I could do that. I think I could. I could enchant a rock to turn into a dragon egg — would that work? Maybe it needs to already contain some kind of life … I’ve never brought something to life before. That might be on the list of things animus magic can’t do.
But I could steal someone else’s egg and change the dragon inside into a SandWing like me.
Hang on. That might have been an evil thought.
She rubs her temples, reviewing the choices.
Right, yes: Stealing someone else’s egg would be bad.
What if I found a different kind of egg — a snake egg or ostrich egg — and changed it into a dragon egg?
And whatever’s alive inside, I make it a dragonet? My own dragonet, who would love only me, forever?
She is so delighted with this plan that she almost runs out into the rain to find an egg right away. But she stops herself on the threshold of the cave.
Wait. Be cautious. It would not be safe for a dragonet to be part of my life right now. If Scorpion found us, she could use it against me.
Bide your time, Jerboa. Scorpion’s not the only one enchanted with longevity. I could live forever if I wanted to.
If I’m patient, she’ll be gone, and then I can create my dragonet and we could return to the Kingdom of Sand and live in peace.
Yes. Really good plan. Not evil, right?
Right. Not evil.
Hugging herself with her wings, she rolls against the cave wall and falls asleep dreaming of her beautiful dragonet.
* * *
She is standing in the desert again at last. Sixty years of hiding was quite long enough. And quite long enough for anyone to be queen, especially the power-mad kind.
Queens die in their sleep of unexpected heart attacks all the time. It might have happened at any moment even without any magic help.
And really, I mean — sixty years. More than long enough.
Her daughter is perfect, and now she is perfect here, in this perfect place, surrounded by sand and wind and wide wide open sky.
“Welcome home,” she says.
Jerboa the third doesn’t answer. She is in a bit of a snit because she just found out about Jerboa the second, which was an accident. Jerboa herself, the first Jerboa, hadn’t planned to ever talk about the daughter who went wrong. Because it didn’t matter. She was gone, and now Jerboa and the next Jerboa were together and they could just be happy, couldn’t they?
“I want a different name,” says the smaller Jerboa. “One of my own.”
“Why? Jerboa is a lovely name.”
“Because I WANT to be my OWN DRAGON,” she huffs. “Not just one of your hundreds of copies of you.”
“I haven’t made hundreds of copies of me,” Jerboa argues. Although, come to think of it, she could, couldn’t she? She could test them out and see which ones are pleasant company and which ones end up as sullen grouches. She’s sure she was never this bad-tempered, so it’s not like the current version is THAT close a copy of her. Maybe a closer copy would be nicer to have around.
Was that an evil thought? her mental voice whispers, as if from very far away.
“You could have made hundreds, and I would never know,” little Jerboa points out. “I could be number 847 or something.”
Eight hundred and forty-seven dragonets sounds exhausting. Even if she only tried them one at a time, Jerboa wouldn’t want to go through that again and again, teaching each one how to hunt, listening to their endless questions.
But I could try a few, until I get a quiet, pleasant one.
“Jerboa doesn’t even have a good nickname,” her daughter mutters. “Jerb? Jerbie? Boa … I guess you could call me Boa.”
Jerboa shrugs. Ungrateful, that’s what this one is. “If I call you Boa,” she says, “will you stop sulking and appreciate this lovely desert?”
“Fine,” Boa snaps, which doesn’t SOUND like not sulking to Jerboa, but she lets it go for the moment.
I don’t have to put up with this forever. If she becomes unbearable, I can always start over.
Wait, wait, whispers the voice. And then what? You’d kill this one? Didn’t we decide once, long ago, that killing dragonets was always evil?
Even my own? she argues back. Ones I made myself?
Yes … I think so …
Hmmm. It is hard to imagine disposing of this one neatly — and she can’t just let her go wandering off. No one can find out that the long-missing SandWing animus is still alive. Jerboa does not want the hassle.
What if I simply … fix her a little, then? Just a little spell to make her more agreeable. Obedient would be a good start. Helpful would be nice, too.
She sinks her claws into the warm sand, picturing how perfect small Jerboa could be.
But … evil? whispers the little voice again. Maybe?
Shush, you, she whispers back. I made this dragon. I can perfect her if I want to. Nobody gets hurt.
No, no, I don’t have to worry. That’s not evil at all.
* * *
She is flying over the ocean, wondering if they should try shark again. The last time it was a bit oily, but this time Boa could prepare it differently.
That was such a good idea, making Boa an excellent cook. A shame she had to add an extra spell to also make her enjoy cooking; she’d thought just being good at it would be enough, but no. Boa tends to be lazy. If she could do nothing at all, that would be her preferred life.
Jerboa thinks she wasn’t always like this. When she was little, Boa had so much energy. Perhaps one of the spells went a little awry. Perhaps making her more placid, less argumentative, more likely to say yes to everything … perhaps that resulted in a bit of laziness, too.
She’ll try again. Calibrating the right personality can be quite difficult, it turns out, even with magic.
She isn’t in the mood for shark, after all. She’ll make Boa go get them a camel; it’ll be good exercise for her.
As she swoops back down to the beach, she spots something odd.
Boa is crouched in the surf building a sand castle … but the castle is building itself.
Jerboa flips through several stages of panic before she realizes what’s really happening. Boa is using one of the objects Jerboa enchanted — the stone that builds them a new home each time they move.
But for a moment, she thought Boa had her own magic, and that was terrifying.
“What are you doing?” she asks as she lands in a squelch of wet sand.
“Sand castle,” Boa replies serenely. Her tail swishes lightly as the waves wash over her talons.
“This is not a toy,” Jerboa hisses. She snatches the stone out of Boa’s claws. Boa blinks and bows her head.
“Sorry.”
“You never touch Mother’s magic things.”
Boa tips her head and looks slowly up at her. “Can I have magic, too? I think I’d like some magic things of my own.”
“No, no, no.” Jerboa shakes her head. “Magic isn’t safe. It’s very very dangerous. Only very special dragons should have it, and that’s why it’s so rare. Only one animus dragon at a time, that’s the rule.”
This is a lie, but Boa will never know that. For a while, Jerboa knows, there were five animus dragons coexisting in Pyrrhia — one in the Ice Kingdom, two in the Kingdom of the Sea, one in the Night Kingdom, and herself. She doesn’t know exactly what happened to each of them, but they’re all gone now. Everyone but her. Sometimes she casts a spell, just to check, but everything is quiet. Peaceful. Much less worrying that way.
Maybe she’s a little bit right — maybe that much animus magic in the world at once was like too many dragons drinking from an oasis at the same time. Maybe they sucked all the magic out of the world. Or maybe the magic is taking a break, waiting for a future generation of dragons before letting another animus hatch.
“There are rules?” Boa says. “About the magic?”
Three moons, she talks SO SLOWLY. It’s like all her words have to wade through the MudWing swamps
to make it out of her mouth.
“Absolutely,” Jerboa says. “One animus dragon at a time —if there are too many, can you imagine how dangerous that would be? They could get in a fight, start throwing spells around, and destroy the whole world by accident!”
“But,” Boa says even more slowly, “one animus dragon could also destroy the whole world, just by herself.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Jerboa says. “I’m the only animus dragon right now, and I’m not going to destroy anything.”
Boa looks out at the sea, thinking something at the speed of fossils forming. “Couldn’t I have just … a little bit of magic?” she says finally.
“Magic is also dangerous for your soul, remember?” Jerboa says. “I want to protect your soul, sweetheart. Let me do all the magic and take all the risk on myself, and you stay safe.”
“All right,” Boa says with a sigh, and Jerboa can sense that one of her spells is kicking in — the one that stops Boa from arguing with her. That was a great one.
Still, this Boa definitely needs a few tweaks. And something to make her stop growing. Jerboa enchanted herself to stop at a normal dragon size. If they both live for thousands of years, as Jerboa is planning, it would be very inconvenient if they wound up absurdly gigantic. She’ll make Boa stop just a bit smaller than her, so they’ll always look like mother and daughter.
Maybe she could add a little fear into the mix as well. If Boa is more scared of animus magic, she won’t keep asking for it. And then she’ll keep her grubby talons off Jerboa’s stash of magic items. Yes, this is a good idea.
Did she once have second thoughts about her magic spells? Wasn’t there once a voice in her head that asked … something?
She shrugs it off. It probably wasn’t important.
* * *
She is curled beside the campfire at night, with stars twinkling overhead and Boa nestled against her side. Boa is small again, and Jerboa has tripled the dragonet’s usual love for her, so she’s extra cute and affectionate. It was getting boring having another full-grown dragon around who never did anything new or surprising. Shrinking her down and starting her over as a two-year-old dragonet has made things much more fun for the last couple of years.
They’ve both been alive a very, very long time. Over eight hundred years? Can that be right? Jerboa tries to think. Boa has started over as a dragonet several times in those centuries. And Jerboa has lightly kept track of any other animus dragons over the years.
She spotted two in the Night Kingdom — the granddaughter of a dragon named Whiteout, and then that dragon’s great-grandson. None in the Ice Kingdom in all that time. One in the Kingdom of the Sea, in the royal family, but she didn’t live very long after having her own eggs. Jerboa doesn’t know why; she hasn’t gone digging for more information. As long as they don’t find out about her or do anything earth-shattering, she can ignore them.
“Mother, I think you should make me an animus dragon,” Boa chirps out of nowhere.
THIS again? Jerboa thought she’d stomped down all of Boa’s curiosity about magic. But it keeps coming up, year after year, despite all the memory wipes and implanted nightmares and personality adjustments. What is wrong with this dragonet? Why can’t Jerboa fix it?
She sighs. “If you did have magic,” she asks, “or, let’s say, if you could cast just one spell, what would it be?”
Boa thinks and thinks and thinks. Rewinding her age made her a faster thinker again, but she’s gotten slower with each new spell since then.
“I know!” she says sweetly. “It would be a teleportation spell. One that would bring me home to you anytime I wanted, no matter where I was.”
“Aww,” Jerboa says, snuggling her closer. “But you don’t need that. We’re never apart.”
Is that a shadow flickering across Boa’s face?
“I know,” she says. “It would be just in case. Just in case something very bad happened, and we got separated.”
Jerboa is pleased. “I can make that for you,” she says. She plucks a seashell from the sand, a pale fan shape edged with dark pink.
“Can’t I —” Boa starts, but Jerboa gently taps her snout with her tail, and she falls silent.
It only takes a moment, and the spell is cast. This seashell will bring Boa to her mother instantly, at just a flicker of a thought from either one of them.
It’s quite neat, actually. Six hundred and twenty years ago, and four hundred years ago, and two hundred and fifty years ago, and a few other times — Jerboa can’t remember exactly — Boa tried to run away.
She doesn’t remember any of that misbehavior now, of course. Each time Boa runs, she thinks it’s the first time. And it has been a real pain in the tail to drag her back, so it’s perfect that now Jerboa will be able to do it with a snap of her claws.
Jerboa pokes a hole in the shell, threads a coconut-fiber rope through it, and loops it over Boa’s neck.
“There,” she says. “See, you don’t need magic. Just ask me for whatever you need, and if I think it’s a good idea, I’ll make it for you.”
Boa nods faintly. She doesn’t seem as delighted with the gift as Jerboa would like. For a moment, Jerboa considers making her more grateful — but really, it’s too late now. Boa has ruined what could have been a very nice moment.
Jerboa sighs. A thousand years. Maybe it’s time for something new.
“What if I made you a brother?” she asks Boa. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Something flickers in Boa’s eyes again. Jealousy? Poor dear, it would be hard to share her mother after all this time. “Would his name be Jerboa, too?” she asks.
Jerboa laughs. “No, of course not. What do you want him to be like? Funny? Clever?”
Boa traces a shape in the sand with her claw. “You can do that?” she asks. “Make him turn out any way you want?”
“Of course,” Jerboa says. “We can even make him love to do all the boring stuff we hate, like gathering firewood or cracking the lobster shells.”
Boa stares at her talons with a strange expression. “I love gathering firewood,” she says in an odd voice.
Oh, that’s right. Jerboa added that to the spell a little while ago, when she got tired of either doing it herself or listening to Boa whine about it.
“Something else, then,” she says. “Whatever we don’t want to do. We can also make him age very slowly so he stays a cute little dragonet for as long as we want. Oh, and we’ll make him a really good sleeper, so he’ll nap easily and fall asleep whenever he starts fussing. Not like you, Miss Up All Night.”
Boa tips her head up to the stars. “But … I sleep really well,” she says. “I sleep all night and sometimes during the day. I’m a ‘really good sleeper.’ ”
“Of course you are now,” Jerboa says impatiently. “So what do you think? Wouldn’t you like a new toy to play with?”
Her daughter doesn’t answer for a boringly long time. Just as Jerboa is about to snap at her, she suddenly turns and burrows under Jerboa’s wing.
“No,” she says. “No, thank you, please. I don’t want a brother. I like it just us. I want to be your only dragonet. Please?”
Jerboa is surprised. Well, this is her own fault, phrasing it like a question instead of presenting the idea in a way that Boa couldn’t argue with.
Anyway, it’s fine. Boa is enough entertainment on her own, especially during the periods when Jerboa makes her a talented musician or storyteller. Another dragonet would probably be a lot of trouble.
Boa is trembling, shivers running through both their scales.
“All right, all right,” Jerboa says. “Just us. No more dragonets. Don’t worry.” Look at her, sounding all nurturing and kind. She’s such a great mom.
“Promise?” Boa asks.
“I promise,” Jerboa says easily. It’s always easy to make promises to Boa, since she can erase them from Boa’s mind just as easily. If Jerboa decides she does want another dragonet one day, she’ll have one,
and Boa won’t complain or even remember this conversation.
For now, she’ll have to think of something else to make their lives interesting. They haven’t abducted an enchanted servant in a while. Maybe a RainWing this time. That would be pretty, and they don’t eat very much. Yes, that would be a nice change of pace around here.
* * *
She is very tired. They have been flying all day to get to their summer hut, and they weren’t able to stop at an oasis on the way because there were so many SandWings milling about below. Every century it seems like there are more and more dragons everywhere. Jerboa prefers to avoid them, after a few awkward incidents where Boa tried to get someone to “rescue” her, of all the nonsense.
Her wings ache and her head is fuzzy, and that is the only reason Boa is able to catch her unawares.
Jerboa doesn’t realize what has happened at first. She is frozen one step inside the doorway of the cabin. Literally frozen; no part of her can move, and ice is starting to travel rapidly up from her claws.
She whips her head from side to side and finally spots Boa in the far corner, pointing something at her.
The porcupine quills. Boa had gathered them all so carefully in the mountain forest, then bound them together with a length of thin vines. She’d shown them to Jerboa, proud and sweet, and asked for a new spell.
“When I point this at my prey,” she’d said, “I want them to freeze in place, so I can catch them more easily.”
Jerboa had chuckled at her lazy, lazy daughter, but she’d given her the spell. Why not? Boa hadn’t asked for a spell in so many years, and she’d been so good and quiet and biddable lately. Easier hunting was a harmless request.
Or so she’d thought.
“What are you doing?” Jerboa says with a hiss. She catches herself, and in the long pause before Boa speaks, she tries pouring honey through her voice instead. “Boa, dear, you’ve accidentally used your hunting weapon on me. Let me go.”
“It’s not an accident,” Boa says, trembling. “You’re stuck now.”
“It seems that way,” Jerboa says. She’s trying to remember the words of the spell. Does Boa have to say something specific to release the prey? The cold is crawling higher on her legs. She tries to breathe fire on the blocks of ice around her talons, but this is magic ice, and her fire does nothing.
Dangerous Gift Page 19
