A Shade of Dragon (14 page)

I
grabbed
the oracle without even thinking. “What?” I demanded. It wasn’t possible; there was always a way, an answer. The gods could not do this to me. I had been their faithful and humble servant for all of my life. They could not snatch away the woman I’d fallen for and never return her. “How can it be? Is she already dead? What do you mean?” I shook her. “Answer me now!”

But the oracle lashed back. She crawled forward until she had walked up my chest and had pressed her face into mine, and then she replied, the voice in my head booming until it hurt,
You did not ever want my words, did you, fool prince? I brought and lost you in one night. You were gone. You did not care. There was no knowing of the knowledge. You went, and took your mate without counsel, and are now here, begging again, refusing again, knowing nothing again. Fool prince, will you beg again and not listen again?

“I understand what you’re saying.” She was a temperamental thing. I took a deep breath, illustrating its calming effect. In response, she imitated the gesture, sucking greenish fumes deep into her lungs. “What is your name, Oracle? Is that what I should call you?”

“My name is Pythia,” the oracle replied. “My twin and I were not fully abandoned in our infancy. We were named. I do not remember it with my baby brain; I remember it with the empty eyes which are all eyes.”

“All right.” I nodded like I understood her, and placed her onto her feet, back in the neon puddle. “Pythia. It was your voice I heard, calling me across the ocean and across this country. It was you whom I had come to see. And when I met Nell… I thought it was her. I thought I was meant to be with her. The voice… you had said that my mate was in this place.”

Listen to the voice again, fool prince,
Pythia instructed, slithering into the shallow pool until only the top of her head was visible. She seemed to be watching me, even though she had no eyes.
I tell you now that you were wrong, always, wrong in this choice. Penelope O’Hara, the drowning girl, she who loves you so, is not your mate. Destiny will never see this through. Do not force the hand that feeds. You must obey the laws I see: the future.

My breath had steadily come faster and faster, until I was dizzy with hyperventilation and hardly aware of it. “Just tell me if she’s dead or not,” I commanded, my voice losing its patience. “That’s all I need to know right now.”

At this, Pythia sank beneath the waters and disappeared, leaving me staring after her helplessly.

I couldn’t bear to listen to her supposed prophecy again. I wouldn’t, and couldn’t, accept that I had been wrong, and that Nell was never meant to be mine. This oracle clearly didn’t function properly. She hadn’t been there—she couldn’t have known how it felt to press my lips to Nell’s, the way the outside world disappeared while the inside world fell into place at the same time. She couldn’t have known that because it wasn’t any truth you could see with the eye.

A puddle of light stirred on the surface of the shallow pool, and then Pythia reemerged, dripping with bright droplets.

The human you seek lives still,
she said.
Surrounded, she lives, surrounded by other kin. Oh, mmm, mmm, mmm.
The oracle traced her tiny mouth.
She cries for you. Tears like sugar berries.
The oracle cackled.

A pang lanced through my heart. “She’s crying?”

Mmm. Such love. Such hope. So human, this one. She cries because she believes in you… even though her soul urges her to accept imminent death.
The comment was punctuated with a giggle, and I snapped, tramping forward into the luminescent waters.

The oracle yelped and attempted to scurry from me, but I clutched her and pinned her thrashing in the air.

“You will help me save her,” I told her. “You don’t understand. I don’t care anymore—I don’t care about the gods, I don’t care about fate, I don’t care what the universe thinks that I should do. I will save her. And you must help me.”

If you must, then you shall,
Pythia answered, oddly cool.
You will require aid; but, without my blessing, I will require instead something of you. An agreement. Do you agree to these terms, fool prince?

I hated those terms, but I didn’t see myself as having any other choice. Without her, I was stranded naked in Maine.

“Yes,” I answered firmly. “I agree to those terms, and promise to repay you for your kindness in considering my journey.”

The strange oracle descended into the depths of the cave pool, and my eyes bulged. What had seemed like a shallow series of puddles truly had depths which I could not even see. For almost a full minute, Pythia was gone, and then emerged from another puddle altogether, scampering through the shallow pools toward me.

She held pinned beneath one arm a transparent glass bottle, and inside of it was a large brass key and a tiny scroll of yellowed, brittle paper.

Pythia settled onto a stone and uncorked the bottle for me, shaking its contents into her other palm. First, she extended the key for my examination.

A thoughtful key,
she informed me.
You may unlock any door the key deems fit. This key was forged by the hands of fate, as was I.

Brow furrowed, I nodded.

Next, Pythia passed me the scroll of papyrus.

Love letters,
she whispered conspiratorially.
This paper will deliver your message to anyone with whom you are in love. It will also receive and return messages from those same people. Only them. This paper knows your heart, dragon prince.

This gift, I accepted eagerly. I had to tell Nell that I was coming.

Finally, Pythia held out the bottle itself toward me.

Liquids herein stored will become poisonous to unstable degrees,
she promised.
Some turn you to a soup, while others force you into a light nap for twenty minutes. Usually, these mystical bottles are destroyed in explosions they themselves cause.

“Thank you.” I accepted the bottle into my now cluttered arms. “I will go prepare for my venture. When I return, Pythia, I will return with Penelope O’Hara at my side, safe, and I will repay you for your gifts.”

I turned to exit this cavern of lights and water.

Dragon prince,
Pythia’s sickly sweet voice wheedled in my head.
I know what I must have from you.

I twisted round and saw her sitting behind me, seeming serene.

You were not wrong, you see,
Pythia cooed in my head.
Your destined mate is indeed in Beggar’s Hole. But she is not the drowned girl.

I hesitated, but then shook my doubts away, as if to clear from my senses an unexpected blow. “It doesn’t matter,” I told her sternly, turning to march away.

You do not even wish to know?

I winced. A part of me did need to know, if only because it had been impressed upon me—upon all the people of my culture—that fate and destiny were the pivots on which our entire universe turned. To deny the knowledge of my intended mate was a decision I could never have foreseen myself making, and yet I felt as if the information was almost too powerful to behold. I had made my choice. I couldn’t bear to consult the future intended for me, knowing I had turned my back to it.

I summoned up the courage to reject the oracle’s offer, but it was too late. It had not truly been a question. It had merely been a criticism.

A blurry image flooded my mind, calling to memory paintings of oil and water… but this painting moved. She tossed her dark curls and smiled at me with a sultry, knowing stare. It was Michelle Ballinger as I had first seen her, when she had approached Nell and me at Goose Pond. Her breasts were as forthright as her eye contact in expressing what she wanted. She exuded sex, from her hand cocked against her hip to the fire leaping in her eyes.

With a scoff, I shook the phantom of Michelle from my mind. “I appreciate your concern, Oracle. But it matters not whom the Fates would have thrust upon me, in another world, another time.”

This was a lie. My stomach felt cold and bottomless at the thought of betraying their will. Had I only met Penelope in order to be brought to Michelle? Had we been wrong? Had I been called by the crystal mirror to that beachfront property not by Penelope but because Michelle had been there? And the marketplace where I had been drawn to her, and we had walked to the pond; had that been destined? For the sake of my lineage, for the sake of The Hearthlands, did I need to be with Michelle, and not Nell?

No… It couldn’t be.

You have still not honored my request,
Pythia informed me.

“What request?”

You must prove to me that I am wrong
.
Consider, fool prince, that you do not actually know Michelle Ballinger at all. There is much more to her than you think. Much more…

“What are you asking of me?”

You must bring her on your voyage. Show her your world… and see hers. Satisfy my certainty that she is meant to be your mate.

I sighed, long and low. “All right,” I said. “I’ll bring her. I will let her see The Hearthlands. And then I will return her. Is this a fair deal?”

I glanced over my shoulder to behold Pythia. She was simpering knowingly; it reminded me of Michelle.
Very fair,
she purred.
Good luck resisting the hands of fate, fool prince.

I shook my head again and abandoned the pools, the oracle, and even the thought that I was acting in direct contradiction of the Fates.

I returned to the cavern, a fire still crackling at its pit. The crystal mirror gleamed dully, and beside it were folded several pairs of clothing and the leather satchel in which I had carried the items here.

I peered at myself, dimly reflected, nude and melancholy, in the mirror. I swallowed and stretched my hand forward, brushing my fingers across the cool glass. “Nell,” I whispered, searching its depths for her face. “Where are you?”

D
ressing
in another pair of cotton slacks and a loose shirt, I retook my lotus position in front of the mirror and closed my eyes. I could not just swoop into Michelle’s home as a dragon, burst through her bedroom window, and collect her, screeching, against her will. I could not return to The Hearthlands through the portal on the rock island, for it was likely under heavy observation in anticipation of just that. I needed to find and secure my family; I needed to understand what had happened to our country. For all of this, I would need to think calmly and clearly. Simple action would not do.

In order to extract Michelle from this world, I would be required to peer deeply into her soul and assuage her fears of the unknown. Only by this mild hypnosis would she travel without trauma. I would need to use another gate—even if it meant a longer flight. Perhaps the gate to the country of ogres, not far from The Hearthlands, would suffice. The ice dragons would not be monitoring the ogres’ portal. The gate resided across this country and another ocean, but I didn’t see that I had any other choice. Finally, I would investigate the shelter my people had developed during the last insurgency of the ice dragons, during the brief and bloody reign of Emperor Bram. If anyone had survived, or escaped, they would be there. I could only pray to the gods above that it had not been discovered or destroyed during the many years it had not seen use.

Preparing my satchel, I transformed and took to the sky. My first stop would be the palatial Ballinger beach house.

I
expected
Michelle to be thronged in followers, as her New Year’s Eve party had been underway not long ago, but midnight had already passed and the guests had ventured elsewhere, leaving their hostess to sit on the beach and gaze out across the landscape, littered in red plastic cups and two smoldering pits of ash.

I circled the beach and landed behind a series of small, weed-choked dunes, where I could safely dress myself and reposition the leather satchel over my chest. Then, setting my shoulders and pulling in a lungful of wintry January air, I advanced on Michelle’s turned back. She was sitting in the sand with her knees drawn up to her chest.

“Lady Ballinger.” I addressed her formally.

Michelle turned, and I was expecting a glare, but instead I got a lip quirked in amusement. “Theon,” she greeted warmly, standing. She measured me. “I thought you might be back.”

Disloyal. The signals she’s sending me are inappropriate for the chosen mate of her own friend.

I did not have the time to be gentle. Nell had already been in the grip of the ice dragons for maybe as long as an hour, and who knew how long the country had been under siege. Weeks?

I gazed deeply into Michelle’s eyes and fell into her soul, as I had done so many times with so many others.

It wasn’t long before I hit my first wall. These human women were so enshrouded by protective layers.

I am so sexy. Have you ever seen a woman as sensual as I am? You love me. You know you do. Who can resist these lips?

Shards of glass shattered away.

I want your attention, goddammit. Why aren’t you looking at me? What? Am I not smart enough? Am I not sweet enough? How dare you. I’ll make you pay. I’ve been invisible for too long. I’ll never be invisible again! You can’t hurt me!

Brambles snagged at me as I moved past this line of defense.

It’s very simple. An idiot could do it. All you have to do is show them your power. No one will be able to deny you. You are a strong, beautiful woman. The world is at your feet. Nothing else matters; you have it all. You’ll show them all.

A hair-thin crack in this psyche allowed me to plunge into the deepest layer yet.

Daddy?
The voice echoed, as if in a vast space.
Daddy, are you playing hide-and-seek? Where did you go?
Feet whispered along tiles, occasionally skipping. The room shifted into focus, allowing me to see a dark, curly-headed girl somewhere between four and six. She was poking around in a spacious basement area, where she appeared to be totally alone.
Hello?
she called. Her eyes widened with panic.
Hello? Daddy?

I watched with a heavy heart as the child Michelle bolted around the room, tearing open closets, diving under tables, all to no avail. Her father wasn’t in the room at all. There had never been a game of hide-and-seek, unless he’d abandoned it.

Michelle balled up and pressed her back against the wall, pulling her knees up to her chest in the same manner I’d just seen on the beach. She folded her arms over her legs and buried her face in them, sobbing with the kind of abandon most adults never displayed.

Grimacing, I crossed the room and touched her arm. Child Michelle gasped and jerked up, as if expecting to see her father. Tears still glistened on her cheeks.

“Michelle,” I informed her, voice slow and rich. “You’re going to go away now, to a new place. You’re going to ride the back of a dragon, Michelle. I will protect you. The new place may be scary, but you will never be alone. You will be safe. I promise.”

Child Michelle’s lip quivered, and as she nodded her agreement, the vision surrounding us dissolved and crumbled, revealing that my hands were bracing the shoulders of the adult Michelle. Now that I’d spoken my suggestion as clearly and firmly as I could into her deepest level of consciousness, her eyes had taken on a drugged and receptive quality.

I removed my clothes. Michelle smiled blithely, but said nothing. Then I transformed with no regard for her reaction.

As I had expected, when I turned to her, she raised her eyebrows and nodded, as if to say,
Of course. I remember this story. A nice man told me this story when I was a little girl.

I used my large head to nudge her onto my back, and she acquiesced without any struggle. In fact, unlike Nell—who had wound her arms around my neck and pinched my shoulders with her thighs nervously—Michelle seemed to be a natural at riding dragons. She sat up straight and loose, as if this was a mere equestrian sport, and held the leather strap of my satchel as if it was reins. When my wings flapped, her body shifted with mine. She had good instincts, and this would make our journey as safe as it would be fast.

We pulled into the air and jetted off into the sky, at which point Michelle leaned down against my neck, although she still did not strangle me as Nell had; in fact, she moved with such awareness, I had to assume that her eyes were open and she was actively “driving” me. Again, I could not mind. This would make our trip speedy.

If everything went according to the plan, I would be in the Pacific, searching for the second gate, by daybreak.