It Gets Even Better

by Isabela Oliveira

  Zen Cho is the author of the Sorcerer to the Crown novels, the novella The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water and a short story collection, Spirits Abroad. Her newest novel is Black Water Sister, a contemporary fantasy set in Malaysia. Zen is a Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Award winner, and a finalist for the Lambda, Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.

  Content notes can be found at the end of the book.

  Sea Glass at Dawn

  by Leora Spitzer

  Spring

  Although he had been scanning the rocky coastline for any sign of draconic presence, Fern could not stop himself from wobbling slightly when the odd rock formation on a distant hill resolved itself into a bronze dragon. He gulped, feeling the heat in his throat, and readjusted the wet cloth he wore wrapped around the lower half of his face. It smelled of saltwater and ash.

  The dragon shifted and Fern knew he had been spotted. “Too late to turn back now,” he muttered to himself, and continued walking towards the hill, the slippery gravel shifting underfoot. It felt heretical to doubt the oracle, but he could not help fervently hoping that the information he had been given was accurate. This would prove to be an extremely short quest if he was about to be lunch.

  Just as he began to mentally rehearse his introduction yet again, the dragon launched into the air, heading directly for the spot where Fern stood frozen. He braced himself for what looked like an inevitable crash, but at the last moment, the dragon pulled up and landed gracefully on the wet rocks as the waves retreated to the ocean.

  “Hello,” the dragon said.

  “Hello,” Fern squeaked.

  There was a pause as they examined each other. Fern shrank at the thought of what the dragon must be seeing, from the soot- and dust-stained clothes to the partially healed burns on his arms to his loose brown curls tangled from the ocean wind. In contrast, the dragon was magnificent, all sleek muscle and burnished scales, with spikes down their back and several horns that curved gracefully away from the back of their head.

  Instinctively, Fern glanced at the dragon’s forearms (front legs? Fern wasn’t sure). It was no surprise that the dragon wore no clothes, but on some level, he had still expected to see a colored bracelet, like the one he and every human he knew wore.

  “They call me Diver,” the dragon said, following his gaze. “Remind me, what do yellow bracelets mean? I know humans have a code with all your genders, but I can never remember.”

  “Yellow means he/him,” Fern said. “White is they/them, and green is she/her. There are a few others, too, but those are the most common ones.” He hesitated. “How do dragons tell what to call each other, if it’s not rude to ask?”

  Diver shifted a wing. “Draconic only has one set of singular pronouns for thinking beings, and we all use she/her in Admatian. Gender differentiation is not really a thing in our culture.”

  Before Fern had a chance to reflect on that surprising revelation —would it make things simpler not to worry about which bracelet fit best that day, or would it be more constricting never to have that choice? — Diver lowered her head and fixed him with a piercing look.

  “What may I call you?” she asked. It was not quite the tone a parent would use to chide a child to remember their manners, but it came from the same neighborhood. Fern blushed.

  “Oh! I am Fern of Cascade. The oracle told me to come here.”

  “Cascade, hmm? So that would be the Speaker of the Sacred Falls, then?” Diver asked, naming the oracle who lived in a ravine close by the tiny village. Its proximity to the Sacred Falls was the only reason anyone had ever heard of his home, but most residents never had any reason to consult the oracle themselves. Fern’s visit two weeks earlier had been the first time he had personally seen the breathtaking cascade from which his village drew its name.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  “And why did she tell you that?”

  “They,” Fern corrected, remembering the white bracelet the oracle had worn. “And, well…” Carefully, he unwrapped the cloth from his face. The salt breeze tickled his nose and he sneezed, sending a small spurt of flame into the air, where it dissipated harmlessly. Diver did not flinch, but her eyes widened in surprise. “That’s why,” Fern finished miserably.

  “You’re a pyromancer?”

  “No, I can’t control fire, I just breathe it sometimes,” Fern explained. “And I can’t control that, either. Last month, I accidentally burned down my grandparents’ barn when I got surprised. The Speaker told me I should come here to learn how to prevent that from happening again.”

  “Well, I suppose they knew what they were talking about,” Diver said. “You have come to the right place.”

  “You can help me?” Fern asked, cursing the way his voice squeaked again.

  Diver laughed. “I could try,” she said, “but it is not me you want, it is my wife. She has the best control of her flame of anyone around. And a good thing, too, given how much of her hoard is flammable.”

  Fern blinked. He had thought dragon hoards were mostly precious metals and gemstones, not any material likely to catch fire. But “never ask a dragon about her hoard” was up there with “never call a wizard stupid” in basic adventuring knowledge, so he bit his tongue and did not ask.

  “It’s good timing, actually. We started the hatchlings on flame-training a few moons ago, so they should have enough control not to light you on fire. You can join their lessons. And we have a small cave we keep for visitors that you may have to yourself, as well.” Diver jerked her head towards the rocky hills behind her and began walking away. After a confused moment, Fern realized the gesture had been an invitation and hurried after her.

  “My family,” Diver said proudly as they reached the top of the hill. Fern gasped, a flame caught in his throat. Carefully, he let it out. Diver continued to radiate pride rather than concern despite the ferocity of the wrestling dragons below, but Fern could not keep from flinching as the blue one pounced on the gold one’s tail. The gold one twisted around to pin the other to the ground and breathed fire at her belly.

  At that, Diver finally reacted, growling and moving forward, but someone else got there first. A much larger blue dragon, this one the pale shade of the pre-dawn horizon, loomed over the wrestling pair and pulled them apart. Fern flinched at the sight of her sharp claws against their scales, but when the smaller dragons seemed unbothered, he concluded that she had enough precision to avoid hurting them.

  “We do not breathe fire at our siblings,” she said sternly, and with that familiar tone, so similar to his grandmother’s, Fern understood. Hatchlings, Diver had said. He’d been thrown off by their size when they were wrestling, as each was easily larger than he was, but now he could see the juvenile awkwardness in their movements and how small they were compared to Diver and the blue dragon. These were not adult dragons fighting; they were children tussling, figuring out their bodies’ strength and poking at boundaries. Relieved, he followed Diver towards the other dragons.

  “Mama, who is that?”

  Fern jumped. He had not noticed the approach of a third young dragon. Her scales were the green of tarnished copper, and her amber eyes glowed as she looked at him curiously.

  “This,” said Diver grandly, placing a single heavy claw gently on Fern’s shoulder, “is your newest classmate, Fern.”

  “Humans can’t breathe fire,” the green hatchling protested.

  “And they can’t fly,” the blue one said, evidently recovered from the tussle. “How is she supposed to be in a class with us?”

  “Fern is a he,” Diver corrected before Fern could figure out how to explain gender to dragon toddlers. “Remember we talked about human pronouns? And he cannot fly, but unlike most humans, he can breathe fire.”

  In another moment, Fern was surrounded by a trio of dragon children bursting with questions. He scrambled to pull his scarf around his mouth again, but the water had e
vaporated. The scarf was stiff with salt.

  “You will not burn them,” Diver said. Fern glanced up, thinking it was an order, but saw in the dragon’s large amber eyes that it had been reassurance. “Dragons are resistant to fire. It would take more than your accidental flames to hurt us. I would not have permitted you close to my children, otherwise.”

  Fern struggled to trust himself, but it was easy to trust the protective instincts of a mother dragon. Reassured, he tried to make sense of the children’s babble and answer what questions he could.

  “I want to learn how to control my flame,” he explained. “No, I’m the only one in my family who can breathe fire, so none of them knew how to help me.”

  A shadow fell across the group as the other adult dragon stepped gracefully towards them. She bowed her long neck to press her forehead against Diver’s with an easy intimacy that flustered the teenager, who was unused to that kind of open affection and fiercely wished that he felt safe enough to ever be that close to another person.

  “They call me Guide, and it would be my pleasure to teach you,” she said, and then, to her wife, added, “Where did you find this one?”

  Diver grinned. “On the beach,” she said. “Where else?” Both dragons laughed.

  “It is a compliment,” Guide told Fern, seeing his confusion. “One of the things Diver and I have always agreed upon is that the best things are discovered on beaches. We both hoard beach-found items.”

  “Oh,” Fern said, reminding himself again not to ask. Did they hoard pearls? Seashells? Guide’s hoard was flammable. Did she collect… driftwood? That was hardly the stuff of legend.

  “And, of course, we met each other on the beach,” Diver added, nuzzling at Guide’s neck.

  “That too,” Guide agreed. “Only because you had the bad taste to pick up something that I wanted.”

  “Excuse me, I think that shows that I have excellent taste,” the bronze dragon protested.

  “Well, you did choose me, so I suppose you do,” Guide said archly, and Fern remembered his grandmother’s lessons. These were the stories that really mattered, more than any legend: People finding each other, choosing each other, caring for one another.

  * * *

  Summer

  Teaching a human was both much harder and much easier than Guide had expected. Fern was more cautious than the hatchlings, and she was far better at listening to instructions, but her magic did not work in the same way as a dragon’s flame. However carefully she listened, some of Guide’s advice simply would not work for her. Together, they had worked to figure out what sorts of lessons would help.

  (She was wearing a green bracelet that day. Remembering to check the human’s wrist had been challenging at first, but the dragons had seen how Fern wilted when they got it wrong, so they made the effort).

  Guide had been quite pleased with their success at beachside meditation, matching breaths to the waves until Fern could make it a whole hour without even a wisp of smoke escaping from her mouth. Her ability to suppress flame had improved tremendously, but Guide knew that was not enough. Dragons overheated if they went too long without expelling their flame, and whether or not Fern’s magic worked the same way, Guide felt in her bones that it would be unhealthy for the human to keep her flame locked up inside all the time.

  “We’re going to continue to practice with small flames today,” she announced to the group that morning. “What’s the first thing you always check when you’re going to breathe fire?”

  “The air currents,” they chorused. The hatchlings tilted their heads so their sensitive horns could catch the wind; Fern licked her finger and held it to the air.

  “What if we want to burn something upwind?” Gold asked.

  “What do you think?”

  Green said, “Move.”

  Guide laughed. “That is going to be your best answer for a while, bright eyes. Once your control is better, we will practice flaming into the wind. That is why you always must know which way the wind is blowing — it takes a different amount of pressure to breathe into the wind than away from it, just like you have to talk louder next to the ocean than inside the quiet cave. If you get it wrong, you might burn something you did not intend.”

  Fern shifted uncomfortably, and Guide knew that she was thinking of all the things she had burnt unintentionally. This was another difference in teaching a human: Fern was far more afraid of her own flame than any dragon would be.

  Guide distributed a clawful of candles to each student. “Today’s goal is to create enough flame to light the candle, but not so much that you melt all the wax at once,” she explained. She reminded them again of all the lessons they had learned that week about how to keep a flame small, and they each began to try.

  She was coaching Blue, who was getting discouraged after her third candle became a puddle of melted wax, when Fern screamed. Guide whipped around, her tail whistling in the air behind her. The human had collapsed to the ground, clutching her thigh. Next to her, Gold hovered in the air, bobbing with anxiety, and Green backed away in alarm.

  “I’ll be okay,” Fern gasped, but Guide had already caught a glimpse of the angry blisters forming on her leg.

  And here was the biggest difference: Fern was also much more fragile than the hatchlings had ever been, even when they’d emerged shell-soft and blinking at their mothers’ fire. Whatever magic allowed the human to breathe fire protected her throat and mouth, but it did not extend to the rest of her body.

  “I didn’t mean —” Green gasped.

  “It wasn’t my —” Gold began.

  Guide dismissed them both with a twitch of her tail. “It does not matter now,” she said, scooping up the human with her front claws as carefully as she could. “What matters is helping. Blue, find Diver, tell her what happened. She was going to catch fish for dinner. You two, stay here.” Keeping her wingbeats as steady as possible, she flew Fern to the nearest freshwater stream. As much as she loved the sea, Guide knew that this was one area where it would do more harm than good.

  Fern breathed a sigh of relief as she lowered her leg into the cool water. “Don’t worry,” she said, and Guide could not believe that the injured human was trying to reassure her right now. “I’ve got a lot of practice with burns. I know what to do. There’s some salve and bandages in my pack that will help.” She winced. “It just… hurts a lot, at first.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Just… talk to me? Anything to keep my mind off this.” She gestured at her thigh.

  Guide hummed. “Have I ever told you about my hoard?” she asked.

  “Just that it’s something you find on the beach.”

  “I collect things recovered from shipwrecks,” Guide said. “Figureheads from the bows of ships, bits of wood, ship’s wheels, fragments of sail.” Even through the pain, Fern looked surprised. “I know, it is not the most traditional of hoards, but it is what I love. Every piece of my hoard had a purpose, once, and it can no longer fulfill that purpose, but it deserves more than rotting on a beach somewhere. Anyway, it is not the strangest hoard ever. Diver’s cousin Bard collects stories, of all things, which you cannot even keep in a cave. I do not know of any other dragons with intangible hoards.”

  “What does Diver collect?” Fern asked.

  “It would be better to hear about it directly from her,” Guide said, and waved off the human’s immediate apologies, tilting her head to the sky. Above, Diver hovered, the hatchlings beside her like little satellites. Guide could see the moment when Diver decided that this landing would be too challenging for the fledgling flyers and directed them onto her back. In the smooth motion with which she had earned her name, she dove for the riverbank, landing lightly despite the extra weight of three young dragons.

  “Sea glass,” Diver said to Fern. “I hoard glass worn smooth by the waves — not because it is precious, but because it is soft, and catches the light so gently.”

  Guide remembered how she had explained her love for sea gla
ss when they had first met, stuttering but unwilling to relinquish her treasure, how something within Guide had looked at that burnished bronze and said, yes, this one, I want. Until Diver had shown her how to stroke the smoothed glass with the sensitive pads of her foreclaws, it would not have occurred to Guide to refer to any kind of glass as “soft,” but while it was as hard as rock when poked, it felt soft as a petal when touched gently.

  Now, the same bronze claw that had cradled the sea glass so tenderly pushed a little dragon forward. “I am sorry,” Green said, her ears drooping. “I should have been paying more attention. I forgot that you are not a dragon. I understand if you do not want to play with me anymore.”

  “What?” Fern said, a spurt of flame escaping from her mouth. It was not surprising that her control would suffer while she was in physical and emotional distress, but it was concerning. If Fern could not regulate her flame while she was in pain, she was liable to reinjure herself by accident. The thought was unbearable to Guide, who immediately tried to come up with ways to help Fern manage.

  Before she could implement any of her half-formed ideas, Fern began to take the deep breaths they had practiced for control, and Guide relaxed, taking a deep breath of her own. When Fern’s breath was smoke-free again, she continued, “Of course I still want to play with you, Green. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I should have been paying more attention, too. I could have put my candle further away from you.”

  “You mean it? We can still play with you?” Green asked.

  “Just do not forget that Fern is human,” Diver said, leaning down to press her forehead to the child’s.

  “I won’t,” Green promised, echoed immediately by her sisters.

  “I owe you an apology, as well,” Diver said, straightening up to look at Fern. “I told you when you came here that my children had enough control to avoid burning you. You trusted me to make proper safety judgments, and I was wrong. I am sorry.”