“What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be in the middle of the road. The road is for cars and trucks only. I already told you that.” Rosalie picked up her scepter and pointed it at Sovvan when she just stared at the girl.
“How did you get from over there to over here?” Sovvan pointed to the cars going the other way on the other side of the guardrail in perplexity.
“Oh that. We got off at the next exit and got back on the highway going this way because Mommy wanted to see the stranded princess for herself.” Rosalie pointed her scepter at the seat in front of her, which was occupied by a tired woman in her mid-twenties.
“I’m not a princess.” And she wasn’t having that conversation again. Sovvan crouched down and placed her hands on the pages, but they just squished when she pushed. That wasn’t what she’d been going for.
“You said that before, but I still don’t believe you,” Rosalie said as a car door slammed.
“Here, let me help you.” Rosalie’s mom appeared next to Sovvan, and she put her hands against the book. “Then you can tell me why were pushing a giant book.”
“You can see it?” Sovvan looked at the woman in shock.
“Let’s start over. I’m Robin. You’ve already met my daughter, Rosalie. Who are you and why are you in the middle of Route 9 with a giant glowing book?” Robin had dark hair pulled back into a braid too and a red leather jacket with a patch of a sword in a book on her shoulder.
“I’m Sovvan, and that’s a long complicated story, which doesn’t make a lick of sense even to me, and I’m living it. Trust me. You’re better off not knowing.” Sovvan gripped the back cover and pushed.
“It sounds like you’ve got a rogue story on your hands.” Robin gripped the bottom and pushed, and the damned thing finally started to move a fraction of an inch, but still, it was progress of a sort. “You know. It would help if you believed this would work.”
“You think so?” Sovvan hadn’t considered that, but maybe that’s what she’d been doing wrong all along.
“Yeah, I do. Beliefs have the power to motivate people, and this is a magical book. So it doesn’t necessarily function on the same rules as other objects or even people.” Robin fell silent, but her daughter had something she was just bursting to say.
“We’re not characters in this story. We’re real people.” Rosalie twirled her scepter, and its jeweled top caught the glow of the book and split its purple light into incomplete rainbows.
Sovvan stared at them as something Robin said triggered a memory. What had that drawing in the book said? Something about how some magic isn’t affected by entropy/chaos because what you believed was a choice. And I choose to believe that book will rise and take me to my family. Any minute now. Sovvan tapped her foot in impatience. Maybe it needed a certain amount of belief to get moving.
“We could be characters in someone else’s story, just as we’re characters in our own. After all, what is life but a continuous story unfolding day after day?” Robin glanced at her speechless daughter in the car.
Rosalie shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“We could be,” Robin insisted. She was enjoying her daughter’s reaction to that idea.
Sovvan tuned out the rest of that conversation. She wasn’t a character. There wasn’t a Scribe plotting her journey through the afterlife. All my decisions, good and bad, are my own, and so are my mistakes, my successes, and my failures.
Sovvan closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure if she needed to, but she’d do anything that might help get her to her family. Okay book, I believe in you. I believe you’ll keep your promise. I believe you’ll take me to my family. I believe you will crash into something again—
“Whoa!” Sovvan screamed as the book rose a foot off the ground and shot northward up the highway, dragging her with it by the chain of promises connecting her, when that damned bond felt like it, to her brother.
“Thank you!” Sovvan called out to Robin and her daughter. I couldn’t have done this without you and that timely reminder to trust in the promises I’ve made. Sovvan reeled herself in hand over hand to the book zooming along the highway and climbed onto its cover again. “Onward! I’m coming, Ran, and this time, I will arrive.”
Party Crasher
[Westchester, NY]
Uncle Miren held me tight as I cried into his shoulder. Papa couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t. Auntie Sovvan, if you can hear me. Come quickly. We need you. Please hurry.
“Move, Miren! Take cover!” Melinda shouted as she ran for the foyer.
Then my uncle was rushing away from Papa. Like Papa, he took my safety very seriously.
We might argue like brothers because there was only a ten year age gap between us, and we’d both been raised from the cradle by the same person, but we’d never hurt each other.
“I’ll fix him. It’s the least I can do since his power fueled my triumph.” the dragon sent two lightning bolts.
I watched in horror as they slammed into Papa, and he seized. His eyes flew open, and they glowed a blinding white with his other magic. Words written in white light appeared on his skin then vanished before I could ask Uncle Miren to read them.
“What were those?” But Papa’s words to me earlier repeated in my head, ‘be careful what you promise, especially to me,’ and I knew. “They’re promises.”
“He’s certainly made a lot of them over the years.” Uncle Miren put me down, and I padded over to Papa. Had he made any promises to my aunt?
His clothes were still singed in the same places as before, and his eyes were still closed. I couldn’t tell if Papa was breathing. When I met my uncle’s worried gaze, he nodded to my unspoken question. He had placed two fingers against Papa’s throat.
“How are you doing this? If you truly have this entropy thing on your side, then you should be just as weak and drained as he is. How are you protecting yourself from that orb?” Melinda asked from the foyer.
That was what we all wanted to know, but Melinda didn’t sound like she believed the dragon had entropy on her side. From what I’d heard about it, entropy didn’t sound like a force that could be controlled.
“She’s right. Where are you getting that power from because that’s not the entropic orb’s doing.” the metal lady rested her fists on her hips. She’d been watching all this with an unreadable expression on her face while she recovered from having her gears fried. Though, I wasn’t sure if her face was mobile enough to display emotions or if she had them at all. She might always look impassive.
“Wouldn’t you like to know. I don’t have to tell you, and you can’t make me. But I can make you just as weak as him.” The dragon pointed to my unconscious Papa.
“Will he be—?” I couldn’t say it. I touched Papa’s hand. It was warm. That was good, right?
Uncle Miren limped over to fetch his crutch from where it had fallen when he’d grabbed me earlier, and he gratefully fitted it under his arm. “I think he’ll be okay if we can get that orb to stop draining him. Come on, bro. You have two types of magic. We just saw the other one, so it’s not affected by this entropic orb thing in the same way as your earth magic.”
That pep talk didn’t do anything. Papa remained unconscious. He might need time to bargain with that other magic to get it to help us, and I knew how to buy him that time.
“You wanted us to witness your triumph. Well, let’s see it. Impress us.” I sat next to Papa and squeezed his big hand.
Papa squeezed back. His grip was weak but comforting nonetheless. He knew I was there.
“Fine, then witness as I claim this place and its power and people.” The dragon spread her claws to encompass the entire building. “Watch my ascension.”
“I’m watching, but I don’t see anything.” I folded my arms. “I’m not impressed.” And for some reason, that bothered the dragon.
“You’re witnessing it! I bested a powerful mage repeatedly because tech rules here, and I am the next level of technology. Magic only feeds its
insatiable hunger to advance. After all, doesn’t the technology here seem like magic to you?” The dragon struck another pose and gave me a challenging glare, but the crowd had run for its life earlier, so there was no one to snap a picture of her.
I could have pulled out Melinda’s phone and taken a picture with it, but I didn’t need a picture. I would always remember this. “But they’re not magic.” I didn’t want to admit she was right.
I willed Papa to wake up. Every time he breathed, I felt his chest rise and fall because I was glued to his side, trying to remember the little we’d figured out about his other magic. It wasn’t powered by the earth or sunlight like his green magic, and it didn’t demand Papa use it all the time. The phone in my pocket vibrated with an incoming message, but I didn’t take it out because I’d just remembered what powered Papa’s white magic.
I leaned over and hid a smile in his chest. “I believe in you, Papa. You can do anything because you’re my hero.” A shudder went through Papa, and white light streamed out of his closed eyes. It pushed against that invisible field and shoved back its energy-stealing power. “I believe in you, Papa, and I always will.”
“I believe in you, Sarn,” Melinda said, and it took me a second to remember that was Papa’s name.
“You know I believe in you, bro.” Uncle Miren nudged Papa’s side with his booted foot.
“I believe in you too, bro,” Auntie Sovvan whispered through the white-glowing chain that metal lady was still holding. It pulled taut, dragging that clockwork creature toward the broken window, just as a boxy blur appeared in it.
What the heck was that? No one else had noticed the blurry thing rushing toward the window. I touched the chain anchored in Papa’s chest. “Auntie Sovvan, are you in the parking lot?” I whispered, so no one else would hear except my uncle who never missed a word I said. Unlike Papa, but Papa had lost some of his hearing in one ear when he was a kid.
Auntie Sovvan didn’t reply. Maybe it wasn’t her out there. After all, that blur was too boxy to be a person. Maybe it was just a car or a truck or some other vehicle owned by one of Melinda’s neighbors. Hopefully, they were all fleeing the area for somewhere safer.
“You’re still not impressed?” The dragon fisted her claws on her hips and scanned the room in search of her audience when no one replied. She’d just noticed she’d scared them all away, and the dragon wasn’t liking that realization.
“No, should I be?” I folded my arms and gave her my best ‘I am not impressed’ look.
“Should you do that when we have nothing to protect us?” Uncle Miren asked in an undertone.
I shrugged. “Sometimes, Papa’s other magic needs a little incentive to work, but I believe it’ll protect me. So, it should. I think that’s how his other magic works.”
But that was more of a hope than a certainty. Papa had great difficulty using that white magic when he was well-rested and not in danger. But it was too late to take back what I’d said, so I loudly whispered some encouragement into Papa’s good ear. “I believe you can kick that dragon’s butt.”
Papa wasn’t so pale anymore, and I could feel his magic saturating the air around us. It wasn’t a shield, but maybe it would become one if we believed hard enough in it.
The dragon narrowed her eyes at me. Smoke puffed out of her mouth, and electricity zinged up her spiny back.
Before she could say anything, that metal lady pushed up from her crouch. She moved stiffly, but she was moving again, which was good, right up until she started slowly clapping.
“This is not about you. It’s about me.” The dragon spun and struck the metal lady with her tail, sending the clockwork creature tumbling into the left-hand wall. What had that metal lady been about to say?
“There. That’s better. You can watch from over there until it’s your turn. Now, where was I?” The dragon looked at me.
“What did you trade for it?” Metalara struggled out of the remains of the wall she’d struck, and part of it collapsed, sending more debris flying.
Thankfully, none of it hit us. But a few pieces came uncomfortably close, and my uncle watched them in case he had to scoop me up and run for it.
“Nothing. That’s the beauty of this.” The dragon gazed at her shiny orb with love. Its aura was dangerously close to us, and I didn’t know if we should run away from it, or what would happen when it encountered Papa again. Probably nothing good. His magic had clearly defined likes and dislikes.
“So, Akasha was telling the truth.” The metal lady shook her head in resignation as she climbed through the hole her body had made.
“Never heard of her. Get ready kid. This will blow your mind.” The dragon rushed to the boiler and pulled a black ball out of its belly. “Behold my power!” The dragon held the black orb up.
As the white nimbus around that sphere intensified, Papa went very still. I touched his chest, but it didn’t move. A loud bang startled me as the wall behind the dragon collapsed.
“Everyone, take cover!” Melinda shouted as she put her back to the wall separating the foyer from the laundry/boiler room.
“Let go.” Uncle Miren grabbed me around the waist.
But I fisted my little hands in Papa’s tunic and shook my head. I was staying right there with him no matter what. Either his other magic would protect us, or it wouldn’t. I didn’t want to live in a world without my hero, Papa. I needed him more than words could express, and my uncle needed him too because he sat next to me and held me tightly to his chest as a wave of debris flew toward us.
Guess Who’s in Charge?
[Westchester, NY, Finally]
Sovvan covered her head as the book crashed into the side of a building, sending bricks flying as it kept shoving itself inside. When the hole was large enough to admit her, she scooted forward until she could reach it. Sovvan couldn’t wait any longer after hearing Ran’s anguished cry.
“I’m coming, kiddo, right now in fact. Duck and cover, and bro, you’d better have some shields up. Things are about to get interesting.” Sovvan poked her head through the hole and choked on the dust clogging the air as she stepped carefully on cement chunks, bricks, and several uprooted rhododendron plants. She waved her hands around to clear away the dust, but that didn’t help. Sovvan still couldn’t see anything. “Ran, are you okay?”
“Yes.” Ran coughed. “But Papa’s not—”
“I know, hun. I’ll fix that. Just give me a minute to sort things out.” And to figure out what was going on, But Sovvan kept that question to herself. Ran hadn’t sounded good. It was better to let him think she had things in hand because she would as soon as the dust settled, so she could see how much of what she’d been told was true. “Who’s with you right now? You’re not alone, are you?”
“No, Uncle Miren’s with me.” Ran coughed.
“Yes, I am. No one’s going to hurt my nephew. Not on my watch.”
“Hi Miren. I’m your sister. Not sure if you knew Sarn had a twin. Well, he did, and I’m her. I’m actually older than him, which makes me the oldest of us, three siblings. So, guess what that means?” Sovvan picked her way carefully over the debris.
“You’re in charge?” Miren suggested, but he didn’t sound too upset about that probably because he was used to not being in charge. After all, their brother, Sarn, was six years older than him.
“Exactly. I’ll hug you later. Right now, you keep doing what you’re doing, okay?”
“What are you going to do?” Miren asked. His voice was deeper than his nephew’s but not as deep as her twin’s. But Sarn was twenty and Miren was only fourteen.
Should she tell him she didn’t have a plan other than to get that orb back? Probably not. “What I usually do.” Sovvan stepped onto tiled flooring and sent some pebbles rolling. Good, she’d finally found the bottom of that debris field and firmer footing too.
“What’s that?” Miren asked because of course, he would. That’s what little brothers did. They nettled their elder sisters.
; But Sovvan smiled at his attempt at banter. She’d missed out on fourteen years of teasing him. “Ask Ran.” Because she’d love to hear his response, and the subject change should take his mind off his stricken father and give him something constructive to do.
“Misriah? I could use a summary of what I missed if you’re feeling generous.” Sovvan fiddled with the bond between her and her twin. It was more of a glowing cord than a chain now since she was only twenty or thirty feet away from him. “Misriah?”
“I’ve already done more than I should. You’re on your own with this. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Sarn’s Guardian Angel said as she appeared briefly as a purple glow in the settling dust, but Sovvan was certain no one else had heard that angel except maybe Metalara if she was here.
Some debris to her left shivered, and Sovvan raised her fists as she silently backed up until she was behind it. Was Metalara under there or the dragon Akasha had mentioned? Either way, Sovvan wanted to be behind whatever emerged, so she could take it by surprise.
“That was all very touching.” Metalara glared at a small shape huddled in the doorway to the next room beside a crouching figure and a supine one as she pushed out of the rubble.
Sovvan tried not to react to that pitiable scene or give away her presence in any way. I will fix things for them. I just need one thing. But she wasn’t sure if Metalara had it. She just had a hunch that psycho did.
“But you all bear the mark. You must all die, starting with you.” Metalara pointed at Ran as she stood up.
“But you’re on our side.” Ran’s little shoulders slumped in defeat, and he leaned into his seated uncle. Miren hugged him. Good. Comfort him, little bro.
“I’m on the side of order, and you’re chaos.” Metalara touched her stomach, and a flap flipped open, revealing a golden glow.
Dragon Spells Page 19