Dragon Master (5 page)

Boe followed my gaze and became excited. Stars were his latest passion, and he’d been spending study hall time reading everything he could find about them in preparation for the Stoneflame. “That’s Raina,” he said, pointing to a golden twinkling dot in the evening sky that seemed to crown Mount Ramses. Laciann followed his finger, her eyes widening. Daija and I humored him by looking at the star as well. “She’s my favorite star in the sky,” he continued without a hint of irony in his voice, “you can see her from our bunk some nights. No other star has quite her coloration.”

I looked around at the sky, the thousands of stars that twinkled and shone in all sorts of colors. I shook my head in wonderment at Boe’s romanticism. There seemed to be no way that Raina was truly unique, if that even was the correct name for the star Boe was pointing at. Daija saw my face and smiled at me knowingly. Laciann used the moment as an excuse to draw closer to Boe who didn’t seem to notice. He started to say something more about the star, but then he froze as Laciann gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“What…” Boe looked like he’d forgotten how to speak. “Who…”

“When, where, why, and how,” I finished, laughing at him. Laciann used her newfound archery prowess to shoot me a stinging look and I covered my mouth to stop my laughter, but I was still grinning. I looked at Daija for support, but she didn’t seem to be as amused by the situation as I was. When she saw me looking at her, she just looked away into the surrounding forest. Girls.

“It’s very sweet,” Laciann explained to the still flustered Boe. “I hope one day a man sees me the same way you see that star.” This just made Boe’s blush deepen.

The line moved again, and Boe stared at the ground between his boots as he briskly walked forward. I had to jog to keep up with him, though Laciann and Daija seemed content to walk slowly behind us, holding up the line as they whispered girl stuff to each other.

After twenty minutes where none of us said or did anything except occasionally take a sip from our mugs and shuffle forward when the line moved, I figured it was my duty to try to put Boe back at ease.

“So what’s the story with that shooting star that we saw during the Stoneflame?” I’d been genuinely curious about it but hadn’t had a chance to bring it up with him before now, and if any of us knew anything about it, he would be the one. He either didn’t have an answer, or he still wasn’t composed enough to speak.

“Mom and dad said they’d never seen anything like it,” Daija offered, “they said they’ve watched every Stoneflame in their lifetimes except the one where—” she tripped over her tongue, “the one where we were conceived.” She muttered this last part. I could sympathize. I didn’t like to think about the Stoneflame ceremony much, and I definitely didn’t like to think about my parents in the Stoneflame ceremony. All Stone Souls knew exactly when and where they were conceived, and how, and why. It was unnerving in a way, and also pretty creepy.

“It was wonderfully beautiful,” Laciann said, “I thought it was like a sign from the Stonespirits, telling us that we were being watched, even in Flame’s brightest hour.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I was thinking something like that too.” It wasn’t that I was religious, but it did seem pretty crazy that something like that happened right then when all eyes had been on Flame. It was a real attention-getter. I looked at Boe but he still wasn’t ready to speak, so I looked at Daija instead. She was looking at me, and this time she didn’t look away when I looked at her. She still didn’t say anything, so then we were just looking at each other. And looking at each other. My gaze shifted between each of her eyes trying to figure out what was happening, but I got no clues from them. I checked Laciann to see if she was seeing this, but she was examining her nails. I looked back at Daija and she was still looking at me, now with a different inscrutable expression on her face. I couldn’t make any sense of it, except to decide that it was making me feel a little crazy. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I blinked, and looked uncomfortably back at Boe for some help, but he clearly hadn’t seen any of this silent exchange. Whatever it had been.

I decided that it probably wasn’t a good look Daija was giving me, though I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I was almost starting to look forward to the predictable blandness and torture of training.

***

We finally reached the front of the line and nobody had said anything to each other for the past thirty minutes. It was one of the longest half hours of my life.

A short young girl dressed as a pixie led the four of us to our own bench, really a smaller version of the benches we sat on for the Tournament and other entertainment. This time there were safety handles attached to the logs that we were asked to hold on to tightly. There was only one handle on either side of each of us, meaning we had to share. I was sitting between Daija and Laciann, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be safer to share the safety handles with the two of them or to just try to do my best to keep my balance without using the handles at all. Remembering what Boe said about this being a special scary performance of the ride made me decide to risk using the handles rather than risk falling off the log in front of everyone. I’d managed to make it through six weeks of the festival without horribly embarrassing myself, and I was overdue for something terrible to happen to me.

I stared straight ahead and reached down. I grabbed the handle on my left first, where Laciann was sitting. There was no contact, no incident. I grabbed the handle to my right and instead found that I had placed my hand right on top of Daija’s. Oh boy. I looked at her and was surprised to see a shy smile creep across her face. It looked like whatever had happened before, we were still okay. I felt surprisingly relieved. When had I started caring so much about what Daija thought of me? But I did. Quite a bit. Without giving myself time to think about it, I squeezed her hand and left mine on top of hers. She didn’t object.

The ride started out slowly, as vague shapes appeared in a swirling fog in front of us. Someone with a deep, raspy voice read from a script behind us, explaining what it was we were supposed to be seeing. It was almost comical, at first. Then the narrator stopped abruptly and just as I was about to crane my neck to look behind us and see what was happening with the narrator, there was a shout of alarm from the front row and then two burning orbs lit up, deep in the swirling fog.

I could see the black silhouette of a dragon growing larger. She was coming toward us, her eyes glowing brighter as she roared through the mist. Puffs of flame seemed to be trailing from her grinning maw. In moments she was upon us and I felt the heat of Dragonsfire and then heard a loud crackling sound. The log dropped suddenly and I heard Laciann scream as I tightened my grip around Daija’s hand. I felt and saw a fire bolt pass overhead, nearly singing my hair. Boe hadn’t mentioned that we’d be in actual danger from this ride!

We were rocked forward and somehow I knew that the dragon was in pursuit. The swirling mists gave the impression that we were in a dense forest, weaving through tight openings in the foliage. We rose and fell as if we were on horseback; the horse was in a dead gallop, fearing for his life and not caring about the safety of his riders. Behind us, there were loud noises as the dragon felled trees and tore apart underbrush in her pursuit. Now and then we would leap over an oncoming fire bolt or dodge sideways to avoid a shadowy claw. I found myself ducking and cringing at each narrow escape.

Then, we were seemingly bucked from our saddles as the log twirled and flew upside down. I did all I could to avoid crushing Daija’s hand beneath mine now, trying to hold all my weight with my left hand on the handlebar. It was no good, I let go with my right hand and fell, dangling from the bench by one arm. Daija was laughing. So this was it, the final night of the festival and finally here I was making a fool of myself in front of everyone; in front of Daija. I looked over expecting to see her pointing and laughing at me. Instead, she was floating off the bench, suspended in midair, completely upside down and not holding on to anything. She wasn’t laughing at me, she was laughing in happiness. I let go of the handlebar and let myself free fall as well and felt the delight of it.

We were flying through the air, out of reach of the dragon. Everyone else was still tightly gripping their handlebars, and many were letting out yells of excitement and fear and rage. Nobody else could really hear Daija and I as we shared our laughter. I reached out to her and she took my hand. The log flipped over again so that we were right side up, and we fell back into our seats. I squeezed Daija’s hand and she squeezed mine in return.

Torches were lit as the light from the fog subsided and the narrator started to speak again, telling us about how we narrowly escaped death at the talons of a dragon or some such. I wasn’t listening. I was just looking at the dancing green sparkle in Daija’s eyes, and this time I understood why she was looking back at me.

Boe’s parents were waiting at the exit to the ride. They told Daija and Laciann that it was time to retire for the night, and to say goodbye. There would be a long journey home beginning tomorrow and they intended to start at the first light of sunrise.

I didn’t say anything, and neither did Daija. She waved at me and smiled, and I returned her wave and watched as she walked away. I didn’t even notice Boe standing right next to me until he gave me a small shove to snap me out of my stupor. I lost my balance and fell, and was surprised when I didn’t float in the air but instead hit the ground. Still, it didn’t hurt. Not at all.

***

I don’t know if Boe slept, but I do know that he climbed out of his bunk before I did. There wasn’t a hint of the first light of dawn, but still he got himself dressed and I climbed out of my bunk to do the same. Boe had a sense about time, especially in the middle of the night, that I envied. I supposed that he was watching for some star or other to appear in the window of the bunk, but I didn’t really understand how any of that worked.

We hadn’t talked at all. I didn’t really want to say anything, and I definitely didn’t want to get teased about Daija. Boe had his own stuff on his mind. We just marched out of the bunk in search of his family and Laciann to say our goodbyes to them, silently understanding each other. It was our way.

Despite their threats to get an early start, I could hear Boe’s mother loudly snoring in his parent’s guest cottage. Boe stopped outside the cottage, but I swept past him intending to knock on the door and let them know that morning was coming, and that we were there to say our goodbyes.

“Wait up,” Boe said. It was the first thing he’d said at all since Laciann’s kiss.

“Don’t want to wake your parents?” I asked, concerned.

“I don’t want to wake anybody,” he replied. “We should talk.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t our way at all.

“Never mind,” he said, and then stalked past me and rapped loudly on the front door of the guest cottage. I winced at the harshness of the sound.

“Okay, never mind.” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “never mind.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay.”

We waited in the cold until the front door opened. It was Tahlor, Boe’s mother. She asked us to wait for a minute while everyone got decent, and then came back out and invited us in for a cup of leftover broth. There was light in the sky now, and I could see that Tahlor still hadn’t had a chance to apply her makeup. I’d never seen her without it before. She looked like another person. I looked over at the training grounds, expecting to see the festival still set up as it had been, but instead I was shocked to see that a crew had apparently spent the entire night tearing it down. There were still dozens of people scurrying around, carrying wooden beams and tent poles purposefully in every direction.

“I’ll be right in,” I promised Tahlor, and then I turned and ran.

I moved as quickly as I could back to my bunk, riding a surge of adrenaline. I searched my Stoneflame ceremonial pants pockets and found what I was looking for, then took off running again toward the training grounds. Commander Hawk was there, already preparing to rouse the Stone Souls to begin our final months of training. I didn’t want to run into him, so I changed course and ran around the outskirts of the row of Stone Soul bunk houses to approach the training grounds as far from the commander as I could get. I searched frantically through everybody, trying to get my bearings, but between the lack of sleep, the unfamiliar angle I’d approached from, and the general sense of disarray from all the people in motion I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

I was beginning to seriously worry about having to admit defeat when I finally caught a glimpse of red and silver and could see that a young boy was carrying it in a sack on his back. After making sure that Commander Hawk wasn’t looking my way, I followed the boy down a small service road that had been worn into the ground during the festival. His destination was an oversized wagon, piled high with sacks similar to the one he was carrying. There was an older woman holding a steaming mug, directing the flow of people and sacks. I recognized her. She was the prize lady! I jumped in the air when I saw her and then sprinted right up to her, waving my prize voucher in the air for her to see.

“You’re a little late, boy,” she said. I didn’t even care that she’d called me a boy. I supposed that, after all, I was behaving like one. I handed her the ticket and she entertained me by accepting it. She pulled out a worn rounded piece of glass, holding it above the voucher and inspecting each of the stamps. “Well, congratulations,” she said, “you would have had your pick of prizes with this.”

I stared at her and my face fell. “Would have had?” I asked, hoping that I was misinterpreting her words.

She chuckled and looked at the mound of sacks piled into the wagon. “Sorry, kid, nothing we can do about it now, is there?” She handed the voucher back to me and I reluctantly accepted it.

I took a step back and scanned the sacks, trying to pick out the one that the boy had been carrying, the one with the edge of a tapestry just barely hanging out the back of the sack. It took a long minute with the old woman watching me, bemused, but then I caught sight of it and pointed. “There, the tapestry,” I said, “that’s what I want.”