Chasing Wings

by Hanna Dare

  Tris stepped toward her with his hands half-raised placatingly — only to be yanked back by Ormur.

  “Put the blade down, old woman.” Ormur’s voice sounded like a growl.

  Both Helda and Tris looked at the knife in her hand with surprise. It really was very tiny. Helda dropped it onto the table with a clatter. She frowned at Tris and drew in a sharp, disapproving breath.

  “Not a word,” Ormur said to her. Standing beside him, Tris could feel the tension coiling through Ormur’s body. “Call out and it will be the last thing you do.”

  Tris was a bit impressed with how frightening Ormur could be, but he was also concerned with things getting out of control.

  “Helda, this is Ormur.” He hoped that Ormur would be less murderous toward someone he had been introduced to. “And Ormur, say hello to Helda. She cooked all those meals you hated so much.”

  “All the more reason to kill her.”

  The expression on Helda’s face was more outraged than fearful. “You have some nerve coming back here—"

  “That’s one word for it,” Tris agreed. “Did Marius come back?”

  “I’ve not seen him since yesterday. The Earl’s in a state with everyone disappearing.”

  “Good,” Ormur said flatly.

  Helda looked Ormur up and down, her mouth a tight line. “I want no part of this.” She glared at Tris. “I’ve told you, I mind my business.”

  Ormur’s voice was cold. “You lived in this house, you took the Earl’s coins, and you claim to have no part?”

  Tris raised a hand to stop both of them from speaking. “Helda, who else is in the house right now?”

  She folded her arms. “I’ll not help you.”

  Tris sighed. “You’ve got it the wrong way around. This is us helping you. We— I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  Helda stared at him for a long moment, the disapproval on her face slipping away to be replaced with something like fear. She swallowed, the cords in her thin neck standing out with the force of the movement. “The girls have gone home for the night. Yonah’s out in his cabin and there’s Tomas the valet. He’s asleep in his room.”

  Tris nodded. “Please wake him and get him and yourself out of the house. To a safe distance.”

  Helda clutched at the kitchen table for support as she took in the meaning of safe distance. “This isn’t right, whatever you’re doing!”

  Ormur turned away in disgust. “We are wasting time.”

  Tris hurried to lead him from the kitchen, looking back over his shoulder at Helda. He didn’t think he was really any better than her. He’d got Ormur out, yes, but that had been after weeks. There were parts of his life here that he’d actually enjoyed. Tris didn’t know what would have happened if Marius hadn’t threatened to hurt Ormur. He might have gone on even longer in his routine of living at the house, getting used to things no one should ever get used to. Given enough time he even might have managed to convince himself that his conscience was clear because he was nice to Ormur. That what the Earl and Marius did was none of his concern.

  “Just go, Helda,” Tris said as he left the room.

  They crept up the main staircase of the mansion.

  Stairs were stairs, Tris might have said in times before, they take you up or down, but he had to admit these ones really had some sweep to them, what with all the fine wood and carved newel posts. A man might feel important walking up them — that is, if the man didn’t have to tiptoe and freeze at every creak as Tris was doing. Ormur, of course, moved with an impressively quiet elegance.

  Tris had never been to the Earl’s rooms — Helda had made it clear that they were forbidden territory for him — but he knew they took up much of the second floor of the great house.

  “Maybe let me go in first,” Tris whispered as they stood before a set of double doors. “See what kind of mood he’s in—”

  Ormur pushed past him. “I care nothing for his mood.”

  He flung open both doors in a wildly heroic gesture that Tris admired, even as he winced at the lack of stealth.

  There was a wide sitting room and through an open door, Tris could see the Earl reading in bed, propped up on pillows and surrounded by lamps. The Earl looked up, startled, his thumb holding the place in the small book he was reading. That instinctive gesture more than anything made Tris catch Ormur’s arm and stop his rush into the rooms.

  “Please, m’lord,” Tris called. “We just want the amulet.” To Ormur, who had angrily shaken off his hand, “He’s wearing a nightgown, for goodness’ sake.”

  “There’s nothing good in that man.” Ormur stalked toward the Earl.

  The old man had hastily climbed out of bed, clad in a long nightgown with a blue velvet bed jacket and matching cap. He clutched at his chest and for a moment Tris feared they had startled him so greatly that his heart had given out. But he was reaching for the necklace he wore with the red stone hanging heavily from it.

  With his other hand he traced some kind complicated pattern in the air. A wall of fire roared up before him.

  Tris yelped and jumped back. Flames filled the room, separating them from the Earl. Ormur stood very still, staring, while Tris shrank back. The flames were moving closer, consuming the rug and sending smoke to swirl around them.

  “Ormur! We need to get out of here!” The fire was spreading to the walls on either side of them — much farther and it would cut them off from the doors.

  Ormur tilted his head. “It’s not real.”

  Tris could feel the heat on his skin, singing his eyelashes and burning his throat as he drew breath to yell back, “Feels pretty real!”

  “Tris.” Ormur’s low voice cut through the roar of the flames. “I know fire — this is not it. Trust me.”

  He looked at Tris and held out his hand.

  Tris stared from the hand to the fire and back again. Finally, he screwed his eyes shut and took Ormur’s hand. Together they stepped forward into the fire.

  The heat was overwhelming. He could feel the pain of his skin as it burned. He was about to scream when abruptly it was gone. The pain, the heat, the smell — gone.

  Tris opened his eyes. They were in the Earl’s bedchamber and Tris was practically hanging onto Ormur.

  “Oh,” he said and let him go.

  “Not everything is an illusion, dragon,” the Earl said and flung a walking stick at them.

  It sped at them harder and faster than the Earl could’ve possibly thrown it, and they sprung apart. The cane speared the wall behind them and stuck there quivering.

  Ormur lunged at the Earl, but the old man said something sharply in a language Tris didn’t understand. Suddenly, Ormur was quite still.

  “Ormur?” Tris could see that all his muscles were tensed as though he were straining against something.

  “It worked,” the Earl crowed. “I didn’t think to test all the amulet’s properties, but I should have been doing this all along.” He rubbed at his chin, lost in thought as he peered at Ormur. “Could I command you to change form I wonder? But the difference in mass might—” He blinked at Tris, who was standing right beside him; clearly the Earl had forgotten he was in the room at all. “Don’t bother me now. Go fetch some tea, I’ll be working all night.”

  Tris bobbed his head in a nod. Then he darted forward and grabbed the amulet.

  He meant to tear it from the old man’s neck, but the chain was too thick and he just ended up yanking him closer. The Earl’s hand clamped down on Tris’s wrist with surprising strength.

  “Unhand me! I order you.”

  Tris took hold of his arm. “I don’t work for you anymore, m’lord.”

  All the pushing and pulling unbalanced them and they tumbled to the floor. Tris managed to clamp his knees over the Earl’s arms.

  The Earl hissed with fury, his eyes locked on the amulet Tris wore around his own neck. “You dare! I took you in and you steal from me. Twice.”

  For a second, shame burned at Tris’s cheeks but then he r
ealized that the twice meant the amulet and Ormur. He focused on getting a hand under the Earl’s necklace while the man thrashed beneath him.

  “I am the lord of the valley!”

  “Aye, and I’m just a shepherd, but I still know what’s right and what’s not.”

  Tris pulled the necklace over the Earl’s head and rolled away. He turned to Ormur, clutching the amulet tightly and hoping he didn’t need to do something magical to break its hold on him.

  Ormur was still not moving, but something in his posture had changed. The tension in his body was of anticipation, not strain. He swiveled his head, and Tris saw that his eyes were bright gold.

  “Tris,” Ormur said, his voice louder and deeper than ever before. “Get out of the house.”

  As much as Tris wanted to see Ormur transform, he did a quick calculation regarding the size of the room and what he knew of the size of dragons. He pulled the Earl to his feet. The old man stumbled, and Tris slung one of his arms over his shoulders.

  They were halfway down the stairs when Tris heard the creak of breaking wood behind him. Wood cracked and splintered, the stairs shuddering beneath his feet. He didn’t dare look back — just jumped down the last few steps and sprinted for the front door, all but carrying the Earl.

  They made it outside just as the house shattered behind them.

  Tris staggered a little farther out and then dropped the Earl and himself onto the grass. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the wonder before him.

  Ormur rose up out of the broken timbers of the house. His scales were a silvery white, and his head was long and narrow, topped with curving spikes that writhed like tendrils and ran down the length of his sinuous body. Standing on his rear legs, his body alone was taller than the house. He grasped the remaining section of the roof with his forelegs, crushing the timbers beneath wickedly curved claws. Tris thought that might have been his bedroom.

  Ormur spread wide wings that shone pale in the moonlight and stretched his long neck upwards. He roared and the sound shook the very air.

  “I was right,” the Earl gasped out. “A dragon.”

  “I know.” Tris was laughing with delight. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  Ormur’s jaws dropped open, long enough for Tris to see his teeth. Then flames burst out of his mouth — so bright that Tris raised a hand to shield his eyes. The parts of the mansion still standing began to burn.

  He’d never expected to see a dragon breathing fire — this was better than Tris had hoped. It was also hotter than he’d imagined, and Tris scrambled back, pulling the Earl with him.

  The old man clutched at him tightly, his breath wheezing. Tris reluctantly tore his eyes away from Ormur. He sucked in a breath in shock as he stared down at the Earl.

  The man that lay on the ground in his arms was withered and frail. All the heartiness, all the life, seemed to be draining from him before Tris’s eyes. Whatever years of aging the Earl had avoided were coming back to him now.

  His wrinkled mouth parted. “You’ve killed me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tris said, even though he wasn’t sorry for freeing Ormur.

  He did have the two amulets, one around his neck and the other hastily shoved into the bag strapped across his chest. He could put one back on the Earl and see if it would restore him to health… But then they’d be back where they started. Tris took a breath and accepted that this death was on him.

  Tris tried to smile comfortingly at the old man. “But you had such a long life, didn’t you? I bet you’ve had some wonderful adventures, learned so many things, and met all sorts of people.”

  “I should have had more.” The Earl’s eyes were dimming. “I deserved it. Land and wealth. A place among kings.”

  “Not at the cost of Ormur’s life.”

  A look of confusion passed over the Earl’s face. “Who?”

  Tris was about to reply, but then he saw that the old man was dead.

  He gently reached out and closed the Earl’s eyes, humming an old childhood lullaby as he did, in case some part of the Earl still lingered. Tris hoped it would help him rest.

  “You pity him.” Ormur’s voice was bigger, just like the rest of him, but it still was familiar. “I cannot. Do you think less of me?”

  The dragon was crouched on the ground, the ruin of the house smouldering behind him. His long snout moved closer. There was a scattering of darker scales across the top — Ormur’s freckles, Tris realized. His head tilted so that his golden eyes could fix more firmly on Tris, the pupils narrowed to slits like a cat’s.

  It was hard to remember he was actually talking to Ormur. Mostly Tris wanted to jump up and down in excitement and shout, “Dragon!”

  He looked down at the Earl’s body instead.

  “No, I don’t think any less of you. It’s easier for me, of course, because he never kept me locked in a cage.” He folded the old man’s hands on his chest, they felt as brittle as dried leaves. “I don’t know if it’s pity, so much as it’s sad to think you could live a whole long life and still not figure out what’s important.”

  “And what’s that?” Ormur spoke without opening his mouth, the sound coming from somewhere in his long neck, but his voice was clear.

  Tris shrugged because it was obvious. “Other people and doing right by them.”

  “You—” Ormur began, his voice husky, but then stopped. It was strange to think of a dragon clearing his throat, but Tris supposed he had just been breathing fire. “You,” Ormur said again and nothing more.

  He could smell smoke and hear the pop of burning wood, but it seemed like there was nothing else in the world but the dragon before him and the way he was looking at Tris.

  Finally, Ormur spoke. “There are people watching from the trees. That woman from the kitchen and a couple of others. Do you wish to go to them?”

  Tris could join them, help to bury the Earl, and then walk on to Rivermouth in the morning. It would be the sensible, human thing to do.

  But Ormur was there in front of him.

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  The dragon moved his great head slightly in a nod.

  “What now?” Tris asked.

  “Now we fly,” Ormur said.

  And Ormur wrapped his claws around Tris and swept him up into the night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tris had dreamed of flying for a long time.

  A sharp gust of wind on his face, an unexpected glimpse of bright stars in a night sky — it would be enough to take him back to those few life-changing minutes when he’d left the ground behind. He’d turned the memory over and over like a worry-stone, until all its rough edges were gone. Some part of him feared he’d built it up too much and that nothing — not even getting to fly again — would ever measure up. He had been thirteen years old, terrified and half-dead from a night lost on a mountain, so of course being lifted up in a dragon’s claws would be the most incredible experience of his life. But he was a grown man now, had seen a bit of the world, and had come to know that the things you dream of in childhood were not always as good as you imagined. Tris was prepared to accept that.

  Except flying with Ormur was so much better.

  They shot straight up into the night sky. Tris was held in Ormur’s front claws and pressed close to his great, scaled chest, but he could still feel the fierce rush of wind pulling tears from his eyes. Not all of the tears were from the wind.

  Ormur’s wings beat hard, ever upward. It seemed that they were so high that Tris could reach past the circle of claws and pluck the moon from the sky. Ormur seemed to hang in the sky for a long, impossible moment — then he folded his wings and plunged down.

  Tris’s stomach dropped too, in the most delicious way. He bit down on a cry — he didn’t want Ormur to think he was afraid when he was feeling completely the opposite. His ears popped as they sped toward the dark shape of the forest below. Tris caught a glimpse of smoke rising from the wrecked mansion, but then it was left behind as Ormur flew on, his wings
shaking the tops of the tallest pines.

  They flew in ever-widening circles over a dark landscape. Somewhere below were people in their homes, asleep in their beds, never realizing the magic that was happening above. Tris glimpsed the sea stretching out to an unreachable horizon… except with wings you could reach it, couldn’t you? Anything was possible.

  He didn’t know if he’d be heard, a small voice among the wind and wingbeats, but he had to try to share what he was feeling. “Ormur, I can see it.”

  Ormur’s voice rumbled close to him. “What do you see?”

  “The whole world.”

  Ormur swept low over tall cliffs, his wings changing their angle to bring them down over a wide pool. A slender waterfall plunged into the water, creating ghostly plumes of mist that swirled in the downdrafts of their descent. Ormur’s rear legs touched down at the edge of the pool and he settled back on his haunches to safely set Tris on the ground.

  Tris held on to him, both to get his balance and because he didn’t want to let go. Ormur’s scales were hard, but they were as warm as his skin.

  “This is the waterfall. The one you told me about.”

  “Yes,” Ormur said. “This is not my home. I don’t believe in attaching significance to a place or things. But,” he admitted, “it is a place where I have felt safe in the past.”

  It was strange to have one of Ormur’s huffier tones coming from a dragon. Tris smiled. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  Ormur dipped his head. “It was close by and as much as I’d like to, I don’t think I can fly very far right now.”

  Tris, who had been admiring Ormur’s long and twitching tail, started in surprise. “Are you all right?”

  He didn’t think it was possible for a dragon to shrug but Ormur somehow managed it. “I haven’t flown in several months and breathing fire is… well, tiring.”

  “And you barely ate anything all day.” Tris searched in his bag but the only food he found was an apple, which he didn’t think would do much to fill up a dragon. “Are there fish in that pond? Let me get a fire going—”