by Sam Hall
“Mmm...taste the rainbow,” Jez said.
“Wrong slogan.”
Mistral lifted her chin, beautiful violet eyes brimming with unshed tears, “Yes.”
Her arms and legs disappeared in a shower of gummy bears, leaving her torso and head perched perilously on top of the pile. Tears streamed down her face but she took her punishment with a stoicism that was actually admirable.
“It was my bloody idea!” Graves said, storming to the front of the pack. “Are you going to turn me into candy as well.”
“Yes,” I said and instantly he was turned into a pile of gelatinous bears.
“Bring the Queen’s dragon,” Scalla said, “before you do so much that you rob her of her opportunity for justice. Let everyone here see what the Queen has done.”
I nodded. The whole thing was ridiculous, yet there had been real pain and anguish here. I’d been focussing solely on me, but others suffered just as much, if not more. I waved a hand with one and wiped away tears with the other. Sephador landed on the earth, limp.
“Take the medications from her system and revive her. Can you bring Greynell here?” Scalla said.
“Yeah, does she want to come?”
“I think she would be best to deal with this.”
I stripped the drugs from the dragon’s system with grim pleasure. It wasn’t without its consequences. Sephador lost that placid stupefaction and it wasn’t pretty. I wouldn’t let myself look away when she lumbered to her feet. Her eyes searched the sky as if the answers are written somewhere out there in the stars. Her jaws worked, something she wanted to express that couldn’t be forced out from between them until the scream began. It was the most horrific song. In that harsh, rending eruption was the sound of agony, of coercion, of rape, defilement, the smashing of trust, the destruction of that content little bubble we all carry around with us before our eyes are forcibly opened. Tears pricked at my eyes, belated in the face of dying and being resurrected. I looked back at the blood in the sand and more slid free. Scalla and I sob in counterpoint, a small chorus to the main act. Greynell approached on light feet, settling down beside us as we watched, but Sephador whipped around, her cry broken off.
Greynell’s head dropped down to the sand and we did the same, baring the back of our necks to the explosive queen. I see, I hear your cry, my queen. Greynell’s voice was a whisper in my mind, yet Sephador stilled in response. We all hear, see your cry. Agony transformed into anger in Sephador and her head swivelled around, looking for a target.
“Show her what you did,” Scalla said to Queen Mistral, a menace I’d never heard from her before colouring her voice. Her eyes turned to me. “Show her.”
With a wave from me, the Queen was forced to remember all that she asked Olongth to do, the plans she made with her cabinet, with the ADC. Her dragon flinched with every memory, every plot. “Sephador...” Mistral sobbed, completely powerless now her riders were incapacitated and so was she. She was a ridiculous figure, nestled within the pile of lollies and stripped of her most basic form of agency. The dragon approached in fits and starts, I could see her wrestle with the information she had been given, but then something consolidated within her. Sephador’s scream was the scream of millions, all of those abused and hurt and held down by those who exploited their power. Every soul in the amphitheatre froze to bear witness, unable to look away as the queen of dragons’ head reared back, hovering over the person she loved, trusted most in the world like a snake. “No, Sephador, please!” Mistral shrieked. And then Sephador struck, those massive jaws swallowing the remainder of the Queen down, finally silencing her rider.
There was only silence as the dragon finished her meal, she turned around and screamed her challenge to every witness. No one replied, moved forward or did anything to impede her. Seemingly satisfied with this, the queen took flight, an ugly lumbering thing. This will be the first time she’s been allowed to fly the skies, Greynell said.
“Fly free,” I say, raising a hand belatedly in farewell.
After several minutes of quiet, Nan turned to me. “So what now, my love?
I shrugged, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. “I can’t turn everyone into gummy bears, can I?”
Jez shook her head. “Haven’t you seen Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs? Rat seagulls and anthropomorphic feral food. Not nice.”
“So what do I do with these fucks?”
“I’ve got guns in my room. A firing squad is an old skool way of sorting them out,” Flea said.
“But then others will just jump in their vacated positions,” I said. “Things need to bloody change here and I don’t know how.”
You think of outcomes, Greynell said, that is not yours to control. Unless you wish to become Aravisian too?
I shook my head. “I’m sure you’ve got the makings of a great country here, but right now, I’m desperate to go home.” Flea grabbed my hand and squeezed my fingers. “I could destroy the bonds between dragons and riders?”
And you would leave some dragons bereft. Not all are treated badly, Greynell said.
“Overthrow the government?”
As you said, another will be built on the same principles.
“So what then?”
The answer is in what you did for the Queen, Greynell said. When people aspire to change, they use the experiences, the testimony of those who had suffered. They do this both to give the victims a platform to share their pain, but more importantly, because it is in stories, communal experiences, not facts and figures, that make the difference. When a story resonates, a pain is shared and we decide to work very hard to try and ‘fix’ what we perceive the root to be. What is needed is for Aravisia to see, to feel what has happened to dragon and humankind alike. To feel the trauma as if their own, to perceive the consequences as if their own. That is what will create the change.
With Greynell’s nod I could see the path forward. It wouldn’t be a bloodless one, no revolution is. There would be upheaval and chaos, blood, death and not just of the guilty. I swallowed, aware of the enormity of what I was going to do and then pushed the wish out into the world, to be made a reality.
Into the consciousness of every dragon, every person old enough to cope with the information, the experience of the dragon queen is shared. Not the observation, cool and clinical, of the chemical rape of both my dragon and the Queen’s, but what was felt, what was sensed, the powerlessness and agony, the breaking of something inside a person that perpetrated abuse creates, to live long past the actual event. I linked the experience of Greynell and her slain children, the experiences of the queens fighting for dominance, the death of Lirriluth. Go deeper, Greynell said. I looked at her and she stared back. All of it. All dragons’ experiences.
You’re going to have chaos on your hands, I said to Scalla and the dragon. Be prepared for that. I have to go home; I need to go home. I’ll give you whatever I can before I go, but I am going.
It’s OK, or really, it won’t be, but we can’t stop the truth for the sake of comfort, Scalla said.
I quietly wondered if she really knew what she was calling down on her country, but I figured it was up to the Aravisians to decide what to do with Aravisia.
All of it, Greynell reiterated.
I nodded and formulated the idea in my mind. No one could put on the blinkers anymore, no one could pretend this hadn’t happened, divert attention away by pointing out that not all riders harmed dragons, play games of smoke and mirrors by focussing on the paranoid delusions about threats from outside Aravisia. There was nowhere for anyone to escape. I heard the cries and gasps around the amphitheatre, no doubt echoed across the country.
When the wish left me I felt strangely empty. I guess it was a reasonable reaction to have after the day I’d had. Fuck, Miazydar.
“I was wondering when you’d remember him,” Nan said with a smile to soften her words. That’s the problem with magic. It makes you a giant, making sweeping changes and then you forget those you love the most. It’s why
I’d given it all away when I married your grandfather. No harm done, well, not by you. Here’s your beastie.”
My dragon was deposited on the sand next to us, but in a condition I would never have wanted to see him in. Not a scale on his glistening red hide was harmed, but I could see the emotional damage of what he’d been forced to do weighed immensely on him. He was little more than a ball, his limbs tucked in tight, his muzzle resting limply on the ground. He wasn’t asleep but his eyes were closed. He flinched when I rested my hand on him, something that tore at me.
My heart?
No, I can’t be anyone’s heart, not after that.
Miazydar, you are always my heart.
Then your heart rapes the sedated bodies of fellow dragons.
I sighed, settling down next to him. Miazydar...
Don’t try to rationalise this, he said, finally opening his eyes. Those glowing yellow depths bore into mine as he dared me to try.
I’m not, but at some point I hope you’ll see you were a victim as well.
“This is one of the things I needed to teach you,” Nan said, plopping down beside me. “I don’t have much time left, not until the thing with Ash happens.”
“What thing with Ash?”
“Not now, focus on your beast. A lot of your power is tied up in him. It's why he disappeared when you let that doctor pull from you. He is you, in a way. Are you a fan of Jung’s psychology?”
“Hasn’t all that been largely disproved?”
“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug. “Look up what an animus is when you get home. Anyway, the dragon is you for all intents and purposes.”
“He knows, remembers stuff I’ve never heard of. Like the Rozenrrath. What was the deal with them?”
Her smile grew sly. “That’s something for the two of you to puzzle out. Now, to your beast. You could eradicate the experience.” I turned to look at M, he didn’t move in response to the suggestion. “That doctor’s still there, you could beat him to a bloody pulp. You can reabsorb the magic you devote to keeping Miazydar going.” My fingers tightened into fists at that. “You’ll need to unpick this one, love,” Nan said, patting my knee. “You’ll work out what to do, you always do. But remember, every action has a reaction, multiple reactions. You’re at the centre of a spider’s web of consequences and as you can see, you can’t predict how they will play out. That’s always the shortcomings of power like ours. Go with your heart, it’s the best you can do.”
Tears filled my eyes but went unspent as she disappeared again, fading until there was nothing left. I looked around at my dragon. Why didn’t I go to him? Why didn’t I help him first?
“Take the chemicals from his system, like you did the Queen,” Scalla said, placing an arm around my shoulders.
It’s your actions now that matter, Greynell said, approaching Miazydar and sitting down in the sand.
You could see the changes in him when I did so. They weren’t positive, his eyes screwed closed tighter, his body hunched further as if warding off a blow. Miazydar, I should’ve come for you first.
No, it’s right that I be seen last, if at all! His head jerked up and his eyes bore into mine. I hurt her, forced her, did the most disgusting thing a dragon can do to another! I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but I did it anyway! I raped her! I took a step towards him, his head reared back and he hissed when I did so.
“Tess!” Flea yelled as a trickle of flame came from his jaws, but I just held my dragon’s eyes with mine and walked open-armed towards him. Flames came, but I didn’t let them singe me, moving in until my arms were thrown around the base of his neck. I held on, aware of the conflagration behind me. I rested my face against the hard shiny surface of his scales until finally it all trailed away. Then everyone moved in; my human friends and the dragon ones as well. We clustered around Miazydar and pressed our bodies into his and waited.
Miazydar’s cry was a more subdued, pitiful thing, the sob of the brokenhearted. A group hug wasn’t magic, wasn’t going to do much and he wanted it that way, but there’s a comfort that comes from having your pain witnessed. We would be dealing with this for some time, but perhaps that was fitting.
Finally, when the sun began to set, there was nothing more for me to do. I mean there were thousands of things I could do. I could hear the sirens, see the plumes of smoke beginning already. There would be rioting at the very least. I sighed, but unless I was prepared to install myself as the sole player of the SIMS game that was Aravisia, I needed to leave and trust that the many capable people here would find a way. “If you need me...” I said as I got to my feet.
“Miazydar will reach out,” Scalla said before wrapping me in a big hug. “Let’s hope this works out, that we can work towards something better.”
I hugged her back, patting her awkwardly because I never know what to do when people hug me. It was either that or freeze like some inanimate log.
“You guys ready?” I said to Flea and Jez.
“Just need to grab my stuff...oh!” Their bags and mine dropped on the floor in front of us. Flea smiled and drew me in, holding me against his chest so I was forced to breathe in his scent of bergamot and cigarettes.
“Let’s go home.”
39
“You gave them tea, I bloody told you not to do that,” I said.
We appeared in the shop with a flash to find Ash being mobbed by small furry creatures.
“God fucking damn!” Ash swore as she batted the a teeming horde of Podlings with her broom. “Yes, but you didn’t say that when you did, they split into thousands of little furry entities with big sharp teeth!” Almost in response to this, several lunged at her ankle, which had her kicking wildly.
I shook my head and waved a hand. The Podlings instantly reverted to their parent forms. I sketched the customary bow to both, waiting until they responded before straightening up. “My apologies, collective ones, my sister is not versed in your ways.” Ash got a whole lot of side-eye from their many, many orbs. “I promise a hundredweight of gold per equivalent in pod phlegm going forward as reparations.”
“This is acceptable. See that all tea is removed from your offered beverages in future. You have quite a nice world, it would be a pity for it to be consumed by our children,” the two parent forms said.
I bowed again, ignoring the implied threat and assuring them of just that, before ushering them through the portal.
“You’re back! Thank fuck! And why the hell were you guys gone so bloody long? You will not believe the stories I’ve been feeding Mum to keep her off the scent,” Ash said.
I collapsed into one of the meeting room chairs, Miazydar going to a corner and curling up in it, head on his paws. Flea kissed my head and said, “I’m calling Gabe, see where we’re at with the business. We’ll get pizza afterwards, yeah?”
I nodded, then looked up at Ash. “Adventures, things didn’t go to plan, because of course, they didn’t. Saw Nan, overthrew a government, have all-powerful magic, but we’re back.”
“Wait, what?”
I sighed and rubbed my hands through my hair.
“Can we close up the shop and get some takeaway and beer in here? Seriously, I’ve eaten organic food by default every damn day and haven’t experienced the superpowers that apparently come with this.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Well, I need to hit the bookstore before they close. You bitches will have quite the reading to do before bed tonight,” Jez said and swanned out.
“So Jez’s still the same then,” Ash said. “And what about you?”
“Yeah, mostly or I will be. I’m just coming off a climactic event and am feeling a bit flat. But Ash...”
“Yeah?”
“I’m taking over the portal side of the business going forward, OK?”
“Oh, thank fuck for that!”
Epilogue
Five years later
“Tess...babe. Tess, you’ve got to wake up.”
I opened my eyes groggily to see my
husband looking down at me. Yup, we’d gotten married much to Mum’s delight, six months ago. She looked past Flea’s tattoos and background when she saw the bank balance of the business. That and the fact Ash lived with Gabe and now had a four-year-old son called Mikey and had shown no interest in walking down the aisle.
“What’s up?”
“It’s Ash. Mikey’s done it again and she needs us to sort it out. Apparently, he’s wished up something a bit on the scary side.”
“What time is it? Goddamit, I don’t want to put a seal on him, but I’m seriously beginning to see the wisdom in Nan’s decision right now.”
“Come on. Should I get the trike or is Miazydar staying here?”
I looked over to where my small dragon lay curled around the brass bedstead. Staying here. Good luck with the magic child, he said before dozing off again.
“He’s staying.”
“Probably for the best. Don’t want you catching a cold out there, or junior here.” Flea’s arms went around me and he hugged me close, his hands linking over the gentle swell of my belly.
“Junior’s no more than the size of my thumb at the moment, so unlikely, but you’re right, we better go. I’ll blink us there. Ash only calls when it's something really scary.”
We appeared inside the darkened hallway in Ash and Gabe’s place, the nameplate on the door read “Mikey’s Room.”
“Fuck, that was fast,” Gabe said. “I’m glad you’re here though.” And with that, he opened his son’s door.
I heard the growl as soon as we did so, then two yellow eyes, bright as lamp lights glowed in the darkness within.
“What the...?” Flea said, but it became apparent pretty quickly what was there. The rumble became a snap and a furry muzzle lunged at us, complete with a very impressive set of gleaming teeth. We slammed the door just in time but were treated to the sound of the beast tearing at it. I reinforced the door with steel and then turned to the others. “Is that Mikey or something he’s conjured up?”
