by Alix Nichols
She was back on Hente again, age ten or eleven, strolling through the garden with Momma on a balmy Late-Spring day. Momma halted, took her hand, and told her to close her eyes and listen.
“Can you hear the noon bird?” she asked after a while.
Their melodious singing quiet, noon birds were notoriously hard to make out amid the myriad sounds of daytime. Marye had heard the pretty song once, but only because she’d happened to sit on a bench with the bird perched right above her head.
But Momma had a technique.
“Picture your hands pushing all the other noises and sounds aside.”
Marye closed her eyes and tried to do that.
“Now that you’ve made room,” Momma said, “allow just one voice back in, the noon bird’s as you remember it. Don’t seek it out. Let it come to you.”
Marye lifted her face skyward and listened.
“It’ll come,” Momma cheered.
And there it was, hushed and tender, the noon bird’s beautiful song.
Marye had never managed to repeat the trick, not even while Mother was still well enough to stroll with her in the garden. She’d concluded that her exploit that day had to be a self-deception. She’d “heard” the noon bird because her faith in Momma was strong enough to trick her mind, not because her mother’s hack had worked.
But what if it had?
Raising her hands, Marye pushed all the sounds aside, and opened her ears and mind to Geru’s voice.
Minutes passed. Maybe an hour. Maybe several hours. Marye lost all track of time. At some point she’d lost hope, too, but she kept pushing with her hands, and listening.
Out of stubbornness. Because of despair. As a tribute to love.
And then she heard him, calling her name. Afraid to spook the voice, she didn’t respond immediately, just stayed with it and attuned her mind.
Then, her voice tentative, she sent out, “Geru?”
His joy flooded her like a tidal wave. “You can hear me! I can’t believe it! It’s working!”
“Where are you? How have you—” she began.
He interrupted her, a great urgency tinging his words. “You’re in danger. I just learned about a surgical intervention Chev’s people are planning for you. They want to swap your heart for an artificial one.” His breathing caught.
She could hear his heart racing, panicked, when he spoke again, “I don’t know when exactly, but I expect it’ll be soon.”
“Yes.” She was going to add “tomorrow,” but instead she just said, “Very soon.”
“Sweet Aheya, help us.”
“I doubt she’ll help me,” Marye said, unable, and unwilling, to rein in her bitterness.
She was beginning to think the goddess wasn’t the caring, motherly figure every Ra-human thought her to be. Aheya was cold, distant, indifferent. Maybe she hadn’t even dictated the Book of Xereill to the Original Ra. A mortal wrote it and said it was divine to give the words more weight.
Maybe she didn’t even exist. Maybe there was no benevolent force in the universe to always ensure good triumphed in the end.
“Aheya never intervenes in Ra-human affairs directly,” Geru said. “It would cancel out our free will. You know this.”
“I do, I do. It’s in the Book right in the beginning. Verse 5.” Marye fingered her ouroboros pendant. “A direct intervention tonight would’ve been great though. I’d trade my free will for it in a wink.”
15
“You may not need to,” Geru said, his words hot and sanguine.
“What?”
Geru forced himself to calm down so he could articulate his rushing thoughts. “There’s another dragon here on Tastassi. He told me it was his wife that triggered his first turning. He’s convinced that you—something you and I did together— triggered mine.”
“You think we can do that thing again?”
“It’s not just that… When I bit you in the sick house, what happened? Did I turn?”
“Yes.”
“To pre-alt or to alt?”
“You became a Ra-dragon and then went full dragon.”
“I can’t imagine Chev allowing me to do that in the sick house.” He nearly shook with excitement. “We overrode the TIC, at least temporarily.”
“But you can’t bite me now.”
“Maybe it isn’t necessary. Or maybe whatever I got from your blood is still in my veins. We’re mind-talking, Marye!”
He smiled sensing a sliver of hope illuminate the darkness in her soul. She perked up. He drew strength from her hope… until he sensed her hesitation.
“I don’t know how to go about it,” she admitted.
Problem was, neither did he.
Minutes passed.
“When you are Ra-dragon,” she said at length, “you call me your mate. You’re quite… protective of me.”
“Like I’ve always been, as your friend.”
“No. Not like that. You do crazy things.”
“For example?”
“You destroyed our summer house because I wasn’t there.”
He cringed. “Did anyone—”
“No one got hurt,” she said quickly. “And that wasn’t the only crazy thing. You traveled in space from Norbal to Hente—no spaceship—like we ride from Iltaqa to Orogate. You did that every time you needed to… um…” She sent him an image of them making love.
He gasped at how familiar it felt. The flashes he’d had before, memories of him with a woman, rushed back into his mind. He saw the woman’s face. It was Marye.
“I need you to find that crazy now and bring it forth,” she said. “I need you to transform into dragon, break free from the detainment block, and come for me.”
There was a brief pause, and he detected an unease.
But then she pushed it aside and added, “If you don’t, Chev’s people will slice me open in less than five hours and rip my beating heart out.”
Something snapped inside him.
A violent tremble shook his whole body. His skin prickled, thickening. Hardening. He’d begun to turn.
Marye was right there with him the whole time, through the growing bones, solidifying scales and straightening ribs. He willed himself to shift as fast as he could, faster than he’d ever done before. His mate was in too much danger. Grave, imminent danger.
When he was fully in dragon form, his room appeared tiny. He could touch the door with the tip of his long tail, and the wall opposite it with his snout. Recoiling to the door, he filled his lungs with air and blew at the wall in front of him. It shook, billowed outward and split open.
But the crack was too small, so he kept blowing.
A tremor ran through the building. Where there was glass, it shattered, shards flying out. Partitions around him crumbled, revealing adjacent rooms. The force of his breath picked up people, beasts and furniture as if they were weightless. It tossed them into the air and slammed them into the ceiling.
They fell to the ground with heavy thuds.
Sirens wailed. Lights came on outside, beams zigzagged. People rushed and shouted, their voices hoarse.
Dragon kept at it, refocusing on the cracked wall.
Behind him, pipes broke. Foul-smelling liquids began to drip into rooms and hallways. A fire started, and sections of the building imploded with pieces of stone and steel showering down. The wall he’d been blowing at finally gave.
He launched himself out, spread his wings, and soared high. “Marye! Where are you? Which building?”
“The three-storied dormitory between the facility and the detainment block,” she sent him. “Can you see it?”
He peered down, his sharp eyesight identifying the building at once. “Which window?”
“Third floor, first window counting from the facility.”
“Get away from it—now!”
He folded his wings to streamline his body and dived down like an arrow. When he was closer, he deployed them to adjust his curve. His velocity still high, he charged headlong into
Marye’s window, smashing his forehead against it. Pain shot through his body.
The metal bars that had been extending from the wall into the hard, glass-like material, broke. The window fell inward, leaving a square hole in the wall. His mate climbed out, he grabbed her with his talons and hurtled away.
The whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.
He was afraid they’d be followed and shot at. Marye was vulnerable to both bullets and blaster fire. But the skies were clear of cyborgs as far as he could see. Dragon relaxed somewhat.
They flew for at least an hour, maybe two, most of it over a great sea. The link between him and Marye still strong, he could feel her aching in his clutch. Then her mind started to drift away. He had to land somewhere. His mate needed to rest.
A small hilly island appeared in the distance. As he got closer, he saw that it was uninhabited. No buildings, houses or even huts anywhere. No big animals, either. Just sand, grass and a few bushes here and there.
It was a good spot.
He alighted on a hill, setting his mate down gently. She collapsed to the sandy ground, hugging herself. Dragon considered shifting to his two-legged form but chose against it. His instinct told him the danger to his mate was still too great. He was better equipped to protect her as a huge, fireproof, storm-breathing beast than as a Ra-dragon. That form was for the mating.
“The tick,” she sent him. “We have to remove it.”
He sat on his haunches and tucked her under his wing. “We can’t.”
“It allows Chev to control you, and I’m sure it’s also a tracking device.” She stroked his side. “They’ll find us like they found us on Hente. They’ll force you to change to Ra-human. And then they’ll take us back to the compound.”
She stretched her arms out against his side, palms flat, and pressed her cheek to his scales.
Dragon’s heart clenched at the depth of her sadness. He also felt her affection for him—heady, powerful, as sweet as her blood. As strong as her character.
She was a determined one, his little mate. Wise. Knowledgeable about so many things…
She’s right.
“Do it.” He lowered his head.
She stood up, grabbed the pest on his neck and tugged.
He roared with debilitating pain and straightened his neck, raising the tick beyond her reach.
It’s stronger than me. This will never work.
“What if…” She wrinkled her brow. “What if we managed to connect your three shapes? When you’re a dragon, or a Ra-dragon, your instincts overpower your reason. It might be the other way around if we can bring the Ra-human into the picture.”
“I have only two shapes,” he said, perplexed. “No Ra-human.”
She shook her head. “You have three shapes. But your Ra-human shape is disconnected from the other two.”
He looked at her, unsure what to make of that.
She walked over to stand in front of him and reached up. “Come here.”
Cautiously, he lowered his head, ready to jerk it back up if she went for the tick.
But she didn’t.
16
Instead, his mate wrapped her arms around his snout and pressed her face between his eyes. “Do you remember the first time you came to me?”
“Of course. I will never forget that night.”
“When I asked you about your past, what you’d been up to before, you had no clue.” She drew back and stared at him. “You have no memories from before that night, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“That’s because it was your very first turning. Up until that night, you’d existed in your Ra-human form only.”
He waited to see where she was going with that.
She pressed her cheek to his scales again. “I think I know what triggered your first change.”
“You do? What was it?”
“I’m going to share my memories of that day with you, all right? Let’s see if they can awaken yours.”
He closed his eyes, opening his mind to her completely.
She sent him an image of a Late-Winter day on Hente.
“Last Late-Winter,” she clarified.
Five Ra-humans glide over a frozen pond just outside Iltaqa. They have strange contraptions on their feet.
She chuckled. “Those are skates.”
Marye is among the group, so is a male called Geru.
He opened his eyes. “Geru? That’s what you call me sometimes.”
“Don’t interrupt!”
He closed his eyes again.
It took her a few moments to reconstitute the memory with its bright sun, the bite of crisp air, and the joy of skating.
Marye spreads her arms and spins prettily.
The others cheer.
She decides to show them another trick and jumps up, all while spinning.
When her skates hit the ice, it cracks, and she sinks through to the frigid water of the pond.
Dragon’s heart ratcheted up. His mate was in peril. He had to get to her, pull her out, take her to safety—
Geru sprints across the rink, then ducks and slides up to the hole on his stomach. “Your hand! Give me your hand!”
Grabbing her arms, he pulls.
He stares into her panicked eyes and speaks words of comfort, “I’m here! Marye, I have you! Don’t you worry. I’m getting you out!”
Dragon’s muscles strained. He had to pull harder. The clock was ticking. She would die if he failed. Marye, his mate, would be no more…
He must succeed.
“Help me here!” he calls out to their friends.
“The ice is too thin where you are!” someone shouts back.
Desperation boosting his energy, he pulls, crawling backward, away from the hole.
Her shoulders, then her chest come out of the water. She starts working with him, dragging her lower body out of the hole.
Someone grabs his feet. More arms join in, pulling and helping the pair of them to the edge of the rink.
When they’re on hard ground, he gathers her into his arms. “It’s all right. It’s over, sweetie!”
She’s quaking, cold and in shock.
He mustn’t betray his own upheaval, mustn’t let on how scared he’d been that he might lose her.
“Let’s get you home.” He brackets her wet face. “You need dry clothes, blankets, a warm fire.”
“A-A-And… h-h-hot… w-w-wine,” she stammers through chattering teeth.
He smiles, pressing her to his chest.
That night he’d shifted into dragon for the first time and flown over the Iltaqa highland.
With hindsight, it might’ve been his way of giving an outlet to all the emotions he’d stifled. His fright when he saw her in the water. The immense relief and the joy that followed. And the other thing he’d repressed—not just that day, but for weeks—maybe longer—because of how inappropriate it was. His raw dreams about Bookworm. His lusting after his best friend.
When the turmoil in his mind subsided, he landed on the lawn in front of the Atiz House, under Marye’s window. He turned to Ra-dragon, and climbed up the brick wall…
“Geru?” Marye gazed into his eyes, and it all came rushing back to him. Images of his childhood, his family, his home, his friends.
His friend Marye.
His mate Marye.
The one he desired.
The only one he truly loved.
Her eyes glistened. “You remember.”
“Yes.”
He remembered all of it… including what Chev’s people had done to Risp’s wife. They’d made her forever in need of their special procedures, hooked on them, unable to survive outside of the compound.
There was no time for reminiscing.
“I recalled something that might help us,” he said. “When Chev’s people fitted me with the TIC, he said that the pain I’d feel would be overblown. He compared it to nail pulling in how disproportionate the agony was to the real damage.”
&nb
sp; She knit her brows. “What does it mean?”
“That means my head won’t burst, and my brain won’t combust when I feel like it’s about to,” he said. “When you try again, can you remind me of that?”
She nodded.
“If you could help me overcome that panic or just attenuate it, maybe I’d be able to—”
“We can do this.”
He angled his head.
She grabbed the TIC. He snarled, tensing.
“It’s an illusion,” she said to him. “I’m right here. Geru, stay with me.”
He took a deep breath.
She tightened her grip. “You’ll be fine. You know you’ll be fine.”
He calmed down a little.
She gave the thorn a sharp tug.
He howled but didn’t yank his head or push her away.
“Well done!” She twisted the device, pulling on it. “Almost there. I have you, my love.”
The pain exploded inside his skull, blinding him. He clung to her voice, to her meaning, to the faith he had in her.
Suddenly, the pain ceased.
He stood there panting as she opened her palm and showed him the bug with long metal hooks protruding from its underbelly. Anger contorting her lovely face, she tossed it aside.
Just as he was beginning to savor what they’d achieved, a low humming sound came from the general direction of the compound.
It grew louder.
He knew what it was.
Cyborgs.
“Are you sure?” Marye stared into his eyes. “Do we have time to get away?”
“They’re lighter and faster than me in the air.”
