by Lucia Ashta
“‘Safe enough’? What the hell does that mean? Can the dragons’ fire reach us in here or not? Can those four huge dragons stream fire all the way in here to kill us or not? Clarity, please.” Apparently, running for my life in such a tangible way didn’t do wonders for my usually calm personality. “Before I go crazy.” Hopefully I wasn’t yet, despite being in a cave with the craziest of all dragon charmers.
I heard someone moving, adjusting, bumping into a few of the others, and then settling at my side. Dean clamped a hand to my shoulder, after missing only once, and said, “As Boom said, we’re safe enough.” I started to protest, he stopped me. “What he means by that is that it’s unlikely that the dragons will stream fire that will reach us.”
“‘Unlikely’? I’d prefer certainty when it comes to dragon fire, please.” This got a good laugh out of what sounded like all of the charmers but Dean, and probably not Shula either, since I didn’t imagine the serious woman ever laughed. I knew better than to antagonize a crew of dragon charmers, especially when I wanted their protection more than ever, but patience and restraint had never been my strong suits. “How can you laugh at a time like this? Is there something funny about death that I’m missing and you’d like to fill me in on?”
This elicited a fresh wave of laughter, but I could still hear Dean over the rowdy sounds. “What else are they supposed to do?”
Uh, I could think of a million, including melting in a puddle of fear and overwhelm.
“We just survived the wrath of four adult dragons, when it wasn’t clear at all that we would.”
“You can say that again....”
“Our lives are high stress. The intensity we barely survived is a bit beyond our every day, but not by much. We need to have a way to retain our humanity through it all. We don’t want to be merely soldiers, to be simply dragon charmers. We’re men and women, capable of dying just as we are of living. Laughter is good medicine for the eternality. It releases tension so the body doesn’t hold on to it.”
“Do you go into fits of laughter every time dragons nearly kill you?”
More laughter. I tried not to be annoyed this time, with little success.
“If we did, we’d do nothing but laugh. Dragons try to kill us most days.”
I was silent for a few moments, listening to the laughter. It was loud and carefree. I listened to it long enough that I noticed my own tension start to leave my body. Maybe Dean was right about laughter being good medicine, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. Instead I asked, “How do you do it? How do you stare down dragons like this, not knowing whether you’ll survive the day?”
Dean started to answer, but I interrupted. “I don’t mean the answer I already know. That it’s our sacred purpose. That it’s an honor to do the work, and that’s reason enough to persevere. I’m asking for the real answer. How? Why do you do it? Why do all of you do it?” I asked everyone in the cave.
Dean removed his hand from my shoulder, and didn’t answer at first. When he did, it was soft. “We each have our own reasons.”
“All right. What are some of them? I honestly don’t understand after what we just endured. I realized that dragons were dangerous before, but this, this was something entirely different. This was death on wings.”
“Death on wings. I like it,” Peachy said in an upbeat voice, as if she had a true death wish.
Maybe that’s what it was. “Is that it? Do you all just have a death wish?”
A chuckle circled the back of the cave, but the boisterous laughter was now absent. I’d seemingly put an end to it, and as much as it annoyed me before, I discovered I missed it. I wanted it back, and I experienced a bit of guilt for denying the charmers their relief.
“Coming to peace with our own deaths is different than having a death wish,” Peachy said.
“We all know we might die every day we get out of bed and head out to the dragons,” one of the men said, either Crush or Scar. I wished I could see them.
And that’s all it took. A simple wish. A single thought.
Suddenly we were engulfed in a subtle purple glow, strong enough to illuminate everyone’s faces around me, just as I’d wished for.
10
Everyone, including me, was too shocked to react. Dean was the first one to break the silence and the stares. “I told you. You have faithum.”
I didn’t attempt to deny it, even if my mind was reeling at the implications, like a trapped mouse running back and forth and never settling. My mouth hung open. I tried to get it to form words, but all I managed to do was stare at the purple glow that rolled off my bare skin. Like heat leaving my body in a cold night, the purple light coated my skin.
Then Boom hooted, Brute laughed a big bear laugh, and Scar grinned maniacally.
“Whoa, Anira. You’re amazing,” Peachy said. “How are you doing that?”
“I have absolutely no idea. I just thought how I’d like to see your faces, that’s all. I didn’t do anything.”
Dean said, “Faithum, in its purest form, is nothing more than desire made manifest. You wished for light, and you received it.”
“But... but nothing like this has happened to me before.” I couldn’t take my eyes from the purple glow. It was the most brilliant purple I’d ever seen, like the brightest color of sunset. “I’ve wished for plenty of things before that never happened. I wished not to be invisible like every single day of my life. I never got that wish.”
“The problem might be as simple as that you wished for what you didn’t want, instead of what you did.”
“No, I’m sure I must’ve wished for things I did want many times.”
“Aye, I imagine you did. Maybe it just wasn’t time. When things are meant to happen, they do, but not a moment before they’re meant to. I think for faithum to happen, you probably need to believe it’s in you. Your belief in yourself, in your faithum, gives it power.”
“How do you know so much about faithum?” I asked. Before Dean, I could never get anyone to barely mention faithum. Beyond my conversations with Rane, no one said the word for fear of the chieftain’s retaliation.
But Dean didn’t tell me how he knew about faithum. Immediately, I began wondering, how did Dean know so much about things no one else did?
He said, “You did faithum when we were running through the forest too, or didn’t you notice?”
“Oh, I noticed. I also noticed how I didn’t manage it at the end, once we reached the rock plains. Just as I’d done in the forest, I envisioned all of us in the caves, but it didn’t happen. We didn’t move a foot without our own efforts.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know,” I replied immediately, but I realized that I did know, I just didn’t want to say it.
“Fear,” Dean said, as if he were in my mind again, reading my deepest concerns. “Fear of failure.”
I didn’t respond. An uncomfortable sensation ran through me, and I buried my face in Rosie’s warm body.
Dean continued, but more gently, and the rest of the charmers listened to their leader, as if they appreciated the wisdom in his words as much as I did. Even if I didn’t feel like hearing what he had to say, I needed to. “If faithum needs pure belief to work, then fear of failure is its complete opposite, because it keeps you from accessing all you’re capable of.”
“I’m not sure I know how to believe. I’ve believed myself the greatest of mistakes for so long....” I blushed, embarrassed to bare my true thoughts in front of all these people I’d only recently met. But there was something bonding about surviving four gnarly dragons, along with the fresh reminder of how easily life could be stolen away, that urged me to be truthful. They were truths I didn’t like, but it seemed we’d left behind the time for conservative action long ago.
“It’ll come. Belief is the most natural state for us. It’s how we’re born. Doubt originates here, and when you begin to understand that there are things not of this world, you’ll accept that you can access that which
is beyond the visible. It should come easier for you than most.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you already are a part of the unseen world, of that part of existence that operates beyond that which we see with our eyes. But just because we don’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You of all people should know that. Just because you don’t yet see the proof of faithum everywhere around you, within you, doesn’t in any way mean you don’t have it.”
“Hmph.”
“Faith requires believing before you see. Believe in yourself, and in your ability to do faithum, and you’ll be able to. Faithum, after all, even contains the word ‘faith’. There’s a good reason for that.”
“What about you guys? Why don’t you have faithum if you can believe just as much as I can? Once I wrap my mind around all of this.”
“Belief has little to do with the mind, don’t confuse the mind with the heart.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I did not.”
“So, are you going to?”
“When it’s time.”
“What does that mean? I need answers. I’ve needed answers since I was born into this world the way I am.”
“When you were born into this world, you had all the answers. You’ve since forgotten them. Now you’re beginning to remember.”
I tried a different approach. “Is this the same thing that happened to all of you? Have you remembered or whatever? Do you believe?”
“Oh we believe all right.” This was the reserved Shula, and I stared at her and her unusual forcefulness of response.
“You do?” I asked her, shocked again, without understanding the full reasons why.
“We work with the most magical of beasts every day. What do you think?”
I turned back to Dean, his intelligent eyes, sparkling in the purple glow, still on me. “So what Pumpoo said is true? The dragons do have a connection to faithum?”
The strong lines of Dean’s face cracked into a smile. “Of course they do. There is faithum all around us. It doesn’t always have to come in big containers or in big displays of power. Faithum is everywhere, and it’s most certainly in the dragons.”
“So Pumpoo will find it!”
Boom laughed, but his laughter had none of its original mirth. “Pumpoo couldn’t find his own rear end with two hands and a looking glass.”
Dean said, “What Boom is trying to say, most colorfully, is that Pumpoo has never approached the dragons. He doesn’t have the ability to work with them. Wanting to figure out the dragons’ connection to faithum is one thing. Being able to do it is another entirely.”
“That’s why he tried to take us,” Shula said, and I knew she was referring to when Pumpoo’s principal emissary, Jore, tried to throw Dean, Shula, Rosie, and me into a pit with a trap door.
“Because he wanted you to access the dragons’ faithum for him,” I said, finally starting to piece together some of the errant pieces of this puzzle.
“Right,” Dean said. “When he saw Rosie, he thought she’d be an easy way to do it.”
“Because she isn’t aggressive?”
“Exactly. But he still needed us because he doesn’t know how to deal with the dragons at all.”
“Aye,” Brute said, “he likes to talk the big talk about how working with the dragons is our sacred purpose and all—”
“As long as he does it from the safety of his ridiculous shade,” Boom finished.
“What’s with the shade, anyway?” I asked. “I’ve wondered before. He uses it even when there’s no sun, and the sun is glorious.”
“He hides under that damn shade, you mean,” Boom said. If I hadn’t already known the hearty man, with his broad chest and easy smile, wasn’t a fan of the ruler, I’d have been left without doubt of his animosity now.
But Dean’s response was serious, his green eyes pensive, alert. “I’ve wondered that myself.”
“So you don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
Peachy chuckled. “I know it’s easy to believe Dean has all the answers, but he only acts as if he does.” But her comment was merely playful ribbing. Every charmer there admired the man; it was obvious.
Dean said, “I have only some answers, and no certainty, for there is little to be certain about in such a fleeting existence.”
“You’ve lived centuries already!” I said.
“Aye, and once you do, you’ll realize that time plays tricks on you, no matter how long you’ve lived.”
“And faithum? What about faithum? Have centuries been enough to do faithum?”
“Not really,” Shula said, moving to crouch down in front of me, her eyes moving from where I was to Rosie. “But we don’t practice every day for nothing.”
11
“Practice?” I asked, not bothering to mask that I was clueless as to much of what the dragon charmers were really about. “You practice... faithum?”
“Aye,” Shula said on a grin. I stared at the hardened woman, noticing how different her face looked when she smiled. She looked lighter, as if she didn’t carry all the weight of the world and our people’s fate on her shoulders.
“I can’t believe it.”
“That’s what you have to shift,” Dean said. “What you do and don’t believe.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just an expression. I didn’t mean that I literally can’t believe it. You guys are changing a lot of my notions of what I do and don’t believe.”
“Whether you meant it or not doesn’t much matter. Words, and the thoughts behind them, have great power. They’re energy, just as faithum is. Once you learn to harness that energy, well, then faithum will be easy for you.”
“Easy. Right.”
Dean just stared at me.
“Right, easy enough.” This time, I left out the sarcasm.
“It truly is as easy as you believe it to be.”
“And you all practice faithum regularly. Right.” I was trying hard to absorb all they’d shared.
“You didn’t really think we spent all our time with those magnificent, unmanageable beasts, did you?” Peachy asked.
“Actually, I did.”
“Well you’re in for some surprises then.”
“You mean more surprises.”
“They aren’t surprises at all,” Dean interjected. “You’ve known these things all along, you’d just forgotten.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that. I could see the world unmoving in front of my eyes, but it felt as if it were spinning, or as if I were spinning my way through it.
“Now,” Dean said, and he turned away from me, to his team. “We need to get back out there.”
“Get back out there? Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s been suggested,” Dean said with a quick glance back at me, and a small smile. But then his attention was back on the others. “If we can calm them, we need to.”
“Calm the dragons? The ones who just tried to incinerate us?”
“The very same.” But Dean didn’t even look at me this time, and I stopped interrupting. “If we can’t calm them, we need to disperse them. Even if they go off fighting amongst themselves, we need to get them out of here, before the whole of the Ooba people arrive to see what’s going on.”
“It’s too late for that,” Crush said. “With the racket they made, there’s no way at least some of the Ooba aren’t already on their way.”
“Which means that so is Pumpoo,” Peachy said with just the right amount of vehemence.
“On the bright side, the rest of the Dragon Force should be heading our way too,” Boom said.
“Including those we can’t fully trust,” Scar said.
“Wait,” I said. “I thought you could trust all the Dragon Force. Dean, you said that the members of the Dragon Force were loyal to each other, no matter what.”
“And for the most part, that’s exactly right.”
“It’s just that it o
nly takes one,” Crush said.
“One is enough to reveal our secrets,” Scar said. “To betray us to Pumpoo.”
“Who is this one? Do you know?” I asked.
Scar turned his unwavering gaze on me. “If we did, the person would have long ago ceased living.”
“We haven’t wanted to let on that we know there’s a chance someone is reporting to Pumpoo,” Peachy said. “Once we let on, then the spy becomes even more careful—assuming there’s a spy.”
“And then we really won’t find them,” Crush said.
“What about Yoon?” I said. “He seems awfully fond of the chieftain.”
“We’ve suggested it many times before,” Crush said, “but Dean dismisses the theory every time.”
“Aye, and with good reason,” Dean said.
“One you haven’t told us.”
“As I’ve told you many times before, it’s one I’ll share the very moment I can.”
“You always tell us we don’t keep secrets from each other, that secrets destroy.”
“It’s true, but this isn’t my secret to tell. If it were, you’d know it by now.”
Dean and Crush stared each other down. Finally Crush said, “Fine,” and I realized how great a level of trust the dragon charmers had in their leader.
Peachy put a hand to my back. “Is it tiring you?”
“Is what tiring me?”
“Maintaining the light.”
“You know, I forgot I was doing it.”
“Really?” She smiled, her pretty face lightening. “Why, that’s marvelous. Did you hear that guys?”
“We’re right here with you,” Scar said, “‘Course we heard it.”
“I think Dean’s right,” she said to me, her ordinary brown eyes looking anything but in the dance of the purple light. “Once you start believing, you’ll be able to do anything.”
“Until then,” Dean said, “we need to get out there and deal with the dragons. People will start arriving soon, and it isn’t safe for them. We have to secure the area before they get here. Either we calm the dragons, or we get them the hell out of here.”