The Deepest Night

by Shana Abe

  “You knew I was coming,” I said.

  “Yes.” A small rush of a word, imbued with every sort of meaning: faith, trust, wholehearted relief.

  “The stars,” I said.

  “The … boy.”

  “The boy in the stars. Jesse. He sings to you.”

  A bare nod.

  I cocked my head, genuinely curious. “And you didn’t think you were going barmy? Or maybe trapped in a nightmare?”

  The sound he made this time was more like a laugh. The fingers with the blackened nails twitched.

  “Worse … than this?”

  Good point.

  “Is Jesse, perchance, singing to you now? Telling you what we should do next?”

  His brows drew together, his lips pulled into a grimace. I took that as a no.

  I sighed. “Listen. Here’s the rub. I can’t hear him. I’ve come here with Armand—yes, he’s below. Don’t try to move yet. I’ve come with Armand, and he’s alive but injured, and you’re alive but injured, and”—I tugged at my hair, frustrated—”damn it all, so am I. So I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now. This place is crawling with soldiers, and I stirred up something out there, but I’m not sure what, if it’s enough to sneak you out or not, and now … now …”

  I ran out of things to say. The bleak cold of the floor was seeping into me, congealing me, skin to muscle to joints.

  “Heard … you’re something.”

  I looked at Aubrey. The grimace had relaxed back into a smile. His hair was blond; his eyes were gray. His lashes were long and thick, just like his brother’s.

  “Scales,” he said. “Wings. Helen of the skies. Like to … see that.”

  A Helen of the skies. Like Helen of Troy, whose beauty had moved armies. But all I could move was me.

  I shook my head, forcing myself to return his smile. What I really wanted to do was curl up and cry because I was chilled and leaden and at a loss for any clever way to go on. I might try to drag him down the stairs to the bottom of the tower, but there were probably more guards between here and there. I could try to Turn to dragon to get him out, but the window was too small for anything but smoke to fit through. And even if I did succeed at any of that, there was still the matter of maneuvering Aubrey onto my back and getting both of us safely out range of the gunfire. And the aeroplanes. And maybe even zeppelins; nothing would surprise me at this point. For all I knew, the Germans had already constructed their own mechanical dragon and we’d have to dodge that as well.

  The riot sounds outside were growing louder and louder, and I was worried about Armand, even though he wasn’t technically inside the prison, because what if the dogs or the guards found him anyway, while he was still unconscious? What if—

  “I’m a pilot, you know,” Aubrey rasped.

  “I know,” I answered, distracted.

  “Know the hazards. Good hands.”

  I studied him, trying to understand.

  “I can hold on,” he said. “Let’s … clear out.”

  And all at once, I understood that there was only one way out. There had really only ever been one way.

  I leaned very near to him, letting him look square into my eyes.

  “Our circumstances are about to become much more precarious. Don’t let go of me no matter what, understand?”

  “Yes.”

  I came to my feet, turned a circle to measure the chamber, then Turned into a dragon crouching over him, pressing him down into the cot but not—please, please—squashing him.

  The tower was too small for me. I’d been counting on that.

  I arched my back against the ceiling. I felt the stones shift. I heard the mortar grinding, and the tower resisted me like a monster holding in its last meal.

  Yet I was monster, too.

  I arched higher, pushing, pushing. My face was smashed against one wall and my tail against its opposite; I pushed harder, squeezing my eyes closed, holding my breath against the powdery grit of the air.

  The ceiling began to come apart. Little fissures at first and then—with a mighty crack!—the entire roof exploded, and I was standing up into the night, still arched like a cat, my head free, my tail thrashing away at the walls. Stones began to rain the earth below us, provoking fresh shouts.

  My wings opened before I remembered my wound, but I couldn’t let it control me now. I’d give in to the pain later. Right now I needed to fly.

  I’d been seen, of course. I was difficult to miss. The machine guns were aimed at me once more, and I swiftly flattened, covering Aubrey again.

  I twisted my neck around to find him. He was cradled against my belly, staring up at me, eyes wide. But he met my gaze and nodded.

  Gently, gently, as gently as I could, I wrapped my front talons around his body. Without lifting him yet from the cot I held him in place and stretched my head upward, peering out over the rim of the wall. I was going to have to do this next part exceptionally quickly.

  A few more bullets whizzed by, pocking the stones to my right. It was a mess down there, exactly as chaotic as I’d hoped, with soldiers in all manner of uniforms running in all directions, tackling each other, fighting. The strict order of the camp had disintegrated. I saw bodies motionless on the ground, raggedy men with arms and legs askew. I saw severed loops of barbed wire stabbing the air, figures vanishing into the darkness of the hills.

  And, just beneath my tower, standing on one leg near the brambles: a man without a uniform. Without clothing at all. He looked up at me and my own joy pulsed through me (he’s alive, he’s here, he’s alive!) and then Armand lowered his head and touched his hand to his mouth, rather like when he’d blown me that kiss as he’d fallen.

  But as his hand dropped away, a dab of yellow light followed. A dab of what looked like, I swear, fire.

  It landed in the rose bushes, and before I could blink, they were aflame.

  He blended with their smoke, moved around the corner, and did the same thing.

  More flames. Fire licking the walls, spreading from plant to plant. Billowing thick smoke twisting up at me, obscuring the ground so completely that all I could see now was the patch of stars and sky straight above.

  Armand had provided us cover.

  I lifted Aubrey, clutching him like a doll to my chest. Then I took off, heading up into the cool blue starlight.

  I flapped away from the camp, away from the town, away from all those prisoners snatching back their fortunes and their lives to become part of the Prussian woods. They were far from home, all of them, and as I struggled to leave them behind us my heart echoed the knell of the stars. I thought for all those men, Go, go, go.

  Go forward and never look back. Find a better fate.

  Aubrey dangled from my dragon fists. Armand was smoke at my side. We couldn’t continue long like this. It was too hard on Aubrey, and I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t lose Armand again, and anyway, my wing was killing me.

  I found a meadow far from any lights. I set us down in sweet tall grasses. Armand Turned as soon as his brother was on the ground, leaning over him with his broken leg stretched out.

  “Hello,” said Armand in a happy voice. “You look wretched.”

  “Have you seen … yourself?”

  I sat in the grass with my knees tucked under my chin, watching them.

  I’d never really been ashamed before about my nudity from the Turns. Discomfited, yes. Ill at ease. But practically the only people who’d ever seen me like this were Jesse and Armand, and somehow, with them, it was almost as if it didn’t matter. As if the magic we shared made it nearly normal.

  But now there was Aubrey in our mix, and I felt—aware. I wished for a dress, and settled for blades of grass.

  At least it was still dark. The moon had set; the stars had gathered into different
constellations.

  Jesse was gone.

  “How long have you been able to do that?” I asked, and both of them turned their heads.

  I gestured to Armand. “Blow fire like that?”

  “Oh.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. “When you spotted me? About ten minutes, I’d guess.”

  “You did … what?”

  “He blew fire,” I explained. “He breathed it, like in fairy tales. It was bloody amazing.”

  “Well …” Mandy actually looked embarrassed. “I found out by accident. I woke up and you were gone, and I wanted to call for you and knew I couldn’t, and it just—it burned in me. Don’t know how else to describe it. I felt a burn in my chest, and then my throat, and I meant to cough. But instead …”

  He began to laugh. I did, too. Right then, in that quiet meadow where everything smelled of grass and smoke and fresh blood, it seemed very, very funny. I laughed so hard I started to cry, so I pushed my face into my knees and let the tears come, dripping down my legs.

  Armand limped to sit beside me. I felt his hand stroking my hair. He didn’t say anything, just kept stroking.

  A bird began to sing far out in the coppices. It sounded like a nightingale. It paused, waiting, until it was answered by another. They caroled like that, back and forth, as piercing and passionate as the emotions careening through me.

  Eventually my tears transformed into hiccoughs. My nose was running. My knees were sticky and wet.

  “Don’t worry,” Mandy whispered. “I’m sure you can breathe fire, too.”

  “Oh, God, I hope not,” I said around my hiccoughs. My life was abnormal enough as it was.

  I looked up, wiping my nose along my arm.

  “Doesn’t that hurt? Your leg?”

  He glanced down at it with an air of surprise, as if he’d forgotten all about it.

  “Er … rather.”

  “I think we should return to the hunting lodge. We can do something about it there. We’ll wrap Aubrey in that blanket.” It had made the journey with him, caught in my claws. “Both of you ride my back.”

  “Hunting … lodge?” Aubrey asked.

  “There are beds there, and clothing. Food in the village close by.”

  “Sounds like … paradise.”

  I had to agree. It did.

  Chapter 32

  Three dragons survived this world, not merely two.

  It was driven home to me as I helped Aubrey into the bed I had slept in not four nights before, into sheets that were still marked with the mud of Mandy’s transformation.

  Three of us. Perhaps the last three, so damaged and undone that if you were to combine us all together, we scarcely made up one sound creature. But here we were, back in the early dawn solitude of this cabin in the woods, and as I bent over to stuff the pillow beneath his head Aubrey’s gaze slipped downward—so very briefly—to my bare chest, and my skin began to burn.

  That dragon echo in him from before. It was louder now. More difficult to ignore.

  I backed away and went to find the trunk of clothing in the other chamber. I discovered Armand already there, lifting up garments. Like me, he was crisscrossed with rose-thorn scratches. Unlike me, the shin of his broken leg was swelling into a gruesome, livid blue.

  I took the sweater dangling from his fingers without bothering to examine it. It was large and loose and fell to my thighs.

  “You need to get off that leg,” I said.

  “I know. I will. It’s just …” He was gazing at the wall, then at me. “We did it, waif. We did.”

  I smiled. “Cursed near thing, though. And we’re not done yet.”

  “But—”

  “But you’re right. Bully for us. We did it.”

  I moved to him, or he moved to me, I wasn’t certain. We were in each other’s arms, holding tight as the shadows shifted into violet and the morning’s first rays lit pearl through the foggy green forest. It was going to be a fair day somewhere, perhaps even here. Yet I longed for the fog to linger, for the mist shrouding the lake to roll closer and erase us from the sun. I wasn’t ready for daylight.

  I lowered my head and let my hair cover my face. I ached for sleep and for poise and for the bandaged and broken man in the other room. For Armand and his leg, and the soldiers we’d left dead on the ground behind us. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to wipe them from my conscience anytime soon.

  I also knew I was at the edge of my limits, because everything had taken on a flickery, unreal cast. Even the heat of Armand’s body felt like something I’d dreamed. If I lifted my head, I wouldn’t be in the hunting lodge. I’d be in my dormitory at Blisshaven. My cell at Moor Gate. I was a gifted dreamer and had conjured a daydream beyond all others, but in the end I’d wake and still be a nameless girl trapped behind locked doors. Ordinary and alone.

  “Eleanore.”

  I looked up. Armand was still there. All of it was.

  “Go to sleep,” he said kindly. “Take this bed in here. I’ll bunk with Aubrey.”

  “Someone should … someone needs to keep watch.”

  “Yes. I will.”

  I glanced at the bed, a bare mattress bumped against a headboard, a heap of blankets at its foot.

  “Go on,” he said, and gave me a gentle push.

  “Wake me when you need to rest,” I said, dropping to the mattress, dragging the blankets over me.

  “Right.”

  “Don’t …” My thoughts were drifting into soft, muddled clouds.

  “Don’t what?” he murmured.

  “Don’t burn the place down.”

  My eyes were closed; the clouds had won. But I thought I heard him laugh a little.

  “I’ll hold my breath,” Mandy said.

  I was a dreamer, though. So even though I fell into those clouds, I dreamed I heard Armand and Aubrey talking. Armand’s voice low and soothing. Aubrey’s weak at first, growing stronger and stronger.

  “ … landed in a field. Engine on fire. Nothing … I could do. Crawled out. Hid in a … ditch. Three days. Farmer turned me in. Didn’t blame him. Children … needed to eat.”

  “Reginald took it hard. Very hard. You should know that he’s changed.”

  “Heard. Asylum.”

  “That’s not the half of it.”

  “The … girl.”

  “Yes, her. And us. You and me, too, mate. All three of us the same.”

  “Bespelled … by stars.”

  Silence for a while; I nearly floated away. Then Mandy spoke again. “You never thought—it might not be real? That you were going mad?”

  Aubrey chuckled. “She asked … the same thing.”

  “She has good reason. It’s been hardest on her, I think. She was the first, and she was alone.”

  “She’s …”

  Mandy and I both waited.

  “Miraculous,” Aubrey said.

  “You’ve no notion.”

  “But I will, Mandy. Swear to you I will.”

  I stole food from the village, a loaf of bread here, a mutton pie there. Small things from different houses, so we’d not be easily tracked.

  I took the sword from the hearth and hacked free two fine straight branches from a pine, and made a brace for Armand’s leg.

  I stood as a dragon by the lake at night and mourned without words the gaping tear in my wing. It could have used some stitches, but I’d have to stay in this shape too long for it to mend. So I would endure it.

  There were, after all, many others enduring much worse.

  On our second morning there, I sat with Armand and Aubrey upon the big bed, offering hunks of bread and cheese as Armand smoothed out the newspaper I’d used to wrap it all in for my hike back to the lodge.

  There I was a
gain, right on the front page. I looked even more fiendish than the last drawing. This time I’d been given horns.

  “Stylish,” I decided, analyzing the illustration. “Elegant but deadly. Perhaps I’ll grow some for real.”

  “Perfect as you are,” Aubrey assured me.

  “Even better than perfect.” Armand had to top him.

  I eyed them both. I’d been hoping, now that the flickering had stopped and the sun had firmly shoved its way inside the cabin, that Aubrey’s condition wouldn’t look so dire, that Armand’s leg wouldn’t be a true break but a sprain or a very bad bruise. But there was no denying that the situation was quite as critical as I’d feared. Aubrey was propped against the pillows; he was sitting up on his own, but that was about all he could do. Armand rested beside him, his bad leg stretched atop the covers, because otherwise the bark from my brace flaked off into the sheets. His toes were turning puce.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “Trying to work matters through. Obviously we need to leave here as soon as we can. Tonight. I believe if we start early enough I can get us across the Channel from here in one stretch, but we should consider what’s going to happen after that. We can land in Dover, and Mandy can say he’s been in an accident or something. But Aubrey, you’re inexplicable. You’re a peer. It’s been widely reported in the papers that you’ve been captured. You’ll have to have either a new name or a new face or a damned credible reason for being in England instead of a German prison camp, and I swear I can’t think of a single one.”

  “No, I can’t go … to England. I’m no … deserter. France. Get me there. I’ll get myself home.”

  My gaze fell to his hands, the blackened nails, the fingers and knuckles scabbed over so severely there wasn’t any skin left. Good hands, he’d told me, but I’d seen enough burns at Tranquility to know he’d likely never open his fingers again.

  Tears pricked behind my lids, which irritated me. Neither of them was acting overly emotional, and they frankly looked as if they might breathe their last at any moment. I had to be stronger than they.

  “Where in France?” I asked.