have a name?”
Most of my memories from the cave were fuzzy, the words I’d heard now distorted like a scratched record. Strange that she had given me so many secrets, but taken such a large chunk of my own thoughts.
“I can’t recall.” Trying to remember frustrated me. “If I ever knew her name, I don’t remember it.”
“Focus, Sara Lee,” Nimue urged. She put her hands on my forehead and closed her eyes, perhaps calling on her uncanny ability to hear my thoughts even when we weren’t in the same room. “Think very hard. Remember the moment the visions flooded your mind, and then put them aside. Was the Mother saying anything? Was she called anything?”
Nimue’s touch took the jumble of sensory details and, like a tangled ball of yarn, unwound them into a single stream of accessible images. I waded through them, picking single moments to remember one by one. Yes, there, glowing among the many other flashes, was her name.
“Nyneve,” I said with certainty. “Her name was Nyneve.”
WHEN WE interrupted the bonfire bant
er with the name of our primary suspect, the group could do nothing but stare at us. One minute we had gone off to have what they probably assumed was the reconciliation after our fight, and instead, we had returned with the name of a water sorceress while they were still debating the merit of some kind of half-bear, half-human general who apparently lived in a building off the main wizarding mansion. Allanah had even brought out something called a marshmallow to put between a cracker and a piece of chocolate, as though they were telling campfire tales instead of finding real clues.
“I don’t get it,” Victoria said after we had explained how we were connected to Nyneve. “Why would a sorceress who wanted to destroy our world give you a stone that could save it? Why send you back in time if she was about to get what she wanted?”
I had no answer to this question, but still I knew I was right—I felt the name’s correctness in whatever truth-place had been strengthened by my dip in the Mother’s pool.
“And here’s another question for you,” Roger butted in. “If this Nyneve is on another planet, how did she activate these robots in the first place?”
“We don’t have any more answers,” Nimue responded for me. “We know only as much as you do. But Merlin did tell us to find some kind of follower of the Mother’s when we were ready to return to our time, so maybe one of them could offer some answers?”
No one needed to state the obvious: we had no idea where these Secret Keepers were. They were Secret Keepers, after all; it wasn’t as though they went around spilling their messages to the wizarding world.
“I think I could find them,” I said tentatively. “Ever since we arrived on Earth, I’ve had these… feelings, I guess you’d call them. More like hunches. They tell me to go in certain directions, like I’ve typed a location into a navigation system or something. Maybe they’re leading me to other Secret Keepers, or to the Mother herself?”
“These hunches,” Dena asked, “are they able to be seen on a larger scale? Can you figure out where they’re taking you?”
I shook my head.
“Then you’ll need to travel above the clouds, as dragons,” Allanah said. “Victoria, Roger, and Benita can follow in their dragon forms with Dena on Victoria’s back, and I’ll follow on Grian.”
“How did I get reduced to a packhorse?” Victoria demanded.
“We could both ride Grian, but his slow pace will make the whole group much less effective. Please, Vic, just this once?”
“Fine,” Victoria grumbled as she crossed her arms. “Why not strap a few water sacks to me and a harness too, while you’re at it?”
“Are we leaving tonight?” Nimue asked. Her fatigue was evident in the dark circles under her eyes and the slow drop of her head every few minutes.
“I’m afraid so.” Allanah patted her arm in a motherly way. “I don’t think we have much time to lose, and if we’re headed to a densely populated area like a city, we can’t exactly fly around whenever we want. Grian’s been attacked enough times for me to have learned my lesson.”
Because we traveled in dragon form, we could bring little with us except ourselves and a spare set of clothes we tied to our ankles. Though bone dragons were the smallest breed of all of the flyers, we were also the lightest and nimblest, like a bat compared to an albatross. Leaping into flight was as easy as spreading our wings and flapping a few times, whereas the larger dragons had to work a lot harder to catch up.
Flying in the wind felt amazing. Before the recent exodus from Balu, most Dramanians had avoided transforming or flying on a daily basis, including Princess Nimue, because each one of us had different transformation techniques and flying talents that made becoming a dragon more or less enjoyable. Some citizens could only hold their dragon forms for a few minutes before transforming back, or at the most, an hour.
I loved it.
If not for the unspoken yet universally understood social rule not to transform and fly in public, I probably would have stayed a bone dragon most of the time back on Draman. I could have lived off the land, catching fresh fish and snatching up spare livestock when the shepherds weren’t looking. But to most Dramanians our dragon sides were ugly and the transformations something to be done in private, if at all—probably because deep down those who couldn’t hold their forms found the rest of us threatening, though they called us disgraceful.
As servant to the princess, my place in society mattered. Or had mattered, assuming I never went back.
How can you enjoy this? Nimue asked as we hovered above the ground and waited for the others to catch up. I feel my skin itching, even though I don’t have any skin anymore. My body keeps trying to return to its human form, which will get really awkward once we’ve reached a certain altitude. I’m exhausted, and everything aches—even my toes, or claws, or whatever they are now.
Just stop thinking about wanting to be a human so much, I said not very helpfully, since I was only half listening. Our bodies are tied to our wills, and if we don’t enjoy flight as a dragon, our bodies try to turn us back. No one on Draman liked flying because everyone told them not to, so they could barely hold the form for thirty seconds. Think of your dragon will like a muscle that you have to exercise, and once it’s strong enough, you won’t have to actively desire the wings or the claws anymore.
But I don’t desire them, Nimue stated for what felt like the millionth time. I just want my pretty hair and my human skin and—
Leave it up to the princess to completely ignore everything I had just said. Out of the corner of my eye, something on top of her head sprouted, then rained gold locks over her face and shoulders.
Nimue, you’re transforming. You need to stop thinking about your other body or—
Too late.
Her legs went first, becoming pinkish-white petals of skin and human bones, and then the flesh worked its way up her body and all the way to her head. Her wings disappeared last, indicating at least a slight hint of self-preservation in her transformation, but eventually they began to melt into nothing too. She had not managed to transform with her clothing, probably too scared by the height to concentrate that much or just unskilled at it, and for a minute she hovered, naked, as the little nubs of her wings shrank into her flesh.
Help us! I called to the other dragons, but no one was close enough to do anything but stare.
Nimue plummeted like a single raindrop, moving at the speed at which all things on Earth fall. Immediately I dove after her, tucking my legs and wings into my body so that neither would resist the descent. A few feet away, her eyes closed, and I wondered if she had fainted when she realized what was about to happen to her.
Using my talons, I reached across the space between us and wrapped my wings around her, then my feet too so that I could keep a secure hold. The ground was coming closer and closer, and I knew that my small body would not be able to lift an entire human by myself. There was only one choice to make: save Nimue’s life or my own.
I didn’t hesitate.
As soon as we got about twenty feet from the ground, I stretched my wings, catching us in the wind like the opening of a parachute. I turned so that my back was to the ground and wrapped my wings around Nimue, hiding her in a cage of bone that, when we hit the earth, would fully protect her from the fall. Then I closed my eyes, braced myself, and waited for impact.
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
NIMUE
I WOKE up with bones scattered around me, like a graveyard but only in the circle in which I lay. A leg bone here, an arm bone there… it was a gruesome sight. I could not remember how I had ended up in such a place, nor what had happened after we left Allanah and Dena’s house.
“Sara Lee?” I called, searching for my friend. “Anyone?”
Several dragons landed around me. My vision was still blurry from whatever had caused me to pass out, but eventually I made out the dragon faces of Grian, Roger, Benita, and Victoria.
“Where’s Sara Lee?” I asked. “Wasn’t she with us?”
The others shared a
look that I did not understand. Then Allanah slid off Grian and knelt at my side, and I knew that whatever she was about to say was very, very bad.
“It’s not your fault,” she started. Tears fell from my eyes before she could finish. “You weren’t ready for such a long journey. If we had known how short a time span you could hold your dragon form, we never would have—”
“Where is Sara Lee?” I demanded as I wiped the tears from my eyes. “I want to see her right now.”
“Oh Nimue…. You can’t. But just remember how much she loved you—so much that she sacrificed her life to save yours.”
The bones. Now I knew why this place could not have been a graveyard; these were not human bones, they were Dramanian. Everything came rushing back to me: the departure from the house, the brief flight, my wish for my hair. How could I have been so childish? My vanity had cost me my best friend, the person I cared for the most in the entire world, someone so selfless and kind that she would break my fall even after I was selfish enough to transform midair.
What were Allanah’s words? I liked the way she saw the world. Being with her made me a better person, more accountable with my powers and kinder to those around me. Do you feel that way about Sara Lee?
Too late, I finally knew the answer: my vanity had cost me not just a friend, but the person I loved.
I wailed, a sound so inhuman that it should have come from the mouth of my dragon form. The sound echoed around us in the darkness, and though it gave away our position, none of the others hushed me. Dena, having spent the most time with Sara Lee during our visit to Earth, began to cry too, and her voice joined mine in the sorrowful chorus.
Fly, my body told me, and for the first time in my entire life, I wanted to transform. I wanted to soar above the clouds, where Sara Lee had dipped and glided many times when she thought I didn’t notice her absence in the castle. Up where I could feel her presence, even though she was gone. Suddenly I hated my human body, the beauty that had come with a bloodline and a crown that I did not deserve and that had cost me the only person in the world who loved me for the person I was still discovering inside my princess skin.
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