The dragon folded its wings and swooped down at Napalm, who screamed and covered his eyes. But instead of eating the challenger, as Billy half-expected her to do, Fulgora stopped at the last second. She beat her powerful wings once, hard, and the blast of hot wind she generated blew Napalm right off his podium. Up over the water he sailed, flying limply through the air and crashing into the first row of seats beyond the water. Billy could hear the crunch of Napalm’s impact, and knew that it was made all the more painful since all the Powers who appeared to be seated there were really Projections, so Napalm smashed into a row of plastic seats rather than comparatively soft laps.
The challenger lay groaning and moaning in a limp pile of armor and bruised bones as Fulgora roared triumphantly overhead. The baleful red eyes of the dragon looked around the stadium, as though seeking anyone else who might issue a Challenge.
No one did.
Then Billy watched in awe as, almost softly, the dragon winged downward and settled upon one of the podiums below. It coughed a burst of flame from its mouth. Then it shivered, as though suddenly cold. Another burst of flame seemed to explode uncontrolled from its maw, and with it a great puff of smoke. The smoke wrapped itself like a living cloak around the dragon, obscuring her from view. It settled like fog over a meadow, dissipating slowly.
And when it was gone, so was the dragon.
All that was left was a motionless form, draped lifelessly over the stone pedestal.
Vester was on his feet instantly. “Fulgora!” he screamed.
In an instant, a trio of Powers were at her side: two gray-clad Wind Powers and one red-robed Power of Fire. They floated on a current of air to hover beside Fulgora’s pedestal. The Red Power touched her wrist and neck, feeling for a pulse. “It’s faint,” he said in a voice that was audible to all in the arena, “but she’s alive.”
Now a new round of buzzing conversation began. Billy caught snatches of it all around him. “Thank goodness,” and “Did you ever see such a thing?” and “A dragon! By all the Powers, a dragon!” being the most common refrains. Vester appeared to hear nothing, his eyes glued to Fulgora as her limp form was floated by the Wind Powers over the water that had surrounded her tiny podium, and off to a side gate which opened for her and closed once she was inside.
“Recovery Room,” said Vester. “That’s a good sign. They don’t send people there unless they’re hopeful.”
“Goodness gracious, did you ever see such a thing?” huffed a nearby voice. Billy turned. It was Tempus, the Gray Power who had been at Billy’s Gleaning. The old man was weaving through the aisle toward them, crashing over, through, and around Projected—and several non-Projected—Powers to get to Billy and Vester.
His characteristic Hawaiian shirt—the moving landscape on this one a bright green and blue and looking more like someone had been explosively sick all over him than like he was going on holiday—flapped as he stumbled toward them. He was also wearing violently pink shorts that barely came down to his bone-white thighs, his knobby knees clacking together as he ran. “Oh, pardon me, was that your head?” he would ask when walking through one protesting Projection. “Sorry, just need to get over a few more of you,” he would murmur as he balanced on top of another Power who was actually there. To Billy, the surprisingly agile old man looked like an ancient polar bear, hopping from ice flow to ice flow in the Arctic Circle.
He finally reached Billy and Vester, puffing violently as he reiterated to them, “Did you ever see such a thing?”
“No,” said Vester shortly before turning back to look at the closed door to the Recovery Room as though hoping it would pop open at any second and Fulgora would walk out.
“Me neither,” said Tempus. “Did you see how they just floated right out to her! In the middle of a Challenge, like they had to rescue an unDetermined child?”
Vester turned an almost-angry gaze on the old Wind Power. “Yes, Tempus, that was really unreal,” he said sarcastically.
Tempus shrank a bit before his gaze. “Oh, and there was also the dragon thing, too, of course.”
“Of course,” said Vester, still clearly biting back incivility only through super-human effort.
Billy watched the short exchange like a spectator at a world-class ping-pong match, the volleys almost too fast to be seen.
“What happened?” he finally managed to interject. “I mean, she won, right? Fulgora is still the Red Councilor, and Napalm can’t ever Challenge her again, can he?”
“She won all right,” whispered Vester.
“Indeed she did,” said Tempus. And then, as if Billy hadn’t seen it all ready. “She actually became a dragon. And a fully-grown one, no less!”
Billy was beginning to sense that what had happened here was very unusual, even for a place where the elevators joked, rock giants boxed, and hot dogs begged you to be eaten in disturbingly desperate voices. “So becoming a dragon is a big deal?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Yes,” said Tempus, “In much the same way as Eurasia is a big island, or a blue whale is a rather large animal, or a redwood is just a tiny bit bigger than a mustard seed, or—”
The Gray Power broke off quickly as Vester again aimed an irritated look at him. Billy was almost grateful; he liked a good metaphor as much as the next kid, he supposed, but he had gotten the point pretty early on.
Tempus leaned in to whisper to Billy as Vester returned his undivided attention to his vigil over the Recovery Room. “Dragons are what Powers become when they don’t want to die.”
Billy was getting even better at his monosyllabic responses now. He had practiced them enough that he was in danger of losing his amateur status, so when he said, “Huh?” this time, it was a “Huh” that would have put a world class “Huh”-er to shame.
“Huh?”
Tempus’s eyebrows went up. It looked like even he was impressed at how well Billy could communicate the complex thought, “I’m sorry, I haven’t the slightest inkling of the beginning of an idea of what the heck you’re talking about and the only way I could have less of an idea is if I went back in time to a point before you had said anything at all on this unknown subject and therefore not only didn’t know any details about it, but was completely unaware that said subject even existed” in a single “huh?”
“Well,” Tempus said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but time doesn’t pass exactly the same here on Powers Island.”
“I had heard something about that,” said Billy dryly.
Tempus nodded gravely. Apparently he was better at sensing confusion than sarcasm. “It does, it’s true. Usually, it moves much quicker here than for the rest of the world. The White King and the Great Gray Prophet who were the principal architects of Powers Island made it that way, to hide us from the rest of the world.”
Billy looked questioningly at Tempus. He was now getting so good he was even able to dispense with the “Huh”s and communicate total confusion in a single glance.
“What I mean is,” Tempus said, “well, you could say we are currently in a slightly different dimension. So something that appears to happen over a course of hours here, takes only a few seconds or minutes back home. So naturally some Powers would rather be dragons or sylphs or sprites or werewolves or such.”
Billy blinked. He had been following Tempus up to that last little bit. And had the old man said werewolves? “I’m sorry,” said Billy, “I don’t really get you.”
“Get me?” asked Tempus absent-mindedly. “I’m not a present. How could you get me?”
Billy was saved from trailing after Tempus’s wildly rambling train of thought by a sudden commotion in the stadium. Everyone was on their feet, straining to look at the Recovery Room. The doors had just opened, and Billy could literally feel everyone at Powers Stadium—even the people who weren’t really there—holding their breath. They all gasped disappointedly, though, when what emerged wasn’t Fulgora, but merely one of the Gray Powers that had borne her on his Wind into the room
in the first place. “They’re still diagnosing,” he said, again in that strangely-amplified voice that resounded throughout the stadium. Billy realized he must be doing something to the air to make it carry the sound everywhere, something that a Wind Power would surely be able to do.
“Where was I?” asked Tempus when they sat down again. “Oh, yes. Passing time and dragons.” He looked at Billy. “If time passes quickly here, and doesn’t in the real world, what does that mean?”
“Uh,” said Billy dully, “it means that time passes fast here, but slow there?”
“Exactly!” crowed Tempus. “But more than that, it means that if you spend a lot of time here, you go back there and even though you’ve grown by a few minutes or hours or weeks, the rest of the world hasn’t.” The old man paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain. “You ever see a kid who literally just seemed to grow overnight? To grow a few inches and put on twenty pounds?”
Billy nodded. Cameron Black sprung instantly to mind. His eternal tormenter had seemed to grow hugely in the two months since school had started.
“Well,” said Tempus, “that may be one of two things.” The old man held up two liver-spotted fingers, ticking off the choices. “One, that he had a growth spurt. Or two, that he or she is a young Power who spent several months on Powers Island for training, then returned to the rest of the world’s time only a day later. But he grew in those months. His body didn’t know that only a day of ‘real’ time had passed. It had experienced a month of growth. And that means, ultimately, that a person who spends a great deal of time at the island….” He trailed off expectantly, clearly waiting to see if Billy would put this last piece together.
Billy thought. So someone got old here, but no time passed for the rest of the world? And that must mean…. “So someone who stays here a lot will seem to age faster, and die sooner.”
Tempus laid a finger on his nose. Correct, the gesture told Billy. “Exactly. Me, for example, I know I look like I’m around fifty,” (and here Billy couldn’t help but think Tempus was being very generous to himself), “but my birth certificate shows that I was born in St. Andrews hospital in Illinois only forty-five years ago.” He looked at his body, then back at Billy. “I think we can agree that my non-Power friends believe I’ve led a very, well, colorful life that has aged me prematurely.”
Billy couldn’t help but laugh. But then he grew sober. “So if I stayed here….”
“You’d age, too, faster than your friends, faster than your parents, faster than everyone. But don’t worry,” he hastened to add. “Most people don’t spend that much time on the island, except perhaps when doing testing or involved in special training of some kind or other. So the difference is usually negligible.”
“Why did the White King and,” Billy tried to remember what Tempus had said, “the Great Gray Prophet make Powers Island that way?”
“So that it couldn’t be found by non-Powers, of course,” gruffed Tempus. Apparently he didn’t have as much patience for other people’s conversational tangents as for his own. “But we’re talking about death and dragons right now.” He rubbed his hands on his Hawaiian shirt absent-mindedly, as though trying to smooth out wrinkles. It didn’t help much. Billy thought the shirt still looked like someone had managed to barf in the shape of palm trees.
“So some of us Powers seem to age. And even though, really, we still get our allotted lifetime of experiences—whether on Powers Island, or back with the real world—some of the Powers don’t like the idea of aging—and dying—before everyone else in the normal world. So they try to take refuge in something that lives forever.” He eyed Billy. “Can you guess what that might be?”
Billy shrugged. He had no idea. “The sun?” he guessed, more to say something than because he thought it was the right answer.
“The Elements,” Tempus said gloatingly, pleased with himself. “The Elements are always there, in some form or other. They are self-perpetuating in a way. So the Powers who want—wrongly, I think—a form of immortality must become their Elements.” He paused, sobering suddenly. “I believe this is an affront to nature, and to the One who created all Elements.” He shrugged then, adding, “But some disagree.”
“So these Powers who want to live forever, they become Elements?” asked Billy. “They become Fire or Water? Or Earth or Wind?”
“No, that’s impossible,” said Vester, causing Billy to jump. He hadn’t even been aware the fireman was listening to the conversation Billy and Tempus were having. “No one can be Fire. A human is a human, and Fire is Fire. Two different things.”
“Quite so,” broke in Tempus, looking a little miffed at Vester for interrupting the old man’s lecture-like teaching of young Billy. “But still they try. And some—a very few, mind you—manage to become something that is close to an Element. An embodiment of it, something more than human, but less than pure Element.”
“Like a dragon,” said Billy.
“Yes,” said Tempus, clearly pleased, though Billy wasn’t sure if the old man’s happiness sprang from Billy’s cleverness or from his own skill at teaching. “Like a dragon. Dragons, being closer to pure Element, have greater control over that Element than any but the greatest Powers. More importantly, they live much, much longer. Some say they live forever. But,” he added, with a bit of a frown, “that’s hard to verify, since forever hasn’t happened yet.”
“So, Fulgora became a red dragon, and—”
“And that is absolutely astounding!” shouted Tempus. “No Power in recorded history has managed to become so close to Element, and then actually manage somehow to return to human form!” He looked at the closed doors of the Recovery Room. “Fulgora must have been truly desperate. Either that, or,” he lowered his voice, clearly not wanting Vester to hear what he said next, “or much more ambitious than we dreamed.” He spoke in normal tones again, then said, “Either way, she did something amazing. She will probably be on the Council for the rest of her life, since I can’t think of anyone who would be crazy enough to Challenge her again after today’s spectacle. Though,” he added, eyeing the still-closed Recovery Room, “the rest of her life might not be a very long time.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Vester snapped. He was clearly angry at Tempus now. His eyes blazed like the fire he controlled. “Don’t ever say that. She’s strong.”
“Of course, my boy, of course,” Tempus said placatingly, his hands up. “I didn’t mean any harm. Just get carried away sometimes.”
Vester’s hands balled into hard-knuckled fists at his sides, and Billy worried for a moment that the fireman might take a swing at Tempus. He didn’t want that to happen. Not only was he fairly sure that one hit would cause the knobbly Tempus to shatter into a million brittle tatters of bone and vomit-shirt, but he couldn’t bear to see his two friends fight.
“I’m sorry, Vester,” said Billy. “It’s my fault.” He looked at his feet, embarrassed. “I just don’t know anything about anything,” he said. He suddenly felt genuinely stupid. If he only understood these things—things which were apparently common knowledge among the Powers—Tempus wouldn’t have had to explain all this to him, and Vester wouldn’t have gotten so angry.
But to his surprise, Vester’s anger subsided instantly. He clutched Billy in a sudden hug. “I’m sorry, too, Billy. It seems you’ve arrived in this world with no warning. Everything must be terrifying to you.” The young fireman let go of Billy, giving a smile to Billy, then smiled at Tempus, too. “Sorry to you too, my friend,” he said.
Tempus waved off the apology, but was clearly happy to hear Vester say that. Billy felt his insides move back to their normal position, overwhelmingly glad that Vester wasn’t going to knock Tempus’s head off like a Rock-em-Sock-em rock giant.
“Have you seen Ivy?” asked Vester.
Tempus nodded. “I did for a minute, but she was called away by something. I think there’s a meeting of the Council happening right now, and sometimes her father wants her there during meeti
ngs so she can run needed errands or deliver messages.”
Vester nodded and turned back to look at the Recovery Room.
Billy was going to look, too, hoping that Fulgora would come out soon. But before he had looked for more than a moment, something very strange and very frightening occurred.
A small explosion rocked the middle of the arena. Nothing huge, not on the scale of Fulgora’s dragon breath, or even Napalm’s fire bombs. But it sent a discernible noise through all of Powers Stadium. The noise appeared to come out of nowhere, but when Billy looked at the arena, he saw in Close-up that several of the monstrous eel creatures that had menaced Napalm and Fulgora were now floating belly-up in the water below the podiums, clearly dead.
He looked back up, planning to ask Vester what had just happened, but before he could do that Powers Stadium suddenly emptied substantially. About half the audience just disappeared, most of them just fading into nothing in the blink of an eye, and the rest using Imbued keys of varying shapes and types to open glittering doorways which they used to Transport themselves to somewhere unknown.
“What the—” Vester began.
Then, out of nowhere, a new crowd appeared. Not fifty thousand, nowhere near the number of Powers who had just Transported or unProjected themselves out of the stadium. Just a few thousand, perhaps, but enough that the new arrivals were noticeable in the crowd. They arrived with that characteristic “pop” of a Transport, all of them appearing almost at the same instant. The new arrivals looked around for a moment, apparently getting their bearings, then moved as one.
One of them had appeared nearby Billy. The creature—not a person, Billy now saw, but something else—had mottled skin, a dull, faded lattice of green and brown. It reminded Billy of grass that had been left unwatered a bit too long. The creature’s skin also appeared flaky, making Billy think of some kind of weird full-body dandruff. The hair on the creature was similarly ill-looking, a diseased patch of mangy locks that curled in sticky clumps around its slightly misshapen head.
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 19