A Dragon and Her Girl

by Max Florschutz

  She swallowed hard. “Because it gives us some measure of freedom. It allows us to have secrets. No man can read it.”

  “Why do you need secrets?” Secrets were never a good thing among dragons. They usually meant something bad was going to happen.

  “My husband is cruel to me. Tan Lao’s husband cheats on her. Mei Ling’s brother sold her to an old man she doesn’t love.”

  “How is your husband cruel?” Tien Shen did not care about the others. But this woman who was scratching his back deserved better.

  “He yells. Hits, sometimes. Not all the time. Just . . . when he’s angry.”

  Tien Shen sensed Kuan Yin reaching for him, the sound of her voice loud in his inside-ears. He heard the creak of the door between the worlds being opened, the rustle of a beaded curtain being pulled back. “I have to go.”

  “All right.” But Chao Ma held on to him.

  He rested his snout on her arm for a moment, was surprised to see tears in her eyes. She pulled away, but one of her tears fell onto his leg, and it burned as it sank into his scales.

  Kuan Yin called again, and he forced himself away from Chao Ma and appeared where he felt his charge calling from.

  Kuan Yin stood in front of the brightest light imaginable. It was so beautiful—Tien Shen never tired of seeing the sight, but then it wasn’t one he saw very often. Those who attained Nirvana were few.

  Soft breezes blew out of the light. A subtle smell of flowers and spices wafted over to him. Kuan Yin’s scent seemed to grow in reaction, sweet and strong and still distinct even among such glory.

  “Dragon?” Her voice was so small.

  “You must go.” But then he heard it: a small sob. And another. And another. His leg where Chao Ma’s tear had fallen began to burn again.

  Kuan Yin turned and stared out at the world, her back to Nirvana. Her eyes welled up, then she blinked, and the tears ran freely down her cheeks. He moved closer, lifted his leg and let her see that the scales where the woman’s tear had fallen were turning silver.

  “I hear them all, Tien Shen,” she whispered. “The cries of the whole world.”

  He nodded. “I hear them now, too.” He looked past her, at the beauty that was Nirvana. At the peace it promised. It was everything this remarkable woman had worked for.

  It was what Tien Shen wanted for her.

  And yet . . .

  “I can’t go just now.” She took a deep breath. “I’m needed here.”

  The beaded curtain fell back, dimming the light. The breeze died, and the smell of Nirvana’s flowers became fainter and fainter, as the scent of Kuan Yin grew.

  Compassion. This was what compassion smelled like.

  She turned to look at the door. “I’m needed here.”

  It slammed shut.

  But the light remained. Growing brighter and brighter, and Tien Shen realized it was coming from her.

  “My Goddess,” he murmured, bowing his head. As he looked down, he realized the silver patch on his leg was reflecting her glow.

  “There’s much to do,” she said, pulling the light around her like a cloak. It finally dimmed, drawn inside her. But he knew she could call it back if she wanted to.

  He studied his leg; it still shone just a little. Even with no light to reflect.

  She began to walk back into the world.

  He hurried to get in front of her, and her eyes flashed with annoyance. Then he knelt, and said, “You should ride. I can be of help to you.”

  She touched his head before hugging him hard, her face pressed against his. Then, without a word, she jumped on his back and waited.

  He listened and heard the loudest cries to the east. Without asking her, he flew for the rising sun.

  Her hand tightened on his neck, and she sang a song he didn’t know, her voice beautiful in its rawness.

  “You gave up paradise,” he said softly.

  “How could I go there when even one person suffers?”

  He had no answer to that. Only, he’d seen others do it. Perhaps Nirvana wasn’t for the perfect. Maybe it was for the almost perfect. And someday they’d be back again to find perfection by helping those who still strove—and hurt.

  “But it was beautiful, wasn’t it?” she murmured. “And it smelled good.”

  He knew it was the last she’d ever say about it.

  Dragon’s Hand

  David VonAllmen

  The Chained King. Flaming Goat. Moon of Day.

  Jane pinched the squares of heavy paper hard enough to turn her fingertips white. She’d finally drawn the hand of cards that would end her years of searching.

  Or she’d drawn the hand of cards that would damn her to a lifetime of sorrow. She couldn’t say which it’d be just yet.

  “Make your play, Indian woman,” the graying soldier across the table grumbled, just loud enough to be heard above the string quartet playing in one corner of the saloon.

  Jane studied the illustrations’ hard black lines and whirling brushstrokes of color. Her eye could almost make out all manner of stars and charms that promised fortune but never delivered. That was nothing new to Jane. Fate had dragged her along one dusty horse trail after the next for near on two years, always whispering that what remained of her tribe was just one more town away, always promising that her daughter was almost within reach.

  She placed Moon of Day face down on the table but didn’t take her fingers off it just yet. The card was powerful, but mighty unpredictable.

  Jane looked up, hoping to read something in the expressions of her opponents. The soldier wore a tattered cavalry jacket and a six-shooter on his hip. His dark eyes darted endlessly around the room and every time the batwing doors thumped open his hand jumped to his gun. To Jane’s left was an emaciated man whose slim suit hung loose, as if God forgot to add meat and fat before stretching skin over his bones. He sat still as a corpse. The woman to her right wore a schoolmarm’s buttoned-up navy blue dress, her hair in a tight bun. She dabbed tears from her eyes with a lace handkerchief, but smiled relentlessly, like a showgirl on stage. The players’ faces gave away nothing.

  Jane started to pull back the Moon of Day card, but stopped herself. If she didn’t play it, she’d never get a chance this good again. The game was the last hope she had to find her six year-old . . . No. Her daughter would be seven by now, wouldn’t she?

  Jane and her three opponents flipped their cards face up. The others eyed Jane with the flat look of practiced gamblers, surely surprised the quiet Indian woman in britches and shirtsleeves was crazy enough to lead with Moon of Day. What did they expect? None sat down for a hand of cards in Gideon’s Saloon unless desperation had driven them at least halfway down the road to madness.

  The game was seven-card Sorte. The stakes were luck itself.

  “You look like you’ve been on the trails for a long time, dearie,” the schoolmarm said, her tone so polite and friendly it was impossible to believe it was sincere. Jane reckoned the woman intended it that way. “What tribe are you?”

  “Guachichil,” Jane lied with practiced ease. It was an instinct every member of her tribe grew up with. Fortune hunters were always on their tail, looking to cash in on the riches to be had from selling their blood to those who knew the ways of spells and conjuring.

  The dealer flicked another card to each player. Their table sat in the middle of a crowded saloon furnished as if it was a betting parlor for European royalty. A score of oil lights shone from each of the chandeliers floating a dozen feet above their heads and plush green velvet cushioned their seats. The décor matched nothing else in the border town of El Perdido, its humble buildings painted burnt red by dust that hung so thick you could taste iron in the air.

  Jane picked up her card. Black Flower. Her jaws tightened.

  “Guachichil . . .” The emaciated man’s voice was never more than a whisper. “From dead in the center of Mexico, isn’t that right?”

  Jane nodded. She tilted the brim of her gaucho hat to keep the light of
f her pupils. If you looked real close, they weren’t quite round, weren’t quite human. They pointed, every so slightly, at the top and the bottom, as if she’d had a reptile for a grandmother. And that wasn’t too far from the truth.

  “Well it is such an unexpected delight to have you join us,” the schoolmarm said. “Many saloons don’t allow your kind inside.” She plucked a card from her hand and placed it face down in front of her.

  Jane pulled The Chained King from her hand and laid it face down. The four players flipped over their cards. As the last round was dealt, Jane struggled to sort out the ranks and realms and trumps her opponents might be working toward. Her head swam. There were too many possibilities.

  She reached for her final card, praying the fates might smile on her just this once.

  A voice like a cannon blast rang out across the saloon.

  “You dumb sumbitch!”

  Gideon himself, owner of the saloon and just about everything else in El Perdido, held some confused-looking sap by the lapels. A cigarillo bit between his teeth, he stood atop a dais three steps above the rest of the saloon and smashed a handful of cards over the fellow’s head. He wore a red silk shirt, busy with embroidery, over a hairy body thick with muscle and fat. He put Jane to mind of a costumed circus bear she’d seen once. No amount of dressing up would ever rid the beast of the killing instinct coursing through its veins.

  Gideon pitched the man backwards, right off the edge of the dais. By all rights, the fellow should have tumbled feet-over-rear and cracked the back of his skull open on the hardwood below. Instead, the fellow’s heels caught each step, then his feet wheeled and danced him across the room, body titled too far to catch his balance. His clumsy jig took him to the far end of the saloon and out the batwing doors.

  The dealer and the soldier chuckled in an easy sort of way that told Jane they’d seen this kind of thing before.

  “Doesn’t much care for losing, does he?” the emaciated man said.

  “Losing ain’t been a problem for him for, oh, going on six years now,” the soldier said. “It’s all the winning that’s made him so ornery.”

  “He’d be the first I’ve ever met who grew tired of winning,” Jane said.

  “He lived for the thrill of the wager,” the soldier said. “And then he trumped a Thirteenth rank Endeavor set. He won’t never lose another hand of cards so long as he lives. No thrill to be had in that.”

  The luck of the Thirteenth rank was powerful and unending. The Endeavor realm ruled over any kind of effort or undertaking. If Jane had that kind of luck, whatever direction she picked to go searching for her daughter would turn out to be the right one, and before she knew it her little girl would all but fall out of the sky into her arms.

  She picked up her final card. Dreamer in Mourning. The schoolmarm had played Three-Tailed Fox followed by Half Coin, and looked to be building a mid-rank set in the Opportunity realm. Jane would have to play her Dreamer in Mourning card to win.

  In Sorte, the cards were both the game and the wager. If Jane’s set outranked the schoolmarm’s, she’d win that Opportunity luck, and the schoolmarm would lose it in equal measure. It was exactly the kind of luck Jane needed to provide a clue where her tribe had disappeared to. But she’d be laying down high-rank Coincidence set. If the schoolmarm’s third card trumped her, Jane would likely spend years narrowly missing her tribe at every turn.

  Jane squeezed her right hand into a fist, trying to fight off the tremble that had overtaken it. She pulled Black Flower from her hand. It stood little chance of winning, but if she lost her bad luck wouldn’t be so terrible.

  “You know, I heard a number of those poor reds down in Mexico were slaughtered two years back when blood hunters came through those parts,” the schoolmarm said, her smile beaming as she played her final card face down. “They were chasing rumors one of the tribes down there were dragons.”

  Jane froze with Black Flower between her fingers. The woman had seen the shape of her pupils. She knew what Jane was.

  The dealer, the soldier, and the emaciated man all studied Jane. Surely, they could hear her heart pounding like the gallop of unbroken horses. Surely, they realized what she was. She had to run, while she still could. The saloon was full of desperate men, and it wouldn’t be long until one of them tried to collect her blood.

  But wasn’t the whole world full of desperate men? If she didn’t take this last chance to find her daughter, how long until one of them caught up to her child?

  Are you okay, my precious girl? Are you still alive?

  I’m okay, momma. Grandpa’s taking care of me. I miss you.

  Her daughter’s voice in her head was just imagination, nothing more than that. But hearing her daughter say she was alive and unhurt was the only thing that’d kept Jane from losing her mind to madness, even if it was only make believe.

  Jane replaced Black Flower in her hand. She drew out Dreamer in Mourning and laid it face down on the table. The schoolmarm watched the change of cards and her tear-strained eye took on a gleam of satisfaction.

  The four players flipped their final cards. The schoolmarm had played Cracked Lantern. Jane had her outranked. The schoolmarm’s smile twisted into something savage.

  “Well . . .” the schoolmarm said, her voice hollow.

  The ink burned off her cards, illustrations disappearing as wisps of colored smoke rose from them and faded into the air. The Opportunity luck Jane took was Fourth rank, which meant her luck would only last until sunrise, but that luck would be powerfully strong.

  The schoolmarm stood abruptly, backing into a man walking past. The whiskey he’d been carrying splashed across the front of her dress, his glass clanked across the varnished floor.

  “And there I had you figured for a lady who scares easy,” the schoolmarm said. She wiped at the whiskey stain with her handkerchief as she strode away. The schoolmarm hadn’t figured out what Jane was. She’d just been poking, trying to unnerve her.

  “You really Guachichil?” the soldier asked.

  “Yeah,” Jane said. “Hadn’t heard of that trouble the lady was talking about. Was she trying to play me?”

  “Probably,” the soldier said. “Had other Guachichil come through here some months back.”

  Every muscle in Jane’s body locked up. Her people had come through this very town. It had to have been them. Her newly-won Opportunity luck had struck already. She dug fingernails into her palms to keep tears from pooling in her eyes.

  “Haven’t seen another Guachichil since I left home,” Jane said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Happen to know which way they went?”

  “Heh.” The man’s eyes landed on her for just a second, then bounded away again. “You just won the strongest set I’ve seen in a while, and you’re looking for a favor from me?”

  “Alright,” Jane said, in a way she hoped sounded friendly. “We’ll help each other out. What is it I can do for you?”

  “Gimme some time to think it over while I try to win some luck of my own,” the man said.

  Another gambler slid into the chair the schoolmarm had occupied. The dealer looked at the deck and frowned.

  “Only fifteen cards,” he said. “Someone dropping out?”

  “I’m done for the night,” Jane said, standing. She looked to the soldier. “I’ll be waiting out front when you’re ready to ask your favor.”

  The man met her eyes just long enough to nod. Jane made for the door. She could only hope that whatever the soldier knew, it would finally put an end to her years of searching. She’d grown weary of lying, of stealing, of doing terrible things just to survive.

  Pomogi mne.

  The voice in Jane’s head wasn’t her daughter this time. It was the voice of a man she’d known two years back. A withered man, his limbs as thin and pale as the branches of a birch sapling in winter. A man she shared no language with, but had been forced to share a cage with. A man whose eyes had begged her for help. A man she had left to die.

  Sh
e hadn’t had a choice. She had to keep moving until she found her daughter. She’d only done what she had to.

  I will find you, my precious girl. I’ve won strong luck to help me. Just stay hid until I get there. Promise me you will.

  Okay, momma. I promise. I’ll hide where the hunters won’t ever find me.

  Jane waited outside the saloon for hours, watching stars inch across the sky, too rigid with excitement and fear to sit. The night air returned the heat it had soaked up all day. Sweat and grit lined the cracks of her skin. It seemed nearly every patron stumbled down the saloon’s porch steps before the soldier in the battered cavalry jacket hurried past.

  “I know a place we can talk,” he said, with barely a glance in her direction.

  She rushed to catch him. “Hold up, now. Where are we going? Do you even know where those Guachichil went?”

  The man turned down the alley between Gideon’s saloon and the next building over. As soon as she rounded the corner, Jane knew she was in trouble. The worst kind of trouble.

  The soldier stood between two thugs, one holding a pistol, the other a length of iron. Jane faded back. A blow like the kick of a mule stuck her full in the back. She collapsed face down in the dirt, blood rising in the back of her throat. Head dizzy with pain and lungs refusing to draw breath, Jane’s only thought was for regaining her feet. She got no further than hands and knees before the toe of a boot cracked her ribs and she flopped belly down again.

  “Stay down,” the soldier commanded. “Ain’t no point in fighting. Told Gideon what you was and he sent us to corral you, and you know Gideon’s endeavors can’t never fail.”

  Eyes blurry from tears, Jane could see one thing plainly enough: the thugs coming for her with a rope, like she was runaway cattle. Her only chance was to shift shape.

  She never truly felt her body grow, never felt the wings sprout from her shoulder blades or talons rip through the leather of her boots. Instead, it was as if the fangs and red-brown scales and all the rest were always there, only she’d forgotten about them, and now her senses were waking up to them once again. Feeling her weight was like standing up after a long sleep, feeling the power of her muscles was like suddenly waking from a dream.