by Jen Pretty
The idea of riding a dragon had never occurred to me since Daisy hated being a dragon, but I wasn’t going to turn him down.
Armond stepped closer and Daisy blew smoke out his nose again, narrowing his eyes at the fae hunter. I wasn’t sure why he was acting this way, but I had never had a reason to doubt Daisy and I wasn’t going to question him. Not after all we had been through together.
I slid onto his scaled neck and moved down till I was on his back, between his small wings. He stood up and started lumbering away from camp. The guys scrambled to pick up Roman and keep up with us. Riding a dragon was like riding an elephant. He was big and lumbering and his strides tossed me around on his back. I held on to his scales for dear life, but we didn’t travel far through the forest. I saw the shape up ahead and couldn’t believe where Daisy had brought me. It was a portal, but one I had never seen before. It wasn’t the one back to earth.
Daisy snorted more smoke out of his nostrils at the door, then he lay down, and I took the hint and slid off again. He stood up and blocked the guys from coming any closer.
“Daisy, you have to let us come with you. What if you run into danger? Lex has no magic. Can you protect her alone?” Armond said.
Daisy huffed again and didn’t move.
We were in a standoff. It was apparent Daisy didn’t want them to come, but they didn’t want to leave me alone. I was trying to hang on to myself, but I was slipping. I knew I should have had an opinion about whether they came or stayed, but I couldn’t find the energy to care.
Armond looked at me for my reply, but I just raised a shoulder. The tension in Armond’s face made him look ancient.
“Let Daisy take care of her, Armond,” Puck said, handing me a water bottle. Of everyone, Puck was the last person I thought would back Daisy, but they had some weird history I didn’t know about.
Armond’s shoulders slumped and he looked the dragon in the eye. “You better bring her back in one piece.”
Daisy booped Armond in the chest, nearly knocking him down. Then he huffed out some more smoke before standing and waddling towards the door. He stopped and looked back at me, shifting back into a duck. I took a deep breath and followed Daisy into the unknown new world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The first thing to hit me was the temperature change. It was cool in the werewolves’ land, but this place was hot. I took off my sweater and left it by the door. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need it here because I didn’t have a backpack to put anything in.
The ground was bare dirt with scrub brush, but up ahead in the distance I could see some small trees, beyond that, mountains were cutting up into the crystal blue sky.
As we walked along, I peeked down my t-shirt and saw that the rot had spread up my arms and was halfway down my body now. Whatever we were doing, I hoped it would help with my magic situation. Quickly.
“So, where are we going, Daisy?” I said to break the eerie silence. He was waddling along like a duck and I hoped we didn’t have to travel far because this was a slow way to go.
He quacked in reply and we continued walking.
Several hours later, my water bottle was empty. The air was so hot here that my mouth had gone completely dry and grains of sand were crunching between my teeth.
“Daisy, we need to find water,” I said, my voice so harsh and gritty that it startled both of us.
He didn’t even look at me. He simply took flight, flapping his wings and flying high into the sky. Hopefully he was going to find water and not just ignoring my complaint. I trudged along for a while alone as he flew up above and then watched as he veered to the right and dropped out of the sky. I turned towards where he landed and sprinted the last couple hundred feet. Then I crashed to my knees at the edge of the small stream, gulping the water down and splashing it over my head. It wasn’t cool like a stream, in fact, it was warm, but at least it was wet.
Daisy took a few small sips and then ruffled and shook dust from his feathers before he walked away again. It was strange to see him walk away from water and not flap about in it. The warm water would be a nice temperature for a bath, but Daisy had lost his joy somewhere between the mountain and here. I refilled my water bottle and caught up with him. The sun was setting beyond the mountains and the sky was slowly turning pink. I watched the horizon, completely zoned out and just putting one foot in front of the other until I saw a shape slide along above the peaks against the setting sun. I stopped dead and glanced down at Daisy, but he kept waddling along.
That was a dragon. Then I saw a couple more, soaring through the sky above the mountain range. It dawned on me that we were in Daisy's homeland. I had often wondered why he was alone, why I hadn’t seen another dragon anywhere in my travels. But I had seen Daisy as a dragon, and there was no way his little wings could fly like that.
He ignored the fact that I stopped and kept waddling towards the oncoming dusk, where the dragons soared, so I jogged to catch up to him.
My mind raced to figure out what the heck I was missing. Daisy hadn’t been himself since I came down off the mountain, full of the evil magic. He had seemed angry, though he still wanted to be with me. I had to assume he had a good reason to bring me to this place but seemed to have lost his joy completely.
If this is where he was from, why wouldn’t he want to be here?
My answer arrived with a bellowing scream and a puff of smoke. A massive dragon with enormous wings landed before us, and Daisy curled into a ball at its feet. The duck looked ridiculous before the dragon, particularly when I knew he could quickly change into a dragon too. But he chose not to.
The dragon flicked Daisy with his nose, launching my ducky across the dirt like a tumbleweed.
“Hey, fuck off!” I yelled.
The dragon just snorted smoke at me and took flight, spraying dirt on Daisy and me with the power of the wind his wings created.
I ran over to Daisy as he righted himself and shook off the dust.
“Are you ok?” I asked, kneeling beside him.
He turned on me and bit my hand as I reached out to him. I snatched my hand back and he marched away. He was still heading towards the mountains and whatever destination he had to take me to. I hoped this was worth it, because whatever he was doing, he was definitely not here because he wanted to be. I stood and dusted my pants off before following along behind him.
The way he hunkered down as soon as the dragon landed was like a dog who had been beaten enough times to expect it. If this is where Daisy came from, I was glad he left and even more glad he had found me that night in the small village.
“We don’t have to be here, Daisy. We can go back.”
He didn’t reply, just kept walking. I followed along silently. I had my knife, but it wouldn’t do much good to protect us from these dragons. I prayed we didn’t meet any more.
As the last rays of pink faded from the sky, Daisy stopped by another small pond and we both had a drink before he led me to a small grassy area. He stomped around, flattening it into a nest.
I sat down in the middle as he continued to make the nest more comfortable. He had never done this before, always choosing to sleep in my bed with blankets, so it was intriguing to watch. He pulled grasses into the area and used his feet and beak to make our nest into a bowl shape. I tried to help for a little while, but when he kept moving the grass I had spread out, so I gave up and let him do his thing. When he seemed satisfied with our cozy place, he curled up in the middle, and I curled around him, falling asleep quickly this time, no tossing and turning.
The next time my eyes opened, the sun was peeking over the horizon. It lit up the sides of the mountains, and I could see all the scrubby trees and creatures moving around -- Large, dragon-shaped creatures.
They looked so much like Daisy, apart from the wings.
We got up and had another drink from the pond. I filled the water bottle, and we started off towards the mountains again.
We heard a few loud calls that made Daisy hustle instead of h
is usual waddle, but we were left alone as we walked through the scrubby trees and rocky terrain. By late afternoon we were close enough to the mountains that they blocked out the sun, but we were still miles away from the base.
The loud shriek of a dragon filled the evening air, and Daisy stopped dead.
“What is it?” I asked, stopping beside him. He ruffled his feathers before cautiously walking on. He kept looking to the sky.
I glanced up too and that was when I noticed they were watching us. Like vultures circling a dying deer, the dragons were in formation above us, flapping their broad wings in a graceful fashion.
“Why don’t you have wings like that, Daisy?” I asked staring up at the sky.
With no warning, he bit my pant leg and pulled, tripping me. I fell to the rocky ground, stopping myself with the palms of my hands and scraping the skin.
I pushed myself up to my knees and looked at the duck. His eyes were on the ground and he cowered down like he expected me to hit him. My heart broke. What the hell? I sat down in the dirt and finally put the pieces together; Daisy should have been like the other dragons. He should have had wings and been able to fly like them.
I reached out, scooped him into my arms, pressing my face into his back, and I pet his sweet head. My poor duck. The sadness at the injustice of the situation tried to take over, but anger pushed it out of the way. If those dragons came down here now, I was ready to stab them even if it wouldn’t kill them. Those assholes had no idea who they were messing with. Daisy was my duck, and I wouldn’t have them screwing with him.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his feathers. He wrapped his neck around mine and put his beak in my hair, nibbling on it gently.
“Ok, let’s do what we came here for, ok? Then we get out of here and back to Armond and Roman and Puck. They love you as much as I do. You don’t need those dragons.”
Daisy quacked and led me to a small pond so that I could rinse my hands. The closer we got to the mountain, the slower the rot was progressing. It had even pushed back in a few places. I hoped this was a sign that Daisy was taking me somewhere that would fix me and hopefully it wouldn’t be too late to save Roman. I had hoped to see Luke overnight, but his absence could only mean that he couldn’t come to me now that I had no magic. My visions were gone, too.
Daisy and I started up the rocky mountain side. The dragons in the sky circled lazily, watching us approach for most of the day. I got good at ignoring them, but Daisy still anxiously looked up at them regularly. The sun had set when we reached a steep cliff edge with an old, weathered nest big enough for Daisy in dragon form, and I wondered if this had been his nest. He seemed comfortable in it. Adjusting the twigs and branches, pushing out the musty leaves and flapping his wings to clear out the dirt that had collected along the edges. Finally, he stopped and looked at me expectantly. We were high in the mountain now, so the deep sided nest was a good idea. I didn’t want to fall off the cliff in my sleep, but it was strange to be sleeping in a bowl.
Climbing in, it was soft on the bottom and solid, made of small sticks but constructed carefully, so it was sturdy. Daisy hopped up on the edge and nestled down beside me. We listened to the dragons scream for a while longer before they finally stopped and the silence of night fell over us. I had a bad feeling about the next day, but I wasn’t sure if it was my magic coming back, of it if was common sense.
✽✽✽
The scream of a dragon woke me the next morning and Daisy’s panicked quacking got my feet moving. I climbed out of the nest and a massive dragon confronted me with smoke coming out of its nose as it hovered before us. Daisy was crouched down in a crevice, his head tucked under his wing like a scared toddler refusing to look at the thing that scared him.
“Hey!” I yelled at the beast. “You leave him alone!” I picked up a rock and threw it at the dragon. When I missed, I picked up two more rocks and lobbed them at him too. He turned to me and huffed smoke in my direction. I backed towards the nest. He flew in closer. My back pressed against the stick nest now. I had nowhere else to go. His chest puffed as he drew a deep breath. Before he could fry me, a blast of fire knocked him out of the sky. Daisy had shifted, and a giant dragon stood in front of me now. The rest of the dragons who had been circling in the sky started screaming, but the rage in the call of the dragon Daisy burned was a thing of nightmares.
Daisy picked me up gently in his clawed foot and climbed the mountain on three legs in great strides like he was a goat, leaping higher and higher. His talons dug painfully into my side, but I held still, afraid he would drop me down the steep slope. The dragon he had fried was slowly catching up to us. Daisy had blackened his scales, so he was slower now, but he was coming.
At the peak of the mountain, Daisy dropped me into a hot spring. It was nearly hot enough to burn me, and I sputtered and splashed, trying to get out of the scalding water, but the edges were steep and slippery. I was struggling so hard to get out I didn’t notice the rot receding or the light feeling of magic returning to my body.
My mind cleared of the dark fog that had settled over it and I looked up in time to watch as the dragon grabbed Daisy by the neck in his sharp jaws and shook him like a dog with a toy.
“No!” I screamed, as the dragon launched Daisy off the side of the mountain.
My magic shoved me out of the soupy bath and sent the offending dragon across the landscape, crashing into a far peak. I slammed time to a stop, and everything paused except my tattered breath heaving from my body in panicked puffs. Sliding to the edge of the mountain where it was too steep to climb, I peered over the edge, afraid I had been too late. A shuttering breath left my lungs as I saw my magic had Daisy suspended in midair. His useless little wings were trying to stop his catastrophic fall, but they were so small. I screamed in anger at the injustice. If I let him go, he would fall, but I couldn’t get him back up here while he was frozen.
Unless.
I looked down at my hands. They were normal again with no trace of rot. I thought about what Helena had said in that clearing. She said I had to will it. I had to want it so bad that it came from my heart. That wasn’t so hard. I wanted Daisy to soar. I wanted him to spread his wings and fly like he was meant to do.
I wanted that so bad, I could taste it. Taking a deep breath, I centered my thoughts on Daisy and the image of him flying through the sky, cutting across the sun like a golden serpent.
I closed my eyes, sending my will out while still holding time to a stop. Sending my heart to the giant dragon who just wanted to be a duck. A moment passed and then another and I didn’t want to open my eyes, but knew I would have to. I crawled back to the edge of the cliff and looked down to find Daisy had enormous wings. I would have to trust him to be able to use them. I was exhausted from all the magic use at once and started to feel dizzy as I moved back form the edge and closed my eyes. Then I let go of my magic, returning time to normal and sent a prayer to every god that my friend would fly.
I waited. One moment. Then two. I couldn’t look, what if it hadn’t worked and my beautiful, loyal Daisy was flat down on the sharp rocks below.
A gust of wind knocked me over backwards and my eyes flew open to find I was face to face with the most majestic dragon I had ever seen. He opened his giant mouth full of pointed teeth and let out a scream that nearly shattered my eardrums. I slammed my hands over my ears and jumped to my feet as he landed in front of me and danced around like a ridiculous duck, except he wasn’t a duck, he was a dragon with large black and crimson wings spread nearly twenty feet in each direction. His clawed feet hopped and skipped on the rocks as he blew smoke into the air in a celebration like none I had ever seen before. Of course, I had never seen a dragon celebrate, but his joy was infectious and combined with the return of my magic, I was excited too.
Eventually, we calmed down and then both collapsed on the top of the mountain for a short rest.
“We have to get back,” I said cautiously. “Well, I have to. You could stay if you wanted.
”
Daisy shifted into a duck and bit my nose before returning to his dragon form to face the group of dragons who had approached us. Their heads were low as they moved closer, like a submissive dog. Even the one who I had tossed across into the mountain came towards Daisy with his head low and body scraping the ground. He had a limp and blood oozed from his side, but he seemed fine otherwise. Dragons were durable.
After Daisy had sniffed the head of each of the dragons before him, he turned and dropped down onto his belly in front of me, his long neck stretched out and his head in my lap. Thankfully he held his head up or it would have crushed me. His scaled snout was coarse and designed for protection only, but I pet him just as I did while he was a duck, because no matter what shape he took, he deserved to be loved.
“I love you, Daisy,” I whispered.
The rest of the dragons watched on as Daisy crawled forward and lay his neck beside me. He sat still, waiting. It was the same look he gave me last time he wanted me to climb on his back. When I didn’t move, he nudged me with his snout and I stood up and dusted myself off before climbing onto his back and taking a deep breath. I wasn’t opposed to speed or heights, but I had never flown outside of an airplane before. He stood abruptly making me squeak and then lowered himself for a brief second before jumping off the cliff and soaring through the sky with his wings held out catching the wind. We soared for a long time before he even needed to flap his wings.
The feeling was incredible. Nearly as good as Roman running at vamp speed. That thought brought me crashing back to reality. Daisy must have sensed the shift in my emotions because he was heading straight for the door on the other side of the world. Dragons screeched, but Daisy just bellowed back and carried on. Slowly the dragons from the mountain dropped away until it was only Daisy and me.
