by Ava Kelly
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
Near dawn, he makes his way back to the room. Orsie smiles, despite having just lost another scale. He stands near the window watching the rooftops while the other server is unaware, sleeping in his bed. Outside, rain is finally falling over the heated city, a thin drizzle that most likely won’t keep it cool, but at the moment everything is shiny under the fading moonlight. If Orsie watches through his eyelashes; it almost looks like a thin sheet of frost.
“Dear one—”
The whisperer calls, and Orsie answers, returns this joy of reconnection. He tried explaining that they shouldn’t indulge this affection. That his devotion won’t fade, that Orsie will find him.
The whisperer, however, welcomes him.
Maybe he should try again to pinpoint his anaskett. So far, he hasn’t seen any recognizable landmarks. Powerful magic seems to be guarding the place where the whisperer lives, keeping its location a secret, along with the man’s name.
He draws a deep breath before closing his eyes. He feels a room, its large windows open, a warm breath nearby. He tries to catch sight of the whisperer’s face, but just like before, it slips through his perception. The room tilts around until Orsie is looking through the man’s eyes. Another safeguard in place. This particular one, though, has a perk, because when it happens, Orsie can see his anaskett, still shining darkly.
The whisperer moves to his own window. Outside, the landscape is unclear, and Orsie focuses—a loud hiss runs through, momentarily interrupting the connection.
He sends back the regret of not being there, his yearning.
“That’s all right. I can wait.”
Orsie will find him, of this he is certain. In a week, or a month, or even five, but Orsie will reach the whisperer before the last scale fades. He must.
Contentment from across the connection brings his smile back.
“I read a story today about a young princess and an evil witch. Would you like to hear it?”
Yes, Orsie would.
*
He has a decision to make as he stands outside of Ses, backpack filled with supplies. He can either go further south, or travel back north. Despite his efforts, nobody he asked remembered a dragon flying over the city in the past few years, so he figures he’d track back to the last place the dragon was seen. There is also an old, larger forest east of Haumir, next to even older mountains. There are trees where the whisperer is, many of them on land sloping outside his windows, so perhaps Nevmis built her lair there.
And so, Orsie turns north, the summer sun shining on his face, and he walks, hopeful once again.
*
Hollowness has carved its way within Orsie, one not even the whisperer can fill, not tonight. He sits on the small bed, thankfully alone in the servants’ chamber, shivering from more than the cold, and he still can’t bring himself to roll his sleeves back down.
His arms are—
He has only twelve left, six on the outside of each forearm.
Orsie can’t move, not even to wipe the wetness off his cheeks.
“Dear one—”
He shakes, fingers fisted in the blanket covering his legs, wishing for his claws, wishing for the whisperer. Hoping against everything the man won’t tire of waiting.
“I am here. I opened the window, as you like it.”
Orsie’s jaw trembles.
“It’s so warm this summer, but there’s a nice draft going now. Can you smell the trees?”
He’s made it all the way to the eastern Red Forest only to find that it never snows here. It rains and hails, but the ground is never white. The great oaks of the forest are caught in eternal autumn, a remnant of a curse brought by the selfishness of its dwellers. Serves them right, to betray a nymph. It’s been more than half a century since this happened, so the whisperer can’t be here and has never been around these parts. Nobody saw Nevmis either.
“I’m sorry,” Orsie croaks.
“Dear one.” The whisper twirls inside his head, caressing. Need and determination flood Orsie’s mind, and he closes his eyes.
He doesn’t deserve this, not after fruitless months of slow journey. He’s coughing again, but he refuses to believe he’s destined to die far away from his soul and the whisperer. Orsie wants to see his face, feel his skin, taste his lips. He shouldn’t do this, but he chases the feeling, allows the fantasy to bloom.
He imagines offering his anaskett and being accepted, then sharing it with his beloved whisperer. He thinks about teaching the man the ways of dragons, anticipates his wonder at all a dragon sees and feels outside the perception of mortals. He yearns for their wings around each other in a cocoon that hides them from the world, that keeps them safe so they could—
Heat rushes to Orsie’s face as his affection is reciprocated.
The whisperer doesn’t understand the whole extent of Orsie’s want. Whenever Orsie tries relaying his dragon nature, the connection distorts, echoing into itself. More impediments from Nevmis’s magic, no doubt.
Still, it’s satisfying to be answered in kind and new tears stream down his cheeks.
*
With a hand over his squinting eyes to shield them from the midday sunlight, Orsie surveys the horizon. He should be arriving at the next village in a day, two at most. He’s been traveling back south through an arid land, right at the outskirts of the sands. The summer air stifles, his water almost finished. A hunter he met on the way told him a caravan is resting at the village, one set to depart in a fortnight. It came from the dunes and is bound west for Uvalhort before making its way back home. Its path will be different than Orsie’s has been, going through different villages as it crosses Sesgrond, and if he can get himself hired as a helping hand, his travel will be easier. A caravan the size described by the hunter would have food, water, and plenty of carts and horses, so Orsie might get lucky enough to steal a ride from time to time as well.
Hefting his backpack higher on his sore shoulders, he quickens his pace.
The whisperer’s been quieter than usual lately, anguish permeating through the connection. Orsie’s been trying, but he can’t reach the whisperer as well as the other way around. Today, he’s distracted and wary, defensive even.
Orsie sends a caress.
“Dear one—”
“I’m here,” Orsie says. “I’m searching for you.”
*
A few days later, the whisperer is relaxed and content for a change, and Orsie allows his good mood to spill over. He’s tired and dusty, but he’s made it to the village in time to catch the caravan, with a few days to spare, even though at one turn he wandered the wrong way and had to backtrack. Only Orsie could get lost on a flat plain. He wishes he could still fly.
He’s managed to get himself hired quickly because he can cook, and now Orsie indulges in a hot meal at the local tavern. He’s at the end of a long table filled by the merchants’ aides, listening to their drunken ruckus.
Someone sits next to Orsie and a carafe is set in front of him. Ale. It’s cheap, and Orsie sneezes at the smell, immediately followed by laughter.
“You don’t have the habits of youth,” Fenna says.
She’s the caravan’s experienced guide, a woman accustomed to life on the road. Her skin is darkened by the sun, dried by the winds, creasing around her eyes and mouth with her mirth. Orsie is again reminded how half a century is a long lifetime to mortals, but he can’t disagree with her.
Instead, he shrugs. “I find no pleasure in it.”
“Well,” she says as she pushes the drink toward the next man over, “we do need a sober cook. Why is a nice boy like you traveling the Plains?”
Here’s his chance to fish for information.
“I’m looking for a dragon,” he says.
Fenna’s eyebrows raise, and she purses her lips in thought. “All the way out here?”
He shrugs again.
“You must be lost, kid,” she mutters, incredulous.
“There hasn’t been a dragon here since before my grandmother was alive, Havesskadi frost her bones.”
Orsie chokes on his own spit. “You know of the black dragon?”
“Me?” Fenna asks, patting Orsie’s back awkwardly. “Psh, no. But my great-grandmother saw him once, up in Hriss. He gave her an amethyst so pure she had to break it into pieces to trade, but it’s how she afforded to take her eight daughters and move down to Uvalhort where it’s warmer.”
He remembers a woman, long ago, on a road. He’d fumbled his landing, apples absorbing his thoughts, and he’d destroyed the poor woman’s cart. Huh.
“Anywho,” Fenna says, rustling through her pockets for her pipe, “my family believes in dragons.”
“And you don’t?”
“Do I ever,” she counters. “I saw one with my own eyes, big and red. It scared all the damn horses.”
Orsie stills. “Where?”
“By Nok, near the border with Danv. I was leading a merchant back east when it flew above us toward the dunes.”
“So it went east,” Orsie says.
“Nah, the other way around,” Fenna tells him as she leans back. “We met another caravan on the way to Ses. They saw it come at them from a distance, but it turned around back west at the last moment.”
Fenna scratches her cheek. “Must’ve been the doing of that witch traveling with them, but who knows why it changed its mind. Dragons are fickle,” she finishes with a sigh.
Orsie, however, feels as if the blood has drained out of him. All this wasted time, searching east when he could’ve—
“You don’t look well, kid. Don’t make me hire another cook.”
He forces an inhale. “I’m not sick,” he defends, grateful he isn’t feverish for once. “Just surprised about the dragon. Did you say it went west?”
“Yeah,” Fenna says, squinting. “Why d’you want to find a dragon?”
“It was Mother’s dying wish,” he lies. If he’s learned anything these past few months, it’s that mortals are more susceptible to tales of death.
“Oh, poor thing,” Fenna says, already distracted. “But the red one is a terror, maybe you should look for another.”
Orsie shrugs, feigning innocence. “Maybe it flew to where the dragons live?”
Fenna’s smile is motherly as she puffs some smoke out before she starts telling him about the dragons. Well, she does know a few truths, but the rest are tall tales.
Orsie listens, asks questions, and at the end of the night, he knows he must return west.
Dawn finds him still awake, watching the dark horizon as the sun climbs into the sky behind him. The caravan will take him to Uvalhort. Fenna is traveling through the orchards after the caravan reaches its destination, toward home for a while, and Orsie jumps at the opportunity to accompany her, at least until he hears more about Nevmis’s path. With her, it will be less likely that he gets lost.
*
Ark closes the book with a long exhale. His companion is silent today, but that’s fine. He never did like to celebrate his birthdays.
His thirty-fourth.
Who would’ve thought Ark would live this long—no, he expected to die on the battlefield. Instead, here he is, drowning in magic. The summer breeze drifts in from the open windows, carrying over the smell of wet earth. It’s been raining during the day.
He’s been sleeping on the cold stone of the chamber for the past three months, his bed forgotten. It feels better here, anyway, where the voice can’t follow. Why, Ark doesn’t have an explanation, but the magic is different in this room. The air is sweeter, sharper, even with the windows closed. And really, if he can sleep on the ground, then Ark can sleep next to him on the stone floor.
Many nights Ark has spent lying under the windows, watching the sky with him. Many days feeling, hurting. He yearns for something he can’t name but feels akin to freedom. It’s not that he wants to be untied from his home. On the contrary, he still needs to be here despite the overwhelming malice.
Like the two doors, one drowns him, the other lifts him.
When his dreams aren’t nightmares, he flies. Soars high above the clouds, a myriad of suns surrounding his essence, like the world bending to his will. When he lies awake, here in this safety, he is cherished.
It strikes him, sometimes, how a lot of this only happens in his head. With the quietude at its peak, straining his senses with the lack of life, that’s when he feels. His companion is closer, livelier, vibrant. The transfer is seamless between Ark’s thoughts and these incoming sensations he doesn’t recall experiencing in his own skin.
He has to ask, although he already knows the answer.
“Do I really love you, or am I just insane?” The air is still, his thoughts unmoving. “I love you.” Ah, there it is, poking at the edge of consciousness.
Mine.
Ark gasps. Of course he is, of course.
“You, too,” he whispers. “You’re mine.”
He closes his eyes, the glint of the moonlight still dancing around his vision. His chest tightens, wishing, hoping.
Waiting.
Chapter Six
Danv
Since returning west, the stories of dragons have been set been further and further in the past, despite Fenna’s assurances. But Orsie has continued until the shores of the Marra. From there, he meanders through Uvalhort, following a sinuous path through villages. Some reports make no sense, being told as if the dragon had passed by years ago. The closer Orsie gets to the southern border, the stranger the tales become. One old man tells him about a dragon being slain in Danv last century. It’s unlikely, the kingdom has always been a friend to dragons, but Orsie’s been in hiding for longer than that. He can’t confirm these rumors, and the dragon of the stories is not always red. Orsie needs a hint whether to go south or search for a ship that would take him west over the sea. The latter would mean he wouldn’t be able to return by the time his last scale fades, and he won’t make a rash decision again.
His questions remain unanswered, and Orsie grows more and more worried. Luck finally smiles on him in a village at the border between Uvalhort and Danv, where a blacksmith tells him a red dragon had been seen almost twenty-two years back, flying over Crinidava. The timeframe is wrong, but the dragon is red, so there has to be at least an ounce of truth to it. Orsie’s hopes replenish even more when he learns the place is famous for its plenitude of rubies, and he wonders if perhaps Nevmis has settled there, living as an overlord of unsuspecting humans. Perhaps she’s been hiding her own presence with magic; it would explain the contrary accounts of her passage.
With a trembling exhale, Orsie presses his palm over the four remaining black scales on his left forearm, then reminds himself there are six more on his right, fingers tapping over his sleeve. His journey has been long, too long. He thinks back to how many times he chose the wrong turn and shakes his head. It’s been a year since he left the icy peak that used to be his home, but he’s nearing his anaskett.
He hopes.
At least he’s closer to the last place a red dragon was seen. He surveys the northern hills of Danv with concern. Here, next to the border, the land is still smooth, but after a few days’ worth of travel south, it becomes peppered with rocks and hills that swiftly grow into mountains. They’re not as high as the Ahrissals, but tall enough and covered with thick pine forests that slow any journey along the winding roads.
So Orsie straps his backpack on tighter and starts toward Crinidava. It will take him two weeks to reach on foot, but short of stealing a horse, there is nothing he can do. He doesn’t have the gems to buy one, and as down on his luck as Orsie seems to be lately, he doesn’t want to cause some poor soul to lose their plowing horse just because Orsie is in a hurry.
*
With vast mountains at its core, Danv opens to the Wolf Lands to the west and the southern parts of Sesgrond to the east. Farther to the south, before the roads reach the Fire Lakes, lies the deserted Kingdom of Graves, a foul and dry
place. Orsie went there once. Mountains of fire on one side, cascades of glass on the other, filling the air with fragments of flames. The landscape caused his breath to stutter, enough that he considered settling there, if only the air weren’t so stifling hot.
For now, Orsie travels through the pine forest of the wide pass cutting between Danv’s northernmost peaks. The low valley has only a few steep ascents here and there, and Orsie is grateful. The place brims with wildlife, the sound of burbling creeks strong in his ears. Orsie imagines the weather is part of spring’s return to life instead of autumn’s goodbye to summer. September is past its midway point, but the valley retains some lingering warmth. Between that and the smells of the forest, Orsie allows the fantasy. He dreams the forest is waking into spring, as if he hasn’t wasted the entire summer in useless travel.
Today, the whisperer is clearer than ever, his mind accompanying Orsie as he walks under the canopy. Over these past months, Orsie has learned much about the man, yet Orsie’s never felt this much enjoyment of the forest coming from the other. But Orsie hasn’t been among pine trees before, and hope swells in his chest until—
Orsie freezes, sharp frost filling his being. His eyes sting.
It’s not possible; he’s imagining things.
Slowly, he shifts back, one step, then two. His gasp is loud enough to echo, and Orsie forces himself to breathe slower. It’s gone.
No reason to panic, this is why he moved backward—to test it. With a careful exhale, he walks forward again, his senses stretched.
His knees give out when he feels it again.
His soul.
Its draw.
The whisperer croons, and Orsie realizes his cheeks are wet. Finally, he’s close enough to feel it.
He wills his tired mind to recall the landscape of Danv, one he’s seen from high above in the past, mind working fast to estimate distances. If the magic’s edge reaches here, then the anaskett must be somewhere around Crinidava. His guesses have been confirmed, and Orsie shakes in relief.
