by Marc Secchia
Bite her wagging tongue! Zaranna hung her head, overheated with shame. “I sort of found him in my world and we’re sort of related. Now you all hate me forever. Please … I’m good, I promise … just …”
When she faltered, Sanu put in, “This Dreamer proved her worth by gifting the Imjuniel back to the Dragons.” More gasps! Mane-tossing and incredulous murmuring! “She is good. And I will slip a dagger into the neck of anyone who suggests otherwise.”
Not so good.
* * * *
Zaranna felt acutely embarrassed by having a short but violent blubbering-session before she went to bed – bed being a still pond fringed by yellow-leafed ferns, fed by a trio of small waterfalls. The day, the war, the killing and burning and fighting, was all too much.
The Human girl sat down beside her and laid Zara’s head on her lap. She said nothing, just stroked the Ripplemane’s cheek, a piercing sweetness of fellowship. Zara remembered startling awake in the late evening, thinking, ‘I’m sleeping in water!’ Sanu lay stretched out behind her, her legs still pillowing the small pony’s head. She made to shift, but that caused Sanu to groan and stir, so she lay back and stilled her breathing and overwrought mind.
Dream. She must Dream of Earth, of her man … urgently.
Alex had bidden her dream of him, but she had not. In this dream she was a Ripplemane Pony being chased endlessly down a dark river, carrying Sanu on her back. The girl was injured. She could see nothing behind, but her mind was terror-stricken with the knowledge of a chilling presence and the hateful laughter of the fiend who had sawed off her knees … so she ran and ran, desperate to bring the Human girl to a place of safety.
“Stick with me, Sanu,” she kept saying. “I’ll keep you safe.”
Somewhere to the rear, she caught a twin glint of red from the eyes of a Dragonstone. There came a rustle from above and behind her. Leathery wings obscured the bright rings of the asteroid belt. Rhenduror! The Red Dragon swooped from a height, easily outpacing a fleeing Equine, even one borne upon the fleet wings of her dream.
A-HA-HA-HA! The Dragon’s laughter washed over her.
“Hold on, Sanu!”
Rhenduror roared, “Where are you running to this time, Dreamer? Back to your precious family?”
She galloped harder, panicked, willing the butterflies to envelop them both and spirit them away through the trackless reaches of time and space, to a place of comfort and home.
“Even there, I will find you!”
To her duvet! She flung it off her face with a cry of horror. Great. Attacked by her bedding. Scary moment there, Zaranna. Almost bitten by all that softness.
Pushing open her bedroom door, Alex sang out, “Good morning, Beauty. And we have breakfast in – in the … what the heck?”
The tray crashed to the floor.
“Alex, I … yie!” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh God, Sanu! You scared me. How did you get here?”
Sanu had not a stitch upon her body. She stretched luxuriously. “A fine morning in Equi –” Her eyes stopped at the ceiling. “Where are we? Why am I cuddled up to – get off me, you pervert!” Zaranna bounced off the bedside table and crashed to the floor. “Sorry. Fright. Ooh. Stars in the heavens, is this Alex?”
Alex was definitely a red-faced Scot. He stared at Sanu for a few seconds longer than Zaranna thought was pardonable in any lifetime before dropping his gaze. “Zara, I … you brought Sanu … here? Why?”
“Mmm. He certainly is tasty, Zaranna. Good catch! You should tie him up in your hammock.”
Balancing on her stumps at the bedside, Zara stifled a chuckle. “Paws off, Sanu.”
“Ooh, just a tiny feel?” Before Alex or Zaranna could blink, she did her incredible Catwoman impression, stealing across the floor in a flash to ‘check’ his biceps, abdominals and jeans-clad thighs. “Ancestors, what a figure of a man! What manner of fabric is this?”
“Sanu! Invisible yourself before I swat you into next Tuesday!”
Well. Appalling grammar, her English teacher would have complained. And a shrilling pitch of jealousy better suited to a Shakespearian fishwife. Ugh. Meantime, Sanu protested that her magic was not working and besides, it was much more fun seeing how brightly Alex would blush. Resourceful Alex earned himself a few redemption points by whipping the sheet off the bed and trying to catch Infuriating Sprite in its folds, which was rather like trying to corner a cat for a bath. Sanu nipped behind him to spank his backside so hard, he sprawled across the bed.
Then she caught sight of Zaranna’s expression. And her position. “Oh. Sorry.” Her face fell. “Do you have coverings for me?”
Mutely, Zara pointed at the cupboard. “The green sweatshirt – I mean, the green clothing.”
Shortly, Insensitive She-Wolf was swaddled to the knees in Zaranna’s old University of Cape Town sweatshirt, Alex had recovered a few shreds of his dignity, and Zara was seated in her wheelchair, showing Sanu how it worked. And biting back an urge to scream at Sanu. So uncalled-for! What was the matter with that girl?
Sanu said, “May I?”
“I guess.”
She touched Zaranna’s stumps hesitantly. “I didn’t believe you, before. Sorry.” She made a strange sign with her forefinger on each of the ends, a complex star. “May detriment turn to reward, for all the eternal cycles of Equinox. I also apologise for touching your boyfriend. Not every day I get to beat up such a buck!”
Alex stammered, “Not every day I have naked girls throwing themselves at me.”
If eyes were hammers, Zara raged inwardly, Alex would have known what it was to have Shuzug belt him across the room for that comment. The silence between them was so awkward, she expected the air to start blushing at any second.
At that moment, Whiz shouted down the corridor, “Did someone say naked girls? Hallelujah!” He could evidently hear like a bat when the subject suited his interests.
In a moment Whiz stood at the door, wearing another of his inappropriately ripped pairs of jeans, arm-in-arm with Christi. Sanu’s eyes almost popped out on stalks at the low but not immodest cut of the Doctor’s sundress, and her bare legs. Yols appeared behind them in a silken nightgown. The Human girl seemed about to faint.
“So, family, meet Sanu,” said Zaranna. “Sanu – that’s the Winter Wizard, Whiz, to his left is … uh, healer called Christi, and my sister, Yolanda, who we call Brains. You already know Alex – kill you for that later. Family, meet Sanu, recently arrived from Equinox.”
Yolanda and the good Doctor gazed at Sanu as though a Siberian Tiger had been conjured into the house. But Whiz moved forward and made a half-bow. “May your daggers be ever sharp, Sanu.”
How come everyone knew the right greetings?
“Wizard,” said Sanu guardedly, feeling for the hilts of her absent daggers. “What is this nightmare? What is this strange place where women dress so vulgarly, and my magic has perished within me? Did I die on Equinox?”
“Possibly,” mused Yolanda.
“Welcome to Earth,” said Whiz, stooping over Sanu’s hand. She was so startled, she actually let him kiss her knuckles. “You are alive, let me assure you of that fact.”
“Let me ascertain,” said Christi, seizing Sanu’s other wrist to check her pulse. “Holy smokes, that’s fast.”
Sanu snatched her hands back. “Are you Ancestors? Or real?”
“Real,” said Zaranna. “I’m a recent refugee between worlds and I can vouch for that fact. Not sure what you’re doing here, though.”
“You transported her,” said Whiz.
“Created,” said Yolanda.
Sanu shouted, “Earthen fires, you’re supposed to be the one with … sorry, Zaranna. I am not created! She didn’t – did she? Can she?”
Brains nodded slowly. “Possibly. I need to think it through. I thought you said, Whiz, that people transport cleanly through portals and interdimensional travel is incapable of creating matter? To incarnate a living soul is, well, I don’t mean to blaspheme …”
No-one knew what to say to that.
Taking Sanu and Christi each by the elbow, Whiz said, “That’s a perfectly healthy viewpoint, Zippy. I advise you to keep it that way. Now, I for one am hungry and we need to introduce Sanu to the marvels of the modern kitchen. And the bathroom. And clothing which actually fits. We have much to do, for my nose is twitching, suggesting that our lovely Zu-Zu has once more run herself into a corner and has come to beg the Winter Wizard for help. Not so?”
“Aye,” said Sanu. “We need to steal Jesafion back, and the Hooded Wizard knows we’re coming.”
“Simple,” Whiz replied. “I will scramble up a plan over eggs. Shell we crack on then, or must I boil up another yolk to make you all split your shells?”
Sanu grinned wolfishly. “Ah, now I know where Zaranna gets her insanity.”
Chapter 32: Hey Presto
Wearing an ANKLE-LEnGTH white Grecian dress Yolanda had grown out of when she was twelve, Sanu stared out of the back doors. “Ocean. Er, glass. Beesh?”
“Beach,” said Zaranna.
“Can we talk about something that makes sense? Like Dragons? My arms are naked.”
“You look very pretty,” said Whiz. “Especially with the kitchen knife slipped into your waistband and the metal kebab skewers in your hair.”
Sanu never seemed to miss a beat. “Earth is a dangerous world. Two Wizards in one house, a picture honouring the Autumn Wizard on the wall and the demon-box thing over there.” She waved at the television. “Everything runs on Sky-Fires. It’s insane.”
“Insane is chopping off my granddaughter’s finger, girlie.”
“Girlie?” Suddenly, Whiz had the kitchen knife tickling his nostril hairs. He blinked. She snapped, “I dare you to say that again, Wizard.”
His eyes twinkled. With a lazy smile, he drawled, “You … you’re something else, girlie.”
To Zaranna’s amazement, Sanu turned a fine shade of pink and fumbled the knife! “Wizard!” she squeaked, recovering her blade in a blur of speed. “What was that power?”
Whiz gave her his best smirk. “Sheer animal magnetism.”
Doctor Martinez growled, “Somebody restrain me before I succumb to the urge to perform an emergency lobotomy!”
“I’d gladly lobotomise that Hooded Wizard,” Zaranna groused. Having Sanu around on Earth felt dislocating. Could it be possible? If Sanu had never before existed on Earth, had she performed some cosmic photocopier trick on a Human body? Oh, God. The idea left her with a feeling somewhere between thrill, disbelief and nausea. She seemed to be invoking God a great deal these days, but surely, she had reason? And the need of Solomon’s wisdom to understand and control this skill of Dreaming. No-one should play with a person’s life. She had no right to embody Sanu right before their eyes. Her gaze lingered on the girl. Real. Fleshly. A doppelganger in the most incredible, disturbing sense of the word.
The Obsidian Highlands Human said, “Sounds suitably immoral to me. Winter Wizard, we came to ask your help, and that of the walking Brain, to think of a way –”
Zara put in, “In the dead of night.”
“– to pinch a Pegasus –”
“Who is so white, he’s almost luminous.”
Sanu’s voice rose a few notches in irritation “– from under the noses of an entire army of Darkwolf Clan –”
“Who can smell a stinky Human from a hundred yards, upwind,” she needled her friend.
“– plus the Hooded Wizard –”
“Who stopped an avalanche with a wave of his little finger.”
“Will you stop that?” Sanu glared; everyone else was laughing. She finished crossly, “And, they’re expecting us.”
Zaranna winked at her sister, “I think she’s worried Kenzo might interrupt her, too.”
“Kenzo?” said Yolanda, promptly. “Oh yes, Mister Tattoos, a bad attitude, and a love for Sanu so deep he has her name scarred on his cheek – was it the left cheek or the right, Sanu?”
“Right – why am I telling you this?”
Inappropriate Chameleon-Girl folded her arms, blushing like a small log fire.
But immediately, the family fell to analysing the situation. Whiz produced chalk. Rolling aside the lounge rug, he had Zaranna sketch a tactical map of Amorix Vale on his very expensive hardwood floor. Then he, Sanu and Alex began to throw ideas about like explosive grenades; meantime, Yols sat on the couch in a lotus position and pretended to fall asleep. That was her usual ‘thinking’ position. Christi popped over to Zaranna and began to ask her question after question about Sanu and horses and how she moved on water and what injuries she had seen in the battle …
Suddenly, Yolanda snapped her fingers. “Silence!” Wow. Roaring Couch-Beast was her sister? “Smell and water.”
Whiz began to say something, but Yols held up a hand. “Alex. Repeat what you said about water.”
“Uh … I said, rather indelicately, that it seems unlikely anything could run up the water droplets of a waterfall.”
“Would you care to argue with me?” asked Sanu, batting her eyelashes sweetly at him.
“Ah, no,” Alex gulped.
“Well then, that’s settled,” said Yolanda, opening her eyes. “You need to make it rain, Beauty. Enough rain and I’d bet even a Ripple-whatsit could run up into the clouds. Then, have the starving mountain waif here turn you both invisible. You drop on top of Jesafion and hey presto, Bob’s your uncle. And the rain washes away the smell, which is a bonus.”
Sanu inquired, “Where’s the land of hey presto and who’s Uncle Bob?”
Whiz clapped her on the shoulder. “We can work with ignorance. Right, team Inglewood – and you lot of foreign imports – we’ve work to do. Let’s pick apart this plan and make it work.”
* * * *
When she nuzzled Sanu’s shoulder, the girl awoke and started gabbling like a demented parakeet. She had survived the most terrible nightmare in the land of Sky-Fires. Her body had been stolen but was thankfully returned to its chameleon glory, all fingers and toes intact. Alex was a mouth-watering buck, only she preferred to snack on more dangerous men. Zaranna closed her ears at this point and summoned Whiz’s intricate description of Vale-Magic.
The Pegasi had long been responsible for protecting the Vales from the ravages of wild equinoctial storms. On the Obsidian Highlands Zaranna had seen one such storm strike with devastating impact. The Vale’s ‘dome’ or more correctly, the ‘magic-enhanced domicile’ was raised by a minimum of two hundred Pegasi Clan Magi working in concert, initially, in a mighty working of enchantment that took a full ten solar cycles to accomplish. After that, it required constant maintenance and tending. The inner workings of dome magic were a tightly-guarded secret of the Clan Magi. It was permeable, but not to all matter nor to all magic. It allowed rain and wind through but somehow blunted the awesome force of the Storm-Pegasi thundering across the mountains, and deflected the Sky-Fires.
Hmm. She had thought they meant lightning. Now, Zaranna was not so convinced.
But she was certain about what needed to be done. Rising, she quietly summoned Imagined Reflection, Pellucid Pond and Queen Suhanoria, and briefed them.
The Queen agreed with Whiz’s assessment of the dangers. “Yes,” she neighed softly. “Pegasus magic must be avoided. The rain will shield, but if it fails, you will certainly fall – so do not soar too high. We will continue to make diversionary attacks and I will ready my cohorts of Pegasi to come to your aid as soon as we see Jesafion loosed.”
With that, her new friends bade her ‘shake a hoof’ and ‘show them a spray of water in the face’, which seemed to pass for expressions of good luck or kicking the enemy in the unmentionables.
Zaranna turned her face to the sky, shaking her long mane out of her eyes. Fine. Raise a storm. No
t a summoning, so much as an invitation to play. To smite Amorix Vale with the hammer of Nature, like Thor’s legendary hammer Mjölnir. To bring cleansing rain upon a land ruined by war.
Clear the mind. Form the picture which had lived in her memory since that first dream of galloping along the beach with Misty Dawn, rising into a sky blackened by great, swelling storm clouds, realising that those thunderheads took the form of great, snorting beasts of beating hooves and flashing eyes, of gnashing teeth and wild, wind-tossed manes, and the drumroll of their advent was like mighty thunder breaking over mountains, splitting peaks with the peals of their fury and casting boulders into the abyss.
Come to me. Arise, my brethren!
All the sky seemed to still. Even the stars refrained from twinkling. For a moment, Zaranna imagined her prayers bounced off a literal ceiling up there, a dome half-imagined, half-seen.
Thunder growled beyond the mountains.
Not thunder. A godlike, resounding voice, rounding up a posse. Marshal the troops! Mobilise the armies! Gird thy flanks with lightning, thy hooves with thunder, and let Sky-Fires be the train of thy majesty!
She quaked!
Sanu’s arms slipped about her neck. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid we may get more than we bargained for.”
“The domicile will hold,” said the Queen. “Be ready. I need to brief my troops.”
The night’s tranquillity, especially deep and poignant after the horrors of the day, contrasted sharply with the storm-wreck of her nerves. Zaranna had a vision of the Storm-Pegasi blasting through Amorix Vale. Worafion’s burning would be nothing compared to that. The coming storm would leave no stone standing upon another, scouring the lichens off every boulder and stripping the bark from trees, causing the very cliffs to take fright and dash themselves into the abyss rather than face that power.
For similarly to Artax the Artificer, Firstborn of Dragons, she realised now that there were equinoctial authorities and powers beyond her ken, a stirring of might that made her rippling mane freeze and her hide crawl. She was a fool to provoke such forces.
