The Deepest Night

by Shana Abe

  “So you won’t go to smoke while I’m on you. You can take off and land as a dragon, can’t you?”

  “No! I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

  “Aaaand … that’s why we’re here, far from prying eyes. Practice.”

  I groaned and flopped back upon the blanket, covering my face with both hands. “You don’t understand!”

  He didn’t speak right away, but I felt his gaze. I felt the warmth of him though my new cotton dress and old battered peacoat, though he sat feet away. “Explain it to me, then.”

  “I’m not good at it. You know that I’m not.”

  “At what?”

  I threw my hands back to my sides. The stars shivered in the misty black sky, distant as unspoken wishes.

  She’s just so hopeless …

  Eleanore, you’re useless …

  A slip of a child …

  “I’m not good at any of it yet. Half the time I think I’ll be smoke, but I Turn to girl instead. I’ve only managed to be a dragon a handful of times, at best.”

  “A glorious handful,” he said quietly. “A damned brilliant handful.”

  “But—”

  His voice took on a harsher note. “Don’t be dense, Lora. If I could do this for you, don’t you think I would? I can’t even manage smoke. There’s no hope of me Turning into a dragon to fly halfway across Europe. It has to be you.”

  I glanced up at him, hard edges and burning blue eyes, that absolute focus it seemed he had whenever I caught him looking at me. Like I was something shimmering right at the brink of his understanding. A mirage, bright and unbelievable.

  “Mandy, I’m saying … that you can’t be with me. This idea of yours, to ride on my back, it can’t happen. If I lose control—if I Turn to smoke or girl in midair—”

  “You’ll Turn back and catch me,” he said, calm.

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Not really. Frankly, I feel queasy just thinking about it. I’ve never liked heights.”

  “This isn’t funny!”

  “I should say not. I rather enjoy myself all in one piece. But …” He sighed and pushed his hands through his hair. “Look, waif. This is the way it’s going to be. This is the way it’s meant to be. The two of us together. Besides, do you even speak German?”

  I averted my eyes, then gave in. “No,” I confessed. “French. Very bad French. I’ve only had a couple of months of it.”

  “Das habe ich mir gedacht, mein Liebling. You need me. I need you.” His lips curved, although it wasn’t quite a smile. “I think fate and the stars would agree. We’re a pair. It’s time we acted like one.”

  A salt breeze skated up the cliff and pushed hard against us; the blanket flipped back, covering the empty plates and our feet. He went to his knees to resmooth it.

  “That’s not all,” I said, following his hands, his back and arms, pale sleeves rolled up, an economy of grace even in these brisk movements.

  “What else?”

  It killed me to admit this. “I’m not entirely well yet. Dr. Hembry says I lost a good deal of blood. I still get weak.”

  “I know,” he said, and sat back, cross-legged. “Did you think I hadn’t noticed?” He sent me a sidelong look, then knocked his knee against mine. “It’s one of the reasons I’m always feeding you.”

  I laughed unhappily. “Nice to know it’s not merely that you think I’m insatiable.”

  “No,” Armand said, and turned his gaze out to the mist-clotted sea. “You’re not the insatiable one.”

  The surf crashed against the shore, a hard tinny sound. I hoped that it covered the noise of my heartbeat, how it had stuttered and started again, one tiny instant of betrayal.

  “Practice,” I said brightly, and leapt to my feet. “Watch my clothes, eh?”

  His brows raised.

  I Turned to smoke. I swirled up above the tips of the trees, thought about it, then flowed out past the cliff, over the open water.

  I couldn’t yet swim, true. But if I accidentally Turned back into a girl while floating in the sky, I thought the Channel might be a softer landing than oak trees and birches.

  The mist drifted below me. I could see flashes of sea beneath it, dark waters sprinkled with faint silver coins.

  Dragon, I thought, intent. You are a dragon. Not a person, not smoke, dragon, dragon, you’re a—

  I Turned, and it worked.

  Right side up this time, wings out, diving down a steep, invisible slope. I flew so low that my tail scratched a line though the mist, dividing it into parts.

  It felt cool and wet. It whipped up in a riot of curls behind me, marking my passage like an ovation of raised and dissolving hands.

  I glanced down at my feet, golden scales a tarnished glimmer, my claws reassuringly wicked and sharp.

  The stars had called me Fireheart. I liked that. A being with a name like that could surely handle something so basic as flight and landing.

  Right?

  Higher, lower, testing my wings. It was easier to soar as a friend to the wind, so I faced the other way and tried it like that for a while, until the crenulated outline of Iverson looked less like a chess piece and more like a real castle. There were lights shining from some of the windows, and I wondered who had to stay on for the summer, rattling around that cold hollow place.

  Not the headmistress, apparently. Maybe Almeda, the housekeeper. The always-charming Gladys.

  Mr. Hastings, the groundskeeper—and Jesse’s great-uncle. He lived alone above the stables; from here I could nearly see it, nearly make out the smudge of light peeking out past the doors …

  I turned about, telling myself I had to before someone caught sight of me.

  I circled up and back and found the cliff with Armand motionless at its edge. There was the blanket behind him, the motorcar, and a small clearing behind that. Not much, but it would have to do.

  I sailed closer, concentrating on the scrap of land I wanted, feeling my wings adapt to my target, shorter beats, a higher arch.

  Closer. Closer …

  I passed over Armand, ruffling his hair and shirt and trousers. I was by him in a breath, past the auto, sinking to the clearing—

  Too fast. My body realized it before my brain did. My legs stiffened and my wings tried to reverse but they couldn’t, and the ground rose up so quickly that all I could see were blades of grass and—

  I struck the earth and went end over end, and my right wing got crushed and my tail hit something solid that squealed, and the next thing I knew I was on my back seeing stars—fake ones, woozy orange balls, up and down, up and down—and when I could focus again my brain was screaming, Breathe! So I did.

  A human was running toward me. No, not a human.

  Armand, his eyes gone an incredible, luminous blue.

  I turned my head and looked at him, dazed and happy in some weird, detached way, despite the fact that I felt broken in about a dozen places.

  Armand’s eyes could glow, just like mine.

  Armand was just like—

  “Lora!”

  He fell to his knees beside me, his hands roaming frantically along my face.

  “Lora! Are you hurt?”

  I smiled. Well, I would have. It was more like I showed him my teeth, which didn’t have nearly the same effect. He scowled down at me, and his eyes reverted to normal.

  “Eleanore, it’s me. Don’t you know me?”

  I sighed, then Turned back to girl.

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Oh!” He lurched away from me. “Oh, ah, you’re—you don’t have any—”

  “Just toss me my coat, will you?”

  I kept my eyes closed until I heard him return and the rough wool weight of the peacoat was dra
ped over my torso. The ground was lumpy and there was a rock digging into my thigh, but I didn’t feel up to moving yet, so I ignored it.

  “Mandy. Do you know what just happened?”

  He settled down at my side, running a hand along my arm. “You managed to destroy my father’s favorite car?”

  I sat up, clutching the coat to me. The motorcar had a series of long, gaping gashes angled down its side, all the way from the bonnet to the back door. The tears were as neat and clean as if someone had taken shears to the steel.

  My tail, I realized. My barbed tail.

  “Uh … ,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. There are a dozen more you can go through before we have to start buying new ones.”

  “No, not that. I mean, I’m sorry about that, of course—”

  “As long as you’re not injured—”

  “No, listen! Armand, you … your eyes. They were dragon eyes! Just now, when you came to me.”

  He looked confused; I dug the rock out from beneath me and threw it toward the sea.

  “Dragon eyes,” I emphasized, smiling. A real smile this time, one I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted. “And they were beautiful.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  And only then, with the wind whispering and the sea crashing and the mist rolling along the waves … only then did the stars come to life.

  not alone, was their sudden chorus, a wily, sparkling tune. not alone, beast, not alone.

  I rose to my knees and hugged him, the coat trapped between us. His arms came up and encircled me; he turned his face to my neck.

  “A dragon,” Armand said against my skin, so soft and awed I barely caught it.

  “Not alone,” I said back, but without sound, because I wasn’t ready for him to hear it yet.

  After that, everything changed.

  We still met at night, because it was obvious I needed all the practice I could get. The owls and herons were our witnesses as I shifted from one form to the next, over and over, mostly getting it right but sometimes not. Armand was always there for that.

  During the day, however, he avoided me. I didn’t notice at first; I was busy with my vastly crucial duty of ensuring that long strips of woven cloth were rolled precisely to measure. I spent hours in what once was the reading room but now housed (according to the sign on the door) “Necessary Supplies.” The sage-green window treatments and white paneled walls had been hidden behind temporary metal cases holding everything from iodine to powdered gravy. My workstation was exactly in the middle of the room: one table, one chair, reams of cloth.

  It wasn’t unpleasant. I didn’t have to see Chloe, and I didn’t have to deal with maggots or scrubbing up blood.

  Even Sophia lost me for a while, though once she realized where I was and what I was doing, she brought another chair and joined in—if you could call sitting beside me and doing none of the work joining in.

  “It’s so much cooler in here than out there,” she commented, taking a sip of iced tea from the service she’d insisted we have on hand.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Quieter,” I noted, adding one of my finished rolls to the pyramid I’d been building on the table.

  She tipped her head to the side, musing. “Less …”

  Death, I might have said. Suffering. Dying men wasting away in their beds with nothing to be done.

  “Fuss,” she finished, flat, and I nodded.

  She placed her empty glass on the nearest shelf. “Where is Armand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I didn’t. That was one of the things that had changed. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel him around in a general way. I still did. But he’d become less than even a specter to me now. He’d become someone who shunned me. No more swimming lessons; he’d told me that since we weren’t likely to drop into the Channel, I didn’t need them. No more taking meals together; Sophia’d overheard the butler informing the chatelaine that Lord Armand was much too busy to formally dine.

  When we met now at night, I noticed how he kept a firm distance between us. How he would stand at the edge of the cliff and watch me fly, but never touch me again, not even to offer me my clothes.

  I was accustomed to his bridled admiration, I admit. I’d come to expect it.

  Losing it irritated me.

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” Sophia inquired, rising to get more tea.

  “We’d have to be lovers for that to happen.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  “I am not. I am hot.”

  “Yes, indeed. Rolling bandages must be such awful exertion!”

  “Perhaps you’d care to try it,” I shot back. “Then you could find out.”

  She sent me a cat’s smile. “No, thank you. I’m quite content over here with my nice, cold drink.”

  I slapped my latest roll on top of the pyramid, destroying its fragile unity. It broke apart into bouncing pieces, bandages unfurling down the table and all across the room.

  “Lovers’ quarrel,” Sophia said wisely, and left it to me to pick everything up.

  “This time I’m flying with you,” Armand told me that night upon the cliff.

  He said it without inflection, without even looking at me, standing with his arms crossed to confront the rising yellow moon.

  No mist tonight; the moon threw a flickering path along the waves that led straight back to us.

  “I don’t know,” I hedged.

  “Don’t argue. It’s past time for it. You’ve done fine for the last two nights, haven’t you? No unexpected changes?”

  “That doesn’t mean they won’t come now.”

  “And it doesn’t mean they will. What are you scared of, waif?” His eyes glanced back to mine, heavily shadowed; I couldn’t read them at all.

  “Killing you,” I said bluntly.

  He shrugged. “Everyone dies sometime.”

  “Oh, am I supposed to be impressed with that? You’re so brave and noble, willing to leave me with your blood on my hands?”

  He looked at me fully. “Is that what you envision will happen?”

  Yes. No. I couldn’t bear thinking about it long enough to decide.

  “Tonight,” he ordered, in that cool, distant tone he used with me now.

  I turned on my heel, stalking back toward the motorcar. “Fine. Your funeral.”

  “We’ll find out.”

  I Turned without waiting to reach the car, smoke to dragon, just like that. I stepped carefully around my scattered garments, my talons scraping against the hard-packed dirt.

  I had no words in this shape; I’d discovered a while ago that I didn’t have any manner of voice whatsoever. I couldn’t even growl. So I lowered my head to glower at him and thought my dare.

  Come on, then. If this is such a cakewalk for you, come on.

  He walked over to me and placed a hand upon my shoulder. Damned if I was going to make it easier for him by bending down. I felt his feet slip for purchase on my scales, some tugging, and then he was up, straddling me.

  I wiggled in place, adjusting to the weight of him. His feet hooked in the space behind my front legs and in front of my wings. His fingers entwined with my mane.

  “Golden Eleanore,” he said quietly, leaning forward along my neck. “Fairest of the fair. I’m so tired of waiting. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  My irritation drained away. I flicked my ears at him, took an uneasy step. He remained perfectly balanced.

  I opened my wings. I tried a few tentative beats, letting him get the feel of it, of how my muscles would shift beneath him. I didn’t like his grip along my mane but couldn’t imagine how else he was going to hang on; my scales were sl
ick as glass.

  Suddenly the saddle didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Fly with me, love,” Armand whispered, a warm and urgent pressure upon my spine.

  I crouched, bounded, and took us up into the heavens.

  Chapter 16

  It was a very different thing to fly with another. I learned that right off.

  He slipped back some but held on tight, which was good, because if he’d fallen off as I ascended I didn’t think there was much I could do about it. I climbed and climbed so there’d be time for me to twist about and catch him if I needed to, then had the grisly thought that if I went too high, I might suffocate him.

  I chanced a look back. Armand was windblown, beaming. He met my eyes and blew me a kiss.

  Cheeky, but the relief danced through me light as bubbles.

  I leveled out, unwilling to try anything too daring. I felt him adjusting in place; every movement threw me off by degrees, and I had to compensate by tilting this way or that.

  I caught a stream of wind and the roar in my ears subsided into something close to silence. There was only the hiss of my wingtips scraping edges off the air. His breathing. Mine.

  The sea was a reflective floor, occasional ships adding dollops of light. We skimmed below clouds plated in gold, because the moon was huge and lovely, pulling me toward it with a yearning that tugged soul deep.

  Fireheart. Lora-of-the-moon.

  I was meant to be here. I was meant to be this way. And even with Armand clinging to my back, I was glad. Up here I was as free to be myself as anywhere in creation. No rules meant to bind me, no gossip meant to make me feel small. No adults chiding me for never being quite what they hoped; no toffee-nosed girls mocking me for what I’d never have or never become.

  Beyond the clouds, the stars had been arranged in a high, brilliant lattice of glitter. They were singing without words, a symphony as glad and ferocious as I was.

  I gazed up at them and imagined plucking them one by one, wearing them as debutantes did diamonds: a necklace of stars, a coronet, a glinting fan of them trailing behind me like the train of the most breathtaking gown. The queen herself would weep with envy.