Fledgling

by Tabatha Palomo

Chapter Seven

  Austin wore Aiden’s red jacket with the hood pulled up, hoping that she wouldn’t be recognized. She had no doubt that Uncle Demitri and Aiden could take Dustin in a fair fight, but she couldn’t trust that boy to fight fairly.

  “Here,” Aiden gestured towards the front of a dingy, closed bar. He fished a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door, “I use this place a lot. The passageway is in the back.”

  Uncle Demitri went in first and Austin followed close behind. Her breath hitched as Aiden closed the door, bathing the place in darkness, but her eyes soon adjusted.

  “Are we breaking in?” she asked. Her whisper sounded so loud in the quiet space that she shut up.

  “I have my own key,” Aiden answered without further explanation.

  Aiden grabbed her wrist as he led the way, weaving through pool tables until they reached what Austin assumed was the backroom. She stepped aside as Uncle Demitri switched on the lights to the room.

  There was nothing interesting inside it: just a few broken pieces of glass, some torn newspapers, and a door built into the wall. Graffiti-decorated concrete filled the space to walk into the door, though, leaving it completely useless.

  “Doors that lead to nowhere. No one pays any real attention to them, but they pay attention to you...if they know you belong in another world. Just walk through,” Aiden said. Austin stepped forwards and raised a hand, as if to touch the concrete. Her hand hovered over the dingy surface, torn. The concrete looked pretty realistic to her.

  “Off you go,” Uncle Demitri patted her on the back, his force pushing her into the concrete wall. She braced herself, preparing to feel her cheek grate against the rough surface.

  Instead, she passed through the wall like it was made of water―icy cold water. For just a second, she had a strange feeling of being neither here nor there, and then she fell onto a bed of healthy, unkept grass.

  She dug her hands into the earth and gasped, her stomach heaving. She only just managed to keep her sandwich from making a reappearance.

  When Austin felt steady once again, she pushed herself up. Her eyes widened before she snapped them shut once again. This couldn’t be real.

  She had just been in an unlit bar that smelled like cheap alcohol and cigarette smoke. Austin opened her eyes again, expecting to see just that.

  Instead, she was greeted with rolling green hills, clear rivers, and a bright blue sky. Everything around her was so colorful. Austin took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet, sharp scent of firewood.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Aiden appeared from behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He turned her around to see something new, “Look at this.”

  Austin wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. A fortress made of stone, with what looked like the great wall of China wrapping around it, loomed past the river and forests. The setting sun bathed the structure with an orange glow, giving it an ethereal feel. Smoke rose from behind the wall that protected the city. Austin thought that she could see a crowd of people amass on the side of the wall nearest to them, but she couldn’t be sure. They were so far away that each person looked like a speck of dust.

  “Kai came here right after the incident with Dustin,” Aiden said, his hand still on her injured shoulder. She winced at the contact, “They’ve all been expecting us.”

  “Aiden,” she turned around and his hand dropped off her sore shoulder, “About what you said earlier-“

  “It’s okay,” he interrupted her gently, “I meant every word, but it’s okay.”

  She nodded, dropping the issue. She pointed at the stronghold, “So that’s Affelil?”

  Demitri appeared out of thin air beside her, making her stumble back in surprise, “This world is Affelil. The amazing place before us is Anathaem City, probably the busiest part of this region.”

  “Ah,” she asked

  Uncle Demitri shrugged, “Most of the doors that lead to nowhere are built here, and most of the time, we built them to lead to here. They’ve never brought us to a different continent, and because of the chaos, travelling is nearly impossible. This is the main part of everywhere we know that exists.”

  “Cool,” she nodded. They made good time, noisily trampling through the dying forest. She didn’t pay much attention to their surroundings, other than to notice that the trees were alive with fiery color, and they made it to the wall just before dark.

  “This is the really cool part,” Uncle Demitri promised her just as a section of the wall dematerialized in front of them, “It’s not included in the origin story, but we earth dragons can make doors and let people pass through walls and stuff.”

  Austin stuck her hand in the open space where solid stone used to be, “Woah.”

  “Stop fooling around,” Aiden sighed, pulling Austin inside the wall. As soon as they were all clear, the wall rebuilt itself. Austin craned her neck to look backwards as Aiden dragged her away, but she couldn’t see anything unusual about the stone bricks.

  Demitri must have seen her confusion, “Earth dragons can’t read minds or control them. We do physical things.”

  “Like what?” she gestured at the opening, “Like making walls disappear?”

  “It’s not disappearing. It’s actually sinking into the ground,” he explained, “But fine, let’s just say that, yes, we earth dragons make walls disappear.”

  “What am I?”she asked, taking her arm out of Aiden’s.

  “I’ll leave that to Aiden,” he smiled and gestured in the opposite direction, “I need to see someone.”

  “Who?” Austin asked. Her face filled with a blush when she realized that Aiden’s hand was still around her own. She pulled herself free from his grip.

  “Virginia,” Demitri said and backed into the crowd, his large and bulky frame crashing into a few people before he faded from their sight.

  Once he was gone, Austin felt scared. There were too many people around them, more than she had ever seen. They all looked cold and unhappy, many with scars marring their faces and bodies. They were unforgiving.

  On the other hand, she had been to New York city. This wasn’t that different.

  “Aiden,” she said. She took longer steps to catch up to him, “What am I?”

  “You’re Austin,” he replied. He was being aggravatingly cold.

  She glared at him, “You know what I meant.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Aiden shifted the weight of his backpack to his other shoulder, “Never bring it up in public again.”

  “I, uh, fine,” she brushed a lock of her hair out of her eyes. Right. For a moment, distracted by the magic, she had forgotten that her existence was wrong. She had forgotten about the death penalty, “Where are you going?”

  “It’s getting late,” Aiden looked up, where the moon was beginning to come into view. Austin couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. The sky was a dark, inky black with thousands, maybe millions, of stars lighting up the sky, “And there’s a celebration tonight. That’s why there are so many people and flags. Before we go to that, we need to set up your tent.”

  “Are we going camping?” she snorted. It’s not that she minded tents. She and her uncle had gone camping a lot in the past, not to mention the times that Dustin and her would hide in the woods.

  “You’ll be living in a tent until I can find you a permanent place to live,” he stopped them at one of the many roadside vendors and traded a strange coin for an even stranger food. He handed it to her.

  She nodded and took a bite of the strangely colored snack. It was sweet, she realized with surprise, but it had a bitter aftertaste. She liked it.

  “I’ll set yours up next to mine, but don’t come by my tent at night,” he continued.

  Austin choked on her confection, “Why? Will you already have visitors?”

  “It’s not like that,” he snapped, “But everyone has an image here. I don’t want your image to b
e…of a girl who sneaks into my tents at night.”

  She wasn’t sure that she was going to like it at Anathaem, then, if people were going to be looking at her that closely for image to matter. Austin saw where he was coming from, sure, but she did not want to live her life according to other people.

  “It’s not far,” he eyes her loose white shirt, “And you might want to change. This is your debut as my assignment, and everyone will be dressed in their nicest today.”

  “I don’t have to wear a dress or a skirt, do I?” she asked, her shoulders dropping. If she had to wear a dress, she wouldn’t go at all. She really hated the things.

  “Just a nice shirt,” Aiden rolled his eyes, “No one wears dresses here. Everyone has to be ready for war at any time, and you can’t high kick in a dress. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Cool,” she said. They walked in silence for a few minutes, pausing every now and then to look at some marvel of Anathaem, but eventually they reached the far end. Austin let out a small gasp.

  The towering buildings suddenly cut off, as did the brick road. Yellow-green grass and black dirt stretch for a quarter mile, or maybe more. Tents were everywhere, except for an empty circle in the middle of it all.

  “How big is this place?” she asked, her boot hitting the hard dirt. Austin looked around but barely saw anyone.

  “Very,” he answered and then weaved their way through the maze of tents before the stood in front of the one closest to the circle, “This is my tent.”

  She stayed outside, at his request, while he went in to retrieve something. He came back out with a pile of things in his arms. He dumped the pile on a ground about fifteen feet away from his tent, and went to work on setting her tent up.

  “I’ve got this,” Austin rolled her eyes and went to work, hammering in the stakes and pinning up the tarp with a few strips of rope. She was tired of being useless, and she could do this. In a few minutes, after her hands had remembered the process of it, she had put up the entire thing, “There. Perfect.”

  “I’ll wait out here while you change,” he said, fishing a candle and some matches out of the pile and handing them to her.

  She gripped the candleholder tightly and hurried inside her tent. She lit the candle and sat it on the ground safely. Once she was sure that she wouldn’t burn her tent to the ground, she searched through her backpack for something to change into.

  Austin dug through her backpack and rooted out a soft blue shirt with a built in hood. Aiden had complimented her in it on several occasions, so she guessed that it would do fine tonight. She changed into it and was glad that this was the one she had chosen. The long sleeves provided shelter from the cold.

  “Is this good?” Austin asked, stepping out of the tent. Aiden gave her a once over and nodded.

  “Blue is very good for tonight,” he looked down at his own light blue shirt, “It is a water dragon festival, after all.”

  “Will I have to talk to people?” she groaned, sidestepping a stake as they made their way out of the field and into the city. She could see light and smoke coming from the very center of Anathaem, but at the pace they were going, they would make it there in no time.

  “You will have to talk to my family, my friends, Demitri’s family and friends, and other trainees,” Aiden said, then laughed, “Sorry, in advance.”

  “For putting me through this hell?” she snorted. If that was it, then he had nothing to apologize for. While she would like to blame him for the need to socialize, it wasn’t his fault.

  He shook his head, gesturing to the lights and sounds that they were rapidly approaching, “It’s just that everyone thinks you’re a guy.”