by C. E. Murphy
"I've made my own prison, I suppose. I would never have believed I could break free of Fúamnach, even when I tried as a child. It was a token protest, one I knew would end in being eaten all up, whether I willed it or not. And then, free from her, I tied myself to the O'Malleys, and when they were gone, to Ireland, for I had nothing else that I knew. But seeing you again gives me strength. I didn't know," she added more quietly. "I didn't know you still lived, after your death. I might have come to find you, if I had."
"I'd certainly have come to find you, if I'd known you lived past your death." Grace shook her head. "What a strange world we live in, Máire. Is it still Máire, or did you take a name of your own?"
"Máire O'Malley is the only name I ever wanted."
Grace put her arm around the witch's shoulder and drew her close to place a smiling kiss in her hair. "Then come with me to—"
"Indonesia!" Tony drove down the hill, leaning out the car door and waving his cell phone at the women. "Janx is in freakin' Indonesia. Grit says we don't need a visa, we can just get on the plane and g—dammit, neither of you have passports!" He stopped the car and got out, running his hand through his hair until short black curls stood up. "The modern world is not equipped for magic, dammit!"
"More like magic isn't equipped for the modern world. Get yourself a ticket, love. Surely a witch and a ghost can slip onto a plane unnoticed, and travel in peace, if not comfort."
Tony pointed the phone at Grace. "I don't know if that's cool or deeply concerning. What if you were terrorists?"
Grace looked at Máire. "Are you a terrorist?"
The witch girl's expression went shifty, then sweetly innocent. "Not for decades, that anyone might prove. You?"
"Never once. A pirate and a soldier, but never a terrorist. At least not by my own definition."
Tony put his face in his hands and walked away to the sound of the womens' laughter.
#
They joined Tony again outside of the airport, Máire with her hair damp from traveling through fog and Grace stepping free of the shadows with her usual nonchalance. Tony's eyes were bright with anticipation. "I've never been farther than Italy, before. The air smells different here."
"Does it smell like dragon?" Máire muttered. "Indonesia's got a population of two hundred million or more. How are we to find a dragon's hoard in all of that? Or is Jakarta his hoard?"
"We've got an inside man," Tony told her. "I just hope she doesn't show up for a few days. I want to see the city."
"Hate to disappoint, but there's our girl." Grace nodded toward a redhead pulling up in a little snub-nosed green car. "We'll go sight-seeing once we've got the Tear, love."
"You say that like we're not going to be stealing it from a dragon and running for our lives. Kate!" Tony raised his voice and waved to the woman driving. She waved back, gesturing them over, and Tony muttered, "I thought Irish cars were small. Will we all fit in this?" as they went.
"It's not that Irish cars are small, it's that American ones are stupidly huge. And yeah, I've got really good hearing. And a better sense of smell. And neither of them are half as good as my sister's." The redhead reached back to unlock a door and eyed her passengers. "Kate Hopkins," she said to Máire. "You should probably sit in back. You're the smallest. Grace and Tony can wrestle it out for shotgun."
"Máire O'Malley."
"Really." Kate nodded at Grace, who got in back with Máire. "Any relation?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Your sister's not here, is she?" Tony asked as he climbed in the passenger seat. "No offense, but your father's bad enough."
Kate slid a glance at Grace in the mirror. "How should I take that?"
"As a statement from a man sensibly wary of dragons."
"And even more so of vampires," Tony said.
"Dragons," Máire half-asked, and Kate transferred the glance to her.
"Didn't they tell you? My father is the dragon you're looking for. I wouldn't have come, if Margrit hadn't called asking me to. What is it exactly that you want from him?"
"A stone," Grace said. "It was mine, and I lent it to a witch, who gave it into his safekeeping when you and I were young. I'm coming to reclaim it."
Kate chuckled. "Good luck with that. What are you bringing him in return?"
"A wish," Grace murmured, and looked out the window as Kate drove them north and east through towns that hardly stopped from one to the next. Deep green mountains rose up to the south, and eventually to the north as well, until they reached a shoreline built up in one stretch and forested up to the water in the next.
Kate got out of the car in a rangy movement, not as graceful as her father, but not as ponderous as he could be, either, and stretched like she was twenty-two, not just past her third and a half century. "Anybody bring a snack? We're here until nightfall, anyway."
"Why's that?"
"Because you can get to his island two ways: by boat or by wing, and if you take a boat he'll come out and eat you."
"I bet I can get there another way," Grace said in tandem with Máire. They laughed, looking at one another, and even Kate smiled.
"You probably could, and he might not even eat you. But if you want something from him you probably shouldn't sneak up on him."
"Is it sneaking if he knows we're coming? Margrit rang ahead."
"I'm pretty sure any time you visit a dragon's hoard you're sneaking, whether you're actually sneaking or not."
"'I smell you, I hear your breath, I feel your air,'" Tony said.
Kate pointed an approving finger at him. "Just like that. Sometimes I wonder if Tolkien knew my father, or if he just got lucky."
"Can a witch fly on dragon-back?" Máire wondered, soft and hopeful as a child. She stood on the shore already, a new staff of braided kelp in hand; Grace had no idea what stiffened it, other than the young witch's will.
"Kate's half-sister bears her sister the witch on her back all the time, and their mother, who was Baba Yaga's daughter, besides. They've traveled the whole world that way. The mother says the power of the Old Races betwixt herself and the sea disrupts the magic that holds a witch to a bit of land."
"Now that," Máire said sharply, "is a prize worth knowing."
"Keep it to yourself, then, girl," Grace said in a mother's tone, and all three of them younger than she looked at each other and laughed. Grace tried to find a scolding face, and found a laugh of her own instead. "All right, then. Will you be flying us, Kate, or will it be Janx himself?"
A strange look came over Kate's face. "I think the last person Janx flew on his back was my mother."
"And how long ago was that?" Máire wondered, but Grace lifted her hand to silence Kate, who arched an eyebrow while Máire turned a filthy gaze on Grace.
"Witches trade in secrets, love. Watch what you say."
"Do you not trust me, Mother O'Malley?"
"I do," Grace said, honestly, "but I don't trust witches. It puts me in a bind."
"Unpack that later," Tony suggested. "The sun is setting. Or do we have to wait until the dark of night to fly out?" All three of the women looked at him and he rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay, the middle of the night. Margrit was right. Hanging out with you people makes ordinary humans use melodramatic language."
"'You people,'" Kate said, amused, and Tony pointed a not-particularly-threatening finger at her.
"Don't you start."
Kate laughed and looked up the beach. "Sunset is as fine a time as any, but midnight makes it harder to get caught on satellite imagery."
"Are you big enough?" Grace asked, curious.
Kate gave a liquid shrug. "Not yet, not until I get bigger or they get better, which happens faster than I grow. Better to be in the habit of safety. Unless the witch can call up a fog to hide us?"
A genuine smile split Máire's face. "So I can, and no satellite will think anything of a girl standing on the beach as fog rolls in." She spoke in Irish then, her voice cajoling and sweet, and though Grace heard and
understood the words, they slipped away from her memory like cotton candy melting in water. There was a cadence to them, almost a song, but the tune faded as fast as the words, all of it the sounds of magic.
No natural fog came up the way Máire's did: it gathered around her ankle, twining like a cat as it inspected the kelp staff and the one-legged woman leaning on it. Then, as if satisfied, it billowed like a spinning skirt, whirling around her waist and growing fuller with each turn. Máire's song went on, lifting from the mist that swallowed her up. Tendrils of fog brushed Grace's face, startling her with their warmth. She took Tony's hand so she wouldn't lose him. He chuckled, dropping his voice in the way people often did in the fog. "You could just drift away on it, couldn't you?"
"I could, but that would be a cold and lonely fate." Grace tipped her face up, searching for the leading edge of the fog. "How deep does it run, Máire?"
"Not deep enough for a dragon." Máire's voice came dreamily, still half a song. "Another few minutes."
"This dragon can change as slow as the fog." Kate came through the mist like a wraith, wings already tearing away from her spine. A ripple ran through her, distorting her ribs, expanding them; the next breath she took disturbed the fog, drawing it into her, and in the next her arms were forearms, burnished red and clawed with gold.
"Jesus." Tony's hand went cold in Grace's, and even she fought the impulse to step backward. Kate's form flowed again, lengthening, wings enlarging, and again, until there was nothing human left in her at all, only a dragon whose size spiraled away into the fog. Whiskers danced around her face, and she dropped her jaw in a laugh that vibrated Grace's bones. Her wings flickered and she dropped to the lowest crouch she could, four tremendous feet digging into the sand and her belly rubbing against it. Her tail lashed in the distance, disturbing the fog, and Tony's voice cracked: "That's a baby?"
Kate jaw dropped farther, a hiss erupting from her throat. Tony put his hands up and did back away, voice cracking again. "Sorry. A, uh, an adolescent? You're just so fucking big."
Kate's offense softened and she spread her wings farther, invitation to…board, Grace sup-posed. "She's only a quarter the size of her father," she murmured as planted her hands on Kate's spine and vaulted up. "Perhaps not even that."
"I know, but she's still huge!" Tony, still gaping, took Grace's offered hand and let her haul him up. Kate shifted beneath them, settling and shaking until she decided she, if not they, were comfortable, then turned to Máire, who still stood at the water's edge.
The young witch offered the flat of her hand to the dragon. Kate dropped her muzzle, one nostril large enough to cover the girl's hand, and huffed like an enormous horse. Máire, smiling foolishly, brushed her hand back over Kate's snout, rubbing vigorously between the dragon's eyes. "I never dreamed of seeing such a thing."
"You won't again," Grace said. "No pureblood dragon can shift so slowly. The chimeric children of the Old Races are wonders unto themselves. Now, come aboard before she takes you in her claws and flies you like a child with an airplane."
Both Máire and Kate turned speculative looks on Grace, who felt the warmth of Tony's snorted breath against her shoulder. "I'd say don't give them ideas, but it's obviously too late. Come on." He sounded five years old. "I've always wanted to fly on a dragon."
Máire came around, trailing her fingers against Kate's shoulder until she reached the dragon's spine. Water whirled upward, lifting her onto Kate's back, and no sooner had she settled than Kate sprang upward, a shockingly smooth and soft departure. Tony shrieked with joy, making Grace and Máire both laugh. Even Kate rumbled with laughter, a deep tremble through her long bones.
The fog came with them, swift and graceful as the dragon herself, but thinning below them so the moon ghosted along over the water, a brilliant crescent that reflected in scattered pieces across the quiet ocean. Tears pulled from Grace's eyes and her teeth went cold from smiling into the wind. Tony shouted something about mosquitoes and she laughed again, then twisted on the dragon's back to kiss him fiercely. He smiled, startled, and Grace turned back again, overwhelmed with emotion. She had lived too long on the edges, her half life souring her connection with the world. It was easy to be cynical, when nothing could touch her unless she wanted it to, and easy to protect herself by wanting nothing to. The street kids she helped kept her from drifting away entirely, but she knew now that she kept even them at an arm's length, as afraid of feeling the glory of their highs as the sorrow of their losses.
Kate roared, a sound that rolled on and on over the ocean. Grace thought there might be words in it, perhaps a warning to Janx that another dragon approached his territory, but then the young dragon dove toward the water, skimming so closely to its surface that her wingtips cut into it and sent sprays into the air. Moonlight caught them and made rainbows, faint and flawless. Máire spread her hands and the spray hung in the air, traveling with them, racing along at eye-watering speed until they flew in the midst of a passage of silver fog and rainbows. Grace wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then pressed her palm against Kate's back, unsure if a leviathan would even feel such a small touch, but unable to express her thanks in any other way.
The dragon roared again, sounding pleased, and Máire, pointing ahead, cried, "Look!"
Beyond Kate, at the leading edge of the fog and rainbows, dolphins leapt from the water, not silver and grey, but teased into a hundred colors by the reflected light. They arched and dove, innumerable creatures moving in tandem and in waves, so that there were always some above and always some below the surface, where they raced so close to the surface they broke the streaks of moonlight into thousands of bright curves. Kate, so much larger and faster than they, overtook them in a few wingbeats, and only when one leapt beside them did Grace realize what Máire had seen at once. Tony whispered, "Oh my God," into Grace's shoulder, and Grace, speechless, curved a hand back to find his.
Siryns, not dolphins, sped through the water below and beside Kate. Easily twice the size of a human, they took their color not from stolen moonlight but from their own rich palette, deep oceanic blues and astonishing oranges, bright yellows and vivid greens, all the shades of a coral reef painted on swift bodies that held a place somewhere between man and oceanic mammal. Their hair was as brilliant as their skin tones, streaming down their spines to make a play at being dorsal fins; they dove with their hands folded in front of them, making a dolphin's nose at a glimpse, but clearly other at a second glance.
Kate tipped to the side, dipping a wingtip in the water and spinning on it. Laughter burbled up from below as siryns whipped after her, creating a whirlpool with Kate's wingtip at the center. Máire cried out, hands extended and trembling, and there was a plea in her voice, a hope that ran as deep as the ocean. She sang again, bringing a wall of water to life beyond the siryns' wheel: a wall that widened as she sang, thickening until it could carry a siryn in it comfortably. One, and then another and another, of the siryns leapt from their whirlpool to Máire's wall, and Kate slowed in her headlong rush until her wings barely beat enough to keep them aloft as they glided, escorted by a host of merfolk once thought lost.
Grace bellowed, "How—?" to Kate, though a dragon's throat was never made for mortal words, and it was one of the siryns who emerged from the waves to answer.
"Blood calls to blood, ancient one. The beast who bears you saved us, and so when she called, we came. It is our honor."
"It is mine," Grace whispered through a throat gone tight. "Grace bears a message for you, lady siryn, from the Serpent at the heart of the sea. He misses you, and all of his kind who once peopled the oceans."
The siryn—half again as large as the others, and with short-cropped hair that framed large dark eyes—smiled, an expression that shone with moonlight. "We are not long returned to the seas, and have found the Serpent quiet. I will seek him out, and tell him more than we were wont to, when last we swam the world's salt waters."
Máire said, "Lady," in a voice of longing, and extended
a hand toward the speaker. The siryn considered it, then gestured an acceptance. Máire curled her fingers, calling the wall of water closer, until the siryn's hand touched hers. The siryn transformed, stepping gracefully from the water onto Kate's back, where she stood above Máire and brushed her fingers over her hair.
Human, she was Amazonian in proportion: taller than Grace and broader of shoulder and hip, thicker of waist and so strongly muscled that even relaxed, she spoke of danger and sensuality. Grace might have elbowed Tony for gaping, save that she could no more draw her jaw up than he could. Máire, though, shone with joyful tears, and the siryn brushed them away. "What a creature you are," she said to Máire. "Caught between so many worlds. Born to a witch, loved by a human mother, blessed by the most ancient, and made half of our element. Child, you will be some time in finding your way, but there is a thing in you that is also in us, so know now and always that you have a home amongst the siryns; so says Ninanak, who is queen among them."
"Thank you," Máire whispered, and then again, helplessly, "thank you."
"I think someday it is we who will thank you." Ninanak bent and kissed Máire's forehead, where a silver imprint lingered a moment and faded. Then the queen leapt back into the sea, and as if her weight bore Máire's walls down, they crashed back to the water's surface, carrying laughing siryns with them.
#
The siryns left them as Janx's island came into sight, diving deep into the sea and disappearing. Grace, silent with wonder, watched them go, and when they finally reached shore, said to Kate, "I thought they were all lost."
"They were, until I found them." The half-dragon, human once more, spoke with neither pride nor humility. "You're not the first one to take something from my father's hoard, lately."
"Someday I'd love to hear that tale."
"Someday it might be mine to tell." Kate stepped out of Grace's way, gesturing to the volcanic island before them. "He's waiting for you."
Grace turned her attention from daughters fraught with power to the greenery and stone rising in front of her. "I don't suppose you'll give Grace the key to the front door."
