by Lucia Ashta
Dean and Shula fully turned away from me. Rane and Traya pretended I wasn’t there, something they were well practiced in.
And I held on to my invisibility with everything I had, pushing away every fear I had of being afraid. The contradictions in my thoughts and actions were obvious, despite how much I wished they weren’t.
Yoon led a large group of men and some women over to Dean. I hoped it was large enough to defeat the small man with the big bad intentions.
19
Yoon hadn’t even made it all the way to us when he called out, “We’re in a stinking pile of dragon feces now, aren’t we?” He didn’t sound nearly upset enough that we were, indeed, in a huge, heaping pile of dragon poop. There was no doubt about it.
None of the charmers or tamers that followed him onto the rock clearing looked frightened either. They didn’t even really look upset. Perhaps when you faced beasts as ferocious as dragons every day, dealing with Pumpoo and his threats was nothing in comparison. They might not experience fear anymore, I reflected with a bit of envy. Even before Pumpoo did whatever he planned to do, I was wrestling with fear.
Dean laughed at Yoon’s description of our current circumstances, and moved to greet him with a brief embrace and a clap to the back. Dean’s Alpha Team, the one I’d grown to trust, joined the rest of them and exchanged similar greetings with their fellow forcers. The noise level rose.
Boom spoke, making himself heard above the din. “We’re glad to have you with us. Do we know if Pumpoo is making his way here?”
Yoon, apparently the unofficial leader of those who’d just arrived, answered. “He was preparing to march on all of you when we left the village, and that was a while ago. We had to leave to make our own preparations.”
“And avoid punishment,” one of the others I didn’t know interjected.
“Aye, that too.”
“You told Pumpoo you weren’t joining his call to arms?” Dean asked.
“Not in as many words, but he got the message.”
“Loud and clear,” a woman called out.
“I imagine he did,” Dean said.
“Aye,” Yoon said, “we had to get out of there fast before he had the chance to intercept us and confiscate our weapons.”
“I would’ve liked to see him try,” another man said.
The men and women of the advanced Dragon Force shared similar characteristics, which melded them for someone who hadn’t yet met them individually. They were hardened and rough, but with a sharp edge that came from decades of practice and from the experiences that forced them to come to terms with their own mortality.
Pumpoo might have the trainees and whomever else he managed to recruit from the village, but those spread around me—and Rane, Traya, and Rosie—were the toughest of all the Ooba. Maybe our chances were better than I’d dared to hope.
Brute asked those who’d just arrived, “Did it come to violence?”
“No,” Yoon said. “Pumpoo wouldn’t dare take all of us on. I’m sure he’s searching for the way to avoid it.”
I tilted my head to study Yoon. The pale-haired man, one of the few with light features in our tribe, had seemed to almost revere the chieftain the last time I saw him. What changed? Or was this the reason Dean insisted Yoon could be trusted, because his apparent adoration for Pumpoo wasn’t what it seemed?
“Well it would be smart for Pumpoo to avoid fighting us,” Dean said.
“And the chieftain is smart, there’s no doubt about that.”
“He threatened our families,” a man from the crowd voiced. I recognized him as a dragon charmer, more advanced in skill than a dragon tamer.
Dean swiveled to look at the charmer. “Outwardly?”
“Nah, you know him, he doesn’t ever say what he really means. But it was clear enough, believe you me.”
“What’d he say?”
“Something along the lines of, we wouldn’t want any harm to come to our families if we were to choose the side that didn’t have the best interest of our tribe at heart, now would we? The same kind of dragon dung as always. Disguising his threat within the well-being of the Ooba.”
“I’m sure he means his threat though.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Peachy, who’d drawn up next to Shula, said. “That sniveling little man always means his threats. What he doesn’t mean are his supposed truths.”
“Exactly,” someone in the crowd said. The dragon charmers and tamers easily identified who was saying what, no matter how many of them there were. But these were the least approachable members of the Ooba tribe. I barely knew any of them.
“I encouraged any tamers and charmers with young children at home to stay behind,” Yoon said, “to pretend to join Pumpoo’s forces against us.”
“And?” Dean said.
“It didn’t work.”
Dean looked out at the sea of determined faces. Eventually, he nodded. “You’re all well aware of the risks, so I won’t bother reminding you. If you’re here now, I assume it’s because you’ve come to terms with the possible consequences of your choice.” If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn that Dean was getting misty eyed. “Without doubt, you’re the best of the best of the Ooba. You have the courage it takes to defeat Pumpoo and free our people, once and for all.”
Boom yelled, “Hell yeah!” His enthusiasm was met with a chorus of equally loud, and equally enthusiastic, cries of support. Pumpoo might think he had us overwhelmed in numbers, but I didn’t think he really understood the determination of the Dragon Force. I discovered myself misty eyed. Courage and determination rolled off these men and women. This was the true heart of the Ooba people. This was the kind of person I wanted to be—the kind who’d do whatever was needed in order to support what was right and true in the world.
Once the tamers and charmers settled down, Dean said, “I’m mighty glad to have you all here. We’ll fight for balance, truth, and goodness, for the real well-being of the Ooba tribe.”
“Until our last breath!” someone called to a chorus of ayes that had me tearing up again, and wishing that senseless loss might avoid these people, the ones who could really lead our tribe toward a brighter future.
Dean looked out at the Dragon Force like a proud father, until they naturally fell silent, looking to their leader for guidance. “We don’t know how much time we have, but I doubt it’s much, so listen closely. There’s some kind of shadow man, who took out three of our own.” Dean gulped, but hurried on. “He blends into his surroundings so that he’s almost invisible to sight. I managed to really see him only when he moved. He’s swift and deadly.”
“And extraordinarily resilient,” Shula said. “Dean knocked him on the back of the head, and he got up and escaped before Dean could get back to him.”
A few whistles peppered the clearing.
Dean continued. “He’s tough and you need to watch for him—with every one of your senses. We’re not letting him get another one of us. Three was three too many.”
“Is he with Pumpoo?” someone asked.
“I’d assume so, if not for the danger of making assumptions.”
“They get you killed,” a hoarse-voiced man said.
“Right. So I’d say the obvious answer is that, yes, this shadow man is working with Pumpoo. The coincidence that he would show up right when Pumpoo declared his intentions toward us is too much. But... that’s no guarantee it’s true. Don’t assume anything. Beyond this shadow man, as I’m sure you noticed, the forest burned and no longer offers cover. And we have our baby dragon, Rosie, with us.”
All heads shifted to look at Rosie—and me sitting right next to her. Keep your invisibility, Anira. Hold it, I willed and forced the fear that I wouldn’t manage it from my mind.
“Pumpoo announced that he has faithum. He wanted us to experiment with Rosie to see if we could discover some connection between the dragons and faithum, I’m sure to use it for himself. Rane and Traya here are Alden’s children. They’re trainees who’ve ch
osen to join our cause. They’ll stay off to the side, as safe as possible, and work with Rosie to see if they can discover some connection between her and faithum that we can use to our advantage.”
I understood what Dean really meant. He meant that I should work with Rosie, and Rane and Traya should offer camouflage for my activities. “Shula will stay with them to protect them, the rest of us will prepare to defend.”
“How are we going to do that?” a muscular man with gentle eyes said. “We don’t want to hurt any of our people. This is different than fighting King Oderon’s raiders. Pumpoo is ordering the Ooba to attack us.”
“I realize that.” Dean released a sigh and ran a hand across his tired face. “I don’t know what we’re going to do, but we certainly aren’t going to kill our own.”
“They’ll be trying to kill us, if Pumpoo has his way.”
“I know, I know. I’ll be giving it thought, believe me. And if any of you have ideas, I want you to tell me. As always, there are no leaders among us, just some of us better skilled at directing. We’re all equal here. Before this is over, we’ll all need to do our part to get out of this in one piece.”
Serious expressions settled across the crowd.
“This is the greatest challenge we’ve ever had to face, far greater than facing the dragons. We’ll be dealing with a man who wields his tongue like a weapon.”
“More dangerous than a Vikas viper, that one,” a woman said. “Forked tongue and all.”
“Exactly. He’ll do his best to whip up the Ooba people into a frenzy. They probably won’t see us as part of them anymore.”
“But as the enemy,” Shula said.
“Aye.”
I wouldn’t be doing the fighting, but I couldn’t help share in the weight of what the Dragon Force was up against. The odds were awful. They’d be fighting our own people with their hands tied behind their backs.
“But don’t worry, my friends. We always find the way, don’t we? We’ve come up against impossible odds before. Nearly every single damn day, in fact. We’ve come up against the most ferocious of beasts on the entire planet. We have the strength and the scars to prove it.” The scar along Dean’s neck moved while he spoke, light against his caramel-colored skin. “We haven’t been training all this time for nothing.”
“But we haven’t been training to fight our own people,” the man with the gentle eyes said.
“It’s true, we haven’t. But it’s also true that we haven’t trained to fight against, but to work with. We’ve trained to understand the dragons, but we’ve also trained to understand the workings of life. We’ve trained to move within the balance that already exists, and when it doesn’t, to restore it. We’ve trained in faithum, even when it was forbidden, because we understood it was a part of life. These are the skills we’ll call upon when opposed by our misguided people. And we will prevail. Why? Because we must. Because we’re the only hope for our tribe. We must succeed for the true way of life of the Ooba people to prevail. This is our sacred purpose here today, and tomorrow, and for as long as it takes until we force Pumpoo and his evil influence out of the way.”
Dean held his audience captive. I didn’t think of anything but his words, wanting to absorb every single one, to allow his certainty to shape mine.
“We’ll do all we have to do—because we can. Because we’re strong enough. Because we’re the defenders of our people. We’ll do whatever it takes—with honor. We’ll do this because this is who we are. Because we, my friends, have faithum. It’s time to step up and use it. Today is not the day to hold back.”
After listening to Dean, I had no intention of holding back. Whoever I truly was meant to become, I was on the path to finding out.
20
It took longer than I imagined it would for Dean to organize the dragon charmers and tamers who joined us. The clearing we occupied wasn’t enormous, but it was large enough to leave us vulnerable, and I could tell the fact had Dean worried.
He’d sent several scouts to check out the forest beyond the clearing, the direction in which no one from the Ooba tribe had reason to travel. And he sent a small troop of tamers to hide in the burnt forest, to be the eyes that could warn us of Pumpoo’s inevitable approach.
He sent another few scouts to head up the mountain trail back toward our village, with hopes that they might discover more of Pumpoo’s intentions for attack.
Everywhere Dean sent forcers, he sent them in groups. He didn’t voice his concern any more than he already had, but I imagined the shadow man and the threat he posed were never far from his mind.
The one threat no one seemed to take into account was the one for which all these people had trained. There was, as of yet, no mention of dragons. I realized we were at a lower altitude than dragons usually roamed, but they did come down here when they needed to—when they were chasing after a distressed baby dragon and those they must have perceived as her captors.
Dean had given me a job. I was to work with Rosie to discover if there was a way to augment my faithum, perhaps even to somehow work in tangent with Rosie to do something we hadn’t conceived of yet. As far as I knew, never before in our history had members of our tribe combined their faithum with a dragon’s. I would be the first—along with being the only invisible girl.
But it was hard for me to do my job when I wasn’t supposed to exist, and there were eyes and ears everywhere. We were nearly a hundred in number now, and with Rosie still glued to me, I couldn’t figure out a place to go—and a way to get there—without drawing attention and questions I wasn’t supposed to answer.
Besides, Dean and his orders fascinated me. I wanted to know everything, every direction he gave and every one of Pumpoo’s moves he anticipated. Given that Dean remained where he’d been when the tamers and charmers arrived, I had a front row seat to the show. I’d longed to be a part of the Force for so long that the temptation to see a legend at work was too great. And since I had the good excuse that I couldn’t really do anything more than stay where I was, I did, even though Dean’s speech had motivated me as it had everyone else, and deep down I understood that the time for excuses was long gone.
I had no idea how Dean would organize us to defeat Pumpoo. It was true that the tamers and charmers of the Dragon Force were almost all present and constituted a formidable power. But so was Pumpoo, and he had the greater numbers of the Ooba tribe on his side, along with deceit and machinations he may have set in motion long before any of us realized he wasn’t who he pretended to be.
It didn’t seem as if Dean had a clear picture about how to organize our defense either. He conferred with Shula and Yoon while he paced back and forth in front of my seated siblings and me. “We have to think that Pumpoo won’t give us much time. He’ll attack before we have the chance to fully organize ourselves and prepare.”
“Maybe,” Shula said. “Or he could draw it out. Make us nervous, think we haven’t properly anticipated his moves.”
“And strain our ability to maintain protection around our troop,” Yoon said. “We’d have to scramble to figure out how to maintain a group this size. We’re removed from our usual food sources.”
“No doubt Pumpoo’s taken that into account,” Dean said. “I’d like to think we could still find a way to have access to our people’s crops.”
“But that’s a dream as big as thinking that Pumpoo would put the needs of the Ooba before his own,” Shula said.
Dean stopped pacing for a moment, brought his hands to his hips, looked to his friend with the long braid and strong resolve. “It is. Why? Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t we have a normal ruler, one whose intentions are true?”
“What? Like the Andarons?” Yoon chortled. “As if they’re any better. We fled the royal city, don’t you remember? Our people fled persecution.”
“That’s what we’ve been told.”
“You think it isn’t true?”
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure about much of anything right now.
Pumpoo’s true intentions aren’t yet clear. I know he’s draining the power from his people, has faithum, and looks to the dragons to increase his power. I also know he might have been planning this for long enough to set up all sorts of offenses I have no idea about, so we can’t defend against them.”
Shula gave Dean a severe look. “This isn’t like you, Dean. Now isn’t the time to question motives or focus on what we don’t know. Pumpoo might lead forces—forces we won’t want to hurt—down that mountain any minute. We have to have some defense in place.”
Dean didn’t cower beneath Shula’s look. He seemed barely to see it, his worries too great. “We do. But what, Shula? What? We can’t hurt the people Pumpoo will bring to hurt us. I’d like to think the Ooba wouldn’t turn on us, but we’re all aware how he likes to spin things. Who knows what he might have convinced our people to do?”
I turned to Yoon, looking for any kind of reaction to talk of Pumpoo’s malicious nature. I’d been sure Yoon was on the chieftain’s side. Dean trusted him enough to include him in organizational talks.
“We have no good place to conceal ourselves now that the forest has burned. We can’t go back to the village and beyond. Our only option is to head in the direction past the clearing or stand our ground here.”
“Standing our ground means open confrontation.”
“Probably.”
“Which means casualties. We need another way.”
“Once the scouts report back and tell us how far we can go beyond the clearing, it might be what we have to do. Retreat. Run. Because standing to fight means death... to someone, to someone’s blood relation. We have to avoid open conflict at all cost.”
Yoon said, “We know beyond the clearing is more forest, with occasional clearings. We’ve explored them before.”
