by Lyn Worthen
“So where are these starships, then?” I asked sourly. “Since we traded being dragons for them, why don’t we have starships now?”
“A war broke out in the universe. Our ancestors decided to hide our planet to keep it safe. We couldn’t send any ships or signals, lest our enemies find us.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Perhaps. Maybe they had good reasons at the time. But the rules were made so long ago, people have forgotten why. They just follow them blindly.”
“Well I won’t!” I declared.
“You will!” Shaoreaux snapped. “Or else I won’t teach you or help you if the government comes and throws you in jail.”
“Fine. I already know how to turn into a dragon and fly. I’ll take my chances.”
The water in the pot began to boil and Shaoreaux dumped a handful of noodles into it. The water hissed and splashed him.
Shaoreaux waved his hand and the water slowed midair. He flicked his fingers and the water spun, then froze into a crystalline snowflake that floated into my hand.
“Still think you know everything about being a dragon?”
# # #
Every other night, we sneak out and meet in the backyard. Shaoreaux has it easy – his bedroom is in the basement, so he just has to stand on his desk and shimmy out his window into the flowerbed.
My room is in the attic loft, and the ladder that leads down from it creaks and ends right by Adabelle’s door.
So instead I climb out my window onto the gabled roof. Shaoreaux changes into a dragon and carries me into the woods. I keep a bag of his clothes with me, so he can change back into a man.
“Dragons have natural magic,” Shaoreaux explains to me as we walk deep into the woods. “Your natural element fuels your magic, and your coloring is a clue to your element. You can guess mine?”
“Water.”
“Correct. Yours may be earth or wood. I think wood, because you’re more brown than yellow.”
I am still pouting about the fact that I’m brown. At my request, Shaoreaux brought a pocket mirror to our first lesson, but I couldn’t see my color in the dark, and flashlights are too risky.
Shaoreaux leads me deep into the woods, to a bush with heart-shaped leaves that have begun to brown.
“Do you know what kind of plant this is?” he asks.
“Summer snowball.”
“Can you picture what kind of flowers it has?”
“White puffy ones.”
“Make it bloom.”
“Now? It’s fall.”
“If your element is wood, then you have an affinity with growing things. Try talking to it.”
Talk to a plant?
“Hi, bush,” I say, feeling dumb.
“Not aloud,” Shaoreaux says, half irritated, half amused. “With your mind, the way we talk when we are dragons.”
I blush hard, something I always seem to be doing around Shaoreaux lately. But then I remember something that happened to me when I was a little kid. I’d climbed a tree and was lying on a branch with my cheek and ear against the bark. I dozed off and dreamt I could hear the tree’s heartbeat.
I lie on my stomach. Pine needles carpet the ground, prickly against my cheek. I touch the thorny trunk of the snowball, and feel life coursing through it like blood through veins.
I think of the white snowball flowers, of the gentle warmth of the spring sun after a crisp night, the ground wet and wakening. I feel the plant’s joy as its buds unfurl.
“Willa,” Shaoreaux breathed.
I open my eyes and see the bush covered in frothy white blossoms. Tears fill my eyes. This is my second miracle.
# # #
By the time Mom and Adabelle came home that night, Shaoreaux was tossing pasta with salty mussels from the harbor. Dad was home just as Shaoreaux dished the pasta up on plates, and we had a normal family dinner. Shaoreaux eats with us. For all he gripes about being a servant, I’m pretty sure he’s the only one who thinks of himself as one. Well, maybe Adabelle does too, but no one cares what she thinks.
After dinner Adabelle shut herself in her room and Mom went to the den. Dad lit his pipe, settling in to read the news while Shaoreaux cleared up. I like the vanilla smell of dad’s pipe, so I brought my homework back to the table.
“Sounds like there was a disturbance at the harbor,” said Dad around his pipe.
I looked at Shaoreaux in panic and he gave me a warning look.
“A boat overturned, and a freighter splashed by a mysterious wave. Several witnesses swear they saw a dragon in the water,” Dad read.
“Nonsense,” Shaoreaux said, before disappearing into the kitchen. I kept my eyes on my equations.
“I thought you’d be interested in this, Willa,” Dad said. I realized I was acting too disinterested.
“Adabelle says there’s no such thing as dragons.”
“Well that’s just idiotic,” said Dad. “They’re part of our history.”
I snickered. “You called Adabelle an idiot.”
“I did not call your sister an idiot. Our school system is what’s idiotic, ignoring such a vital part of our history. Don’t you agree, Shaoreaux?”
“It’s the best way to mold society,” said Shaoreaux, who had returned with the teeny-tiny glass of dad’s schnapps. “Indoctrinate the young with revisionist history, and it won’t even occur to them to question the current status quo.”
“Exactly!” Dad pounded his fist on the table, and he was off on one of his rants. Crisis averted.
# # #
The storm strikes in the dark hour before dawn. It’s right overhead, and a thunder clap shakes my attic bedroom with such violence that I wake. I get up and watch from my window, my feet bare and chill against the wooden floor. The sky is lousy with lightning, and against the illuminated clouds a long, sinuous form spirals up, up, up like a wisp of smoke. Lightning strikes and all I see is a shower of sparks as Shaoreaux and the lightening meet. I scream and throw my window open. The rain whips my face, but I don’t care. I don’t bother to take off my pajamas or look down at the steep drop to the backyard below. I climb out the window, my bare feet slipping on the wet, wooden shingles of the roof. I leap and change mid-air. I coil then uncoil to boost myself upwards, and the tip of my tail flicks my open window and shatters it.
A thunder clap reverberates through me. The charged air makes my mane stand on end. I fly towards Shaoreaux, towards the great, roiling cloud where light seems to be warring with the darkness.
A streak of lightning illuminates Shaoreaux’s silhouette. He’s flying even higher, up into the storm cloud.
Thunder again, so close and loud this time that it hurts my teeth. Lightning lasts only a second, but somehow Shaoreaux catches it. He and the lightening meet, and beads of mercury rain down like a giant firework.
I realize at last that it isn’t hurting him, and I slow to watch in wonder.
“Go back,” Shaoreaux says, noticing me at last. “It’s not safe for you.”
“You’re doing it.”
“I’m a water dragon. I’m conductive. Your element is wood, remember? Do you know what lightning does to wood?”
I feel a tingling as the air charges around me, and suddenly Shaoreaux is barreling towards me. He catches the lightning as it strikes, drawing it away from me.
I flee, but as I near the house I see a face in my broken attic window. I veer off towards the woods.
Shaoreaux follows and after we change we sneak back in through Shaoreaux’s window, cluttering his desk with wet leaves. He tosses me a quilt then pulls on clothes.
“Hide the fact you’re naked. Wait.”
He points to my wet hair.
Shaoreaux’s eyelids droop. He inhales then blows a sudden puff of air. I feel my hair and it’s so dry it crackles.
I grin and follow him upstairs to the kitchen, where we run into Dad.
“What are you doing?”
This is directed to me, but Shaoreaux answers.
“The
storm broke her window and she got scared,” he says.
Dad frowns at me.
“Next time wake me or your mother. Don’t bother Shaoreaux.”
“Yes, Dad,” I say contritely.
“I don’t mind,” Shaoreaux says. “The storm woke me, and it’s too close to morning to go back to sleep.”
My dad doesn’t agree. He yawns.
“Sleep in Adabelle’s room. Don’t go up to your room until I clean up the glass.”
He goes back to bed. I sneak up to my room to put pajamas on.
# # #
I want to see what I look like, and I want to see by daylight.
We have an assembly last period. It’s the perfect time. They never take attendance at assemblies. I duck out of line and into the bathroom, and when all is quiet I sneak outside. I change in the woods, and fly under the trees right to the back yard. I peer into the den window.
But the light isn’t right, and my reflection is transparent.
Adabelle’s lace curtains flutter in her window. She’s left it cracked. I nudge it open with the tip of my snout. I can just fit my head and neck in to peer into her mirror. For the first time I see my true self.
I am glorious. ‘Brown’ doesn’t do me justice. I am every color of bronze and copper, earth and stone, as if each of my scales were forged from precious metal. My eyes are hazel with rings of ochre. And my mane is the color of tree moss, wispy and ethereal.
“Change back now!” shouts Shaoreaux in my head.
In a panic I try to change and fly into Adabelle’s room at the same time. I shrink and writhe and my tail makes one violent pass around the room before I become a girl, knocking down Adabelle’s collection of perfume bottles.
The door opens and Shaoreaux looks in.
“Someone saw you leave the school. The story is you felt sick and came home.”
“Shaoreaux.” I am about to cry.
“I’ll clean up here. I have to call your mother before the police start searching the woods and find your clothes. Move!”
I run upstairs to my room, throw on pajamas and burrow into bed.
After a few moments Mom arrives and pulls down the covers, feels my forehead.
“Shaoreaux told me you left school because you felt ill. You’re a little warm, but you don’t have a fever.”
“I had a stomach ache.”
“Why didn’t you go to the nurse?”
“Sorry,” I mumble into the sheets.
“That was a very irresponsible of you, Willamina. The school didn’t know where you went. We thought you’d been kidnapped.”
“Sorry.”
The lecture goes on until I begin to develop a bellyache for real. Finally mother sighs and says, “Come down and see if you can eat.”
I feel so guilty that it is not hard to act sick. I pick at my soup. Adabelle comes home and goes to her room. A silent minute passes and I breathe a sigh of relief. Shaoreaux must have come through.
But then Adabelle lets out a bloodcurdling shriek. Her door bangs open.
“Where is my bottle of Clara Luna?!” she bellows in my face. “Did you take it? Did you touch my things?”
“It’s my fault,” Shaoreaux says. “I was dusting and I knocked it over. I’m sorry.”
“Why were you cleaning my room?” she whirls on him. “I never gave you permission to go in there!”
“Adabelle,” Mom warns, but Adabelle’s temper is in full swing.
“I was gathering your laundry and noticed dust on the shelf. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry’s not good enough. That was my favorite. Why would you do a girl’s laundry anyway? Are you some kind of pervert?”
I forget I’m supposed to be sick and tackle Adabelle.
“Don’t talk to Shaoreaux like that!” I scream, and we smack each other until Mom drags us apart.
“Enough! This behavior is absolutely shameful. You’re both grounded.”
I stomp up to my room. This is all my fault. Adabelle’s favorite perfume getting broken, Shaoreaux getting blamed… all because I had to look in the mirror.
# # #
I don’t know what to do.
Two strange men were at the house when Shaoreaux and I got home today, talking with Dad in the sitting room we never use.
“Come in here a second,” said Dad when he saw us.
Shaoreaux handed me the grocery sack. “Put this in the fridge, please, Willa.”
“Actually, we need both—” began one man.
“No need,” said Shaoreaux, nudging me. I went up the stairs then snuck back down to listen.
“…reported that she saw a dragon in your yard. Would you know anything about that?”
“This isn’t the first sighting,” added the other man. “We’ve had three reports total in this area.”
“I suppose there’s no point in lying,” Shaoreaux said. “Professor, I apologize for bringing this upon your house. I thought I was being careful. But I can’t ignore my nature – in fact I think it’s wrong to do so. But I accept the consequences.”
“I see,” said one of the government men. “You’ll come quietly then?”
“Yes.”
“And no one else was aware of your activities?”
“No.”
“Then you are under arrest.”
They led him out. I threw myself at Shaoreaux went they reached the door.
“No, you can’t!”
I felt Shaoreaux’s hand on my hair, and his voice inside my head saying, “Shut up, Willa. Let me do this, as your teacher.”
“No, I—”
Dad clapped his hand over my mouth until the door was shut behind them.
“Go to your room, Willa,” he said.
“Don’t let them take Shaoreaux, Dad, please!”
“He made his choice.”
“But I’m the one—”
“Enough!” Dad shouted. It shocked me, because Dad never shouts.
“I don’t want to hear you speak of this again. Do you understand?”
I yanked myself out of his grip and ran outside. The car was peeling away. I ran after it, but fell, scraping both my knees on the gravel drive. I could see the back of Shaoreaux’s head in the rear window.
This is all my fault. And now Shaoreaux’s gone and I don’t know what to do.
# # #
I don’t want to go to school the next day, but Mom forces me. She’s says she’s sympathetic about Shaoreaux, but not sympathetic enough to let me miss school.
I haven’t slept all night. What time I didn’t spend crying I spent trying to think of what to do. There are two choices I can see. Either I turn myself in and Shaoreaux and I both end up in jail – because I doubt they’ll set him loose just because they’ve got me too. Or I keep my mouth shut, and let Shaoreaux sacrifice himself for me.
My face is so blotched and puffy that at break Marta Berenge asks me what’s wrong. She actually seems genuinely worried.
And I’m tired of hiding the truth.
“I broke the law,” I say. “But my best friend took the blame for it and was taken away.”
I thought this would shock her, but she just tilts her head.
“What law did you break?”
“The law against being a dragon.”
Longing flickers in her eyes. I realize that she feels the same way I do. I always thought that Shaoreaux and I were alone, that it was us against everyone else. Suddenly I realize this is not true.
Marta Berenge, former bane of my existence, has become my inspiration.
I jump to my feet.
“What if I could show you how?”
“How to what?”
I run to the front of the class. Break is almost over so most of the class is back in the room, but Mrs. Garvis is still out in the hall.
“Everyone, attention please.”
A couple people glance my way, then go back to talking.
“Hey!” bellows Marta, coming to stand beside me.
The noise di
es down and the whole class stares at me. Mrs. Garvis pokes her head in.
“What are you shouting about?” she demands.
I have made a lot of progress with my training. The thing is there’s not much to it. I have an affinity with wood – leaves and flowers and grass too, but especially wood. Whatever I desire, the wood is happy to oblige. Even though the wood of the classroom door has been dried and cured, it still has a spark of soul that I can speak to. I send some strength into that spark and suddenly the door sprouts branches. Mrs. Garvis jumps back as branches weave around the door jamb and into the walls, locking the door in place.
I definitely have everyone’s attention now.
“What if I told you that every one of you could do magic like that? That every one of you could fly?”
Shaoreaux sacrificed himself to save me. Dad silenced me to save me. But I don’t feel saved. What is the difference between Shaoreaux behind bars and me outside of them if I can never be who I truly am?
I look at the faces of my classmates. I’ve always thought of myself as different, but Marta has helped me realize that I am not. I am dragon.
And so are they.
Alone, we can be silenced, as I was, or intimidated, as Dad was, or even locked away like Shaoreaux.
But there are twenty-four of us here, and six-hundred in the school. We can communicate by thought, and fly faster than any ship can sail. We will reach out to others and spread the truth.
“What if I taught you all to be dragons?”
We can hear the teachers banging at the doors. When they try to come in through the windows I grow branches over those too. Meanwhile I tell what I have learned and my classmates listen. They all have that same buzzing in their chests, that same longing for flight, for freedom, for their true inner selves. They do not need much instruction. Holding it back has been hard for them too.
