by JJ Jones
“I’m not expecting anyone.”
“Didn’t you call your job?” Alistair’s voice was no longer tinged with sleep. There was worry laced in his words.
“It’s probably just the neighbors.” I shrugged, but I had no idea what the neighbors would be doing at a time like this.
I hadn’t been doing anything to disturb anyone since the night before. I sighed and climbed out of bed, leaving the warm sheet behind and pulling my bathrobe over my shoulders and tying it on my waist. I left the man that I had spent the night with behind and peeped out of my door.
The sight on the other side of the door made me want to scream. It was her: “What do you want?” I asked through the door.
“Let me in.” It was a demand, something that I found it hard not to listen to.
I let her in, but to this day, I just don’t know why. Maybe because it was the first time this woman had spoken to me. I wanted to know what kind of craziness she had to offer my life and maybe convince her to leave me alone. I unchained the door and let her in.
She looked me up and down as she shuffled into the living room. “Get dressed.”
“What do you want?”
“There is something you need to know.” It was all that needed to be said. “I’m going to explain it to you, but you should get dressed.”
She was wearing that same dress, once again, navy with impossibly white tiny polka dots. The same handkerchief covered the back of her head, letting the white and gray and black hair just show at the front. I was still kind of in shock. I didn’t know how she had found me the first time, and now she had gotten to my apartment. Part of me tried to picture if she just went around knocking on doors, but still I couldn’t see that happening. I just kind of stared at her, awe filling me and unable to do anything about it.
“Go. Now.” The command was sharper and I practically ran into my bedroom.
“Who was it?” Alistair was pulling on his pants.
“I don’t know.”
I must have looked harried because he stopped in his tracks, his pants half over his hips. “Who was it?”
“I don’t know who she is. Some crazy old lady that’s come into my office twice.”
“What?”
“She just stared at me and now she’s here. Every time she’s in the same dress and carries that creepy looking dragon cane.”
Alistair looked shocked when I told him about her. It took him almost a minute to recover. “What did you say?”
“Crazy old lady, comes to my office, stares at me, now she’s in my living room.”
“She’s here? In the living room?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.” I explained speaking more slowly so that he could understand me through whatever weird thing was going through his head. “The good news is that she actually spoke to me this time.”
“Dragon cane?”
“Yes.” I let the word drag out. Sensing something was off, I wanted to know what it was.
“I have to go.”
“What? You’re just going to leave me here with her?” I was a little frightened by the prospect.
“Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you. She knows what you are. She’s here to help you but I shouldn’t be here.” He said hurriedly, but It felt a little strange.
“Are you telling me that all of this is connected?” I wanted to punch something.
“Probably.” He looked down at his feet, and tried to look innocent.
“This is really starting to piss me off.” He continued to pull up his pants and I kicked the bedpost of my bed. Unfortunately it’s not one of those expensive hardwood frames, instead it’s a one of those metal frames, portable and easy to handle. I bent the metal and cursed. I guess it wasn’t as strong as I thought. Or maybe I was stronger than I thought. “I just want to know what the hell I’m getting into.”
“She’ll tell you. She’s better at this than I am anyway.” Alistair opened my window. “Good, you have a fire escape.”
“Are you really going to climb down the fire escape to avoid this woman?” I hadn’t even begun dressing myself yet.
“You should get yourself dressed.” Alistair warned me as he climbed out of my window. “She’s waiting for you.”
“Bye.” It was all I had a chance to say before he disappeared. I threw on a pair of sweats and a bra, a white t-shirt over it. It was quick and easy, and exactly what I needed to wear in a moment like that. I didn’t want to dress up for this woman who had invaded my home. She didn’t deserve it in the slightest. With a deep breath I opened my bedroom door and left to meet my fate with more questions than answers.
“What did you want?” I was trying to be rude. This lady had pissed me off.
“Sit down, talk to me, I have to be sure.”
“Sure of what, exactly?”
“I have to be sure that you’re the one. That you’re dragon-blooded.”
I scoffed. “You couldn’t tell me that when you walked into my office and almost got me fired, twice?” It was a lot easier to defend myself now that she was talking to me. I guess she just seemed a bit more human to me.
She smiled at me. “You aren’t as scared as you were before. That’s good. Though I wonder what caused your sudden bravery.”
“I’m not scared of you. You just shocked me a little.” She put me right back on the defensive.
“That’s fine.” She blew off my comment of self-defense. “We need to speak about what you are and what that means.”
“I just don’t understand why no one told me this before.” I shook my head, still not sure if I was ready to believe this whole dragon-blooded thing that people were telling me.
“When your parents were killed you were shuffled into the system before we could find you. You were supposed to be raised with us. You should have known. We failed you.” She shook her head.
“What are you talking about? I had no kin, that’s why Mom and Dad adopted me.”
“They didn’t look very hard.” The woman admitted to me. “There isn’t a lot out there, but one of us should have raised you. Unfortunately, the humans who found you just wanted to get you into a new home and a new normal as quickly as possible. It took us a long time to find you.”
“They raised me well.” I told her. I felt the need to defend the man and woman who had sacrificed so much for me. Their memory deserved so much more. Their children had left the house and they had taken on another family. They were older and I missed out on some things, but they loved me and cared for me. They made sure that I was taken care of. They deserved respect.
“You should have been raised with us. You should have known what you are.” She looked like the idea saddened her. “There are so few of us left and so few of us that can mate with the dragons. We can’t afford to lose one.
“They did a great job.” I promised them. “I was a part of their family, my brother and sister loved me and they treated me like I was one of their own.”
“For that, I am grateful. I don’t blame them, please understand.” She caught my gaze. “I blame the people from the state who didn’t take the time to search for your real family.”
“They are my real family.” I swore at her. “They raised me. They loved me. They cared for me.”
“I’m not trying to say that.” The old lady sighed at me. “You belonged with us, not with them. They were wonderful people, I’m sure, but you belonged with us.”
“That doesn’t matter. They raised me. They are my real family.” I felt horribly offended, and I wasn’t listening to her anymore for anything other than the insults she was hurling on the people that had cared for me. “They loved me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not saying it right. How do you refer to the family that you were born to?” She looked like she was trying to understand.
“My biological family, and no one ever came to claim me.” I jabbed at her, trying to cause as much pain as possible.
“We didn’t know that your family had been killed in that accid
ent. We didn’t find out for almost a year. It was a different time, technology wasn’t as advanced. On top of that, you didn’t really have a lot of ‘biological family’. We’re family because we’re so alike. When human laws get involved it can get a little difficult. Especially as technology increases, we have to live in their world, there are so many more of them than there are of us. We can get lost sometimes and we don’t exactly keep up with the times very well. It was unfortunate, and you should never have been forced to suffer like this.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because we’re all dying, less and less of us are born every year. We need everyone we can find. When Alistair found you, we knew we had to do something.”
“Is this some kind of crazy game?”
“No, you’ve seen your dragon, the one that is meant for you and only you, the only one that you can help carry on the line with.”
“Wait, just wait a second. Is this supposed to be some kind of arranged marriage?” I didn’t like that idea at all.
“No, we would never do that. Not anymore, we’ve changed.” She paused a moment, then said sadly but pointedly, “That’s why we’re dying.”
It was at that moment that I realized I had been holding my breath, when I let a breath escape, she continued, “The dragons can only mate with one specific person. We don’t force that person and if they choose a more normal life, there’s nothing that we do to stop it. The dragons are dying and all I want is for you to give it a chance. Just give it a try.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just give the dragon a chance. That’s all I ask. If you want to walk away, that’s just fine. I won’t blame you.” She promised me, pleading. “I know that this has to be frightening to you.” She pulls out a crystal, a tiny shard in her hands. “This will help.”
“What do I do?” My hands were starting to shake. “How is that supposed to work?”
“All you have to do is touch it. It will show you the truth.”
“And exactly how is that supposed to work?”
The old ladies eyes twinkled. “Magic. It’s very simple, really.”
“You really don’t expect me to believe in magic do you?”
“After everything that you’ve seen and encountered; touching dragons, seeing them fly in the sky, can you really discount it?”
“I guess not.” I reached out and touched the shard.
In a flash, I saw my biological parents. Before, I had only fleeting impressions of them, but I knew that it was them. Immediately, the image of their warm faces appeared in my mind and I wanted to cry. I saw them floating, as if I was looking through a sheet of water or some kind of fish tank. They were so far away; I couldn’t reach them. It broke my heart. I wanted to do something about it, I wanted to pull them back to me, to find out what my life might have been like had I been raised by them, had I known what I was. They slipped from my mind a lot faster than they had materialized. Within the moment of a breath they were gone and I didn’t know what to do.
“What was that?”
“Did you see them?”
“See who?”
“Your biological parents.” The word biological sounded formal in her mouth, like she wasn’t used to it. It had been something that I had always known, something that I had always heard, but it still felt strange when others said it. They would find themselves over pronouncing the world, trying to make it into something more important than it was. “They wanted you to be happy. I’m sure they’re happy that you are.”
“Ok…” She was leading to something, and I couldn’t help but wonder if I really wanted to hear it.
“I know this didn’t go well last time.” The woman was starting to sound like a worried old aunt, concerned with how I would take a strange bit of news. “I was hoping that you would give it a chance once again. We haven’t handled this very well. I know this, but please, this is an unusual situation.”
I scoffed. “Unusual situation? Is that how you would describe this?”
“I don’t know any other way to.” The lady shrugged and I could hear the joints creak and protest against the movement. She must be in so much pain with the slightest movement. I didn’t know how she did it. Still, I was making assumptions that I didn’t know the truth behind. It was all just some way to make myself understand what this woman was trying to tell me. “We want to help you. It’s what we do. We help the people that are like us. All that we want to do is help you to meet your dragon and see if you want him.”
“How exactly do you do this?” I was suspicious. I couldn’t identify a good plan for any of this, but I can’t say that I was an expert at it, either.
“We know that the last party didn’t end well with you. We did it wrong.” She admitted it and made me feel a little better about it. “We want to try again, but this time we want you know what is fully going on.”
“Are you sure that a party is the best way to do this?”
“I think that the masks will ease the transition.”
She explained and started to go through an entire list of reasons, most of which centered on making it easier for me to identify my dragon and find out if I got along with him without the pressure of looking him in the face.
I worried about the dress, I still had the one in my closet, having taken it to get cleaned at the dry cleaners, but she said that she would arrange for a tailor to meet me and we would work out my dress. Still, I was worried about it all. I didn’t know how I was going to handle it. Whether this would end any better wasn’t something I was sure about.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was the same mansion that I had gone to last time, but this time it was different. I arrived in a limousine this time, the same way as countless other guests. The point was so that I would fit in with the others, so that I would be harder to spot in the crowd. I liked the idea of feeling anonymous and considering the fact that I had been given a few lessons on how to behave properly, gave me some comfort – it didn’t make me feel much better, but it was just the way that things were going for me.
If I was to be honest with you, I would have to say that part of the reason that I was excited for this event is because my life was boring up until this point. I know I’ve said that before, but I have to stress it here. The major reason I chose to do any of the things I had done in the past few days and the days to follow was to fight against the loneliness that I lived with every single day of my life. There had always just been something missing,
I had just found myself struggling to understand what was happening in my life, why I found myself fighting to find interest in what everyone else around me was interested in. I wondered, after my chat with crazy lady, that perhaps, this was why. Dragon-blooded, it seemed as reasonable as anything else, considering the fact that I had seen a dragon with my own eyes, touched its scales and looked into its eyes. I had seen it and I knew that dragons were real; still, I wondered when I was going to wake up from this dream.
When had I started to believe this insanity? I was asking myself questions like that as I climbed out of the limousine. The world felt like it was rushing around me, a heavy rain of mixed emotions flowing over my shoulders. It felt like I was being freed and bound at the same time, a soup of scattered fears and joys floated over me. I struggled with my own state, half of me wanting to run up the steps and half of me wanting to run away, down the driveway and hide into the night.
My dress however was magnificent in every way. Billowing and light blue, the silk and satin was inching toward an unnatural shine. I stepped to the doors and for the first time, I actually saw them. My nerves were steady enough to appreciate the gilded designs inlaid into the portal. I paused, staring up at the vines and flowers that decorated the solid wooden door. It must have been at one point a security door, but it was decorated so efficiently that it was hard to identify the security elements that the door was made to have anymore. They had done an excellent job of hiding the entire purpose behind the barrier.
I structured my resolve as the door slid open. I thought it would squeak, but it didn’t. I stared at the doors as they slipped open, widening to a massive entrance. This place definitely belonged in some sort of movie or fairy tale and not on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri.
That’s when everything started to feel a little surreal and strange. I think that the decorations helped with that a little; the little balls hanging down, just above my head, glowing with some strange light only made the atmosphere seem more magical. It was hard to identify what the source of the lights was and almost impossible to see the nearly invisible line that was holding them to the ceiling. I stared in awe until I noticed that no one else was staring, so I forced myself to stop. Instead, I gazed out over the sea of people in front of me, a few steps below on the ballroom floor.
I had entered into a strange sort of balcony that overlooked the actual party. It felt like I was looking down at everyone there, but no one seemed to have noticed my entrance. Everyone was involved in their own little series of moments. I watched them for a long while. I wasn’t the only one on the balcony, so I don’t think it looked too odd as I watched the people below me, separated by a few feet of height. It felt wrong, somehow, to be above them like that; for some reason I felt like I should have been below them. It was me, though, something in me that made me feel like I was less than worthy of the company that I now found myself.
I stared; I didn’t care who saw me do it. It all looked like a set from a movie, a life that had passed me by a thousand years before I was born. This had never before existed, and I had never believed that anything like this could happen to me before. I fought the impulse to run. I was supposed to find my dragon here, but I didn’t know how this was going to happen. I watched them dancing, moving around and slipping in and around the tables that were along the sides of the dance floor. There was punch and champagne and a thousand different types of hors d’oeuvres and drinks that I couldn’t identify.
