by Marc Secchia
“Did someone make a promise?”
He cursed again, but Sanu just rippled over to him, apparently more water than woman. Bad Boy definitely fancied those moves. He wore a foolish grin as Sanu cooed, just an inch from his dark stubble, “Learn to pick your opponents better, boy. Do tell me your names.”
With a stiff-as-a-lamppost bow, he growled, “Kenzo Kayatana, Captain of the Black Assassins, at your service.” He bent to whisper in her ear, most probably his Soul-name, then added, “I’d watch your back from now on.”
“I thought you preferred to watch my front? Nice meeting you, Kenzo. Now, we’ll be off. I claim rules of the victor. This is my condition: don’t follow us. Or, next time, I’ll do more than carve my name into your cheek.”
“What?” he snarled, his fingers flying to the wound.
Sanu bowed to Zaranna. “Pick a path.”
“That one,” she said, flicking her mane to their left. Knockout to Sanu!
They left Kenzo using his blade for a mirror to peer at the wound. Sanu had indeed carved three runes into his skin in the space of time it took a warrior of Kenzo’s calibre to respond. Unbelievable.
“Sanu!” he yelled at last.
She did not deign to glance back. But Zaranna noticed she made sure those hips were working overtime as they marched down the next Safeway. The Horse made a very small snicker. Aha. So, Sanu thought she had made herself a conquest, did she?
Shame he was an enemy officer.
Chapter 25: Revelations
With her horse camping in decidedly Spartan conditions somewhere beneath Equinox’s surface, Zara woke to a joyous Saturday in Cape Town, the most beautiful city in the world. She joined Whiz for several races at Kenilworth before taking a taxi to see Alex. He was as fit a fiddle. Ooh, and so … Alex. Scrummy Alex, even seen through three layers of impervious plastic. Poor man, he was so desperate to escape the hospital. They chatted until Nurse Grace, Zaranna’s favourite, came to kick her out, shouting that she had five boys of her own and she would have no compunction in tanning Alex’s backside if he did not behave and observe visiting hours!
But she left with a precious promise. Tomorrow, there would be no more barriers. They could cuddle and canoodle and drive the hospital staff crazy. Oh, yes!
The only oddity was the way Doctor Martinez kept watching her. Just looking. She checked her hair and face in the bathroom mirror, but found nothing amiss. So, tomorrow Yols would arrive, and Zaranna planned to see Alex on the way back from the airport. She would take her sketchbooks and the finished composition of Jesafion, stallion-rampant, rearing atop a waterfall with his wings outspread, with Sentalia Vale in the background.
Let this secret not become poison between them.
She enjoyed a relaxing afternoon’s painting and a swift surf with Gramps as the sun set over Noordhoek Beach, giving the atmosphere that perfect radiance beloved of filmmakers the world over. There was a crew shooting further down the beach and a small crowd watching. Then he whisked her off to a ‘little do’ which happened to be a party at which Zaranna was the youngest person by about thirty years or so. Awkward with a capital A.
She slept dreamlessly.
* * * *
The following day, at 10:52am, Alex hurled her sketchbook across the room.
Zaranna remembered the time because the book struck the cream-coloured wall right next to the digital wall clock; because she turned in disbelief to follow the flight.
“Jesus, Zaranna!” he snapped.
“Alex?” The horrid sensation running down her spine was like Shuzug breathing over her.
She had just finished her tale of Equinox, laying it all out for him, praying he would understand somehow, accept, perhaps ask for clarification … that he would not rip his hand free of hers, and toss the outpourings of her heart into the garbage.
“What the hell – you’re sick! Tell me I’m dreaming, that I’m the one who’s woken up in some freaking alternate reality!”
His expression slew her. The revulsion. The anger, twisting him into some non-Alex beast. She pushed the wheelchair into reverse, but he threw words after her like daggers meant to impale.
“There’s other kinds of hospitals for people like you. It’s just sick … you’ve feelings for … Jesafion this and beautiful Jesafion that … what’s wrong with you? Can’t you hear yourself? Man, Zaranna, I thought I’d heard it all until today.”
“Alex, please …”
“Get out!”
“Please! What did I do?”
Addressing the wall, he said, “Zars, it’s just not right. You’re supposed to be a Christian. You go to church, even had me thinking there might be something to this faith thing. But you … you’re describing feelings for a horse. I can’t deal with that right now. It’s beyond wrong, or sick, or anything I ever imagined you’d be into. You need help. Serious help.”
Placing her faith at the core of his objections was not at all what she had expected. She pleaded, “Alex, listen to me. I don’t have feelings for – not that sort, anyway. Not what you’re thinking.”
“But you think you’re an extra-terrestrial filly running around in another world with a stallion. You’re the one panting after him, poring over every detail in your worshipful little drawings. Right, Zars. They have websites for perverts like you, and sicko reality shows, and what’s the name of that mental hospital they’ve got here? I think you visited the wrong ruddy ward – you freak! Get out of my life! Get out!”
His shouting drove her out like a whipped cur. She did not remember sobbing her way in and out through hospital heavy doors, just that she was on the other side of his window and someone was whimpering in distress and he was still yelling in there, as purple as a sliced swede, beyond hope or reason.
Nurse Grace’s arms enfolded her. “Alright honey. Come with me.”
Grace drew her shattered parts together again. Hugs. A cup of hot, sweet tea. Masses of sympathy. But Zaranna was almost incoherent, her brain refusing to remember what had happened in there, just words popping out of the morass, like ‘panting’ and ‘freak’, exploding fireworks of misery and loathing in her heart. Grace said strong medication sometimes had strange effects on people, that after a near-death experience it took time for a person to re-centre themselves. But she knew. Zaranna knew because she had those same doubts and had tried to guard her heart, her morals, her sanity. She had boundaries she could never cross, but Alex did not know that. What an awful, awful mess.
The taxi ride home was a puddled blur of nightmares. The sympathetic driver helped her up the front steps and said he would collect payment from Whiz another time. Zaranna suspected that meant, never.
Kindness. How it smarted.
She wheeled inside. Gramps had left a note in the kitchen saying that Yols was asleep and he was down in the paddocks dealing with a sick horse.
A sick horse? Oh, the irony. Irony like iron with a ‘y’ on the end. Cold, grey, hopeless metal followed by the unanswerable question, why? Oh God, why? Psalmists had all sorts of ways of describing their misery, like burning coals and plagues of boils and gnashing teeth. How apt. She gazed at the sketchbooks cradled in her lap, at the rolled-up canvas of Jesafion, and the pile of artwork neatly stacked to one side in the living room, and she hated Equinox and Dreaming with a loathing which had never seemed so pure and poignant. She was a freak. A loner. A madwoman, like her … no, she would not say it. Was this kind of power what had made Susan fragile? A soul torn between worlds? Maybe she had been a Dreamer or a Wizard and someone or something had broken her mind, shattered those abilities and torn them out of her, leaving a husk …
If she was to mourn, she would do so with dignity. She would show someone that it mattered, that her heart and feelings could be splashed upon paper. Flipping her brakes off, Zaranna wheeled forward purposefully. She took up that heap of artwork and sketches and odd-sized papers and began to arrange them around the living room, upon the sideboard and the bookshelves and the table, moving to t
he floor, carpeting and enfolding the space with the multifarious form and beauty of Equinox. Each picture a faithful link to reality … or unreality. Pages carefully torn from her sketchbooks, laid side-to-side. This was factual. Tangible. Yet these were fragments of insanity. An orderly wreckage of consciousness.
Oh, Alex!
Then she abandoned her wheelchair, crawled into the space in the middle of her splintered life, and wept. Soundless sobs. Muffled, as though the screaming of her heart could never be heard on Earth, in this life, in the loneliness that stemmed from being special. How she hated that word.
An unknown time later, she heard a footstep. A running step.
Whiz burst in through the door, crying, “Pixie? Pixie, are you – oh, there you are.” He ran through the lounge, his shirt flapping at the side, torn somehow in his rush to find her. His eyes fell on the carnage in the living room. “Precious girl, I had a call from Doctor …”
He paused at the border of her crazed mind-map. Immobile. A low gasp ripped from his throat, as though she had punched him in the gut. Zaranna groaned inwardly. He thought she was mad, too. Nonno’s eyes focussed on the artwork of Jesafion, and he made that strangled sound again, clutching the meranti dresser for support. Wheezing, struggling for breath. Unable to speak, the eyes bulging, his free hand clenched into a fist near his heart.
Behind him she saw the picture of Grandmother Ziryana, and the fancy pipe. It struck her like a bolt of lightning between the eyes, then, where she had seen that pipe before. That exact pattern, those bold geometric designs carved into a type of wood alien to Earth. Kesuu’s pipe.
Rhenduror had made a mistake. She was no Wizard-daughter. She understood that now. But she might well be a Wizard’s granddaughter.
Words burst forth like blood spurting from a wound. “Gramps. Can I ask you a question?”
Nonno straightened, still stricken, speechless. “Whaaaa …” He waved a hand.
“The nickname Whiz – it wouldn’t happen to be short for ‘Wizard’, would it? As in, the Winter Wizard, lately from Equinox?”
“You’ve been … you know … Pixie?”
“Yes, Whiz. I know.”
Brokenly, he said, “I can’t believe it. It’s all here, every detail. No. That’s Sentalia Vale … and a pony-rat, and … how … did you? I don’t understand. Pixie-dust, what is this?”
“You are my grandfather, aren’t you? That bit’s not a lie?” She chuckled, but that sound had a sharp, desperate edge. “But you’re about as Italian as a Yorkshire pudding, aren’t you? And how Ukrainian was Grandmother, exactly?”
Poor Nonno was still stuck at the seen-a-ghost stage. “You’ve seen Equinox? Zars, it’s impossible. You’ve actually been there?”
She held out her hand. “Zaranna Inglewood, Plains Horse and Dreamer, at your service.”
“Holy mackerel!” he screamed.
Zara jumped.
Her dear grandfather started capering about like a madman, shouting, “Un-freaking-believable! You! You did it!”
Alright. Gramps had not only lost the plot, he had never laid a finger on the plot in the first instance.
“My Pixie, you did it … that’s my girl! You’re awesome. Beyond awesome, I mean, you and I both knew that already, but you … you’re the cat’s pyjamas! You’re rainbow sauce on apple pancakes!” He pranced over the papers and crashed to his knees beside her, shaking her shoulder like a Gryphon mangling its prey, spitting in his excitement, “Do you know what this means? Do you know what this means?”
She shook her head, starting to laugh with a kind of crazy, dazed relief. Nonno kissed her cheeks at least forty times, crying, “Do you know?” and, “What a girl!” and, “Better than surfing a thousand-foot wave!” And a whole lot more Whiz-ardly nonsense. Far too frenzied to make sense. Now he was rolling on the floor beside her, chortling something about the Pegasi being ambushed by the impossibility of a Dreamer in non-Pegasus form. She confirmed that yes, she was a Dreamer, a dozen times or more. He picked up picture after picture, devouring them with his eyes as if he were a drowning man clambering a rope hand-over-hand.
Then, he whirled. “That accident?”
Zaranna shook her head. “Probably not an accident. Most likely a certain Red Dragon who broke through to Earth.”
“The Dragons have that much power? Ominous.” But he was grinning a wild-haired, madcap Whiz grin. “Pixie, my darling, darling girl, do you know what this means? I’ve asked that question already.” Seizing her hands, he said, “You see, we feared we were trapped here forever, cut off from the true flow of power, from most magic. But that foul traitor, that Wor –”
“Gramps!” She almost hit his mouth in her haste. “Names have power.”
“Oh, God!” He shivered violently. “It’s true. It’s here in front of me, burning into my disbelieving eyes, and it’s been so long … so, oh, my dear God …”
Great. Now he started weeping, bent over, holding his stomach with one hand and covering his mouth with the other, but she could not be furious with him in the face of such brokenness. Gramps shook, wailing with an eerie sound that crossed delight with anguish, that cut deeper with every rising and falling, sobbing note. He deserved better. Struggling into an upright position, Zaranna put her arms around his shoulders and hugged him fiercely. Such beauty in restoration. Such wholeness, which she would never enjoy with Alex again.
Finally, he sat back a little, wiping his eyes. “Introductions, right?”
“Right.” She smiled at him with her eyes. “Go on.”
“I am Luxian Lucandor tar-Arandatha, High Wizard of the Blue Wizard Clan, otherwise known as the Winter Wizards. Rightly, I am at your service, Dreamer.” He gave her a quirky grin. “Yes, I’m your grandfather. That’s true, lucky you. And me. Luckiest grandfather alive. But I’m not from Earth. Never was. Not an Italian bone in my body.”
“I think I figured that out.”
“This must all come as a terrible shock to you, Zars. I’m sorry.”
“No … well, yes. Shock, but also relief. I thought I was going mad. Alex definitely thinks I’m mad. Now I merely have a strong suspicion that I’ve recently crawled out of the loony bin. Gramps, is Mom –” she choked it out “– is she alright?”
“Pixie, sweetheart. Mercy, oh mercy, how do I tell you this?”
Poor Whiz. Now he was the one biting his knuckles, exactly as she did. Zaranna prompted, “Something happened to Mom?”
“When we fled Equinox, your grandmother sacrificed her life to secure our freedom,” he said. “Her strength alone saw a few of us escape from the Hooded Wizard. Your mother, Suarienne – that’s her real name – was only eleven at the time, but already coming into her powers. The Hooded Wizard used a debased form of magic forced through his Dragonstone –”
“The Ixurbiel?”
“You’ve been a busy little girl,” he growled. Zaranna had the impression he didn’t entirely approve of her knowledge. “Yes, that’s the one. He stole something from her, Zara. She’s never been the same since. Never quite in her right mind. My poor girl.”
She watched him closely. “There’s something more. Tell me.”
“Um … what the heck. Why not rattle all of our family skeletons at once?” Whiz took a very deep breath. “Did I see a picture – yes, that one on the chair. That’s Illume the Stars, right? Couldn’t be any other Dragon.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I sort of … well, stole your grandmother from him. We were love rivals, you could say.”
“Gramps, Illume’s a Dragon. He can turn into –”
“No, the opposite, in a manner of speaking. Your grandmother’s a Dragon.”
She burst into incredulous laughter. “Alright, Nonno. Can we pack mad-Whiz away and get the sensible one back, please? My grandmother is not a Dragon.”
“Do you remember you told me that you hit your mother out of the path of the train?”
Zara squirmed. “Adrenaline? You’re joking. Right?”
“Ziryana was a Human-Dragoness Shapeshifter.” Oh no. Cyantoria had said the same. She shook her head mutely, but Whiz continued inexorably, “Shifters have a primary form, in her case, Human. But Illume knew her as a very pretty Dragoness. You can see that, can’t you?”
“No. I am not part-Dragon.”
Whiz just shook his straggly blonde hair. “Hold those horses, Pixie. Ziryana was a double agent, using her abilities to spy on the Dragons on behalf of the Wizards of Autumn. We met – uh, in battle, as enemies – and sort of, you know … love, love changes everything. There’s a song. To cut a long story off at the knees, we fell over the asteroid belt in love, and all that jazz. Huge scandal. Massive. Like you wouldn’t believe. It was glorious, and crazy and real and awesome! Then Illume kidnapped Ziryana in her Dragoness form with the intent of, uh, making her his. Some Dragons practice a sort of bride-kidnapping and they, um …”
“Grumps, I’m sixteen, not six.”
He rubbed his neck awkwardly. “These are delicate matters. A Shapeshifter, at least the moral ones, will not marry or mate in any form but her primary form, which in Ziryana’s case, was Human. Some of the things Alex was apparently shouting – he thought you were running around doing horsey things with horses, right?”
“Uh … right.” And how pink was a rose? Her cheeks were pinker.
Gramps looked at her with an extremely Whiz-look.
“No. Gramps, no – ew! Gross! No, I haven’t. And would never. How could you even think that?”
“Pixie-dust, I believe you’re a good girl.”
“That bit’s debatable, apparently. Right now I’m on the run and wanted by the Pegasi for high treason, namely, carrying a Human on my back.”
“Pah. What’s a dash of treason in this family? So, you didn’t?”
“No!”
“Good.” He crinkled his eyes at her. “But you did?”
“Uh, the treason bit? I’m afraid so.”
“Marvellous! Absolutely fantastic. Right. I declare coffee and storytelling.”
Zaranna accepted his hand up; Whiz was surprisingly strong, lifting her without apparent effort. She was grateful for a hiatus from a series of rapid-fire revelations, a chance just to let her mind settle into something less than a mad gallop.