Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection

by Kerry Adrienne

“Raynar, this is Poe.” Jonas motioned to the new guy. “He’s a healer. We need to look at your injuries.”

  “I’m okay. We really need to go.” I urged as I sat and began putting my shoes back on. “Let’s go.” Only no one followed me down the stairs.

  “Raynar. Come here.” Jonas commanded. “Let Poe have a look.”

  The door opened behind him, and Ren came out onto the front porch. “Poe, we’re back. Fenick and I…” He stopped when he recognized us and his expression turned from pleasant to feral.

  Poe placed his hands on Ren’s chest. “Backup Ren. These are guests and he’s hurt.” Poe’s voice held authority.

  Ren let out a snarl but stepped back against the shop door, hands clenched at his side in restraint.

  “Please, come in so I can check it out.” Poe kept his hand against Ren’s chest andmotioned with his head for us to enter the shop. Jonas went in first. Torin followed. My eyes were trained on Ren, who had pushed Poe’s hand off of him and ran off into the green landscape. A moment later, a large reddish dragon, the size of an SUV, emerged from the foliage. Its wings, which extended a good fifteen to twenty feet on each side of it, beat hard, helping the beast arc high in the air before it circled back and sped straight for us.

  “Duck!” Poe yelled out as the dragon opened its mouth blasting a fiery blaze in our direction. Thankfully no one got burned, but the heat from the blaze had been intense.

  “Ren’s in a mood” Fenick appeared in the doorway next to Poe.

  “When isn’t he?” Poe answered before stepping forward to yell after the dragon. “Cool off, Ren, and be back by nightfall. And don’t you dare burn down the shop!” The dragon flew out of sight.

  I grabbed my pack and followed Fenick into the building with Poe closing the door behind us. Poe walked me over to a padded table in a back room and asked me to sit on it. “Sorry—no one else in the room. It messes with the energy.” He shut the door, closing him and I off from the others. I couldn’t help feeling like a lamb being lead to the slaughter, yet I didn’t feel alarmed. In fact, I felt completely calm and relaxed.

  “Let’s try this again.” He extended his hand to me. “Hi. I’m Poe.”

  “Ray.” I took his hand and shook it.

  “Ray. Let’s put the bullshit aside and cut to the chase. I can heal you, but I need to see your injuries.”

  I pulled off my dirty socks and hiked up my pants so he could see my lower legs.

  He returned with a wet wash rag and cleaned the dirt from my skin. He winced as he took in the damage to my legs and feet. “Shit. Did you fall or something? You’re pretty bruised up, and then there is this thing on your ankle.” He pointed to a hematoma on my outer ankle bone.

  “No. I didn’t fall. I have a condition that makes everything in me fragile, blood vessels included.” I took in the rainbow of colors smattered across my skin and the bubble of blood the size of half dollar that grew in the same spot as my previous ones, only this one was far bigger. This was the worst my legs had ever looked.

  A few years back, my parents had taken me to a hematologist to ask about the recurrent hematomas. The doc hadn’t seemed concerned and had said they were inevitable with my fragile vessels. He had recommended rest and elevation to help them go down.

  “Lucky you.” Poe scratched at his head. “But I can fix this.” He walked over to a cabinet and took out some supplies and set various bottles and wraps on a nearby table. “So what’s the deal with you guys and Ren? You know each other?”

  “We ran into him and Fenick in Sault Ste. Marie. He torched our ride.”

  Poe shook his head. “Shit. He’s a hot head. Fenick and I spend a lot of time picking up his messy pieces. He’s impulsive and annoying, but he’s not all bad.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.” My skin warmed. Poe’s hands, which seemed to be glowing with a white light, enveloped my legs. He rubbed gently at the lower half of my leg as the intensity of the light and heat fluctuated. I sucked in a breath to help with the pain.

  Poe looked up at me for a moment, the light dimmed with his distraction. “Sorry, almost done. Think you can you push through?”

  I nodded, and he returned his focus to my legs. As the heat intensified, I joked, “I didn’t know you’d be cooking my legs for dinner.”

  Poe laughed at the joke and then it stopped. My legs and feet tingled as if both had been put to sleep. “Is that it?” I looked down and saw my skin had a strange appearance to it, almost like a snake shedding its skin.

  “I need to wrap them. But this is a good sign. Many blister from the treatment but this dead skin…that’s not typical. We don’t see this until the next day at the earliest. But I’m gonna wrap them anyway with this ointment to prevent infection.” He wrapped my legs in a wet gauze that had a woody smell to it. I looked like a mummy, but Poe pulled my pant legs down to cover most of the bandaging. “You can move around if you gotta, but try to sit with your legs up as much as possible.” He looked up at me and saw the question on the tip of my tongue. “You guys need to stay till tomorrow. We have plenty of beds on the top level.” He took the dirty towel to the sink. “I’m sorry about your ride and my brother’s temper. Ren will be back by nightfall, but you won’t have to worry about him while in the shop.”

  “Why is that?”

  “This shop or some call it, a healing outpost, was built long ago by a member of a nearby peaceful tribe called the Gylos. The Gylos healed others and stayed clear of the wars around them. The Gylos wanted to put good energy back into the world so they provided healing, magic, and tinctures to anyone in need.” He walked over and pushed against a large wooden vertical beam. “This shop was crafted and spelled to foster peace within it and protect those who sought shelter. Once you stepped off the front porch, the gloves came off and fights resumed. But as long as you touched a part of the spelled structure you were safe from enemies. People from all around would come here for healing and to trade for special goods they couldn’t readily find in their region.”

  “Are you part of that Gylos tribe?”

  Poe turned toward me. “Half. My father was Gylos; my mother was not. But now I’m all that’s left of the Gylos.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They were massacred.” Poe showed no emotion despite the strong words he spoke as he opened the doors, revealing Torin and Jonas reclined back in chairs with their feet propped on a nearby table.

  “Hope you don’t mind. We helped ourselves to some tea.” Jonas held up his mug.

  “Not at all. You guys are stayin’ the night. My tinctures need some time to work on Raynar’s legs.” Poe walked over to a refrigerator near the back of the store.

  Fenick came out of a back room, whistling while tossing and catching an apple. “Hey Fen, gimme a hand with these sandwiches. They’re stayin’ the night, and we’ll help them get off in the morning.”

  Fenick’s face dropped at the news and he ceased tossing the apple. “But I thought…”

  Poe shook his head slightly, but enough that I saw it. “Here’s the bread and meat. One for each of us please.”

  Fenick said nothing more and got busy constructing sandwiches. I joined Torin and Jonas in a chair and propped up my feet.

  “How are they doin’?” Jonas sat forward and touched the bandaging.

  “Okay. They stopped hurting after he did the light ray thing to me.”

  Jonas nodded and sat back.

  “What did he do to you?” Torin questioned.

  “He zapped my legs with this bright light. It felt like an intense sunburn. Then he wrapped them and told me to elevate them when I can.”

  Torin’s eyebrows shot up. “Did it work?”

  “He said it looks good, but we’d know more in the morning.”

  Torin shook his head, though it surprised me that this seemed unreal to him. Surely, he’d seen or heard of strange healing practices with Jonas being his Guardian but then again Torin and Jonas had a different relationship than I had with my
parents. “I gotta get some air.” Torin pushed off and headed out the front doors as Jonas and Fenick brought over a tray of food and drinks.

  “Is he not hungry?” Poe glanced to the door where Torin exited.

  “Just keep one aside for him. He won’t be gone long.” Jonas put a sandwich and some chips on his plate, then sat back. “How’d you get chips up here?”

  “Dragon power.” Poe laughed. “What? It’s true. We make a trip to some of the nearby towns and trade tinctures and medicines for odds and ends every few months. Helps to have dragon shifters for brothers.” Poe smiled at Jonas. “Fenick traded for a bunch of chips last time. At first I was mad, but the customers we’ve had all bought a few bags.” Poe popped one in his mouth.

  “Does Malon still come around here?” Jonas asked.

  Poe grabbed a soda and took a sip, “He died a few weeks ago, they all died.”

  “The Gylos? The whole tribe?” Jonas sat forward, concern etched his face. “That’s impossible. How?”

  “It was a massacre. I’m all that’s left, and I’m only half Gylos.” Poe looked like he was about sixteen years old. His shaggy hair and grunge style would have fit in at Midland High.

  “Half Gylos? How is that possible? The Gylos didn’t allow mating outside of the tribe.” Jonas looked about the room. “The massacre—”

  Poe nodded, answering Jonas’s unfinished question. The young teen suddenly seemed so much older as the weight of his controversial existence and the bloody aftermath weighed heavily on him. His shoulders slumped and he left out a long breath. His birth, the broken rule of mating outside the tribe, caused discord within the tribe, leading to the end of the tribe.

  Jonas rubbed his stubble in thought, “But how did they…”

  The shop’s front windows lit with a fiery blaze on the other side of the glass. We hurried to the door. Torin stood on the lawn in front of the shop and flung large rocks at the dragon before him. “Try it again, asshole.”

  The dragon answered with another blast, catching Torin’s shoe on fire as he dodged the fiery breath. He yelped and stopped to pat it out. “Come on, switch back to your wimpy human self and fight me fair.”

  The dragon let out a loud roar, shaking the ground around us.

  “Enough. Ren, stop.” Poe ran out with Fenick following close behind him. Poe positioned himself between Ren and Torin. He turned to Torin. “Get inside the shop and all this will stop. Go, now!”

  Torin stood there, looking like he wanted to continue the battle till one of them was bleeding or dead.

  “Torin, now!” Jonas’s voice was calm but authoritative, and Torin listened. He jogged over to the shop where Jonas caught him by the arm. “Are you all right? Any injuries?”

  “I’m fine.” He pulled his arm free and shoved past Jonas, probably pissed that he was asked to stand down. Jonas followed after him while I stayed back to watch Fenick and Poe calm Ren down to the point he could morph back into human form. Ren finally retreated to the trees several yards away and emerged from the forested area clothed. He passed his brothers without saying a word and rudely pushed past me into the shop. Poe followed him while Fenick hung back with me on the porch.

  Fenick leaned against the porch post. “He’s got a temper. He had no clue you were staying the night. I guess the sight of your friend pushed him over the edge.”

  “He really doesn’t like us, huh?”

  “He doesn’t like most people. But yeah, he sees you all as a threat.” Fenick stood a few inches below my nearly six-foot stature. Of course, he was younger and had more growing to do before he topped out. He had an athletic physique but was less muscular than Torin. And his skin had a tanner complexion than my own.

  “So, he controls fire and you have the freeze ray?”

  Fenick laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

  “What about Poe?”

  “No fire or ice for him. He can heal.” Fenick motioned to my bandaged legs. “That’s a Gylos ability. He also can see things—some things, before they happen. That gift came from our mother’s side of the family.”

  “If your mom was not a Gylos, what was she?”

  “Something completely different.” He pushed off the post and headed inside, leaving me on the shop porch with more questions than I had started with.

  Chapter 8

  I couldn’t sleep. The couch I laid on was plenty comfortable, but I had too many questions in my head. Torin slept restlessly in his bed while Jonas lay peacefully sleeping with his back turned toward both of us.

  I checked my watch. 3:25AM. Maybe I needed to pee. I walked quietly down the hall toward the restroom, careful not to wake others. Quiet murmurs slipped through the closed door near the bathroom. I paused and leaned in to listen a moment, wondering if one of the dragon bros was talking in his sleep.

  “They’re a threat. You said so yourself!” I could make out Ren’s angry voice. “Why did you heal him? I mean, seriously, we don’t need them making it to the village.”

  “I healed him because it was the right thing to do. They have done nothing to us—and just because the others have hatred for us, does not mean these three will feel the same.” Poe, the calmest of the three, was in there working to subdue Ren’s anger.

  “You said your vision had them in the village warring with the armies of King Vintras. You saw something happen to one of us, something bad.” Fenick sounded calmer than Ren but still concerned.

  “I never said something happened to one of you.” Poe calmly corrected.

  “You didn’t have to. Your whole demeanor changed when you talked about the vision.” Ren’s voice grew louder.

  “Shh!” The others shushed him.

  “Which one of us dies?” He lowered his voice, but there was sadness and fear beneath Ren’s anger.

  “Just stop Ren. You’re getting all worked over this. My visions aren’t perfect and you know this. If any one thing changes, even the smallest detail, the outcome is altered. And I can’t just summon visions to see if they’ve changed.”

  “Mom said you might get better control of them now that the Gylos tribe and their magic was gone. She thought the magic you inherited from her would become stronger,” Ren added.

  “Well, I think she was wrong. If anything, it’s been harder to get a read on what I’m seeing.”

  “Yeah, but we need you to try.” Fenick sounded worried. “This vision involves us dying by their hands.”

  “I never said that.” Poe corrected. “I said I saw them arrive and visit the village. Then I return to our shop...” There was a small choke to his voice. “Okay, fine, yes, I did see... I saw both of you... But I never saw the cause of death. And besides, you’ve met them.” Poe answered. “Do they seem like murders to you?” No one answered, so Poe continued with a sterner tone. “Right. Listen, I’m not happy you two took matters into your own hands. If Mom finds out you two went rogue, she’ll tether your wings.” Poe cautioned. “Ren, I paid Jonas for the car and supplies you torched. You’ll have extra shifts in the shop to pay me back for the damage you caused in Sault Ste. Marie. And next time you blow up a car, pick a cheap one.”

  Where was their mom anyway?

  “And if you head past the outer oaks, stay together—always.” The sound of footsteps on the wood floor within the room reminded me I shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

  I hurried back to our room instead of continuing to the bathroom. I peered through the cracked open doorway, waiting for the others to enter their respective rooms before heading back down the hall. I didn’t want them to suspect I had heard their discussion.

  “Night, Fen.” Ren said as he passed our door.

  “Night.” Fenick answered as he retreated to his room.

  I waited a moment longer, and when I was sure the hallway was clear, I headed for the bathroom in hopes it was all I needed to attempt sleep again.

  Chapter 9

  The morning sun blazed through the small square window, shining directly on my face. Aft
er trying different positions and covering my head with the blanket, I gave up and accepted that there would be no more sleep for me. Torin slumbered peacefully across the room, but Jonas’s bed was empty.

  I kicked off the covers and headed toward the stairs but froze when Jonas and Poe emerged from the room across from the bathroom where the meeting of the brothers had taken place. Poe turned and headed back into the room while Jonas approached me, motioning me to come closer.

  “We depart in twenty minutes.” Jonas spoke in a low voice. “Poe is sending Ren on an errand. He fears that Ren is too emotionally unstable and doesn’t trust what he will do to us outside of this structure. Once he leaves and the coast is clear, Poe and Fenick will help us get to the village.”

  I followed him into the room where he hurried over to Torin and stirred him awake. “Pack up. We leave in twenty minutes.”

  “Where’s the fire?” Torin’s voice was hoarse with sleep.

  “Poe doesn’t want any drama with Ren. He’s sending him out on an errand and asked that we don’t leave the shop till he gives the word.” Jonas shoved his clothes into his bag.

  “That dude is wound too tight.” Torin shook his head.

  “He is. Complete opposite of Poe.” I unwrapped the bandage from my hand to see if my birthday burn had healed and found new skin where the blistered wound had been. It looked great. I wondered how my legs looked after the night of healing. I worried today’s travels would undo his healing. “Jonas, is the village far from here?” The thought of making a journey similar to yesterday’s made me shudder.

  “It is, but you won’t have to worry about that.” Jonas answered.

  A knock at the door interrupted my next question. “Jonas, it’s me.” Poe called through the door. “Can I come in?”

  Jonas stood and let Poe in.

  “I wanted to check on Ray, see how the legs are.” He walked over to me and pulled up a foot stool close to me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Good. Felt good to sleep and not be trekking through the forest all day.”