by J. A. Curtis
“That’s not much of a choice.”
“Maybe not, but does Arius deserve your loyalty? They kidnapped you just like I sought to do. You’re going to be loyal to them because they succeeded before I did?”
He had a point. Being forced to go with him wasn’t the nicest thing, but it was no less than what Arius and the others had already done. Also, more faeries falling because of me didn’t sound pleasant. I had made an enemy of Thaya when Tily fell, and even though they claimed their “essence” lived on, falling still sounded an awful lot like dying.
I rubbed the bracelet on my wrist. If I went with Dramian, would I find a way to escape? Trying to gain Arius’s trust wasn’t working out that great. Corbin needed me. Nana needed me. My parents—well, they were probably glad I was gone.
What would Nana tell me to do? The woman always had answers for my problems. But this was so outside the realm of everything I had ever experienced, I came up blank.
“If—if you promise not to force me to prove my leadership through any violent neo-soldier posturing, I will go with you,” I said.
“Deal.” His dragon appeared off to my right. Its eyes glowed a nasty shade of yellow, and its scales were blood-red. Dramian ran and leapt, landing on the dragon’s back.
“Climb on up,” he said.
I walked up to the dragon, wary. This monster made Tily fall. It eyed me almost lazily. Dramian straddled the dragon’s neck and offered me his hand. He pulled me up behind him. The scales on the dragon’s neck were like rough unpolished metal. The dragon raised its head, and I swayed. There would be nothing between me and the ground if I fell.
“I don’t suppose you have ridden a dragon before,” he said.
“That’s a negative.”
“Grip with your legs and hold on to me. I won’t lose my balance and fall off.”
“Good to know.” I placed my hands at his waist. Dramian chuckled.
“You will need to hold on tighter than that.” He grabbed my hands and pulled them around him. “Lock your fingers, squeeze your arms. Are you ready?”
“I hope so,” I said, doing as he directed.
I heard feet pounding on loose rock. Someone was running toward us at full speed.
“That’s our cue,” Dramian said.
The huge dragon snorted and flapped its long wings, launching us into the air. We rocketed upward. If I hadn’t had a firm grip on Dramian, I would have tumbled backward off the dragon. Dramian leaned forward, hands on the sides of the dragon’s large neck. He knew just the right angle to get the maximum height in the least amount of time but still keep us from falling off the dragon’s back.
We began to level off, and I glanced back to where I had been standing only a few moments earlier. Arius stood below, his face filled with numb disbelief. A strange sense of satisfaction filled me as he watched us soar off into the waning twilight.
5
Me and Dramian Hang Out
“If you want to convince anyone of anything, you must first know the other side’s argument.”
AS WE SOARED ACROSS the sky, fading light cast soft shadows over the large hillsides covered in green pine trees. The sun partially hid behind one towering mountain with a craggy rock face, which jutted up from the forest beneath. A boy stood in the top of a pine tree, resting on a branch too small to hold his weight. Dramian made some sort of gesture, and the boy made a slight bow before jumping from the branch. I held in a gasp. If the boy didn’t have some ability to save him, he’d be in trouble.
The ravine I had been sitting next to stretched below, sinking deeper and deeper until its depth became lost in shadow. Wind swept my hair from my face as I glanced around, seeing no sign of human existence. The wilderness, though breathtaking, promised danger to any who did not know how to find their way through its maze of trees and undergrowth. Sudden cliff faces and other dangers lurked within its dark confines. Like navigating my new world, I would get lost if I tried to find my way on my own.
We flew toward the setting sun. After a while, the dragon descended until we skimmed right over the tops of the trees, the pointed tips quaking with the force of the dragon as we whisked along. The majestic creature flew around in a wide circle before dropping below the tree level and into a small clearing. Squeezing my legs, I held tight as the ground came up in a rush, but the dragon landed with more grace than I expected for such a large creature.
“That was amazing.” I slid down the rough scales of the dragon’s neck to the ground, landing unsteadily on my feet.
Dramian dismounted more gracefully, coming to rest beside me. “Glad you enjoyed it, despite your traumatic kidnapping.”
“You get kidnapped once, you begin to get used to it,” I countered.
Dramian smirked and held out his arm. The dragon disintegrated, reappearing as a fresh tattoo curling up to his shoulder.
“I would find your lack of loyalty disturbing if it didn’t benefit me,” he said. “Seems Arius’s hospitality held some deficiencies.”
Remembering Arius’s look of disbelief as we flew away, I looked down. “I only came with you to stop the attack. I wouldn’t call that lack of loyalty.”
“And yet you are not very broken up about it.”
“Loyalty goes both ways, and I didn’t want what you did to Tily to happen to the rest of them.”
“It’s called falling, and Tily is fine, she just... got a fresh start at life.”
Dramian walked into the trees. We pushed through bushes and tall undergrowth, following no path. He made it sound all casual, like falling was the same as hitting the reset button on a video game.
“You could have let her go. She was weak. It's not like she was a threat at that point.”
“A leader does not set a consequence without being willing to follow through. I said she would fall if Arius refused to hand you over. When he refused, I had no choice.”
“You had a choice.”
“If you think falling is the same as dying, it’s not. Tily is alive and well. I could have easily ended her for good, but I didn’t. For faeries, there is a line none should cross.”
I pushed the leaves of a bush out of my face. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by his attitude. After all, Arius had said that Dramian was a dark faerie. If that were true, shouldn’t he be cavalier about taking down an enemy?
“Are you our queen or not?” he demanded.
“I don’t know who I am.” I watched for his reaction.
His eyes narrowed. “How can you not know?”
“How can I?”
“Our queen’s ability was to see visions of the future, while our general saw into the past. So, which have you been receiving?”
I stopped. “You’re serious.”
“Arius didn’t tell you?” He shook his head. “I thought that would be the first thing he’d explain.”
As a child, I’d suffered from violent nightmares. Beasts and monsters locked in mortal combat. Many a night I had woken up in terror, my parents rushing into my room because of my cries. But those dreams no longer bothered me. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had one.
He watched me process. “I don’t suppose you would tell me anything about these visions?”
I bristled. “You were going to attack Arius and the others.”
“You think they’ve never attacked us?” Dramian challenged.
We entered a small clearing in which stood a long metal structure. It looked like one of those storage units on farms where they kept cattle. There were a few skylights way up high and a few slats that were propped open along the sides. The large front doors slid open and shut. Two small kids were banging large swords together. They stopped when Dramian and I approached.
“You live here?” I felt a little bad at the surprise in my voice. This wasn’t at all like the evil lair I envisioned for Dramian and his fellow dark faeries.
“We don’t all get to live in nicely crafted structures like the manor.”
A gi
rl streaked out of the trees. She had olive skin and stormy gray eyes. Her long auburn hair was pulled behind her into a braided ponytail. “Sir, you called off the attack.”
Her eyes shifted to me, and she sucked in a breath.
“Mina, this is Raedia, my next in command. Raedia, meet Mina.” Dramian almost sounded bored.
Raedia bowed, her eyes back on Dramian. “How—”
“A story for another time,” Dramian said. “We need to pull everyone back and set up a perimeter around the camp in case Arius mounts an immediate attack. Send Iris back here. He will guard Mina. All of us will sleep on our swords tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Raedia said. With the blink of an eye, she was gone again.
Dramian ordered the small kids to round up all the other younger kids and get them into the cowshed. The kids bowed and hurried to do as he commanded. He grabbed the door, and it opened with a grating screech.
The inside looked almost how I would have pictured—with large wooden stalls lining both sides of the long structure. I glanced in a few stalls as we passed. Each one had a cot-style bed with a sleeping bag, armor, tools, and random items laying about. The air smelled of old hay and leather. I wondered how long they had to scrub to make the place suitable for habitation. The wooden paneling on the doors to the stalls, which originally came up a little lower than my shoulder, had been added on, with boards nailed between the slats to raise the height for more privacy.
Dramian pushed open one stall door at the very end, and it creaked open. “This one will be yours.”
I saw a cot with a navy blue sleeping bag. CDs stacked on top of a portable CD player sat in one corner. Ten unique-looking stones lay along one wall, and in another corner leaned a huge, straight branch someone had been trying to whittle into a spear. A Weezer poster hung on the boards above the cot.
“Whose is it?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dramian said. “It’s yours now.”
He pointed to an actual metal door at the end of the opposite row of stalls. “Armor, bedding, and extra supplies are in there.” He knocked on a door next to the metal one. “And this is the nursery.”
“Enter,” said a voice from the inside.
I peered in as I entered. White bassinets filled most of the small room. Two little toddlers walked and laughed, chasing each other around the confined space. They ran up to Dramian as he entered, and he scooped one up in each arm.
“Dram, play?” the boy said while the other, a little girl, clapped her hands.
“Not right now, Syrim,” he said. “This is Mina.” Dramian turned the toddlers so they faced me.
“Hi, Syrim, and...” I looked to Dramian.
“Perlasia,” Dramian said.
“Perlasia,” I said, addressing the little girl. “Good to meet you,” I reached a hand toward them, but they both shied away. Syrim laid his head on Dramian’s shoulder as he stared at me with large blue eyes.
“Do you have domovye too?” I asked.
Dramian nodded. “They tend to the young ones, help with the garden, make and store most of the food, and make sure we have certain basic supplies.”
“For all they do, you don’t see them very much,” I observed, peering up into the rafters.
“We see them when we need to,” Dramian said. He extricated himself from the children and led me out of the nursery, shutting the door behind him. “I’d be concerned if we saw too much of them,” he added.
A group of children about five or six entered the cowshed. Too small to fit into faerie armor, they wore shorts and tee shirts. Two older children tugged the large sliding doors shut, and with a curious glance our way, they each slipped into different stalls.
The doors at the front screeched open again, and a single older boy with a thin face entered. He was short and had long tangles of dirty blond hair, almost like dreadlocks. His eyebrows angled inward giving him the impression that he was perpetually upset about something. His arm boasted a fiery orange bird.
“Really, Dramian? You couldn’t find someone else to do babysitting duty?” the boy said in a whiny voice.
“It’s only a precaution, Iris,” Dramian said. “They may not attack us at all tonight.”
Iris looked me over, a sour expression on his face, but then bowed. “I’m Iris, Dramian’s lowly brother.”
I remembered Arius’s explanation from the night before. Iris had betrayed Nuada and the other faeries. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be left with him if Dramian ran off to play soldier.
“I’m Mina, the person you will be babysitting,” I said without bowing. “Also, perhaps your queen.”
The boy’s face flushed a little, and he bowed again. “Forgive me. It was not my place.”
“So,” I said, determined to clear the air. “You two are the ones who placed the queen and the general among the humans.”
Dramian and Iris exchanged looks. “Is that what Nuada and Arius have been telling you?” Dramian asked.
“They said Iris betrayed them, and that you wanted the queen and the general for yourselves. So you hid us among the humans, but then you fell, too.”
Iris shouted, and Dramian folded his arms, his eyes narrowed.
“Me? A traitor?” Iris said.
“Fits pretty well into their story, doesn’t it?” Dramian said, more calm than Iris, but his voice dripped with disdain.
“They refuse to admit they don’t know what happened. They have to blame it on us!” Iris said.
“Is that not what happened?” I asked, a little shocked by their reaction.
“We don’t know,” Dramian said. “That has always been a mystery. But if Margus can’t tell us what happened that night, I don’t think Nuada could have that knowledge.”
“You’re saying Nuada lied,” I said.
“Twisted facts to fit her version of events,” Dramian said. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I can’t believe Arius is gullible enough to believe that witch,” Iris grumbled.
“Arius is the true traitor,” Dramian said, with a fierceness that caught me off guard. “Turning his back on his brothers.”
My mouth fell open as I stared between Dramian and Iris. Dramian noticed my response and said, “Arius didn’t bother telling you, did he? Big surprise. Yes, Arius, Iris and I are one big happy family. Not that it matters.”
Dramian left to go check on the troops and left me in Iris’s care. I wanted to ask so many more questions, but Iris disappeared into his stall, the wood door banging shut.
Well, if he was going to be like that... I started sneaking past Iris’s door. I heard a long sigh.
“Don’t even think about trying to escape,” Iris said.
I frowned and turned toward his stall. “I thought you were supposed to keep an eye on me.”
“Don’t need to. I can hear everything going on for miles. Trust me. I will hear well before anyone shows up. Now do us both a favor and stay put.”
Not like I could escape anyway. I still had no clue where I was. Out of options, I went into the stall that would serve as my makeshift “room.”
As the stall door swung shut, my eye caught something etched into the wood on the inside of the door. My fingers ran over the carving of the name Syrim. I glanced around the stall at the few possessions lying around, a queasiness settling in my stomach.
With a sigh, I slumped onto the cot. The test with the domovoi, my argument with Arius, and now coming here with Dramian—I was trespassing into something I could never understand.
As the night became cooler, I gave in, slipped into the sleeping bag, and stared at the darkening skylight. Dramian and Arius were so much better suited as enemies than brothers. And Iris—the not so subtly aggrieved odd man out.
I massaged the woven bracelet Corbin had made for me between two fingers. I couldn’t imagine Corbin as my enemy. The kid was brilliant. His hands were constantly in motion, and he could make anything. I pictured his crooked smile, his smart aleck mouth—well, at least with h
is older sister. With other kids, Corbs hardly spoke at all.
He was small for his age, a constant target for bullies. An ache started in my chest. What would he do without me?
But if I was a faerie, was Corbin even my brother? And if Corbin wasn’t my brother, then were my parents my parents? And Nana wasn’t my nana. My whole identity, everything I knew about myself, was gone with one word. Faerie.
I pulled my sleeping bag over my head, wanting to hide from the thought. That couldn’t be true.
Dramian’s rough hand on my shoulder woke me hours later. I looked up. Blackness still blanketed the skylight.
“Get up,” Dramian said, “Time to go hunting.”
“Wha—” Hunting for what? I sat up to ask, but Dramian moved away, climbing a wooden ladder outside my stall up to a loft above. A bell hung from a rafter, and he pulled on the rope hanging from it, letting out a dull peal like a gong. There were a few shouts of alarm, but Dramian held both arms high over his head. All sound from the faeries died.
“Today, we are going hunting,” Dramian said.
A cheer rose, and there was a flurry of motion as faeries wriggled out from under their sleeping bags and buckled on their belts. They bolted out of their stalls and rushed to the front of the barn, throwing the sliding doors wide and hurrying out into the darkness.
I followed. Dramian spoke with Raedia and a boy with long curly dark hair that fell to just above his shoulders—the boy who had been standing in the tops of the trees yesterday while Dramian whisked me away from the Haven. He had survived his disastrous fall. Good news.
The kids busied themselves about the camp, and I stood off to the side. Should I talk to someone? Or was I supposed to wait for Dramian? I sidled up next to him.
He stopped talking and gave me a look, eyebrows raised. “Can I help you?”
Raedia and the boy both stared at me. “Were you going to introduce me?”
“Do you need introducing?” Dramian asked.
“No,” I said quickly. “It’s just, Arius had everything planned, and I didn’t want to ruin anything in case you—”
