Dragon Riders

by Elle Casey

  I adjusted my scrubs so the shirt wasn’t hanging off my shoulder and my pants were back up around my waist where they belonged. I wanted to give this fleet of dragons the best impression possible under the circumstances. I patted my bag and fixed the strap so it fitted comfortably. I would have loved to chuck the Crocs over my shoulder too, but without something on my feet, I’d get nowhere in this harsh landscape, and after seeing Biad’s reaction to my arrival, I knew I couldn’t count on hitching rides on dragonback anytime soon.

  When the flowers and grasses were below my chin, I could finally see what awaited me—nine dragons and Biad. She was facing them, and they were facing us. I recognized one as Othello and was thrilled to see his rider Ishmail on his head. When I looked at the other dragons, I first felt fear—because damn, they were scary looking—but when the one next to Othello tipped his head a little and I saw the figure standing between its horns there, my emotions raced in the other direction.

  “Spike!” I screamed. My voice echoed all over the valley.

  “Hey, Jayne,” he said. He didn’t sound happy but he didn’t sound mad either. Just neutral. It made my heart sink down into my toes.

  “Looking good up there on that dragon,” I said, hoping to charm my way back into his heart.

  “Thanks. I’m a dragon rider now.”

  Jesus H. on a popsicle stick…how long was I gone? Tim said an eon, but was he being literal? I thought he was just being dramatic. How long is an eon? A hundred years? A thousand? I felt sick all over again. There was no way Spike could have survived however long an eon was without someone else’s energy to keep him alive, which meant whatever relationship we’d had before I’d left was either over completely or something very different.

  Tears came to my eyes and welled up into little pools that made my vision blurry. I tried really hard not to let them fall. I couldn’t turn into a total boober baby and hope to be able to win Spike back. He was a friggin dragon rider now, and from what I was seeing, it didn’t get any cooler than that.

  Each of the other beasts tipped their heads and a rider was revealed to me. Scrum, Jared, Felicia, Becky, Sam, Tony, and Finn were all dragon riders, apparently. And none of them looked particularly happy to see me.

  Biad’s head swiveled around until her face was just in front of me, near the ground. Do you want to greet your friends?

  “I’m not so sure they want to say hi to me. They look angry.”

  Do not look. Feel. They are here because you are here.

  “What? I don’t even know what you mean by that.” The tears fell from my eyes and tracked down my cheeks. They felt sticky and they were definitely annoying. I hated that I couldn’t keep up a brave face when it was most needed.

  Biad reached forward and nudged me with her nose.

  I fell back two steps. “Quit.”

  She nudged me again, but this time I fell on my ass.

  “Quit, I said!” I angrily wiped the tears off my face and stood. “I’m not in the mood to play.”

  It’s time to ride. She came forward as if to push me again, but this time I jumped out of the way.

  “Ride where?”

  “Into battle.”

  “What?” She was making no sense. That cavern was too small to fit all of us, and it hadn’t admitted Othello before anyway. How did she expect to get to the battle if she couldn’t even fit through the doorway?

  A noise caught my attention. Spike was standing tall, a large sword held out in his hand and pointed at the sky. “Jayne, we’re here. We heeded your call and we’re ready to go.”

  I frowned up at him. Had my boyfriend lost his marbles while I’d been away? Had all those weeds and skunk meat dinners fried his brain cells?

  Suddenly someone was at my side, and I jumped in fright. That fear lasted only as long as it took for me to see who it was. “What the hell, Becky?!” I expected a hug from my normally overly emotional friend, but Becky didn’t make a single move; she looked like a soldier the way she was standing so stiffly.

  “Hi.” Her smile was more subdued than normal, but it was there. “I like your haircut. We don’t have a lot of time. Can we go now?”

  I turned to face her more fully, wiping under my eyes to be sure there were no streaks of dirt or tears there. “I don’t understand what’s going on.” I looked up at all the dragons and my stoic friends. “How long have I been gone? What have you been doing? What battle are you talking about?”

  A female voice came from behind me, yelling from somewhere inside the cavern. “Jayne, just get on the fucking dragon and do what they tell you to do.”

  Becky’s eyes went really round.

  My eyes felt like they were bugging out of my head. “Did you hear that?” I asked in a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “Was that…?”

  She nodded slowly.

  A chill went up my spine and down it too. All the hairs on my body stood on end—arm hairs, neck hairs, leg hairs, butt hairs, nose hairs…the works. I put my hand on her shoulder and stared into my tiny friend’s eyes. “Stay here. I’m going to go investigate.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should just do what she says.”

  “How long have you known me, Becky?”

  “I don’t know…a year? Two? Three? We kind of lose track of time in this place.”

  I was a million times relieved to not hear her say a hundred or a thousand years. Maybe I hadn’t been gone that long after all. “Whatever. In all that time, have you ever known me to just do what I’m told without questioning?”

  She shook her head slowly. “No. Definitely not.”

  “Okay.” I let her shoulder go. “And I’m not going to change today. Or probably anytime in the near future.”

  She smiled. “That’s okay. I kind of like how you are.”

  “Kind of?”

  She looked around and sighed. “Well, to be honest, I’m tired of training and super anxious to leave here, so whenever you’re ready to go, that would be awesome. It’s nothing personal. We’ve enjoyed the training you helped put together…it’s just…I want to go home.”

  I totally understood what she was saying, even though I didn’t have the details of what they’d been through yet or how I had anything to do with it, being as I was gone the entire time. But I’d brought her and the rest of my friends here, and it was up to me to get them out. I just had to wrap up this one little thing first. “Don’t leave without me,” I said, turning to run toward the cavern.

  “I’ll try not to!” Becky shouted after me. “But don’t take too long!”

  I got to the cavern as fast as I could, considering what I had on my feet. When I reached the entrance, I stopped, squaring myself up and lifting my head so my voice would carry as far as it needed to. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  Nothing but silence greeted my call.

  “Stop fucking around. I heard you, and I know you’re in there.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we see each other,” she said.

  “Tough. Show your face or I’ll bring The Green into the mix again.”

  She snorted. “And that went so well for you just a minute ago.”

  I shrugged, no shame in my game. “Hey, it worked.”

  She sighed loudly. I could tell from the sound that she wasn’t far away. I took a few steps forward.

  “Why can’t you just do what you’re told for once in your life?” she asked, clearly frustrated. “I promise I’m not fucking with you.”

  “Not until I see your face,” I said, getting closer and closer to the boulder that was hiding our mystery guest. I didn’t trust that I wasn’t getting totally punked by another Fate who had way too much time and power on her hands.

  “Fine. But if this throws the Earth off its axis, it’s totally your fault.” She stepped out from behind her hiding place and faced me. We were about ten feet apart.

  “Hello…Me,” I said, taking in the dirty tunic a
nd ripped jeans, the bag that looked exactly like the one I had slung across my chest, and the terrible haircut that was like a mullet gone wrong—bangs cut almost to the roots and the rest of it stringy, knotted, and sticking out all over the place. As soon as I saw her, I knew in the deepest part of my soul that this wasn’t a trick. This wasn’t a witch’s spell, a fate messing around, a glamouring, or any other magical fucked up thing…it was just…me. Standing there, looking at…me.

  “Hello, Jayne,” she said. She shook her head slowly, looking me up and down. “Damn. I thought you looked bad from a distance, but this is something else.”

  “You should talk.” I laughed bitterly. “Seriously. You cut your bangs again?” In all the time I’d been gone she…I…surely could have grown them out.

  “No, I cut them once when I was under the influence of pixie butt dust. They’ve had about a month and a half to grow out, which obviously isn’t long enough to turn me into a normal looking person again.”

  “I thought I was gone longer than that.” I looked over my shoulder. “They said…”

  “Never mind what they said. This place makes a month feel like a year. And they’ve been through a lot. We’ve been through a lot.”

  I looked at her again. “I don’t understand what’s going on at all. How did this happen.” I gestured at her and myself.

  She sat down on a rock and picked distractedly at the strap on her bag. “Nearest I can tell, we went into the cave as one person, and then when we got blasted, our soul or our essence was split into two. One part of us went where you went, and one part of us—I—stayed here. But neither of us was really ourselves the whole time we were apart. There was a piece…missing.”

  I sat down too, the weight of what she was saying pushing down on me like a ton of bricks. “Oh. That sucks.” It would explain why I was so easily convinced I was nuts and not fae—only half of me was there. And it could also explain why my friends were acting so cold toward me. Maybe the part of me that stayed in Ish’s time was really different. Not herself. Not…myself. I was getting a headache trying to wrap my brain around the situation.

  “And in the meantime,” she said, “I let our friends know what was going on in the Overworld, and we’ve been working on training and preparing for the inevitable.”

  “The inevitable…being…”

  “The battle. In the Overworld. It’s still raging. Can’t you hear it?”

  We both paused to appreciate the banging of steel and cries of pain. “Yes, I can hear it.”

  “I’ve tried to bring everyone in through this portal several times so we could go kick some demon angel ass, but Biad says it can’t happen without you. She’s been very bitchy about the whole thing.”

  I held up my hand, showing her the dragon scale. Mirror-Me showed me the same thing. Biad’s angry eye blinked simultaneously in both of them.

  “How do we get back into one body?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” the other me said. “I have a feeling Sam could help us, though.”

  We both looked toward the cave’s entrance.

  “So, what are we waiting for?” I asked.

  “I’m worried that if they see both of us, if we exist together and yet separate for others, something really bad will happen. That’s why I stayed in here once you arrived. None of them have been able to come in, so I knew it was safe.”

  “Because of Biad. She’s keeping them out.”

  “I think so.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I guess we need to get Sam over here.”

  “But once she sees us, she can’t un-see us,” the other Jayne warned.

  “Yeah. Right.” I walked to the entrance to the cave. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “TIM!” I SHOUTED. “I need to talk to you, stat!”

  I didn’t have to wait long. A fluttering of wings and the sounds of intestinal gas being released announced his arrival. He stopped on a log that had fallen near the cave entrance, taking a seat and crossing his legs.

  “My liege? You shrieked for me?”

  “Yes. How did you know I was gone? You had the other me here the entire time.”

  “Do you really need to ask that question?” He leaned back on one hand to eye me critically. He looked like he was posing for a pixie fashion catalog.

  “Apparently I do.”

  “Okay…short bus. I get it. Let me spell it out for you…” He started flopping his hand around in the air. “I. Am. A. Pixie. P-I-X-I-E.”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, praying for patience. “Since you’re only about three inches high, that seems painfully obvious. But how does that explain anything?”

  He stood in a flash, stretching up to his fullest height. “I’ll have you know that I am six point eight centimeters tall.”

  “Sooo…that’s like…what? Three inches?”

  “Actually, no, Jayne. It’s not. But what’s your point? You called for me, right? Clearly you’re seeking my wise counsel, but you’re not going to get it if you keep disrespecting me.”

  I put my hand on my heart. “I’m sorry, Tim. Really. I just need you to spell it out for me in more detail, I guess. How does being a pixie make you able to see or know that there are two of me hanging around?”

  He sighed, flying over to sit next to my ear. “Jayne Number One, how many times have I sat here on your shoulder?”

  “About a thousand?”

  “Probably more. And in those thousands of times that I’ve sat on your shoulder, couldn’t you imagine me getting a pretty good idea of your soul’s vibratory tones?”

  “Uhhhh…what?”

  “Argh. This is like talking to Willy, the long lost fruit of my loins. Let’s shortcut the convo, k?”

  “Good idea.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Here’s the deal, Big J: I get you. I feel you. On every level, right down to the nitty gritty Jayne. I am all up in your soul’s business. Do you understand now?”

  “Um. Ew.”

  “No, not ew. It’s amazeballs. I’ve told you a hundred times—I’m good with electronics.”

  “But…I’m not a robot.”

  “No, but your soul has a vibrance. It has a tone and wavelength. And it has all the essence of you in it, usually, but after you went into that cave, well, let’s just say it didn’t anymore. There was less of you there. You were Jayne Light. Jayne fifty percent free. Discount Jayne, half off full-price Jayne…”

  “Have you ever felt something like that before?” I asked, cutting him short.

  “Maybe once.”

  His tone was evasive, which made my ass twitch. “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t have time for you to indulge in a temper tantrum right now, seeing as how we have the world to save and all.”

  I reached up to grab him but he escaped me easily. “Ah, ah, ahhhh, Miss Grabby Grabster. Hands off the merch.”

  “Please tell me, Tim. It could be critically important!”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Please?” I turned to face him, panicking that he might be holding back the one piece of information that could help us get out of this nightmare.

  “Ergh, why do you have to look at me with those puppy dog eyes? You know I can’t resist those.” He sighed. “It was Chase, okay? He was never totally there.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. “You could just tell that? Right from the start?”

  “No, not right away. Not until I sat on his shoulder.”

  I chewed my lip as I thought that bit of information through. “But you never said anything to me.”

  “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

  I stomped my foot. “But we agreed that roommates don’t keep secrets from each other!”

  Tim’s smile was definitely wily. “Heh, heh…yeah, but not until you already knew his secrets. So then there was no point in me saying anything.”

  “I think you�
�re remembering things out of order.” I glared at him.

  “And I think the Overworld is about to crumble and rain demons down on top of all the humans and fae the world over. Do you want to deal with that right now or argue with me about the roommates’ code and the timeline of our relationship?” He shrugged like he’d be happy to go with either plan.

  I really wanted to flick his butt into next week, but I resisted. “Just go get Sam for me and tell her to stop at the entrance to the cavern, please. I need to talk to her about working a spell to fix this.”

  “Okaaay…but are you sure she’s the one for the job?” He was being evasive again.

  “Why?”

  “Because her magic has been a bit…off here in this realm.”

  “She’s the only witch we’ve got. But I think I can help her.”

  “You’re going to help with the spell? Oh. Well. This should be good.” He flew straight up into the sky and assumed the Superman position. “I shall return post haste, my liege!” He zipped away with one arm held out straight and the other doing a bicep curl, his fanny pack bulging out below his belly.

  I sighed and turned back toward the cavern. “Sam will be here soon.”

  The other Jayne mumbled, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  SAM APPEARED AND she didn’t look happy about being there.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.” She searched my face. “You’re back.”

  “Yes. So you knew I was split in two?”

  “We all did. Tim explained it about halfway through our…trip here.”

  “Oh. Okay. So…why is everyone mad at me?” I looked over my shoulder toward where the other part of me was hiding behind a boulder. I lowered my voice. “Was she rude?”