No other dragon folk were near the cage now, having at last lost interest in its new inhabitant. The dragon girl could see Aethelbald sitting cross-legged in the back, his eyes closed, his head bowed to his chest. She gulped and took in a deep breath, pulling the sleeves of her robe down over her dragon arms. When she opened her mouth to speak, no words would come. Cursing herself, she turned to go.
“Una?”
She froze as though paralyzed at the sound of her name. It hurt to hear it, like a knife in her mind.
“Una.”
His voice was low and, wonder of wonders, kind. Her chest felt dull and empty as her fire sank inside.
“Una, come back.”
Keeping her face hidden by the hood, she crept up to the cage. He stood at the bars, gripping them with both hands. As she neared, he reached a hand toward her, but she remained out of reach.
“Why did you come here?” she whispered.
“To find you.”
She knew that but could make no sense of it. “When the Dragon returns,” she said, “they are going to kill you.”
“They will kill you too.”
“I know.”
“It will not be a good death,” he said.
She turned away from him, clenching her dragon hands into fists so that her own claws pricked her scaly palms. “All I love are lost to me,” she whispered. “My brother is dead. My father may be as well. And my – ” She clenched her teeth, for the flame rising inside burned her throat.
“Your brother is alive,” Aethelbald said.
She stopped breathing. “What?”
“Felix is alive, Una. The duke’s plot did not succeed, and your brother was only wounded. He is receiving care. He is alive.”
All the world was still, around her and inside – a stillness without serenity, a silence without calm. “Felix,” she whispered. Then she hissed through her teeth like a snake. “He may as well be dead, for I am dead to him, dead to all of them!”
Aethelbald reached out to her. “Una – ”
“That is no longer my name!” she snarled.
“That name is precious to me,” he whispered.
“More’s the pity for you, then.”
“Little sister.”
She gasped and stepped back at the Bane of Corrilond’s growl.
“Little sister,” the giant woman said, grabbing her shoulder with a massive hand. Claws pricked her skin. “Were you, perchance, the princess sought by this handsome Prince? How fitting. So you weren’t entirely forgotten, were you?”
The giant bent down and snarled in the girl’s face. “But he’s not the right one, is he?” She chuckled harshly. “You gave your heart to another, and this one can never help you now. Poor little sister. And poor little Prince! You see, don’t you, that there is no redeeming our kind.” She turned to him and showed sharp fangs in a hideous smile. “But perhaps this will stir up a fire in your own breast, noble Prince? Jealousy makes a fine flame. How does it feel to not be good enough to win her heart, no matter what you risk?”
Aethelbald slowly shook his head. “Woman, I fear you have long since forgotten the meaning of love.”
The Bane of Corrilond hissed, then glared down at the girl. “True love does not exist, little sister. I learned that lesson centuries ago. You would do well to learn it now.”
With a flame in her mouth, she disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, a fireball roared to the ceiling of the cavern, and a massive red dragon raced up the path to the tunnel and vanished, gone to spend its flame on the desert night.
The dragon girl, her breath coming in short gulps, looked down at an object clutched in one scale-covered hand: a cold iron key plucked from the Bane of Corrilond’s robes.
32
A swift breeze flowed through the branches of the Wood, skirting along the tops of the trees, then wrapping about the trunks, flowing faster than water as it went. It came at last to a grove of white aspens and shook the branches in a wild rustling before dying away into nothing.
Felix sat upon the edge of the bed in the white room that had been his since he arrived at the Wood Haven, patiently allowing Dame Imraldera to check his bandages. She clucked to herself as she always did while cutting away the old dressings. But when the trees made their soft susurrus above them in the strange vault that was neither ceiling nor forest, she paused and looked up, a strange expression crossing her face.
“What’s that look for?” Felix asked, watching her.
“What look?” She blinked and turned back to him.
“That faraway, no-longer-paying-attention-to-what-you’re-doing look. Like you were suddenly a thousand miles away.”
“No, no!” Imraldera laughed. “I am very present.”
“Good, because you’ve got a knife in your hand.” Felix added, “What’s wrong?”
“I was listening, that’s all.”
“To thin air?”
She laughed again and went back to work on his bandage, wrapping the soft gauze around his shoulder. “Remember, I can see and hear what you cannot, Prince Felix.”
“Oh yes.” He shuddered. “How many are in this room with us now?”
“You have at least five attendants at all times. They minister to your needs even as you sleep, keeping off Faerie beasts who would do you harm.”
“Beasts?” Felix looked around his chamber. He had grown used to it with time – how much time he could not imagine, for it was impossible to measure time in the Halflight Realm – but suddenly he remembered how open it was, and he saw more of the forest than he did of the white walls. And he remembered the bestial roar he’d heard the night he walked the moonlit hall. “I’d forgotten. Are there many beasts in the Wood?”
“More than you can imagine,” she said. “The Far World is not a safe one.”
Felix snorted. “Then why are you keeping me here?”
“Because the Prince’s Haven is safe, and his servants, your attendants, will let no harm befall you.” She patted his shoulder and tugged at his shirt. “There, you are done. Button yourself up and lie down again.”
“I don’t want to lie down,” Felix said, buttoning his shirt. “I’ve been lying down for ages – probably a good hundred years at least.”
“The best way to heal is to rest.”
“I have been resting.” He got to his feet and paced to the other side of the room, which once more overlooked the wild landscape of Faerie, so oddly familiar yet so foreign. He could see the Northern Mountains from here, though back home he knew they were much too far away to see. Strange that they seemed simultaneously much closer than he knew them to be but also ten times more distant. He knew he stood in Goldstone Wood, yet from where he stood, the Wood seemed to stretch out for miles upon miles, an ocean of trees, much more vast than he had ever believed the familiar forest he had always known to be.
And the Goldstone he knew had never held wild beasts.
“Dame Imraldera,” Felix said, “when can I go home?”
He turned around to speak to her and saw her standing with her back to him, her head turned so that he could see her profile. Her mouth was open, her brow puckered, and her eyes stared again at an empty space in the air.
“Dame Imraldera?”
“Felix,” she said, turning to him suddenly, as though she hadn’t heard him call her but needed him quickly. “Felix, I’ve just received word of your father.”
Felix’s stomach dropped to his feet. He felt dizzy watching the expression on her face and reached out to grab a tree for support. “What?” he demanded.
“He has been taken. By the . . . the Dragon.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Felix sank to the ground, too weak with relief to stand. Alive! His father still lived. Capture was not the end; capture could be fixed. Dead he could do nothing about, but capture . . .
Imraldera moved to his side and bent down to touch his shoulder. He looked up at her sharply. “You must let me go,” he said.
br /> “Felix, I – ”
“You must. He’s my father!” Felix felt tears burning his eyes and pounded his fists into the hard dirt beneath him. “You cannot make me sit here a minute more when my father’s life is in danger!”
“Felix, there is nothing you can – ”
“Don’t tell me that,” he cried, knocking her hand away from his shoulder. “He’s my father. That counts for something. I can help; I know I can.”
“The Prince will – ”
“Aethelbald isn’t here.” Felix took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself, to speak like an adult rather than a child in a tantrum. “When was the last time you heard from your master? Honestly.”
She bowed her head, her hands folded before her. “Not in a long time.”
“See?” Felix scrambled to his feet. Though he stood half a head taller than the woman, he felt like a little boy pleading with his nurse to let him go out and play in the mud after a shower. “See, you can’t know that Aethelbald will do anything. You can’t know where he is. But I am here, and I can do something! You know Faerie, don’t you? Isn’t it true that there is power in blood ties that . . . that sometimes can overcome foes much too great otherwise? Isn’t it true, Dame Imraldera?”
“Felix,” she said gently, taking his hand and stroking it as though trying to soothe a baby. “Felix, if you leave here now, the poison – ”
“Will it kill me?”
“Not immediately,” she admitted. “Perhaps not for many years. But someday, Felix, yes. If you do not stay and receive the full healing I can give you, the poison will pump through all your veins, will work its way into your heart. And you will die, young prince. Whether in a year, in ten years, or in fifty, the dragon poison will kill you.”
Felix shrugged, shaking his head angrily. “A year? I can save my father and be back here long before then! I will return immediately – I promise – and you can finish your treatments then.”
“But, Felix – ”
“You’ll always have some excuse, because you don’t want me to go.”
Felix pulled his hand from hers and stormed across the room. “You don’t want me to go because you think I’m too young, you think I’m useless, that I can’t do anything. But I can, I tell you. I can save my father!”
“Felix – ”
“What?” he snapped. “Don’t try to comfort me; I don’t want it.” Imraldera stood quietly in the center of the room, her hands still folded. “I cannot keep you here against your will,” she said. “If you desire to go, I will send you back across the Borders. Your attendants will protect you until you pass through, but once you’re on the other side you will be truly alone. And, Felix, I will not be able to make you return to me.”
Felix looked up. “But you will let me go?”
“I will.”
He leapt up, pounding the air with his fist, then grabbed the startled woman up in his arms and spun her around so that her tunic and flowing trousers swirled. “Thank you!” he cried. “Thank you! Thank you!” He set her down, both of them staggering from the momentum, and kissed her smartly on the cheek. “You will see,” he said. “I’ll save him, I truly will. And I’ll come back before the year is out, fit as anything, and you can do whatever you need to!”
Imraldera, tears in her eyes, backed away. “Oh, little Felix,” she murmured. “I hope that you will.”
But he did not hear what she said, for he was busy shouting to the thin air, “Attendants! Invisibles! Can you get me some real clothes? Something other than a nightshirt? And boots and things. And a sword! Don’t forget a sword! A sharp one!”
–––––––
In that moment, as the dragon girl stood with the key clutched in her hand, watching the trail of fire that marked the Bane of Corrilond’s departure, she was thankful that she no longer possessed a heart, for she knew it would beat through her chest. Glancing over her shoulders, certain that at any moment one of the shadowy figures would stop its aimless wandering to apprehend her, she slid the key into the lock. The metal on metal clanged so horribly, she thought she would die on the spot. She shook too much to turn the key.
A strong hand slid between the bars and covered hers. “Let me help,” Aethelbald said.
She removed her hand from under his and quickly pulled the sleeves of her robe lower. Had he noticed the scales?
He turned the key, and the lock clicked open. The door creaked as he pushed, and she started and turned this way and that, certain of attack.
“Don’t be afraid,” Aethelbald said, sliding from the cage to her side. “Most of them do not care enough, caught up as they are in their own burning. We need fear only one of them now, for most have spent their anger on me and already forgotten.” He reached for her hand, but she refused, so he gently took her elbow instead. “Come, Una. You must know the way out.”
She took two steps, but fear of the hundreds of shadows, her dragon kin, overwhelmed her. “They’ll kill us both,” she breathed. But she did not care what they did to her.
“They won’t, Una.” He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Trust me.”
At those words, she shivered and pulled away. But Aethelbald’s hand remained on her elbow, and somehow she felt able to step forward again.
They passed through the shadowy figures, and to her surprise not one of them looked their way. She and the Prince might as well have been invisible. Startled by this, she found herself looking more closely at the figures than she had before. She discovered that most of them did not walk toward any particular destination: They paced. Some of them paced the whole length of the cavern, turned, and paced back again. They walked with their gazes fixed on the ground just beyond their feet, and as they walked they muttered quietly to themselves. Sometimes fire licked between their teeth or in their eyes. Sometimes they would stop and spit a small flame toward the ceiling. Then their pacing would continue, getting faster all the time, until finally they burst into flames and rushed from the cavern out into the desert, venturing to unknown destinations. They would return eventually, and if not, who cared? All were too busy in their own pacing to notice.
She herself had not noticed until now.
They reached the mouth of the tunnel unhindered. “There,” she said, trying to pull her elbow from Aethelbald’s gentle but firm grip. “There’s your way out. Follow it quickly.”
“Not without you.”
“I can’t go,” she said, hanging her head.
“Then neither can I.”
A flame burst up in her chest and into her mouth. She forced it back as best she could. “You must go. They’ll kill you.”
“I’ll die before I leave you,” he said.
How she hated him in that moment! Hated him enough to swallow him whole – hated him for his heart, which she coveted; hated him for loving her as she could no longer love her jester-prince; hated him for not being her jester; hated him for all his stupid, noble self-sacrifice, so wasted on her.
Hated him because she knew she could never deserve his love.
“Come, then,” she hissed and hurried into the tunnel, leaving behind the cavernous village of dragons.
Just for the moment, she told herself. Just until I slip away from him. For I belong in the Village and must return.
It was night outside, she realized. No sunlight found its way through the cracks in the tunnel ceiling. Her eyes were used to the dark, though, and she did not stumble. Aethelbald’s steps hesitated here and there, but he seemed to follow her lead without question. Several times there were twists in the tunnel or it split, and she was uncertain which direction to choose. She quietly selected, using the best reasoning she could, but finally she was forced to admit, “I am not certain of the way.”
“I remember,” Aethelbald said.
She realized then that she had not been leading him at all but that he had been guiding her with gentle pressure on her arm. Of course he would know the way. He had come here to find her, hadn’t he?
She yanked her arm free from his hold. “You lead, then,” she said. “You don’t need me.”
“I don’t wish to lose you in the dark, Una,” he said, his voice soft. “Please, walk before me.”
She turned her back and went forward down the path, keeping out of his reach. This stretch of the tunnel was straight and even, and she did not need his assistance. Soon she saw light ahead, white light unlike the red flames she was accustomed to. It had been so long since she’d seen it that she almost didn’t recognize it for what it was: moonlight.
“Oh,” she breathed, and something inside her that she did not know still existed stirred. She stepped up her pace and hurried to the mouth of the tunnel, hardly noticing the crunch of Aethelbald’s boots behind her.
“Wait, Una!” he cried, but she ignored him and ran from the rocks out into the open air. The desert stretched around her in all its barren loneliness, but above – ah, above! There the sky vaulted from a light blue on the horizon up to greens and deeper blues, all the way to the deepest violet-indigos in the highest regions, where innumerable stars glittered, pure treasures unsullied by blood and greed. And the moon, its light engulfing any stars within its sphere, shone as a brilliant crown of white, more lovely than words.
Fire forgotten for a moment, the dragon girl ran forward, stretched out her arms, and spun about, her face tilted to watch the stars twirling above her.
She heard Aethelbald’s urgent voice. “Una!”
“Good girl, sister.”
Even the moonlight betrayed her.
A spindly hand grabbed her arm, and she gasped in pain and surprise. Two yellow eyes gleamed above her. “I thought she might be the princess you sought,” the dragon boy said. He forced her down and pinned her to the sand, twisting her right arm behind her and pressing a knee into her back. Her dragon claws tore uselessly at the sand.
“Let her go.” Aethelbald stepped from the shelter of the tunnel into the moonglow. “Your fight is with me. She is nothing to you.”
“Did you hear that?” the boy with the yellow eyes hissed. “You are nothing, you who once were a princess!” He chuckled. “But you are wrong, Prince of Farthestshore, if you think I have no grievance against her. She would betray us for you. Us! Her kinfolk who took her in and taught her, who gave her a home. She would betray us for you, a stranger. Worse, an unwanted suitor!”