Billy: Messenger of Powers (26 page)

No one did.

Then Billy watched in awe as, almost softly, the dragon winged downward and settled upon one of the podiums below. It coughed a burst of flame from its mouth. Then it shivered, as though suddenly cold. Another burst of flame seemed to explode uncontrolled from its maw, and with it a great puff of smoke. The smoke wrapped itself like a living cloak around the dragon, obscuring her from view. It settled like fog over a meadow, dissipating slowly.

And when it was gone, so was the dragon.

All that was left was a motionless form, draped lifelessly over the stone pedestal.

Vester was on his feet instantly. “Fulgora!” he screamed.

In an instant, a trio of Powers were at her side: two gray-clad Wind Powers and one red-robed Power of Fire. They floated on a current of air to hover beside Fulgora’s pedestal. The Red Power touched her wrist and neck, feeling for a pulse. “It’s faint,” he said in a voice that was audible to all in the arena, “but she’s alive.”

Now a new round of buzzing conversation began. Billy caught snatches of it all around him. “Thank goodness,” and “Did you ever see such a thing?” and “A dragon! By all the Powers, a dragon!” being the most common refrains. Vester appeared to hear nothing, his eyes glued to Fulgora as her limp form was floated by the Wind Powers over the water that had surrounded her tiny podium, and off to a side gate which opened for her and closed once she was inside.

“Recovery Room,” said Vester. “That’s a good sign. They don’t send people there unless they’re hopeful.”

“Goodness gracious, did you ever see such a thing?” huffed a nearby voice. Billy turned. It was Tempus, the Gray Power who had been at Billy’s Gleaning. The old man was weaving through the aisle toward them, crashing over, through, and around Projected—and several non-Projected—Powers to get to Billy and Vester.

His characteristic Hawaiian shirt—the moving landscape on this one a bright green and blue and looking more like someone had been explosively sick all over him than like he was going on holiday—flapped as he stumbled toward them. He was also wearing violently pink shorts that barely came down to his bone-white thighs, his knobby knees clacking together as he ran. “Oh, pardon me, was that your head?” he would ask when walking through one protesting Projection. “Sorry, just need to get over a few more of you,” he would murmur as he balanced on top of another Power who was actually there. To Billy, the surprisingly agile old man looked like an ancient polar bear, hopping from ice flow to ice flow in the Arctic Circle.

He finally reached Billy and Vester, puffing violently as he reiterated to them, “Did you ever see such a thing?”

“No,” said Vester shortly before turning back to look at the closed door to the Recovery Room as though hoping it would pop open at any second and Fulgora would walk out.

“Me neither,” said Tempus. “Did you see how they just floated right out to her! In the middle of a Challenge, like they had to rescue an unDetermined child?”

Vester turned an almost-angry gaze on the old Wind Power. “Yes, Tempus, that was really unreal,” he said sarcastically.

Tempus shrank a bit before his gaze. “Oh, and there was also the dragon thing, too, of course.”

“Of course,” said Vester, still clearly biting back incivility only through super-human effort.

Billy watched the short exchange like a spectator at a world-class ping-pong match, the volleys almost too fast to be seen.

“What happened?” he finally managed to interject. “I mean, she won, right? Fulgora is still the Red Councilor, and Napalm can’t ever Challenge her again, can he?”

“She won all right,” whispered Vester.

“Indeed she did,” said Tempus. And then, as if Billy hadn’t seen it all ready. “She actually
became
a dragon. And a fully-grown one, no less!”

Billy was beginning to sense that what had happened here was very unusual, even for a place where the elevators joked, rock giants boxed, and hot dogs begged you to be eaten in disturbingly desperate voices. “So becoming a dragon is a big deal?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Yes,” said Tempus, “In much the same way as Eurasia is a big island, or a blue whale is a rather large animal, or a redwood is just a tiny bit bigger than a mustard seed, or—”

The Gray Power broke off quickly as Vester again aimed an irritated look at him. Billy was almost grateful; he liked a good metaphor as much as the next kid, he supposed, but he had gotten the point pretty early on.

Tempus leaned in to whisper to Billy as Vester returned his undivided attention to his vigil over the Recovery Room. “Dragons are what Powers become when they don’t want to die.”

Billy was getting even better at his monosyllabic responses now. He had practiced them enough that he was in danger of losing his amateur status, so when he said, “Huh?” this time, it was a “Huh” that would have put a world class “Huh”-er to shame.

“Huh?”

Tempus’s eyebrows went up. It looked like even
he
was impressed at how well Billy could communicate the complex thought, “I’m sorry, I haven’t the slightest inkling of the beginning of an idea of what the heck you’re talking about and the only way I could have less of an idea is if I went back in time to a point before you had said anything at all on this unknown subject and therefore not only didn’t know any details about it, but was completely unaware that said subject even existed” in a single “huh?”

“Well,” Tempus said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but time doesn’t pass exactly the same here on Powers Island.”

“I had heard something about that,” said Billy dryly.

Tempus nodded gravely. Apparently he was better at sensing confusion than sarcasm. “It does, it’s true. Usually, it moves much quicker here than for the rest of the world. The White King and the Great Gray Prophet who were the principal architects of Powers Island made it that way, to hide us from the rest of the world.”

Billy looked questioningly at Tempus. He was now getting so good he was even able to dispense with the “Huh”s and communicate total confusion in a single glance.

“What I mean is,” Tempus said, “well, you could say we are currently in a slightly different dimension. So something that appears to happen over a course of hours here, takes only a few seconds or minutes back home. So naturally some Powers would rather be dragons or sylphs or sprites or werewolves or such.”

Billy blinked. He had been following Tempus up to that last little bit. And had the old man said
werewolves
? “I’m sorry,” said Billy, “I don’t really get you.”

“Get me?” asked Tempus absent-mindedly. “I’m not a present. How could you get me?”

Billy was saved from trailing after Tempus’s wildly rambling train of thought by a sudden commotion in the stadium. Everyone was on their feet, straining to look at the Recovery Room. The doors had just opened, and Billy could literally feel everyone at Powers Stadium—even the people who weren’t really there—holding their breath. They all gasped disappointedly, though, when what emerged wasn’t Fulgora, but merely one of the Gray Powers that had borne her on his Wind into the room in the first place. “They’re still diagnosing,” he said, again in that strangely-amplified voice that resounded throughout the stadium. Billy realized he must be doing something to the air to make it carry the sound everywhere, something that a Wind Power would surely be able to do.

“Where was I?” asked Tempus when they sat down again. “Oh, yes. Passing time and dragons.” He looked at Billy. “If time passes quickly here, and doesn’t in the real world, what does that mean?”

“Uh,” said Billy dully, “it means that time passes fast here, but slow there?”

“Exactly!” crowed Tempus. “But more than that, it means that if you spend a lot of time here, you go back there and even though
you’ve
grown by a few minutes or hours or weeks, the
rest
of the world hasn’t.” The old man paused, trying to figure out the best way to explain. “You ever see a kid who literally just seemed to grow overnight? To grow a few inches and put on twenty pounds?”

Billy nodded. Cameron Black sprung instantly to mind. His eternal tormenter had seemed to grow hugely in the two months since school had started.

“Well,” said Tempus, “that may be one of two things.” The old man held up two liver-spotted fingers, ticking off the choices. “One, that he had a growth spurt. Or two, that he or she is a young Power who spent several months on Powers Island for training, then returned to the rest of the world’s time only a day later. But he grew in those months. His
body
didn’t know that only a day of ‘real’ time had passed. It had experienced a month of growth. And that means, ultimately, that a person who spends a great deal of time at the island….” He trailed off expectantly, clearly waiting to see if Billy would put this last piece together.

Billy thought. So someone got old here, but no time passed for the rest of the world? And that must mean…. “So someone who stays here a lot will seem to age faster, and die sooner.”

Tempus laid a finger on his nose. Correct, the gesture told Billy. “Exactly. Me, for example, I know I look like I’m around fifty,” (and here Billy couldn’t help but think Tempus was being very generous to himself), “but my birth certificate shows that I was born in St. Andrews hospital in Illinois only forty-five years ago.” He looked at his body, then back at Billy. “I think we can agree that my non-Power friends believe I’ve led a very, well, colorful life that has aged me prematurely.”

Billy couldn’t help but laugh. But then he grew sober. “So if I stayed here….”

“You’d age, too, faster than your friends, faster than your parents, faster than everyone. But don’t worry,” he hastened to add. “Most people don’t spend that much time on the island, except perhaps when doing testing or involved in special training of some kind or other. So the difference is usually negligible.”

“Why did the White King and,” Billy tried to remember what Tempus had said, “the Great Gray Prophet make Powers Island that way?”

“So that it couldn’t be found by non-Powers, of course,” gruffed Tempus. Apparently he didn’t have as much patience for other people’s conversational tangents as for his own. “But we’re talking about death and dragons right now.” He rubbed his hands on his Hawaiian shirt absent-mindedly, as though trying to smooth out wrinkles. It didn’t help much. Billy thought the shirt still looked like someone had managed to barf in the shape of palm trees.

“So some of us Powers seem to age. And even though, really, we still get our allotted lifetime of experiences—whether on Powers Island, or back with the real world—some of the Powers don’t like the idea of aging—and dying—before everyone else in the normal world. So they try to take refuge in something that lives forever.” He eyed Billy. “Can you guess what that might be?”

Billy shrugged. He had no idea. “The sun?” he guessed, more to say something than because he thought it was the right answer.

“The
Elements
,” Tempus said gloatingly, pleased with himself. “The Elements are always there, in some form or other. They are self-perpetuating in a way. So the Powers who want—wrongly, I think—a form of immortality must
become
their Elements.” He paused, sobering suddenly. “I believe this is an affront to nature, and to the One who created all Elements.” He shrugged then, adding, “But some disagree.”

“So these Powers who want to live forever, they become Elements?” asked Billy. “They become Fire or Water? Or Earth or Wind?”

“No, that’s impossible,” said Vester, causing Billy to jump. He hadn’t even been aware the fireman was listening to the conversation Billy and Tempus were having. “No one can be Fire. A human is a human, and Fire is Fire. Two different things.”

“Quite so,” broke in Tempus, looking a little miffed at Vester for interrupting the old man’s lecture-like teaching of young Billy. “But still they try. And some—a very few, mind you—manage to become something that is close to an Element. An embodiment of it, something more than human, but less than pure Element.”

“Like a dragon,” said Billy.

“Yes,” said Tempus, clearly pleased, though Billy wasn’t sure if the old man’s happiness sprang from Billy’s cleverness or from his own skill at teaching. “Like a dragon. Dragons, being closer to pure Element, have greater control over that Element than any but the greatest Powers. More importantly, they live much, much longer. Some say they live forever. But,” he added, with a bit of a frown, “that’s hard to verify, since forever hasn’t happened yet.”

“So, Fulgora became a red dragon, and—”

“And that is absolutely astounding!” shouted Tempus. “No Power in recorded history has managed to become so close to Element, and then actually manage somehow to return to human form!” He looked at the closed doors of the Recovery Room. “Fulgora must have been truly desperate. Either that, or,” he lowered his voice, clearly not wanting Vester to hear what he said next, “or much more ambitious than we dreamed.” He spoke in normal tones again, then said, “Either way, she did something amazing. She will probably be on the Council for the rest of her life, since I can’t think of anyone who would be crazy enough to Challenge her again after today’s spectacle. Though,” he added, eyeing the still-closed Recovery Room, “the rest of her life might not be a very long time.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Vester snapped. He was clearly angry at Tempus now. His eyes blazed like the fire he controlled. “Don’t ever say that. She’s strong.”