by Garret Weyr
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
COLORS
FOLLOWING THE LITTLE CAT, MAGGIE AND GRISHA found themselves walking a familiar path toward the Stadtpark. Maggie was sure they were heading to the Kursalon, the park’s music hall that looked like a palace. But Tyr took them down to the U4 metro station. And instead of waiting on the platform for a train, they went through a heavy door that said, in German, NO ENTRANCE. They ended up in a small room filled with noisy and hot machines that were part of the U-Bahn’s rail system.
In the middle of the room was an unusual flight of stairs that vanished into the ground after only three steps. But when you’d taken those three steps, three more appeared. Each three-step set was very narrow and had no railings.
“Don’t worry,” Tyr said. “No one has died using them.” “Where do they go?” Maggie asked, not exactly comforted by the assurance.
“To the tunnels,” Tyr said.
After about a hundred or so steps, Maggie got into a rhythm of only being able to see three steps at a time (the next three did not appear until you were practically done with the previous three, and then those three disappeared the minute you started on the next set).
Grisha scaled down considerably in size. “We’re so close to finding them,” he whispered to her. “I never thought we’d get this close.”
Maggie pressed her hand against his orange scale, partly to say I know and partly because she did not think those stairs looked safe.
“Just follow me,” Tyr said, making her way down the strange steps gracefully.
Just as she was beginning to feel comfortable using them, the stairs ended. “Thank goodness,” Grisha whispered, and Maggie smiled.
As they turned this way and that, it seemed as if they were in a maze of tunnels. The farther they walked, the warmer it got.
“Who built these?” Grisha asked. The tunnel floors had the same smooth, rounded shape as the sides and the ceilings. They were oddly familiar, and he wondered where he would have seen them before now.
“The dragons built everything down here,” Tyr told him.
Of course, Grisha thought. These were similar to the underground spaces dragons used to build out of dead trees, stones, and underbrush. Nothing in the forest was ever wasted, and the dragons who loved to build made beautiful underground dwellings to protect creatures from rain, ice, snow, or extreme cold.
Grisha had dropped to all fours, but Maggie had to walk with her feet wider apart than normal to keep her balance. It was as if the halls and the stairs had been designed so that anyone with two legs instead of four would have difficulty using them. On top of that, she began to have trouble breathing. The air was becoming very, very warm.
Tyr made one last turn into one last tunnel. At the end of it, Maggie and Grisha could see flickering hints of flames. As they approached the source of the fire, the smell of smoke choked the air, and suddenly they were there. The tunnel opened up into a huge, cavernous space.
And there before them, everywhere they looked, were the missing dragons.
These dragons were not quiet sleepers. The creatures who were curled up on straw beds or stretched out on old newspapers snorted, tossed, turned, and exhaled fire.
Maggie, who had only ever seen the dragons at the bar, was amazed at all of the colors spread out before her.
White, silver, black, fuchsia, turquoise, and burgundy created a mosaic of color across the floor. Wings furled and unfurled like gorgeous banners as dragons exhaled fire that quickly vanished, leaving behind heat and smoke.
Maggie wanted so much to talk to each and every one of them, to ask them about the battles they had fought, the kings they had rescued, and the dreams they’d spent the past forty years having.
“Do they ever wake up?” Grisha asked Tyr. It was wonderful to see the dragons whom he had feared were gone forever.
“No, but they aren’t dying anymore, thanks to me,” Tyr said. “The spell Leopold used was killing most of them. It was supposed to make them quiet, but his magic wasn’t strong enough to be precise. Instead of making them quiet, they all fell asleep. A couple had a bad reaction to the spell itself and got fatally ill.”
Without thinking, Grisha and Maggie moved closer to each other until they were almost touching. Watching the dragons sleep began to feel disrespectful, but to look away felt just as wrong.
“My half of the spell kept the sick dragons from dying,” Tyr said. “Thisbe’s half would have woken all of them up.”
Maggie wondered whether she would rather not have discovered any of this. It was awful to see so much beauty trapped in a kind of living death. She made herself focus on the part that was good news: Because of Tyr, the dragons were alive. She had to hope that soon they would be awake and free.
“Where are we?” she asked, wanting to make sure that she and Grisha would be able to get back to this place even if they never saw Tyr again.
“Schönbrunn,” the cat said.
Now a museum, Schönbrunn had been the emperor’s summer palace as well as where he’d been born. It was a huge building with an even bigger garden. It was so big that one could easily imagine the earth beneath it absorbing a large number of dragons.
“Poor things,” Maggie said. “It’s so wrong.”
Grisha, feeling much the same but worried about the effects of the heat on his human companion, turned to Tyr. “Take us back,” he said. “We’ve seen enough.” He did not want to return until they were able to bring all these dragons back into the world.
They retraced their steps to the Blaue Bar and discovered that walking up the vanishing stairs was easier than going down. To cover her lie, Maggie told her father she hadn’t been able to sleep. She couldn’t believe they’d been gone for less than an hour, as it felt like the universe had shifted.
“Whipped cream and cake should help,” Alexander said with a smile, before turning back to his friends.
For a moment or two, Maggie stood by his table, amazed that her father and all his friends were behaving normally, as if more than seventy dragons weren’t trapped under the city’s earth.
“Everything is so wrong,” she said to Grisha.
“Not everything,” he told her. “The whole world is not horrible just because one part is.”
“It feels horrible,” she said, and he nodded. Yes, of course it did.
“Will they ever wake up?” Grisha asked Tyr.
“They might,” Tyr said. “But the river water alone won’t do the trick. It has to be used by someone who knows magic.”
“But isn’t the water like a potion?” she asked.
“It’s exactly like one,” Tyr said.
“Well, you can use a potion without giving anything up,” Maggie said. “You don’t have to know magic to use it.”
“That’s not true,” Tyr said.
“It is,” Maggie said. “Grisha, tell her what Yakov told you when he set you free.”
Grisha briefly relayed what Yakov had said about having to give something up in order to practice magic, but that with potions, it was simply a question of finding the right one and using it.
Tyr asked whether Yakov had ever seen Grisha again after he’d left for Vienna.
“No, but I wasn’t allowed to leave the city,” Grisha said.
“And he never came to visit you?” Tyr asked.
“No, he didn’t,” Grisha said. “I always thought he might, and then I stopped hoping.”
“You realize he gave up being able to see you,” Tyr said matter-of-factly. “It wasn’t the nettles that made the potion work.”
Grisha had a sudden image of Yakov clearing his throat and wiping his eyes. His farewell words—Wherever you go, you’ll take a part of my heart—took on a new meaning. If only he’d known. He felt stricken, sick with sadness.
But Maggie was excited. Yakov, who hadn’t been a magician, had been able to make a potion work. He had given up what he loved.
Grisha, in the way friends sometimes do, realized what she was thinki
ng and shook his head. “No, don’t. Maggie, don’t.”
It would be easier, she thought, if she didn’t look at him. She’d be unhappy and Grisha would be too, but together they’d have a moment of glory. After that, they wouldn’t have to see each other in order to be linked forever.
“Not everyone can see dragons,” Maggie said to Tyr.
“I know,” the cat said. “It takes a certain sensibility to notice what is possible.”
“Even people who might want to can’t always do it, but I can,” she said. “If I were to give up seeing dragons, I would be giving up something I love more than almost anything.”
Tyr tilted her head and examined Maggie as if seeing her for the first time.
“There has to be another way,” Grisha said.
“Are you sure about this?” Tyr asked Maggie.
“It’s out of the question,” Grisha said.
“It’s your choice,” Tyr said. “But to give up something that important to you, you have to be sure.”
“I’m sure,” Maggie said. To Grisha, she said, “It’ll be like Rachel. Only instead of not being able to see you because I’m a doctor, it will be because of what we did together.”
“Magic asks too much,” Grisha said. “It’s not fair.” In his long life, he’d had much time to think about all that was wrong with magic.
“Magic asks for its exact price,” Maggie reminded him. In her short life, what she’d learned about magic was that it demanded a sacrifice. This was one she believed she could make. “Even if I can’t see you, you’ll see me,” she said.
“Will I?” Grisha asked Tyr. “Or would that be part of what she gives up?”
“I can still see Thisbe,” Tyr said. “I often go to the roof of the D.E.E. just to see her.”
Grisha turned back to Maggie. “Are you sure you’ve thought about this?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” she said, her words rushing out. “I don’t have to think. It’s the exact right thing to do.”
“Being the right thing doesn’t mean we won’t regret doing it,” the dragon said.
“Grisha, it’s our quest,” she said. “How could we regret that?”
Time makes you regret things, he thought. But there was no way to explain that to a human as young as Maggie. And the mix of determination and excitement in her voice and eyes was not to be taken lightly. If they regretted it, at least they would do so together.
He thought of all the sleeping dragons. “How much water do you think we should bring back from the forest?” Grisha asked Tyr, and was rewarded with the rare sight of a smiling cat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FLY AWAY HOME
MAGGIE THOUGHT THE BLACK FOREST WAS DISAPpointingly like other forests. There were the usual trees, birds, bugs, brambles, and rotting things. There were sounds that were either too quiet (the slight rustle of wind) or too loud (an angry owl or a tree branch crashing). The air felt damp and heavy.
To Grisha, being in the forest was like slipping into a bath at the end of a long day. The spell Thisbe had used to keep Leopold from detecting a dragon in Germany was good for only thirty-six hours, so he had to resist the temptation to detour in search of his favorite trees. Instead, he ate an acorn from every oak tree they passed.
Grisha and Maggie had answered all of Thisbe’s many questions about Tyr. Once they’d reassured her at least four times that the small cat was well, Thisbe had set to work on getting them to Germany. “I’ll give up three memories of Tatiana to keep your trip secret from Leopold. One memory for every twelve hours,” she said.
“Is there another way?” Maggie asked, not wanting to be responsible for that type of loss.
“There isn’t, and anyway, it’s fitting—Leopold murdered Tatiana, and I will use my memories of her to help kill him.”
“It’s not guaranteed that Leopold will die once this spell is reversed,” Grisha reminded them. “He fears death might happen, but it may just be that his power weakens even more.”
“I hope he dies. Then I will take Theodora away from this godforsaken place,” Thisbe said.
“What about Tyr?” Maggie asked. “You’ll be able to see her!”
Thisbe took her spectacles off and began to rub them with her rumpled but clean shirt.
“She can never get back what she has given up in exchange for magic,” Grisha whispered.
Thisbe put her glasses back on and said calmly, as if she hadn’t heard either of them, “I think seventy-two dragons are still buried. Is that right?”
There had been seventy-seven when the unlucky dragons were first moved to the apartment building. Three had been shot trying to escape, and two had died from a reaction to the spell that was supposed to have put them to sleep.
“Yes,” Grisha said.
“You say Tyr thinks it will take about two ounces of water per dragon?” Thisbe asked, not waiting for an answer. “So two times seventy-two is . . . oh, I hate math.”
“A little over four liters,” Maggie said, glad that her father insisted that math was a vital part of a creative and independent person’s education.
“Can you carry that out of the forest?” Thisbe asked Grisha.
“Of course,” he said, and, as if to prove it, he spread and flexed his wings.
It was a shorter flight than the one to London, but much bumpier. As soon as Maggie and Grisha landed—in a shallow pond at the edge of a clearing—and were out of the water, Maggie slid off her friend’s back, landing with a thump on her bottom. Grisha had scaled to an enormous size the moment he’d caught scent of his old home; each of his paws was now twice as large as when they had taken off.
Maggie stood up and got a good look at his new girth. It was impressive. “How far are we from the rivers?”
“Not far,” he said, and led her into the woods until they arrived at a new clearing. “This is where I was captured by Leopold,” Grisha said. “I lived with my mother three miles north of here.” Being this close to where she had taught him to roar made Grisha sad.
“Did you ever see her again?” Maggie asked.
Grisha was struck by how often she knew his thoughts without walking through his mind the way Thisbe could and did. He shook his head no. “She died about sixty years before Yakov freed me,” Grisha said. “Dragons don’t live much past five hundred or so.”
“How old are you?” Maggie asked.
“Close to two hundred, maybe,” he said. “I don’t know exactly how old I was when I went into the teapot, but I doubt more than sixty.”
“How old is Kator?” Maggie asked.
“About three hundred and seventy, I would guess,” Grisha said. “Only Lennox is over five hundred.”
“If you get sick before I find a way to see you again, will you ask Kator to keep an eye out for me?” Maggie asked.
“Once you do this, you won’t see me again,” Grisha said. “And you won’t see Kator, either, or any of Vienna’s dragons.”
“I don’t think we know enough about magic to say that,” Maggie said.
“I do,” Grisha said. After all, if you’re born in the forest, you know exactly what magic is. It was odd, he thought, how stories about magic tried to present it as a force for good. Magic was just a force available to those who understood it.
He and Maggie were leaning against two oak trees, looking at how light filtered through the leaves. “Don’t agree to give up seeing magic if you’re thinking it’s temporary,” he told her.
“I have to think it’s not forever,” she said. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to do it.”
“Maggie—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Let’s not talk. Let’s just pretend that everything will work out.”
Grisha remembered that early on in his enchantment, he had repeatedly told himself that it wasn’t forever, that sooner or later the spell would reverse itself and he would be free. As it turned out, he was freed, just not in the way he had imagined. So who was he to tell Maggie that things would
not work out in some way or another?
“It’s getting late,” he said. “We’ll spend the night by the basin and then fill up the bottles just before we head home.”
He dropped onto all fours and she climbed up without hesitating. When he walked there was no turbulence, and the ride was smoother than when flying. Grisha moved slowly, so it was more like sauntering anyway. It was exactly the right way, Maggie thought, to be a part of a forest.
They heard the rivers before they saw them. They emerged from the forest onto a grassy bank. On either side of the bank were two narrow bands of water, which Maggie assumed were the Breg and the Brigach. The small rivers crossed right at the bank’s tip and swirled a bit before spilling out into the wide start of the Danube. It was beautiful, but in the normal way of any wide and glorious river.
“Sometimes magic doesn’t have to be more than it is,” Grisha said, when Maggie complained that none of the three rivers—even where they met—looked particularly special. “People expect that the magical will be extraordinary, but it’s often easy to overlook.”
He pulled cheese, bread, and a chocolate torte from the basket Alexander had asked the hotel kitchen to pack. He took a long drink of water from the Breg side of the riverbank and filled a cup for Maggie, who looked at it cautiously. “By itself, it’s just water,” he told her.
The sun had faded away, turning the forest a soft gray. By midnight, it would be black, then dark blue in the very early morning, and then gray again, but this time streaked with pink.
It had been a long day and tomorrow would be another. Grisha made a space between his front paws and Maggie curled up as if she were falling asleep under a table at the Blaue Bar.
