by Alex Sapegin
The flow of mana was getting greater and greater. The image on her shoulder began to glow like fire. Jaga felt a high and an increase in strength in the first moments, but now she was experiencing fear instead—what if the influx of external energy didn’t end? Her fear became the pain. The energy was beating at her with the force of a battering ram. Unable to contain herself, the elf shouted in pain. The powerful flow of someone else’s energy demolished all her inner barriers and didn’t show signs of slowing down.
“What’s happening to you?” Karegar’s voice came to her as if through a thick layer of insulation. The snout of the dragon leaning over her was swimming in a red haze. “You’re burning up!”
The fire overtook the elf’s clothing. Her summer dress and homespun woolen skirt were reduced to black tatters, but, as strange as it seemed, not a single hair on her body was burned. Jagirra felt the strings of an ancient spell breaking, one after another, under the force of the mana. She dashed off to the woods: something was happening….
“Stop!” Karegar turned about on the spot awkwardly and took off after her. “Jaga, what’s happening to you??”
She ran on, paying no heed to the branches and twigs barring her path and flinging back in her face. Stumps, sticks, and ditches didn’t stop her. She was flying fast as if she had wings. Fear and pain chased her onward. The insane flow of energy Jaga was experiencing for the first time in her long life was destroying the shackles that were placed on her three thousand years ago. Behind her, forgetting that he had wings and breaking down trees with his body, Karegar made his way through the thickets.
There was a bright flash in her head. The last string snapped. The shackles disintegrated. Jagirra was flung down on the ground and arched her back. The elf lost control of herself as if she were having an epileptic seizure. Tearing a couple young maples trees out by the roots and trampling a hazelnut tree down in the mud, Karegar burst onto the scene and tried to pick Jaga up in his paws, but the elf turned away and crawled away.
“No, don’t look, don’t touch me,” she cried, feeling the flow of mana go down to a small trickle and then dry up completely. She knew she was too weak to stop the transformation at this point. “Don’t look!”
It was no use. Karegar, frozen on the spot like a black sculpture, stared at the crystal dragon sprawled out on the grass where the elf used to be.
***
“Why, Jaga, why?” It seemed the old dragon had forgotten all other words, repeating “why, why” like a mantra. His neck was as straight as a pole, but he shook his head from side to side. Karegar stood on the edge of the field and quietly whispered this one word. Jaga, how could she? Why hadn’t she told him? Why had she kept silent about it these past two thousand years? Why? Did she truly not trust him enough to be afraid to tell him? He felt, he knew—a simple Snow Elf couldn’t smell like a dragon, but why had she hidden her essence from him? Two thousand years—TWO THOUSAND! Would he not have understood? He accepted her as an elf. He was prepared to share his life with her… why? It was so painful… he felt so empty inside, and he felt so nasty from the lack of trust. It was disgusting that she, the one he trusted more than his own self, had spit on the trust in their relationship. Did she really feel that rotten ancient secrets were more important than he was? Why? Jagirra was a dragon. He ought to jump for joy—but his reaction was the exact opposite. He felt horrible inside. He looked at the crystal dragoness, shining with golden scales with green vine-like designs on her sides, and thought that he did not know Jaga at all. All this time he’d been living with a ghost.
“Karegar…,” the dragoness stood up on her wobbly legs. Karegar flinched and took a step back from the sound of his name coming from her lips.
“No,” he said and paced back in small steps along the hole cut out ten minutes ago by his body. “Don’t say my name.”
“Karegar. Forgive me, I...” Jagirra took a step towards her de facto husband.
“No, don’t come near me. I trusted you. I thought I knew you. I was wrong.” Karegar pushed off the ground with all four paws and flew away. “You can forget the way to my cave, got it?”
Jagirra, watching the black spot in the sky get smaller and smaller, fell to the ground in a heap. Her legs couldn’t hold her up. The uncontrolled transformation had zapped her of all strength. She wasn’t surprised that after three thousand years of life without wings, her true nature immediately took its toll as soon as it was freed from its fetters. She would have to sleep outside. If she changed her hypostasis in her sleep, her house would simply burst. What timing. Enira, why didn’t you warn me that it would be like this? How can I be seen by the one I truly love and who I pushed away with my secrets? Should I tell him the truth and push him away forever? Or should I not tell…. All powerful goddesses, why don’t you give me a choice? No matter which way I look, there’s only rapids and whitewater….
Jagirra’s thoughts swirled around Karegar. Right now she couldn’t think about anything else. How could she tell him that she couldn’t transform? He could sense that she wasn’t like an ordinary Rauu! What should she do and what could she do? Now she could find words and get him back, but what would happen when he found out who she really was? Jaga had long ago forbidden herself to think about the past. She buried it in an abyss of oblivion and stopped calling herself a Lady of the Sky…. Who was she fooling? She forgot, she buried it, she stopped… but every day the sky called to her. For three thousand years she dreamed of wings, and her pillow, wet with tears, did not let her forget what was lost in the darkness of ages.
A branch snapped in the ditch Karegar had made on his way there. Jaga lifted her head and was face to face with Charda.
“M-mistress?” the girl’s voice trembled from worry and fear.
“Yes, my child,” the dragoness answered in a serious tone.
“I-is that really you?”
“Charda, now’s not the time for stupid questions. Go, run home please, and bring me the long shirt I hung out to dry on the clothesline, and don’t forget the sash.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right back!”
The girl’s actions were true to her words. Soon a light, quick pitter-patter of feet running towards her informed Jaga the girl had returned with the things she ordered. Jaga changed hypostasis. Charda gasped in amazement and bit her fist. The student’s eyes were as big as saucers. With the fist still in her mouth, Charda watched as her mentor donned the man’s shirt. Jaga activated a “staying” spell. Now the enchanted shirt would disappear at the moment she took on the winged hypostasis and reappear when she again took on elf form. For now, she had to borrow her son’s clothes; later she would enchant a couple of dresses for herself.
“Mistress, the house is that way,” Charda said, overcoming her fear. Jagirra, after she took a couple of steps towards the woods, stopped and looked over her shoulder:
“But Karegar’s cave is that way!”
Neither Charda nor her mentor, upset by recent events and weighed down by sad thoughts, noticed a human figure on the edge of the clearing.
Maruna, Duke the tanner’s wife, was gathering mushrooms in the oak grove. The wicker basket was half full when the Mistress ran by in her birthday suit, twenty paces away. Jagirra was acting like she was being chased by a herd of long-maned wolves. She did not notice anything around her and the Snow Elf’s beautiful face was distorted with suffering. Upon hearing the guttural cry of a dragon and the crackling of trees being trampled down, Maruna squeezed herself between two thick roots of a thousand-year-old oak and, pressed against the ground, looked on in horror as Karegar chased after her. Trying to calm down her heart that was beating like hunted hare’s, she ran after them, staying hidden behind trees and crouched down to the ground. Her curiosity turned out to be greater than her fear.
“Merciful Hel!” the curious country peasant whispered, crawling through the bushes, getting her clothes all dirty and losing the mushrooms in her basket. “The Mistress is a dragon! What will happen now, what??” T
he woman hid from the old were-dragon in a deep ditch and lay there a long time, not moving. What she had seen frightened her to the core. Karegar had flown away a while ago already. Charda ran into the clearing where the dragoness was from the direction of Jaga’s house, and then back in that direction again. But Maruna decidedly stayed put. She wasn’t about to leave her relatively safe spot. “I have to tell the others,” she decided finally. Carefully, trying not to step on any dry twigs, she made her way towards the village.
***
“Go away!” the strong roar drowned out the sound of the water droplets and the noise of the waterfalls spread out over the lake.
“No!” the answer came loud and clear.
A long blast of fire came from the mouth of the cave.
“I won’t leave.”
“Then I will!” The lake water seemed to ripple from the force of this angry cry.
“… you… I won’t let you.”
“What’s that?” Gmar darted back ten feet from the slight touch to the shoulder and whisper in his ear.
“Duke!” the dwarf’s hair barely sparkled, he was so afraid. “You nearly frightened me to Hel’s court!”
“What?”
“Chicken butt! They’re fighting, can’t you hear?” Gmar squatted down near a fat pine and turned his head towards the dragon’s cave.
“All powerful Twins, who could have thought!” Duke said to no one in particular. The forms of the curious village ladies continually flashed and disappeared behind the bushes. “What do you want?” the tanner snapped.
The branches on the edge of the field began to flutter. The muffled voices of the gawking busybodies and the pitter-patter of many feet could be heard. The women were either running off to the woods or changing their position—probably the latter.
“What do ya think, will they make up, or no?” the tanner asked, spitting on the ground near the dwarf.
“I wish they would,” Gmar answered, scratching his scalp as its bright color flared. “We won’t be able to live if they don’t bury the hatchet. I don’t want to leave the valley.”
“And what’s he so mad at her about? Just think….”
“Quiiiiet!” Gmar held up his hand.
Something flashed blindingly on the overhang at the mouth of the dragon’s cave. There was an outraged roar. A fireball smashed into the cliff near some rainbows from the waterfalls. Stone debris flew in all directions, whistling and knocking down the tops and branches of giant pines. The dragon appeared at the edge of the mountain platform.
“Stop!” The golden dragoness threw herself onto the black giant’s back. Karegar tried to free himself from her grip with his claws. He didn’t hold back, and both dragons, in a death grip, plummeted into the creek that led to the lake directly underneath the overhang.
“Bug-eyed Targ…,” Duke said, slack-jawed.
“Let’s get out of here!” Gmar grabbed his friend by the sleeve and pulled him into the forest. Up ahead, branches crackled under the village women’s feet, who had realized before the men had that it’s better to stay as far away as possible from a pair of fighting dragons. Safer if one values one’s health and life….
***
“Alright,” Jagirra said, climbing onto the shore and lying flat on the hot stones. “I’ll go. I can’t get used to it,” she added quietly.
Karegar said nothing. He stood over the former elf and looked at the light playing on her golden scales.
“Answer me. Why?” he asked, flicking blood from his right front paw.
Jaga looked guiltily at what her claws had done. She’d ripped a few large scales from her de facto husband’s forequarter. She turned away.
“Would you have believed me?” she said dully, looking at the dark lake water. “Or could you have helped me get rid of the spell?” Karegar didn’t answer. “What do you know about ‘snares’?”
“I’m not an expert in transplantology and polymorphic magic,” he responded quietly. The old dragon didn’t know what to do with himself. It seemed he’d overdone it, giving in to frenzy and hurt feelings and pride.
Jagirra apparently wanted to say something in response, but thought twice about it. A translucent membrane fell over the dragon’s eyes. For a few minutes she lay there motionless. Only the periodic twitching of the tips of her wings and tail gave away her agitation. From that same pose, not turning her head and not opening the membrane lids on her eyes, she said:
“I was only one hundred and fifty years old, just a snot-nosed kid, when I got the idea into my head of wanting a second hypostasis. It was so popular. All my friends and the older dragons had two hypostases. The girls had their circles and their secrets. They would sneak off to elves and humans, and only I was different. I wasn’t interesting. No one wanted to talk to me. What could you talk about with a dragon who knew nothing of clothes and had never kissed a man? At university the talk was all such-and-such a dragon had picked up another ‘victim’ from the simple mortals. Now I understand that they were subtly and carefully pushing me towards that decision, through my friends and so-called girlfriends, but then, in order to ‘come into my own,’ I decided to undergo the Ritual. The magical changes didn’t hurt at all. It was so interesting and unusual to not have wings, to get an attractive human face, hands and feet instead of a tail, paws and wings. At night my girlfriends and I used to change hypostasis and run off to the human city—it was so exciting and enchanting. The cavaliers and the knights, the balls, getting invited to parties and men’s attention, and how I loved it when mortal women would despise me, and their powerlessness before a Lady of the Sky! Life was so full of adventure… idiot! For a whole year I went on living this double life, and then my father died. I think the dragons took too much from the elves and the humans. I think my father was ‘helped’ when he went to meet Hel. Before that day I didn’t know I had enemies. It turns out I was very sadly mistaken. A few attempts on my life made me ask for help from my uncle, who was appointed the leader until a certain dumb young dragoness came of age. I was stupid enough to believe him and agreed to live in the mountains until everything blew over. If only I’d known my worst enemy was hiding behind my uncle’s resplendent smile and kind eyes, my uncle, who was patting my head as I was in elf hypostasis and crying my eyes out. I flew to the mountains hoping for peace and quiet, naive girl that I was. The place became a prison. I don’t remember how many days I sat in that notrium cell without food or water, but as soon as my strength left me…,” Jagirra sobbed and covered her head with her wing. “… my uncle himself cast the ‘snare’ spell on me. The scoundrel, he couldn’t kill a dragon, but the death of a lowly orphaned elf would pass unnoticed. I found aid in escaping. Hiding from my uncle’s spies, I made my way to Ilanta. War was raging around me. The lone Snow Elf turned out to be no good to anyone except thieves and rapists. The dragons were far away, could they come to my aid? Answer me! You say nothing…. In order to survive, I had to kill rapists and thieves, and not only them. Elves, humans and dwarfs… I can’t count how many people died at my hands. After a month, the way back was closed to me forever. The last true bloods went to Nelita and sealed the portals. If I had known that this was only the beginning,” the dragon stood up from the stone and plopped into the lake, stomach first. Karegar looked on mesmerized at the ripples on the surface of the lake from the tears falling from the dragon’s cheeks. “Six months later the pain started. My body was trying to turn back into its natural form. I tried to fight the magical shackles, but it was no use. I’ll tell you without trying to feign modesty—I’m a strong mage, even though I never finished my studies; and, nevertheless, all my magic was not enough to remove the spell. No one was that strong. Only a blood relative could break the spell. Pain, hundreds of years of pain I felt every day, the involuntary transformations, when all of a sudden my elf body was covered in scales or the fangs would grow back in my mouth, and I was doubled over. The caves of the Berit Mountains became my home. I hid there from prying eyes. Then, it was easy—there w
ere no humans or elves for hundreds of leagues around. The rare bands of dwarf prospectors were happy to share old clothes and news with the Spirit of the mountains. The pain went away little by little. My body stopped fighting, it and I went out among people and began to learn and sell herbs. Two thousand years ago, I met Enira—the White Larga, who immediately recognized me as a dragon. She’s the one who led me to you.”
Karegar stepped into the water and stood alongside Jagirra. He remembered the old witch well. The fortune teller came to the valley once and stayed there for three months. The black dragon didn’t touch the lonely woman. On the contrary, he seldom brought her a portion of his game in exchange for stories from the outside world. One fine day the zavis’ cart wasn’t where she usually parked it. It had disappeared as if it had never been there.
“Enira said,” Jaga went on, “that she would take me to my destiny. When I saw you, I realized the Larga was right. You are my destiny. No matter that I couldn’t fly with you on a wedding flight. I could just live near you. I forbade myself to think about wings and remember the sky, but I couldn’t keep that rule. I’m probably a weak person. I can’t count how many times I tried to get out of here, so as not to see a dragon soaring into the blue heights, to no longer thrown my hands up and scream into my pillow at night from the awfulness of it… but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell you many times, to reveal my truth, but what would it have changed? Then you too would have suffered from the helplessness and impossibility of breaking the spell. For two to bear that burden—would have been too much.”
“How do you explain your Incarnation today?” Karegar carefully touched Jagirra’s wing.
“A blood relative.”
“A blood relative?”
“Kerr. He’s my and your blood relative. I can’t know what made him plunge into the astral, and how he sent that energy to me, but you’re looking at the results. The monstrous influx of mana broke down the internal shackles and broke the ‘snare’ spell.”
