by Brindi Quinn
“What?”
“Bring me your backpack, will you? I threw my homework in there at the end of class because I was sore from practice and I didn’t feel like carrying it.”
I turn to face her slowly. Dangerously. She can’t be serious. “You didn’t.” Somehow I manage to keep from lashing at her.
“Oh come on, you big baby. Bet you didn’t even notice the extra load. It’s just two textbooks and my notes.”
. . . YOU’VE GOT TO BE JOKING!
I choke back the words I want to say and the things I want to do. “I’ll be right back, Sil.” I grind my feet into the hardwood with every step of the hallway. When I reach my chambers, I give it up and tear to the rucksack sitting on the floor near my nightstand. I turn it upside-down and let the books within fall heavily to the ground. Sil wasn’t lying. Two textbooks are hers. Or maybe she was, for the notebook is nowhere to be found. I check twice and then once more, but the damned thing hasn’t slipped between the pages of another book. It isn’t being concealed in one of the side pockets. It’s nowhere.
Still, I hold on to my rage.
With deliberate steps I return to Sil’s room. “Here you are, SIL. Afraid to say your notes were not ther-”
But when I see that Sil is indeed now writing in said notebook – the very one for which I spent all afternoon – I must stop myself. WHAT THE HELL?!
“Yeah, guess it was in my room after all,” she says without looking up. Sil is the pinnacle of innocence. The most unobservant, ignorant, naive person in the world. I don’t understand how that can possibly be. Until she gives me the tiniest, evilest sideways smirk and I know: She’s planned this all from the beginning.
Sil is a malicious mastermind.
My body lurches to where she sits. My hands, like talons, clamp to the armrests of her chair. My forehead settles against hers. “What are you drawing, Sil?”
Sil produces a hiccup. Good. She is affected.
“Siiiil?”
“N-nothing,” she peeps.
“Show me.”
“N-”
I slide my mouth to her ear. “Show me.”
“. . .‘K-kay.”
Shifting my face so that our cheeks are flush, I release a talon and pry the notebook from Sil’s trembling fingers. I fan through the pages. Sil doodles more than she takes notes. At first I find no evidence of me, for in the days before my arrival, Sil simply drew her classmates in various embarrassing situations. Even the tick makes an appearance with an enormous head and a tiny body and two sets of limbs.
A third of the way through I find it.
There I am. And I look . . . normal. Sure, it’s a cartoon version of me. My eyes are cynical black dots suspended from horizontal lines, and my hair resembles sticks of spaghetti flat out from my scalp. Other than that, though, I can notice only one oddity.
In the drawing, my right bicep contains a tattoo. A black heart crowned by what appear to be . . . my horns? Sil’s never seen my horns, and yet the illustration of them is surprisingly accurate. Small, striped, pointed, curving inward. How does she know what they look like? Two pages later I find the same thing. And there it is again after a spell of Chemistry notes.
Strange.
“What’s with the tattoo, Sil?” I remove myself from her so that she might answer with composure. “And do be precise.”
“Geesh. You’re so bossy. It’s just a regular old tattoo. I dunno.”
On one particularly large portrait, I point to the things jutting from atop the blackened heart. “What are these?”
“Your horns, I guess.”
As I thought. Now I am the one who must keep composure. “Pray tell,” I say, strained, “how do you know what my horns look like?”
Sil is quiet.
“SIL!”
“Ugh. Fine, okay?! Don’t get cocky or whatevs, but I had some dreams about you, is all, and in all the dreams you had that tattoo. The heart with the horns.”
Sil . . . dreamt of me? That’s all it is? The doodles are simply a manifestation of the subliminal desires she has for me? Hah! How trite!
“What happens in these dreams, Sil?” I press.
“Nothing! You’re just there.”
“Don’t be shy.”
“I’m serious! You’re just standing there in the cemetery and then you push up your sleeve to show off your muscle or something – I dunno – and there’s the tattoo. And you get all, like, surprised, I guess.”
The dream is meaningless, I’m sure. The only questionable thing is the fact that her depiction of my horns is as they are. I’ve never described them to her, and knowing Sil, she’d have drawn them as curling ram’s horns or the like if left to her own volition.
Peculiar.
“You done with your interrogation now, paranoid?” she asks.
“Not quite.” No, there’s something I wish to try. I begin to unbutton my shirt. Sil reacts by sliding herself, in chair, as far from me as possible.
“Whoa, demon boy! W-what’re you doing there?”
“Try not to get so excited, Sil. I merely wish to try something.” I toss my overshirt to her bed. I’m left in my t-shirt. I roll up the right sleeve.
“Come here, Sil.”
“What?”
“We’re going to try again. And we are going to alter the rules a bit.” I know not if Sil possesses any seer’s powers, but on the off chance she does . . . “One hand on my chest. One hand on my arm,” I instruct.
Sil doesn’t get up from the chair. “Now, now, demon boy, it’s not like the dream means anything. You’re silly if you think –”
“I’ll be the judge of that, Sil. Start by revealing how many times the dream has visited you.”
“Uh . . . since you arrived here?” She chews her lip. “Maybe a dozen?”
A dozen?! That’s nearly every other day! And there’s something else – “What do you mean since I arrived here?”
“Huh? Well . . . that is . . . I’m sure it’s nothing, but . . .”
“SIL?!”
“I had it twice before you came.”
I am shocked. Really? I hadn’t expected something like that. Either she’s lying or there really is something to the dream! I stare at her, analyzing her intent, reading all of those little subtleties her grayed eyes reveal. No, she isn’t lying. That much is clear. She’s alarmed. She’s afraid. Not of me. Of the dream.
“Might you not have told me about this, I don’t know, BEFORE NOW?!” I scold.
“What? Why? You don’t seriously think –”
“And you don’t? Twit!” By the wrist, I yank her from her chair. “We’re trying again now, Sil! Prepare yourself!”
“For reals, demon boy?” Sil is reluctant, but I’ll stand for none of that. She deserves whatever discomfort the act gives her.
“Stand here.” I position her in the center of the room. She slides her hand beneath my shirt and to my chest. Unlike last time, it is warm. That’s a welcome change. The other hand she places obediently on my arm where the mystery tattoo appears in dreams and doodles. Then she stares at the ceiling and spouts,
“Blood and smoke. Soul and shadow. Heart and –”
“Ahem. Look into my eyes, Sil.” Moron. She knows as well as I that it won’t work unless she keeps contact.
Timidly meeting my vexed gaze, she begins again, eager to be done with it. “Blood and smoke. Soul and shadow. Heart and void. I love you, Wayst.” She says it so quickly that it sounds like one word. No matter. The incantation is out. Our eyes are locked. Her positioning on my body is true.
But despite the precision of our attempt, nothing happens.
“Damn,” I mumble. “Damn it.” It’s never going to work. Sil’s hands slip away. My head falls. “Damn it,” I say again. “Damn all of it.”
I melt into a pile on her floor. Why not? There must be a pile of one thing or another in here, mustn’t there?
Sil is awkward. She just stands there and stares at me. “Sorry, demon boy. I want you o
utta here as much as you do. Sorry I can’t get it to work.”
“I’ll bet you’re really sorry, Sil.”
“You’re a jerk.”
“You’re a slob.”
“Not anymore! Just LOOK how clean my room is.”
I venture to look up, and she is grinning with spirit. I shake my head. With something on her mouth that is either humor or mockery, she settles onto the floor beside me. “You know, for a demon, you’re surprisingly tidy,” she says, scanning the room.
“I’m not a demon, Sil. I’m a daem.” Why she cannot grasp such a simple concept is beyond me.
“So you keep insisting. I don’t get it, though. Isn’t ‘dame’ just a fancy word for lady?”
“That’s dame. I’m a daem.”
“And how is that different from a demon?”
“Daems are legendary men of shadow. Although that, too, is a falsity. Within my veins runs not shadow, but smoke.”
“Huh?” Sil is not convinced.
“Believe what you want. Daems are the descendants of dragons. Thus, our veins are filled with smoke.”
Sil raises a skeptical brow. “Dragons exist?”
“Not anymore,” I tell her. “The last one died to save a foreign world – neither Dhiant nor this one. Though I’m told he was reborn in your world. . . . Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“So you’re saying that if you were to cut yourself, you wouldn’t bleed?”
“That is precisely what I’m saying.”
“Right!” laughs Sil.
I shrug. “Like I said, believe what you want.”
“So daems are the descendants of dragons. They bleed smoke. They have horns. What else?”
I look at her suspiciously. Why the sudden interest in my people? Cautiously I further, “The horns are for taking spirit. When a daem uses a spell, we deplete our spirit. Thus we may borrow some from each other or from other beings by drawing it in through our horns.”
“Weirdness. What else?”
“What do you mean ‘what else’?”
“Are all of you guys pale?”
“We all have a fair complexion because of the light that surrounds us constantly.”
“Ur. ‘Kay . . . And you all have black eyes?”
“Red. Red eyes. For some reason, they appear virtually black here. It’s most likely part of my father’s seal.”
“Hmm. I see. So you said ‘spells’. What sort of spells can you do?” she presses.
“Well, I can’t do any in this state. But I should be able to turn to smoke, pull malevolent ailments from people, blur a person’s thoughts . . .” I glide a finger up her honey-colored arm. “And also slip inside of a person and control their movements. Things that wouldn’t interest a mortal like you.”
“Control them?” Sil folds her violated arm into herself. “So you ARE evil.”
“If anyone in this room is evil, it is you, Sil. Not me.”
Sil chews on the things that I’ve told her. Afterwards, she lies back on the floor, hands behind head, and throws a leg over her opposite knee. “Well, it’s a good story, demon boy. Who knew you could make stuff up like that?”
Oh? That’s how she wants to play? Smartass.
“Choose your weapon, Sil.”
“What?”
“Choose your weapon,” I repeat. “Something sharp, mind you. I’m feeling bored, so I suppose I’ll show you a trick.”
Sil doesn’t question it. “All right.” She rolls to her feet. But because she doesn’t know where anything is in her room anymore, I watch her roam about like a myling without prey.
“Try the bathroom,” I suggest.
“Oh. Right.” She begins to do so. However, she stops at the door. Her skin is pallid – like mine, for once. Her eyes are round. “Wait a minute! You even went through my underwear?!”
“Ugh. Please. Like there was anything excitable.”
“PERVERT!”
Sil slams the dirty bathroom door behind her. I smile to myself because it feels good to get under her skin. Which reminds me . . . I eye my hand. If I had my powers, I’d be able to get fully under her skin. I’d be able to manipulate movements. Dizzy her mind. That would be almost as satisfying as outright killing her.
When Sil appears moments later with a tweezers, the color has returned to her cheeks. How quickly she gets over her anger. A stupid person’s emotions are not as potent as the rest of ours apparently.
I turn up my nose. “That’s the weapon you choose?”
“Yup.”
I think not. Sighing, I tell her. “You’ll have to chisel away if you use those. Could take a while. Just run to the kitchen and find a knife.”
Unusually complacent, Sil trots away and returns with a butcher knife. From feeble tweezers to the largest knife in the house. Only Sil would make a leap of that scale.
“Now what?”
I flatten my palm. “Now, you cut me.”
“All right.” Sil bares a toothy grin and holds the knife as though she’s about to murder someone. Frightening. But after only a short charade, her maniacal expression falls. “Hold on,” she says, losing her nerve. “For reals? You actually want me to cut you!? Why?”
“For God’s sake, Sil. It isn’t like I’m asking you to slit my throat. Simply cut me enough to make me bleed. I’ll prove to you that I’m a daem. Demons bleed blood that is black. Daems bleed smoke. That, among other things, makes us unequivocally different from those savages.” If I can prove it to her, it’ll finally put an end to her ridicule.
Sil glances from the knife to my hand and back to the knife.
“Well? Go on,” I prod.
“I don’t really feel comfortable slicing you. Guess I’ll sorta poke you.” Sil lays my hand in her lap.
“Wait, poke? As in stab!?” Suddenly I’m rethinking this strategy.
“No, you baby. As in prick.” She takes the enormous blade and pushes just the tip into the top of my middle finger, where it breaks the skin. Sil squints at the small opening. Sure enough, a small trail of black smoke hisses out.
And Sil’s antiphon is . . . well . . . a tad over the top.
“HOLY HECK!” She throws both the knife and my hand from her lap with a vigor so intense it can only be thought of as frantic. I hold the smoking wound in front of her face a moment before bringing it to my mouth and sucking the stuff away.
“You-you-you really are a demon, huh?”
“NO. I’m a d-a-e-m.” I groan. “I give up. For whatever reason, your brain seems to be too small to grasp the concept.”
Sil pulls my hand from my mouth. She wipes away any spit onto her pantleg before bringing my finger close to her face and putting a little pressure against the prick point to make the smoke rise again.
“Whoa!” On a switch, Sil turns from afraid to amazed. She drops my hand and scooches closer to me.
Too close. I lean away. “What do you want?”
She orders me to open my mouth. And when I indeed open it to tell her off, she takes my jaw in her hand and peers down my throat. I slap her off. “Stop. What are you doing?”
“Trying to see if you’re just all full of smoke in there.”
I study her blankly to see if she might be joking. When I find that she isn’t . . .
“Imbecile! Are you ‘all full’ of blood? If I peer into your mouth, will I see a pool of the sticky stuff? No. So why should you expect the same to be true for me?”
“Oh.” Sil contemplates it. “Guess you’re right. But still! This is all too crazy! I never would’ve thought . . .”
“Sil, you knew I wasn’t like you. After all, my father performed several otherworldly acts in getting you to agree to this arrangement, didn’t he? He made your mum think I was a transfer student solely by whispering into her mind. You experienced it too. You spoke with him even though you never met him, correct? He spoke into your thoughts. Surely you knew I wasn’t deceiving you when I said I was not of this world. Surely you didn’t expect that I’d bleed a
s you do.”
“Sure, I knew you were different,” she says offhand. “Seeing it for the first time was surprising, that’s all.” She sniffs at my smoke curiously.
“Careful, Sil. Even without my powers, you just might let me in on accident.”
On second thought, why the hell would I want to warn her against such a thing? It would be ideal if she let me in by accident. It’s too late, though. The damage is done. Sil fans my lingering smoke away as though it might infect her at any moment.
“Since we’re on the subject,” I digress in an attempt not to take offense and lose my temper, “what did he promise you, Sil? The king, what did he promise in exchange for your cooperation in this endeavor?”
At the question, Sil looks through me, and I know. Immediately. Without a doubt. That I won’t get a proper answer. “Something important,” is all she’ll say. The same response she gives every time. And, like all times before, she refuses to tell me more.
On this occasion, however, something additional happens. Upon answering and reflecting, Sil looks around her orderly room and shivers. Not a frightened shiver, mind you. A shiver of desperation. In short, Sil is sad. My mark, so headstrong and harsh and ungirly, is sad and vulnerable for the first time ever in my presence. I am not thinking clearly. I utter the first thought that comes to me:
“I’ll kill you if you’d like,” I offer. My solution is primitive. The girl is sad. Shall I put her out of her misery?
But the offer only serves to put Sil off. “Excuse me?” she says, stodgy. “You can leave now, thank you very much.”
Fine by me. I’ve spent far too much time conversing with the sloppy human. Without another word, I take my leave of her.
><
Later that night, as I travel to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I notice that Sil’s dwelling has changed. It remains clean for the most part, but the space around her bed has been filled. Several pieces of furniture are butted up to her bedframe, and at their tops, mounds of clothing now reside. Sil’s made herself a nest.
And that isn’t all.
From within the nest I hear something. A whimpering, soft and injured. From the pit of her bed Sil is crying. She remains unhappy? Even though hours have passed? Most certainly.
