“You stopped, stock still, and stared into - nothingness.” Loki explained.
“Oh...” She’d thought they would have heard her side of the conversation with Monster, but evidently not. “Our host is waiting, just on the other side of the hill...” She pointed. Loki gave her a very odd look, but followed when she started walking again.
She let them all get a little ahead. She wanted to see their reaction to Monster’s Valley. There was a slight rise in the road, then it got steep enough to make them scramble, and on the peak of the pass between hills, they stopped, the three of them, staring at what lay below. Linn had seen it before, the utter desolation of black ashes, rustling in the wind, but never quite blowing away. The great white bones, their covering of scales and flesh long gone. The huge skull, vacant eye sockets looking straight at the access road. Monster was long dead.
The spirit of the dragon lived on, though. He was alone, having warded his valley so no human gaze would ever see it. Only his friend Coyote came on a regular basis, and had even made a house of sorts, where Linn had visited before. Now, she could hear the scales hissing over stone as the Monster came toward them.
She could see on their faces the alarm, and mixed with fascination on Loki’s part as the illusion of the living dragon slithered up. Deep bronze and browns, the dragon looked much like he had in the holograph deep below the Icelandic volcano.
“Welcome, children.” Now, she was sure, they all heard him, the ground shaking a little. He wasn’t being quiet. He meant to impress on... Loki, she was sure, that he was there, and more powerful than the little god.
“May we enter?” Linn asked. She knew that even in death, the Monster had formidable defenses.
“Come, refresh yourselves, and tell me why you have come.”
The illusion turned his head away from them, and slid smoothly away, leaving a clear path that stretched across the valley to the vast skull. The ash was gritty to walk on. Every so often, Linn caught a glimpse of the metallic scales: buried in the ash, but revealed in tantalizing flickers of light as the restless wind moved the ashes. The path followed the curve of the bones, up and around from the tail, under the high arch of the rib cage, the bleached bone overhead eerily similar to the metal arch she had awakened.
She was thinking, as fast as she could, about everything that had happened, from the beach at Sanctuary, up until now. She knew it was probably muddled, she kept forgetting things in the story and jumping back and forth, but the Dragon’s quiet purr of amusement in her head reassured her. Of all the people she knew, he’d be able to keep up with this torrent of information.
She wrapped it up with the image that had brought her here, when there was no time, and she was afraid, and–
“Hush, Bright Spark.” He was soothing, and she felt like he’d wrapped her up in a gentle hug. “Do not fret. You have come for answers, and I will give them freely. But before we talk, I will play host. Enter, and find refreshments.”
They had reached the skull, while Linn walked along half in a trance telling her story. Blackie and Merrick both sat at the foot of the rickety staircase, staring upward. Merrick wagged the tip of his tail as she walked up to them. She was tempted to pat his head, and decided she’d better not.
They weren’t about to try the stairs without her, she realized. Linn walked past them and up the stairs, which weren’t, quite, as rickety as they looked. She could feel them following her, for instance. She also knew without having to look that Loki was behind her, and then the boys.
Loki had gotten very quiet since he’d met Monster. She wondered if he was having an internal conversation of his own.
“No,” Monster said quietly. “He is worried about me. He cannot quite remember me, but the legends of the past are bright in his mind, as he seeks an answer.”
“Is he dangerous?” Linn had been sure of that, when she first saw him holding Blackie, but then he was very stupid in the forest... Monster chuckled.
“He is very dangerous. He was trying to trick you into talking, child, he sees you as an infant in arms, and also as a woman whose head he can turn.”
Linn was revolted. “I’m not-”
“You aren’t.” Monster agreed. “You are very young, and you have not blossomed into full womanhood, but you are a Bright Spark, and he did not see that.”
Linn decided she wasn’t going to ask about Blackie and Merrick; that felt like invading their privacy. She had needed to know about Loki, though, because it looked like she was stuck with him. She didn’t trust him out of her sight, in that room, and here…
“I watch.” Monster’s voice was serene. “Enter.”
The door in the eye socket wasn’t round, it was framed in to allow them to enter where the ocular nerve had penetrated to the brain. Loki had to stoop more than a little to get in, and Linn had to bend her head a little. She hadn’t, on her last visit.
Linn looked around the room. It hadn’t changed since then. It was mostly one large, open room, a floor laid into the brain case to give a living space, and she knew there was a small stable beneath them, from her last time. There was a bathroom, which she pointed out to the newcomers, and watched all three make a beeline for it. She turned to look at the table, which was set for five.
“Who else is coming?” She asked Monster.
“You will see,” His voice was warm with amusement.
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Loki come out of the necessary room, and stop to look at the bookshelves. Linn went to stand next to him.
“Coyote prefers moderns.” She told him. “Mostly fiction.”
“Coyote lives here?” Loki looked alarmed.
“Yes, part time. He’d rather be out in the wild, but this gives him a home, and he keeps Monster company.” Linn looked up at him. “You know Coyote.”
It didn’t quite come out a question. She was certain he did.
“I know him, yes. We have had... disagreements.” Loki glanced toward the door as though he expected Coyote to walk through it, and to be unhappy with his presence in Coyote’s home.
“He’s busy.” Linn didn’t explain more than that. She wasn’t going to trust the Norse god, she’d decided a while back, even if she had asked him for trust.
Loki looked relieved. Linn wondered if that was a story she wanted to know, or not. Behind her, the door opened, and she turned to look.
“Grandpa!” Linn shouted as she ran toward the barrel chested man who had walked through the door. He held out his arms for her and hugged her tight.
After a long minute, he pushed her away a little, still holding onto her upper arms. “Let me look at you.”
She could see in his eyes that her appearance was making him unhappy. “I’m ok. Really I am.”
He nodded. “Your Mom said you were, and she wouldn’t have left you if you weren’t ready, but still.” He stroked her cheek. “I'm glad I didn't see you fight, and sad, as well. You’re beautiful, child, and the thought of seeing you in battle chills me, but I’m happy you fought like a tiger.”
Linn could feel herself blushing. Grandpa Heff let go of her with a last quick hug, and turned to face the other immortal in the room. “Loki,” He said, his voice neutral to Linn’s ears.
“Haephestus. Or do you now prefer Vulcan?” Loki inclined his head in greeting slightly. Linn wondered if handshaking was a modern invention.
“That has not changed.” Linn watched them. There was an undertone to her grandfather’s words, seeming to say that Loki hadn’t changed, either. Grandpa Heff looked taller, now, his face fierce and eyes glowing. He held Loki’s gaze for a long moment, and then Loki looked away.
“I see the library here is delightfully light hearted.” Loki murmured, slipping sideways, and speaking as though he were addressing her grandfather. Linn rather thought he was escaping that eye contact, instead.
Heff looked at her, smiling, and losing the fearsome storminess that had gathered for Loki. “I think you have something to tell me? Monster was most unhelpful with his
summons.”
“I’m not sure yet.” Linn flicked a glance at Loki’s back, and saw her grandfather nod just a little. “Where are the boys? We should eat… I’m starving.”
Grandpa raised his voice. “Blackie!”
He hadn’t met Merrick yet, Linn remembered. It was hard to remember, herself, that they had only known one another for a week. It seemed like they had known one another forever. Both boys popped around the corner in human form, and Grandpa Heff raised an eyebrow. Oh... he hadn’t known about that, either.
Blackie got an attack of the shys, Linn saw, as he blushed a little and offered his hand to the old god. Heff laughed. “Glad to see you join the two-leg club, boy.”
Heff pulled Blackie into a hug, thumping him on the back. Then he turned to Merrick, holding out his hand. “I hear good things about you, lad.”
Merrick pinked. “Um…” He shook hands, but couldn’t seem to find any words.
Heff chuckled all the way to the table. “Sit and eat, no point offending Monster.”
There was, Linn was unsurprised to see, a salad and a big pot of rabbit stew on the table, and under a clean cloth, flatbreads. It was what they had eaten before, her first visit, and it was just as good, especially as it had been a while since the last real food her group had seen.
They feasted in silence, Loki looking pouty. The boys were intensely focused on the food. Grandpa looked relaxed, but distracted, and Linn guessed he was talking to Monster. She ate in peace, her belly happy with the tasty food.
The sense of urgency that had been riding her had slipped away, somewhere in the walk through the Valley. She’d brought her problem to the Monster, and now…
“Bright Spark.” His voice sounded gentle in her head. Looking around the table, she knew only she could hear him. “May I suggest a walk?”
Linn spoke out loud. “Excuse me, I’m going for a little walk... No, Merrick, I’ll be fine. Ask Grandpa, this place is safer than anywhere on Earth.”
Merrick sat again, glancing at Heff, who nodded a little. Linn put her dishes by the sink and walked out the door, closing it firmly behind her. She’d seen Loki get up, and wanted to make it clear he wasn’t to follow her.
Monster kept quiet while she got safely down the stairs, and Linn appreciated that. She could feel his amusement lurking at the edges of her awareness, though.
“Oh, I know they won’t fall down, but my knees don’t know that.” Linn spoke out loud to him.
“You have allowed your unconscious to guide you many times in the last few days, but it is bothering you.”
Linn headed for the massive vertebrae. She had stuffed herself with food and wanted to sit and relax, not walk. Perching on a handy spine, flat, hard, and more than long enough for her to sprawl on in the sun, she responded. “I don’t believe in magic.”
“No more do I. You are correct, this is not magic. There comes a point, though...”
Linn sighed. “Most of my peers when I went to public school walked around in a daze, with a phone plugged into their ear, staring at the screen. Might as well have been zombies. But if they dropped and broke it? All the magic leaked out. They couldn’t have fixed their phones, or computers, to save their lives. And that’s how I feel now.”
“You are an extraordinary child.” Monster sounded serious, he wasn’t teasing her. She squirmed.
“I have a big vocabulary, and I’m not afraid to use it.” Linn decide flippant would be easier than risking a swelled head.
“Indeed. Are you ready for the answers?” Monster sounded diffident, like this wasn’t something he wanted to do.
“Monster, if you could have anything, what would you ask for?” Linn draped an arm over her eyes. The sun was bright, even through closed eyelids.
“Oh... ah,” She’d caught him by surprise. “I would like to go home.” Monster’s voice was very small and still, now.
“Why don’t you?” Linn asked. He wasn’t actually dead, after all.
There was a long, windy sigh, and the ashes stirred and rustled. Linn could feel the breeze cooling her. “May I tell my story? Much will be illuminated, I suspect.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Curiosity is a gift, do not lose it.” Monster’s mental smile was back now.
“Once upon a time and very far away,” he began.
Linn giggled a little. She stretched out on the spine, her legs hanging over a little, but she was warm and full... Monster went on, and she drifted into his words.
Chapter 19
Adel’eui D’natti hesitated in front of the arch. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he read, then sucked on his front fangs in consternation. When he had been given this assignment, he’d known it was punishment duty. But those were grim words.
Within his mind, a pre-memory of a tiny soft thing with silky black hair and earnest eyes stirred in her sleep, her dreams his memories, but the being who would become the Monster was more concerned with his past present nowness all here, in his last day at home.
Home. Adel looked up into the sky, pleadingly, at the rosy sun, and the smaller white sun which forever chased his lover across this sky. They said his posting had only one, small, yellow sun. And blue skies. Adel shivered. He was going to be very cold, for a long time.
A clash of chains signaled the arrival of his charges. Adel flattened his crest in dismay. So many of them, and such a strange shape they had. Ter’nian, his commander, snaked his way to the head of the line.
“All formed in the fashion of the inhabitants of the world you are going to.” He turned his vast red skull and surveyed the line of prisoners with satisfied eyes. The People had learned generations ago how to manipulate the genes of, well, simply everything. They had conquered disease, death, but they could not alter a mind’s will. Which was what brought Adel here, miserable.
It could be worse. He could be in one of those flimsy, two-legged, squishy bodies. Instead, he was the warden of the prison planet that had been dubbed Gaia. The arch flashed into life, the pulsing energy making Adel itch right to the tip of his tail.
The prisoners, chained two by two, walked through the shimmering light of the portal to another world, another universe. Ter stropped chins with Adel.
“Don’t worry.” He slid backward so Adel had room. “It’s only a turn of the galaxy. You’ll be back before you know it.”
Adel slid forward, into the terrible forces that twisted, squeezed, and shredded his very being...
Linn woke up with a scream. Shaking, she sat up and looked at her hands. They were slim, brown, and five fingered. She made a fist. And no talons.
Monster spoke apologetically. “I am sorry. But it seemed the best way to convey the tale in the least amount of time.
Linn gasped for breath. She was having a little trouble wrapping her head around being a human girl again, rather than a terribly alien dragon being. “I know your name.” she whispered. She had an inkling of the honor it was.
“Are you ready? I will be more conventional, now.”
Linn nodded, taking a deep breath. Her hands were still shaking a little. She pulled her legs up onto the spine and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, listening.
“We emerged on the other side of the arch, into that room you so recently explored. The technicians who had prepared it lined the room, leaving a central path for my charges and I to walk through. I remember looking down at them and marveling at how delicate and skilled they were, while they flinched away from me, as I could crush them with the least movement.
“I was a terrible warden, you may think. I remained in Nyx, which is the name of the rooms in the pit of the earth, and sent my charges out into the new world to live new lives. They were not allowed to remember who or what they were, and they were not allowed to remember whence they came, beyond Nyx. They all began in one place, but as I learned later, they were restless, and they moved. They warred, and moved further. In time... But that came later.”
T
he Monster huffed a long sigh, and the ashes moved again. “I was miserable. Depressed, alone, and so cold - I would curl up in the volcanoes for as long as I dared leave Nyx at a time, trying to warm myself.”
“I noticed that where there had been many technicians, who were of a race I never knew the name of, only that they were tiny, there were now very few. Each time I returned to Nyx, there were less, and then, there were none.”
Linn thought of Deirdre, and the coblyns, goblins, brownies, and others she had no name for. “Yes,” Monster said. “They were the ones who came before me, to prepare the machines of Nyx. I assumed they were returning home, and Oh! how I envied them. I no longer spoke to them at all, bitterly jealous of their presumed freedom.”
“They weren’t, though.” Linn thought about it. “And they aren’t immortal, so they have forgotten?”
“They are very long-lived, by human standard, but not immortal. And I do not think they forgot, I believe they chose to rub it out of their memories. For fear. They were afraid of me, and for good reason.”
Monster’s voice faltered, and there was a long pause. Linn stretched back out in the sun. She’d have a burn if she wasn’t careful.
“There isn’t much more pertinent to what you must know.” Monster sounded sad, and he was reluctant to continue.
“I will always respect you.” Linn told him, thinking of the tales she knew, of how he had come to this valley and a kind of death.
“I thank you for that. The time came when I crouched by the arch in Nyx. Now, my kind continue to grow as long as we live, and I had grown during my time here on earth. I would barely be able to carefully wriggle through the arch and back to my homeworld. It had been a turning of my home galaxy, about a thousand of your years. I was so weary, and longed for the twin suns of home.
“There was no technician to activate the arch, and my claws catch, I am clumsy... for a time I thought that was why I failed. But now, I believe that the problem was on the other side. The arch came to life, and I saw an image of myself, as I had been that last day. I know who made it. My beloved Ter’nian, who must still be waiting for me on the other side.”
The God's Wolfling (Children of Myth Book 2) Page 15
