The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

by J. Marshall Freeman

  We crept down the hall conspiratorially, smiling. Then there was this weird swishing sound, and the others hesitated and started to fall back. But I was curious and continued. The swishing sound again, this time followed by a little choked cry. I arrived at the door of the classroom alone and looked in. First I saw a circle of maybe ten kids, ranging from maybe six to thirteen years old, seated on cushions on the floor. They looked pretty upset, and a couple of the younger ones were crying. All eyes were turned to the front of the classroom, so I stuck my head farther inside and followed their gaze. A severe man in black and green, his head shaved, was holding a boy, around eight years old, firmly by one arm while he whacked a thin stick down on the poor kid’s butt and leg. This time, the kid cried out sharply, and tears began washing down his face. He tried to pull away, but the teacher was too strong.

  Without stopping to consider my actions, I barged right into the classroom, running straight toward this ugly Oliver Twist scene, shouting, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you freaking animal?”

  Chapter 10: Eliza Doolittle

  My mom likes to remind me of the time I brought home a litter of seven puppies from a sketchy neighbour that lived at the bottom of our street.

  “He said he was going to drown them in his bathtub!” I screamed in outrage. “In the bathtub!” I was horrified such a sacred place of bubbles and boats could be transformed into a slaughterhouse.

  “But what are we supposed to do with them all, Crispin?” my mother asked.

  “I-I could start a circus!”

  “You act without thinking,” my dad said. Or maybe that was last week when I accidentally made a burrito explode in the microwave. The point is, I might be impulsive, but screw you, I always have a good reason.

  I was down on my knees with my arms around the sobbing kid’s heaving shoulders, keeping my body between him and the teacher’s stick.

  “You okay?” I asked him, but he looked more startled than grateful for my timely arrival.

  “Children,” said the teacher in a voice like a scratchy flute. “Do you know who this is? It is the Copper Guest, come to us from the Realm of Earth. Say, ‘Welcome, Copper Guest.’”

  The class mumbled an out-of-sync greeting. They looked like they were in shock, either from watching their classmate being whipped or from my defiance of their teacher.

  “Children?” the teacher repeated, with an edge of menace.

  “Welcome, Copper Guest,” they repeated in loud, unison sing-song, and I just stared back in horror at their obedience. That level of kiss-ass would have rendered you utterly friendless in the schools where I grew up.

  The kid pulled himself out of my hug and ran to a corner of the small room, wincing as he sat. Red-faced with both anger and embarrassment, I stared at the teacher. His nasty little stick still hung in his hand, and he was rocking it back and forth like a little orchestra on the floor needed conducting.

  I stuck out my chin. “What do you think you were doing to that kid?”

  The man stared into my eyes, trying to intimidate me with teacher hypnosis mojo, and I have to say, in my world or this one, it was a powerful force.

  He called out to one of his students. “Glarndarn, what have we been doing this morning?”

  She jumped to her feet. “Learning the order of crop rotation, S’arnen-da,” she said, dropping right back down into her cross-legged position.

  “That’s right. And what was the miscreant child doing while we were studying this lesson from the sacred DragonLaw? Quirdin?”

  Another boy scrambled to his feet. “Fexil…I mean the miscreant child was flying his frog around, S’arnen-da.”

  All eyes turned to a paper frog, a little kite by the look of it, that lay on the ground near the teacher’s desk. Fexil, the punished boy, was hanging his head in shame, banished from the circle of his peers, apparently even without the privilege of a name.

  “Come on!” I protested. “I used to spend whole math classes making rosters of boy bands in my notebook!”

  I turned around, maybe with the intention of grabbing Fexil and walking out, only to collide with Davix, who had entered the room behind me. The other apprentices peered at me nervously from the door.

  “Copper Guest,” Davix said stiffly. “We have taken up enough of Teacher S’arnen’s valuable time. And you’ll recall we have our own responsibilities. Perhaps we should apologize for our rudeness and go.”

  I was full to the eyebrows with anger, and it was all too easy to tip it over onto Davix. I got up in his face, matching his glare with my sneer, and hissed under my breath, “I’m not apologizing to that horse-face dictator.”

  Davix didn’t flinch. He just looked me deep in the eye and whispered, “And if you don’t apologize, who do you think S’arnen will take it out on after we leave?”

  That brought me down in a hurry. I looked again at little Fexil, who looked back at me with a sullen pout. I realized I couldn’t really do much, so I said to the teacher, “Um, yeah, I’m sure Fexil—the miscreant, whatever—didn’t mean to be disrespectful. Just, um, go easy on him this time. Please?”

  The creep shot me a look of smug triumph that made me want to shove the paper frog down his throat, but then he nodded. “As the Copper Guest requests. Ekdahi. Your presence does us honour.”

  I was so mad as I stormed away from the classroom that I just started speed-walking wherever, inadvertently leading the apprentices on a pointless, erratic tour through the halls of Vixtet House. Davix came up beside me, matching my furious pace. I wanted to tell him to get unborn, to jump into a lava crater, but then I caught a whiff of his smell. Peaches and woodsmoke and rain. My anger became something more complex and confusing, and I fell back to let Davix steer us to the common room he had reserved. Not that I was in the mood to learn etiquette just so I could play nice with creeps like the teacher and Grav’nan-dahé.

  “Pretend this is the dining hall in Etnep House,” Davix told me as the others set cushions around a low table. “That’s where you’ll be eating tonight. Pretend I’m one of the masters, for instance my master, Tix-etnep-thon-dahé. You come in and greet me—”

  “Oh, I know,” I said, leaning in to do the forearm shake, but Davix kept his arms crossed on his chest. “What?”

  “That is an informal greeting among equals. You should touch your forehead and your heart and bow.” I tried it. “Not that deep, otherwise it looks like you expect them to bow back.” I tried again. “Good. Now, let me show you some of the rules when you’re eating.”

  We all sat down on cushions, except Stakrat, who pretended to be serving. I learned I was supposed to refuse the food once, let one of my fellow diners insist, then accept politely. There was some complex thing about when I was supposed to reply with certain pithy slogans, but I couldn’t get the rules straight.

  Kriz’mig simplified it for me. “Anytime someone says, ‘The gracious Dragon Lords,’ just reply, ‘And gracious is the world they have built us.’ That will get you through ninety percent of the interactions.”

  “And I guess I can throw in the odd ‘Ekdahi,’” I said, “and everyone will be impressed.”

  Davix said, “Just try your famous S’zista farad dr’kaden, and they’ll all faint in their soups.” The look on his face confused me. Was he being an asshole or was it meant as a joke? Could he actually—emoji of shock—have a sense of humour?

  A low bell rang somewhere outside, and several more followed from distant corners of Cliffside.

  “Fifth bell,” Stakrat said. “We’d better go, or the Copper Guest will be late for dinner.”

  I was suddenly sick of being called that. “Listen, guys, is it, you know, legal for you to use my real name?”

  “Sure. What is it?” Grentz asked.

  “I’m Crispin.” Davix’s eyebrows shot skyward. Grentz’s mouth dropped open. Stakrat was clearly on the verge of cracking up. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Kriz’mig said. “It’s a nice name. Cute. And, of cou
rse, we can use it when we’re not in public.”

  I was about to ask them to explain what was so funny, but Davix took me by the hand and said, “Come on, we have to go.” And we left the building and climbed upward through Cliffside’s winding streets with my skinny hand in Davix’s big warm one. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. They touched a lot, these kids in the Realm of Fire. Kriz’mig, for instance, was trudging along with her arm around Stakrat’s shoulders, Grentz playfully pushing their asses uphill when the road grew steeper. The chaperone wasn’t far behind, making sure this touch didn’t become, you know, full-on intercourse.

  Davix’s eyes were focussed ahead and upward, like he was climbing Everest instead of just the streets of his city. Despite all the ways he was trying to annoy me, he wasn’t a bad guy. Dr. Crispin’s diagnosis was a case of acute taking-everything-too-seriously. But maybe serious was better than what Altman had to offer. Altman let life drift over him like fog, as if no one and nothing really mattered. And I couldn’t deny it felt pretty amazing walking hand in hand up the hill, until I remembered he was probably Stakrat’s boyfriend. That made me think of Sylvia and the whole scene at school. Altman had drifted through that, too, gawping like a fish instead of defending me. My stomach knotted, and I vowed not to make the same mistake again. Maybe I would just avoid the love thing altogether.

  Chapter 11: The Bidahénas

  Etnep House turned out to be the big, pretty castle I’d seen when I arrived. By the time we’d climbed all the way, I was out of breath. But at least we were above the damp fog now, and a fresh wind was blowing through my clothes, drying the lightweight material. I raised my arms to air out my pits.

  “The days get so sticky, I know,” Stakrat said. “But when Sarensikar comes, the season of fog will end, and it won’t be so hot and humid.”

  Kriz’mig added, “Then it will be planting time, the nicest weather of the year.”

  “And Davix usually dances then?” I asked. I imagined him in a beautiful tuxedo with his long hair all blown out nice, waltzing around the dance floor with Stakrat in his arms, like in a BBC historical drama. Dragons and Dragability.

  “Yes. Usually,” Stakrat muttered, and I amended my casting. She would be more believable in some dinosaur action movie.

  I looked around. “I see we lost our chaperone. What’s with that? Don’t kids, you know, ditch the adults and hook up behind the 7-Eleven or whatever?”

  “The DragonLaw is clear on the matter,” Stakrat said. “Only the Arbiter of Blood chooses which couples may reproduce.”

  Kriz’mig nodded. “Our friend Din’don was banished for three cycles because he and a girl he was looped with conceived a child. I miss him.” She pulled off her kerchief and let her long hair fly in the wind. The sun was setting behind her, and I would have taken a pic, but my phone was back on Earth.

  “Harsh,” I said. Was it all arranged marriages here? And wasn’t there any birth control? But before I could figure out how to ask any of this politely, I heard Davix call.

  “Copper Guest,” he said, and we looked up to see him and Grentz standing on a higher balcony. “They’re ready for you.”

  We climbed a stone stairway and stood in front of a big open gate in the castle wall. A quadrana—the first one I’d seen other than Tiqokh—stood there, dressed in a gold and green toga, apparently waiting for me.

  “I am Zishun, Convenor of Special Events. Come with me, Copper Guest. Many wish to meet you.” His voice was kind of hissy, like someone voicing an animated snake.

  Only Davix was allowed in with me, and I was glad for his company. We followed Zishun into an entrance hall, crossing an intricate mosaic of a copper-coloured dragon. The huge hall was lit by glowing stones on tall, cast-iron stands.

  There were fifteen or twenty people way at the back of the hall, as well as two more quadranas, one of whom I was pretty sure was Tiqokh wearing a kilt. But between that group and me stood Grav’nan-dahé, flanked by two terrifying creatures.

  “The bidahénas,” Davix whispered, and I could tell they made him nervous.

  They were maybe three metres tall, and other than the fact that they stood on two legs and were dressed in long, priestly robes, they looked more lizard than human. As we approached, the little leather umbrellas I figured were their ears stretched open and rotated like radar dishes, triangulating on my position. Their clawed feet scratched the stone floor as they shifted from foot to foot, like they had to pee. But who could tell what it really meant? Their eyes, unblinking globes with pinprick irises, betrayed nothing human.

  Run away from the monsters! my instincts screamed, but Davix was holding his ground, so I nutted up and stayed. Grav’nan-dahé came forward to greet me, and I tried to look pleased to see him.

  “Peace and balance, Copper Guest.”

  “Hi,” I said in reply.

  “Peace and balance,” Davix prompted under his breath.

  “Right! Peace and balance. Thanks for inviting me.” Then I remembered to touch my forehead and heart, accompanying the gesture with a spasmodic bow. I straightened right up again, not wanting to take my eyes off the bidahénas in case they pounced. Just behind them was a short, balding middle-aged man dressed in orange jammies. He was up on a step-ladder, whispering into the umbrella ear of one of the bidahénas.

  “The Council of Earth invited you to the Realm of Fire, not I. But here you are.” Grav’nan-dahé sure knew how to make a guy feel welcome. “Behind me,” he went on, “are Kror and Throd.”

  I did a head and heart at each of them, but the only reaction they made was to randomly click the long claws on their hands like castanets. Then came a horrible, endless silence, during which those awful eyes just stared at me. Had Davix forgotten to mention something I was supposed to do at this point? Jumping jacks, recite dirty limericks? Then one of them leaned down and started sniffing me, which at least I recognized from Tiqokh as normal behaviour for the mixed beings. Still, it took all my willpower not to bolt.

  In a sibilant rasp, as if it was speaking on an inhaled breath, the bidahéna said, “Strong copper. Traits and traces. What will be written in the DragonLaw when this story is sent and sealed?”

  The little guy dressed like a cheese doodle scuttled over to me. “I am the Interpreter. Kror says he detects the strong presence of your copper blood. Further, he declares—”

  “Yeah, I heard. I mean, I understand. Thanks.”

  Kror and Throd suddenly snapped open their wings—I hadn’t noticed they even had freaking wings—in a terrifying exclamation mark to our one-sided conversation. I gave a little shriek and covered my head, as if they were going to drop a bomb as they flew off. I straightened with embarrassment in time to watch them disappear through a big arched window three stories up.

  As if I hadn’t acted like a complete loon, Grav’nan-dahé said, “Come, Copper Guest, the masters of Cliffside are anxious to make your acquaintance.”

  I turned to Davix, who seemed as unnerved by the bidahénas as me.

  “Did you really understand the words of Kror?”

  “Sure, why not?” He was clearly blown away by this, which I liked.

  “D’gada-vixtet-thon,” Grav’nan-dahé snapped. “You are dismissed. I hope you find time in your busy schedule to help with preparations for Sarensikar!”

  His words sounded nasty, and I wondered what was up between them. Davix bowed and left, and I walked with Grav’nan-dahé to the back of the hall where the Realm of Fire version of a cocktail party was happening. The masters were in little clusters, having a half dozen animated conversations. They were holding ceramic cups filled with a bubbling drink that sometimes got too enthusiastic and sloshed itself on the floor. Two or three other guests were wrapped up in formal wear like me, but most were dressed in the same simple style as the people on the street.

  In addition to the humans, several mixed beings were at the gathering, including Tiqokh and another quadrana. And yes, Tiqokh was wearing a leather kilt that fell just below
his knees and nothing else.

  A waiter passed me a cup of bubbly, and I stuck my nose in for a sniff, immediately snorting up a bubble and sneezing extravagantly.

  Grav’nan-dahé started to introduce me around. “Copper Guest, this is Tiren-renrit-gav-dahé, Master of Agriculture.”

  I did the head and heart bow. “You must be really busy, with Sarensikar coming up.”

  She smiled. “We are ready, Copper Guest. The seeds are separated and waiting.”

  Score! Good small talk, Crispin!

  “Please meet Krenlin-etnep-bor-dahé, Master of Health and Healing.”

  I bowed with a bit more elegance this time. “Hope I won’t need your services.”

  I only gave myself a B minus for that one. Still, I got a smile out of him.

  “That is down to the will of the gracious Dragon Lords,” he answered.

  “And gracious is the world they have built us,” I responded like the etiquette champion.

  But then, as if every dimension has to make sure Crispin doesn’t feel too good about himself, Lok’lok-sur-nep-dahé strode up to me, clucking and shaking his head in disgust. He spent a good thirty seconds painfully tugging at places where my outfit was sagging, muttering “No respect, no respect.”

  Blushing, I turned away and found myself facing a woman whose deeply lined face and tightly bound grey hair were a total contrast to her ripped body.

  “Copper Guest, how exciting to meet you,” she said. Over her simple brown dress, she wore a leather apron and chest piece. Her boots looked like they could safely cross a field of razor-sharp lava rock or kick open a thick oaken door. I started to do the bow at her, but she grabbed my forearm for a shake. Clearly not the formal type. “I’m Koras-inby-kir-dahé, Master of Defence of Realm, but most people call me Korda. You know my lead apprentice, I think.”

  “Stakrat? Yeah, she’s awesome,” I exclaimed, happy to cut the formality, too. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”