Dragon Spells

by Melinda Kucsera

  Covering the metal-and-plastic body that woman had printed for her with a custom-made leather outer layer had been a stroke of genius until it had torn. But it had done its job and kept the magic out for long enough to mess with Ran. His reaction had been priceless. In fact, he should arrive soon. I’d better build another body, so I can finish what we started.

  Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be easy since Dysteria had only printed one body for her. But technology was ascendant here. All around the Newsletter-Dragon, gigabytes of information flew by as the residents of twenty-four apartments downloaded videos, shared images, posted on social media, read eBooks, and listened to music in the cloud. And she could tap into that because she was data too.

  ‘With this orb, you’ll be the master of it all,’ Dysteria had promised.

  The Newsletter-Dragon removed the lone gray byte from her shoulder and examined it. How strange that so much should depend on so small a thing. It was an executable program compressed down to a single byte, and it might have sparkled as she gazed lovingly at the first step in her plan to rule the narrative once and for all.

  ‘As the orb’s power grows, so grows the power of the one who wields it,’ Dysteria had said, and the Newsletter-Dragon had the makings of an orb in her claws.

  All it needed was some power to kick start its metamorphosis. That spike-loving lady had been right about everything else; she’d be right about this too. The Newsletter-Dragon felt it in her code.

  Come to me. Garb me in your data. The Newsletter-Dragon raised her foreclaws to the ceiling tiles and by the power of Wi-Fi, she was reborn. Her tail plugged into a socket in the wall between a washer and a dryer, feeding power into the program that was unpacking itself to create and feed the orb.

  A load of laundry whirled around in the belly of a boxy device, and its clanking and whirring was music to her ears, but it wasn’t the right vessel to grow her orb. For one thing, it didn’t generate enough power. Electricity crawled up her tail, magnetizing it while the dragon scanned her surroundings. When that raw power reached her belly, it sparked a fire inside her.

  Oh yeah, it’s barbecue time. Smoke curled out of her lips as a box of screws and metal washers flipped over and its contents clung together giving her the rough outline of a physical body—just like Dysteria had predicted. What else was she right about?

  The Newsletter-Dragon rubbed her foreclaws together in anticipation, triggering the motion sensors, and they switched on the lights before she stripped them for parts to add to her growing body. She needed more—more Wi-Fi, more electricity, more metal, and—the revving of an engine caught her attention. Yes, yes, it would be perfect for her orb! She rushed toward it.

  She must have it. She must have all the devices to feed the seed of power clutched in her claws. Only then would she be master of everything she beheld.

  Where’s That Dragon?

  [Westchester, NY]

  “Any minute now, she’ll appear.” Melinda stood guard over her computer in the kitchen on the other side of her small studio apartment, while Papa stayed by the Wi-Fi and the door.

  Though, since the dragon was digital and thus not corporeal, she didn’t need to use the door to enter. But I didn’t point that out. Papa might banish me back to our side of the portal if I did, and I didn’t want to miss a thing.

  “Maybe she’s not here anymore. A stiff breeze could have carried her off.” I wished one would carry me off too. Instead, I was stuck behind the couch, and Papa’s magic made sure I didn’t move from that spot. It had hemmed me into a shining green ring that flared up each time I tried to escape it. No fair.

  A growly scream and the shrieks of tortured metal startled me. The dragon was still here. But what the heck was she doing?

  “What’s making that noise?” I made another dash for freedom, but this time, Papa’s magic didn’t stop me. The sound of grinding metal followed by a mechanical squeal came again, and I jumped. “That noise must be something bad. Get your magic out, Papa, just in case.” I clamped both hands over my ears as a shrill sound pierced the quiet.

  “I think it’s coming from out here.” Melinda ran out of her apartment. She was a lot smaller than Papa, but she was swift when she wanted to be.

  I skidded on the red tiles in the foyer as I hung a right into a big room with lots of doors and loud machines all spinning and banging away. “What are those things?”

  “Washers and dryers. There’s one of each in here.” Melinda reached for the gray fire door at the other end of the room, but Papa stopped her.

  “What are they doing to the clothes tumbling around inside them?” I poked the door of one such machine.

  “They clean and dry clothes.”

  “Oh.” I couldn’t understand how all that agitation managed to do anything except make a lot of noise.

  When it was time to clean our clothes, Papa brought them to an underground lake. Submerged lumir crystals kept the water warm and made it all glowy and bright. It was so pretty there. We even had waterfalls. While Papa did the actual laundry, I swam and played with the other kids. Those were fun times. The people here were missing out.

  Plus, Papa’s magic hated water. So while we were splashing around doing laundry, his eyes didn’t glow. And when that happened, he became more talkative, which was good because I didn’t like it when he got all quiet and intense, like he was now. But now wasn’t the time to point that out because there was something very wrong in the next room. So wrong, even I, a kid from a fantasy world, could sense it.

  Papa scanned the next room with his magic then motioned for us to step back. When Melinda and I finally did, he opened the fire door. And what to my slowly widening eyes should appear?

  A metal-plated dragon, but this time, she was all snuggled up to a boxy metal thing with blinking lights. Those lights flashed an urgent message. I watched in horror as the dragon curled more tightly around the person-sized machine and partially melted it. Bolts of electricity jogged up her spiny back, which was metal plated now. No fair.

  “Where did you get all that metal from?” I stared, agog at the Newsletter-Dragon’s transformation.

  Melinda tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to two piles of scrap metal just visible beyond another gray fire door at the other end of this rectangular room. “Somehow, she disassembled the washer and dryer that had been in there and used them to create the body she’s wearing.”

  “Why’d you do that?” I asked that smug dragon.

  She didn’t answer because the answer was obvious. She’d needed a body. But she wasn’t all metal yet. There were gaps between the plates she’d fashioned out of only Fates knew what, and through them, her blue-glowing ones and zeroes showed. Were the black spaces between those flickering characters some sort of scaly hide, or the blank space between pieces of code?

  I couldn’t tell. She flexed her coiled body, and the machine she was giving a full-body hug to made a screeching sound. To add insult to injury, the dragon smiled at me like this was all going according to her plan. She had some nerve, that dragon.

  Papa ushered us back to the other room with the still-functioning washer and dryer and closed the fire door, so we could talk without being overheard. This room was rather large and echoey, but the noise the machines made should mask our conversation while we came up with a plan.

  “Where did she even get the power to make a physical body from?” I asked because someone had to. Bodies didn’t appear out of thin air, not even freaky metal ones. Someone had to have helped that dragon magic one up, but who had that kind of power?

  Not Papa. His magic liked rocks, not bodies. It wasn’t all that fond of people outside of our little family either. Could our Scribe have done it? I glanced at Melinda. She mumbled something about ‘a game.’ That would explain the inexplicable situation we faced.

  “But we’re not living in a computer-generated world, right? Because I liked sausages and muffins and hugs. Do they even have hugs in computer games?” I glanced at my blue-clad Scr
ibe for confirmation. This was her world after all. If it was computer-generated, she’d know.

  When she didn’t answer, I got a bit concerned. Melinda wasn’t usually so quiet, but she just stood there coiling the ends of her dark hair around her index finger and mumbling imprecations about dragons. Not helpful.

  Papa patted me on the head, and his warm, magic-infused hand calmed me. If we were in a game, at least we were in it together. Nothing bad could happen to me as long as he was with me.

  “I know how she got here. But how did she get out of the computer and into our world?” Papa scratched his head on that one, and I did too. His green eyes fixed on me. Uh-oh.

  “Well, I didn’t let her out.” I folded my arms over my chest. “I said something in last week’s newsletter about dragons, and she didn’t like it.”

  “Then how did she get from her cyber lair in this world to our cave under Mount Eredren?” Papa’s eyes narrowed, and his magic locked onto me.

  All the better to shield me, I hoped. “I was just as surprised as you were to see her in the tunnels near our home.” Hopefully, Papa would forget the part where I was running around those tunnels without supervision and wouldn’t make the inductive leap as to how that had come about.

  I had given my babysitter the slip earlier, but I didn’t want to get Saveen in trouble. He was my best friend, and it wasn’t his fault I snuck away while he was talking to his idol. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done that, but I’d wanted to find Papa. He was usually home with breakfast in hand before Uncle Miren had to leave for school, but that hadn’t happened this morning, and I’d wanted to find out why.

  There were dark circles under his eyes. I wanted to blame the dragon for that, but I couldn’t because I’d put them there. Papa stroked my greasy hair; we both needed a wash when we had time.

  “I don’t know how she escaped.” I had an idea, but it was a troubling one. I faced my Scribe but stayed close to Papa. I’d missed him while he was at work. “Could there be another portal? One we don’t know about that lets out somewhere else under the mountain? That would explain how she’d gotten there.”

  Melinda stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. “I was wondering the same thing. Who could have made it for her?”

  Maybe Bear knew. I padded back to the portal inside Melinda’s apartment and poked my head through, but Bear and the book he’d been reading were gone. “Bear? Where did you go?” I stepped away from the portal in confusion. “He’s gone.”

  “Who’s gone?” Papa squeezed my shoulder as he passed me.

  “Bear’s gone. But he was just sitting there reading when we entered the portal. Where did he go?” And why did he take my toy with him? Bear was a ghost for Fate’s sake. He could float off on his own business whenever he wanted, but could he leave my stuffed bear behind sometimes? I needed to squeeze it right now. Things had gotten way out of hand and not in the way they usually did.

  “Maybe he had something to do.” Papa peered through the portal then shook his head as he walked away from it.

  “I hope Bear’s not in trouble.” I hugged myself. I wanted Bear here with me, not gone on some mysterious errand. He was my stuffed toy before that Ghost Bear had taken up residence inside his furry body, and he was the only toy I owned.

  Someone had sewn him for me. Papa had never said who, but I knew he hadn’t done it because Papa didn’t know how to sew. That was why his cloak fixed itself.

  We trooped back to the boiler room. Maybe the dragon would tell us how she’d gotten out, but I doubted it. If we knew her secret, then we could stop her from ever escaping again. Papa stopped at the gray fire door that separated the boiler room from an antechamber with many doors and the loud washer and dryer.

  “They’re storage closets,” Melinda said when she caught me looking at the closed doors in perplexity.

  “Why are there six of them?” That didn’t make much sense to me. One closet I could understand, but why did this building need six?

  “Each resident has one. There are six more in the next room where the dragon is.” Melinda jumped as another metallic squeal sounded from beyond that gray fire door. She turned the knob, but Papa stopped her before she could pull it open.

  “Are you turning your computer off when it’s not in use?” Papa towered over our petite Scribe as he waited for an answer.

  Melinda had agreed to do that at our last character meeting. If she’d forgotten, then that could explain how the dragon had gotten out of cyberspace, but not how she’d gotten to Mount Eredren.

  “It’s okay if you forgot this one time. You just have to be more careful. That dragon is a tricky one.” And all this running around was making my tummy grumble. I crowded in close to Papa and checked his pockets for food. A snack would be great right now.

  “I didn’t forget. I’ve been turning my computer off when not in use. You’re not blaming me for her escape. No way.” Melinda folded her arms over her chest and stepped back from the confrontation.

  “Well, I didn’t let her out either.” Nor did I find any food in Papa’s pockets, just the usual stash of glowing rocks. I returned them to his pockets because we had enough light with Papa around, but we could use some heat. This room was rather cold.

  “Let’s ask the dragon how she got here.” Papa pushed open the fire door.

  I shivered in the cold air creeping invisibly down the stairs and into this room, but I stepped into its path and stared up. Across from the top of a short staircase stood a door to the outside, and sunlight knifed between the door and jamb. Those gold rays stabbed the rapidly cooling split-level foyer. I pointed at it to change the subject. “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not since she’s wrapped around the boiler, which heats this building.” Melinda stuffed her hands into her pockets again to warm them.

  “Oh, so that’s what that boxy thing is—the heating system.” I grabbed Papa’s cloak and tugged. “Wait!”

  “Why?” Papa let the fire door swing closed, cutting us off from the dragon again.

  “If we ask her how she showed up under the mountain, then she’ll know we don’t know.”

  “We don’t have any leverage to make her tell us, and no way to verify if what she tells us is the truth.” Melinda nodded. She was getting it.

  “Yes! We have to trick the truth out of her.”

  “How do we do that?” Papa still looked skeptical. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t tricky, nor did he do guile well.

  Maybe that was because he was twenty, and I was four, and I was better at games then he was. Whatever the case, I had to convince him to play it my way. “I don’t know yet, but I’ll tell you when I do.” I patted his hand on the doorknob.

  Papa shrugged then pushed open the fire door again. Before we could enter, a fireball slammed into the green half-dome that appeared between us and the dragon.

  One Confused Sister

  [The Gray Between]

  Sovvan opened her eyes to an all-encompassing gray fog. Oh fantastic, I’m in the Gray Between again. What did I do to get sent here this time? She sat up, and her head popped out of the fog bank, but there wasn’t much to see because that fog covered everything as usual, and it had taken her most recent memories again. Great.

  Well, at least she still had the rest of her recollections—those she’d recovered anyway. There were still large chunks of her personal history that were unaccounted for, but in time she’d recover them too. Still, it would have been nice to know where she was before she’d woken up here.

  Since sitting here wouldn’t help her figure that out, Sovvan rose and dusted off her borrowed white robes. They were unadorned because she wasn’t an angel, just some hybrid creature with wings that were still bound and out of sight. Damn.

  So, what was I doing before I woke up here in this place in between worlds? I was probably trying to save my brother, Sarn, and his adorable son. That was a safe assumption since they were always in some sort of trouble.

  Sovvan scanned the
horizon for a creepy forest. When she finally spotted it, Sovvan set off at a brisk trot. She just needed to get to it, find that weird pool, and through some magical means she didn’t understand, she’d be on her way back to her brother. She could work out why she’d ended up here after she ensured her loved ones were safe.

  That sounded like a great plan, which meant it would probably blow up in her face at some point because her plans always did. Maybe it already had. A chain made of white-glowing links sprouted from her chest and extended into the ground and beyond it. At its other end, her twin gave it a sharp tug, sending her flying face-first into the fog. Oof. Sovvan landed on her stomach. Ouch. She rubbed her chin and pushed up to a sit.

  The fog decided it had better things to do than try to eat her remaining memories, thank God. It flowed away from her, revealing one of the pachyderms generating it. The Memory-Eater regarded her with liquid eyes as it lowered its trunk. There were six gray dots between its now glaring eyes. Oh great. Six wasn’t one of her fans.

  “What are you so upset about? I only just arrived.” Sovvan fiddled with the chain. Each link was a promise she and her twin had made when they were small, and that resulting bond connected them heart-to-heart across worlds. Death itself could not sever it. Though it had tried, and so had a great many other people, but none had succeeded. Are you okay, bro?

  An image of a metal-plated dragon momentarily cut across her vision, and Sovvan winced. What the hell was that? Bro, are you fighting a dragon without me? I thought you had more sense than that. Sovvan pushed to a stand, and an angry pachyderm planted itself in her path. “Excuse me, but I have somewhere I need to be.”

  Sovvan attempted to go around that beast, but it peeled a set of wrinkly wings from its back and extended them to block her. “What the hell is your problem?”