“My whole life,” he begins, “I’ve been raised to believe that you are not a human being, no matter what you may look like. I was taught that despite all appearances you are, and always will be, a monster, and that the form you wear now is nothing but a clever disguise.”
I raise an eyebrow. “This isn’t exactly news to me, you know.”
“Yes.” He nods solemnly, ignoring my tone. “I’ve been very vocal about my beliefs. But I only did this because I sincerely believed that you are born a dragon and you die one. Every moment I spent in your presence, I’ve had to convince myself that my eyes were deceiving me; that this was not a girl before me but the true face of evil hiding behind a veil of female flesh.”
Zig is not a handsome man. It might seem like a mean thing to say, but it’s true. Maybe it’s his mouth: his lips are thin and pale, and because of a scar that runs from his top lip to the side of his face, he always looks as if he’s sneering. Or maybe it’s his eyes. They’re such a strange, silvery shade of gray that they look almost inhuman, as incapable of expressing any true, warm-blooded emotion as a cat’s. And then of course there’s that terrible tattoo that snakes from his neck over half his face right to his hairline: a blue-black dragon tumbling from the clouds with a bleeding sword plunged through its chest.
I’ve always thought Zig’s face was as hard and pitiless as his heart, but right now, with him looking at me like this, I’m beginning to wonder if another face may be hiding behind that cruel mask he always wears.
“It took me a long time to realize I was wrong,” he continues emotionlessly, “and when I did, I was too cowardly to admit it to myself. But today I realized that my hatred has become an act, and that I am tired of it.”
“So what brought this on?” I ask, not trusting this sudden about-turn.
“I dislike lying. And never more than when I’m lying to myself.”
“Okay. But, like, what exactly are you telling me?”
He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand.
“If you become a dragon, I will slay you. That is my destiny and yours, and neither of us can do anything to change it. But before that day comes, I will help you, if I can, and I will stop pretending that I’m doing it against my will.”
I search his face for clues. Could this be a trick? Some kind of trap?
“So… what? You don’t think I’m a monster anymore?”
“No.” His immediate denial must’ve surprised even him, because he stops, scowling, before he continues more thoughtfully. “It is true that a dragon slumbers inside you. I am not denying that. But it’s also true that, for now at least, you are still just a girl.”
Deep inside my heart, something lightens a little.
“So you think I’m still myself? Even with the shine on me?”
“Yes.”
“But what about those times when I can’t even remember what I did or who I am?”
“Your identity is not a simple one. But it doesn’t make you any less human.”
“You really think so?” I’m embarrassed to hear the childish note of hope in my voice.
“I have seen it with my own eyes. Even when you’ve been lost so deeply in your dragonshine that you couldn’t remember your own name, you always found your way back again. They were wrong when they told me you weren’t human, and I was wrong to keep believing it even after witnessing the evidence firsthand.”
“I…” To my absolute horror I hear my voice thickening. To hide this unexpected wave of emotion, I pretend to cough a few times, clear my throat. “Why should I believe you?”
“Do you know what a slayer’s first and most important duty is?”
“To kill dragons?”
“No. It’s to protect humanity. To guard against the forces that would see innocent people wiped from the face of this earth.”
I clear my throat again. “Are dragons such a force?”
A cool, blank stare.
“But I’m not a dragon yet.”
“No. You’re not. That’s what I missed until now; what I wouldn’t allow myself to see. But I see it now. As clear as day. So while you remain you, I will do my best to keep you from falling into that darkness. This I swear on my honor as a slayer.”
The moment is so strange and intense that I can’t look him in the eyes, so I lower my gaze to stare at his heavily tattooed arms instead. Both are inked with dying dragons, a cavedragon on the left and a waterdragon on the right, and with his fists clenched so tightly, his forearm muscles make the dying dragons writhe like animals in pain.
Wait.
The muscles in his arms.
I gasp. “It was you! You brought me back from the other side.”
“No. I have no idea what brought you back. But it wasn’t me.”
“It was you.” I close my eyes, feeling as if I’m trying to remember a long-ago dream. “You took me in your arms and you pressed me to your chest. You made me remember—–”
“I did nothing of the kind,” he snaps. “I was carrying you to the bed, that’s all. You were hitting your head against the floor and I had to stop you from doing further damage to yourself.”
“Hey, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m trying to thank you for saving my life. Again.”
“My intention was merely to prevent further injury, so I will accept neither thanks nor censure for my actions.”
“Oh, relax,” I say, irritated by his attitude. “I’m trying to thank you, not marry you.” He looks so uncomfortable that I can’t help pushing it a bit further. “Although I do now have the unforgettable memory of being firmly pressed to your manly chest...”
It is only when he narrows his eyes at me, the room suddenly growing cold, that I remember Zig is an honest-to-god religious extremist who finds any kind of flirty playfulness offensive on a level I will never understand.
“Oh,” I say sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I forgot about your beliefs and your, um, purity and the Old Words and all—–”
“Leave the Old Words out of this.”
“Of course. Yes. I’m sorry.”
He doesn’t acknowledge my apology, and now that we’re back to the old glaring and icy silences, I can’t help but feeling as if it’s all my fault.
I blow out a breath. “Look. Zig. We both know our relationship started out badly.”
“We do not have a relationship.”
“Yes. Of course not. What I mean is that our, um, association started off on the wrong foot.”
“I did my duty. Nothing more and nothing less.”
“Oh please. You never stopped insulting me for a moment—–you admitted it yourself just five minutes ago.” I lift a hand to stop him before he can argue. “But it’s not as if I was blameless either. I began teasing you as soon as I realized I could get under your skin. I knew you hated it and I wanted to irritate you. So I guess after a while it became a kind of habit, you know?”
No response.
“And the thing is, old habits are hard to break, even though we both might feel a bit different now.”
Still no response.
“What I’m trying to say is I didn’t mean to offend you just now. Honestly. You irritated me with that whole I-refuse-to-accept-your-thanks thing, and I tried to get back at you with the manly chest comment. That’s all. I wasn’t trying to be a bitch, or anything.”
It might just be wishful thinking, but I imagine the tension in him relaxing a fraction.
“I’ve thought a lot of things about you, but never once that you’re a bitch.”
“Really? I suspect that puts you in a minority of one.”
No response.
I lift my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, Zig, okay? It really meant a lot to me, all that stuff you said about me being a person and not a monster. I didn’t mean to ruin it with some stupid comment.”
After a few seconds of silence, he nods. “These arguments are a waste of time. If there truly is a negative pattern of engagement between us, we will need to break the cycle goin
g forwards.”
I risk a careful little smile. “I’ll stop if you’ll stop?”
“Yes. That’s fair. I believe you've taken the lead in this already.” He gets up, his manner so stiff and formal that I kind of expect a salute.
(But I don’t say it. I’m really trying here.)
“I apologize if I seemed… ungracious when you tried to thank me.” He blinks a few times, his face completely expressionless. “Before meeting you, I never associated with any normal young people, and I’ve come to realize that there are times when I misinterpret some of the finer nuances of everyday banter.”
“Wow.” My smile widens. “I think you just called me a normal young person.”
“You must understand that I don’t get out much.”
“Was that an actual joke?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
But I’ll be damned if there isn’t a glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
It’s about an hour later.
Earlier, Jonathan brought me some food, but his bloodmagic was still so out of control that Zig sent him out of the room immediately. Nobody needed to explain to me it meant I was still shining like crazy. While Jonathan guarded the door, I told Zig everything I could about the last Remembering trance I fell into, and now he’s giving me one of those nasty silver glares again.
“What exactly did your keepers tell you about the deep earthmagic skill of Remembering?”
I shrug. “That some Earthkeepers can go into a trance where they ‘remember’ things that happened to their ancestors in the past. Nobody knows exactly how it works, but Gunn says it’s got something to do with the fact that time is never really ‘over’: we experience time as linear because that’s just how our brains work, but in reality time is just another dimension—–” My words dry up when I notice his look. “What?”
“Sometimes I could strangle Waymond with my own hands.”
“I know right? He always goes off on all these theoretic tangents, not realizing it’s impossible to understand head or tail of what he’s saying.”
“The problem isn’t that his theories are difficult to understand. The problem is that they’re wrong.”
“Really? Why?
“Because he’s attempting to normalize deeply mystical processes with fashionable scientific theories instead of honoring the insights of the hundreds of generations of keepers who’ve gone before.”
“Okay,” I say carefully, not wanting to make him mad again. “But the thing is, if my keepers had honored those traditions and followed the drills, I’d probably be so physically damaged and emotionally traumatized by now that I wouldn’t be that different from the Pendragon women. So I’m kind of inclined to give Gunn the benefit of the doubt.”
“Yes,” Zig says, “I can see why you might think Waymond a hero. You are strong and whole and so is your magic. But once that magic grows so powerful that it forces your transformation, it is not Waymond who will have to deal with the consequences. I am the one who will have to face the dragon. I am the one who will have to scrub that dark blood from my sword, while he walks away with his pretty face and his pretty scientific theories to wash his hands in innocence.”
His words hang in the air between us like shards of flying glass.
I tell myself that I can handle it.
I know all this.
I can handle it.
“Anyway,” I say in the tense silence that follows, relieved that my voice sounds almost normal. “I don’t think that’s really the point right now.” I swallow. “Um. You were going to tell me about remembering trances?”
The dying airdragon across his cheek twitches.
“I shouldn’t have said what I just said.”
“Never mind.” I do my best to keep my voice even. “It’s probably true.”
“Understand that I do not relish the prospect of causing your death. To the contrary, the thought is beginning to fill me with—–”
“Please,” I interrupt. “Just leave it, okay?”
“If that is what you want.”
“It is.” I can’t help blinking a few times, but I don’t look away. “I’m not a dragon yet, and I don’t want to think about the future right now. Just tell me what was wrong with my Remembering spell and leave it at that.”
He gives a curt nod. “Remembering connects Earthkeepers to the lives of their ancestors. It gives the most powerful among them a glimpse into a world long gone, which now exists only in the blood memory of those who share the same ancestry.”
“Like genetic memory? Gunn told me about monarch butterflies and laboratory mice—–” One look at his face shuts me up. “Sorry, go on.”
“Remembering,” he says sternly, “like all the other deep skills, cannot be explained by science, and certainly not by the kind of pseudo-science Waymond likes so much. It is magical and holy, a gift to open the eyes of those who want to see and the hearts of those who want to believe.”
“Okay, I get it.” I have to concentrate really hard not to roll my eyes. “It’s a magical miracle and super mysterious. So what’s wrong with the way I did it?”
“A Remembering trance gives one the briefest flashes of insight: a snippet of conversation, a glimpse of a person or a place. It doesn’t display past events in a logical or coherent way, complete with different characters and unrolling events like some… television show.” He looks so pained by the idea I have to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from smiling.
“Actually, it didn’t feel like watching a show. It was more like those recurring dreams where all the places and faces seem familiar, but only until you wake up and it’s gone.” I stare at the treetops outside, trying to remember. “To be honest, now that it’s over, it feels more like a story I once read than a dream I had. I know what happened and I know why it happened, but I can’t really recall the faces and the places beyond the vaguest outlines.”
“I fear your magic is wilder and freer and stronger than any magic should be. You almost died today. I don’t know why your keepers didn’t warn you, but Remembering trances should only be practiced in the rarest of circumstances, and only with months of rest in between.”
His words evoke a memory: a glimpse of a place beyond this. A clear realization of how close I came to letting go.
“Gunn did warn me,” I admit. “But I was so desperate to find out how to control my shine I forgot all about it.”
“And did you find the answer to your question?”
“Yes.” I tear my eyes away from the endless green outside. “I think maybe I did.”
Chapter 14
And thus, of all the deep skills, the Earthmagic skill of Remembering is the one that I, personally, trust the least. For is it not true that the exact same Saturnalia will be remembered very differently depending on whether one feasted as a slave or a senator, a farmer or a tradesman?
From Orations of Aelius (1st Century CE); translated from the original Latin by Sofia Rodriguez (1999).
It’s about ten minutes later. I’m trying to explain to Zig how I’m planning to dim my shine. So far it’s not going well, mostly because he keeps interrupting me.
“So basically when the mother—–the dragon—–explained to her daughter that a dragon is half-beast—–”
“She admitted this?” Zig looks as surprised as I suspect it’s possible for him to look. “In so many words?”
“Yes. She said that part of every dragon is brutal and cruel and only concerned with its own survival.”
“It doesn’t sound like something a dragon would say.”
“Well, she did. She told her daughter she could strengthen the shine by looking beyond the beast inside her and focusing on her higher self. So I figured this means I have to do the opposite: if I want to dim my shine, I need to focus on my animal nature and try to suppress my higher self completely.”
He scowls. “It just doesn’t make sense. Why would focusing on your dragon-nature help you to dim the shine, when the shine is a dragon’s grea
test weapon?”
“No. You misunderstand. When the dragon talked about the part of her that was animal and beast-like, she was referring to her human side. She saw people as no more than cruel and savage animals. The higher nature she talked about was the part of her that was purely dragon.”
“Ah yes. That would be far more typical of a dragon’s thinking.”
“Anyway, what I’m thinking is, if you brighten the shine by building the dragonfire inside you higher and higher, it follows that if I dim my dragonfire, the shine should dim too.”
“That would make sense. Providing such a fire can be manipulated.”
“I’m a firemaster, aren’t I?”
“As far as those categories apply to one such as you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Have you ever seen your own inner fires?”
“No…”
“Then how exactly do you intend to dim your dragonfire?”
I shrug off his skeptical look. “I’m not sure. But I’ve never been sure about how to do any kind of magic, and that didn’t stop me from becoming both a firemaster and an earthmaster without even meaning to. I reckon if I put my mind to it, I should be able to figure this out in no time.”
Nope. Turns out that’s not how it works.
Now that I’m actively trying to do magic, I’m completely and utterly useless at it. Of course.
To be honest, after a couple of hours of trying to dim an invisible fire inside me, I’m so discouraged that I can’t help recalling those mind-numbing sessions in Ingrid’s garden, when Gunn had me stare at a blade of grass for hours on end.
Zig is the first to break the silence. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s not working.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. I tend to get cranky when I’m failing miserably.”
“May I ask what exactly you’re doing?”
“You know; I’m trying to dim my dragonfire.”
“By sitting motionless in a chair with your eyes closed?”
“That’s how I usually draw my firemagic to me. I just close my eyes, concentrate and… ta-dah!” I do the jazz hands. “The next thing I know the whole world is alive and beautiful and burning with a million secret fires.”
Treasurekeeper Page 14
