by Dianna Hardy
Pueblo glanced at the jar with a lop-sided smile. “Hey, look at me – I’m growing.”
He looked away before grief for the loss of his friend could claim him again.
Instead, he thought of his son, and teleported out of there.
~*~
Well, this was bound to be a bitch of a headache, thought Katherine.
Katarra moaned, consciousness pulling the demon awake. “Ouch.”
Katherine continued applying the healing. “Yep. Keep still. You’ve got one huge lump on your head.”
The Brujii opened her eyes with difficulty, looked like she as about to throw up, and finally zeroed in on her face. “God turned up,” she croaked out, “lookin’ just like Karl.”
Katherine went cold inside, from both fear and anger. It was a reaction she had mastered over the years, so she brushed it to one side and got on with sorting out the bruising. “I’m almost done with your wound – sorry it’s not as thorough as how Elena would tend to it. She’s the natural healer, not me.”
Katarra stared her straight in the eye. “I really don’t want to say this, but I don’t know if she’s gonna get him back. I’m sorry. I didn’t get any sense of Karl there at all.”
Katherine finished up. It would have to do – the lump was a little smaller and a little less purple than a minute ago.
“If she can’t kill him, you might have to. You know that, don’t you? Can you do it?”
The cold settled more deeply within her body. “Where did they go?”
Katarra pointed to the great big split in the ground.
She sighed. “That’s where I figured. Guess I was hoping you’d point to … anywhere else, really.” She made her way to the edge and looked down. Good job she wasn’t scared of heights. She fingered the amethyst-encrusted amulet around her neck. That, and the oils she had anointed her pulse points with, created a mystical armour that should work like an astronaut’s suit. As long as the amulet stayed on, she should reach her destination without any injury, or any pressure build-up in the brain. Demons and angels wouldn’t have the same problem.
She looked over at Katarra who was now standing. “Are you coming?”
The Brujii approached her. “Did you hear what I said before? About Karl? Can you kill him?”
Her stomach sat heavy in her body, like a leaden weight. Her reply was comprised of the only thing she knew with any certainty. “I would do anything for Elena.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
When Mary had recounted her experience of Hell at their last breakfast, she had described how hot it had been. But Hell had also been located, so far as Elena could make out, one step outside of the human dimension.
Where the Dragon resided was in the physical world. She was quite literally in the centre of the Earth, and it was cool. Cool to the point of being too cold. And it was pitch black.
She’d lost sight of Karl on the way down.
She let out a small yelp when her feet contacted something solid, immediately dematerialising herself and reappearing some metres higher up so she could land again more carefully, purposely slowing down her descent.
Whoa! She’d never have been able to do that pre-apocalypse.
And maybe the four snacks you had a couple of hours back helped a little, reminded her inner-voice. It was a welcome reminder in the belly of the planet. She was pretty much as powerful as she was ever going to get at this precise moment, and it made her feel a little better.
After a few more seconds remaining silent, listening for Karl and sensing her surroundings, she opened her palm and shone light from it. It was a green light, casting everything in a slightly eerie glow, but at least it was light.
She let it fall all around her, taking in the dark brown walls, surprisingly smooth… She was in an empty cavern. Stalagmites came up out of the ground. Ahead of her, to her right, the cavern narrowed and seemed to lead into a tunnel – and it looked like her only option.
At least that makes decision-making easy.
She ventured forward, letting her magical green torch lead the way.
The tunnel was smaller than she’d expected and seemed to go on forever, but right at the point when she began to wonder if she’d made a mistake coming this way, it widened out and exited into another cavern – this one was huge. Huge, and filled with human-sized crystalline objects that emitted their own light. What were they? Super-sized quartz crystals? But they looked quite polished for raw crystals, and each of them seemed to hold mineral deposits that created shadowed layers within the—
Oh … my … God.
She stopped breathing when she realised what she was seeing: Eggs.
Dragon eggs.
Maybe about twenty of them.
She put out her glow and the light from the eggs seemed to intensify.
“Misleading, isn’t it?” A very small, old woman, emerged from the opposite side of the cave, an equally looking old man beside her. But whereas he was a normal kind of size, she was tiny.
“What is?” asked Elena, ready to attack if necessary.
“Life,” she replied, her raspy voice sounding very much like her mother’s had before she’d grown young again. “You expect one thing – think you know everything – but you get given something else instead. One Dragon, we were told. One. The last. Looks like someone told a teeny-weeny little lie.”
“Maybe nobody lied. Maybe sometimes, we just don’t get to know everything, although … I think the Malattal predicted this.”
“Yes … their final prophecies. I believe it is the last line you are referring to.”
“Dragons – plural.”
“Any chance you remember the fourth line?”
She shook her head.
“The Totilemi, young and wise – age will herald their demise.”
“You’re … you’re a Totilemi demon?”
“I am Sophia, last man standing – minus the man. This is Ri Tian – he’s not a demon, just old.” The man, who Elena guessed from his looks was Chinese, bowed his head in greeting.
She found herself dropping her own head out of courtesy. “Sophia … Sophia…” Something clicked in her brain; something Mary had said. “You’re the one Gwain and Mary rescued from Hell, right?”
She smiled. It wavered. “I looked a bit better then.”
Over that fateful breakfast, Mary had mentioned how the Totilemi had all looked like children. No wonder this ‘old woman’ looked tiny – she was. She was the same size as maybe an eight year old, but with the face of a hundred year old lady.
How horrendous. “I’m sorry for your…” What? Loss? Demise? Extinction? There were no words, so Elena left that sentence right there and proceeded with a question. “How did you get down here?”
“Ri Tian had retained a portion of the Dragon’s blood and magic; enough for one more pendant to be made. The pendant created a doorway into which we could travel here.”
“A pendant like this one?” She pulled Mary’s necklace out of her pocket and held it up.
Sophia’s eyebrows rose, although it was barely noticeable under all the heavy wrinkles. “And how exactly did you get that?”
“I performed a repair spell. It repaired more than I was expecting.” That’s putting it mildly, she thought, remembering Karl’s reaction to the removal of his mother’s blood stain. Speaking of whom… “Have you seen … er … a blond man anywhere down here?”
“You mean, the God incarnate? No. I’m afraid not.”
“So, you know about that.”
“I still have some knowledge left, although it’s all fading fast, which reminds me… It was Morgana who approached Ri Tian, twelve hours ago or so, in a bid to try and find a way to the Dragon. She felt something was wrong; that she was missing a piece of the puzzle.
“Ri Tian forged the pendant from the blood he had saved whilst making the first one, and a sliver of silver the fairy gave him, but Morgana did not return, and that is when he contacted me. I informed him that the fay have all p
erished.”
“What?” gasped Elena.
“Yes. Not long ago, Morgana’s light went out.”
“How do you know?”
“I could read it in the fairy silver that she had given Ri Tian. I knew I didn’t have long left either, so I decided to venture into the Dragon’s lair myself and try to put the last of my knowledge to good use – discover whatever piece of the puzzle Morgana thought was missing. Ri Tian was kind enough to accompany me.”
Again, he bowed.
“And I have found something,” she continued, her eyes coming alive, even as her energy seemed to fade a little. “Something secret, something hidden…” And now those eyes were practically dancing… “Something really, really old.”
~*~
Okay … it wasn’t so bad. Everyone always made it sound like the most painful thing in the world, right? No, this wasn’t so bad; it was sort of like really bad period pains. She could handle that, even if it had been pretty much non-stop for … oh, she didn’t have a watch on – about an hour?
“This stage can take a few hours,” said Paul, who had since magicked himself some clothes to wear.
“Stage?”
“If I remember correctly – and it’s been a long time – this is stage one of labour.”
“There are stages?”
“Not many,” he smiled, in what she assumed was an attempt at reassurance.
She winced as another cramping feeling came and went, and shrugged off the hand he offered. “I’m all right. This isn’t so bad.”
“It’ll get worse,” Zaynolita said with a big grin, as she brought over a larger bowl of water and some clean towels.
“It will?”
“Yes, but don’t worry. We have a saying among the Dessec: the more painful the birth, the stronger the baby. I screamed until I lost my voice and nearly died giving birth to my twins,” she beamed, triumphantly.
Oh, fucking wonderful.
“OOOoooo…” Another cramp, this one a little worse than the last. “I think they’re getting faster.”
“So it might not take hours after all,” added Paul. Was he still trying to be helpful?
She suddenly didn’t feel ready for this. “I can’t get him out.”
“Of course you can.”
“No, no, no – look at the size of him. How the hell is he going to come out?”
“The same way he got in.”
“Paul,” warned Amy.
“Sorry, bad joke. Bad timing.”
“I’m missing jokes now?” Pueblo materialised right in front of them.
“You’re late,” scowled his grandmother. “At least you didn’t miss the birth.”
He nodded at Paul, and then looked at Amy and smiled. “I said I wouldn’t.” He looked more than a little haggard. “By the way, the shaman’s dead.”
“Norolf?”
“That guy – yeah.” And then a shadow fell over his face. “The fay are also gone.”
Even the baby seemed to stop for a second while that information sank in. “What do you mean, gone?” asked Amy, her tone hushed.
“Extinct. Wiped out.”
Paul let out a slow breath. “Morgana?”
“Yep.”
“AaayayOOOOW!” cried Amy, and both men jumped.
“What is it?” shouted Pueblo.
“What the fuck do you think it is?” she glared at him.
“Now, now…” The old female came between Amy and the two men. “Usually, I would ask you both to leave, but you are necessary for the birth, so give her some room for crying out loud.”
They both stepped back and Amy took in a huge breath, then almost swallowed her own tongue as a heavy weight rippled through her abdomen, although she felt it across her entire body. “Oh, God, oh, GOD… Was that a contraction? I need to lean forward!”
She didn’t wait for a reply, but got on her hands and knees, her palms finding, by accident, the slightly raised roots of the tree. But they were a welcome support.
She grasped them as another contraction hit, and she moaned long and deep, just about managing to refrain from screaming. “Are they supposed to be so close together?”
She heard granny chuckle behind her. “This baby has little patience, hmmm? Much like his mother, I think.”
Why the fuck was everyone suddenly a comedian?
“Tell me when you get the urge to push, but don’t push.”
“Don’t push? I want the baby out!”
“Not until your body is ready.”
“It is ready,” she growled out.
Paul leaned down to meet her gaze. He looked a little pale and … something she couldn’t place her finger on. “You have to be fully dilated before you can push, or it won’t be effective. You need to be ten centimetres wide; you’re only about three at the moment.”
How the hell does he know that? Oh, right… At some point, she had lost the bedsheet. Guess he must have looked. How nice.
“Only three? You have got to be kidding me!”
He threw her an apologetic look and stood up again.
“Wait … Paul…” She held out her hand to him.
He took it and came back down. “Okay?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing?”
“Do I look not okay?”
She didn’t answer, because another contraction ate up her words, replacing them with some sort of howl that must be exclusive to women in labour, ‘cause she sure as shit had never heard the likes of it before.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you…” He entwined his fingers through hers.
Someone was rubbing her back, and she suspected it was Pueblo given the size of the hand she could feel there. It occurred to her this should be strange, all three of them here like this, but now that it was happening – now that the baby was coming – their unusual situation paled into insignificance to the actual event. Nothing mattered more than when the next goddamn contraction was coming.
A kiss landed on her shoulder. “You’re doing great, babe.”
She croaked out a “thanks” to Pueblo, and squeezed Paul’s hand tighter. Her wedding ring dug into her finger a little, and that’s when everything kind of freeze-framed in her head – and maybe all around her, although she could still see movement out of the corner of her eye.
Clarity hit with full force: that look on Paul’s face. It was the same expression she’d seen on herself in the mirror the past month and a half – the uncertainty; the ‘what-if’, the debilitating inability to let go, even though she had tried so hard to…
She wasn’t the only one who had had two lives – he had two. “You have to go to her,” she said to him, quietly. And the words came out much easier than she’d thought they would.
Paul looked at her, confused. “What are you talking about?”
How could she not let him go? He’d regret it for the rest of his life.
Her whole mind illuminated as she finally understood the gift Pueblo had given her. He’d let her say, ‘I love you’ … and, in turn, ‘I love you’ enabled her to say ‘goodbye’, not because she wanted to say goodbye, but because, sometimes, you just had to.
“You have to go to Elena.”
He began to shake his head. “Amy—”
“I have the ring you gave me; the baby and I will be safe – I have everything I need. You’ve given me everything I need…” She squeezed her eyes shut as her body was bombarded by another contraction. This one tore through her… “Except for bloody painkillers!”
“I can ease some of the pain,” came Pueblo’s deep voice from behind her, above her, wherever … everything was sort of spinning anyway…
“Just like I did for your shoulder, remember?”
She grunted her consent, and he set to work.
A bit of the fire left her belly – not all of it – but even that tiny bit felt divine. Way better than painkillers…
She turned her head to Paul again, who was looking both worried and upset, and … yeah … there
was that distant, ‘what-if’ look. “Please, Paul … please go to her. We all know if the baby’s coming, the Dragon must be coming too. Elena’s there with it, no doubt, and she’s hurting so much without Karl.”
He made to protest again, but she cut him short. “You said it. You said you didn’t want to leave her to fight this on her own, and you shouldn’t have to – she’s your granddaughter. She’s as much your flesh and blood as this child is.”
Jesus, he looked torn – completely torn in half, and she wondered if this had been what she’d looked like to everyone else in the past few weeks.
“I’m already safe because of you,” she continued, “and so is the baby. But Elena needs you now. Go.”
She saw him throw a look over her shoulder – at Pueblo? Maybe. She didn’t really want to twist her body that way to look right now.
Whatever was exchanged between them, it seemed to settle Paul, although the pain was still there in his eyes. Of course it was: he was leaving her … and their son.
“Amy—”
“It’s all right; it really is.”
He got down on his elbow, planted himself right in front of her and kissed her. Tears lined his face. “Thank you. I wish—”
“No … no regrets. I love you, too.”
“Whatever happens, I’ll make sure the Dragon doesn’t come to any harm; our son will be born,” he smiled through his tears.
“I know, and I’m sorry I took your choice away. With the apple, I mean.”
“No,” he kissed her once more. “You took nothing away, and gave me everything.”
With another look over her shoulder, and then a last look at her, he teleported out of there.
An overwhelming sadness grabbed hold of her and she let out a sob, although it was only half a sob before the monster of all contractions wracked her body and wrenched a scream from her lungs.
Pueblo was in front of her in an instant, with his back against the tree, taking her arms and pulling them up around his neck. “Lean on me.” He kissed her forehead.
