The Dubious Gift of Dragon Blood

by J. Marshall Freeman

  The owner of the inn looked even more suspicious when we checked out, surrounded as we were by three more weirdos. We all squeezed into Krasik-dahé’s rented sedan and drove down the mountain into a small town. Srarkraw got out at some random corner, telling Krasik-dahé she’d hear from him the next day.

  In an outlet mall at the edge of town, the Consul bought us new clothes. I helped Davix avoid major fashion errors—he almost picked up a clearance Christmas sweater that said “Who you calling a Ho Ho Ho?”—and soon we looked like we actually belonged on Earth. Was Davix devastatingly hot in skinny jeans? Hell, yeah.

  We returned the rental car and walked across the road to the bus station, where Krasik-dahé purchased three tickets at the kiosk.

  Tiqokh was waiting for us in the parking lot. He went down on one knee in front of me and said, “Dragon Groom, I will leave you now. I am anxious to try my new wings in the prevailing winds of Earth.”

  I felt a bit teary about his departure. “When will I see you again? Maybe I need you to keep guarding me.”

  “You are safe, at least for the time being. But I have no doubt we will meet again soon. Though such a concept is still somewhat foreign to me, I believe you and I have grown to be friends.”

  “You better believe it, lizard man,” I said. I thought about moving in for a hug, but that would be pushing him a little too hard on his first day as a friendship intern.

  Tiqokh stood and put a hand on Davix’s shoulder. “D’gada-vixtet-thon, I remember how difficult it was to adjust to life on the Realm of Earth. But remember that with challenge comes discovery and growth. Trust in your curiosity.”

  Davix smiled and looked up at the clouds swirling around the mountain tops. “I’m already curious about the winds of Earth, now that you’ve mentioned them. Those cloud formations are spectacular, and unlike any we have back at home.” His smile dropped. “Will we be able to repair the strands, Tiqokh?”

  “I hope so.”

  Our journey was in two legs—bus and train—with a hotel stay in between. In the afternoon of the second day, the towers of Toronto came into view, and I got jumpy and excited as a Jack Russell terrier. I started pointing out everything to Davix, realizing only thirty seconds into my spiel that I was talking English. He wasn’t listening anyway. He was staring up at the skyscrapers, taking in the sheer scale of everything. In the Realm of Fire, nothing human-made could compare, and I realized again just how much newness awaited him.

  Two boys and an octona climbed into a taxi and headed toward the suburbs. I guess Krasik-dahé phoned ahead, because the taxi hadn’t even turned into our driveway when the front door flew open and my mom ran out. She barrelled down the walk and into the driveway so fast, I was scared the taxi might knock her down. In the doorway, my dad was hopping up and down, trying to pull a shoe on.

  My heart pounded; so much was about to happen. After today, I would be a different person in the eyes of the people I loved the most. I hoped they could love that new Crispin as much as they loved the old one.

  Chapter 52: Rumours of Reunification

  If you don’t mind, I’m going to hurry through the sentimental reunion. There were hugs and tears, there were reproaches for having been away so long without calling. I explained that time works differently there, and besides, there wasn’t any cell signal. Mom, true to form, shifted things pretty quickly to recriminations and blame, mostly aimed at Consul Krasik-dahé, but some at Dad, too. It pissed me off, because even after everything that happened before I left, she still acted like this was all being done to me instead of something I had chosen on my own. I was the one who chose to go to the Realm of Fire and fulfill my dragon destiny. No one forced me. So, I put a stop to the fight, basically by shouting louder than anyone else.

  “Mom! Dad! I have to tell you something important.” Mr. Kapetanos next door leaned back against his garage door, settling in for some entertainment. “Inside. I’ll tell you inside.”

  “What about him?” Mom asked, pointing at Davix.

  “He’s coming in, too,” I said, dragging Davix through the front door before Mom could raise an objection.

  And there we were, back in the living room. Remember the living room? It’s kind of where this story started—where Dad and Krasik-dahé told me about the copper in my blood, where Mom and the Consul each grabbed one of my arms and pulled in opposite directions. Amazingly, I had the whole scene stage-managed to my satisfaction, which was basically everybody sitting—Mom and Dad on the love seat in front of me, Davix and Krasik-dahé on the couch at my back—and me standing in the centre of the room.

  “So,” I said. “Here’s the thing…here’s what I have to say…what I maybe should have told you before, but I wasn’t ready, and besides maybe you already…” I ran out of breath and gasped, then coughed. Dad was leaning back on the love seat, tensely casual, his eyes kind of scrambled and hard to look at. Mom, on the other hand, was pure alertness, back straight, eyes focussed on mine like we were the only two life forms in the universe.

  My mom takes parenting very, very seriously. There’s a section of her bookshelf with a volume corresponding to each stage of my development, from single-celled gamete right through to rolling ball of teenage hormones. For every situation, she always knew the drill. She would sit on the floor with me when I was having a tantrum at age five and encourage me to put my rage into words. When I was nine, she helped me untangle moral conundrums, also known as “Why Crispin shouldn’t steal from Mommy’s purse.” At twelve, also twelve and a half, thirteen, 13.5, 13.6…I got horrifying talks about masturbation, sex, condoms, consent, internet predators and their tricked-out torture dungeons.

  Sometimes she did the right thing only after she had a total meltdown, Jekyll-and-Hyding from screaming crazy lady to expert in child psychology over the course of one stressful hour. But whichever incarnation I got, I never doubted she loved me. If she was totally psycho about my dragon blood, it was just because she wanted me to be safe. But, Mom, you can’t protect me from who I am.

  “Dad, Mom,” I said, catching a still trough between waves of panic, “I’m gay.” What was it that made owning that word so hard? The panic wave caught up with me again, and I hurried to finish what I needed to say before the undertow dragged me down. “I know it’s…it’s not what you were expecting from your son, especially your only child. But…well, I’ve known, like, for a long time and…and…” My script eluded me. Tears were spilling down my face, and I couldn’t look anywhere except at the floor.

  Mom was on her feet in an instant, wrapping her arms around me and pulling my head to her shoulder. “Sweet boy, my little wolf, it’s all right, it’s all right. We love you. You know that.” Dad, who was always tortoise to her hare, joined our huddle, although Mom hadn’t left him much of me to hug.

  I had to squeeze my words past a glob of emotion in my throat. “I just don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

  Maybe this situation wasn’t as dramatic, but I felt the way I had in the Matrimonial Tunnels, like I was transforming into another creature before my parents’ eyes. And like with that other transformation, I was scared I wouldn’t survive. But my mom kept talking soothing words, and the sound of her calm voice anchored me.

  Dad’s voice, in contrast, was kind of choked up, but he told me, “It’s okay, Crispin,” before lapsing again into silence and taking a step back from the family hug.

  Mom said, “I’m glad you felt ready to tell us, honey. Though, of course, I guessed a long time ago. And then your relationship with Altman blossomed…” My shoulders stiffened at that. “I tried to talk to you about it at the hotel, remember?”

  I pulled back from her. “Wait a minute. There was no…It wasn’t a relationship with him. Jesus Christ, Mom.”

  “Well, call it what you will, Crispin,” she snapped back. “And then I ran into his mother at the mall, and I didn’t know what to say. I had to spin outrageous stories to cover for you. I told her to send your love to Altman.”
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br />   “What? Oh my God, I don’t want to hear this.” I turned my back on her and found myself facing Krasik-dahé and Davix, who were whispering to each other on the couch in the Tongue of Fire.

  “What’s wrong?” Davix said. “Why is X’risp’hin so upset?”

  “He is telling his parents that he is sexually attracted exclusively to men. The mother is responding that they already knew.”

  “So, what is the problem?”

  To be honest, I had forgotten they were there. And now, hearing that language was messing me up. The dissonance between that life and the one unfolding here with my parents was completely jarring. And I wasn’t the only one who felt unnerved, because now my mom was staring daggers at them.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a tone as icy as a mountaintop in the Chend’th’nif, “but this is a very private family moment. Maybe the two of you could just leave?”

  I ran over to Davix, pulling him to his feet. “No, listen. I have something to tell you. Mom, Dad, this is Davix. He’s my boyfriend. He had to leave the Realm of Fire and come to Earth, but it’s okay. He can stay with us, and we’ll teach him English and everything.”

  This happy announcement didn’t go down as well as I’d hoped.

  Mom’s voice was like glass shards on toast. “I don’t think so. You,” she hissed at Krasik-dahé. “I’d like you to leave now, and please take the young man with you.”

  My mouth dropped open, and I squeezed Davix’s arm tighter.

  “What is happening?” he asked, and I had to actively ignore him. Switching my mind back and forth between two worlds, two languages, was more than I could handle at the moment.

  Mom was looking right past us at Krasik-dahé, determined to make this an adult thing. “Listen to me, Dragon-lady, I am done with all this nonsense. You kept my son from me for five months. Five months! But now he’s back, and we’re going to have our lives back, too. Take this David person and please go.”

  I could hardly breathe. “Mom, his name is Davix. And you don’t know what he’s been through. He had to leave everything behind and run.”

  She finally looked at me. “Why? Is he a criminal?”

  And that’s when I got mad. Because, you see, I have the Jekyll-Hyde gene, too. I stepped forward until we were practically nose to nose. “Didn’t you hear anything I said? I’m gay, you got that part, right? And Davix is my boyfriend. Boy. Friend. I love him and he’s not leaving.”

  “Crispin, enough. I want every dragon person out of our house this instant.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, I got bad news then, Mom. Only two people in this room are one hundred percent human, and that’s you and Davix. The rest of us are dragon people. Coppery dragon goodness from head to toe. So, why don’t me and Dad and Krasik-dahé leave, and you can have Davix as your new, better son. Oh, sorry, he’s gay, too, but you can’t have everything!”

  “Stop this,” shouted my dad, stepping between us like it was a hockey brawl and he was the ref. (See? I can do sports metaphors when I’m all mad and testosterized.) “We do not speak to each other like this in our house. Crispin, Isabel, control yourselves.”

  I sputtered, “Tell her to control herself!”

  “I just did.”

  Mom threw herself down on the couch, crossing her arms and glaring into the corner while Dad took charge. “Consul, is there anywhere else for the boy…for Davix to stay?”

  “Dad, no!” I pleaded. He held up a hand, and I bit my lip, going back to Davix and pulling him into a hug.

  “What’s happening?” he asked again, and I just responded shh, and squeezed him harder.

  Krasik-dahé, who hadn’t moved from her seat nor betrayed the least emotion, said, “Arrangements could be made. I suppose I should have anticipated your mate’s reaction. But I think it would be better for Davix if he could stay with the Dragon Groom.” Mom snorted angrily at the term, and Krasik-dahé impressed me by saying, “My apologies. If Davix could stay with your son, Crispin.”

  I held my breath and looked back and forth between my parents. Then Dad was looking at Mom, too, and we were all just waiting. Mom got to her feet with a groan that made her sound sixty years old and walked to us. I was reluctant to let go of Davix, but he gently shrugged me off and held out a hand, which, after a moment’s hesitation, she took. In both hands.

  “Please Mom,” I said. “You’ll like him. He’s really smart. And way more mature than me. He won’t be in the way. He can stay in my room.”

  “Like hell he will,” Mom said, and I could see the thaw starting in the corners of her mouth. “He’ll stay in the guest room until we find a better home for him. I do not trust that consul creature to even know what a human boy eats.”

  I happened to know that Krasik-dahé was more of a gourmet than my mom, but I answered, “Yeah, good point.”

  “Are you hungry?” Mom asked Davix, who just smiled. “Crispin, is he hungry?”

  I exhaled. Figuring some snark would normalize the situation nicely, I said, “Oh great, Mom. Your own son is standing in front of you starving to death, but go ahead and feed the stranger first.”

  A week later, I was woken up in the middle of a dream by a strange feeling. The feeling is still hard to describe, so I’ll tell you the dream first.

  My mom comes home with this enormous bouquet of flowers, not so much enormous in number as in the size of the blood-red blooms, which are as big as human heads. They’re in a butt-ugly vase on the dining room table—some rough, hand-crafted thing like you buy at a garage sale and immediately regret. Anyway, it’s not long before I knock it over in a typical moment of inattention. Then Inby’s there, filling the room with his long, skinny body, sniffing his big snout into the shattered remains.

  “THAT’S NOT THE END OF THE STORY,” he says, stirring the shards. I watch as they begin to vibrate and shift, drawn toward each other by some inevitable gravity. That’s when I was woken by that, you know, strange feeling.

  It was two in the morning and I was in Davix’s guest bedroom, where I snuck into every night after eleven, and snuck out of again at six. Maybe the feeling had been a tiny earthquake—rare in Toronto but not unheard of. Or maybe something else. I lay there listening to nothing other than the occasional car on the street and a lingering impression that something had shifted. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again without reading for a while, so I figured I might as well head back to my room early.

  Davix was lying with only his lower half covered, and the moonlight through the window made his smooth, firm chest glow silver blue, the dark nipples indigo. We planned to buy him some curtains soon, not that he was complaining. He said he liked being woken by the sun. I fished for my underwear under the covers, pulled them on, and got out of bed.

  I navigated the moonlit room carefully, trying not to wake him. Davix’s new clothes were folded on shelves in the bookcase. On his desk were sheets of lined paper on which he had written umpteen rows of abc’s, like a grade one kid. Beside the sheets was a pile of beginner readers, and on his bedside table, a fat university text on meteorology. He would pore over the illustrations of clouds and diagrams of rain cycles for hours, begging me to translate bits of text into Tongue of Fire. But since I didn’t know what half of it meant in English, the process was kind of hopeless. Plus, I hardly needed another subject to study. Mom had gathered a ridiculously huge pile of school material for me so I could write exams in August and hopefully get out of repeating a grade.

  I opened the door silently—I was getting good at this—and slipped out into the hall. The guest bedroom was on the main floor, and my bedroom upstairs, but as I snuck through the dark living room, I caught sight of a silhouette at the window and almost cried out. Was it Tiqokh? No, too small…It was my dad. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and staring out the window into the front yard.

  “Crispin? Is that you?” he said in a low voice, turning my way.

  “I was just getting some milk in the kitchen,” I said too quickly, but he turned a
nd looked back out the window. “What are you doing up, Dad?”

  “I thought I heard something. Felt something.”

  I should have just run upstairs before he decided to quiz me on my late night ramblings, but I was intrigued enough by his statement to go stand at his side.

  “I hope nobody can see in,” I said, and he put an arm over my bare shoulder.

  “Nah, not with the lights out.”

  My dad was something of a mystery to me. I mean, I knew him pretty damn well, obviously. I knew his moods and when was the best time to ask him for money and stuff, but unlike Mom, he didn’t feel the need to say every single thought that went through his head. So, he surprised me sometimes by saying something profound or sad or just kind of wonky out of the blue. And sometimes he surprised me with an on-the-nose comment about stuff happening in my life when I hadn’t realized he was even paying attention.

  I said, “So, what do you think you felt?”

  He thought about it. “It was like something very far away turned and looked at us.”

  “Ha! Grandma would say it was Jesus and cross herself.”

  “What did it feel like to you?”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t say I felt anything.” But he kept waiting for my answer, so I tried to put the inexplicable into words. “I don’t know. Like there was an invitation to a family reunion, and the first RSVPs were trickling in. Like a vase that was broken started to…” I closed my eyes and tried to remember the feeling. “I think maybe it was the other realms, Dad. Like they shifted. Do you think they might return? Is Reunification coming?” He just kind of grunted and looked back out the window. I felt sleep reaching up to reclaim me and leaned my head against his shoulder.

  He said, “Your temporary driving permit runs out end of June. We should book you a road test.”