Fledgling

by Tabatha Palomo

Chapter Twelve

  “Man, you get lost easily,” the boy grabbed her arm and yanked her to the side of the path, where she could breathe for a second, “This is the place.”

  “Wait, I still don’t know your name,” she said before he turned to leave, “I’m Austin.”

  “That’s a boy name,” he pointed out, but sighed, “My name is Garry.”

  They walked up about five feet before Austin bumped into a rack of books. Looking up, she saw that several of them were out at the side of the street, all of them slanted in the direction of a glass door.

  “Found the books,” she laughed before pushing open the door, leaving fingerprints on the blue tinted glass. Garry scrambled past her and disappeared behind a bookshelf. She heard his footsteps grow quieter as he ran to the back of the shop. The kid sure had a knack for escaping.

  Austin didn’t know what she expected, but it sure wasn’t this. The shop was more like a dusty used bookstore than anything else. Its second floor and high ceiling gave it no charm whatsoever. She had expected something...different.

  “You’re early,” Kai said from behind her, and she whirled around. His blond hair was gelled back, he was wearing a white button down, and wire framed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, “It’s not Wednesday, is it?”

  “I thought you might need some extra help,” she bit her lip, trying to bring herself out of the shock Kai was putting her through. He looked so formal and resigned, which made him look twenty-something, not eighteen, “How old are you, again?”

  “Around a hundred and twenty, I think. Actually, I’m not sure,” he answered absentmindedly and gestured towards the back, “I have paperwork to do, so it would be great if you could wipe everything down. That includes the door. Cleaning supplies are in the kitchen.”

  “There’s a kitchen?” she asked, already walking in the direction he had pointed.

  “Of course there’s a kitchen,” Kai scoffed, “I live here.”

  “Someone needs a cup of coffee,” Austin muttered once she found the kitchen. He seemed grumpy today, definitely more so than he had been last night. She found a dishrag and an eco friendly cleaning spray, and she went to work. She wiped down the warped shelves, using a step stool for the ones too high for her to reach, until they shined.

  “Austin,” Kai called after she had finished the first section. She navigated through the shelves, making sure not to trip over any stray piles of books, until she found him at his desk on the second floor.

  The second floor, she found, was better kept than the first. Here, new, colorful books filled the shelves, and it was better lit.

  “Yeah?” she asked, looking around. His desk was covered with paper, pens, and index cards. An old fashioned typewriter and a laptop sat side by side on the left side of his desk. She didn’t bother to wonder why the people here didn’t upgrade to the newest models of things. They picked and chose what they wanted, and that seemed like a pretty cool way to go about doing things.

  “Like I said, I have paperwork to do, but there are children here,” he said the word children as if it were a disease, “They want a story.”

  When Austin didn’t reply, he sighed and explained further, “You’re going to have to tell them a story. Just try not to trip over any words and you’ll be fine. They tend not to be picky.”

  “What book should I read to them?” she asked, her eyes wide. Her arms were sore from practice and cleaning, but that didn’t seem to matter now. She didn’t want to mess up her first real job by reading something boring.

  “Take your pick. Human world books are downstairs. Books written by me and my family are on this floor. The children are waiting in the reading room downstairs,” he said, signing his name on something that looked important. Austin looked around at all the books around her, all engraved with the last name Davis, before running down the spiral staircase. She grabbed a thin book off the first shelf she saw and went to find the reading room, wherever that was.

  The room was adjacent to the kitchen, she found out. When she burst into the room, the only things she saw were the backs of leather chairs and an unlit fireplace.

  “Hello?” she asked. She couldn’t see any children. Had they all gone home?

  “Told you she would be late,” Garry, the boy from before, snorted, leaning from around the chair. Kai must have told him that she would be reading the story today, “The storyteller’s new assistant always gets lost.”

  “What story is it?” a young girl with blond hair crawled out of the chair and looked at Austin. Her hair was arranged into curls and baby fat clung to her rosy cheeks.

  “Uh,” Austin looked at the cover quickly, unsettled by how adorable the girl was. She couldn’t have been more than five,, “Red Riding Hood.”

  “What’s that about?” Garry asked. The girl shrugged and walked to the other side of the room, turning on a soft lamp before sitting back down.

  “Well,” Austin sat on the edge of the rocking chair that faced the children, only to find that there were more of them. The high backs of the chairs and sofas had hid all of their heads. She counted seven of them, most of them being girls, “I guess you’ll just have to listen to the story, now won’t you?”

  She read out of the book, but couldn’t help putting in her own touches and comments here and there. They didn’t seem to notice the difference. Actually, they didn’t seem to know the original version at all. Red Riding Hood must not be as big of a classic in Affelil as it is in the human world.

  “That’s stupid,” Garry complained once she snapped the book shut, “So the wolf just ties upthe grandma? And no one dies?”

  “In the original version of this, the original original version, the wolf eats everyone,” Austin shrugged. The girls cringed at this, but Garry seemed satisfied.

  “People die,” he said, standing up, “I’m going to take everyone else home, and then I’ll come back and take you to my house. Okay?”

  “Sure thing, Garry,” Austin rolled her eyes and grabbed her dishrag again. The children left and she scrubbed down the seats, then the coffee table around them. For the next hour, she swept, dusted, and wiped everything she came into contact with.

  In the middle of putting away a book she had found on the ground, she noticed Kai staring at her from behind the rails that kept people from falling off the second floor.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that staring is rude?” she quipped. Kai’s sigh was loud in the empty store, and his footsteps even louder as he came down to talk to her.

  “You cleaned a lot,” Kai said, looking around, “I didn’t expect you to be so thorough.”

  Austin decided to take that as a compliment. With the funk that Kai was in, that was probably the best she was going to get, “Thanks. I usually did the cleaning when I lived with Uncle Demitri, so-“

  “I know,” he interrupted her, “You forget that I was your guardian, too.”

  “Yeah. How did you do that, anyway? We never talked before this week,” she said. She ran her fingers over the old books, almost none of them current in the human world.

  “Aiden didn’t want you associating with a storyteller until it was absolutely necessary. I swear, for a city without a class system, there really is a lot of prejudice floating around, and all of it directed at my job,” he said, pushing his glasses up, “I was reduced to not much more than a stalker.”

  “So you watched me while I slept? Let me guess, you were looking in front my window,” she laughed. Kai didn’t appreciate it.

  “The fire escape outside your room wasn’t exactly comfortable, especially not in the winter months,” he said, completely serious. Austin’s mouth hung open; had he really watched her without her knowing? “But mainly, I would just check in from time to time and fill out the necessary paperwork. Which reminds me, some key parts were missing.”

  “Wait, after I ask you this,” Austin’s brow furrowed as she fought to
remember something. That last time they had seen each other in the human dimension, Kai had said something, “You said I looked like my mother.”

  “I met her once, before you were born. I was twenty two, so that would have made her…sixty? She only looked thirty or so, and I imagine that’s how she looked for the next twenty years. Our bodies age slower when we hit eighteen, but at sixty, it really stops.”

  “Was she nice?” Austin asked. Her curiosity was tainted with sadness and jealousy. Kai had met her mother while she hadn’t, and he was too busy going off on tangents to tell her what she wanted to know.

  Austin was rewarded with a smile as Kai remembered, “Incredibly so. She was a hunter, but she took guardian classes on the side. I met her at her goodbye party, right before she left for the human world.”

  “A hunter,” Austin nodded. Her knowledge of that job was extremely limited, but she didn’t think there was much to know. They were obviously the ones that fed Anathaem, and Aiden had seemed to respect that position very much.

  “That’s where she disappeared. The human world,” Kai stared at her intently, his icy blue eyes piercing through her, “We have to guess that’s where you were conceived. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I don’t want to talk about how I was conceived,” Austin said, a blush flooding her cheeks. Sex-Ed in school had been bad enough. Kai giving it would be torture. Besides, she didn’t think that any of the fundamentals would change, no matter if the species was a human or a dragon in a human form.

  “Not how. Who,” Kai stepped forwards, “It’s extremely unlikely that she found a rogue dragon there. It’s strange, but I can’t find any records on who your dad was, or even could have been. No male dragons were assigned jobs in her immediate area.”

  Austin’s throat suddenly felt very dry, “So?”

  “Who was your father?” Kai asked. Austin avoided eye contact, instead choosing to pin her gaze on the door. She willed Gary to come in and drag her off to Demitri’s. He said he would be right back, and now would be a very nice time for him to do just that.

  “I don’t know,” she said. That was the truth.

  “I just have to fill in the paperwork,” Kai sighed, his shoulders dropping. He seemed less intimidating now, but more tired, “Austin, I don’t care who your parents are.”

  “I thought that family trees were important to everyone here,” Austin said, not falling for it. She chose each word carefully, since Kai was dangerously close to the truth.

  “Well, just call me strange,” he shrugged in such an offhand way that Austin had no choice but to believe him.

  “I really don’t know,” she said. Kai looked at her, taking in her body language and tone, before nodding.

  “I’ll leave that section blank, then. It’s not like anyone can blame us,” his voice grew bitter, “We can just blame everything on the chaos, after all.”

  Twenty minutes later, Austin was being led down the darkening streets by Gary, who had returned as promised. She noticed lanterns being lit, even though the sun had yet to go down. When she asked about it, Gary had a hard time putting his words together.

  “The dark…we’re not afraid of it. Well, we are. But we don’t want that to be obvious. So we still have fun. We stay out after dark. But it’s never really dark here, since we put up so many lights. The lights keep us safe,” he seemed satisfied with that answer, and Austin didn’t push. She simply followed him out of the business section and into the thinner streets, where the air was thick with the scents of flowers and bread.

  “Here,” Gary’s hat was slightly out of place as he pointed at a brick house. He pushed open the burgundy painted door and ushered Austin inside, “Mom, Dad, I brought a girl home!”

  “Don’t say it like that,” Austin grumbled, but looked around. This house didn’t look like Uncle Demitri lived in it at all. Back at their old apartment, he had decorated the place with full boxes of girl scout cookies and dragon ornaments. She had just thought that he was eccentric.

  This home, however, was filled with warm and worn things. A green hunting jacket hung from a closet door, photographs lined the walls, and the walls were a comforting crème. Upon closer inspection, Austin found that most of them were focused on Gary, others were pictures of three people: Gary, Uncle Demitri, and a woman that Austin didn’t recognize.

  “A girl?” heavy footsteps stomped down the stairs, and Austin bit her bottom lip as a man came into view. He almost looked the same, except he was happier now. He was happier here.

  “Uncle Demitri?” she said his name, and her eyes watered. Her allergies must have been acting up. There’s no good reason why she should be crying right now.

  Demitri stood in front of her, his eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. Suddenly, he ran forwards and brought Austin into gigantic bear hug, “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon!”

  “She said that she knew you,” Gary said, bored, “I thought she was lying.”

  “No, no. She was my assignment. She was why I was in the human world in the first place,” Demitri let her go and spun Gary around, “Thanks for showing her the way here, Gare.”

  “She’s weird,” Gary stage whispered into Demitri’s ear, and he nodded.

  “Hey!” Austin cried out, indignant. The two snickered and her face filled with a blush.

  “I’ll go help Virginia cook. We’ve always got food to spare, so don’t worry,” Demitri said, pointing at Austin, “Stay right there. I mean, don’t stay right there. Make yourself comfortable. But stay.”

  He backed away, not able to keep a smile off his face. Gary stared after him with a sullen expression.

  “So he really was your guardian,” Gary sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “He raised me,” Austin nodded, not noticing the grimace on the young boy’s face, “He was the best uncle that anyone could have.”

  “I was going to hate you. He was never here, always too busy raising a kid I had never met,” Gary laughed, staring at her. Austin stared back, her eyes wide. She cursed herself for not even thinking of that. Gary must have felt like she was stealing his dad.

  “But?” she prompted, hoping that there was a but.

  “But I can’t hate my foster cousin, now can I?” Gary asked. He was mature, much more so than Austin had been at his age.

  “Well,” Austin shrugged, smiling, “I suppose not. So we’re cousins?”

  “I suppose so,” Gary responded, turning his head away.

  Just then, a woman who looked thirty five –which, as Austin had learned, probably meant that she was more than a few centuries old- walked into the corridor. She was wearing a long, floral shirt that highlighted her curves and skin tight jeans. Her brown hair was pulled into a high ponytail.

  “Hi,” the woman said, staring at Austin, “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m Virginia.”

  She stuck out her hand and this time, Austin was expecting it. She shook Virginia’s hand strongly, “I’m Austin.”

  “You have a lovely home,” Austin said, since it seemed like the right thing to say. She couldn’t keep herself from staring at the woman

  “Thanks,” Virginia laughed, letting go of her hand. She took out her ponytail, letting her hair fall around her shoulders, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “You have?” Austin asked, looking at Gary. He hadn’t seemed to know anything about her, except what she had told him, “Gary didn’t, uh, seem to-“

  “Gary doesn’t listen to most of what we say,” Virginia sniffed playfully, “So don’t take it personally.”

  “I listen,” Gary mumbled, looking at the ground. Austin smiled. From what she had seen, most ten year olds didn’t have the attention spans needed to have a decent conversation with their parents, much less retain things that had been said. She wasn’t going to take offense in any case.

  “Sure you
do,” Austin snickered, elbowing the boy. He pushed her back, and Virginia gave them the look---the you-two-stop-fighting-or-else look. They stopped fighting.

  “Well,” Virginia smiled, rubbing her hands together, “Demitri is probably finished setting the table. Have you eaten?”

  “No, I haven’t, ” Austin said. The skin around Virginia’s eyes crinkled as she smiled, putting a delicate hand on Austin’s shoulder.

  “Good, you’ll join us for dinner then,” she said decisively, ushering her into the dining room. Demitri was waiting for them there.

  Her family had grown. This sassy little boy and his sweet mom, they were her family now. She had only met them today, and already they accepted her, even if they shouldn’t. They more than forgave her for taking away Demitri for so long.

  She was really going to like it here.