Beneath Stained Glass Wings

by K Kazul Wolf

  “Not before your father was born.” She squeezes my hand. “I thought he would have said something, I’m sorry.”

  I shake my head, pushing back the whirlwind of emotions threatening to take my mind. “It’s fine.” I think. “But what does he have to do with this?”

  “If you go to the lake, and no matter how hard you think of your memories, and no matter how much you push the illusion into the water, it doesn’t show anything, Maur will know a way to help you. He helped a lot of people here master their strength, if they were brave enough.”

  The training he was going to give me. The heat trickles from my face, down the inside of my ribcage. “What if he won’t teach me?”

  “It’s your only chance.”

  Her eyes glint in the candlelight, dark and almond-shaped like mine. There’s no doubt woven into the wrinkles of her face, no fear in the set of her eyes. She believes in me. Like Vito believed in me, though he didn’t know that I’d murdered his sister. Like Carita believed in me, before I abandoned her to go on this wild hunt. Like Maur believed I could learn, before I chose to come here.

  Maybe this could fix it all. I could save Vito, help Carita with illusions she can’t have seen before, and make Maur teach me.

  If he will.

  And if Vito’s still alive.

  My gut twists, pain shocking through my system. “And what if Vito isn’t— He’s not—”

  “If he’s not alive, it will show nothing. Just as it will if you’re not powerful enough. You have to try.”

  “But what about you?” My voice is too high, too close to cracking. “I can’t leave you here. They could do something to you, and what if I get captured, or something happens when I find Maur—if I can find Maur, since I don’t even know where I came from—”

  “Ava.” My mom’s voice is a slap to the face. My words recoil, slinking back into my uneasy stomach. “Breathe.”

  I follow her instructions with barely a thought, drawing in a shaky breath.

  She gives a small smile. “I’ve spent so many years thinking you were dead. A few days—or weeks, even—won’t compare.” She reaches up a hand, brushing the side of my face. “All these years, I’d never checked on your father, tried to contact him, too afraid that I’d miss you both even more. If only I’d known sooner…”

  I place my hand over hers. “But you couldn’t have known.”

  She nods. “But you can. And you’re going to. Like I said, Hamahl can show you the pond. If you can’t work the illusion without further training, wait until sunrise and fly straight east. Past the ruins is the shore and, well, I suppose you know what to look for then.” She gives another smile, her eyes glistening. “You can do this. Don’t live your life with regrets.”

  She takes away her hand to brush tears from my face.

  Then she rises, pulling me up with her. She pulls me into a hug so tight that I can barely breathe, and I hold her just as hard. When she lets go, I nearly reach out for more, my mind grasping for assurance that she’s still there, that she’s not going again. It’s like I’m a child again, awkward in longer limbs, with full-fledged wings.

  “Go. I’ll be here when you have news.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to talk.

  “I love you.”

  I grin, tears falling down my face. “I love you, too.”

  She takes my face in her hands, kissing my forehead, then both of my eyelids. Then, with a gentle nudge, I walk to the back of the tent. I nibble my lip, pushing a tendril of water through the tent and jumping when the fabric instantly falls.

  “That didn’t take as long as I would have— Are you all right?” Hamahl reaches out, then seems to not know what to do with his arm.

  I nod. “I, um, I need to go to the pool.”

  Slowly, he nods. “May I ask why?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” I’m not going over that story again.

  He shrugs, fixes the flap behind us, and walks forward. With one look back, I follow.

  My thoughts race. My mom is alive. And then there’s Vito. He could… He’s dead. He can’t be alive, he’s dead. It’s like a mantra in my head, like if I say it enough, I’ll believe it.

  But I won’t believe it. My mind won’t take it in, like I’m throwing oil against water.

  I barely feel Hamahl’s illusion fall around us as we wander through the dark tents, the smells of sharp, earthy, spicy food still drifting through the air though most everyone is asleep.

  None of these people know that I’ve found my mother; none of them would care. None of them could even fathom what it would mean for Vito to speak to me again. That he’ll be human again, that he can hold my hand like he used to when we were younger. A soft warm pressure against my palm, the feeling of being close with no scales between us…but, no. We’re too old for that now, aren’t we?

  Are we?

  Suddenly, the tents end.

  We emerge from sand and heat into a small group of trees, flowers, and heavy moisture.

  My breath catches. This isn’t supposed to exist down here. Green life breaks and crushes and cushions my footfall, and I’m like a child in the gardens in front of the palace. My dad would always tell me never to go into them, but of course I disobeyed. And that one time I did, a hunter caught me. That was the first time I learned to fear the hunters. They aren’t there to protect me. They are only ever there for the dragons.

  The brush clears and a pond spreads out before us, so large that all I can make out is a black line of growth marking the other side in the darkness. The water is smooth, so still that it’s a near-perfect mirror of the sky. It seems that if I stood in the center of it, I might become a part of the sky, too. One more star to be lost in the dozens of others, a fire to burn out in the daylight. A light for Vito to weave his stories from, gazing up from the rooftops like we used to. With the chaotic energy spiking around my insides, I nearly believe that I could explode and become one.

  I walk to the edge, watching little bugs flitting across the surface and shattering an otherwise perfect image. What do I do now? I turn back to Hamahl, standing a few feet back, watching me. “How do you scry?”

  His eyebrows raise. “Scrying?” Then he shrugs. “Walk out onto the center of the water—yes, it will hold you if you let it, don’t look at me like I’m insane—and, well, look for what you’re searching for. The lake here can call to water anywhere in the world. You can see anything, if you can imagine it.”

  Eyeing him for a moment longer, I look back to the water. Here goes nothing. With a deep breath, I step forward. I reach out to the movement of water around me like I can grasp it, shove it under my feet.

  My foot touches the water and doesn’t get wet.

  Color and light skitter away from me, dancing with the water-walking bugs and spreading like the stroking of a paintbrush until it fades away. Wings half-spread, I shift my weight, then take another step. A rainbow of light springs from my foot again, the watery reflection glimmering off the nearby plants like dragon’s wings. Then I take another step, and another, gliding along the surface of the pond in a sea of stars.

  When I reach the point that seems like the middle, I stop. The light fades and there’s only a dark surface beneath me. If the water decided to let me drop, would I drown? For being surrounded by moisture my whole life, I’ve never had the chance to even try to swim. There were never any ponds or lakes or pools above, only wells.

  With a shaky breath, I kneel closer to the water, tucking my wings tight to my sides.

  Fear pulses through me, jittering and sharp. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to think. What if he’s dead?

  Hope wraps itself around my throat, strangling me.

  He can’t be alive.

  But he has to be.

  My heart ricochets around my ribcage as I reach out to touch the water, biting my cheek at the same time. My palm sinks only a hairsbreadth into the cool liquid, this time the splay of color making me feel sicker than ever.

/>   I think of Vito.

  Of everything.

  Our mutual animosity toward each other when we were forced together. How he broke that cycle, defending me from my peers as they teased me for my dung-colored dragon. Oh, how he hated that. Maybe I made him hate it less, though. There’s no other color I love more than that exact shade of brown, that comforting, warm, dark earthiness. He was more beautiful than those spoiled children deserved to know. And he would tell me the same thing, throwing my compliments back at me.

  Wandering around the city together, forgetting our classes, our lessons. How we’d quietly steal away to the rooftops, studying books of dead languages, of love and loss and learning far beyond what I could grasp at the time.

  His quiet, constant company when he lost his words. That other side of him that I missed deeply, a crack in my being, but I craved him too much for it to change anything about us. Instead, a new adventure began in learning to read him, to know what he was saying without words.

  Vito.

  But…not even a glimmer of light shows under my fingertips. No color, no vision.

  I dig deeper, blood dripping from my mouth and onto my tongue, flooding my senses with hot iron. I leap over that gap in my brain, tearing through the darkness, finding my last memories of him. How he could barely move, barely fly. The last time I felt those smooth, warm scales under my fingertips.

  And nothing.

  Nothing happens.

  I push harder and harder. Tears fall from my cheeks, destroying the image of the stars and the blackness, casting small rainbows in their ripples.

  But no Vito.

  I can’t do it.

  I can’t find you, Vito.

  25

  The Fear

  Hamahl stays with me until sunrise, no matter how much I try to convince him to leave. He insists that I’ll need a reason to come back, that he wanted to show me that his people aren’t bad—as if my mom isn’t enough.

  My thoughts keep wandering back to the blank surface. He could be dead. I’ve told myself over and over again that he has to be, that there’s no other way. I’d stay here and be with my mom—or maybe go back to Carita and finish those wings. Stop constantly running, since all it ever does is bring me trouble.

  But there’s that stupid, nagging, fragment of hope. And what my mom said. “Don’t live your life with regrets.” How could I face her if I threw her words away?

  Crimson creeps into the sky, tendrils swiping away the splotches of stars.

  I stand, my muscles tight, threatening to cramp.

  “Time to go?” Hamahl stands, too, taking a long stretch.

  I nod, looking to the horizon. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. Seriously. Don’t.” I glance back, finding him grinning. “Good luck, illusionist. See you.”

  I hesitate, but can’t think of anything to say in return. I spread my wings and fly away from the water, the greenery, the tents. Over and over, I keep thinking about turning back. But I can’t turn around. The desert rolls out underneath me until the tents are a dot, and then nothing behind me. Heat rises with the sun, the air feeling heavy in my lungs with it. Sweat drips from my eyebrows, my nose, into my eyes.

  Finally, in the distance, the ground shimmers with something other than the hot air. The ruins that I’m nearly positive Maur led me through poke slightly above the sand dunes. I fly past them to the shimmering stretch at the edge of the horizon.

  My wing beats are too much work with the smothering blanket of heat, and they become irregular. I try to land with any modicum of grace on the beach. Instead, my feet hit the ground and my legs fumble, trying to remember how to stand. I flop into the water, spluttering as the salty brine rushes into my mouth. It isn’t anywhere near cool, and my heart sinks with disappointment.

  I crawl from the ocean, sitting on the shore with the sun drumming a slow beat against my head. Wouldn’t he have heard me land? Maybe he doesn’t know it’s me.

  “Maur?” I’m ridiculous, calling out to the open air. Maybe he’s not around. Maybe he’s somewhere in the ocean, or back in those ruins—though he should be able to hear me from here.

  “Maur!” I call, louder now. He has to be here. Where else would he go? Though maybe now that he knows Dantea isn’t coming, he moved on.

  “Maur!” I bang my fists against the sand, sending a wave of illusion with it. “I swear, if you’re not here, I’m going to hunt you down and make you—”

  The sand slides out from underneath me. I drop, my wings not snapping out nearly in time to catch me before I smack against a smooth, mirror-like floor.

  “And make me what, serpent?”

  I roll over, wincing and shaking my feathers back into shape. “Have you been ignoring me?”

  “It isn’t as if I left you abandoned out there for hours. This time. And hello to you, too.” He stands with his hands behind his back, yellow eyes narrow. My heart hiccups. This man is my grandfather?

  He raises his eyebrows. “Did you lose your tongue? What are you here for?”

  “I, um, I want you to teach me. Like you said you would before.”

  “You chose to see your mother over those lessons.” He cocks his head. “You can’t exactly take that back.”

  I shake my head. “I know, it was the wrong choice to make in the first place, avoiding what I needed—”

  “What?” He takes a step forward, eyebrows furrowed as his voice rises. “You regret putting your family above power?”

  “Well…” I shrink back, slowly getting to my feet. Do I really regret it? “You can’t change anything if you keep on running, if you don’t make sacrifices.”

  His face relaxes slightly. “The kind of change you’re looking for can’t come without thinking or caring, either. Running away and running toward what’s important to you—even if that thing changes—are two completely different things.”

  I pause, trying to grasp those words. Did I— Could I have made the right choices until now? I shake my head. “Either way, I need to learn. I know you didn’t want to follow me because of my mother.” I curl my hands into fists, fighting against the memory of the black water, the unknown of Vito. “Is there any other reason you can’t teach me? Can you honestly tell me that you had any other reasons for not coming?”

  He purses his lips. “She told you, then.” Not a question.

  I nod.

  He’s quiet for a second. “And you’re not going to ask me anything about it?”

  “Not an ‘it.’” I grip for my sabre, then remember that the Azelain had taken it. “He’s my father and your son.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “And you’re going to tell me how I should feel about him?”

  “He’s dead.” My voice breaks on the word. “You could at least show him some respect.”

  “Hmm.” He glowers at me, his heart picking up its beat.

  “Why do you hate him, then?” He didn’t bat an eye when I confirmed that I was Chava’s daughter, and I’m sure he’d already guessed by the time that I told him what happened to my father. A rush of fire feels like it burns through my veins. “What could possibly make a father hate his child so much that you don’t care that he died?”

  He stares at me, his face a mask. I reach up, pushing away the tears that threaten to break.

  “Before he met Chava, your father was his mother’s puppet. Sharp as a tack, a honed blade for the city. I would be lying if I said he wasn’t a part of the reason I escaped in the first place—even if I always kept a small hope that he’d change, grow out of it. After a while, I started visiting him, attempting to take on the part of father that I was so awful at playing. Every time, we’d bicker, and it would end when he’d threaten to report me. Every time, I’d try to teach him, show him the power of the people below, and he’d shun me. He took the books, though. He always took the books.”

  So that’s where he got them from. All those illegal books, full of their beautiful words and seductive secrets. Maur. My grandfather. The word f
eels awkward, even in my head.

  “Except, toward the last visit, things started to change. He started asking, taking in what I was saying. While I thought he actually wanted me in his life, he was up to something else. I should have known he was trying to use me.” He shakes his head. “I was the one who brought your mother down here to the Azelain, if she hasn’t already said. And after that, he said to never come back. That it would be ‘better,’ that the hunters would be keeping a closer eye on him. Though I never knew you existed in all this.”

  He takes a step forward, and this time, I hold my ground. “It makes sense, of course. I thought she was crying a little too much over my idiot of a son.”

  I want to slap him. My arm’s half-raised to do so until I remember I need him. “How did you know who I was, then?”

  He waves vaguely. “That crystal of yours. She had the same one, and I recognized the theory behind it as similar to one of the books I’d loaned your father. Impressive for an untrained illusionist to be able to use a tool like that, though.”

  It definitely wasn’t easy to master, he’s right about that. And what he’s saying of my father is nothing like the memories I have of him. He didn’t care about the dragons or their rules, other than when it came to me. But it explains the books.

  “And why do you need to learn so suddenly?” Maur frowns. “Did your mother have enough of you?”

  “No.” I snap the word at him. “She did send me here, but only because you’re the only one who can show me.”

  He nods, as if this is nothing, something he predicted. “Show you what? How to use illusions like a civilized being? For what purpose?”

  “I need to use the lake that the city rose out of to scry.”

  “To scry?” his eyebrows shoot up. “Looks like those people have had some success experimenting illusions on the surface of that water. Now stop beating around the bush, serpent. For what?”

  I scowl. “To find Vito.”