by Melody Rose
“Now?” Yerti blinked in response.
“Yes, now.” I gave Yerti one of the brightest and biggest smiles I could manage under the circumstances. “Pretty please?”
“Well, if Montgomery and Arabella are ready, then we can certainly go now,” Yerti said as she walked past me, back towards camp.
“Wait,” I said as I whirled around to face her. “Arabella and Montgomery? Why do we need them?”
“Oh, did I not say?” Yerti smirked. “Opala said she would only speak to you if Arabella and Montgomery accompanied you.”
“What?” I asked, baffled. “Why?”
Yerti offered a half-hearted shrug. “I do not know. You can ask her when you see her.”
The older woman didn’t spare me another thought or glance and marched back towards the camp. My fists clenched of their own accord, and the muscles in my arms tightened.
“I hate that woman,” I grumbled to myself, then I begrudgingly followed her back towards where I had left the dragon. And wherever Monte was, Arabella was undoubtedly close by.
Yerti gathered up the three of us and informed the other two about what was going on.
“Why does she want to see all three of us?” Arabella asked.
“I wanted to know the same thing,” I said, surprised to find myself agreeing with Arabella on something.
“Like I told Eva,” Yerti said, way less annoyed than when she answered me, “you can ask the elder when you see her. Now, please come with me. We have to head up back into the volcano.”
“I thought we moved everyone out of there,” I recalled. “When I cleared out the garden and that section of the jungle.”
“Everyone except Opala,” Yerti explained sternly as if this should have been obvious to me. “She refuses to emerge from the sanctity of the volcano until the whole isle is healed.”
“Stubborn woman,” I muttered.
“We prefer to use the word ‘headstrong,’” Arabella whispered beside me with a know-it-all air.
I slowly turned my head towards her. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Then who were you talking to?” Arabella asked innocently.
“Myself,” I replied as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
“Oh,” Arabella said curiously. “Well, then, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Please, continue your conversation with yourself.”
“Thank you,” I answered, pushing as much snark as I could into my reply.
Suddenly, I heard Arabella’s voice in my head. “Does she do that often? Talk to herself?”
Arabella was asking Monte about me using their mental link, which was also our mental link! I grumbled and resisted the urge to hit her.
“The hearing each other’s thoughts things works both ways, Arabella,” I replied back down the mental line. “It’s a three-way call up in here.”
“I do not know what that means,” Arabella responded with the most innocent tone. It made my teeth hurt.
“Just a reminder that I can hear you, too, okay?” I said, hoping she would take the hint and shut up.
“I forgot,” Arabella said. “You sleep so often that normally Montgomery and I can talk uninterrupted.”
“I’m not asleep!” I replied, utterly offended. “I am passed out most of the day because I’m too busy trying to heal your home!”
“Either way, we talk often using our mental connection, and I forget that you are also… on the line, as you say,” Arabella explained. Her tone remained even and calm, which only infuriated me more.
“Well, I’m awake now,” I snapped back.
“I can see that,” Arabella replied plainly.
“Then try remembering that when you’re trying to talk about me behind my back,” I scolded.
We trudged along the path in apparent silence, but I had a puffy red face from all of my anger. Arabella, however, walked along with a serene face as if she had a pleasant tune in her head, instead of me screaming at her. Monte, on the other hand, looked pinched and pained, as though all of our arguing were giving him a headache.
Any sympathy I had for him was quickly squashed by a weird, petty sense of satisfaction. As if to say, “That’s what you get for bonding with two women, you idiot.”
Luckily, our arguing was cut short by our arrival back into the volcano. We entered through the base this time, into a cavern that the citizens had originally escaped into. This was the second thing I healed after the river so that we could get out without having to go up and down the volcano so many times.
Yerti continued to lead the way as we wove in and around the inside of the rock enclosure. I hadn’t been back in here for several days, and I was fiercely reminded of Julei’s fear of the underground. Why had there been so many important moments on this journey done under the surface of the earth? It was rather traumatizing when I thought about it, and it suddenly made me very grateful that I had a dragon as a djer rather than an earthworm or some other underground dweller.
Then, Yerti approached a door. Well, it was a slab of wood acting as a makeshift door. She knocked on it three times before calling out through the slats.
“Opala,” the woman said in a raised voice. “I have Arabella, Montgomery, and the visitor here for you.”
“The visitor’s name is Eva!” I shouted from over Yerti’s shoulder. “Just thought you should know it’s Arabella, Monte, and Eva out here. Waiting to see you.”
Yerti shot me an impertinent glance over her shoulder, and I only offered a falsely innocent shrug in return.
“Enter, you three,” a shriveled voice said from the other side of the door.
Yerti picked up the slab of wood and moved it out of the way. Since it had no hinges, this was the best method to unblock the doorway and let us through. Once she set the wood down, Yerti opened her arm, indicating that we should walk in.
I entered first, and Arabella came behind me. Since Monte was too big for the room, he stuck his head and neck inside so he could still be a part of the conversation.
The room had more candles than I ever expected. It illuminated the room in an orange and brown flow, giving the room a fall feel. There were clay figurines and pots all around the room, balanced on top of one another precariously. A stuffed bedroll lay in the corner and a large circular plate in the center.
That is where the woman sat, with the large plate in front of her. She used one hand to spin the plate so that the creation in the center, currently a lob of unformed clay, spun, and she could mold it to her will. It was a hodgepodge pottery wheel. I couldn’t help myself, I was a little impressed at the simple mechanics of it, considering this world didn’t have those kinds of contraptions.
The woman herself was petite and as wrinkled as a crumpled piece of paper. She had the tannest skin of the bunch of people, which was surprising considering she spent most of her day inside. Her hair hung at about her shoulders, though it was scraggly and uneven. She had the tiniest button nose I had ever seen in my life. Her eyebrows were heavy, and the hairs poked up in mismatched directions. She kept her eyes on her work and did not look up as we approached.
“What are you making?” I asked, trying to get the conversation going.
“I was thinking of a water jug,” Opala answered, speaking to the clay and not to me. “I broke my last one.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Arabella said politely.
The woman waved her hand in our direction to dismiss Arabella’s apology. A little blob of clay flew off her pointer finger and plopped onto the floor with a squelching sound.
“There is always more clay,” Opala said, still refusing to look at us. “You can always start over.”
Before this woman started to throw more pearls of wisdom at us, I stepped in and decided to stop the small talk. “We’re here to learn where the kingdom of the mermaids is located. Arabella here says you know where it is.”
Opala grunted in response. It was impossible to tell if it was an affirmative or negative grunt. I leaned forward a little
as if that would help me to hear her better.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I prefer not to talk about that time in my life if I can help it,” Opala said grimly into her pottery.
“We don’t need the whole story, especially if you don’t want to share it,” I said as I held out my hands as if to separate us from the exposition. “That’s your business. We really just need to know where the mermaids are, Lorisis specifically.”
“You are asking the wrong question,” Opala taunted with a sing-song voice. The pot spun a little faster after the woman gave the plate a good spin. She rubbed both hands from the bottom to the top to give the soon-to-be water jug a longer frame.
“What question should we be asking?” Arabella wondered.
“You’re not going to make us guess, are you?” I hesitated. “Because, to be perfectly honest, we’re running out of time. The mermaids have this key, and we need to get it from them and reunite with our friends--”
Opala held up a hand, and my voice flew back into my throat. Not by any magical spell or anything, but by the sheer violence in her eyes when she looked up at me. Her eyes were completely white, like how Julei’s got before she had a vision. I realized then that Opala was blind.
I closed my own eyes and resisted the urge to scream. Now we had a blind mentor, too? I was seriously starting to doubt the validity of this quest.
The pottery wheel slowed its spinning, and Opala let it go until it rested to a complete stop.
“You need to be asking how to fix this.” Opala wagged her finger between the three of us.
We all exchanged glances until one of us perked up enough bravery to ask the appropriate question.
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” I wondered as I mimicked her gesture between the three of us. When I realized that she couldn’t see me, I dropped my hand down and felt foolish.
“The tangled bonds between you,” Opala clarified. “It cannot last.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “How do we fix these tangled bonds, as you say?”
“I cannot tell you,” Opala said as she started up her pottery wheel again.
“What the hell?” The abrupt words left my mouth before I could stop them. “You said we weren’t asking the right question, but then when we asked the right question. you say you can’t tell us?”
As I posed this, a sense of defeat hardened my stomach. I realized that the fate of the world lay in the hands of this old bat who may or may not have been in love with a mermaid, and whether or not she would tell us the location of a secret underwater kingdom.
We were screwed.
“You disapprove of me, Eva?” Opala said as if she could read my mind.
My gut plummeted straight to the floor when she asked that, so I wondered if she could indeed read minds. So I asked her flat out.
“Can you read minds? Is that your gift?”
Opala let out a bark of a laugh. It turned into a wheezing cough, and Yerti rushed to her side to hold the elder. The older of the two women pushed her off.
“I am fine, Yerti. Do not hover as such,” Opala commanded. “Go off now and let me talk to these young ones.”
Yerti kissed Opala’s cheek and hurried out of the room. I couldn’t say I was sad to see her leave. If only we could follow her, but with the information we needed. I kept my fingers crossed that it would be sooner than I thought, but my brain thought otherwise.
“To answer your question, Eva,” the old woman said, pulling me out of my thoughts, “my gift is not the ability to read minds, but being blind, I do pick up a few tricks. My gift is the ability to handle fire. I use it only now so I can burn these pots and harden the clay.”
“Your gift is with fire, but you fell in love with a mermaid?” I asked, disbelief written all over my face.
“Star-crossed lovers, if there ever were some,” Opala said with a grin.
I swore I heard Arabella swoon beside me, but I didn’t have a chance to be annoyed. I was too focused on Opala’s otherworldly reference.
“Hang on a second,” I said as I held out a hand, my thoughts running too fast for my mouth.
“Yes, Eva?” Opala said knowingly. The woman’s chapped lips curled up into a smile. “Did you have a question?”
“Are you… you’re not…?” I concluded, but then when I saw the woman’s cheeky grin, I wasn’t so sure. “Are you?”
“Am I what?” Opala taunted. “Use your words, girl.”
“Are you from my world?” I gaped at her. “Originally, I mean? You’re from Earth.”
Opala’s smile grew wider. “You’re not wrong, dear.”
“Did you happen to be the first person to bond with a dragon here on the Coast of Teine?” I asked, my words coming out sharply, more out of speed than wanting to accuse her of anything.
“You have good intuition,” Opala complimented.
Even though I knew I was right, it still bothered me that she wouldn’t confirm any of my suspicions. I wondered if it was because Arabella was there or if Opala had lived in this world for so long that she refused to acknowledge her old life.
“I hope it will serve you well for what is about to come next,” Opala said, her tone changing to something more ominous.
“What comes next?” I hesitated, my voice unwillingly shaking in my throat. I was so distracted by this revelation about Opala and all the questions I had for her running through my head like mice that I nearly forgot about the original reason why we were there.
“A choice,” Opala warned. “One of many that will be made along this journey.”
“What are my options?” I wondered as I readied myself. I widened my stance as if preparing for battle and grounded myself. “Lay it on me.”
“While I appreciate your enthusiasm and your tenacity, Eva,” Opala said calmly, “it is not you who will be making the choice?”
“But I thought…”
Opala stopped me before I could finish with a soft shake of her head. Her silver locks gently tapped the sides of her face as she finished the motion.
“It is not you,” Opala announced. “Your time will come, do not worry about this. But this decision is Montgomery’s to make.”
“Me?” the dragon reacted with utter surprise. “I do not understand.”
“I believe you do,” Opala said gently. She shifted a little on her stool, maneuvering herself to the edge of it. “You simply do not wish to admit it.”
“No,” Monte said, his voice quivering.
The dragon and Arabella seemed to catch on before I did because the girl’s hand flew up to her mouth. She gasped loudly, like an overdramatic actress, but unfortunately, Arabella appeared to be serious in her shock.
“What am I missing here?” I said aloud to the room, willing anyone to answer me.
“Montgomery must make the choice, once and for all, who is to remain his djer,” Opala explained with an airy tone. “Only then, when the bond is broken and only one remains, will I tell you the answer you seek.”
The old woman’s eyes were on me, but not on my face. Her gaze traveled lower toward my midsection. I followed her line of sight and noticed my belt. More specifically, the sword hanging from my belt.
Suddenly, I understood the whole scope of the situation. My breath stalled, and I thought I was going to pass out, and not from overexertion of my powers. Disbelief and shock wracked my body, with a little twinge of fear.
Not only did Monte have to decide who was going to be the djer, but I was going to have to break whichever bond he didn’t choose with Queen Irena’s sword.
And there was a very good chance I would have to break ours.
26
Kehn
“Kehn?” Heloise asked with furrowed brows. She took a couple of steps further, up the hill so we would be face to face.
Since I was a younger version of myself, it was the first time I ever had to look up at Heloise. The sensation unsettled me and made me queasy. I was caught between a memory and reality, and th
e whole notion hurt my head.
I clutched my temples for a moment and closed my eyes. The world shifted a little, and I felt as though I were on a rocking boat. Closing my eyes, as it turned out, did not help in the slightest. So I opened them back up and caught the gaze of the red-haired girl with the violet eyes.
Heloise, I told myself, her name is Heloise.
“Kehn?” she asked again. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” I muttered, but saying the word felt wrong like I was deviating from the script. Another pounding, this time behind my right eye, started up in my head.
“Where are we?” she wondered as her eyes traveled upwards towards the sky. “Why are you a boy? And why is Hannan here?”
“I do not know,” I answered. Speaking through the pain was difficult and only made it worse.
A feeling of guilt rose in my stomach like a snake. I was doing something wrong. Something was supposed to happen next, and it did not involve this girl. What was she doing here? In the middle of my memory? She had not been there when Hannan and I witnessed the destruction of our home. How was she there now?
“Wait a second,” the girl said. Her eyes flashed purple, brighter and more vivid than before. “I can see it. We are in your head, in your memories.”
I nodded vigorously, but even that motion worsened the pain behind my eyes. I pressed the heels of my hands into my forehead, hoping that would alleviate something. The pressure grew tenfold, and eventually, I put my hands down at my sides and stared straight ahead. Maybe if I stood still, she would go away, and my head would stop hurting, and everything would go back to normal. I could go back to feeling miserable over the death of my family and everyone I ever loved.
“Kehn,” Heloise said urgently. She crouched down and got right up into my face. “Listen to me very closely.”
I did not know how I was supposed to listen to her when she was so close, close enough to kiss. I had never kissed a girl before… No, that was not right. My brain shook again, like riding on a horse-drawn cart. I did not want to kiss this girl, but there was another one. Someone else.
Her face was on the edge of my memory, but when I tried to recall the image, the pain flashed through my head with the violence of a lightning bolt. I avoided the image at all costs.
