“No,” I whisper. I’m not sure what to do with this new knowledge—the knowledge that we have strong feelings for each other.
It’s best not to act. I could be mistaken about his feelings. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve overestimated a boy’s esteem. Everything that happened with Markus, for example.
Face burning, I turn from Orion, let go of his hand, and resume walking.
“Oh no you don’t,” he says, capturing my wrist.
His touch is scorching, but in a good way. He spins me toward him, then steps with me until I’m pressed between him and the stone wall of a building.
“Orion, what are you doing?” I try to sound calm, but I am anything except calm.
“The look you just gave me,” he starts.
I wait for him to finish the sentence, but he doesn’t go on. The sound of our breathing is punctuated by the frantic beating of my heart.
His hand is still on my wrist. Taking a deep breath, he lifts my arm and places my palm on his chest, over his heart.
“The look you gave me—that you’re giving me right now,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for you to look at me like that for three years, Inez.”
I feel my jaw drop.
He cups my cheek in his hand and brushes his thumb over my lower lip.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he says.
I’m ready for that kiss. It’s what I envisioned during the pain after the scorpion stung me. Orion’s mouth on mine, our fingers entwined.
A wolf howls. Then another. Howls of alarm.
We both turn to look down the empty street at the same time.
“We have to go,” I say, the words garbled, my tongue reluctant.
“Later,” he says, nudging my chin with his thumb until I face him once more. He stares deeply into my eyes. “I will kiss you later.”
Then he drops my hand and starts running. I take off after him, in the direction of the howling wolves.
My boots crunch the sandy street with every running step. I pull my sword from its scabbard.
When we reach a low enclosure where Orion has stabled the wolves, I see no danger at first. I had been expecting a windhaunt or dune spiders. Perhaps another scorpion dragon.
But movement near the horizon grabs my attention, and I point. A sled and wolves.
“We have company,” I say.
One of the riders wears a dark green tunic, very like Petre’s.
“I’ll ready the wolves,” I say.
“I’ll get the sled.”
The wolves’ harnesses are draped on a low wall. I whistle to Brute, who trots over. I reach behind his ears to give him a quick scratch as thanks for howling the warning to us.
He pulls back and growls at me, teeth bared.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s just me.”
Growling low again, he takes a step away.
Puzzled, I lower my hands to my sides before holding one out, palm up. “Brute, it’s me, Inez. Come on. We have to go.”
His gaze is distrustful, but he breaks the distance between us and sniffs my outstretched fingers.
“See?” I say.
He gives me a tentative lick, and his posture turns friendly once more. The other wolves slowly approach as I buckle the alpha’s harness around his shoulders, and they take turns sniffing me, as well. They have never behaved so strangely before, and I wonder if Lament could be the cause, and whether there is, indeed, something real in Orion’s superstitions.
Orion has dragged the sled closer and begins calling the wolves forward as I finish harnessing each one.
“What about water?” I ask.
“I filled the barrels while you were sleeping.”
I feel badly that he was on his own for so long. I wonder what transpired, whether he had to battle other windhaunts, what other horrors he might have seen.
“What else did you do while I slept?” I ask as I buckle and knot harnesses.
“Mostly I read that book of dragon prophecies.”
I’m sure there was more to his time alone than that. Now isn’t the time to ask, though.
Petre’s sled is too close. What do they want with us? As soon as the last wolf is wearing her harness, I go to the sled and find two spears. I’m angry enough with Petre, Fran, and Caleb to throw a weapon at the first sign of trouble, and I’ll be aiming for the chest.
I climb into the sled and pick up the reins. Orion is fumbling with the knots.
“Are you done yet?” I ask him, stress making my voice higher in pitch.
“Yes, let’s go,” he says.
I whistle and the wolves leap into motion. Orion times his jump perfectly, landing next to me at the front of the sled just as we take off.
I whistle again, guiding the wolves away from Petre’s sled, hoping that all the travelers want is to pick at the carcass of Lament like the scavengers they are.
My skin feels as if it is boiling; I’m engulfed in heat. “Are you suddenly hot?” I say to Orion.
Orion takes one look at me and his eyes go wide with alarm. “Deep breaths, Inez,” he says. “Breathe with me. Now. Control yourself so your eyes don’t change. It’s important.”
My eyes are changing? I don’t understand. I can’t pull my gaze from the travelers’ sled, but I breathe with Orion until I feel my skin began to cool.
“There,” he says, taking my hand. “You did it.”
“Did what? Petre and them are closer than before.”
Fran is waving her arms, asking us to slow. They’re off to the side, behind us, and if we continue in this direction, they’ll never catch up.
But we need to go west, not north.
I whistle to the wolves, adjusting their course.
“What are you doing?” Orion asks, then he looks at the emerging stars and notices our direction. “Oh.”
His hand is on my back, just under my shoulder blades. Warm, supportive. But he pulls away to pick up the spears.
The travelers’ sled shushes forward. I debate slowing our wolves, but I’m not going to make this interaction any easier on the travelers.
At least this time, if we come to blows, it will be a fair fight.
Finally, they’re close enough for their voices to carry. Fran calls, “The dragon! Did you see it?”
“No,” Orion says back, before I can speak.
I want to know why he’s lying, but if I look at him in question, the others will guess he speaks a falsehood.
“You had to have,” Petre says. “You were in Lament, were you not? We saw it fly out of the ruins.”
“We were indoors,” Orion shouts. “Inez was ill.”
I can feel their stares, full of suspicion, but they can have their suspicion. Orion and I are going to continue to the Western Lands and we’ll…what? I thought we were hunting a dragon, a creature I hadn’t believed existed. Then we found a dragon, but we’re not hunting it.
Water. We’re searching for water.
Petre leans down to say something to Caleb, who whistles to their wolves. Their sled changes direction and heads for the ancient city.
“She’s too clever to return,” Orion says, almost to himself.
“Who?” I ask.
“The one who saved you. Are you ready to talk about that yet?”
The wolves are heading directly west, and there are no obstacles in sight. I turn slightly to look at Orion, but keep part of my attention on the path ahead.
“All right,” I say, drinking in the sight of Orion’s beautiful eyes. “Talk.”
He inhales deeply. On the exhale, he says, “The woman who saved you is also a dragon. She turns into one, and she made you like her—you can turn into a dragon, too.”
I nod and return my gaze fully to the line of wolves that pull our sled. Dragon. A woman who is also a dragon. The dragon could fly, too. Can a woman who is a dragon also fly?
Then I realize my thoughts are twisting in a spiral. None of this makes sense. Not Orion’s revelation, not my urge to believe him, not the hot
, itchy feeling of my skin, not the tearful thickness in my throat.
“Inez?” he asks softly. “She said you’ll transform in a sevennight.”
“No,” I say.
He gives me a sad look. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
It’s too much for me to contemplate. I want to laugh just as much as I want to cry. “Let’s assume I believe any of this,” I say. “She said I’ll transform in a sevennight. Does that mean a sevennight from now, or from when she healed me?”
“From when she healed you.”
“Assuming, again, that I believe you, is the woman a water dragon?” I’m searching for holes in his logic—despite the obvious flaw, which is that people do not turn into dragons. “Would that make me a water dragon?”
“She said you’ll have powers,” he says. “She didn’t mention anything about water dragons.”
I take a deep breath. “Will I remain a dragon forever?”
“No,” he says. “She was clear about that.”
“What just happened with my eyes?”
“If you get upset, it seems like they change. The pupils, they get thin, and the irises look brighter. She mentioned it was a possibility.”
“And she couldn’t stay to tell me any of this herself?”
He gives me a sad look. “I suppose not.”
I don’t believe him about any of it. I can’t. I wonder where the truth got lost. In the woman’s mind? Orion’s? Or did Lament twist the truth, warp it like metal in extreme heat?
My hands itch, the skin tight. I absently scratch them while I stare at the horizon, willing something new to appear. But dunes rise after dunes after dunes, the desert harsh and endless.
I direct the wolves until my eyes grow heavy. Orion’s arm comes around my shoulders and he tugs me to his side. “I’ll drive for a while. You rest.”
It’s a mark of how tired I am that I don’t even attempt to argue. Closing my eyes, I nestle my head against Orion’s solid arm.
My skin continues to itch, but I shove away the distraction in favor of sleep.
Chapter 6
The story of the dragon is limited by words. There is more to the dragon than words.
A few more days pass in the same manner. Our barrels of water are running low once more. We drive at night and sleep during the day, sheltering in old, dry oases or in the shadows of towering cliffs that start to replace the dunes bordering the desert—giant walls separating Celinia’s desert from the Northern Lands.
Orion, who had been leaning against the bench and flipping through the dragon prophecy book, points to a set of cliffs rising from the sand to the south on the other side.
“What is it?” I ask over the hush, hush of the sled tracks on sand. “It can’t be the border of the Southern Lands.”
Orion nods his agreement. “It isn’t a border. It’s Whispering Canyon.”
“We’ve come to it already?” The dwelling place of the windhaunts. I’d thought it farther away, beyond our reach.
I urge the wolves to bank to the right, toward the north, to put a little more distance between us and the canyon. We haven’t gone far before the monotony of the orange-brown sand is broken once again, this time by a sea of white.
“We’ve reached The Salt,” I say.
Orion’s lips part in surprise. “We’re nearly to the Western Lands, then, aren’t we?”
I don’t know. Nobody has gone past The Salt. The flat, white expanse is made up not of sand, but of salt, as its name suggests. Legend has it that a large sea used to sparkle here, bluer than the sky.
It is hard to imagine such a wonder when my throat begs for liquid. If a salty body of water lay before me, I would guzzle it up, not caring about the salinity.
A grove of strange trees juts up from the edge of white, so I steer us toward it. Daylight will be upon us soon, so it’s better to break camp here, where we’ll at least have some shade to keep cool.
As we get closer to the trees, Orion points out their spiky leaves. They look like Joshua trees, but with even sparser, sharper foliage. Just beyond them is a giant structure with black bars.
“It looks like an iron bird cage,” Orion says.
“But for a giant bird,” I say. “Or…”
Neither of us says “dragon,” but we’re both thinking it.
I direct us to the side of the grove as far from the cage as possible. It’s still visible through the spindly tree branches, though. I don’t like the feeling it gives me. We set up our tents and create a makeshift pen for the wolves by dragging fallen tree trunks into a lopsided square.
This is the seventh day since the woman healed me. I tell myself the days don’t matter. Orion doesn’t bring up the dragon again. Nor do I. He must know I don’t believe him. I wonder if my disbelief causes him pain, but that’s not my intent.
We also haven’t spoken of his promise to kiss me. It’s on my mind just as much as the dragon is.
Once our tents are set up, we sit outside them. We’ve begun to play a game at the end of each night’s travel, and we read the dragon prophecies by the rising sun before we sleep. For each prophecy, we replace the word “dragon” with another beast or insect.
“Fear not the dung beetle’s fire,” I read. “Rage and wrath are only one part of the majestic creature’s beauty.”
Orion laughs so loud, it startles the wolves in their makeshift pen.
“My turn,” he says, still chuckling.
I hand him the book, then absently scratch my wrist. Orion’s eyes lock on my movement, but he doesn’t comment.
He says, “The camel is as smart as anything; its intelligence gleams like its scales.”
I grin, imagining a scaled camel.
“Inez,” Orion says, “it’s been seven days.”
Asking him what he means would be disingenuous; we both know he’s talking about the dragon transformation. I’m tempted to mock him for believing in wild tales, but the apprehension in his eyes gives me pause.
“Will I be a danger to you?” I ask instead.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“There’s that cage,” I say, pointing to the iron structure on the other side of the grove. “You can shut me inside of it, just in case. It’s big enough for a dragon.”
I scratch at my arm. My skin has become raw and red. I’d give my sword for one of Elda’s healing lotions, the kind she’d give to us as young children when the sandflies gave us painful, itchy rashes.
“No way,” Orion says. “There is no way I’m putting you in a cage.”
I don’t believe for a moment that I’ll turn into a dragon today. But what if he’s right? If there’s even a chance, it seems like I should do the safe thing.
“Let’s move our camp,” I say.
“What?” He gives a longing look to his tent.
“We’ll move our camp next to the cage, and if I feel like—like I’m turning into a dragon”—a strange yelp of laughter bursts from my mouth, but I purse my lips together until my vocal cords are under control—“then I’ll climb into the cage and latch it. I won’t even need to wake you.”
He mumbles something about not being able to sleep, anyway, but follows my lead as I take down my tent. We carry everything to the flat, white ground near the cage. The shade from the trees is sparser, but sweeter smelling.
While I put up the tents once more, Orion brings over the wolves and sled. The wolves prance about as they come, making a game of the move because they aren’t harnessed for a long journey. Only Brute retains his dignity.
It would be too much work to drag the fallen trunks all the way over, so Orion ties the wolves to the sled.
The dark blue sky in the east lightens to an orange-pink as dawn breaks. My arms, hands, legs, and feet itch. My back and torso, too. Even my face and scalp burn with the need to be scratched. It would feel so good to run my fingernails over my entire body and ease the burning.
I growl and score the skin of my forearm with my fingernails. Orion g
ives me a questioning look.
“Just a sun rash,” I say.
I take tiny bites of the dried fruit he hands to me. My appetite has vanished. I can’t believe I’m nervous about this dragon thing. I don’t even think anything will happen. Orion’s nervousness seems to be enough to concern me, though.
I drop the fruit back into its waxed parchment, stand up, and begin to pace. The alpha wolf’s eyes follow my progress back and forth. Orion says nothing and stares down at the food in his hand.
This unsettled feeling has taken me over. I want to ask Orion about his promise to kiss me. Does he regret it? Perhaps he has forgotten all about it.
Tomorrow, on the eighth day, when we see that I haven’t become a dragon, I’ll bring it up again. I should like that kiss.
After marching over to the iron cage, I absently scratch my arms, neck, and hands while examining the latch on the door. There is no lock, but I imagine a dragon, trapped in the cage, wouldn’t be able to twist the strange handle to release the metal pin that holds the door closed.
Orion comes to stand next to me. He touches the bars and tugs at them, testing their strength. I reach out and do the same. The metal is still cool from the night, but I expect it will burn once it has absorbed the sun’s heat.
“Inez, your hand.” Orion reaches for my wrist but stops before making contact with the raised red welts on my skin.
It isn’t my wrist he’s looking at, though. The skin of the back of my hand has been coming off in patches, revealing angry red skin beneath. And beneath that, not blood, but something green.
“Is it a disease?” I ask, fear making my voice higher in pitch.
“I think…may I?” Orion points to the spot on my hand again, his finger nearly touching me.
“Go ahead.”
The skin doesn’t itch any more than usual when he uses the edge of his fingernail to peel it away. More of the green beneath is revealed. I can’t bear to look, so I stare instead at Orion’s handsome face, his brow wrinkled in concentration.
“Inez, look,” he says. “Scales.”
The entire back of my hand is green—a vibrant, beautiful green like the dragon we had seen at the well in Lament. The green is made up of tiny scales. I touch them and shudder at their coolness.
Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 95
