Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ripley Harper

  It was a good night.

  *

  When I wake up, I feel shaky and sick and horribly disoriented.

  I try to get up, but my head is spinning and I stumble, fall back onto the bed. The nausea hits me next and I lurch to the bathroom, dizzy and weak, making it just in time. I hang on to the toilet seat for a long time, vomiting and spitting and retching miserably.

  It takes almost half an hour before I feel strong enough to drag myself to the basin. I rinse my mouth and wash my face with shaking hands, my vision blurry and distorted. I can see just enough of myself in the bathroom mirror to know I look like hell: red eyes, swollen face, yellow-grayish skin. My hair looks terrible too, the dim light seeping in through the closed blinds making it seem greener than ever. I rub my eyes, hoping my vision will improve, but if anything I look even worse when I see myself again. I turn my back to the mirror, stagger back to bed.

  I have almost no recollection of what happened last night but I’m sadder than I’ve been in a long time, and for some reason I feel guilty and embarrassed, as if I’ve exposed myself in some awful, humiliating way. I hug my pillow, close my eyes, try to go back to sleep. But brief, terrible flashes of memory intrude just as I’m dozing off, and I wake every few minutes, twitching with anxiety and paranoia.

  Oh my God.

  Did I really act so superior, as if the entire world revolved around me? Was I really that rude to everyone, grown-ups and strangers and—ugh—even Gunn? I groan and pull the covers over my head, my toes curling in mortification when I remember how arrogant I’d been, how certain that I was better than everyone around me.

  How could I have laughed when people got hurt? Who were they anyway? And why were they fighting? Oh God, Ingrid’s face. I have never seen her so angry and disappointed. And Gunn? I’m almost certain he was bleeding at some point.

  Could I really have licked the blood from his face?

  Oh no. No.

  I’m pretty sure I tried to seduce Gunn last night. Oh my God. How am I going to face him? If only the earth would open up and swallow me.

  I shudder, clutching myself and shaking my head, trying to get rid of the memories, but it only makes my head hurt. After about an hour of mental torture I roll myself up into a little ball and give in to a burst of pathetic, self-pitying tears, ugly-crying until another wave of nausea hits me and I crawl to the bathroom again.

  I hang on to the toilet seat, sobbing, wishing I was dead.

  And then it’s back to bed, and another round of horrifying, mortifying, flashes of unwanted memories.

  *

  I must have drifted off at some stage because when I wake up again, it’s dark outside. I sit up carefully, afraid to trigger another bout of nausea, but I feel much better than before. When I drag my hands through my hair, I notice they’re not shaking anymore, and when I stand up and walk toward the bathroom, I’m steady on my feet, all the dizziness gone. But my heart is still heavy with sadness, my thoughts full of shame and anxiety.

  I take off my dirty clothes and get into the shower with some vague idea of purifying my mind along with my body. And strangely enough it does help: as the water pours over me, I begin to feel stronger, less paranoid, less hopeless.

  I stand there for a long time. I try not to think about what has happened.

  When I get out of the shower, I wrap myself in a towel and brush my teeth. I don’t look in the mirror. I just can’t bear it. Then I walk to my closet, open it.

  All my clothes are blue.

  I stare at my wardrobe for a long time, tears running down my face. Maybe Ingrid was right. I shouldn’t look normal; there is something badly wrong with me.

  In the end I put on a pair of electric blue jeans and a blue sweater. Then I brace myself and go downstairs to face the music.

  Ingrid is in her office, working on her laptop. When I knock on the door she whips around, getting to her feet in a startled movement. Tonight, for once, she is make-up free and wearing a simple wrap-around dress without any jewelry. Without the distraction of her usual outrageous outfits, she looks old but strikingly beautiful, her lined skin somehow only emphasizing the unusual dark blue of her eyes and the sharp angles of her cheekbones.

  We stare at one another for a few long seconds, and then she gives a strangled sob, rushes over and hugs me fiercely. “Jess!” She pushes me away just far enough to look at my face. Then she touches my hair, my cheek, my neck, before hugging me toward her again. “Oh, my dearest little one.”

  Ingrid has never hugged me before. Usually she’s very careful not to touch me. I’ve never minded really; I understand that some people are uncomfortable with physical affection. But right now, this hug is so welcome that I nearly start crying again.

  “I’m so sorry,” I begin, but she shushes me immediately.

  “No,” she says. “I’m the one who should be sorry. This is all my fault.”

  I stare at her, surprised.

  “I have failed you in so many ways,” she says, drawing me toward the sofa in the corner and pulling me down beside her. “I cannot ask you to forgive me and yet I am so, so terribly sorry.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry! I don’t know what got into me last night.”

  “Of course you don’t; how could you? I never prepared you for any of this.” She takes my hand in hers, her face drawn in deep lines of regret. “You have to understand that I was never meant to be a keeper. My sister was the one in our family who felt the calling—I never wanted the responsibility…”

  She swallows a few times before continuing.

  “I came to my role as Black keeper late in life, and I was never particularly good at it. I loved your mother too much, you see. Not with the care and respect of a good Black keeper toward her ward, but with the deep, humming, blood-love of a mother. Oh, Jess. I was so sure that my love would be enough to show me the way. I ignored all our traditions and customs and I allowed Bella to run wild, to grow up as freely as if she was an ordinary little girl. I knew it was my job to shield her, to mold her and protect her, but she was so full of life! So eager for new experiences, so ready to grow and to change. Being her keeper began to feel like being her jailor, and I just couldn’t do it. My love for her wouldn’t let me. I wanted her to be free, to taste life in all its richness. And yet, I should have stopped her, I should have…”

  Ingrid is now crying openly. I don’t say anything.

  “By the time I understood your mother’s plans, it was too late to stop her. I couldn’t keep her; she’d become far too powerful by then. I begged her not to follow through with her crazy schemes, but she was stubborn, so stubborn, and so incredibly strong. Nobody could stop her. She broke so many rules, did so much that was forbidden... The choices she made hurt me deeply, but nothing hurt me more than her decision to take you away to those foreign deserts, so far from me.”

  She shakes her head, as if she still can’t believe what happened.

  “I knew she meant to raise you away from all places of power, and especially away from the ocean—she was very clear about that. But I never for a moment thought she’d go through with it! Never! How could Bella stay away from the sea? The mere thought was ridiculous; I didn’t take it seriously for one moment. There was a lot of bitterness between us by the time she left, and when she cut off all communication, I was too hurt and too stubborn to reach out to her.”

  Ingrid pauses to take a tissue from her bag, wipes her face. Then she grabs my hands again and looks at me pleadingly. “When she came back here, I couldn’t believe she’d gone through with it. She was dying—my baby, my lovely daughter—and I couldn’t handle it. How could she expect me to just sit by and watch her suffer like that? She shouldn’t have asked that of me! She shouldn’t have.”

  Ingrid is sobbing now, her face in her hands. I watch her shoulders shake, but I don’t reach out to her. I have a sudden, horrible memory of how my mom’s hands looked toward the end: just a bunch of bones held together by discolored, paper-thin skin.<
br />
  “But I couldn’t turn her away,” Ingrid continues after a while. “It was unthinkable. When I realized she was set on this desperate plan, that she wouldn’t budge no matter what I did, I knew the only thing left was for me to take care of her, to make her last months in this world as bearable as possible.”

  Months and months before her death, my mom’s head already looked like a skeleton’s. Sometimes, before I fall asleep, I still see her suffering eyes in that big, bony head, and I feel sick and shaky with the memory.

  She wouldn’t have chosen to die. Never.

  Ingrid is wrong.

  I concentrate on my breathing, try to block out Ingrid’s tearful voice. But despite the measured lungsful of oxygen, my head feels so light I’m afraid I’m going to pass out.

  “It broke me. Bella’s suffering destroyed me. And afterwards… It was difficult for me to look at you; impossible for me to even think of preparing you for your destiny. The truth is that I didn’t really believe in it anymore. Nothing made sense; it all seemed so hopeless and desperate. And now I’ve waited too long and I don’t know how to fix it!”

  “I don’t believe you.” I finally find my voice. “My mom wouldn’t have chosen to die. She would never have suffered like that if she could’ve stopped it.”

  “Your mother’s sacrifice was greater than anything I could have imagined.”

  “It wasn’t a sacrifice! She got cancer; she couldn’t help it. She would never have left me otherwise. She loved me.”

  “Oh, little one, of course she loved you. In the end your suffering hurt her more than her own. But she made that choice for you, for all of us.”

  “It wasn’t a choice.”

  “Oh, Jess.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  But when Ingrid takes me in her arms and rocks me from side to side, slowly and rhythmically, just like my mom used to, I know for the first time that this is a lie, and that the truth may be more dreadful than I ever imagined.

  Chapter 17

  The First came from Chaos

  and knew destruction.

  The Second came from Will

  and knew creation.

  The Third came from Wonder

  and knew marvel.

  The Fourth came from Darkness

  and knew evil.

  The Fifth came from Light

  and knew good.

  The Sixth came from Fire

  and knew burning.

  The Seventh came from Air

  and knew breath.

  The Eight came from Water

  and knew thirst.

  The Ninth came from Earth

  and knew growth.

  The Tenth came from Blood

  and knew what it was to be human.

  From Collected Wisdom of the Seaprophets (first printed in 1809);

  this translation from the original Japanese by Asahi Ito (1948)

  It’s about half an hour later. We’re still in Ingrid’s study, sitting side by side on her sofa. On the coffee table in front of us a pot of herbal tea stands waiting on a tray. I’ve eaten a piece of dry toast, which I’ve managed to keep down. Ingrid has agreed to tell me everything I want to know about my mother, vow or no vow.

  “A Blood Oath is a powerful spell,” she says. “But I am still the Black Lady, and not without power of my own.”

  I nod, my heart in my throat, afraid of what I’m about to hear.

  She blows out a long, slow breath before she begins.

  “As far as we, the keepers of the Black Clan, know, true magic comes from ten ancient lineages. Your own bloodline, which has been called many different names through the ages, but I will call… Lilith’s heirs… for now, was the youngest of those ancestries, and the one most completely of this world.”

  She speaks slowly, with many pauses, and I realize she must be choosing her words carefully.

  “We do not know much about those early days. Legends and rumors and stories about your kind are told all over the world, and yet it is surprisingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. The Black Clan itself only started keeping written records in the time of the Pharos, but unfortunately those ancient scrolls were lost when the great library of Alexandria was burned to the ground.”

  She takes a few sips of tea.

  “The oral histories that remain are confusing, shrouded as they are in mystery and riddle, but we do know that in the days before humans bent the living world to their will through agriculture and industry, your family’s magic was at its strongest, and your kind were feared and worshipped by all human cultures in all parts of the world.”

  “My kind?” I bite my lip, not liking the sound of that. “You make it sound as if… as if I’m not really human.”

  Even as I say it, I will her to laugh and say: Of course you are! What a ridiculous question! Instead she remains silent for far too long, her face troubled.

  “The issue you raise is a difficult one,” she says eventually. “Even within the Order, there aren’t many who agree on this. Some believe you to be evil monsters, some believe you to be divine spirits, some believe you to be little more than dumb animals...” She tightens her throat, as if swallowing a bad taste. “Perhaps the truth is that the Order has controlled the lives of girls like you so strictly for so long that nobody really knows anymore.”

  An awful, hollow feeling starts growing in my stomach.

  “What did my mom think we were?”

  Her face softens. “Bella was completely and utterly convinced of your humanity. She passionately believed that this was the true root of your magic; the very source and foundation of all your power.” She rubs a hand across her eyes. “In the end she even became convinced it was because we, your keepers, had denied your essential human nature for so long through our rituals and practices that the magic had weakened over the ages, dwindling with every generation until it became little more than a myth, a legend from the past.”

  “Was she the only one who thought so?”

  “No.” Ingrid smiles sadly. “I’m sorry to say that she got this crazy idea from her keeper, a foolish old woman who never did know when to shut her mouth.”

  “Do you still believe it?”

  She sighs. “These days I don’t know what I believe. When Bella sacrificed her life on the altar of your humanity, I cursed myself for having planted the idea in her head. But now I’m not so certain anymore.”

  I feel my entire body go cold. And then hot.

  “Ingrid,” I say, as calmly as I can, and then I wait until she looks me straight in the eyes before I continue. “I know you’re not a bad person and you’ve always been kind to me, in your way. But this is the third time you’ve told me that my mother killed herself because of me, and…” My voice thickens.

  “Oh, little one. I’m sorry. I would never—”

  “Please. I don’t want your apologies.” I take a deep, shaking breath. “All I want is for you to explain, slowly and clearly, why you keep saying something so terrible.”

  She drops her head into her hands. We sit in silence for a long time.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” she says eventually, her voice sounding old and thin. “Sometimes I feel as if everything in the world died when Bella did. I am dead inside, little one—deaf and blind and numb. I don’t know how to deal with the living anymore.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” I say, my voice sounding harsher than I wanted, “and neither do I.” I look at her bowed head, her fragile shoulders, and try to soften my voice. “You’re doing okay, Ingrid. I know this is hard. I miss her too. But you need to talk to me. Please. What happened to me last night? What’s going on?”

  A long silence greets my words. I’m determined not to back down this time, so I force myself to remain completely quiet. Waiting. As the seconds drag by, I stare at a framed photograph on the table beside me. It’s a picture of my mom when she was about my age: a smiling, happy, ordinary girl.

  “You’re right, little one.” After at l
east five minutes of complete silence, Ingrid lifts her head, visibly squaring her shoulders. “I am still your keeper, and I know my duty. I promise to do my best to tell you what I must.”

  But then she searches for the right words for such a long time, her mouth opening and closing and her hands fluttering like moths, that I suspect the spell still binds her far more tightly than she’d like to admit.

  “Some say that women like you first rose from the sea,” she eventually begins, “their bodies covered in scales, their blood green and venomous. Others believe you were hatched from eggs, covered in feathers and hidden in high nests, or that you grew like trees from the soil, your limbs like clever branches reaching out to the sky.” The corner of her mouth twitches slightly when she sees the horrified expression on my face. “Some of the oldest ancestries, it is said, showed clear signs of their strange origins: there were those who were born with feathers on their heads, and those who had scales on their legs, or arms covered in a soft green mossy bark.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  She smiles sadly. “We don’t know if any of those stories are true, but we do know that this was never said of your own bloodline. I’ve told you that you are descendant from the youngest of the ten great magical ancestries and, believe me, nobody ever doubted that your ancestors entered the world by any other way than through the living wombs of their human mothers.”

  “That’s reassuring,” I say, not entirely ironically.

  “It has always been known that those whom we call trueborn—men and women who are directly descendant from the Ten through their mother’s side in an unbroken line, one body born from the other, generation after generation—carry more lifemagic inside them than anything else alive on this world. Before the Order of Keepers brought discipline to this magic, the men born from such ancestries often went mad with power, while the women…”

  Her mouth opens and closes again a few times, but no sound comes out. I know she’s fighting against her vow of secrecy, but this is too important. I can’t let it go. “What happened to the women?” I ask.

  She swallows, clears her throat, takes a few deep breaths, clenches her fists. “They were transformed into beings of myth and legend,” she says eventually. Her words drop into the silence one by one, heavy stones in a still pool. “Powerful, spectacular creatures that many now believe existed only in our dreams and our nightmares.”