A sky filled with dragons. An earth where time stood still. Ronan tried to make sense of it, but he could not. Questions rocketed through his brain like an electro-magnetic current, questions that, before this crazy, backwards day would lave been unbelievable. Why did he, Sebastian, Jee and presumably Emma remain unfrozen in this rigid wasteland? How could dragons materialize so suddenly? If dragons were real, what else lurked in the shadows? He trekked behind Sebastian and Jee, falling further and further behind as they traveled further and further away from the comfort of Clearwater. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground passing under his feet.
The whir of dragon wings assailed him and he cowered instinctively, glancing up. Sebastian and Jee were too far away from him, barely visible between the trees and brambles. Above him, through the leaves, he could see the glint of one of the three Silver dragons as it caught the sunlight.
Ronan screamed, a high girlish scream let out in pure fear of the huge beast that crashed through the trees and caught him in the talons. He closed his eyes against the blinding glint of the silver scales but he could not close his other senses. He heard the wails of Jee and Sebastian’s yell. He smelled the stench of death that followed the great silver beast like an aura. He felt the sharp, cold talons dig into him like spears and he tasted his own fear in his mouth, metallic like pennies.
And like that, he was in the air. He could feel the chill surrounding him as they rose higher, and it became hard to breathe. He sucked in oxygen, shifting in the massive beast’s claws and wishing he had no sense of smell. God, where are they taking me? He thought. I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.
The dragon laughed and Ronan felt tears squeezed out between his eyelids. There was no sound in the universe as cruel as that Silver dragon’s laugh. Encompassed in the sound was the dying words of a thousand men, the icy fear of a child’s last moments before death took her. In that dragon’s laugh was the emptiness of a wormhole and the sheer joy of slaughter that is part of a beast with no soul. Ronan gasped for breath as they rose still higher . .
And then they plummeted through the air, reeling downwards like a bird hit with a stone, spiraling down and down and down. . .until the Silver dragon glided to earth as serenely as a feather. He set Ronan down in his feet and nudged him with his great black nose. “Human. Bait,” He said. His voice was like a shard of clear white crystal dragging through Ronan’s flesh. He stiffened and hugged himself against the bitter cold. The dragon breathed upon him with a blast of icy air. “You will call me Master,” whispered the dragon. “You will obey me and bow to me and I will hurt you until there is nothing left but crushed dreams.”
Ronan rubbed the back of his hand across his nose, wiping away the drip of snot there. “I want to go home,” he said quietly.
The dragon laughed, not with mirth but with pity, with delight in being cold. He picked Ronan up, digging his claws into the boy’s sides and raking them until blood spilled onto his shirt. He cried out and the dragon began to walk, lurching across the land to a high, craggy mountain; there was no high, craggy mountains in Pennsylvania, Ronan thought. The dragon--Master– took to the wing and carried Ronan up, up into a cave with walls of ice and snow. Ronan shivered and he felt goose-bumps rise on his arms and thighs. The Master tossed him into a cell, a real prison cell with bars and chains. With one talon the Master closed the gate and Ronan knew it would be useless to try pushing at it.
He stood in his cell, feeling the blood rush out the slashes in his sides and the cold seeping through to chill his very bones.
A Long Journey
Sebastian held Jee tightly to him as he watched the Silver dragon fly off with Ronan in its claws. The little girl was sobbing and clinging to his arms, the poor thing. He knelt to be at her level. “Jee, they’re gone now. Come on, we have to go save him. We have to get them back.” Little Jee snuggled her Lollipop to her chest and sucked subconsciously at a lock of the doll’s hair.
Sebastian held her hand as he walked through the woods. What am I doing? he asked himself. I’m no novel hero. I’m freaking fifteen years old. Can’t even drive a car. All heroes can drive.
What would he do when he found Emma? He knew she didn’t care about Ronan. She would just let her brother die, she was so heartless and messed up. First things first, he told himself grimly. He sighed and wondered if most heroes even cared. Maybe they just wanted to go home.
And then, quite suddenly, there was a woman in the woods, standing right in front of him. She was beautiful, unlike any of the falsely made-up people on TV. She was natural and real and flawed, and all the more perfect for it. She looked him, and then at Jee, and she said, “Who am I? I must be important. I must have a. . .a destiny, a path. Do you know?”
Sebastian ran his tongue over the backs of his teeth. Of course the beautiful one would be the crazy one. “No, sorry. Have you seen a girl about my age, wandering around?”
The woman shrugged delicately. “Forget about the girl. You got to save the boy, the little one who is always thinking, ‘help me, help me’. He’s the one in danger. The girl’s fine.”
“How do you know?” He pulled Jee closer to him and she clung there.
“How do I know?” Asked the woman. “I know because I am strange and magical and I think. . .I did something very wrong. I think. . .this, the forgetting, this is my punishment. But if I could just remember, just for a moment, I could fix it. Oh. My name’s Ivy. Or possibly Ixchel. I know the little one’s. Julia.”
“Jee,” Jee said. “I hate being called Julia. And this is Lollipop.” She held out the porcelain doll, now just as torn and dirty as Jee herself.
“I’m Sebastian,” he said politely. Ivy, or Ixchel, nodded distractedly and wandered off. Sebastian shivered. It felt like, for some reason, he had seen the face of something powerful, something old, something great. He shook his head to clear it and went on in his search for Emma.
A New Mission
Emma saw the Silver dragons carrying her brother, carrying Ronan, and in the instant she forgot about Clearwater, forgot about going home. She turned her course to follow the great winged beast, to bring Ronan back form the clutches of the massive Silver evil. She retraced her steps, all the while thinking about how cruel she had been, how badly she had treated him in the depth of her depression and anger. She had attacked him, she remembered. A hole of darkness opened in the pit of her stomach. With a bread knife, she had gone at him and tried to kill him. But Mom had stopped her, and now Ronan would die at the hands of the Silvers.
Once more, she would be alone.
It seemed she walked from days, but the sun was barely past its zenith when she stopped to rest. The hole of blackness in her belly was smaller now, less drawing. It was easier to resist giving in the to the darkness and surrendering to the hatred and anger that moiled there. She wished she had a water bottle, she wished she had a change of clothes, she wished she had never left Clearwater.
With a groan, she stood up and started walking again. It was so strange, the silence of the forest. She hadn’t believed time was really frozen until she saw a doe and her two fauns right ahead of her; even as she approached, the deer remained in her path, totally unmoving. She glanced back. The three deer were still there, still in the same positions. No leaves rustled, no squirrel chattered, no birds twittered. The only sounds were the crunching noises her feet made as they tromped over last year’s leaves.
I’m coming, Ronan!
Endless
Time seemed irrelevant in the cell. Ronan paced to keep warm, did jumping jacks, pulled his hands inside his T-shirt, but still the ice invaded his skin and filled him with cold and numbness. There was nowhere to sit down, nowhere to rest his aching feet and stiff muscles. Even if there were, he couldn’t have sat down; he’d probably never have gotten up again. All the while, the Master watched him from the outside of the ice cell, laughing that soulless laugh and grinning that delighted grin.
Ronan approached the metal bars of the cage. “I hate you!” he screamed. “I will never bow to you, you disgusting. . .thing!” he collected his saliva in his mouth and spit it at the dragon angrily. The Master breathed on it while it shot towards him and it clattered harmlessly to the floor, ice. Ronan screamed in frustration and stormed towards the back of his cell.
“Met another human once,” said the Silver dragon. “Her name was Mildred and she was quite the little fireball herself. She actually thought she could anger me into killing her quickly. Hmm. But you, sir, are quite good. Actually got a me a little annoyed for a minute there. Oh well, it’s gone now.” He paused. “I can’t kill you until your sister gets here, now, can I? She’s undergone quite the little personality change, you just wait and see. My brother’s been watching her for a while now. I believe you’ll be happy with her new outlook on life. Healthier.”
Ronan rubbed his arms, buffered with the knowledge that he would remain alive until Emma had the chance to save him. Would she? He jumped up an down for warmth.
The Master opened the door of the ice cell. Only his claw could fit through, but he pointed one massive talon and raked it down Ronan’s right arm. He screamed and fell to the ice floor as blood poured from the long, angry wound and froze in the snow beside him. He struggled to stand up, to get out of the ice and snow on the floor, but he could not. His arm was too painful to feel like anything at all. He curled himself into a little ball in the ice cave and shivered there. He knew. He would not leave this cage alive.
Council of Gods
Ovinia, whose mantle is prophesy and whose skin is the words of the future, stood at the banks of the great sea in heaven and knelt beside the waters. She knelt beside the waters and to them she sang the song of the sight, the song of vision and foretelling and knowledge. She sang unto the great salt waters of heaven, Round and round through time unending, round and round through worlds and seas, round and round, the wheel of hours, come and speak your words to me.
And from the great sea of heaven came knowledge, pure and strong and old. Ovinia, the great goddess of prophesy, whose name is holy, cupped her hands and drank the knowledge there, drank until her body and soul were filled and satiated with wisdom. She wrapped herself in the robes of splendor and, in the way of the gods, changed and moved with the currents of the air until she stood before the council of gods in all her glory.
She bowed low until her hair, long and dark and heavy, coiled on the floor. “I have come from the great sea of heaven,” she murmured. “I have seen great things, my people. My lovers, my children, my kindred. I have seen the coming of a child whose power is unrivaled, whose name will set fear in the hearts of evil and whose fate rests in the hands that shaped her. A Changer is coming.”
Ovinia shed her robe of splendor, shed her mantle of prophesy and stood before the thousands of gods in only her skin, the skin which was the words of the future. She bared to them the image she had seen, the endless futures stretching out across her skin, forever changing. “My people, these are the futures of the Changer. We must find this child, this woman of such power. We must find her and teach her and hold her in our loving arms, until she is ready to Change the universe, the dimensions and herself.”
Ovinia, whose words were the liquor or fate and whose thoughts were the wheel of time, donned the garments of a seer and bowed once more, and once more her hair swept along the floor of heaven. She turned and floated out, across the arena of gods’ council, to the shore of the ocean of prophesy.
But the arena remained full. From the bodies of immortals stepped one god, Soren, whose spear was the spear of war and whose smell was of death and blood. “A war is begun, my people,” said Soren, whose voice was the battle cries of a thousand men, the clash of a thousand swords, the death of a thousand men. “A war of dragons, a war which spreads now from the dimension where dragons dwell to the human dimension, earth. The Changer, Ovinia’s Changer is in grave danger, for she is threatened by the soulless Silver dragons. It is taken upon us to save the Changer, for here is the answer to the problems of the worlds over which we stand.”
“The Changer will not want to save us!”
“The Changer is a child, not a weapon!”
“The Changer is our only hope!”
Silence, fools.
The council of gods fell silent under the growl of the great Aijamusxa, who commands the monsters of the deeps. Aijamusxa, who carries the duality of good and evil in him, whose meat was the flesh of humans and whose eyes were in the soles of his feet. The Changer is a girl of six years old, six small years in which she has been taught only playfulness and innocence. Her name is Julia, which, in Latin tongue, means youthful, means downy-haired. She is frightened of dragons and with her she carries a small doll, which she has named Lollipop, after a candy. Even as we use her for our own ends, abuse her youth and her innocence, we must remember that she is a child and very, very small.
Aijamusxa, whose human features are distorted by claws and fangs, whose constant companions are the roaring winds and sweeping sands, took his seat in the vast circle of gods stretching further than the eyes of any immortal could see.
Silence took the council and for many days no one stood. Gods are known for their patience, but some grew restless and began to shift, to flex their power. But still, great Zeus did not dismiss the meeting. He sat on his great throne and let lightning bolts play between his fingers, but he did not say the words that would release the gods from their places. He only smiled a knowing smile.
Days passed and finally one goddess stood. Maia, who was born on Mount Cyllene and whose parents were Atlas and Pleiona. Maia, whose realm was springtime and whose features were motherly and tender. “I will fetch the Changer,” she murmured. Her voice was like the chirping of a thousand birds and the gentle sound of a flower pushing its patient way out of the dirt. She smiled and the circle of gods became a happy place once more. “I will bring back the Changer and I will become her mother, for I am Maia, I am spring.”
From his great throne in the heavens, Zeus let lose a thunderbolt into the center of the assembly. “So is shall be,” he said, and the gods and goddesses turned and left the council. Only Maia remained, and she bowed her head to the great god Zeus.
“I do your bidding, high one. Is it your wish that I bring the one called Jee to you?”
Zeus, the Kosmetas, the Soter, the Polieos, whose sons were many and whose reign stretched from Iraklio in the south to Preveza in the west to Alexandroupolis in the north, whose parents were Rhea and Chronos. Zeus, the great god of weather, the god of gods, reached down one hand to touch Maia’s cheek. “Bring me the Changer. Serve me well.”
Climbing Ice Mountain
Days had passed since Emma had climbed the fence out of Clearwater. Her black hair hung un oily strands down her back and her clothes were stained and torn with travel. Her feet were blistered, her leg muscles screaming in protest and her belly ached with extreme hunger the likes of which she had never known. She slept in the shadow of the trees, cramped and stiff, and woke angry and distracted. Sometimes she saw the Red dragons or the Silver as the soared by, and each time she glanced up to be sure they had no twelve-year-old boy grasped in their talons.
She passed through a few towns as she walked, and she studied the frozen people and cars with great interest. They were totally frozen, not even blinking. They’re eyes weren’t watering, nobody seemed to have wet their pants in the four days since they had last used the restroom and nobody looked at all hungry or tired of their current position.
Finally she saw it. The huge, rocky mountain protruding from the earth like a hard, brown pimple and stretching up into the clouds, where it was covered in snow like the Himalayan mountains in Tibet. The reason the mountain looked so out of place was that there were no foothills. It just began, a sudden incline.
“I’m coming, Ronan,” she whispered, and began the climb.
There were no big hills in Clearwater, let alone mountains. Emma found herself panting with exertion almost immediately, and as the incline increased she had to lean forward and grab on with her hands to keep her balance. Soon, she was clinging to the face and trying to learn how to rock climb by climbing. Unfortunately, there was no rope to fall on, no belay down at the bottom to catch her if she fell. This was real danger, and it wasn’t exhilarating.
Emma looked up at the huge cliff above her and then, closer to her, the next handhold. She grabbed on, stuck her foot in a crevace and held on, pushing herself upwards with all her might. Her exhausted muscles screamed for mercy. At the next push, her leg muscles wouldn’t pull her up any more and she dropped back to her position, scanning the rock face. If I fall from here, I die, she thought. It wasn’t giving her the insentive to move. She hung there on Ice Mountain, fearing, knowing, clinging, until the dragon came to take her.
She screamed and flailed in the cage of its talons, until she looked up at it and saw that the dragon was red, the color of warmth and love and heart. She stopped her struggle and lay still in the dragon’s grip until it set her down on a farmer’s field beside the mountain.
“I am Ryu, whose name is holy,” said the dragon. He spoke slowly, softly, as If each syllable of this low, human language was debasing him. “I know why you seek to climb the Ice Mountain, small one, but I cannot let you do this.”
“It’s my brother!” Emma said. It took all her courage to speak to this beast, this massive creature whose intellect alone was so huge compared to humans’. She knew, though, that as long as she was protected by the Red dragon, she would remain unharmed.
The dragon nodded. “I know. Emma, child, I know of your transformation. I know how dark your life had become, how bright it became. I know how much you want to help, to do good in this world. I know your stubbornness and your passion and your determination, and I admire you for these things. But you cannot climb that mountain, you cannot defeat the Silvers. Not even the Red have been able to do so.” He paused, drew a breath and continued. “My mate, my love, my Elia and I came to your dimension to escape them. They were. . . they were not supposed to follow us. I am sorry to bring such evil to your world.”
Emma looked up at the huge Red being, whose name was holy and whose soul was full of love. She began to cry, soft tears that held no anger in them, only grief and loss and desperation. She turned to the dragon and began to speak. “I’m going to say stuff to you that I’ve never said to anyone before. I’m going to be truthful and I probably won’t use the right words, but I’ll try. I just. . .I was so horrible to Ronan and everybody. I missed my Dad so much, it was like. . .I had lost part of myself, part of, I dunno, part of who I am. Like I couldn’t be me without Dad. I tried to kill Ronan, once. With a bread knife. I hated Mom, and everybody hated me. I want to make it better. Everything’s my fault and nobody’s blaming me, which makes it harder. I think Sebastian’s out there, and he’s innocent and so. . .perfect, do you get that? He shouldn’t be involved.”
The great dragon Ryu, whose name is holy, reached out with one talon and stroked Emma’s back with it; it was taller than she was.
“I need to save Ronan because. . .he’s my brother. I have all these memories of us as kids, with Mom and Dad, and how perfect everything was. I . . .well, I guess I sort of love him.” Emma sighed. “I’m using all the wrong words, I can’t do it right.”
Ryu smiled. “It was perfect. Come, my child. We must save this boy.”
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More to come!!! *Grins* This is getting suspenseful! I wonder what will happen!
