Children of Magic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  For she knew what lay within the egg, although she did not speak of it, and she knew that death, if it came, would be brutal and terrible. Her grandmother had desired that she remember Winter and cold, and she understood in this silence what that desire meant: acceptance of death.

  But the Winter in Shahira’s heart was not the long Winter that had made her grandmother’s life what it was; she did not want to live to see these children die.

  If you must, she said, her lips tasting of salt, take me first. Spare me what must follow. Grant me at least this.

  And then, because the gods did not listen, she added, take only me. Wake now, and I will be silent; devour me whole, let them see nothing, and I will not fight or run or cower.

  But the egg was silent, and at last, defeated, Shahira sang her Winter songs to its silent shell, thinking that it, too, was a child, and at that, one not yet born. In darkness it lived, and this shell was its isolation; it was not hers, and not of her. What it needed, it would take, as all children did who were born whole, and Shahira knew well that sometimes the life demanded was that of the person who had birthed the infant.

  But to hate the infant for the mother’s death was beyond her people, and Shahira was of her people. After the salt had left her lips, she decided. Her hand on the egg was gentle, as gentle as it might have been had she rested it upon Kaylarra’s head.

  “Tonight,” she told the children, “We will gather round the egg.”

  “How do you know it’s night?”

  “It’s always night here.”

  She waited for the bickering to subside; she hadn’t the heart to end it.

  “What will we do?”

  “Sing,” she told them quietly. “It is a baby. A very large baby, but still a babe. We will sing it our songs, because it is one of us.”

  Ademi looked dubious.

  “It is,” Shahira said quietly. “And it waits the same moment that we do. If song is needed, let us sing the songs we like; let it learn the words and the deeds of our ancestors.”

  “But they’re—”

  “Hush, Ademi,” Estavos said severely. “If you want to hear Harald again ever, you’ll listen to Shahira.”

  So they gathered, and they sung, and they argued about where Shahira would sit, and in the end, she roved among them, keeping her voice steady as she did.

  Estavos woke her in darkness, and the darkness was final. She had not let the torches gutter but they were guttered; night had fallen and it was starless. She startled, and he caught her. Held her for a moment, offering her what she offered the children. Comfort.

  “Footsteps,” he whispered. He did not point out that the torches were gone.

  “The children—”

  “Sleeping.”

  “But you—”

  “Shahira,” he told her quietly, “I chose. I hated it, and I chose. They will come now, and we’ll let them.” His breath was soft against her cheek for all its harshness. He was afraid, she thought.

  But the Priests came in the darkness, and they woke the children and said “It is time.” The King was with them, so silent and dark that she did not at first recognize him.

  She nodded at the sound of their voices, although they couldn’t see her, and she whispered the names of the children, one by one, touching them as she stumbled in the darkness. They woke to it, but also to her, and chose her without being aware that they chose at all.

  She had earned this trust, and felt the enormity of the lie at its foundation, but to beg for forgiveness would have destroyed what she had built. She offered them the lie instead, and found strength in the act of offering. She gathered them as she could; it was harder here.

  But the King said, “You must stand around the egg. You must touch it.”

  And they were led, stumbling, until this moment.

  And now, the egg. Shahira can see it, and it has changed in color, but not shape; it is glowing with the light that once—and only once—limned the King’s hands. The shell seems almost translucent; they can see the shape of what lies within, waiting.

  The children should be afraid. But they are not afraid. Two days they have spent around this egg when the King has been absent; two days, they have listened to the stories of the longhouse while the egg lay in the sand that clings to robe and foot and hair, and sometimes mouth.

  She has led them this far, and she will lead them at last to the end of this road. Estavos is by her side. Ademi and Kaylarra and all the rest of the children allow this, because they know that Estavos will cause trouble if they don’t. He is like a boy, she thinks, with both gratitude and fondness.

  She starts the song, for she is so very, very weary, and with the song, there will be an ending.

  Only one of you will survive, her grandmother says. And it must be you. You must come home to us.

  But, Shahira thinks, are we not one, now? One family, one tribe? Were we not all chosen to share this fate? Will we sunder what we’ve made? For she can no longer imagine a life without these lives about her. The longhouse is gone, or rather, transformed: it is this cave, in the end, this Winter place in the middle of a killing Summer.

  She starts the song, and she expects to sing alone for some time, for the priests make the children nervous. But it is Estavos who joins her first, his low voice singing the harmony to the melody she must carry. That she has carried from the beginning. The children join her before she has finished the first phrase, halting and hesitant—but their voices are sweet and their notes are true. They touch the egg with one hand, and they touch the child nearest them with the other, making small anchors of themselves for reassurance. It has been three days since any of them have spoken of home. The words fill her mouth, and with those words, she lets go of her fear. The egg is beautiful and glistening and round, and it has been part of her Winter here, and if Winter ended long before she was born, it is part of her still.

  She does not notice, at first, that the priests have withdrawn; does not notice the absence of the King. She is aware of the song and the egg, and she is aware—perhaps they are all aware at the same moment—of a foreign voice that has joined theirs, singing another harmony, a low thrum that is wordless and pleasant and terrifying.

  For it grows, and it grows loud, threatening to drown out their voices, their own small parts. They are small. She realizes it, and she denies it by lifting her voice, by forcing it to be heard. Estavos’ is defiance personified, and he finds the same strength of voice, joining it to hers, and urging the children to do the same; his hand does not leave the egg.

  It cannot. Nor can hers; she has tried to lift it. It will not come. As if it is no longer hers, it remains there, anchored. But the song is almost done, and she does not give in to the panic she might otherwise feel; does not allow weariness to quell her voice. The song itself is beautiful, and if it is hard to hear over the growing thrum of this last, new voice, she listens anyway for the other voices that she knows she can hear, and she names her children, her brothers and her sisters, as he picks their voices out of the whole.

  And when the world shatters, when the final note attenuates, held at last by only the one voice, she shifts her song, her low song, and she sings a song that is Winter and comfort and hunger and death, for in the Winter there were only these things.

  Glowing pink shards pulse and break, and were it not for the familiarity of the Winter song, the children would cry out or break or run—she knows this because it is her own desire, and one she masters with difficulty. The torchlight is no longer necessary; she can see every child in the room clearly if she swivels her head; can see them as the small helpless creatures they are, Summer things and hungry and terrified and yet—and yet—

  She can feel her limbs pinioned to her sides and she struggles to free them. And she speaks their names in one breath, all of them falling together like the syllables of one long name, each a part of the whole, and each, important to her.

  She feels hunger, a terrible hunger, and she has known hunger for year
s. But hunger did not kill her and hunger did not drive her to kill; it drove her to tears at times, and waste of water, but she was younger then, and it was expected. She swallows the hunger as it grows, and Shahira understands, for as she stretches her limbs, they are not her limbs; they are thin, wet wings that go on forever, up and up, bound by gravity.

  Bound by hunger.

  She sees as the dragon sees, and she hungers as the dragon hungers, and for a moment, they are the same creature.

  But she is Shahira, and Winter is in her heart. The Winter that withstands the howling and the hunger of the world.

  She is Shahira who is standing upon the rough ground of the cavern looks up at the swirling eyes of the dragon who is, for a moment, also Shahira, and she sees herself as frail and faltering and weak, and more, she hears the promise, at last, of strength.

  And she wants it. To have an end and have peace, and more besides; to have flight and freedom and a full belly.

  This is no infant, no delicate babe, and yet it is no adult, and she does not hate it for its driving need, as she thought to. She asked it for mercy, and she understands that mercy is a concept that it cannot see or know, not yet; what babe does?

  But she is Shahira, and she hears the dragon’s voice, and she says, you will feed on Summer. And it sings to her, deafening, its great thirst, and she knows what will quench it. But she says again, you will feed on Summer. You are cold, and warmth is waiting.

  Jewelled eyes now, hardening into shape. Her eyes and not her eyes. She sees her children as it sees her children, weak and helpless and waiting. And she opens her mouth, her small mouth with its flat teeth, and she sings in her weak thin voice, and the song she sings is not the song of wakening, but a Winter song.

  Yes, we are weak, she sings; yes we are frail. But together, no Winter or Summer can kill us.

  I can kill you, the dragon says.

  She does not argue; who argues with a child? But she sings again, fighting hunger with years of long practice. And in a sly voice, it tells her that it cannot consume Summer if it is weak.

  It does not lie.

  Nor does she. I do not care if you consume Summer; I care only that you do not kill your brothers and your sisters. I will go with you, and if you must, you can consume me.

  Brothers. Sisters.

  Yes. You are of the longhouse, and we sang to you while you slept. You were born, as we were born, to save our people. And it rises shedding the last of its shell. I was born, it tells her, to fly and eat and grow warm; it is cold in this place, and the cold kills.

  It is cold, she whispers. Outside of this place, and the cold kills. Sing our songs, and I will sing with you.

  And it sings, as if song is a surprise.

  And she hears the shouts of men in the distance with her own ears and with dragon ears, and she hears the rough cadence of voices she detests and understands the words that have always been nonsense to her.

  “We offer you this.

  We offer you this in keeping with our vows, child of the ancient world. Go forth and keep yours.”

  Brothers. Sisters. The dragon hisses and rises, thinking of hunger and cold. Winter creature, yes, and Winter is in Shahira’s heart, and it is her own Winter, for she has made it so. And she turns to Estavos, her throat raw, her song coming to an end. “The children,” she whispers. The dragon is shining a blinding white gold, a light that the eye cannot hope to contain. They close their eyes, all of them, but they are not yet terrified.

  Estavos stares at her.

  “The children,” she says again, her voice louder. It might be the last words that she speaks, for the dragon’s throat is thrumming and it thrums in keeping with her own.

  She says it again, and this time it is the dragon’s jaw that forms the words, and they are a command and a plea. And he finally understands her, and he grabs Ademi, all of the children whose hands now hold fragments of dead shell, useless harbor, and he drags them away from the light, the jaws, the waiting death—and the dragon allows this, but barely.

  She wanted to spare them.

  But the dragon must feed, for promises made in blood are bound by it. And beyond them all, the Priests are chanting, and she knows they will be a harder meal, for she is not yet strong enough to fly on the wings of a dragon; not yet strong enough to break free.

  But she is strong enough to lurch away from the circle of children because the dragon knows their voices, and their song, and he understands that the Winter holds food if one knows how to hunt. The strong hunted. The weak remained behind, waiting, singing, hoping.

  They are singing now, the songs that she loved. She is both with them and beyond them. She is Shahira, and she accepts that those who leave the longhouse to face the storm—to stand in it—might never return alive.

  Thus with the Priests and the guards and even the King, and as she rises at last, as the dragon rises, she does not fight him at all. Instead, she croons her love of her family, his family; she speaks to him of the warmth that waits, and she goes as far as she can from her children before she at last lets him give way to hunger and the desire for blood.

  She hears the screaming and the terror, and it feels both wrong and right; she hopes that Estavos can somehow protect her children from the knowledge of what she is doing. Taking what must be taken. But not from her family, not from her kin.

  When it is done, she is injured, but she is whole and strong, and she knows no pity and no mercy; she knows only the drive to survive and protect what she has built.

  He is giddy, this child she has sheltered, and they are without Priests or guards and the King is bleeding but not yet dead, and his eyes are bright, his sword brighter.

  And she says “For your people,” and means it, although she speaks with dragon’s voice. But she does not kill him; his wounds might. The cold is strong, and the dragon is strong, and he is tingling with a frenzy of desire as he rises up and up into a darkness that cannot be dark in his presence, like the moon itself stretching toward the sky.

  Save us, she sings, and we will never leave you.

  And in the cold of this night, the dragon begins to bind the scorching heat of Summer into its scales while below the children sing in voices so pure and clear she can sing with them.

  And if they sing a song of blood and death and glory and battle, well, that’s Ademi, and besides, the dragon likes the song better than the rabbit song; he is a boy. She is Shahira. She can feel the land beneath her as it stretches out farther than her eyes could ever see, and she can see the roots of Summer in the hard earth, and it is this summer she takes, with a frenzy of joy.

  She is free here.

  But hours later, when she is warm, she is lonely, and the dragon is lonely, and it stretches its new wings out as it flies.

  Yes, she says, weary and content. Home, now, hunter, and we will sing for the joy of your return.

  And he whispers, crooning, brothers. Sisters. And it is to them that he goes, replete, and they are waiting for him, and they are waiting for Shahira, and they are not afraid as he lands.

  Come, he tells them, and her own voice fades, and her vision diminishes, and she returns to darkness and frailty with a pang of terrible loss, I will take you home.

  There is a small pause and then he says, I will stay with you all. It is a question, a child’s question, and Shahira, with her own arms, reaches out to embrace its closed jaw and chide it gently about its wings and its claws and the danger they might pose.