The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

  “What’s this?” he asked. “What have you brought me, Heikki? Is she what I think she is?”

  “That she is.” Heikki half-pulled, half-helped me out of the cart, and held me up when my numb legs gave way underneath me. “The first female dragon found on the plains in a generation. Joki was bringing her back, but we captured her while he was sleeping.”

  “How do I know she is what you say she is? Show me.”

  Heikki and Lord Hei haggled briefly over when and how they would demonstrate my dragon-ness. In the end, Heikki went back to the cart and retrieved an even smaller vial than Joki’s.

  “I’m going to give this to you,” he told me. “It won’t hurt you; you know that. No funny business.”

  I had just enough time to think that I should seize the moment and bite him when he took off my gag, or use the strength that the blood gave me to fight my way free, before he forced the neck of the tiny vial between my lips and tipped it back, pouring not just a drop but a whole swallow, the entire contents of the vial, into my mouth. And then I could do nothing but scream and convulse like a woman struck by lightning, and then collapse into their waiting arms and lie there limply as they dragged me down into the bottom of the keep and threw me into an empty cell.

  THE CELL WAS JUST LONG enough for me to lie full-length on the floor, providing I held my legs off to the side to avoid knocking over the slop-bucket in the corner. At least I had that, and wasn’t expected to lie in my own filth. I made use of it, twitching and stumbling and half-convinced by the way it kept pressing down on my head that I was wearing the ceiling as a hat, and then curled up in the corner and waited for whatever was going to happen to me.

  TIME WAS MOVING STRANGELY, so I didn’t know whether the wait had been long or short when Lord Hei appeared, flanked by two men who looked enough like him to be his cousins. Or mine. There were not many of us black-haired people on this side of the mountains. Perhaps we were kin, although no one had ever said anything to me about noble blood. But it seemed there was a lot about my blood I didn’t know.

  The sound of the cell door rattling open grated on my skin and seemed to crawl under my scalp and lodge somewhere in my spine. When I tried to stand, my legs gave way underneath me, and I had to hold onto the wall to keep myself upright. Even so I was still taller than everyone else. Maybe that was why they stood out in the corridor instead of coming inside. Some part of me that seemed very far way imagined rushing them and overpowering them and escaping. But that only made me shiver from fever till my teeth rattled in my head.

  “Is she supposed to be like that?” Lord Hei asked.

  The man to his right shrugged. “We gave her a lot,” he said. “The effect can be strong, especially at first, and especially if you don’t bleed them properly. You have to let out the weak blood to make way for the strong.”

  “Should we wait till she recovers?” asked Lord Hei.

  “Best to bleed her now,” said the man on his right. “She’s strong; like as not she’ll survive. But if we don’t make the change now, it might not get made.”

  Lord Hei nodded a decisive nod. “Do it,” he said. “But don’t harm her.”

  “There’s no way to do it without hurting her.”

  “Laela.” Lord Hei came up to the open doorway. “We are going to help you. It will hurt a bit at first, but don’t struggle, and it will be over quickly and you’ll be better than ever. Stronger than ever. More beautiful and perfect than you could possibly imagine.”

  I wanted to say that I didn’t feel beautiful and perfect, but my teeth were chattering too much for me to get a single word out. Then all three men came crowding into my cell, and I discovered that even with a warning, I couldn’t fight at all.

  AFTERWARDS LORD HEI seemed shaken. Not as shaken as I was, unfortunately.

  “Are you sure you didn’t hurt her?” he asked.

  “If she’s really a dragon, she’ll survive,” the man who had slit my wrists and bled out a carefully measured cup of blood told him.

  “If she doesn’t survive, she wasn’t a dragon,” said the man who had forced more of the red liquid down my mouth.

  “Should we keep watch over her?” asked Lord Hei.

  The two men shrugged together. “Not much anyone can do for her, one way or the other,” they told him. “And she might cry and scream a lot. No point in listening to that.”

  They left, Lord Hei giving me backward glances as he walked away, but walking away nonetheless. I thought about killing them. I thought about capturing them and pinning them down and slitting their wrists and stealing their blood as they had stolen mine, and forcing them to swallow strange liquids. I thought of all the poisons I knew, all the places in the human body I knew where a single cut or blow or twist would be fatal. But none of that had done me any good. They had still come in and done what they had wanted to me, and all my rage had meant nothing and would probably mean nothing when they came in and did it all again, as they had promised they would.

  “Don’t struggle,” Lord Hei had told me, stroking my hair as tenderly as a man like him knew how, as the others held me down and hurt me at his orders. “Don’t struggle, and it will be over soon and you will be glad of it. You’re going to be a dragon, Laela, a dragon! My very own dragon. With beautiful black hair, like a curtain of midnight.”

  The tenderness in his words and his hand on my hair was the worst part, worse than the pain and the fear and the dreadful feeling of helplessness, because I knew then, knew down to my very marrow in a way I had never known before, why women stayed with bad men who did bad things to them, and I knew I could be one of those women, and very likely would be if I didn’t find a way to fight it, to escape, and soon. Because I would forgive any cruelty from someone who needed to me. The need in his voice and his touch was a stronger draw than any drink, any tincture of poppy, and I knew then I could succumb to it just as so many women had done before me. Everything could turn out exactly as he hoped, because he hoped it and I could not bear to dash his hopes the way he would dash mine.

  But then they were gone, taking with them whatever shred of tenderness he had shown to me, and the desire to kill them overcame every other desire. I shivered and shook, and thought the walls were closing in on me and crushing me, and that I was floating in the air and chained to the floor at the same time, and that evil beings were in the cell with me and trying to smother me as they pushed me backwards into an unfathomably deep drop into Hell, and through all of it I plotted how next time I was going to fight back, next time I would break free of my captors and escape and run, run, run all the way back home and never leave ever again.

  But when they came the next time, none of that happened. I wasn’t even able to try to fight back. One twist in their grasp made the floor lurch under my feet like a canoe on a stormy lake, and I ended up sagging limply in their grip, unable to offer up even a token resistance as they drained more of my own blood out of my arms and forced more of the foreign blood down my throat. Lord Hei stroked my hair and asked, his voice full of worry, if I was supposed to be so shivery and sweaty and pale.

  “It means the change is taking place,” the dirtier of the two men said, and then, wrapping his hands in his sleeves, pried open my lips and poured more of the blood into my mouth.

  “You hear that, Laela?” said Lord Hei, stroking my forehead. “The change is taking place. Soon this will all be over, and you will be a dragon. The most beautiful dragon that ever was! Think of all the things you will be able to do when that happens!”

  I did. I thought of shredding them all with my claws, and melting the flesh from their bones with my fiery breath, and bursting free from this prison and flying up, up, and away to some remote peak where no human would ever touch me again, or even sully my gaze with their presence. I thought those thoughts over and over as I lay on the cold stone floor, unable even to push myself up to standing, and as they came in and hurt me again, and again, and again.

  IT WAS MORNING. HOW did I know? I was und
erground. But I knew. Lying there on the dirty stone floor, my wrists hurting more than I thought it was possible to hurt from where they had cut me over and over again, twitching uncontrollably and feeling like I was falling even though I was already lying on the ground, I knew it was morning.

  I sat up. I still felt like I was falling, like I was sinking into the ground and straight down to Hell, but I wasn’t. I was sitting upright. Everything seemed too bright and too loud and too far away, but I was sitting. And then I was standing. On a floor that was dropping away beneath me and taking me to some terrible, terrible place, but standing nonetheless. When Lord Hei and the other two men came to my door, I looked out through the bars at them.

  “Give me the blood,” I said.

  The shorter of the two men, the one who always forced the blood into my mouth, sniggered. “See,” he said. “She’s learned to like it, just like I told you.”

  “Give me the blood,” I told them. “I will take it.”

  Both the men sniggered. Lord Hei frowned. “Are you sure, Laela?” he said. “You still seem weak. You won’t drop it?”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t. Give me the blood.”

  “Here.” Lord Hei retrieved a small cloth-wrapped vial from the pocket over his heart. “It is the last dose. Let me...will you let me give it to you, Laela?”

  “I will. I will let you give it to me. But you can’t take any more of my blood. You’ve already taken enough.”

  Lord Hei looked over at the other two men, who shrugged. “She’s right,” said the one who always handled the blood. “We’ve already taken more than enough. Just give her the last dose, and be done with it.”

  Lord Hei stepped into the cell with me. He had to reach up to pour the blood into my mouth. He stroked my cheek with his other hand as he did so.

  “You feel so warm, Laela,” he said. “So warm. And soft. I thought you would feel hard, like stone or bone. What color do you think you will be?”

  “Black,” I told him. “Like a curtain of midnight. Or red as blood. White as bone, green as grass, blue as the sky.”

  He nodded. “All will be beautiful.” He slid his fingers through the tips of my hair. “What do you think?” he asked. “Are you ready to come out? Come out and meet my court?”

  “I am,” I told him. “But I should wash first.”

  “It shall be done.” And in short order three women came and got me and led me out of the cell and up—I wavered and clutched at the wall as I climbed, but I did not fall—to a bedchamber, where they bathed me in steaming hot water and put me in a clean gown, finer than anything I had ever touched before, and changed the dressings on my wrists. The wounds were healing cleanly and quickly, faster than they should have. The healing skin shimmered in the light like snakeskin. When they were done washing and dressing me, my head was as light as air, and I floated after them back down the stairs and into the keep’s great hall.

  The keep’s great hall was not that great. It was in keeping with the size of the rest of the keep. Lord Hei was a small lord of a little valley. What did he want with a dragon? To have one, and no longer be the small lord of a little valley. I floated after the serving women to the head of a small table at one end of the hall, and sat down beside Lord Hei.

  “You are so beautiful, Laela,” he said. “So beautiful. I did not even realize how beautiful you are. This gown”—he fingered the velvet gown I had been dressed in—“is not fine enough for you. You should be in the finest silk and jewels money can buy. And you will be.”

  “You are too kind,” I said.

  “We will only be a small, intimate”—his eyes gleamed—“group this evening. But that is fitting, do you not agree?”

  “It is fitting,” I agreed.

  “And, look! A guest. An admirer of yours, come to ensure your safety.”

  The men who had cut me and forced the blood down my throat came into the hall, dragging someone between them. It was Joki. He looked even shabbier than before, and his puffy face was bloody and swollen with bruises as well as drink.

  “You see what ardent devotion you inspire, Laela,” said Lord Hei, and stroked my drying hair, which had been left to float free like a shimmering curtain down past my waist. He ran his fingers through it all the way to the end, his hand coming to rest on my hip.

  “Get your hands off her!” screamed Joki.

  Lord Hei kissed the side of my neck, as the two men punched Joki several times in the stomach.

  “She prefers me to you, doesn’t she? She spurned your touch, but she won’t spurn mine. Will you, Laela? Do you have anything to say to your former captor?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Have him brought up to me.”

  “He is dirty, my love.”

  “Soon you will wash me clean. Have him brought up to me.”

  The two men dragged him up to me, letting him sag to his knees at my feet.

  “I think you have something for me,” I said. “A wand. Give me the wand.”

  “Laela! You don’t mean to stay with these...bandits.” Joki groaned as the men kicked him in the ribs. “And it’s not yours to take anyway.”

  “Give it to me, and I will free you.”

  “See what a queen she is already!” said Lord Hei, squeezing my hip and running his hand down my thigh. “Give it to her, old man, and I will let you live.”

  “Give it to me,” I repeated. “And you will live, and go free. I need it, so that you can go free.”

  “Laela...” Joki gave me a long look in the face. Then he shrugged as best he could, pinned as he was down on the floor. “Very well. Let me up, you two, and I will give it to her. Consider it a gift,” he said, as he struggled to his feet and pulled a slender bundle out from under his shirt. “A gift to mark your transformation. I can see it has already taken place.” He placed the bundle, which was warm from where it had rested against his breast, and warmer still from what was inside it, in my hand.

  “What is it?” asked Lord Hei, leaning over my shoulder with bright-eyed interest.

  “A dragonbone wand,” I told him. “Only those with the blood can touch it.”

  “Oh...” Lord Hei clutched at my thigh in excitement as I unrolled the faded piece of velvet and took out the wand.

  “It is beautiful, but we will make it more beautiful,” he told me. “So that it will be fit for you to wield.”

  “Truly?” I asked. His eyes were shining. I let my eyes shine back at him, and bit my lip. My teeth were sharper than they had ever been, sharp enough to draw blood just from their touch. “Truly? Then kiss me, my love. You have given me so much; I would repay you.”

  He bent his head closer and pressed his lips eagerly to mine, his tongue seeking to part them. I let him, and then, when he stiffened, held him hard against me. When he tried to pull away, my sharp fingernails dug into his arms and pulled him close, and when he tried to scream, I kissed him harder. The others in the hall laughed and cheered at his passion.

  When I released him, he fell to the floor, his mouth scalded and blistered, blood running down his chin. “Kissing dragons is a dangerous business,” I told him. I stood. “Come, Joki. Let us leave. I have somewhere I must be.”

  Lord Hei tried to shout orders with his burned and bitten tongue. The two men tried to grab me, but I pressed the dragonbone wand against them, and they fell back, skin blistering. Servants came running up, looked at me, and stopped, making no move to detain me.

  The wand felt so right in my hand. Warm and alive and an inseparable part of me, as hot as the rage inside me. I thought about spitting the blood that was still filling my mouth onto Lord Hei, onto the men who had held me down and hurt me, onto the servants who had fetched and carried and done nothing to help me. The rage said that would be right. The rage said there was more than dragon blood rising within me: there was dragon fire too, and the wand would help me unleash it. I could point the wand wherever I willed, and fire would leap from blood to bone and then explode into air, burning all in its path. I would burn d
own this keep of Hell and all those who lived inside it, till there was nothing left but ash that would float free in the wind.

  “Run, Laela,” said Joki. He had gone down on one knee, and was clutching at his side. He spat blood on the floor. His blood was not the shimmering, glowing red of mine, but it was red nonetheless, red as fire as it slid over his sharp teeth. “Don’t wait for me, just run. Run, Laela, RUN!”

  “You run too,” I said, and grabbed him by the collar and hauled him to his feet and ran, dragging him behind me, down the keep and out the door and across the yard and out the gate to the cold, free, clear open air.

  “To the left,” he gasped as we cleared the gate. A guard made to stop me, but I raised the wand, and he jumped back behind the wall before I could even attempt to use the wand against him.

  “To the left,” Joki gasped. “Tähti is waiting for us there.”

  We ran down a small slope to a grove of trees, where Tähti was waiting for us, still harnessed to the cart.

  “I came for you, Laela,” Joki said. “I came for you.”

  “You did,” I said. I lifted him up into the cart and thrust the reins into his hands. “Now drive! And I will keep up with you.”

  WE WENT AS FAST AS Tähti could go, with me easily keeping pace beside the rattling cart. We stopped only when Tähti’s sides were heaving, and dark had settled over the road. I found us a resting place, and unharnessed Tähti and rubbed him down and fed and watered him, and prepared food for Joki and myself, and treated Joki’s wounds as best I could.