Misfit

by Jon Skovron

  “So if the Earth doesn’t care about mortals, why does it care about demons?” asks Jael.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it cares about us,” says Dagon.

  “It’s more like mild curiosity. We live long enough to show up on its radar, so we can affect things in very small ways.”

  “What do you mean, we can affect things?”

  “That’s what magic is,” says Dagon. “Coaxing the elements into doing something a little different from what they usually do.” He moves over to a small stream, his thick, scaly legs surprisingly agile. Then he beckons to her. Jael picks her way through the clumps of moss and thick roots that stick out of the ground with a lot less grace.

  “We’ll start with the ones that are closest to you.” Dagon bends over and scoops up a handful of water. “Look at this.” He holds out his clawed, webbed hands with a perfect pool of water collected in the center. “Now, it’s natural for water to freeze.

  Just not something it’s used to doing at this temperature. So convince it to do it anyway.”

  “Convince the water . . . ,” says Jael. “What, like, talk to it?”

  “If it helps you,” says Dagon. “But that’s more to keep you focused. Water doesn’t understand language, just intent.”

  “But how does it get my intent?”

  “Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it?” says Dagon.

  Jael glares at him.

  “What?” Dagon grins. “Nobody said it would be easy.”

  “Can’t you at least give me a hint?”

  “It’s different for everyone,” says Dagon, still smiling. “I wouldn’t want to impose my own techniques on you.”

  “Thanks,” says Jael. She stares at the water in Dagon’s hand.

  “It does help if you’re touching it,” he says. “At least, at first.” He holds out his cupped hands and pours the water into her hands. Since her hands are much smaller and don’t have webbing, a lot of it trickles to the ground.

  “I can’t hold as much as you,” she says.

  “It would be easier if it were more solid,” he agrees. Then he winks at her.

  “Right,” she says. She looks at the tiny puddle in her hands.

  Feeling pretty dumb, she says, “It would be easier to hold you if you were solid.”

  And she’s looking at a small disk of ice in her hands.

  “I did it!”

  “Careful,” says Dagon. “Don’t start thinking like that. You and the water did it together.”

  “Right.” Then she says to the water, “Sorry. We did it.”

  “Better,” says Dagon. “Now get it to turn to steam.”

  “Hmm,” she says. She stares at the clump of ice for a minute.

  “Turn to steam,” she says.

  Nothing happens.

  “You can’t command it. You have to convince it,” says Dagon. “Give it a reason to change.”

  “So, why would water want to become steam?”

  “Freedom, perhaps?”

  “I don’t get that.”

  “When water is heated, the molecules speed up and separate from each other. That’s steam. So imagine how great it would feel if you could spread out like that, then see if the water’s interested in it.”

  Jael has a hard time imagining being able to let loose that much. To literally explode. It doesn’t really seem that fun. In fact, the idea makes her a little uncomfortable.

  Then she gets this strange feeling that the ice in her hands disagrees with her. She can’t say how, exactly, but a whisper at the base of her skull tells her exactly how much fun it can be to throw yourself to the wind, literally.

  “Oh yeah?” says Jael to the ice. “Show me.”

  The ice dissolves into a single puff of steam. And as it disperses, Jael catches just a hint of the joy it feels.

  “Okay, that’s pretty cool,” she says.

  “It’s just the beginning,” says Dagon. “Water’s the most accommodating of the elements. Some of the others are a little more tough to convince.”

  “Like earth?”

  “Right,” says Dagon. “Earth doesn’t like to change what it’s doing. If you want to start an earthquake where one never happened before, you’d have to be pretty damn persuasive.”

  “But if one was already happening, I could just egg it on?”

  “You got it.”

  “What about growing plants and stuff super fast?”

  “That’s a little more complicated,” says Dagon. “Because you have to coordinate earth, water, and air.”

  “What about air?” she asks. “It’s gotta be pretty flexible, right?”

  “It is,” says Dagon. “The trick is keeping it on track.”

  “But it’s air. It’s everywhere, so what does it matter?”

  “I’ll show you,” says Dagon. “Getting the ice into steam was about getting the water molecules to go faster and farther apart, right?”

  “Oh, God, this is turning into a science class.”

  “Science, magic. Just labels for the same thing.”

  “Huh,” says Jael, thinking of Rob.

  “So,” Dagon continues, “hot-air balloons work the same way. The air is heated, which makes the air molecules fly around faster and farther apart.”

  “So, wait,” says Jael. “Are you telling me I can do that to make myself fly?”

  He spreads his webbed hands wide. “I don’t know. Can you?”

  She closes her eyes. It’s kind of hard to actually feel air unless there’s a breeze. So she waits until a strong wind comes up, then, when she can feel it all around her, she tries to recall that fleeting feeling of joy that she got from the steam.

  “You want that, don’t you?” she says to the air around her.

  Then she’s jerked off her feet and up into the sky.

  “Ohhhhhh shiiiit!” she yells.

  She pitches forward, then spins around so fast that the ground beneath her becomes a blur. She pauses about fifty feet up and just hangs there.

  Then she drops.

  The earth rushes toward her and she screams, “Please, God, no! Help!”

  There’s a flash of orange.

  Then she strikes. But instead of hard earth, it feels like warm pudding. She opens her eyes and finds that she’s submerged in a glowing orange sludge. She kicks hard through the thick liquid until she breaks the surface. All around her, the forest is the same as it was, except for this small pond of steaming orange.

  “That was incredible!” says her uncle, his fanged mouth open in a wide grin. “You’re picking this up even quicker than I expected!”

  She swims to the edge of the orange pool. “What happened?”

  “You got the earth beneath you to liquefy so it would break your fall.”

  “Liquefy . . .” She looks at the pool around her. “So this is . .

  . lava?” She scrambles out of the lava and back onto solid earth.

  “Why didn’t it kill me?”

  “Are you kidding? Uphir recommends that demons bathe in lava at least once a month.”

  “Who’s Uphir?”

  “Hell’s physician.”

  “Huh,” says Jael. Then she realizes something.

  “I’m naked!”

  She drops to a crouch and covers herself as best she can.

  “Of course you’re naked,” says Dagon. “Lava might be fine for you, but your clothes didn’t stand a chance.”

  “What do I do?”

  “What do you mean?” he asks, looking a little confused.

  “I can’t walk around like this!”

  “Oh,” he says, and scratches his scaly face thoughtfully.

  “Hmm. Well, you can change your skin to look like clothes.”

  “I can?”

  “Sure. Just get a picture in your head of what it looks like, and then . . . well, it’s hard to describe. Just imagine the feeling of your skin changing into it.”

  Jael pictures her jeans, T-shirt, and raincoat. But nothing happ
ens.

  “Try adding more details,” says Dagon. “The important thing is to get as specific as possible.”

  It’s hard for Jael to concentrate when she’s squatting naked in a forest, but she tries to recall little things about her clothes.

  She remembers the fraying on one pant leg cuff, the slight stretch in the shirt neck, and the buttons on the jacket. She holds the entire image in her head, then pictures her skin matching it.

  When she looks down, there it is.

  “Wow,” she says. She slowly stands up and checks herself over. “And I could make any clothes I want?”

  “You could even grow fur and a tail,” he says. “You just can’t change your size.”

  She moves around a little, testing the feel of her new clothes.

  “It’s weird. I still feel kind of . . . naked.”

  “That’s because you are,” says Dagon. “You just look like you have clothes on.”

  “Well, that’s no good.”

  “Why not?”

  “It feels weird. I need to have something on.”

  A flicker of irritation moves across Dagon’s face. “You know, these mortal hang-ups of yours don’t really mean anything. You need to let them go.”

  “They aren’t hang-ups,” says Jael. “It might be hard for you to understand, but being naked in public is a big deal for a mortal.”

  “But that doesn’t concern you anymore,” says Dagon.

  “Look, I guess you don’t like to think about it, but I am half mortal. I’m getting enough crap from my dad about being half demon. I don’t need you coming in from the other side hating on mortals.”

  He looks at her, his black shark eyes unreadable. Then he nods once, slowly, like he’s bowing to her. “Fair enough.”

  He scans the trees around them. “So, real clothes . . .” He stands there for a few more moments, idly scratching at the small gill slits on his neck, then his face brightens. “Here’s something we can do. Hold your hands out together.”

  She cups her hands in front of her, almost like she’s receiving communion at church. Then he stretches out his arm, digs his claws into his shoulder, and slowly rakes them down, peeling scales off as he goes. The scales flutter into Jael’s outstretched hands. He begins to work faster, switching back and forth between arms, until he’s shucking a pile of scales into her hands.

  Clots of blood bloom on his arms but are quickly covered as new scales grow in.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” she asks.

  “Sure,” he says, still scraping away. When he’s done, she has a heaping pile of scales cupped in her hands.

  “There,” he says, and smiles in satisfaction. “That should be enough.”

  “For what?”

  He reaches out and picks up a single scale. When he lifts it up, the rest are drawn with it, like a big piece of fabric. He holds it up for her.

  “It’s not much,” he says.

  The scales gleam with glittery rainbow swirls.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says.

  He drapes it around her. “Just needs something to hold it in place,” he mutters. Then, still holding the cloak in one hand, he reaches into his mouth and grasps one of his big shark teeth.

  “Wait!” she says, then winces as she hears the crack.

  He holds up a large, triangle-shaped tooth. He smiles in satisfaction, a trickle of blood coming from his lips.

  “I could have found something else,” she says. “You didn’t have to rip your own tooth out.”

  “It’ll grow back,” he says. “Besides, since it’s still a part of me, it’ll stick to the scales.” He places it at the point under her chin where he’s holding two corners of the scale cloth, then lets go. It hangs around her like a cloak.

  Jael gathers it around her body. The inside feels surprisingly soft. The outside feels smooth when she slides her hand down and rough, like sandpaper, when she slides it back up.

  “It’s awesome,” she says. “Thank you.”

  “Well, you can only wear it in the rain. If it gets dried out, it’ll look ratty and it’ll probably smell. Like me.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a big problem in Seattle,” she says.

  “I don’t get why you did this, though. I mean, that had to really hurt.”

  “Jael.” It still gives her a strange shiver when he says her name. Like she can almost get a sense of the person he believes she’s capable of becoming. A person who deserves an exotic name spoken with reverence. But now he looks a little sad. “If all you ever do is try to avoid pain, you’ll never create something truly worthwhile.”

  “I don’t try to avoid pain,” she says quickly. Then she thinks about it for a second. “Do I?”

  “You’re a brave one, that’s for sure,” says Dagon. He gently lays his webbed hand on her head, covering most of her scalp.

  “But you’ve still got a ways to go. It’s one of those things that comes in time.” Then he looks around. “And while we’re waiting

  . . .” He turns her head in the direction of the seething orange lava pool that hisses at the occasional drops of rain that slip through the canopy of trees. “I think you better put out that pit before it eats up the forest.”

  Eventually Jael is able to coax the earth back into a solid state. She can feel its resistance and confusion. After all, she was the one who asked it to liquefy, and that had been a much more urgent request. But finally, almost resentfully, it thickens and cools until it looks like a big patch of slick, black lumps.

  “Okay,” says Jael. “So why didn’t the flying thing work?

  That’s what started all of this.”

  “It’s pretty easy to get air to do something,” says Dagon.

  “The trick is to keep it doing that thing for more than a few seconds. You got it to lift you up all right, but as soon as it did that, it got bored and wandered off.”

  “So is real flying even possible?” she asks.

  “I’ve seen a few successes,” says her uncle. “And a lot of failures. But who knows, maybe you’ll get it someday.”

  “So there’s only one more element, right?” says Jael. “We’ve done water, air, and earth. The only thing left is fire.”

  “There’s actually two left,” says Dagon. “And they’re somewhat interrelated. Fire and spirit.”

  “Spirit? Like a soul?”

  “Sure,” says Dagon. “If that’s what you want to call it. The part that makes us who we are. The spark of life.”

  “So that’s why it relates to fire? The spark thing?” asks Jael.

  “Not really,” says her uncle. “Here, let’s start with this.”

  He reaches down and picks up a large branch that’s fallen to the ground. He brings it up to his lips and opens his mouth wide so that the rows of teeth protrude. He strikes a claw across one tooth, and a few sparks fly. He does it again, and more sparks leap out. A few of them hit a couple of the leaves on the branch.

  He blows on the leaves gently until the sparks nestle into the green and start smoking. He blows harder and the leaves begin to burn. Soon, flames lick around the edges. Then, at last, the branch catches on fire.

  It’s the first time Jael has seen fire with her demon eyes, and she’s not prepared for its beauty. The swirling, lashing orange and red intertwine in a dance. Bits of blue flicker at the base, and the yellow edges reach endlessly toward the sky. Of all the things she’s seen in the past few days, this simple burning stick is the most marvelous.

  “What is fire?” asks Dagon. “It isn’t an object with mass or weight. It is the visible transformation from matter into energy.

  So fire isn’t a ‘what,’ really. It’s a ‘how.’ And yet you can see it.

  You can hear it. And if you’re strong enough, you can feel it.”

  He holds the stick out to her.

  “Go ahead,” he says. “Invite it over.”

  A part of her—the mortal part—is screaming at her to step away. But the demon part is too entranced w
ith the fire’s beauty.

  Hesitantly, she reaches out her hand. She’s not exactly sure what she says to the fire. Something awestruck and barely coherent, like a giggling fangirl. But whatever it was, it does the trick, and the fire leaps gracefully off the branch and onto her hand.

  When it touches her palm, the heat shoots up her arm, straight to her heart. She suddenly feels so light, so free. So this is what the steam was talking about, she thinks. She never realized how weighted down she was, how tied up with dumb, pointless details like clothes, money, and status. This means something real. Something perfect.

  But then the fire shrinks down until it’s just a flicker, and the feeling of euphoria dwindles with it.

  “Oh,” she sighs. “What happened?”

  “You want to keep it going?” Dagon asks quietly.

  She nods.

  “It’s going out because it doesn’t have any fuel.”

  “Should I put it back on the branch?”

  “You could do that,” says Dagon. “Or you could feed it something else.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Give it back what it gave you,” he says. “Give it some encouragement. Give it some joy.”

  She closes her eyes. Then she takes the little bit of lightness that remains within her and gives it up to the tiny fire in her hand. That offering acts like breath on the flame, bringing it slowly, gently back to life. Her eyes are still closed, but she can feel it grow in her hand and the thrill within her heart grows with it. But this time, rather than hog it all, she gives that to the flame as well. And the more she gives the fire, the more she has to give.

  She and the fire grow lighter and stronger and everything else drops away from her mind until there is nothing but this moment of freedom. She doesn’t know why, but she starts to laugh, and then she starts to cry. She must look completely insane, giggling with tears streaming down her cheeks, but she’s beyond caring.

  “Jael,” she hears her uncle say.

  She slowly opens her eyes. Her entire body is wreathed in flames that reach up to the darkening sky. She is the fire. She is pure action, roaring and laughing and crying. She stretches out her hands and sings the song of fire, and it is glorious.

  After some time, her uncle says, “Okay, time to come back.”