by Marc Secchia
I burn in reflected honour, o mighty Tourmaline. I, too, bind my fires to this oath. Now, I must assume the role of teacher. I wish to teach you several deeper uses of the art of filtering, at the auditory, psychic, physical and emotional levels. I believe this knowledge will be your strong right paw against the depredations of Azziala, the so-called Empress of the Lost Islands.
As the Dragons of Fra’anior say, even after a thousand years, a volcano shall explode in reply.
The Land Dragon’s laughter was a rumbustious shaking of Grandion’s every fibre. Aye, but let us not wait a thousand years. A day or two shall suffice. Even a bottom-dweller must learn to value clarity over obfuscation.
The Tourmaline grinned back, disguising the nausea that racked his stomachs as he considered Hualiama’s fate. Siiyumiel thought a day or two would reveal a new truth? Never had he so feared to summon the white-fires of hope to his third heart. Instead, he jested, Thus, you shall obviate obfuscation.
Siiyumiel roared, Then let us to the meeting of fierce and fiery minds!
Chapter 3: Siiyumiel’s Balance
Waking, She Knew the balm of her Dragon’s embrace. Stirring, she knew the loss of her wings. Rising, she knew the pain of rebirth. Nothing worked as it should. Everything hurt with a freshness and piquancy that brought tears to her eyes, but the Princess of Fra’anior refused to give those tears credence. End the war. Find her Dragoness. Escape from her mother–these were her priorities. She stood, despite her legs wobbling like tender reeds.
“Glance at me in a way I don’t like, and I swear I’ll slap you to the Rim-Wall Mountains!” she greeted Grandion, grimly cheerful.
All her Dragon could do was choke on his own smoke.
Planting her hands on her gaunt hips, she faced seven ranks of mountains and shouted, “Siiyumiel, mighty Lord of Wisdom and assorted whatnot, I demand answers!”
Well. Not a decent shout, but it woke the Land Dragon from his undeserved slumber.
“Don’t hold me, Grandion.” Lia bent over, trying to catch her breath. Ooh, life was a pain. Literally. “Alright, Dragon, just this once, I’ll accept your help. Don’t get used to it.”
Three hundred feet offshore, Siiyumiel cracked open his main eye, revealing a narrow strip of glittering fire. “Is the Dragonfriend always this spirited?”
Lia eyed him as menacingly as a half-dead invalid could manage. “I count an Ancient Dragon amongst my friends. Yet, I must thank you …”
“You’re a great deal smaller than some of the parasites that plague Land Dragons.” Siiyumiel appeared to stretch, for though he barely moved, Lia felt and heard a series of massive cracks and groans emanate from his body. After several minutes, the noise settled and so did the Island beneath her bare feet. The great eye and its neighbours cracked further open, swirling in complex patterns of inner fire, agitated.
Hualiama abandoned the remonstrations she had been planning to unleash. “I sense your conflicted feelings, o mighty Siiyumiel,” she called. “Speak to me.”
Speak to her grief. Speak to the searing betrayal writ upon her heart. Lia wanted to scream, to rail, to cast herself off the Island rather than endure … what, humble humanity? Ungrateful for the very blood that pulsed in her arteries? O desolate girl! Yet could these Dragons not understand that to touch glory, then be robbed, was a fate infinitely crueller than to merely observe from the fringes, excluded by her very nature from ever participating?
Grandion did. Every scale on his body proclaimed his outrage.
Turning to her, the Tourmaline spat into his palm and held it out, cupped. “Drink first.”
“Your spit?”
“Water, from my water stomach.”
Hualiama shot Siiyumiel a glance meant to convey that her demand would be forgotten at his peril. Fine. The contents of a Blue Dragon’s water stomach, used to fuel their ice and Storm attacks, was supposed to be pure and sweet, according to the scrolls. Dragons did not apparently produce saliva in the same way as Humans. To the Dragonkind, spit was Acid, the mainstay of a Green Dragon’s offensive weaponry. His water should therefore be completely potable.
Dipping her hand into the liquid, she took a cautious taste. “Sulphurous, yet satisfying,” she said. “Not quite scale mites, but it’ll do.”
Grandion’s ire rose immediately. “Are you not hungry? Shall I cook you a portion of leftover–”
“Yum, raw hyrax!” she snarled. “Er … on the other paw, I’ll have my portion cooked, please.” Lia smothered a treacherous giggle. What? Where had that growl sprung from, and what was this unfamiliar gladdening of salivary glands as she considered raw meat?
Rather ponderously, Siiyumiel said, “This re-clothing in Human epithelium was not a result I computed, Hualiama. I am–” he struggled mightily, before resorting to lifting his head and thundering to the skies “–remorseful! I thought what I had observed was the inclosing of your Star Dragoness, so vital to the future of our Island-World, into the casement of Human bone and flesh. That she was merely hidden. Yet I detect no physical or magical signature of the Star Dragoness in the immediate vicinity. Your being evinces Balance. Your Dragoness demonstrated the same Balance. It is … inconceivable.”
Almost, she teased him. The Land Dragon sounded so mournful.
“We Shell-Clan thrive on logic. We calculate to astonishing degrees of accuracy the probable flow of events, or in your case, the precise antidote to your famishment and the multiplicity of delicately balanced parameters which had to be understood in order to provide the optimal solution for both healing and re-nourishment of your being–do you understand?”
Grandion said, “I understand that Lia loves to flout draconic logic at every opportunity. Chargrilled steak of hyrax, o Princess?”
“I’ll chargrill your ruddy rump, you oversized male chauvinist gecko!”
“I meant it positively.”
“Islands’ sakes, Grandion, that must be why I’m dancing over meadows of fireflowers singing my favourite excerpts from the Flame Cycle!”
Both of her draconic companions flicked their nictitating membranes, indicating surprise.
Lia added, “I know. Dragons seldom understand sarcasm. Consider it a verbal fireball and you’ll have the right idea.”
Punctuating his riposte with a rude wing-tap on the crown of her head, Grandion said to the Land Dragon, “Human females are like volcanoes. They usually require a proper little eruption before simmering down.”
She gave him the arms-folded, foot-tapping benefit of her filthiest glower. Perhaps the dearth of so much as a stitch of clothing spoiled the effect, although the Princess tried to ignore that inconvenient fact. Grandion bared his fangs lazily in response.
“We might consider recreating the conditions of her ascension to the draconic sphere,” mused Siiyumiel, clearly preoccupied with weightier deliberations. Odd, how his speech meandered between formal draconic metre, sprinkled with thees and thous, and the more intimate metre used in familiar settings.
“Aye, the fire of fifty hostile Dragons and a small lava pit ought to suffice,” suggested the Tourmaline.
“Grandion!”
Was he just pleased by her recovery, that she was coming in for the full wing-tugging benefit of his sense of humour?
“I forget for how many years I’ve been meaning to roast that cute rump of yours,” he added.
“Cute?” Her eyebrows crawled toward her hairline.
His inner fires performed an impressive draconic blush. “Hatchling-cute,” he amended hastily. “Titchy-size-cute.”
Ugh. She was not fooled, not even slightly. So the male Dragon was still possessed of that wicked propensity to admire her scale-less Human limbs and eye-filaments and globs of mammary tissue upon her–unholy windroc droppings! Lia pulled herself up with a mental start. Where were these peculiar thoughts coming from? She crossed her arms self-consciously and sank down in his paw. Not comfortable!
Was Dragon fire really the answer?
Lia said, “Siiyu
miel, show me what you saw. Please.”
* * * *
Between them, Grandion and Siiyumiel worked out a way of using the Blue Dragon’s projection magic in concert with the Land Dragon’s eidetic memory to replay the exact moment of Lia’s transformation, as they had come to call it, in excruciatingly slow motion, on a panel of frozen air between them. Over and over, they examined that Dragon’s whisker of time in which the Star Dragoness appeared to blur away as if eaten from the inside by white-fires, only for the form of a Human to coalesce simultaneously in that very space the Dragoness had vacated.
A quarter-ton of Dragon replaced by a tiddly few sackweight of tasty Human Princess, Grandion opined. That was the physical conundrum. Simply put, something could not arise from nothing, nor could a mass of Dragonflesh instantaneously vanish into thin air. The sums did not add up. This was impossible by any known law of physics, metaphysics and Dragon science–which Grandion and Siiyumiel discussed at vast length. Certainly an education for the subject of their vigorous debate, but the matter proved ultimately to be a fruitless pursuit of the ungraspable.
Hualiama drank and ate, and tried to focus on her recovery.
Then, as the afternoon heat baked her white-blonde head into a fine muddle, they all three settled down for a snooze–Siiyumiel massively indolent, Grandion resplendent in his gemstone raiment and Hualiama, as charmingly nude as a freshly peeled tinker-banana. She covered herself modestly with her hair, which struck her as fuller and longer than she remembered. Waist length. Knotted like a crimson-crested weaver’s nest. Because naturally, she admonished her thoughts with boundless vexation, a girl should be paying attention to the state of her hair when she was embroiled in a battle for her life with enemy Dragons and evil Enchantresses who marched off to perpetrate genocide, while on the side, she sought to rid the Island-World of Shinzen’s inbred Giants and the scourge of ruzal still buried within her flesh!
Ha. If she curled up, the royal locks made a serviceable blanket. Utility over beauty. Her sister Fyria had always managed enough preening and primping for ten princesses, anyway.
She’d set about slapping the Islands into shape … later.
Besides, she needed to have words with blue-haired Lia about ruzal. If this was some trick of Dramagon-spawned filth–mercy, would the ruzal find a way to live on without her?
First, she should yank a Dragoness’ tail. Lia dozed, and slipped away to the dream-world.
* * * *
“You! Human girl! Get your rascally parakeet-cheeks over here. I’ve a few fireballs to shoot at you …”
Other-Hualiama stood beside one of the marble pillars, gazing out at the endless ribbons of stars. She wore an impeccable white Fra’aniorian lace gown with a train a mere four feet long, above which her tumbling, deep blue tresses made a second train. Without turning, she said, “I’m so glad you came to visit. Feeling better?”
“Better enough to be furious with you! How dare you steal my Dragoness? Feckless Human, I’ll burn your toes to a cinder for–”
“You’re our Human.” To her embarrassment, Human-Lia produced a squeak of outrage. “We must be feeling better to be this angry. Have I done wrong?”
“Where’s my Dragoness?”
“Right here.”
She stumbled up the steps. “You’re infuriating!”
“Quite possibly the most infuriating person we know?” asked the girl, turning to smile mysteriously over her shoulder. “Come look at the stars, Human girl. I double-dragonet dare you.”
“And a sackful of manky multiplying maggots to you!”
To me? To you? Oh, what was the use? Hualiama padded over to her twin, noticing en route that her present Human guise also wore an identical gown hand-crafted in the finest Fra’aniorian tradition, only hers was a deep blue, the better to set off her pale hair and deep blue eyes. Right. Swallow the impatience. Then wring answers out of the girl-creature’s neck like a washer-woman wringing out her linens.
Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and gazed at the splendour of stars.
After a long silence, blonde-Lia said, “Your surprise certainly was inspiring. We were a Star Dragoness, at least for a few days.”
“We are a Star Dragoness.”
“Our mother being?”
“Istariela, mate of Fra’anior. I think.”
“Whaaa … whaaaat? I think I need to sit down!”
Instead, their hands sought each other unconsciously. Intertwined. Laced together, as they always had been. Or was that a hand and a paw?
Blue-haired Hualiama said, “Since you woke me, I’ve been thinking a great deal. I’m sorry to have caused you so much grief. But we are inseparable, don’t you see? Two sides of one coin. We are one fire inhabiting one heart, despite how we appear in this place.”
“You saved my life. You sought me across the Island-World.” Gazing deep into her alter-ego’s eyes, blonde-Lia said, “I remember being in a dark, terrifying place, and then there was light, and white-fires, and comfort. I had died, but my spirit had not yet flown. We sang together as one restored from death to life. And from that day I knew eggling-dreams, and carried you here.” Taking the girl’s other hand, Human-Lia placed it upon her heart. “Here.”
“I can never thank you enough.”
“I am honoured to have carried you these many leagues and years, Star Dragoness. But now you must fly. The fate of this Island-World lies in your paw.”
The other sighed. “I’m not sure you understand.”
“I understand I’m denying a Star Dragoness her destiny. Stifling, repressing–”
“No!”
To her shock, blue-haired Hualiama began to cry! Lia held off stiffly for a moment, before enfolding the other girl in her arms. “You’re right. I haven’t the first understanding.”
“You think I’m an invader … a parasite …”
“No!” This time, blonde-Lia felt tears start in her eyes. “I didn’t mean … I’m so grateful for this life, it aches like knots in my bones … if I can help … help in any way …”
“Your courage succoured an eggling and our mother from the wrath of the Onyx Dragon–even now, mighty Fra’anior seeks us. Yet, not out of animosity, I sense, though his motives are unclear–”
“Impossible. This would have been long before I knew you, before you entered my life–is that what you’re saying?”
“Is time a road?”
The classically inscrutable reply. Never had other-Hualiama seemed more draconic. Yet when she looked deeply into the other’s gaze, Human-Lia found no subterfuge or deceit. This was the truth, as she grasped it. Somehow, she shared life-space with a Star Dragoness, the incarnation of Blue-star, the Hualiama of draconic legend. Somehow, they had contrived to help each other elude death’s claw. But was it not time to …
“Separate?” they whispered simultaneously.
Only when they both shuddered did Lia realise a grievous thought had been given voice.
“Is that what we want?” rasped Dragon-Lia.
Human-Lia shouted, “No! Yes … no, I don’t know. No. Is it even possible? Must I not grant a Dragoness the life she deserves? Even if I must maim my own heart in the doing?”
In reply, her mirror-image sang:
Before the dawn, before the spark,
Took fire upon the wings of life,
Two mothers lived, two spirits grieved, and touched,
Eternity.
And in eternity did mingle two sparks,
And become one flame.
Thus prophesied, thrice born, lived twice,
Amaryllion’s gift: true oneness.
Beautiful, and bewildering, of course. Human-Lia said, “I … I hate trying to wrangle meaning out of the depths of obscure lyrical prophecies! You’re saying we have two mothers, that much is clear. But we are one. Inseparable–in eternity did mingle two sparks?”
The Dragoness-image, or whatever the girl was, turned away, but Lia refused to relinquish her hold on those precious fingers.
>
“Look. I’m earning myself a fine migraine trying to understand this.” Gracious, she was a stubborn creature! Blonde-Lia smiled grimly. So this was what it was like to deal with herself? “You woke up, having been bound for twenty-one years. Yet I’ve always known I had flame within me, have always yearned for it, danced toward the flame … I knew, Hualiama. But who’s the real Hualiama? Is there such a person? Am I, or are we, some kind of Dragon-Human hybrid? A freak? Stop shaking your head! I must know!”
“I wish I knew,” mumbled blue-hair. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re a Dragon! You aren’t sorry!”
“I’m Hualiama, and I am the most wretched of creatures–I weep terrace lakes for all the anguish I’ve caused–”
“Be still!” Lia drew a deep breath, before she reeled the other girl back into her arms, despite her resistance. Blue-hair refused to look at her. “Wow. Snap of the old royal command there.” Now she was babbling like a dragonet. “First, if I must drill it into that hard-as-Dragon-scales head of ours to make you understand, I will–I do not want to be rid of you. Ever. Not on this Island, not on the next, nor on any Island of life to come! Secondly, what has been cannot be changed. Besides, I–you–are me. We are me. We are–I love you. That sounds lame and so clichéd it’s about to curl up in shame and crawl off under a rock somewhere, I know, but I do.”
And she had the kind of pronoun confusion that would have driven her royal tutor into snarling apoplexy. But she simply did not possess the language to describe this riddle. You? Us? Multi-layered me? Me squared? Divisible yet indivisible?
Other-Lia turned and pressed her head against her shoulder as though she wished to burrow back inside the shell. They held each other, trembling with desperation.
“Look, can’t we try to work this craziness out?”
“Without being immolated in fire, as you were suggesting earlier? Human girl, what if this means you can never have yon toothsome Tourmaline? And he is ultra-toothsome. I’ve peeked–hope you don’t mind.”
