Young Writers Society

He and Kara had been silent for the entire flight, and Einar had been content with that.

He had banked and soared and dipped with the dragon, slipping up into the freezing wisps of the clouds and then further down to the thicker industrial smog with lazy strokes of its wings. He had smiled and revelled in all of the sensations of flight - the giddiness in his stomach, the weakness in his legs, the numbness of his cheeks against the wind. All of it delighted him as if he were a child on a carnival ride. He'd been careful to hide all of this from Kara.

Finally, Einar circled above the canal, leaning forwards to peer through the dragon's two horns. He could see exactly where the slum ended, where the mess of clothes lines and carts on the streets jarred into the more ordered rows of houses that made up the neighbourhoods by the North Gate.

They soared over the city as it shimmered like lanterns on a faraway lake. The dragon's wings held them in the air, stretched out and quivering through their glide. Kara hadn't loosened her grasp on Einar's coat for the entire journey - if anything, her grip had become tighter with every bank and she'd tensed with every wingbeat as if she didn't trust the perfect machine to carry them safely.

"Where are we landing?" Kara shouted, finally breaking the silence. She leaned forward to Einar's ear as she hollered, as if she were deaf and believed everybody else to be, too.

Einar sighed into the wind before he replied. "We're landing in Cross Fields!"

"Where?"

"Oh, for fu... Church Park!" Einar leadned over the other side and pointed as he bought the dragon around into a bank. Cross Fields, formerly known as Church Park, was a stretch of colour-leached grass and scrawny trees just outside the churchyard. It was a square of darkness among Fjordheim's mess of lights that lay crumpled like dirty clothes along the bottom of the valley.

"Isn't Church Park haunted?" Kara shouted, loud as ever, "the servants told me -"

"It's an urban legend. Relax." Einar rolled his eyes and coaxed the dragon around. He knew the fables well - stories of a cloaked murderer who drifted like a maleviolent spirit out of the shadows and killed with one oil-slick movment, a demon who no one had the good sense to exorcise. It was Einar's favourite tale, perhaps because he was the cold-blooded phantom everyone feared so much.

He was the one who cut throats in the dark and left corpses bleeding out onto the grass. He was the one who winced at the feeling of metal slicing flesh and the blood gushing through his fingers. He was the one who buried the final expressions shiny terror in the eyes of his victims, and the one who'd tried to forget about the lengths he'd gone to for money, sustainance to keep him going before he could reach the dragon again. He was the one who'd shoved humanity aside and stooped to the level of a mindless animal with the savageness of a rabid wolf and the coy cunning of the fox. But business was business, especially in the diseased underbelly of a city like Fjordheim.

Einar tried not to think about the deeds - the less he thought, the less he regretted.

The chill of the night in his bruised bones bought him aching back to the present. Cross Fields lay ahead of them. Einar made one quick estimation using his thumb and the dragon's horns for scale, before he shifted his weight forwards and the machine's head dropped. The wings half-furled as they slipped toward the city. Einar flattened himself against the bronze of its back and shut his eyes just enough to be able to squint out of them as they descended.

The ground rushed toward them faster and faster. The forces of it crushed Einar against the dragon and pressed Kara down over his back. He yearned to squirm away but the pull held him flush against the dragon's spine. Kara shrieked behind him as the little details of Fjordheim became visible. Swathes of bitter coalsmoke from the dragon billowed up into their faces, making Kara's untrained lungs wheeze and cough.

The wind rushed over them, cradling them and whispering sweetly past their ears as they fell. Einar kept his hand firmly over the controls and eased one of the dials. The dragon shuddered as its wings extended, levelling them out as it broke their speed. They shot over Fjordheim with the steep grey gables rushing by metres below them.

The garish orange oil-glow from the streetlamps glanced off of the underside of the dragon's wings and the puddles in the worn cobblestones below as they flew. Einar eased the dragon closer to the ground. His hands begun to shake and his gut clenched - and he could have sworn Kara whimpered. The gables galloped by with the same warning-thrum of the Royal Guard's faraway hooves, sending shivers trampling down Einar's spine.

The roofs disappeared as if magic more powerful than his had willed them into not being, replaced by the tops of birch trees so sickly they looked as if they were dying. Einar jerked the dragon left as it skimmed the tops of the trees, bringing it groundwards sharply. He bought the wings into an arch soften their landing, only later realising that it almost slipped his mind with his tight-chested frenzy.

"You... You didn't crash..." Kara breathed, throwing herself at the ground off of the dragon's back. Her twig legs shook and looked as if they threatened to snap under the vigour. She was scared, obviously, but not scared enough to forget to drag the key out of the dragon with her.

Einar sat, eyes open but unseeing, with his hands spread over the dragon's neck as it puffed thicker clouds of smoke. The stenches of the city drifted over him, tousling his hair with its disgusting stink. Faint undertones of human sewage accompanied with industrial fumes and heavy overtones of damp hopelessness.

He longed for the crisp air of the cloudline, above the smog. If only he could recall its details, if only he could -

"Hey, Einar!"

His head jolted up and he stared at Kara. "What?"

"Where now?"

"Oh," Einar swung a leg over the dragon grudgingly. He made a quick scan around the park's familiar shadows - so familiar they couldn't play tricks on his mind anymore. Every patch of darkness was just as it usually was. They were safe, for the present.

"Come on," he said, resting one hand on the dragon's spade-like snout, leading it forwards with his magic. He and Kara walked in time down the gravel path through the middle of Cross Fields. Einar prowled like a snow-cat, light and cautious in his movements. Kara strolled like the palace idiot she was, oblivious as she gazed around with eyebrows arched with interest.

Einar's flat was a two-minute dash from Cross Fields. He could feel the shadows burning holes in the back of his coat as he lead Kara and the machine past darkened overhands and alleys. The cobblestones slipped beneath his feet, and he had to hush Kara twice.

"Shhh!" He would scold, harsh and sharp.

She would be silent and look at him with a single cocked eyebrow, as if it all was a joke to her and seeing his fear, riling him up, gave her petty satisfaction. Einar would scowl in return and fix his attention to creeping home safely. He knew bad people lurked in the shadows. As soon as they reached the peeling paint of his front door opposite the main canal, he rammed his key into the door and shouldered the door open. Einar let the dragon shove Kara aside as it followed him inside. She shut the door behind her.

His apartment was a cramped mess of mechanical parts and old clothes that lay discarded on the ground. There was nothing but a sofa, a stove, a cupboard, a bathroom, and a bedroom, islands in a sea of metal components and dirtied rags. The disorder was illuminated by a single grimy window above the kitchen sink. The unpleasant tang of engine grease hung thick in the air. Faint embarrassment flushed Einar's cheeks red. Kara didn't seem phased, however, and nosed around as she picked her way between the debris.

"Is there any water?" She asked, half-shouting from the bathroom. Einar hoped feverishly he hadn't left anything questionable in view.

"You can't drink the water here," Einar sighed, "I have milk or beer. You're going to have to pay for this, you -"

He was cut off by a curt knock on the door. The sound echoed off the stone and timber of the walls. A cold flush washed down Einar's body. He had a terrible moment of recognition as he realised who he would find if he opened the door - if? As if he had a choice. This individual was the most painfully tenacious in Fjordheim.

He motioned to Kara to be quiet, and crept to the door and opened it just a crack, enough to see someone he really hadn't wanted to. He locked eyes with the person on the doormat, feeling the hairs on his arms rise like hackles.

"Hello, Einar. It's been a while, hasn't it? I've heard you stole the dragon."