by Marc Secchia
Brushing back a stray lock of hair, Alex brushed her lips with his, as if fearful of spoiling a delicate treasure.
He murmured, “Now that’s the most awesome ‘get out of hospital’ gift, Zara. Ever. I’d almost go through it all again just for this.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Almost-never. Let me look at you.” He did, unhurriedly, making heat steal into her cheeks. Twice. Affecting a heavy Texan accent, he drawled, “Girl, a filly with legs like yours should be declared illegal.”
Filly? Deliberate choice of words, or she did not know him at all. What was this? Acceptance? An apology? Zaranna clutched her man dizzily, for a wink of time, caught somewhere between Earth and Equinox, between Human and Equine points of view.
Whiz gushed, “Gosh, is that the time? Hands off my granddaughter, thou scurvy pirate!”
Alex said easily, “I think the lady gets to choose, sir.”
The lady snugged Alex’s hand around her waist, and slipped her arm around his. “I’ve chosen. Our carriage awaits. Driver, my door, if you please.”
“Driver?” sniffed Whiz.
Christi snaffled him for a quick peck on the cheek. “Must run to Surgery. See you for dinner, my gorgeous Wizard?”
Yols said drily, “For that, I think he’d accept a demotion to doormat.”
Gramps clipped her head fondly. “Enough backchat from you, Junior Under-Footman Yolanda. Fetch that wheelchair and make it snappy.”
If only happiness could put the worlds to rights, Zaranna would have effected full restoration in a heartbeat. She and Alex shared the back seat of the BMW and chatted all the way home to Noordhoek as if there was no Equinox, no troubling horse-form and no existential enigma over the way she was able to travel between worlds.
Just before she went to sleep, Alex slipped into her room. “I have secured permission for a goodnight kiss by ransoming my motorbike.”
“Must be love,” she teased.
“It’s alright. Don’t sit up.” Moving over to the chair by her bedside, he said, “Today reminded me of what life’s truly about. I know you told me that I’ve apologised enough, but I wanted to say something else. When I mistreated you so awfully yesterday, I saw my father in me, in a way I’ve never seen before. I hate that man! I mean, there are things about him that I hate. I never want to be like him. Ever. I treated you like dirt and I’m so sorry. Zars, the thing that drew me back to you, that makes me think you aren’t mad … it’s your integrity. You’ve always been true even when it hurts. I can’t imagine the kind of courage it took to tell me something like that, knowing … you must have known. Dreaded the outcome. Didn’t you?”
“I did. But Alex …”
“Shh. I want to go there with you, Zaranna Inglewood.”
“Alex?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes. If Equinox is true, I want to be there with you and I believe you’ll find a way to make that possible.”
“You’re sweet.”
“I’m jealous. And angry. Curious and excited and – Zars, I’m not there for you. I can’t protect you from mean Dragons and this Sanu girl and … everything.”
She squeezed his fingers. “It’s enough that you believe in me.”
“Is it? Zars, one more thing. I was thinking today, thinking about what that beast said – what was his name? Illustrate?”
“Illume?”
“Yes. You said Illume claimed, ‘The Dreamer appears as she wishes.’ Dreams are powerful. If you have power, then why become what they expect? You can be more.”
Zaranna cocked an eyebrow at him, inviting further explanation. “Sir Knight?”
Alex just caressed her cheek, over and over, then suddenly knelt by her bedside and placed his lips upon her knuckles. “You’re true – to yourself, your beliefs, in your actions. That’s what integrity means, what you’ve demonstrated time and time again. I love that about you. Now, I know of one dream you revealed to me today. One very important, liberating dream, a dream that will release you into being not what these others – these external forces – impose upon you, but into being yourself.”
The silence teased her, a powerful awareness between them, until Zaranna began to half-wonder if Alex had a way of creating magic with his words.
“Which is?”
He chuckled. “Toes, Zara. You should dream of ten beautiful toes.”
Chapter 27: Dragonstone
SHe Woke, Looked down, and screamed.
Sanu was up in a blur, daggers drawn, then suddenly she loomed over Zaranna, shouting, “Ancestors! Who are you? Where’s my friend?” In the pre-dawn glow entering the crystal cavern, the Outland girl’s face was as hooded as a cobra’s, shock and deadly focus combined.
Zara pointed, yelling, “It worked! It worked! I have toes, Sanu … toes! Aren’t they amaz – urk?” Sanu’s dagger-blade pressed beneath her chin, stopping her shouting with a surprised gurgle.
“Good,” said the Outland Human, grimly. “First, imposter, I’ll have your name.”
“Zaranna.”
“Last I checked, she was a Plains Horse, not a white-haired ancestral spirit.”
“I am Zaranna. I’ll prove it to you. I know all about you, Sanu.”
“No, I’ll prove it,” said the girl, looking her over with an air Zara recognised all too well. Uh-oh. Naked. Shifting between worlds obviously did not include clothing – unless she was already wearing clothes, of course. Or horse-hide, more usefully.
Sanu was way too fast. She pinched hard, in a decidedly uncomfortable spot. “Saaaannuuu!” Zaranna roared, covering herself. “Get off me, you ridiculous beast!”
“I’m having too much fun. Tickle, tickle.”
Zara squealed, “Not the ribs! Darn it, Sanu, I’m so going to turn you into a toad when I get the chance.”
“Hmm.” The daggers vanished. “Definitely Zaranna. No one else screeches quite so much like a mountain eagle. So, this is what you look like? Your … Earth form? How peculiar you are.”
“Yes. Plus toes – look!”
“Toes? Are those ticklish too?”
“Sanu, stop. Oh, God stop!”
A touch of butterfly-magic slapped Sanu fifty yards across the crystal-ice inside the cavern where they had camped that night; and oh, she felt her toes! Zaranna froze. She could wriggle them. Feel cold. Know what it was to be ticklish. And she was so going to slap that inappropriate pest into kingdom come! Fancy leaving bloody pinch-marks on her left breast? Probably jealousy.
Who cared? Merciful heavens, Alex had predicted this Toe-Jam miracle!
Sanu came skating back with an expression that mingled displeased with thunderous. Zaranna realised that the act of swatting Sanu was about to earn her a world of hurt. Sanu did not like to be beaten. And she was under no illusions she could hold Cat-Warrior off for more than three seconds, give or take. A thrashing beckoned.
No. Before Zaranna could blink, a second, mischievous curl of magic whipped the Outland girl’s legs out from under her. The girl sprawled on the blue crystal lake. Hey. This could work. Zaranna chortled happily, which probably did not help her cause. A few waves of her hands to corral the crazy wind-pony-thing that had zipped past Sanu resulted in the girl thumping down on her head, rising only to be knocked flat once more; next, she floated aloft upon a bed of air, even though Sanu had turned invisible. Whap! She thumped down again with a wild shriek of fury. The other girl’s chameleon colour flickered, allowing Zara to spot and corral her.
By now, Sanu was working through a list of curses and invective that covered most of the alphabet backward, forward and sideways, and all of this at an impressive volume. Zaranna alternated between doubling up with helpless laughter, protecting Sanu from smashing into one of the crystal formations and trying to manoeuvre the girl into a position in which she could torture her feet. Well, that was the idea. Control was a slight issue.
“HUMANS!” A roar shook the cavern.
Dumping Sanu on her tailbone, Zaranna whirled. “Illume!”
<
br /> The Blue Dragon stalked toward them with powerful, sinuous steps, having to flatten his body to move beneath the crystal formations on the cavern’s roof. As he beheld Zaranna, his jaw dropped. Literally. The point of his chin struck the ground with a dull thump, making his fangs clack together. For a second the Dragon just stared, then he shook himself like a wet hound violently working the wet out of its fur, before going very, very still again.
His belly-fires raged as if they were a jet warming up its engine.
“Illume –”
“Ziryana!” he hissed. “You look remarkably well, considering last time I saw you, your corpse was rotting with the wormquines.”
“Illume, this isn’t what you think,” Zaranna stammered.
“Isn’t it? We rid Equinox of a plague of treacherous Human Wizards decades ago!” Illume snarled, visibly and audibly livid. “I know you, Ziryana, Wizard of Autumn. Just look at you torturing this hapless wretch – not that I disapprove of torturing Humans in general, of course. A noble art-form. Flares of fun for devious Dragons.” Clearly losing track of that thought, he added, “Dragons may change their scales, but they never change their hearts!”
“I swear, I am Zaranna.”
The Dragon cursed horribly. “Don’t start your tricks with me, Autumn Wizard. I’d know over Vale and under hill, you and your freakish white hair, your chrysoprase eyes …” He pulled up with a choked sound. “You … those eyes …”
Not far behind Zaranna, Sanu said, “You’re a Wizard? Dragon, shall I behead her right now to save you the trouble?”
“Shut your face, you perfidious rat, or I’ll make you chew on my foreclaw,” threatened the Dragon, although it was not clear whether he was snarling at Zaranna or Sanu.
“May my ancestors spit upon you, you filthy pile of Gryphon dung!” stormed the girl.
Obviously, Sanu was as excited about the possibility of Zaranna being a Wizard as she might be to sink her daggers into Darkwolf Clan hide. She shifted sideways, trying to keep the girl in her line of sight – not that this would matter should it come to a fight, or more accurately, a slaughter.
“So, the Autumn Wizard whelped a bastard child?” Illume was more fire than sulphur or jasmine at this point. “May the ghosts of your ancestors rise up and choke you, daughter of –”
“Grandchild, actually,” said Zaranna. “And I’m a Dreamer, not a Wizard.”
The Dragon insisted, “The eyes say Wizard-scum.”
“The heart says Dreamer.”
Oh no, Sanu had performed her vanishing act again. Zaranna’s nape crawled, expecting at any second to feel cold steel sliding between her vertebrae. She acutely felt the meaning of the expression, ‘between a rock and a hard place’. In her case, between a predatory bonfire and a deadly, invisible warrior.
“You’re Wizard-Clan?” Sanu snarled.
“I only found out my family history yesterday,” Zaranna protested. “I’m still the same girl you know. Honestly, Sanu.”
Honestly, Zaranna? Powerful argument. Totally convincing.
“You are Luxian’s granddaughter?” howled the Dragon. “Were it just for that, I should kill you – you and that pony-rat behind you.”
Fire wreathed Illume’s nostrils as he spoke. But Zara was fixated on his eyes. They had changed, the whirl of motes having stilled into a yellow, fiery glow that somehow struck her as duller than before, as if the nature of his inner fires had been transformed. The whole posture of his body, his attitude and even the agitated flicking of his wings, proclaimed more, even, than his words. Peril! Dragon fire! This was not the Illume of quirky words and teasing. This was a different beast altogether.
“Her, not me?” Sanu put in, helpfully.
The Dragon howled, “BOTH OF YOU!”
“Coward!” snapped Zaranna. “Go crawl back under a boulder, and moulder – urk.”
Steel pricked her neck. Zara saw her own body vanish. “Divided attention,” whispered the girl. “Didn’t work.”
Great acting, or a flat-out lie? “Oh, right.”
“I know exactly where you are, chameleon-girl.” The Dragon’s fury made him sound like an earthquake in motion. A huge puff of smoke enveloped them. “I see your smoke-shadows, I hear your frightened little hearts beating, and I blench at the rancid stench of Humans in the sacred birthplace of Dragons.”
Zara asked, “Are we in the Beyond?”
“You’ve an uncommon talent for turning up where you’re least welcome, Wizard-daughter,” said Illume. “Aye, this is the Beyond, the sacred and forbidden realm of Dragons, and you two are the first Humans ever to set foot in this place.” Briefly, his eyes seemed to deepen again toward their natural darkness. “I’m sorry to have to end our relationship this way, Dreamer, but for this trespass, you must die.”
She could not keep a quaver from her voice. “You promised, Illume. You made promises to me and I made oaths to you.”
“FILTHY LIES AND DECEPTIONS!”
When his thundering had finished shaking crystals loose from the roof, she said quietly, “What of your honour as a Dragon?”
The cavern resounded to the heavy rasping of his breath. The Dragon’s ire had risen to the point where his scales were smoking and the heat radiating off his body was like the open door of an oven. Illume seemed to be thinking very deeply; he groaned at length, as if gripped by a great, unseen pain.
Finally, he ground out, “You dare to lecture a Dragon about honour, Wizard-daughter? How shall I respond? Shall my honour overrule the survival imperative of all Dragonkind? You two have trespassed upon that which is most sacred to the Dragons, our very heart.”
“Why –”
“No, I will not explain what or why. No more games, little Plains Filly. I trusted you; you betrayed me. Your intrusion here is odious and unthinkable!”
Illume the Stars seemed keen to justify murder as the shortcut solution to his problems. Yet still the Dragon hesitated, his tail snapping about angrily, his muzzle dipping from side to side as though he sought to shake a wasp out of his ear. Bizarre behaviour. Watching him narrowly, Zaranna meantime cudgelled her brains. Hide? Escape? Lie? Illume was no idiot. He had clearly thought through the issue of tracking an invisible Human. He was also a Dragon, an awesome predator. He could simply bring the roof down on their heads. Or … she did know someone who was actually a Wizard, who might have some ideas about how to escape a maddened Dragon?
And the way to get there? A surprise might just earn the two girls a second’s grace to concoct, bake and perfectly present a miracle pudding.
Taking advantage of the Dragon’s roaring belly-fires, she whispered over her shoulder, “Sanu, can you knock me out?”
“Why?”
“Just do it!”
Illume the Stars had stoked up such a burn that his body glowed like a bar of gold; there was fire behind his fangs, fire in his throat, and his talons clenched so powerfully that they convulsively gouged canyons in the crystal floor. What drove him to such madness, Zaranna wondered?
“Sanu, I need you to –”
She felt a sharp blow like a bird pecking the back of her neck. Zara blacked out.
* * * *
“Naaarrrgghh! Drag – oh.”
It was deep night. Zaranna yanked off her duvet, began to swing onto her wheelchair, and stopped. What was she doing? Make a plan. Move. Whiz’s room, downstairs. Go, girl! Don’t stop to think. A midnight brain-picking with the Winter Wizard …
But her brain buzzed like a crazed hummingbird. Illume the Stars was about to indulge in Roast Dreamer with a side of Outland Human. What could she possibly do to stop him? Zara whizzed through the family room and up the ramp to the staircase. Alright. No suicidal moments, Inglewood! Using the banister to swing down from her wheelchair, Zara dropped onto her backside and headed downstairs one bump at a time. Oh, cool! Whiz’s skateboard lay at the bottom. A hop and a wobble later, and she surfer-skated down the corridor, past the lower games room to Whiz’s Chamber of Secrets, as he ca
lled it. The door was ajar. Whiz’s bed was pristine, conspicuously minus one Winter Wizard.
Torn pantyhose! What was this? Sneaking off to his girlfriend’s while the kids were asleep? That left Alex. Acutely aware of the passage of time, Zara backed up and then accelerated up the corridor to the last room. Closed. Balancing carefully on her stumps, she reached for the doorknob. Not locked. Good. Practically falling inside, she wheeled to the bed. Heart thudding – a vision of her parents’ reaction upon discovering she had snuck into Alex’s room in the dead of night.
Mister Munchable lay on his stomach with one arm dangling off the bed. The covers looked as if he had been dreaming about fight scenes from Kung Fu Panda.
“Alex. Wake up.”
“Must kiss …” he mumbled. “Ooh. Dream come true. Oh!” Alex did a very commendable impression of a frightened cat. “Zars! What’re you doing here?”
“I’m in trouble and I need your help.”
Rapidly, she sketched her perilous position and the need for haste.
Alex barely scratched his five o’clock shadow. “The Imjuniel will stop whatshisname right in his lizard gizzard.”
Zaranna grinned at him. “You’re so gorgeous when you’re sleepy.”
“Are you saying I’m talking nonsense? I’m serious. Take a Dragonstone back with you and tell the beast to behave. Job done. Oh, no, you then make the Dragon take you to save – Jitterbug, wasn’t it?”
“Alex, I don’t want to control Illume. That would be evil.”
Suddenly he stood up, bare-chested, Mister Lean-and-Muscly. Zaranna tried very hard not to think of Michelangelo’s David clad in boxer shorts, and failed miserably.
He said, “Come. Help me get the stone. You can work through the ethical implications meantime.”
“As in, how I ethically plan to pinch a family heirloom from my grandfather?”
Scooping her up in his arms, Alex said, “I am thinking something entirely less ethical than that at this juncture, o scantily-clad girlfriend.”
