Beneath Stained Glass Wings

by K Kazul Wolf

  Again, he blinks. “To her? But you might get caught; when the occasional fallen illusionist from Caelum ends up here, their illusions stick out like a sore thumb among our type No one was paying attention enough to catch you before, but now…”

  “Didn’t someone back in the tent mention that there were no illusionists here, though?”

  “He meant city illusionists. There’s…a bit of a prejudice against Caelum here.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, now that they’re watching for them, you stand no hope.”

  I scowl. “I didn’t ask if it was dangerous. I asked if you would do it.”

  He looks away for a moment, up at the stars. Then his eyes snap to mine. “All right. I’ll do it. But let me cast the mirage to cover us—they might not notice, then.”

  Slowly, I nod. “Just don’t pull anything.”

  He places a fist over his heart. “You have my word, and my word is my life.”

  I press my lips together and give a firm nod.

  Then he grins, raises a hand, and brings it down slowly, with effort, like he’s pressing something invisible into the ground.

  It feels like water’s rolling down my head, though my hair doesn’t become any heavier. The air around us ripples in a way I can see even without reaching out to touch the water. He’s completely gone from my vision, only barely able to be sensed when I reach out to feel his heartbeat.

  “How…?” I clear my throat. “And the rest of the nomads can’t feel this?”

  He shrugs. “It’s sort of a mirage for a mirage, it focuses your attention around it. If you’re looking for it, you can feel it, but otherwise it’s hard to tell.”

  I eye him for a moment, then turn and climb over the dune, him scrambling to catch up. “And what if someone’s looking? I am an illusionist.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You’re a Caelum illusionist, we all know you’re the weaker sort.”

  I turn, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “Uh, well, if you’re Chava’s daughter, I’m sure you’ve got talent. It’s just, you know…” He purses his lips. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Then how does Chava do it?” I lower my voice as we approach the tents.

  “Through many, many years of being taught.”

  And we both fall silent.

  The tents are quieter, less bright and colorful. The smell of smoke and ash is strong in the chill air, almost like a fog. Sometimes I can see inside the tents from the light within, people having tea, reading, or other things I quickly look away from. It’s a little ominous, a little suffocating, having all the tents and the darkness so close. I know I could fly, run away, but my feet feel stuck. I can’t turn back now.

  I take a deep breath, following a few steps behind him. He stops in front of a large, black tent. A light shines from inside, but there are no shadows against the dark, thick fabric.

  “This is it,” he breathes. “There’s a guard at the front, so we won’t be going in that way.”

  The question of how barely forms at my lips before there’s a crack of light gleaming through the fabric, near the bottom. And it keeps growing, curving up and around until it falls to the ground.

  “Force any sort of illusion through this patch of the tent when you want out. I’m closing it behind you, but I’ll be able to sense it. Until then, you shouldn’t be interrupted.” A hesitation. “Good luck.”

  23

  The Truth

  It takes a moment to remember how to use my legs. It doesn’t feel like it’s blood rushing through me, but fear, jutting painful pinpricks against my skin as it tries to get out.

  Then I take my first step in.

  What if she doesn’t want to see me? What if she’s angry that she’s in this situation because of me? Again and again, my legs seem to urge me to move back, but I take another step.

  And then I see her.

  She’s kneeling on a mat on the ground of the large tent, right in front of the small fire in the center. Her hands are tied, but much more loosely than mine were. It’s like I’m small again, insignificant and so carefree. The urge to run forward and hold her, have her lift me up and spin around with both of us laughing, is overwhelming, suffocating. I choke on nostalgia.

  She looks up. Her eyes meet mine and I remember I’m not that young anymore, that I can’t know her as she used to be. She’s an illusionist who outclasses everything I’ve ever known—even Maur didn’t do anything like control fire. And she’s someone who disappeared from my life with no reason.

  “Ava.” It barely escapes her mouth as a whisper. Tears spring to my eyes and I fight them back with all I’ve got. “It is— It’s you, isn’t it?”

  Slowly, I nod.

  For a second, all she does is look at me. I can’t read her face; I don’t know her. I can’t possibly fathom what she’s thinking. Maybe she’s wondering why I’m here, why I’m bothering her. Why I’ve gotten her into this trouble. I should say I’m sorry, I should explain, but if I open my mouth, I can’t hold the tears back.

  Quiet tears begin to stream down her face. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Dead? I’m not…” The words squeak out and I angrily rub a tear from my cheek. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, Ava,” She chokes on the word, slowly getting to her feet. “It— Your father. He told me that the hunters had taken you because they found an imperfection in you, like me. He even— He showed me fledging feathers covered in blood. B-but I knew you were perfect, I knew it couldn’t have been. But your father seemed so earnest, and I left. And I always wondered why—” She covers her mouth with her hands, her body shaking.

  Before my mind’s caught up with me, I’ve walked halfway across the tent, stopping a couple of feet from her. She…didn’t leave because she wanted to?

  “It couldn’t have happened. It makes so much sense now. How could I have been so blind? Now I know why he didn’t run with me. If he ran, yes, they would hunt us, probably catch us, but what more could we have lost? I would never have left if I knew you were still up there. I must have outlived my usefulness, producing offspring that wasn’t flawed while I still was. He told me they took you and they were coming for me, that it was my turn for the sacrifice. I knew I never had long to live, knew I was too flawed and useless for them to want to keep. They would have hunted us all if two winged had left. I should have seen right through him. Of course, that’s how he saved us both.” She laughs, a half-hearted, terrified thing. “In the most back-handed way possible. He never really did change. What you must think of me. But you weren’t supposed to exist. And if I let myself hope…”

  If I let myself hope, believe that anyone I love is alive when they aren’t, I wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t survive to see another day.

  Tears fall from my eyes.

  She opens her eyes, gasping to see me so close. I shrink away, my mind fumbling around for words, searching for them through my muddy thoughts. She didn’t want to leave me. She…she loves me?

  The knots around her wrists snap. I jump. She takes two steps forward and wraps her arms around me. My body feels hard and wrong, being held.

  “I’m so sorry, Ava. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

  “M-Mom?” The word finally slips out, finally said aloud. Sobs wrack my body, and the hard awkwardness melts away. I wrap my arms around her, holding her back. She’s so warm, and she’s so real. My hands shake as I grip the back of her shirt through her braids, and I can’t stop them. I don’t really care to.

  She’s here, she’s alive. I have my mom.

  She pulls away and it feels too soon.

  With a sniff, she takes a deep breath. “How are you here? Do we need to worry about people following you? If you cast an illusion…”

  I shake my head, wiping my face with my wrist. “I-I don’t think so. A man named Hamahl helped me get in here.”

  She smiles, reaches for my face, but pauses for an instant before wiping away a tear I missed, her fingers lingering there. “Of course it was h
im.”

  I quirk my head. “If you can break your bonds so easily, why aren’t you running away?”

  “Well,” she brushes a stray hair from my cheek to behind my ear, “I wanted to run. I wanted to find you, though I know I could never catch up with your beautiful wings. But I can’t leave.”

  “Can’t?” My heart drops. She can’t come with me. I didn’t even know I was hoping for it and the dream is already shattered.

  She shakes her head, taking my hands in hers. “It’s a long story that isn’t important right now. What’s important is that you’re alive.” She smiles, her eyes glistening. I can’t help but give a tentative smile back. “Oh, how I could slap your father. Where is he?”

  The smile drops off my face, my stomach rocketing from my gut to somewhere deep underground. I look away. “He… He’s not…”

  She squeezes my hands. “Can you talk about it?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. Why does she have to be so nice about it? Maybe if I was quicker, if I could have cast better illusions, he would still be here. “Yeah. I can talk about it.”

  She doesn’t make a noise while I gather my thoughts, put them in order and try to remember as best I can. They’re across the gap in my brain, the part that I’ve tried so hard not to think about. Maur may have dragged a few things out, but she’s asking for all of it.

  And I want to tell her.

  She strokes the back of my hands and muscles start to relax throughout my body, even though my stomach churns. So I open my mouth, and I begin.

  I relive my crimes in front of her, the tears starting again. And once I start, I can’t stop. I tell her everything, all that’s happened since I’ve fallen. Vito comes up and I can barely say the words, hardly explain what happened to him.

  My mom brushes the tears from my cheeks, shushing me when I can’t continue from there.

  “You loved him, didn’t you?” she whispers.

  “Wh-who? Dad? Of c-course I loved h-him.”

  She shakes her head, “No, sweet, of course I know that. We both loved him, and we’ve both mourned him. But your dragon, your Vito. You loved him, didn’t you?”

  The word tears through me. Love. Is that right, to describe Vito and me? It isn’t like how the others always described love, not all fire and kiss and touch. It’s…different. It’s not what I felt for my dad, the feelings I have for my mother. But there was no one as important as Vito to me. I’d be content to spend the rest of my life lying next to him and creating stories for the stars, singing songs from dusty books, just being next to him.

  Love. Is it enough? Weren’t we so much more than one word, one concept? We were willing to die for each other, sticking together through the worst trials of our lives, giving each other’s shoulders at a moment’s notice. And forgiveness. After all he did for me, how he forgave me for everything, all of it.

  But…that would be wrong. It couldn’t have been that, ever.

  “I was his caretaker. I was paired with him; I was nothing more than that.” But it feels like an insult to say it. We were never like the others.

  “I was matched together with your father, you know. Paired together for breeding, approved by the dragons since they have to control everything.” She looks to the walls of the tent, though her eyes don’t seem to focus on it. “I was assigned to be his assistant in his inventing, too. He wasn’t…well, he wasn’t too fond of me. He was raised by dragons, and I was less than perfect. I’d known it my whole life. Maybe just less than, but enough for it to matter to most up there.

  “But after spending so much time together, well…” She smiles at me. “He always learned quickly, your father. And I lived a little bit of a freer life than him, my bloodline further from dragons than his, my imperfections making me a bit of an outcast. So he learned that freedom from me, and he grew to love it, too. It’s what united us. Love comes about in many ways, you know.”

  “But Vito, he’s…” I look down. Maybe she’s right. Maybe everything she’s saying is true, but what does it matter? “It’s too late.” After all the tears I’ve shed, I’m empty. Saying those words gives me a hollow ache that makes me want to wrap my arms around myself, but I don’t want to let my mom go.

  My mother takes my face in her hands, making me look at her. “Ava, I hate to ask this, but I need to know: did you see your Vito die?”

  My stomach rolls, all the thoughts and images that have plagued my dreams hitting at once. I only manage to shake my head. No, I didn’t see it, but I can imagine it well enough.

  “Then there might still be hope.”

  That word sends a shock through me. I thought I’d been getting better, I thought seeing my mom and even Maur had been helping me. But in that vast, gaping hole that Vito made when he left, there’s a spark, illuminating all the darkness in me, showing me that it could be full. That he could be there. Vito could be alive.

  No, no, no. “They wouldn’t have kept him alive,” I whisper, trying to convince myself. “He and I— What we did together— What else would they do with him?”

  She leans in closer. “Dragons have too much power to be killed off so easily. It’s what the king would consider a waste. We both know it isn’t true, what he said about consuming a person to gain their power. It’s population control, breeding control. We’re all swine to those beasts. But dragons? They’re gods to themselves, raised and preened to be the most narcissistic beasts on the planet. It seems an inevitable mindset when you’re the most powerful beings alive. Even one dragon has so much potential, too much to waste when they’re so good at coercing others to their will. The king might, just might, keep him alive.”

  “But…” No, I can’t think about this. It’s too painful. He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead. “Where would they even keep him?”

  “I don’t know.” She takes a breath. “But there might be a way you can find out.”

  24

  The Hope

  The quiet presses against my eardrums, the sound of the lantern flickering loud as cracking stone.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” I finally manage.

  “How much did you hear of the story I told earlier?”

  What? “All of it. Why?”

  “Well, when the city rose from this spot, it left a lake. And, you see, when that illusion was cast, and the land rose, some of the illusion was left behind in that lake. Once, it was all underground, used sparingly by the Azelain to fuel strong illusions. Then illusionists, and a dragon in his turn, uncovered it, holding the water down and keeping it hidden from above with a constant illusion.”

  “Why is it so important?” I try to wrap my mind around all these new concepts, thoughts. “Is it that important to have a source of water?”

  She shakes her head. “We rarely drink from it. It’s a source of power, something that we’re still figuring out. The residual force of the great illusion it took to raise Caelum off the ground, the creation of that power still resides in there. There’s so much we’ve learned, and have yet to learn from it. Which is why we cannot let it evaporate, and we cannot let the city in the sky find it.”

  I sit a little straighter. “Is that why you can’t leave, then?”

  She nods. “Someone must be here to maintain the illusion at all times. A group illusion can maintain it for a time, but it’s not as strong that way. Heavens forbid it evaporates, or the city themselves find something so powerful.”

  “Why do you keep it uncovered, then?” If they could extract it before, it makes no sense to risk the whole lake.

  “The whole body of it isn’t exposed, but it turns out that when working with the lake as a whole mass, you can do some interesting things. It has amazing healing powers, and can scry nearly anything that exists.”

  “Scry?” I inch closer.

  “You can push a memory into an illusion, focus it into the pool, and it will show you the place, person or thing. It’s just…”

  “What?” I realize how tightly I’m gripping her hands and let go. I could s
ee, and Vito might—

  “You might not be strong enough to do it.”

  Not enough. Like I wasn’t enough to save my dad, I wasn’t enough to save Vito and myself, wasn’t even enough to cast an illusion like Maur.

  Not this time. “You could teach me?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s a newer technique that I haven’t quite mastered it yet. If I had, I would have…maybe I would have seen you or your father.” She takes a breath. “And I’ve had years of training from the Azelain. It’s slow, and it’s hard, and you have to build up strength. Though…”

  “There’s another option?” I press. There has to be an answer, there has to be a way to fight this time.

  She frowns, then sighs. “You mentioned it was Maur, unfortunately, who sent you here?”

  “Well, yes. But why unfortunately?” Unfortunate that I left his training? Or something else? “Is there a reason he’s not here? The others don’t seem too fond of him.”

  Clasping her hands together, she takes in a deep breath. “Well, they have a reason. He used to maintain the illusion on the lake, but he left as soon as I arrived, leaving me with a steep learning curve to adapt to maintaining it myself. I learned that illusion before I even knew what I was doing to make it work.”

  “But…why?” He’s definitely weird, and obviously has a knack for abandoning people, but he wouldn’t leave this place to fend for itself like that without reason. Though he did leave me at the mercy of these people, even if he did know them a long time ago.

  She looks down, squeezing her fingers tighter. “I think I remind him of your father.”

  I open my mouth, shut it, then open it again. “Dad? But why does he care about him that much?” He only mentioned seeing him, maybe knowing him.

  Her eyes snap to mine. “He didn’t—” She unclasps her hands, taking one of mine again. “Ava. Maur is your father’s father.”

  I blink. Maur…related to me? Sharing blood that closely with a dragon? And of all dragons, that one? “But he left Caelum such a long time ago.” Did he, though? I can’t remember if he ever said how long he was down here.