Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  “That’s so wrong. I’ll dial 911 and get a bomb disposal team.”

  “They’ll never make it in time.” She takes it and puts it gently into the black plastic trash bag we’re filling.

  My uncle Uriah had a lot of great qualities. He told great jokes and long stories that were actually interesting. He could be anyone’s friend. He was calm and patient with a kid who was anything but. However, being neat and organized was never one of his gifts.

  When it was open, Poe’s was well known in Richmond. It drew a unique crowd of eccentrics, miscreants, and practitioners of secret arts from a city that was, and still is, full of them. Art professors, sculptors, witches, want-to-be philosophers, psychics, musicians and writers and painters, fae and grogans, and even just boring human people, too, would pack the bar and the booths on the weekends and spill out into the street.

  But Poe’s is still pretty trashed, more than a year after their last big party. I wasn’t here, but I saw some of the pictures: a bagpiper, a packed crowd. Someone juggling fiery balls of magic, someone else telling fortunes. People dancing on the bar, on the sidewalks, even on the ceiling. A whole lot of drinking—my uncle was a big fan of his whiskey collection.

  Once we get all of these incursions stopped, and I deal with whoever or whatever took my friends, I’d like to bring all that back.

  I grew up here, sitting at the counter, right where Sam is now. When I was five, people would call me over to sit with them, and they’d tell me stories, most of which I didn’t understand, though I learned to laugh when everyone else did. They’d ask me to sing them a song or tell them a story of my own, and I’d make one up on the spot. Some of them even brought me little paintings, or tiny carvings of rabbits or horses or deer. One old fae made me a blue dress I can still remember—when I spun around in the circle, the skirt would spread out and it would lift me gently into the air.

  I think I still have some of those things up in the attic.

  Uriah had named it Poe’s in honor of Edgar Allen Poe, of course. Poe had spent a lot of time here in the city, before dying mysteriously up in Baltimore. What my uncle really liked was the idea of Poe as a starving artist, hanging around town, drinking and gambling and professing undying love for the well-to-do women he was sponging off of.

  Plus, I think he really enjoyed Poe’s stories. Who doesn’t?

  The walls here are covered with eclectic things my uncle also liked or at least thought were funny. There’s a Spam clock on the wall that doesn’t work; the hands are stopped at five minutes after midnight. There are the taxidermied heads of imaginary and real animals—a jackalope over the door, a bobcat on the wall by the bathrooms, a bear who’s wearing a top hat and has a green tennis ball in its mouth. A huge, antique bra hangs from some exposed pipes—I’m betting there’s a story to that, though my uncle never admitted to it. Traffic signs say Do Not Enter and Wrong Way, and there’s even a stoplight that used to work—he’d turn it green every time someone ordered a bowl of his famous Widowmaker chili.

  It was green a lot; that green chili was pretty legendary. I still have the recipe: the number of jalapeños in there could burn down a house.

  Richmond needs a place like Poe’s again. I think I’m the person to make it happen.

  That starts with cleaning. Thank god I have help.

  “Your uncle was a pretty interesting guy,” Zara says.

  “Still is an interesting guy, I hope.” I spray some cleaner onto one of the booth tables. “I think he would have talked to the smaug too.”

  “Definitely. You did good, Kylie,” Zara says. “It helps them to feel more settled when they can interact with the neighbors. I have not met Xyr, but she sounds kind of neat.”

  “If I’m honest, it wasn’t easy.”

  Zara puts down her cloth. “I get that, after what you went through. It takes a pretty big person to reach out after that. But they’re just people. Like you and me and the Morris’s and the fae.”

  I nod. She’s right.

  Zara looks thoughtful. “So…you were saying your mom and uncle were involved in some secret government project that went bad, and then your uncle brought you here?”

  “It sure sounds like it.”

  “But your uncle never told you more about your mother.”

  I shake my head. “Not really.”

  “What about your father?”

  I shrug. “My uncle was really good at avoiding all conversations about family,” I said. “The minute I brought it up, he’d change the subject. I sort of gave up asking by middle-school. I know he loved my mother. They were twins, and really close. When they were little, they even had their own language that no one else could understand. I think he probably never got over her death.”

  Sam laughs at something on the phone. He’s got a great little laugh that’s three-quarters giggle. He sees us watching him, and he looks away, embarrassed.

  Zara smiles. “Do you remember anything about her? Anything at all?”

  I sit down on a barstool and think. “Mostly just feelings. Smells. A sense of a large person nearby who was really warm. That sort of thing.”

  I think for a minute.

  “Wait,” I say.

  Then I sit down hard in the booth.

  There’s more, I realize. Why have I never remembered this before?

  I smell smoke, spices.

  I see my mother down a long hallway. She’s walking toward me, wearing a dress that’s long and elaborate. It sparkles with all kinds of colors.

  It’s a smaug-styled dress, with a lot of shifting patterns on it.

  She’s scared, I realize. She’s reaching out her hand to me.

  She calls my name.

  And then she’s gone.

  “Hey,” Zara says. “You ok?” She’s standing next to me with a glass of water. “Kinda lost you for a minute there. Maybe we need to take a break.”

  I tell her what I just saw. She sits down in the booth next to me. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  I nod. I sink down into the booth. “I think so. I think I’m remembering the Elhyra.”

  “That’s…” Zara shakes her head. “That’s incredible.”

  More images spring up inside my head. Where are these coming from? “Also, something’s chasing us. We’re trying to get away. It’s my uncle and me. Other people too.”

  “That’s really strange.”

  “I can see trees, weird trees—more like crooked hands? I can’t—I can’t breathe.” I shake my head. It seems so vivid now. “I’m crying, my feet are scratched and dirty. I smell...”

  “What?”

  “Smoke. Spices.” I say.

  The images wash over me, one after another. My uncle’s key is hot against my chest. “Why am I remembering this stuff now?” I say.

  “Maybe it was the incursion?” Zara says. “Or meeting the woman from the Elhyra. Maybe it’s the close contact that’s bringing things back? That can happen, you know.”

  That sounds reasonable. “It could be.” I take a deep breath. I drink some of the water.

  If I’m honest, I’m more than a little freaked out.

  What would my mother and I be doing in the Elhyra? Why would she be in a smaug dress?

  I drink all the water. I get some more and sit back down, and realize how nice it is seeing Zara’s reassuring face across the table. I spent such a long time with Michael in that van last year that I’ve forgotten how cool female friends can be.

  I feel like I need to be honest with her. I take a deep breath.

  “There’s also something else you should know,” I say. “And I’d understand if this makes you want to live somewhere else. I’d be heartbroken, of course, but I want to be completely honest with you because I think you’re awesome.”

  “Shoot,” she says. She only looks a little worried.

  I hold out my hand on the bar.

  I call up a tiny purple flame in it.

  It burns there in the room with an eerie, flic
kering light.

  We both look at it for a long minute. Sam looks up from the phone, too, and stares at me. Then he puts down the phone and looks down at his own hands.

  “I’ve been able to do this since I was little,” I say. “My uncle helped me figure out how to manage it, to keep it under control. It was hard. Really hard.”

  Zara looks at it and looks up at me. Her face suddenly looks solemn.

  She takes a deep breath and lets it all out really slowly. “I guess I better get my things,” she says quietly.

  I look away. I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. “I understand,” I say. I feel a little choked up.

  I must have read her all wrong.

  I thought we were building a really good friendship there, for a little while. I feel stupid and embarrassed.

  “Hey,” Zara says. “Kylie?”

  I look back. She has a big grin on her face. “Stop,” she says. “I was worried you were going to say you were secretly a mob accountant or something.”

  It’s pretty awkward hugging someone across the top of a table. But if you put your heart into it, you can totally make it happen.

  When I lean back, we’re both a little teary-eyed.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was really mean.”

  “You’re a horrible person,” I say. “And I’m happy you’re not leaving.”

  Sam is studying the two of us like we’re a little nuts.

  Maybe we are. But it’s been a while since I felt like I had a friend I could trust.

  “Sam can do it too,” I say. “It’s one of the reasons I brought him back here. But he knows he shouldn’t try anything yet. Not until he’s a lot older, right, Sam?”

  Sam looks down at his hands and then back at me with a very serious look on his face. He nods seriously.

  Zara nods too, realization dawning on her face. She looks at Sam and then back at me. “What is it, exactly? That fire?”

  “It’s a connection with the Elhyra.”

  “An incursion?”

  “We think so. In a really small way. When it gets a lot bigger is when we need to worry.”

  “Has it ever gotten bigger?”

  I nod. “Yeah, the first time it showed up, it was crazy. I think I was Sam’s age. I was mad at my uncle for something stupid—I think he’d taken one of my stuffed animals away because I wouldn’t eat broccoli. I almost burned down the whole place before he talked me down. After that, it was pretty small until I was a teenager. But by then, I think my uncle seemed to know what was going on. He taught me some meditation, some breathing exercises that helped me keep it under control.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Can I tell you another secret?”

  “Of course. We all have our secrets.”

  I grin. “I still don’t like broccoli.”

  “That’s because you haven’t had my broccoli.” Zara grins. “We’re going to have to fix that.”

  “May the old gods be with us.” I cross myself.

  I absently take hold of the key. It’s still really warm.

  “Can I ask about something weird?” Zara says quietly, after a minute. “Why are there no mirrors here?”

  “Mirrors?” I look around. She’s right. No mirrors here—not over the bar, not back by the bathrooms. Not in the bathrooms either, I realize. “I guess my uncle didn’t like them? There aren’t any upstairs, either.”

  “I brought my own—I just didn’t know if that was a thing.”

  I shrug. “I don’t think it’s a thing. I just never had one growing up. I would get to school early to make sure I looked ok. I guess that’s a little weird now, but at the time it was just what I was used to.”

  “Weird,” Zara says.

  “Weird,” I agree.

  “Weiiiird” says something from YouTube on the phone. Sam looks at us, and we look back at him and crack up.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  I shrug. “Today I clean,” I say. “And by the way, I totally appreciate your help.”

  “You got it. Actually, I’ve been a little bored.”

  “Tomorrow, Sam and I have a date.”

  Zara smirks. “Scruffy guy?”

  “Scruffy guy,” I say. “Someone has to do it. And then...”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’re going to get us some answers.”

  10

  Upstairs, Zara’s room is quiet.

  She’s scrupulously neat—you can see that from the way her bed is made precisely, with sharp corners. Her sheets are fresh and white, her blanket is a light grey, her bedspread is a dusky red. Her pillows are carefully arranged. Her clothes are grouped by color in the closet, and the colors are ordered by the visual light spectrum: purples to blues to greens to yellows to reds.

  Lots of reds—it’s her favorite color.

  On the chair, there’s a folded quilt in case the old air conditioning in the building will ever get too cold. (It won’t.) On the nightstand, there’s an ebook reader with a red cover, a red eye mask.

  On the dresser, her carefully folded clothes for the next day are stacked on one side, and her cosmetics are on the other. Several bottles all in a row, set up in the order she’ll apply them: a light, moisturizing foundation, tailored for her skin. A little blush for her cheeks—so little you’d hardly notice. A touch of eyeliner to highlight her great eyelashes, a little spray to keep her hair the way she likes it.

  Between them is her jewelry box, which has some small gold chains and charms she’d gotten from her parents on birthdays.

  The door’s closed. On the back of the door hangs her mirror.

  It’s not large, but it is tall—about eighteen inches wide, and about five feet high, it’s hung on the back of the door so she can both apply all of her makeup and check her clothes over before she goes out.

  Inside the mirror, something is watching.

  Something that’s still very hungry.

  Something with long black teeth.

  And tongues. A lot of tongues.

  It pushes at the surface of the mirror.

  That surface bows a little outward. Just a little.

  Then it turns away and dives back into the deep.

  Soon, it thinks.

  Soon.

  11

  It's dark, and someone is calling him.

  Sam rolls over in the bed. Kylie's old bed. He pulls the blankets over his head. He doesn't want to answer.

  It's not a voice, exactly. It's something else.

  It's a whisper. It's a heartbeat.

  And it's calling him.

  He sits up. The room is dark but lit up a little from the lights in the alley. It was Kylie's room when she was a kid, she told him, before she went away to school. It has her big swirly drawings—starry skies full of black holes or whirlpools. A blue dog, lots of those. It has stuffed animals everywhere and posters of horses and of boys who were in old bands on the walls. On the desk, there's a tiny pink music box that, when you open it, has a little ballerina in it that spins around while music plays. On the floor, there's a fluffy rug that is bright green.

  He misses his own room. He had cars on the floor that he and his dad used to play with, and Legos everywhere. His dad had hung from his ceiling, and sometimes his mom would come in at night and tell him stories after he'd had one of his bad dreams about the other place. When he laid down after the stories she would rub his back for him and tell him that everything was ok until he fell asleep.

  But she was wrong. Everything was not ok.

  It's still not ok.

  His favorite car was the Volkswagen bus that his dad had painted to match their own real bus, the one they would use to go camping in the desert. The real one was green in the front and back and orange on the sides and white on top. It had stickers all over the roof inside, from all the places his parents traveled before they'd had him. It drove really slow, and it would usually break down.

  His mom didn't like that at all. His dad thought it was funn
y.

  He wonders if they have cars in the other place. He doesn't think so.

  He doesn't want to think about any of that.

  He puts his feet on the floor. The rug is tickly.

  The floor is old and creaky, which is kind of neat. He opens the bedroom door and looks down the hallway. There are no lights from under Kylie's door or Zara's door, but there's a small nightlight in the hallway bathroom, and the light in the kitchen is on, the one over the stove.

  It's not calling his name, exactly.

  It doesn't say Sam Harper, come and see me.

  But that's what it wants.

  That's what it really, really wants.

  He pads his way down the hallway in bare feet.

  It's not in the bathroom. There's just the drip of the leaky old faucet here.

  It's not in the kitchen. There are dishes drying on the towel beside the stove and in the refrigerator there is cheese. Sam's favorite cheese is white American cheese because it's salty, but Kylie doesn't have that. She has monster cheese, which is white in the middle and orange around the outsides. She melts for him in the toaster oven in folded up tinfoil, and it's really good. But it isn't the same as white American cheese.

  It's not in the refrigerator.

  It's not in the living room either.

  Outside, through the big windows with the old glass with ripples in it, the street looks quiet. The streetlights buzz a little. There are cars parked there next to Russell: a red Honda and a blue Kia and a brown Toyota are just in front of their building, Kylie's building.

  It's downstairs.

  He opens the door and goes down into the restaurant, which is big and cool and kind of scary too. There are little lights in the corners that throw the shadows of things up onto the walls.

  He's a big kid, and he knows he's not supposed to be scared of shadows, even though he is, so he tries to figure out what the shadows are from.

  That one is from a chair.

  That one is from the light shining through some of the hanging glasses.

  That one is from a bottle of something that was left out on the bar.