Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  Oswald Franklin, the grogan, is up on the old stump, shouting into the bullhorn. He gestures erratically in the air. Sunlight glints his tusks, where he's had them tipped with metal. Spit sprays from his mouth.

  “I saw that,” Devon says. “The smaug escalated, but that guy was clearly the instigator. Maybe he should be in jail.”

  Mason frowns. “At this point in the video, he's just a US Citizen, exercising his right of free speech.”

  “You can't be serious,” Devon says.

  Mason frowns and doesn't say anything. She's pretty severe, he realizes. Just like a lot of other Blackstone people. He's used to intense people—Special Ops was full of them.

  But they weren't so self-righteous.

  If he was in charge? Things might be a little different. But that's not going to happen in this lifetime.

  Mason says “That's not all.” In the video, the smaug come out onto the porch with those staves.

  “Sure wish we knew where refugees got weaponry like that,” Devon says.

  “Wait for it,” Mason says. “I have a theory. But you're not going to like it.”

  Franklin draws his knife and jumps. The smaug guy takes a hit. The lead smaug swings and sends Franklin flying, and then all of the smaug fall back, and the lead one sets up whatever that shield thing was between them and the crowd.

  The drone pulls back as the grogans surge forward.

  “There,” Mason says. “Recognize anyone?”

  “That's Kylie,” Devon says. “We know she was there. I helped get her out of the crowd.”

  “Look close,” Mason says.

  One of Franklin's instigators advances on Kylie with a bat. She stumbles backward. And then the wolf leaps into the crowd, to stand between them.

  “That's no normal wolf,” Devon says.

  “No shit,” Mason says. “But I'm not worried about some shifter. Look closer.” She backs up the video and reruns it from when the guy advances on Kylie.

  She pauses it as Kylie is in mid-stumble. “There,” she points.

  Devon squints.

  Mason points at Kylie's hands.

  Just for a minute, they're wrapped tight in bright purple fire.

  “Holy shit,” Devon says. He feels a sinking feeling in his stomach. “I don't believe it.”

  “Harbinger,” she says. “She's a goddamn harbinger. I said you wouldn't like it.”

  Devon starts thinking through the implications. “That could explain a whole lot.”

  “That's where your weapons are coming from.” Mason nods, self-satisfied.

  “You think she's opening up portals? Bringing them things? We could ask them. The smaug.”

  “We are,” Mason says. “They're not talking. But I know someone else we need to talk with.”

  She stares at Kylie's frozen picture on the screen.

  That sinking feeling in his stomach?

  It's getting a whole lot worse, really fast.

  17

  I always leave my door open when I go to bed. Tonight I hear small footsteps.

  My phone says it’s 2:37 am.

  I lurch out of bed and run to the door, and I just catch a glimpse of Sam padding down the hallway in bare feet. He’s wearing one of my teenage Snoop Dog t-shirts.

  I follow him and catch up in the kitchen.

  His eyes are only half open, and it sounds like he’s whispering something under his breath.

  He’s sleepwalking, for sure.

  “Sam?” I whisper. “Hey, Sam.” I remember something about not waking up sleepwalkers, but I think that was probably an urban myth.

  At least I hope it was.

  It doesn’t seem to matter. Sam turns to me in his sleep and smiles, but then he whispers something I can’t hear and heads over to the stairs. He opens the door and heads down into the restaurant. I worry that he’s going to fall down the stairs, but he’s holding on to the railing in his sleep as he goes.

  “Sam?” I try again. A little louder.

  No luck. I follow him down.

  He gets to the bottom and opens the door to the restaurant. He pauses, looks around with his half-closed eyes: it’s almost like he’s following something.

  Then he whispers something else and heads out into the dining room.

  He moves pretty quickly through the tables, around the bar, back into the kitchen, and right to the basement door.

  I locked that door this afternoon, after finding him down there this morning.

  He turns the knob and pulls, but it stays closed. He tugs harder.

  “Sam,” I say. “You need your sleep. We need to get you back to bed.”

  He’s not hearing me, though. He yanks at the door and is starting to get upset.

  I see small purple sparks starting to jump between his fingers.

  Shit.

  I unlock the door and open it for him.

  He sighs, relieved.

  He turns on the light switch and pads sleepily down the rough wooden stairs.

  I’ve never liked this basement. My uncle told me I should never go down here, and unlike pretty much every other thing he told me, this one I actually listened to.

  It’s dank and moldy. The damp dirt on the floor sticks to your feet. There are large piles of dirt in the corners, and I swear there are rats down here, though I’ve never actually seen one. Rats in Richmond can get as big as cats. They are definitely not something you want to run into at any time of the day, but particularly in the middle of the night in bare feet and a t-shirt.

  I follow him anyway.

  Sam weaves his way back through the old crates of junk, right to the bricked-up section of the wall.

  He leans up against it and places his cheek flat on the brick.

  I come up behind him and put my hand on his shoulder gently, so I don’t scare him.

  “What is it?” I say. “What do you think is in there, kiddo?”

  He turns to me. His eyes are fully closed now, and he sways a little on his feet.

  But he reaches out and taps his hand against the center of my chest twice, and then twice again.

  Ba-bump. Ba-bump.

  Like a heartbeat. A shiver runs up my spine.

  I hesitantly put my hand against the wall.

  Nothing. Just cold brick.

  But Sam turns and leans up against the wall again. He presses his cheek up against it again, and nods his head a little in time to that imagined beat.

  Not having a better idea, I pick him up. He doesn’t resist.

  I carry him awkwardly upstairs and tuck him into bed. He settles in, curling up around the stuffed dog he likes. It’s blue, and reminds me of another toy I had once, a smaller blue dog that I don’t have anymore, but that I see in my dreams sometimes.

  On the way back to my room, I notice Zara’s room is empty. She didn’t come home tonight, I guess. I hope she’s doing ok.

  I sit on my bed for a few minutes. I’m kind of spooked, and exhausted but not tired if that makes any sense.

  It’s probably a bad idea, but I go back down into the basement.

  On my way through the kitchen, I grab a crowbar and a hammer from the closet.

  The brick wall is definitely newer than the rest of the basement. I wonder if my uncle put it here?

  I set the crowbar up against the mortar.

  I whack it with the hammer. The mortar is pretty sloppy, and it chips away pretty quickly.

  I get a couple of bricks out. There’s definitely a space of some sort behind the wall.

  It’s too dark to see into, though. If I were smarter, I probably would have brought a flashlight, too. Or at least my phone.

  But going back up two flights of stairs seems insurmountable right now, so I just keep at it. The mortar is really crumbly, and the wall is only one brick thick. There’s a lot of damp dust in the air that makes me start to cough, but I keep going anyway.

  I get another bunch of bricks out, and then I just try pulling at more of them with the crowbar.

  I b
race myself, lean back, and give a good yank.

  I have to jump back as the whole wall falls over in a giant cloud of dust and mold.

  When the dust starts to settle, I almost let out a yell.

  The first thing I see in the space is actually myself, looking back at me.

  I want to sprint for the stairs, but then I get a grip.

  I realize: it’s a mirror. But not just any mirror—it’s huge, nearly ten feet high, and at least eight feet wide. It’s seriously old. The glass is scratched and dull in places where the silvering on the back has worn off. It has a thick, ornate metal frame that’s covered with some sort of writing. It’s heavy, too. I can’t budge it. There are pictures all around the frame—elaborate trees growing everywhere, with some kind of snakes that wrap themselves around the branches. Other figures are sitting or climbing in singles and pairs: humans, fae, smaug, grogan.

  And some other races I can’t identify. Strange birds emerge from leaves, too, and spread their wings, beaks open.

  The mirror leans up against a plain dirt wall. There’s nothing else behind it—the small room is about four feet deep, and looks like it was probably dug out by hand.

  Now I know where those dirt piles in the corner of the basement came from.

  I put my hand on the glass.

  It’s cold.

  I leave my hand there for a little while. If I feel a heartbeat in this, I think I’m grabbing Sam, and we’re going to find a hotel somewhere.

  But I feel nothing.

  I step back and stare at myself.

  I decide I look perplexed.

  What the hell was my uncle thinking?

  18

  The next morning I’m working the breakfast shift at Joe’s Inn. Sam gets to hang out in the back booth with all of the Morris kids’ old superhero comic books. They’re the same ones Mr. Morris used to let me read when I was little, when my uncle would park me over here in that very same booth.

  I used to love them—the X-Men, Thor, Wonder Woman. The Fantastic Four were all my favorites. I used to show my uncle pictures of the Human Torch, and imagine that I could be the female version of that: zipping through the air, battling the masked Dr. Doom. With the heroes in my head, I would zoom through the restaurant at the worst of times, scattering servers and sending plates flying.

  Mr. Morris would give me a stern talking-to afterward, but I couldn’t help noticing his smirk he tried to hide behind his mustache and his curled tusks.

  I have never gotten the flying thing down.

  Sam looks engrossed, but that could be the sugar coma from the hot chocolate. He didn’t remember anything about his night adventure when we woke up. When I showed him the mirror this morning, he looked surprised and mildly curious, but that was about it.

  I’m pretty exhausted, but I manage to get through the breakfast rush on a combination of too many espressos and the famous Morris magical Greek omelet, cooked by Mr. Morris’s daughter Becca.

  Zara gets dropped off at Poe’s mid-morning by a white Tesla. I text her: You ok? Am at Joes and there is coffee here.

  COFFEEEE, OMG, she replies. A half-hour later, she slides into the booth next to Sam. She’s had a shower, and her clothes and hair are impeccable as always.

  But there are dark circles under her eyes. She’s covered them well, but I can still tell.

  I bring her the big mug a double espresso on the side.

  “You are a lifesaver,” she says, running a hand back through her hair. “Long night.”

  “Same here,” I say. The breakfast rush has tapered off, so I grab a seat with them too. “You were ok after everything yesterday?”

  She nods, though she looks upset. “Once all the cops showed up and arrested everyone, it got quieter. But they cleared out the smaug families from all of the houses. Everyone! You know how hard we all had to work to get them settled in the first place? We were on the phones late into the night, talking with the police and with lawyers to figure out where they’d gone. They still haven’t told us anything.”

  I shake my head. “I’m really sorry. That doesn’t seem right.”

  “It’s definitely not right.” She sips at the coffee. “You guys were ok? Were you caught up in the fight?”

  I tell her about the riot, about hanging out with Max, and then about finding the mirror.

  “Scruffy guy can cook?” she grins. “That alone is pretty amazing. Glad you were all ok,” she toasts me with the mug. I get her a Greek omelet, and Sam another hot chocolate.

  “This,” she says, pointing at her plate. “Is incredible.”

  “Right?”

  Sam’s too busy slurping whipped cream and turning comic book pages to comment, but I’ll take that for an endorsement.

  A few more people come in, so I go handle them. After Zara eats, she says, “I’ve got to go through the smaug houses this afternoon, if you wanted to come? We’re saving any of their things that might have been left behind, and could use the help.”

  “Sure, I say. “Sounds great.”

  Becca Morris says she’ll take Sam to a playground for the afternoon with her own kids, and Sam nods that he’s good with that. Becca’s only a few years older than I am, and already she’s married to a great guy and has three furry little kids. It’s hard to believe—we used to take martial arts classes together, and play tag in that same playground.

  After my shift is done, I meet Zara at her office, and we walk over to the Hill.

  We’re the first ones there. The row of houses looks all right on the outside, aside from the broken windows and the dents in the walls from the rocks. But the first one we go into, the one where Xyr was staying, is completely trashed inside. I’m guessing the others are similar.

  “The police did this?” I said.

  She shrugs. “Probably some of it. But it looks like some of that crowd came back after too. The police aren’t usually this bad. There were some of those border patrol contractors they’re working with, too.”

  “Blackstone?”

  She nods. “Those guys can get intense. How did you know?”

  “They’re the ones that came to Joe’s Inn, asking questions. And I saw one of them again during the riot, though he actually helped me get out of the worst of it. Wow, this is pretty awful.”

  Whoever came through here wasn’t just looking to clear people out—it seems like they were trying to leave a message. Furniture is ripped open or broken, carpets are torn, dishes are smashed. Spices and food items from the open refrigerator are dumped across the floor, and there are wet spots along the walls at about waist height that are probably not water.

  Zara wrinkles her nose. “I’ll go check the other houses, too. Do you want to check upstairs?” She hands me a pair of thick work gloves. “And put these on before you touch anything.”

  “No prob.”

  The stairs are creaky and slanted. The rooms up here are no better—mattresses upended, bed frames cracked, sheets torn into pieces. Drawers have been pulled out of dressers and clothes have been scattered around the room. The bathroom is a disaster.

  In one of the smaller bedrooms, there’s a large mirror tipped over onto the floor.

  It isn’t as big as the one I found last night, maybe about five feet high and just two feet wide. It’s pretty heavy.

  I put the gloves on and heave it up against the wall.

  The frame looks eerily similar to the one in my basement. The same ornate metal. The same carvings of trees everywhere, with snakes and humanoid figures and birds in the branches.

  I put my hand against the glass.

  It’s warm.

  So is my uncle’s key around my neck.

  There’s a sound like a single ring of a wind chime.

  I step back and realize the glass of the mirror is moving. Ripples spread out on the glass from where I touched it, as though the mirror was a pond set on its edge.

  I can still see myself in it, and the room behind me. But superimposed on that, I can see another figure, too
.

  It’s a smaug, wearing a heavy cloak and holding a cane. On her left hand, she wears a metal gauntlet.

  She’s walking quickly past the mirror as if it’s a window, on some kind of a wooden floor.

  It’s not a wooden floor: it’s the large branch of a gigantic tree.

  I can see other branches tangled in knots behind it.

  The smaug stops, turns, and stares at me.

  Then it reaches up and lowers the hood of the cloak.

  I see that it’s Xyr.

  She clearly sees me, too. She looks at me, curiously. Then she looks around her quickly, like she’s watching for something.

  She frowns and steps closer. Then she reaches out her hand, the one that’s wearing the gauntlet.

  Her arm passes through the surface of the mirror, and right into the room where I’m standing.

  Her palm is open. It’s an invitation.

  What would you do?

  I take off one of the work gloves, and I put my hand in hers.

  Then I step through the mirror.

  19

  “You are very nearly the last person I expected to see, Kylie Walker.” Xyr says, with an ironic edge to her voice. Her voice sounds stranger than usual. There's still that experience where it seems like someone close to my ear is whispering her words as she speaks them. But sounds here are also weird. Each word is clipped. Each noise ends abruptly.

  There are no other ambient sounds around us. It's almost like we're underwater, without the water part.

  It's also hard to breathe.

  And it smells strangely metallic, like ozone.

  I try to take a deep breath, and then another, but it feels like I'm not getting enough air.

  “Where,” I say. I take another breath. “Where are we?”

  I put my hand out, and she steadies me.

  “Follow me, quickly,” she says. “This is not a place to talk.”

  I look around us, and immediately start to feel dizzy.

  I sit down, fast. I grab onto a branch and hang on.

  We're high in the air, standing on the branch of some immense tree. We're so high I can't even see the ground below us.