Burn

by Patrick Ness

  Sarah was shaken more than she thought possible by the fear she heard in Kazimir’s voice.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Kazimir swung that great, one-eyed head back toward the boy, who she now saw held a blade in one hand and . . . something in the other.

  “He has the Spur of the Goddess,” Kazimir said.

  Malcolm felt no fear. True, the other boy had a gun on him. True, the dragon could incinerate him with a single breath, but he held his blade in one hand.

  And the Spur of the Goddess in the other.

  Sacred nearly beyond speaking, a holy relic to every dragon the world over, regardless of color or mythology, missing for centuries. A dragon claw, blackened and ancient, believed to have been torn from the Goddess herself, and carried for these many days in Malcolm’s travel bag, the item without which all this was lost.

  Dragons were not quite of this reality, were they? Even Believers acknowledged that. Breathing fire, living for a possible eternity (Malcolm believed in that eternity, so did the Mitera Thea, so did Kazimir), intelligent, obviously historic but somehow with no past evidence in the geological record. They were, for all that science could confirm, sui generis.

  They were not of this world. And then they were.

  The Spur was the proof of their power. Believers had stumbled upon it in the Wastes, indeed it was the artifact that had founded the whole religion. They had kept it hidden away all these years.

  In the right hands, it held power unimaginable.

  “I do not wish to harm you, Great One,” Malcolm said with reverence that was not manufactured, “but I will if I must.”

  “And what do you plan on doing if I allow you to continue, boy?” Kazimir asked, trying to keep up his haughtiness, but Sarah could tell there was a strain behind it. That fear again.

  “You don’t know?” the boy holding the claw asked, surprised.

  “I know the result that you believe. War between men and dragons. War unceasing. The death of us all.”

  Malcolm’s eyes widened in astonishment. “No, oh, Great One, that is exactly what I’m here to stop. I’m the only chance at peace.”

  Jason’s voice was strained. “Well, both can’t be true.”

  “Oh, they can,” Kazimir said, ruefully. “Prophecy is slippery, dangerous, open to fatal misinterpretation.”

  “I’m not afraid of fatal,” Malcolm said. “I only wish to do my duty.”

  “And there is no doubt in your mind that you will complete it?”

  “None,” the boy said, firmly. “It’s been foreseen.”

  “Well, then,” said Kazimir, “I suppose there is nothing left but to let you get on with it.”

  The boy looked astonished.

  “That was not foreseen,” Kazimir said, the playful tinge Sarah was familiar with back in his voice. He raised his long head, looked directly at Jason, and said, “Shoot him.”

  Jason Inagawa raised the gun. The boy with the claw turned to him. In fact, everyone turned to him.

  “Jason!” he heard Sarah shout, but just his name, no call of yes or no. She was clearly as confused as he was.

  “Jason is your name,” the boy with the claw said. “Mine is Malcolm. I have a great work to accomplish.”

  “One that involves killing Sarah,” Jason said. “I’ll shoot you before that happens.”

  “Shoot me then,” the boy with the claw said, opening his arms. “I won’t stop otherwise.”

  “Do it,” Kazimir said to Jason.

  “You said Sarah was the important one,” Jason said.

  “She is, and believe me when I say, only one of them will live to the end of this day.”

  “I don’t think either of us will, Great One,” Malcolm said, somewhat sorrowfully. “But you will. That’s what’s important.”

  “Then why did those who sent you wish for me to die, oh, Believer?”

  Malcolm was immediately angry. “We would never, Great One, it would be sacrilege—”

  “This girl’s father tried to poison me, I can only assume through blackmail, as I could practically smell the struggle in him. Your leader wanted me out of your way.”

  “The Mitera Thea would never harm a dragon!”

  Kazimir got right up into his face. “Your Belief will let you down.”

  “It won’t.” Malcolm flicked the blade with impossible speed at Kazimir’s face. Kazimir could only flinch fast enough to have it cut just his chin. He roared back, but the blood was already dripping. Malcolm expertly caught some of it in the hand holding the claw.

  Which started to glow.

  “Thank you, Great One,” he said.

  And Nelson struck Malcolm on the back of the head with a rock.

  Agent Woolf sped along the dirt road where Sarah and her father had been picked up by the dragon and flown home. She would have warmed to the synchronicity of this, had she known.

  She rounded a corner and could see the antenna on a far hill, barely more than steel and wires, the whole arbitrary reason why all of this was happening here. She had no doubt Malcolm would use the Spur of the Goddess to complete his mission. Blue dragon or not, prophesied girl or not, whether he lived or not. She had trained him herself. She knew the desire in him, the absolute Belief. She had worried at first at his pairing with the new boy, but on balance, she felt it gave Malcolm even further incentive to succeed.

  He would save the world.

  She smiled to herself. It was the least happy smile Agent Dernovich would have ever seen had he lived. It was grim, a smile of the gallows.

  Because she knew the world Malcolm was saving was not his own.

  She heard police sirens behind her.

  Malcolm dropped the claw. That was the worst part, not the pain or the blood on the back of his head, not his certain knowledge that it was Nelson who had struck him (a beat of sad, inevitable betrayal he felt beyond the pain from the rock), but that the Spur of the Goddess was falling, falling, falling to the frozen ground. Malcolm intoned the words he’d been taught, dragon language itself, hoping it would work even if he wasn’t holding the Spur.

  It worked.

  The tip of the Spur struck the ice, piercing it as if it were aflame. A light opened above it, shimmering, almost as if something were trying to open.

  “You fool,” the Great One said, still bleeding.

  Malcolm heard cars, coming from both directions.

  Agent Woolf had her gun on the passenger seat, ready to use it the moment this podunk cow-jockey of a sheriff tried to make her pull over. She didn’t even slow; on the contrary, she pressed the accelerator as far as it would go, nearly reaching the floor.

  But whatever the Sheriff’s Department was investing in its police cars was clearly a scandal, as it reached her with ease, then raced right by as if she were standing still.

  The grim smile was gone. This could not be good news.

  “What’s happening?” Sarah asked, as the aura around the claw grew, now as big as an orange, now a grapefruit. The sirens were getting nearer, as was what she guessed was her dad’s truck, on its way from the farm.

  “This fool,” Kazimir said, meaning Malcolm, “thinks the Spur is a weapon. One that will stop the satellite and save this world for dragons. But that is not all it is.”

  “What is it then?” Jason said, nervously, his eyes on the aura, too.

  “It is a key,” Kazimir said.

  The aura rising above the claw was now pig-sized, and Sarah thought she could actually see things in it, a change of light, shadowy ground . . .

  “A key to what?” she asked.

  “The satellite’s moving into place,” Malcolm said, his voice distant. “The moment is arriving.”

  Sirens blared as the sheriff’s car screamed into view, its headlights—when had it grown dark enough for headlights, Sarah found herself wondering—lighting up Jason.

  Jason, still holding the pistol.

  “Throw the gun down!” the sheriff himself shouted, getting out of
his car, holding up his own gun. “Throw it down, now!”

  “What are you doing here?” Sarah found herself asking, as if that were the thing to be curious about.

  “Your librarian saw a gun in Jason’s schoolbag,” said the sheriff. “One that looked an awful lot like a deputy’s sidearm.”

  “It’s not what you think, Sheriff!” Sarah said, moving forward.

  “Do not move!” the Sheriff snapped, and Sarah froze. The sheriff had seen the aura above the claw, still growing, still shimmering in light. “What the hell is that?”

  “Dragon magic,” Kazimir said, simply, dread in his voice.

  “I suggest you stop it right now,” the sheriff said, in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a suggestion at all. “And you,” he said to Jason, “I said, put the gun down, son, and I meant it.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jason said, gun still on the boy Malcolm. “This guy is here to kill Sarah.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Malcolm had stopped when the sheriff got out of his car, but Sarah saw him slowly leaning toward the aura again, his hand getting closer and closer to the claw.

  “Stop!” Jason shouted at him.

  “Everyone just stop!” the sheriff ordered. “Even you with the rock!”

  The boy who’d struck Malcolm on the back of the head dropped it. “He murdered a Mountie,” the boy mumbled, sadder than anything Sarah had ever heard. “He did it right there on the road.”

  Sarah saw the sheriff’s eyes going back and forth among them all, trying to figure out this scene. But there could be no figuring. Nothing here made sense. The sun had set, the moon was up—the snowclouds had vanished somehow, going against all the weather she’d ever seen in her state—and nothing, nothing, nothing made sense.

  “There it is,” Malcolm said, turning his eyes to the sky.

  They all looked, almost involuntarily, even the sheriff. A little light blinked among the stars, faint but there, blink, blink, blink.

  “The satellite,” Sarah whispered.

  “The world is watching us now,” Malcolm said.

  Agent Woolf pulled up to a stop behind the police car. No one seemed to note her arriving. They were all looking up.

  Ah, yes. The satellite.

  She took her gun and got out of the car. This was what she had worked for. Why she had folded herself into the FBI with her dazzling dragon expertise, disappearing for months at a time to do “research” that only dazzled them more when she returned, the gullible idiots. It had been tricky, to say the least, balancing her role as Mitera Thea and being undercover, but she had needed their best information on the satellite and what they knew about her and her mission. Taking over the search for herself and any potential assassin had seemed only natural. Then after a while, it was simply fun, the best way to keep Malcolm safe while he fulfilled his destiny.

  His destiny not as assassin. The real destiny he had remained unaware of even up until this moment that he was about to fulfill it.

  Oh, no, he was definitely not the assassin.

  She was.

  She was about to murder the entire world of men.

  So many things happened at once then, so many terrible, terrible things, that it was only later, after the world had already burned, that Sarah could sort it out completely and even then, she could only see her small part in it.

  The satellite was first.

  While they were all looking at it, Malcolm had—of course he had, of course—used their distraction to move for the claw, as he frantically muttered in a language she didn’t understand.

  “No!” she heard Kazimir growl.

  And then she heard—

  Oh, God—

  She heard the dragon start an inhalation of breath.

  “Don’t touch it!” Jason shouted, still pointing the gun at Malcolm.

  “You don’t even know what you protect,” Malcolm said, almost sadly, his hand an inch away.

  “I protect her,” Jason said, seeing Sarah move out of the corner of his vision.

  “I will shoot both of you if you don’t stop right now!” the sheriff yelled.

  Malcolm ignored him and continued talking to Jason. “She’ll try to stop me,” he said. “If she doesn’t, no harm will come to her.”

  “No harm will come to her anyway,” Jason said.

  Malcolm lunged for the claw—

  Jason cocked his pistol—

  The sheriff fired first.

  “Jason! Get out of the way!” Sarah shouted, leaping for him.

  She meant the fire she knew Kazimir was about to breathe. There was so much shouting, she didn’t even hear the gunshot, only saw the pistol flip out of Jason’s hand, saw the blood erupt from his wrist. Then a second eruption from his back as he turned from the force of the first. It was only pure luck that neither bullet struck her as well, another thing she would only realize later.

  For now, she was catching him in her arms, noting the look of complete surprise on his face as he slumped. He said her name, “Sarah,” but it was more exhalation than word, a wet exhalation, small bubbles of blood floating out on his breath.

  “The dragon,” she said, still not quite understanding what had happened. “He’s going to fire.”

  Malcolm could hear the blue drawing in its breath, knew there was oblivion coming—

  But also knew victory was his.

  He felt more than saw the blue rise above him, the great chest expand, the head pull itself back in the preamble to incinerating Malcolm and pretty much everything within a circle large enough to include the girl the dragon was supposed to be protecting.

  But the prophecy had been wrong. The girl had not interrupted. She’d run to the other boy instead, right at the critical moment. And something was happening to the other boy, he was falling, falling—

  Malcolm had no time for that, no eyes for anything but the Spur of the Goddess. He grasped it. He spoke the final words, words of pure dragon, thinking of the blinking eye in the sky above them.

  His mission was complete.

  There was a pulse. And a light.

  Kazimir exhaled, and the flames ceased just past his mouth. The pulse and the light from the Spur of the Goddess stretched the aura to swallow his fire as if it were nothing more than mist.

  The pulse and the light rocketed into the air above them all, in a spiral to the antenna on the hill, which lit up like the transmitter it was, shooting an even bigger spiral up to the cold, improbably clear sky, twisting around itself farther and farther, faster and faster. Until a small flash of light, high up in the atmosphere, signaled the end of the satellite the Russians had sent to spy on America . . .

  America, thought Kazimir. The satellite was destroyed by a weapon fired from American soil.

  Oh, no.

  Oh, what have I done? he thought.

  He realized his mistake. His unforgivable, irredeemable mistake, the truth that had been sitting right in front of him the whole time.

  The prophecy wasn’t about a war between men and dragons. It was about a war between men.

  The Russians would see the destruction of their satellite as an act of aggression, and if it took them time to understand that that aggression came not from the United States, but from the world of dragons, how could that matter if the bombs were already falling? This world was over. It was only a matter of days now, perhaps hours.

  The Believers hated humans. The Believers worshipped dragons, dragons who might not survive a direct hit from a warhead, but who could withstand radiation humans could not. The Believers thought they were giving the world to dragons. A world without humans.

  They didn’t know what doom they had started.

  “You have not saved us,” he said to the boy.

  He raised his wings to fly, though he had no immediate answer as to where, just somehow to get to the right humans, to tell them where the real fault lay if they would even believe him, to stop the bombs that might even be falling by morning. He made to rise
, taking his first muscular swoop to leave the ground. He turned to get away from the ever-growing aura around the Spur.

  The truck with the plow attached caught him just offside his chest, mere centimeters away from where a direct blow would have punctured his flame sac, killing him terribly, in agony. Instead the blow was glancing but managed to knock him off to the side.

  Into the aura.

  Where he disappeared completely.

  Agent Woolf saw the blue make to rise—

  Then just like that, he was gone.

  That would make things much easier in the short term. She cocked her own pistol and shot the sheriff in the back.

  “Jason?” Sarah tumbled to the ground with him, unaware that a light was now rising into the sky, unaware that Kazimir had started to breathe fire, unaware even that her father was less than fifty meters away and closing fast. “No, Jason, please.”

  He couldn’t speak. The second bullet had angled down his back and out through his lung. Every breath brought more blood to his lips. He looked up at her, and still his main expression was of surprise.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” she said to him, crying. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do—”

  His eyes widened at something behind her. She turned and saw Kazimir, all seventy tons of him, vanish into the aura as if he’d tripped through a door.

  “What on earth?” she said.

  When she turned back to Jason, he was dead.

  “Sarah?” her father shouted, getting out of the truck. “Sarah!”

  Gareth Dewhurst didn’t know what the hell had happened to the dragon, didn’t know who the hell any of these people were, or what the hell this huge glowing thing was in front of him. He only knew that his daughter was in the midst of it, surrounded by danger.

  “Sarah!”

  He also didn’t know he’d been shot until he slumped to one knee.

  Malcolm waited to die.

  (You have not saved us.)

  He’d thought it would be in the fire from the blue, but the Spur of the Goddess had stopped that, the aura swallowing it all, and in doing so, turning the aura from him.

  Toward where the girl held the boy.

  “Malcolm?” he heard Nelson say.

  “I’m still alive,” he said, astonished. He turned to look into the face that made his heart lurch with what so briefly might have been. A future outside the destiny he had been given. A future inconceivable, impossible, yet real for a few shining moments.