Wings of Change

by Lyn Worthen

  There are no shadows in Rigel Angston’s room. Bartholomew has swallowed each of them whole and scurried away.

  # # #

  The next day after school Rigel makes her way through the crowded corridors toward the drama room.

  “You’re going the wrong way.” The teasing voice belongs to Blaze Whittingham. He’s walking alongside her, two of his mindless friends shuffling at his heels. “School’s out, ya know. Didn’t you hear the bell?”

  Rigel ducks her head, watching her feet moving beneath her; fast, faster. “I can’t talk now,” she hears herself say. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Hurry to where?” Blaze asks, keeping pace, shoulder to shoulder as Rigel darts down two flights of stairs, turns right at the bottom and rushes on, toward the drama room.

  “Auditions are next week,” Rigel has no idea why she’s telling him this, and yet keeps talking. “For drama school. I have to rehearse...”

  “Drama school!” The taller of Blaze’s two friends snorts. “What sorta idiot goes to drama school!”

  “Shut up Bill,” Blaze hisses over his shoulder, though Rigel, pulling ahead, doesn’t hear him.

  Rounding the final corner she fixes her eyes on the brown double doors dead ahead. She doesn’t notice Blaze fall behind, see the sharp glare he gives his friends, or hear his angry words. Blissfully unaware, Rigel plunges through the drama room doors just as a grey shadow appears. Its soft edged clouds blossom from a far corner as it billows through the air, shrouding the corridor behind. The palest of red flames trickle along its edges just as it lurches, swallowing the three boys whole.

  No one hears the satisfied chuckle trail away as the shadow rolls itself into nothing, and disappears.

  # # #

  “For the last time I said spit them out!”

  A week later Bartholomew still refuses to admit his wrong, or to cooperate one tiny bit.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  As Bartholomew shifts into lotus position, the people puppet on Rigel’s bedroom walls transforms into a perfect image of Abraham Lincoln wearing a beret. “Watch this! If I splay my right hind talon just so... See? It’s not every shadow dragon that can create bereted Lincoln in swimming trunks. And polka dotted ones at that!”

  “Bartholomew,” Rigel’s eyebrows raise, she’s standing in the center of her room, glaring at the shadow dragon.

  She looks exactly like her grandmother to the fourth great when she does that, Bartholomew thinks. Shall I tell her? For a few moments he considers the possibility. Then, people puppets forgotten, rolls himself into a dragon shaped ball hovering just above Rigel’s desk. No, she isn’t interested in ancestors, not yet at least.

  “Well I can’t simply spit them out, as you well know.” He says instead, holding back a belch. “And it isn’t as if I didn’t want to! It’s getting awfully crowded in there between that rude girl from the Dairy Queen, ornery old Mrs. Conolly – if only I’d snatched her before she put on all that weight – and now those rotten boys.”

  Despite his efforts the belch escapes, sending oblong shaped shadows floating across the wall. One after another they slip into the crack just below the ceiling.

  “They’re a sour lot and are ruining my digestion.” Bartholomew groans, the fire trickles from his eyes in tiny blobs and spurts. “I feel all bound up.”

  “Well then spit’em out!” Flopping into her desk chair Rigel leans back, smiling at Bartholomew. “Come on, you know you want to.”

  “I know nothing of the sort and you’re wheedling.” Bartholomew’s golden eyes turn smoky. “How unworthy of you! Wheedling is a disgusting habit.”

  “And gobbling people up isn’t?” Rigel counters.

  My, when she frowns like that she looks exactly like her Uncle to the second great Abernathy, Bartholomew muses. I probably should tell her, I wouldn’t want her forehead going all wrinkly like Abernathy’s.He begins to speak, then stops. No, maybe not today. Not after she’s stooped to wheedling. Maybe tomorrow.

  “No,” he says aloud. “It’s my natural talent and duty. Dragons are supposed to devour people, it’s the way they’re made. Frankly I don’t understand your problem with it. It isn’t as though digestion has begun yet...”

  “Eww,” Rigel grimaces. “I’ve told you I don’t like hearing this part!”

  “Because if it had one of ‘em might come out missing half a leg, or maybe an eye, or even their ribcage. Did I ever tell you the story of my cousin Hilda? She overslept after swallowing an entire Roman legion, when she finally woke up the moon had waned to the thinnest of slivers. To this day she’s still burping up hobnailed leather sandals and lappets.”

  “Bartholomew!” Rigel’s voice rises and they pause, both of them glancing toward the bedroom door as though strings were attached to their heads and shoulders; dancing marionettes.

  “Careful,” Bartholomew warns. Rigel shakes her head.

  “They never hear me when I’m actually in the same room with them. I could scream the house down and they’d never notice.” There is no bitterness in her voice, she’s merely stating fact.

  They sit in silence for some time.

  “As I’ve told you,” Bartholomew finally says. “They’re in safekeeping, so to speak. Just until the time is right.”

  “But don’t you see this is wrong?” Rigel’s voice sounds tired suddenly; she’s heard all this before. “You can’t simply go around swallowing up everyone who annoys you...”

  “That isn’t what I do!” Bartholomew’s indignant snort sends sparks flying. “I swallow up everyone who annoys you. If I swallowed everyone who annoyed me there’d be no one left!”

  “Ok,” Her eyes dazzled by fizzling red and purple sparks Rigel makes the smallest of retreats. Ye gods, the last time he made purple sparks was when Katie Miller got the lead in Cinderella back in third grade. Poor girl still has that limp.

  “But you do promise you’ll let them out before it’s too late, right? Not like, ah...” Rigel hesitates, considering if she dare mention the name and deciding on a pseudonym. “ Ah… you-know-who?”

  “You mean Mr. Mulls?” Bartholomew’s shadowy, golden eyes flash black as red flames lick along his tail. His voice is absolutely bloodthirsty. “That was a service to humanity! The git shouldn’t have been allowed around children at all, much less be a first grade teacher Imagine, telling poor, impressionable younglings that dragons are imaginary!”

  “Bartholomew...” Wheedling and warning mingle in Rigela’s voice.

  “No. I’ll release them when the time is right and not a moment before!” Condensing himself into a tight ball he lets out a low growl and disappears with a pop.

  # # #

  Rigel learns she’s been awarded the Yastrzhembsky Scholarship to The Dale Academy of Drama in New York City on the day of May’s full moon.

  The news leaves her mother worrying who will help with the weekend deliveries, her brothers cross-eyed at Yastrzhembsky, and Rigel ready to pack her things and set off for the bus station at that very moment.

  Strangely enough, while walking home she finds herself pondering just how she’ll tell Bartholomew.

  Stranger still, there seems to be an aching sensation deep in the middle of her chest at the thought.

  “Certainly I won’t miss him?” She says aloud, wondering how what began as a statement turned into a question. “Because I won’t.”

  Turning the corner her bedroom window comes into view. “Will I?”

  # # #

  “We need to talk.”

  “Ominous words indeed. Many a man’s heart has been broken by such words. Luckily, I am no man.” Bartholomew has tucked himself upon the corner bookshelf’s third shelf. His scaly chin rests upon a worn copy of Alice in Wonderland.

  “Someone’s been watching Lord of the Rings again,” Rigel smiles and sits cross-legged upon her bed, considering Bartholomew. “I have something to tell you,” she says. Feeling tears fill her eyes she pinches herself. Stop it, i
diot!

  “Something about New York?” Bartholomew purrs, Rigel has never heard him sound so satisfied.

  Of course he knows...

  “It’s a fantastic opportunity; my drama coach freaked out when he got the news!” Words pour from her as she watches wisps of turquoise steam coil about the dragon’s head. “If I could take you with me...”

  “But Shadow Dragons are matter bound,” Bartholomew whispers both their thoughts.

  “Yes,” her voice falters. “But you still have your... work. All those important things you’ve never told me about, right?” She stares down at her hands, concealing the new glint in her eye. No wonder I won the scholarship! Rigel bites her lip as she waits for the dragon’s reply.

  “I’ve released them by the way,” Bartholomew abruptly changes the subject. “You’ll be hearing about it soon. I drank a great deal of pond water, it was decidedly scummy, made me go green about the gills, and I heaved the five of them onto the banks of Henderson’s Pond.”

  “Did you? I’m so glad! Are they, um, changed at all?”

  “Not so much,” Bartholomew sniffs. “Utterly confused and discombobulated of course. Mrs. Collings has lost a few pounds, nearly regained her girlish figure. Those horrible boys might be a few inches shorter, nothing anyone would really notice.”

  He smiles at her, his eyes glowing amber.

  “When did you say you were leaving?”

  “Ah...” Rigel flounders. Bartholomew isn’t behaving at all how she’d expected. What could he be up to?

  “The sooner the better I think, so I can get acclimated and all that. I’m not even going to walk at graduation. The school will just mail my diploma.”

  “That’s less than two weeks,” Bartholomew sighs, his scales flutter silently along the wall. “Won’t you miss me?”

  “Of course I will!” Tears again fill Rigel’s eyes. “I’ll be home on holidays, of course, and during the summers. We’ll see each other then.”

  She sniffles, allowing the tears to spill down her cheeks.

  “Will you?” Bartholomew examines Rigel carefully. Look how the salted water flows down her face, he thinks. Just as did when she was a child and no one thought of comforting her but me. For a moment he nearly feels what some would describe as guilt. But not quite.

  He is, after all, a Shadow Dragon

  “Because it’s quite a distance, New York,” he continues. “However will you be able to come home on holidays? And summers, really? Why would you want to?”

  “Well to see you of course,” Rigel begins, and stops, as Bartholomew lets out a low snarl.

  “How shiny your eyes are today Rigel dearie.” He growls, gliding down from her bookshelf he spreads himself along her bedside table, along the wall nearest her bed where no other shadow has ever fallen. “And not from the water you shed, ah no! Not tears this shine, but something else.”

  His growls turn to low clicks, a long series of deep clicks; they roll and vibrate against his beautiful ivory teeth. “Something you’ve imagined hidden. But...”

  His long body, his beautiful crimson eyes pour across Rigel’s headboard and lampshade. He stretches his neck, talons glistening; his wings pulled taut. Gliding, gliding he moves; and now they are nose to nose.

  “You can’t hide anything from me.” Bartholomew’s whisper is cold, colder even than deepest despair or eternal longing, and Rigel shudders, knowing herself revealed. “Have you forgotten? Shadow Dragons dwell in the hidden places, in the darkness, where all secrets lie.”

  The air hangs heavy around them.

  “I’ll never come back!” The girl hisses, springing from the bed she spins widershins in the room, and turns to face him.

  “My daemon? My protector? A blessing!” Rigel’s beautiful face twists and for a second, for half a second she appears almost ugly. “I’m tired of your lurking about, forever spying on me! Oh I know you think you’re protecting me, but...”

  “Hmmmm...” Bartholomew is all twists and curves, rolling between the lamp and table, thinning and fattening his grey body he spirals up until he is a tall coil, staring down at Rigel with sparkling crimson eyes. His mouth stretches, outlining his gleaming teeth, almost as if he were smiling.

  “Do you mean to say,” he asks slowly, as though unable or unwilling to speak the words. “You’re tired of me?”

  “Yes!” Rigel shouts, actually shouts as a bark of wild laughter escapes her. “I’m tired of you! I’m sick of you, sick of all of it! Of this god-awful house, of that stupid school filled with stupid people, of asses like Blaze Whittingham and losers like my mother and brothers and everyone in this crappy town imaging I’m going to wind up a loser too, just because...”

  Rigel whirls about, claws at her hair and face with tear-wet hands until, chest heaving, she falls upon the floor; exhausted and salt-water soaked.

  “You dearie, are a hysterical mess,” Bartholomew’s voice is not unkind. “Though don’t imagine I don’t understand. I was young once, many millennia ago. Of course you desire your own taste of independence, it’s only natural.”

  He stretches out a golden tipped talon, gently stroking Rigel’s beautiful hair. “What a powerful young woman you’ve become! Don’t you see, that means you’ve already won? You’ve beaten all of them.”

  When he chooses to Bartholomew can transform his voice into music. Into a crooning song-chant capable of soothing, of emboldening, of bewitching and bewildering even the strongest.

  “Of course you must go,” he croons. “It’s your time now. You’re just learning how lovely it is to stretch your wings. To allow your shadow to fall behind you.”

  # # #

  Later, Rigel wakes from her dreamless sleep. Her voice, low and painfully hoarse, whispers, “I didn’t really mean all that you know. Well, the part about school, and this town I did, but the other, about you – none of that was true.”

  Bartholomew, tucked tight within a deep ceiling crack, can sense her tears. His eyes burn cobalt blue.

  “I’m not sick of you, honestly. I really do wish you could go with me to New York.” Rigel hesitates, wondering if her Shadow Dragon is going to answer.

  “Bartholomew?”

  When she speaks again after some moments her voice sounds odd to his ears. Stronger perhaps, he thinks. The voice of someone without need of comfort. Almost, but not quite, a stranger’s voice.

  “Are you there?”

  “Of course I am, dearie,” he says, making his own voice warm and reassuring. “No worries. As I said, it’s natural, all this. And it isn’t as though I haven’t been through it all before.”

  “What?” Rigel is wide awake now. He’s been through this before? She sits up in bed, staring at the only speck of shadow in a room overflowing with the full moon’s cold light.

  “What do you mean? How’ve you been through this before? When? Bartholomew?”

  But Rigel’s shadowless room is quiet, and she is alone.

  # # #

  High atop the Angston cottage’s tumbledown eves sits Bartholomew, and how surprised Rigel would be at his expression! More satisfied than even she’s ever seen it. His eyes glow emerald as he watches her walk toward town, rolling her suitcase behind, its wheels crunching and awkward on the gravel road.

  Further along slants Rigel’s shadow, such a lovely glimmering shade of burnished gold. Bartholomew considers it, turning his head just a bit this way and that. Evaluating it as he always has his people puppets. After all, one must keep striving to improve.

  Hmmm... A bit too slanted and sharp-edged, he thinks. Though the scales are beautifully shaped, and that knob on the end of the tail’s a lovely addition. A detail like that can really make a difference in the heat of battle.

  His glance moves to Rigel’s shadow’s head and he finds a pair of questioning ebony eyes blinking back at him. Such is the way of younglings, so often filled with uncertainty and hesitation. Bartholomew’s fiery heart surges with love as he smiles his most reassuring smile. Go on, he urges
, whispering in the silent way Shadow Dragons have of speaking to their most beloved, to those important things which matter. Remember all I’ve taught you. You can do it!

  He catches his breath as Rigel’s shadow smiles back at him, nodding its noble head just as the girl turns the corner and continues on; making her way to the bus stop. And from there? Why an airport somewhere, Bartholomew imagines. And then further east, to New York.

  A place he’s never been and probably would fail to appreciate.

  Though one never knows.

  “It can get awfully chilly in New York,” he muses aloud to himself, flicking a wasp from the air with a whisk of his own sleek tail. “Hope she doesn’t get the croup.”

  He hears Rigel’s mother humming to herself in the kitchen below, setting out rows of flower-shaped soap molds. Three miles north Rigel’s brothers are making their way home. Two have caught their limit of fish, the third sings an old folk song, one Bartholomew remembers the boy’s grandfather singing, and yes, his grandfather before him.

  Bartholomew feels the scales along his neck prickling. His stomach, vast caverns of emptiness, rumbles as the inklings of an idea begins to stir deep within the recesses of his glorious brain.

  “Quite a nice singer, that boy is,” he whispers, and slowly turns his head away from the road into town, staring instead toward the path leading to the riverbank. “Puts me in mind of his grandfather to the sixth great, a fine work he was; full of piss and vinegar in the end. This one’s a bit old of course, nineteen or so. Still, I’ve noticed him biting at the Angston yoke more than once. Besides, it’s the challenges of my work which’ve kept me young.”

  Gazing beyond the back meadow he watches the three brothers enter the clearing. The singer is a handsome lad with startling ice blue eyes.