Sacrifice
Sarah
On the sweltering July evening that would change my life forever, winding up as a blood sacrifice was not on my to-do list.
Trust me, I was running through the list in my head as I waded through our Pennsylvanian neighborhood creek looking for my baby sister’s beloved macaroni-and-bead necklace, which she had dropped when Rachel and I were watching the littles play in the stream earlier.
When it came time to bring them inside to clean up and get dinner ready, Abby was still desperately looking for it, and she threw an absolute hissy fit about leaving it behind, saying something about the “tree lady” (whoever the heck that was) saying it was important. So I, being the wuss that I was, told her I would look for it, and Rachel took them back inside.
Wading through a creek looking for a five-year-old’s necklace, half the components of which could be disintegrating in that very moment, had most certainly not been on that to-do list either, and it was now looking like it would be a long night. I still had dinner to make, though with any luck, Rachel was starting that for me. Though I doubted she would do the dishes afterward; finish, sort, and fold the laundry; clean up the messes in the kitchen from lunch and the forthcoming dinner; and put the littles to bed.
My phone in my back pocket vibrated. I pulled out the old model with the cracked screen and looked at the caller ID. And groaned.
I hit the answer button and snapped, “What?”
Rachel said, “Sheesh, no need to bite on first hello.”
“Oh, I think I do. Let me guess. You’re not starting dinner. You’re about to ask me if you can ditch me to go off to the mall or the movies with that latest boyfriend of yours.”
“First off, ouch. There’s no need to put it so harshly. I’m not ‘ditching’ you. After all, I brought the littles back and cleaned them up, didn’t I? Now they’re happily running amok—sand and mud free—through the house for you. Second, we’re going to the rock-climbing place: far more B.A. Third, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Yet,” I said, rolling my eyes even though my older sister couldn’t see.
There wasn’t a boy alive who had resisted Rachel once she set her smoky eye on them.
“True,” Rachel said smugly. Then her voice got sweet. “Come on, Sarah. It’s my night off. I have only so many nights off left before the semester starts again.”
So do I, I thought with a growing pit of dread in my stomach.
Except this would be my first semester of college, and in a very uncharacteristic move for me, I hadn’t fully decided where I was going, and the time to make that final decision was running out.
Oh, I’d gotten acceptances aplenty. But the gratification had worn off quickly in the face of being forced to choose my destiny. The hardest choice of all: stay local, like Rachel had…or leave. Pack my bags, get on a plane or in an even more beat-up car than the one Rachel and I shared now, and leave it all behind.
To play it safe, I accepted the offer of a local four-year university by their May deadline, but doubts still plagued me.
Staying local had all the usual advantages of lower tuition and living at home, but living at home had its own costs. Particularly, the needs of my large, busy family and two hectic, in-demand parents. I couldn’t see those costs decreasing.
If anything, they had increased with Mom and Dad taking on more responsibility at work; Michael moved out and married, with his own toddler to worry about now; and Rachel taking on less and less for her own, less noble reasons. And if anything had been drilled into me about college by now, it was that it would be hard, harder than high school, even though I’d taken almost all advanced classes by my senior year. I was only just now, in the middle of summer, catching my breath. I couldn’t imagine trying to juggle a part-time job, an even harder course load, and increasing family demands on my time and energy.
As I waded through that creek, I was tempted more than ever to just go. Even Mom and Dad were encouraging about that, saying it might not be too late for me to change my mind, or to transfer somewhere else after my first year. They said they would rebalance somehow to cover the gaping hole of responsibility I would leave behind. They were proud of the schools I’d gotten into. Not Ivy League (I hadn’t even dared mess with those), but good schools. Better than Rachel had managed, who hadn’t even bothered with applications and just gone to the community college, and seemed perfectly content to stay there, an undeclared major, even though she’d just finished her second year.
The most aggravating part of Rachel’s blasé attitude about her education was that I knew she would get whatever job she finally set her mind on anyway. Because she was Rachel.
Who, right now, was working her magic on me.
“Pleeeeease, Sarah? My most amazing, brilliant, faithful sister? I’ll buy you a book if you’ll take over tonight. Isn’t that author you like coming out with a new one soon?”
“Alright, fine!” I huffed, caving. Not just because of the bribe—I could never seem to say no to her, or to any family member, and I hated that.
I bent over to fish around for something shiny, but it just turned out to be a mica-laced rock, smelling of mud and minerals.
“Go. Leave me and have fun. But could you ask David if he could start dinner?”
My options for backup meal preparers were limited tonight, seeing as Mom was out of town at a conference and Dad was teaching night classes this summer. Even Lizzy was at dance practice. Which was why Rachel was supposed to be helping me with the littles. That left David, the next oldest kid after me.
“It’s not his night to cook,” Rachel said. “You know he’ll—”
“Just tell him to put a pizza in or something. You can put a pizza in or something.”
“We don’t have any left. I just checked.”
Figures. She had probably hoped it would add sweetness to the abandonment deal if she could at least throw something in the oven.
I gritted my teeth. “Could you please nicely ask David if he could at least start a meal for me? I’d take peanut butter and jelly at this point. The littles will be hungry soon.”
“He’s playing that new video game he just got. You know he’ll just—”
“Rachel, I am wading through mud right now, looking for Abby’s silly necklace. Do you want to be doing this instead, or do you want to brave David’s petty wrath to deliver a message and then be on your merry way?”
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll deliver the message. But you know what you’re going to find when you get back, and that’s zilch.”
I know, I thought as I squeezed my eyes shut. I know.
A breeze started blowing hard through the trees. I opened my eyes and looked up in surprise, but the sky was still clear, not a cloud in sight. Still, that wind felt nice, drying the sweat that the humid summer evening had worked up over my body and made my clothes cling unpleasantly.
Rachel’s voice brightened at my silence, which she correctly interpreted as giving up on even the David plan. “Thanks, Sarah. I’ll make this up to you, promise.”
She would, somehow. She wasn’t a monster. It was just…I was done. So done.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, anger dying in the face of that exhaustion. “Go have fun.”
“Will do! Love you, byeeeee.”
The call disconnected.
I sighed. Before I put the phone away, I set a five-minute timer.
I had to be able to look Abby in her adorable, watery eyes and tell her I had tried, and tried hard. So I would give this fruitless search another good five minutes…and then I would go in and take care of my family. Like I always did.
That was one of the hardest parts about the thought of leaving. Mom and Dad said they would manage without me. But…how?
I was too self-aware not to admit that there was an even deeper fear tangled up in all the others. My family was my world. We had moved so much that we’d had to bond together, just to even have friends, have normalcy, have something that always stayed the same, something you could count on. Their bonds around me were as needed as they were becoming suffocating. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I cut myself adrift. Just the thought filled me with terror, both for them and for me.
Without my family…without who I was to them…who was I?
That wind was kicking up now, making the tops of the trees sway. The scent it carried was crisp, much more like the cold clarity of winter than the heavy richness of summer. Dead leaves, stirred up from the mulch of the forest floor, were spinning in the eddies. The sunhat hanging by its cord around my neck flapped wildly at my back, my tiny side purse swung like a pendulum, and my sneakers sitting on the bank fell over, getting sand on the socks I’d stuffed inside them.
Worried now, I glanced at the sky again as I waded over to and grabbed the sneakers, but the sky was still clear. I hadn’t heard of a tornado ever hitting this area, but then, we’d only lived here a year, and there was a first time for everything. Still, if this was a tornado in the making, shouldn’t there be some clouds?
The wind was now officially cold. I had thought that my cooling skin was just my sweat evaporating, but now I was certain that with every passing second, the wind was plunging in temperature. Goosebumps were breaking out everywhere over all my exposed skin—which was a lot of skin, considering I was in a white tee and jean shorts.
Timer or not, I decided my search was now at an end. I’d done my best, but the necklace was gone for good, and I would just have to endure Abby’s disappointment. It was far better for me to be with them to keep them safe from any pending natural disaster than for Abby to have it back.
Just when I was about to step out of the stream and onto the sandy bank…it froze.
Instantly.
All the way down to its half-foot depth. I knew that all too well, because my feet were encased in ice. I couldn’t budge them.
I’d heard of snap freezes before, but this…was something else. Chills ran down my spine, and that wasn’t just from the frigid prison my feet were now in.
Vainly, I tried to jerk them free, but all I did was throw myself dangerously off balance. If I had fallen in that moment, I would have probably broken both my ankles. Horribly.
It was almost fortunate that in that very moment, I felt a sinking crack beneath me, as if my weight had broken through more fragile ice beneath, even though that was impossible. There was nothing below me but muddy, sandy dirt.… Right?
Then I fell.
Straight down.
Into darkness.
***
My head hurt when I woke up, and my mouth tasted like dirt. As I blinked my eyes open, the world still spun.
But something about that world was off.
That giant, squat, living-granite face with the blue fires for eyes leaning over me, for instance.
“Holy cow!” I shrieked, flinching away from it, no matter how much the movement sent further stabs of pain through my skull.
I braced my arms in front of me, uselessly, because the stoney, moss-and-vine covered ogre thing just grinned, grabbed one of those arms, and—nearly wrenching my arm out of its socket—lifted me up so that my feet dangled at least a yard off the ground.
A frantic glance around showed me that I was surrounded by these stoney, unfriendly looking, ten-foot giants. Behind them, a thick, luscious jungle towered around me from all sides. Unseen creatures hooted and hollered, exotic birds flitted through the thick canopy, enormous purple trombone-like flowers dripped glowing gold liquid, and the air I was gasping in was rich, humid, and cloying.
Assuming all this was real, that I hadn’t hit my head or wasn’t dead or hallucinating, I…was not in Kansas anymore. I wasn’t even in Pennsylvania anymore. And these were no friendly munchkins who greeted me.
They spoke to each other in grinding, stoney voices that made me flinch. Now, I was trying to not be rock-ist or anything, but I found it difficult to imagine that their hard expressions, blazing eyes, and harsh tones were…benevolent.
“Er, would you mind putting me down, please?” I asked, with little hope. But I had to try. My arm was in agony, and I was afraid that at any moment, the socket would pop.
My phone’s timer went off.
The ogre holding me shook me, gargling some rock nonsense, and I cried out in pain. With my other hand, I frantically pulled out the phone to turn off the timer.
Before I could even hit the stop button, another ogre grabbed the phone from me—scraping my fingers painfully as it did so—and crushed it in its fist. I stared as perhaps my last hope for salvation spilled from the ogre’s hand as so many useless shards of glass, plastic, and electronics.
Sure, maybe the phone wouldn’t even work here. It wasn’t even a nice phone; I’d been saving up for a new one for a while now. But it was the disheartening principle of the thing.
The only good thing in that moment, if you could call it that, was that my captor used its other hand to grab me by the waist instead, pinning my other arm and letting go of the one it had been holding, probably seconds from doing serious damage. I still hissed in pain as that abused arm fell limply against its stone fingers.
So, I had one arm free now. To defend myself against half a dozen ten-foot stone ogres. Fantastic.
As I thought through my options, the ogres seemed to be verbally doing the same. Not long after, they came to a consensus and began marching through the trees. With me in tow. Helpless, as far as I was aware, to do anything about that.
My captors’ giant fingers around me were literally rock solid, and when I tried wiggling, it grunted something nasty sounding at me and tightened its grip. I froze, not daring to push it to tighten further. I was already finding it hard to breathe. If I made it mad, I was sure it could crush me nearly as easily as its comrade had my phone.
After only a minute or two of marching, we broke through the jungle and came into an enormous clearing, larger than a football field. The sun shone down with mocking innocence on its dirt, moss, and rock expanse and on the crude stone table in the center, which the ogres were heading straight for.
Wait, I thought with dawning horror.
Was I going to be for dinner? Were they not even going to have the decency to kill and cook me first? I couldn’t see any sign of a fire or other element of meal preparation in sight. Just that enormous stone table, made with four boulders for legs and a large, flat stone for an uneven, unlevel surface.
Anxiety at my situation skyrocketed to downright terror. My heart felt like it was going to explode, my body sweated from more than just the sweltering jungle heat. I was almost surprised the ogre didn’t drop me from how slick I was becoming.
How had it all come to this? How had I plunged straight from my neighborhood creek in Pennsylvania, where my worst problem was the fact that I had so many chores to do, I’d be doing them until I collapsed into bed? I took it back, I took it all back. I would do the dishes from now until eternity if I would just wake up.
But the nightmare didn’t end. In fact, it only got worse.
The ogre dumped me on the table. Vertical, so I fell on my back with an impact that sent a blaze of pain through my already sensitive head, stunning me. That was fine with the ogres, because the others began tying me down, wrapping thick vines around me and under the table again and again, until I couldn’t budge, even though I soon recovered enough to try.
What did they need to do this for? Weren’t they just going to tear me limb from limb? Wrapping my entire body except my head and upper chest would make that rather difficult. Not that I was complaining about a change in plans, mind you.…
Until I saw one of them bring out a knife.
It was the epitome of a stone-age weapon: a large, flat rock that had been chiseled into a narrowing, pointed tip. But its shape and the way the ogre gripped its “handle” were unmistakable.
So was the way the others all gathered around, almost ceremoniously. And started chanting, repeating the same grinding, nails-on-chalkboard words as the others, in unison.
Just as quickly as before, my mind flipped the script.
Now, I was new here. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But from the way the biggest ogre was holding the knife over my torso with both rocky hands.…
I was almost one-hundred-percent certain that this was a sacrifice.
If I’d ever taken the chance to contemplate how my life would end, I would have never pictured this.
The ogre raised its serrated stone dagger with both hands above my chest and finished its garbling chanting with one final triumphant proclamation, so loudly that I was caught in the spray of spittle. If they hadn’t tied me on my back to the crude altar (not table), I might have rolled over to puke from revulsion. But my last lingering instincts of self-preservation and the frozen apathy of fear combined to keep the burning bile from rising further than my throat.
Besides, my mind was a little more occupied by the terrifying silence that ensued as the ogre paused ominously and its gathered comrades waited with bated breath and literally burning eyes for the dagger to plunge into my heart.
My very last thought was of bewildered loss. Who is going to tuck Abby in tonight?
And then.…
A roar.
A deafening, ears-ringing, bone-chilling, muscle-jellifying roar that I could never, in my deepest, darkest nightmares have ever imagined. It was like a Tyrannosaurus rex had stolen a megaphone and somehow held it up to its mouth with its tiny arm and gave the loudest, most bestial bellow of its life.
For one tenth of a second, the ogres froze. Their blue flame-eyes barely had time to widen and turn purple at the edges before IT was upon us.
I saw only a blur of a maw so big it filled my entire field of vision and teeth longer than baseball bats—curved, ivory, deadly canine baseball bats—before the knife-wielding ogre priest was gone with a screech as grating as steel nails scraping a granite boulder. From the way the screech rapidly faded, I assumed it had been tossed and was flying away from us at what would have been a lethal height and velocity for any human.
I couldn’t ponder the ogre priest’s fate beyond that. I was much more occupied with my own. Because not a second later, I was staring at the scaly gold underside of the Thing.
Which was at least a story above me, and so massive I could see nothing else. All I got was the impression of a horizontal mass with four giant oak-sized legs from the curvature of its giant musculature, which looked taut and powerfully lean in proportion to its size. As it turned, I glimpsed a long, supple tail as thick as a small car and as devastating as a battering ram, and once I saw outspread, shimmering webbed wings as large as galleon sails.
Screeches began filling the air as the Thing agilely twisted its girth above me. If I’d been capable of more thought than abject terror, I might have noted the oddity of how it never moved from its position over me, no matter how it had to turn, shift, or twist to counter whatever insane resistance the ogres were putting up for losing their prize to the much bigger and deadlier predator.
If I had noticed, I would have assumed that the Thing was determined to keep me for itself. Which would have led me to question why a single human female would have been appealing enough to steal and then guard so determinedly. To a Thing so big, every step caused a tremor, I would have been just a morsel.
But my brain wasn’t capable of such detached philosophizing now. The only thought it had the capacity to support was thinking of how to get away.
I yanked at my bonds, expecting to feel their implacable resistance once again. But there was none. My arms and legs thrashed freely across the rough stone. I had been so frozen with terror that I hadn’t even realized that at some point between the roar and now, the ropes had simply…fallen off me, crude but tight knots undone.
That oddity was enough to register in my brain, but I didn’t take the time to guess why. I pushed myself up so quickly my head spun.
Just at that moment, I realized the screeching had stopped, and as I looked around, I saw the last of the ogres were fleeing into the woods. The Thing above me growled, a rumbling sound I felt as much as heard, being just beneath the enormous chest where it originated. Then it roared after them in a threat universally understood at the primordial level what it would do to them if they dared come back.
Then it stepped back and away from me with a care that I might have noted in different circumstances. Instead, all I saw was the blessedly clear and scale-free sky and shadowy trees ahead.
I didn’t even think. I was already pushing off the altar and hitting the ground feet-first and sprinting before conscious thought caught up to me, heedless of how my bare feet bled from running on that rocky, mossy ground. I just ran.
Then I heard an astonishing thing.
I’d heard many astonishing things since stumbling into this nightmare. Guttural garbles coming from stone-like ogres with flames for eyes. Also, creepy chanting and terrified screeching from the same. That roar, which I would never, ever forget even if I lived to be a hundred. I would hear it as I lay dying, as if the sound had infiltrated every cell in my body to welcome me to the end.
Perhaps this new sound was so remarkable because it should have been unremarkable, and it was the stark familiarity in an unfamiliar and monstrous world that made it seem like the most unbelievable thing I had heard thus far.
It was a human shout.
I didn’t recognize the male voice. I didn’t understand the word he shouted. Even so, it was so astonishing that it pierced my haze of panic and made me stumble in my headlong sprint. For one split second, I hesitated.
Was another human about to be the Thing’s lunch? Or had he come to help me escape? Because escape was the only possibility for a human now, unless that human happened to have a tank or some missiles.
That second of hesitation was all the human needed to catch up to me, because in the next moment, something slammed into my waist, and I was flying forward.
But I didn’t hit the ground. Instead, I crashed into my tackler, who, through some feat of agility, had simultaneously grabbed me and twisted us in midair to take the brunt of our fall. My breath was still knocked out of me for a second from hitting his hard chest, but the ground would have been harder.
“What—was that—for?” I huffed, using my arms on either side of his face to push myself up. I had another split second of costly hesitation when our eyes met. His were a color I had never seen before: an astonishingly vibrant gold that seemed to be…glowing. Almost as bizarrely, the color perfectly matched his longish hair and short beard.
“Adelak,” he said urgently. “Dedran es ethankil.”
I didn’t understand a word, but then again, that wasn’t surprising. I had already been ninety-nine percent sure I wasn’t in Pennsylvania anymore, and his Babel talk pushed my certainty to one hundred. Thing was, though, I didn’t have time to waste surmising even that much because there was a dragon about to eat us.
That was when I admitted to myself that I knew what the Thing was.
Naming it didn’t make it any less deadly, and in fact made it about twice as terrifying, if that was even possible.
I scrambled to get off my tackler, but though he let me get onto my hands and knees to put some distance between us, he continued to hold on to my waist while shooting off more words I couldn’t comprehend.
“What…are you…doing?!” I panted in pure panic. “There’s a—”
That’s when I finally could twist enough to look behind us at our impending doom.
To see nothing and no one in the clearing but us.
I was so astonished, I nearly fell on him again. I looked around frantically, and the man let me go to do so. I sat back on my heels, fingers of one hand against the ground as I twisted and turned, but I could see no sign of the behemoth that had no doubt been baring down on us for the kill not a second before.
“Where—where—where—” I said, until realized I was repeating the same word like a broken record and bit my tongue to make myself stop.
“Adelak,” the man insisted, his voice turned soothing as he too sat up. I realized I was still crouched over his legs. I fell sideways onto my rear, partly to get off him, partly because I could do nothing else but sit there in numb shock.
“Where did it go?”
I stared, for a lack of anything else, at the altar where I’d come inches from being a human sacrifice and nearly as close to being in a dragon’s belly, if only by proximity. But I was reevaluating the past few minutes in a bewildering blur, rewriting the script again. I’d been certain the dragon had intended to.…
Well, actually, I had no way of knowing what the dragon had intended to do. And that was almost as disturbing as its sudden disappearance.
“Nema?” the man said, a questioning rise to the end of his speech. That is, if a vocal rise had the same meaning to him as it did to me.
When I glanced at him in a daze, his expression seemed to match the lilt in his voice: eyes open and searching, head tilted toward me.
“The….” I swallowed, finding it hard to force the word through my throat. “The dragon.”
I didn’t know why I was bothering. If I couldn’t understand him, he sure as heck wouldn’t understand me.
And yet, comprehension dawned on his face. “Drakón?” he asked. The A was lower, the G turned hard into a K, the low O fully vocalized—but it was unmistakably similar.
“Yes!” I said, pointing across the empty clearing. “Tell me I’m not crazy and that a…drakón was just there.”
He hesitated, looking at me as if not sure I was serious.
I groaned and put my head in my hands, which were still trembling from shock. “I’m crazy, aren’t I? Must have lost it there near the end in just sheer terror, I guess.”
I raised my head, eyes falling on the altar. “But then…what scared away those…other things? The ogres, or whatever they’re called?”
I couldn’t have imagined those too, could I? No—my wrists and ankles were still raw from the ropes they’d tied there. I could still smell their acrid stench in the clearing, lingering in the back of my nostrils.…
“Ahglen.”
“What?” I asked blankly, looking back at him.
He pointed at the altar with a dark, hard look. “Ther suther ep ‘ahglen.’”
The emphasis on the word the second time finally helped me understand.
“The ogres are called ahglen?” I asked.
It was only when he nodded that it hit me.
“Wait one freakin’ sec—you can understand me?”
A faint chuckle escaped his lips, and he nodded.
“How?” I demanded. “If you can understand me, why do you keep replying in your language?”
Once again, he hesitated. But this time it appeared less because he was evaluating how serious I was and more because he could not think how to explain.
“Never mind, then,” I huffed, getting to my feet.
I wanted to keep sitting. Actually, what I wanted was to lie on my back and stare at the sky until my shaking stopped, my sweat dried, and the world turned back to normal. But that didn’t seem like a smart idea with…ahglen somewhere in these woods. And, if I wasn’t crazy, a dragon.
How could I have imagined that roar?
“Eklan dres oden?” he asked hastily, getting to his own feet.
Then I was staring up—way up—at him.
Goodness. I’d known from being so up close and personal with him that he was rather…large. And I did not mean in the heavyset way. Every inch of him that I could discern underneath his loose golden shirt and pants appeared to be thick, hard muscle. Every…ninety inches or so of him.
I then felt every inch of my five-foot-six. For the first time, a bit of nervousness started creeping in. Surprising that it had taken this long, considering this guy had just tackled me. Maybe it was our shared humanity, but even as we were falling, I never once considered that the man might mean me harm; I had no idea why he’d done it and still didn’t, in fact. But I’d subconsciously assumed good intent.
I still did, seeing the clear earnestness in his golden eyes look back at me. But it was hard looking up at that seven-and-a-half feet of viking-esque beard and muscle and not feel a twinge of my comparative helplessness. Plus…all that…gold. His hair, his eyes, his clothing.… It was a bit more overwhelming standing up. Maybe it was the way the setting sun could now strike his face over the angle of the treetops, making him into something a bit less mortal and a bit more godlike than was suited for comfort.
I’d stand behind him if the ahglen came back, though. Somehow, I got the feeling that he could take them.
I realized from the puzzlement going over his features that I was still staring and looked away.
My eyes fell on the altar again. Hard for them not to, what with it being the only feature of significance in this clearing. I shuddered, rubbing my arms. Goosebumps were reappearing there from the chill of the drying sweat on my skin.
“What drove them away?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “If not a dragon?”
The man hesitated long enough that I looked back—all the way up—at him. If our facial expressions meant anything remotely similar, he was looking a bit…reluctant.
“What?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his hair. Which tussled those metallic, shoulder-length locks in a distracting way for me. “Yeth drakón.”
“I know,” I said, sighing at how short a distance this one-sided understanding was going to take us. “You already made it clear that I hallucinated the dragon.”
He was shaking his head grimly before I even finished. “Yeth drakón,” he said, emphasizing the first word this time, and pointing at the altar as he did so.
I puzzled it out for a second before my heart began hammering in understanding. “There was a dragon?” I asked, nervous. I glanced around the clearing, but it still was not in sight.
Just when a certain lovable Disney kid’s movie about an invisible dragon was entering my thoughts, the man sighed again. This time, he pointed to himself.
“Ani eh’drakón,” he said slowly, gently, as if to avoid startling me.
I stared at him, uncomprehending.
He huffed in frustration and folded his arms as he stared out into the clearing, as if trying to find something there to use to communicate with me.
“Drakón,” he began again, pointing beyond the altar.
“Right, I’m with you that far,” I said. “I saw that part for myself. And heard it—loud and clear. What I don’t get is where it went. You’d think I would have noticed a thing that size taking.…”
I trailed off, because as soon as I said the word went, his eyes lit up with an idea, and his pointing finger began tracing a line from the altar toward…us.
Ending pointing back at himself.
Again.
Ani eh’drakón, he’d said. While pointing to himself.
I stared. And swallowed. Even though it felt like no saliva was left in my mouth to go down.
“You…are the dragon?” I rasped.
He nodded slowly but firmly.
I couldn’t help it: I took an unconscious step back. I didn’t regret it, even when I saw him wince.
“Adelak,” he said quickly, hands spread out by his sides peaceably, palms toward me. The same word he’d said several times after chasing me down. Though I didn’t understand it still, his gesture and expression were unmistakable.
He meant me no harm.
“How?” I choked. “How…can you be.…”
He shrugged helplessly. I realized that perhaps that had been an unanswerable question, the kind that had no answer, even for philosophers speaking in the same language for hours, much less in our case. After all, I could have asked “Why am I human?” and there would have been nothing for him to say in reply.
As I stared at his tentative, all-too-human expression, I tried to banish my unease. But that roar.… That enormous mass of scale and sinew, that unstoppable force of death and destruction.…
Even given his imposing presence as a human, my weary mind just didn’t seem up to reconciling the two halves of the whole in my head.
I cleared my throat, “So…sorry, but just for clarity’s sake, I have to ask: you don’t…mean me harm?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Adelak. Ani droden makethwella.”
I believed him. With the openness of those eyes…I found it hard not to. That didn’t mean my primordial instincts quieted all at once, but…I found my heart rate beginning to slow.
“Great,” I said faintly. “Great. Um.… Glad we had this talk.”
In fact, it was a good thing that we’d cleared that up by then, because just at that moment, I heard yet another sound that I’d never heard before.
A powerful rushing in the distance, as if a great wind were sweeping through the trees toward us. Accompanied by a heavy whump…whump…whump.…
On any other day, I might have had no clue what was coming. With dragons on the mind, well.…
I am proud to say that when I looked toward the sound, though my face probably went white—judging from the sharp look the man cast me—I did not run for cover. Or scream. Or even flinch.
OK…I might have flinched. Just a tad.
“Edlen,” he said soothingly. But he stepped between me and the rushing, thumping sound.
That ratcheted my heart rate to a whole new level. Because if I found it difficult to believe that this human version of a dragon meant me no harm, then I was going to have a heck of a time keeping it together with this new, very dragonlike addition. If even he didn’t entirely trust the newcomer.…
The whumps made their presence felt; I could feel the ebb and flow of gusts of air first. Then, as the sound increased to almost a dull, hissing roar, I felt the air pressure in my eardrums with each beat.
Then the dragon appeared over the treetops, soaring low and fast.
Seeing the immensity of that apex predator coming straight for me, all my survival instincts kicked into the highest gear. I’ll admit it: if the man had not reached behind him in that moment and grabbed my upper arm in a loose hold, I might have bolted.
I doubted anyone seeing their second dragon would not have done the same.
At least I bit back the whimper that threatened to escape as the violet dragon soared into the clearing a second later. With two mighty backward wing flaps that sent blindingly powerful gusts of air, it hit the ground with its hind legs and settled elegantly onto all fours a second later.
Then…it was gone. Just like that—poof. Granted, I’d been huddling behind the golden man and not paying close attention, but I hadn’t thought it necessary to. How hard could it be to keep track of a beast the size of a super jet?
I had only just learned not five minutes ago that dragons could become something quite different, but I’d had the longest and most harrowing fifteen minutes of my entire life, and my mind and body were wrecked from the first adrenaline crash and needing to ramp up for another.
World views take longer than five minutes to adjust.
A second after the dragon disappeared, I realized my mistake as soon as I heard a human female swearing.
Foreign language or not, I was positive most of the words she was throwing at us like daggers were swears. And those daggers were coming closer. I peeked around the golden man and nearly flinched again.
Lithe, with the effortless grace of a cat. Fiercely beautiful with high cheekbones, a pointed chin, perfect eyebrows only marred by one small scar, and white teeth that flashed menacingly as she continued swearing. Olive skin. Long, slightly kinky, bound dark violet hair with matching eyes still glowing. Violet plate armor tightly covering every inch of her below the chin, including her long neck. And, of course, she must have been over six feet tall.
I didn’t know if I had ever seen a more intimidating young woman. My sole comfort was that it appeared her furious gaze was fixed not on me but on the golden man in front of me.
Or…it was until she caught sight of me peering around him. Halfway in between where she’d landed and us, she froze in both mid-step and mid-curse.
She took me in with wide eyes for one moment. Then those eyes narrowed as they made their way back to the man.
He winced. I didn’t blame him. Those eyes promised death.
Then I did perhaps the most courageous thing I had ever done.
This man…dragon…person had just saved my life. I wasn’t sure why, but I believed him when he said it was with good intentions. If he had violated some kind of dragon code by doing so, I didn’t think it fair that he be sentenced for it while I huddled behind him.
So, since his grip on me had gone slack, I slipped out from his grasp—ignoring his muttered protest—and stepped in front of him. I did my best to lift my chin and square my shoulders. I’ll admit, though: meeting her glowing violet eyes with her dragon form fresh on my mind took a heroic effort.
“It’s not his fault,” I said, proud that there was only the slightest tremor in my voice. “I’m not sure what he did wrong, but I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for him. So…if he’s to be punished, then I should be the one to take the punishment.”
She stared at me for a moment, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Then she looked at the man just behind me—not a hard feat with both able to look over my head—and arched one eyebrow.
This time, when she spoke, her tone was much more on the dry than lethal side as she asked the man a pointed question. He replied steadily, with no hint of anxiety or guilt in his voice.
Sheepishly, I got the feeling that I might have overestimated the level of trouble we had been in. That feeling appeared to be confirmed when the young woman rolled her eyes; I was pretty sure from the casual hand on her hip and her air of pure annoyance that the eye roll meant the same thing to me as it did to them.
My heartbeat slowed to a pace that was not quite normal but much closer to self-consciousness than fear.
The young woman strode the remaining distance to us while she and the man traded questions and answers. Meanwhile, he moved to my side, so they were no longer talking over my head. She still glared at him, but now I recognized the glares as not meaning literal harm, and his expression was merely chagrined as he took his scolding. I hazarded a guess that far from wanting to kill him, she had been worried about him—that he had been reckless in either taking off on his own or trying to tackle an entire tribe of ahglen solo, or maybe both.
I wasn’t sure why either would be a problem; he’d managed them easily, and I couldn’t imagine anything that would have posed a challenge for him in dragon form—and few in his current one. But that was probably my dried-up imagination failing me. If a fierce young woman like her had been worried, then things could have gone differently.
Although I shuddered to think how.
The young woman’s gaze fell back on me for a moment, and she asked me a pointed question. All I could do was stare at her helplessly before the man interceded, probably explaining my lack of understanding. She demanded something, he shrugged in reply.
When she looked back at me, she said something that sounded different from the way they’d been speaking before. I got the fleeting impression of a more lilting, almost melodic cadence. Then I realized she’d most likely been trying a different language on me.
“Still don’t understand that one,” I said.
She scowled and spoke again. This time, her words were much more clipped and guttural.
I just shook my head. “Nope, sorry.”
The man spoke this time, trying a different language again: one that sounded like Latin, which I’d taken as my language credit in high school. I shook my head again. “Nope.”
The young woman threw up her hands and barked something at the man. He frowned severely at her and gestured to me as he replied. The young woman spread her hands and said something emphatically, and she too gestured at me.
I sighed, feeling the second adrenaline crash of the day draining the rest of my patience. I put a hand to my forehead, feeling even more of a headache coming on. “Look, guys, I know there’s not much you can do about it, but it’s getting annoying for you to be talking about me like this as if I’m not right here.”
The man looked at me and grimaced. “Ahdrah.”
I was fairly sure that meant “sorry.” The young woman huffed, not looking the least bit sorry as she glared at him.
He groaned, but the way his shoulders sank seemed to indicate giving in somehow. He looked at his friend imploringly, but she only smirked and then gestured to me with both hands and a comment that I swear sounded like, You’re the one who saved her. She’s your problem.
He sighed but didn’t argue. Then he looked at me hesitantly.
“Look, I don’t mean to be a bother,” I said. “I’m grateful for your help and all that. But I should get home. If…that’s possible I guess.… I don’t suppose you two have ever heard of a place called Pennsylvania?”
As I had expected, both just stared at me. I sighed, shoulders drooping. “I…didn’t think so. Seeing on the planet I’m from, there aren’t dragons or ogres or ahglen or whatnot.”
The young woman said something dryly, and I was glad I couldn’t understand her, because I guessed from the man’s glare at her it wasn’t complimentary.
I tried to ignore her and asked the man, “Do you have any idea how I could have gotten here? I was just wading in a creek in my world, and.…”
I swallowed. “Then something…weird happened. Everything got windy and cold, and I fell through ice, and by the time I woke up, I was…here.”
From the grim look in his eyes, I saw he did have some idea, even before his nod. Even the young woman’s expression sobered, and they exchanged meaningful looks.
I swallowed. “Do you have any idea how I can get back?”
He hesitated, looking at the young woman. She just looked back at him, folded her arms, and shrugged. Then she unfolded one arm to point at the fading light and said something firm.
My heart sank. “I’m assuming that means you need to go soon.”
She looked back at me with an eyebrow arched in surprise, but the man chuckled at her and said something that sounded teasing. She scowled at him and snapped something back.
The man ignored her and looked back at me. And sighed. Then began rolling up one of his sleeves with a grimace.
“Uh, what’s going on?” I asked, eyeing him.
The young woman snorted, but at his glare, she seemed to take pity on either him or me and made herself useful. With her most serious expression yet, she pointed to me and then made a beak shape and mimed talking by opening and closing the “mouth.” Then she cupped her hand behind her own ear, made her eyes demonstratively wide, and nodded with slow emphasis. Then she looked expectantly at me.
“Uh.…” I said. “You’re saying that you can understand what I’m saying?”
She nodded.
“Ka avain drakón,” the man told me with an inclined head. Then, for emphasis, repeated, “Drakón, hem?”
Drakón—dragon.
“Right,” I said, remembering. “You two can understand me because you’re dragons.”
Because that’s logical, I thought but wasn’t rude enough to say out loud. Besides, I understood all the rules of reality had changed.
He nodded, giving a quick, tense smile at my effort.
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with.…” I said, looking at his now bare forearm. Heavily muscled, of course, but hairless. Not a single freckle, either. Just smooth, pale skin.
The woman waved her hand to get my attention again. Once she had it, she pointed to her own mouth and opened and closed it to mime talking. Then she pointed to me, frowned, and made a slashing motion while shaking her head: a clear negative.
“But I can’t understand what you say,” I repeated back to her.
I tried to hide my impatience to know where this was going. If they had to go soon and leave me in this jungle to find my way back home, I’d prefer they started figuring out a way to help me rather than state the obvious.
She nodded. Then she pointed at the man and handed him one of the daggers at her waist, hilt first.
As if that were his cue to take up the explanation, he took the dagger and looked at me to make sure I was watching. Then, with perfect equanimity, as if he did this every day, he pricked his pointer finger with the dagger.
I stared, trying to wrap my head around why he’d done that. Was he trying to show how sharp the dagger was? But why?
He held his finger out to me, inviting me to look. Swallowing, but glad the sight of blood didn’t bother me, I took a step closer and looked.
And stared.
His blood…was the same color as his eyes and hair. It was…gold.
“Yven drakón,” he said.
I looked up at him, eyes wide. “Dragon blood?”
“Yven drakónani,” he clarified.
I frowned as I puzzled what the meaning could be. “Your dragon blood?”
“Hem,” he said with a nod. Again, that tense smile of approval.
I looked at the woman, at her violet hair and eyes. “But yours…would look different?”
“Hem.” She pointed to that drop of blood. Then to her ear and her mouth. Then waited expectantly.
I looked between her and that drop of blood several times, trying to put all the pieces together.
They could understand me because they were dragons. I couldn’t understand them…because, well, I wasn’t. This was dragon blood, which they had thought was important to show me, because.…
“It’s your blood, isn’t it?” I looked up at the man. “Something in your blood makes you able to understand me.”
“Hem!” he said with a wide smile.
“I still don’t understand,” I said with a frown. “Why are you telling me all this? How does that help me?”
“He’yven ythresha ve seyven,” he said patiently.
When no comprehension dawned on my face, he sighed. Then he reached toward me with the finger trailing a bit of blood—trying not to startle me, eyes locked on mine for permission.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked nervously, backing up a step.
The young woman threw up her hands again and grumbled, clearly nearing the end of her patience. The man spared a glance at her and said something sharp that made her scowl, but she folded her arms and fell silent. He looked back at me with a grimace of apology. Then he reached up with the bleeding finger and tapped his own ear.
I reached up to touch my ear. Could a dab of his blood, however magical, really give me the same understanding that he had? He seemed convinced it could, or at least wanted to try.
I trusted him, but I was still apprehensive. Yes, it was just a drop or two. Yes, it looked thick, gold, and metallic and nothing like human blood. But it was still blood.
Yet what other choice did I have?
“OK,” I whispered.
He moved his hand again, raising it to the ear I’d exposed by tucking my dark hair behind it. He lightly brushed his fingertip down the outer edge with the faintest of touches.
It was still enough to send a shiver down my spine. Maybe it was the surprisingly warm blood—almost hot enough to be uncomfortable—lingering on my ear. Or the tingles that shot over the entire surface and into my ear canal in one quick flash. It couldn’t have been the way he leaned in close, eyes tight with concentration, as if willing the blood to do something.
“What…happens now?” I asked nervously, avoiding his gaze.
Then he spoke. And when he did, my heart gave a thud and my eyes shot to his again. “What was that?”
He said the same words again—for the third time now, since they were the same ones he’d said after I’d asked, “How does that help me?”
“He’yven ythresha ve seyven.”
I still heard them in his language. But now, after three times—especially after the two since he’d touched my ear with his blood, I understood. That’s what he had been trying to tell me.
The blood will help you understand.
My jaw dropped. “It…it did! Holy cow, but…it did. It took me a bit, but I understood that.”
He grinned and leaned back.
“How?” I asked, dumbfounded. I touched my ear, but the blood must have already dried. I didn’t so much as feel crustiness. “It’s just blood.”
“Yven a’drakón,” he reminded me. It took effort, but I understood that too. It helped that I somewhat knew the words already: Dragon blood.
So not just any old blood. Dragon blood. Which, apparently, was so darn magical that it could impart its language abilities on me with just one swipe of the stuff in the right place. I could take nothing for granted anymore.
The young woman said something fast and hard, pointing at the darkening sky. She spoke too quickly for me to keep up, but I could guess her meaning: time was short.
The man muttered something to her, but he raised the dagger to his bare arm in a businesslike manner.
“Wait, what are you doing now?” I said.
“Et sa kalthen?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. The amount of effort it took for me to puzzle out the meaning—like turning the dials into just the right positions on an antique radio—proved his point.
Was that enough?
I grimaced. “No, but…are you seriously going to…to cut yourself right now to make up the difference?”
He shrugged, as if that were nothing. “Hem.”
I stared at him. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Aaagh!” the young woman said, throwing up her hands.
I didn’t need a translation for that.
She turned on her heel and began marching toward the woods. She shouted something over her shoulder while drawing a claymore that had been strapped to her back and looked far too large for any normal person to wield.
I looked at the man in mild alarm. He just shrugged and sighed, not appearing concerned. “Ad’a ythren,” he said. She’ll be back.
“Sorry,” I said with an apologetic grimace. “I know I’m dragging this out, but it’s all so…foreign to me. Using blood as a tool like this.… Especially if it means hurting you.”
He nodded. “Kalla,” he said, holding out his finger. Look.
I looked down at it, wondering what I was supposed to be seeing. Then frowned as I realized that was perhaps the point. “Wait one second—isn’t this the finger you pricked? Where’s the blood? Or scab?”
“Wyrshen,” he said with a smile. Gone.
“Yeah, I see that,” I said. “Where did it go?”
He chuckled. Then he pricked his finger again with the tip of the dagger and held it out to me. “Edrin.” Watch.
I watched, then stared as he wiped the bead of blood away with his thumb to reveal the tiny hole, which disappeared not a second later. He wiped the blood trail off on his pant leg and showed me his perfectly whole finger once again.
My eyes went wide. “No way. You can heal that fast?”
“Hem,” he said with a chuckle.
I looked at his forearm. I was getting an inkling how such smooth perfection was possible. “How fast would your arm heal?”
He shrugged. “E’dek ev resh.”
I still didn’t understand what a dek was, but I got the vaguest sense that it wasn’t long.
“It wouldn’t scar?” I wanted to be sure I wasn’t asking something unreasonable of him before I gave him the go ahead.
He shook his head. “Ahn.” He raised an eyebrow and inclined his head pointedly at his arm, as if to say that if what he was about to do scarred, he’d be covered in scars by now.
I frowned. “This really isn’t a big deal to you, is it?”
He shook his head again with a small smile. “Ahn.”
“OK,” I said as I let out a breath. “If that’s the case, and you really want to do this.…”
“Hem,” he said firmly.
“Alright, then,” I said, steeling myself. As if I were the one about to be cut open. “Go ahead.”
Without further ado, he calmly raised the knife and cut a neat line across the inside of his forearm. Thick golden blood congealed in the crevice of parted skin, so hot it steamed in the air. My stomach turned a bit, especially when I caught the faintest whiff of something pleasantly pungent, almost like a spice; the way it appealed to me was the exact opposite of comforting. Revulsion was the proper reaction. What did the lack thereof say about me?
I wanted to look away or to step back, but I fixed my eyes on the wound. This was for my sake. I wouldn’t take that for granted by looking away, no matter how uncomfortable I made myself.
He swiped his finger down the line of blood, collecting enough to paint a good portion of his finger gold. Then he raised his finger and looked at me questioningly for final confirmation. I swallowed and nodded, turning to show him my other ear while tucking my hair behind it.
This time, he covered my ear in blood, moving his finger back to his arm several times as if his wound were a palette and his finger a brush. The hot tingles that were shooting from my ear into my skull were enough to make me close my eyes within seconds from the effort it took to hold still.
Just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he moved back to the first ear he’d touched, painting it entirely over. I distracted myself from the sensation by imagining how strange my blood-painted ears would look once he was done. Good thing Mom had convinced me to let my hair grow so long, down to nearly my waist, so it could conceal them.
“How long will this last?” I asked, searching for another distraction.
He stepped back and examined his handiwork on both ears. “A sevenday, perhaps. Maybe a bit more. It’s always hard to tell.”
It took me a whole second to realize that his meaning came through so quickly and clearly, he might as well have been speaking English to me.
“Holy cow,” I breathed.
I answered his questioning look. “The difference. Goodness, it’s like…I had cotton in my ears before or something, but now…I don’t even have to think about it to understand you. I just do.”
“Then it’s working as it should,” he said with satisfaction. “Good. Because that’s Yvera returning from her scouting, and she’s not going to wait for us to leave any longer.”
I turned and saw the violet-haired young woman striding back to us. I noted enviously how much ground she could cover with those long legs of hers. She would dominate the competition in track.…
I made myself focus on my priorities. “Oh,” I said, trying not to sound nervous. “Good. Um, I guess that means you can give me directions on how to get home and be on your way.”
“You don’t honestly think it’s safe for you to wander around this jungle with a whole rogue tribe of ahglen after your blood, do you?” he asked, folding his arms. “I went through all that trouble to explain to you that I’ll get you the help you need, but you’re going to have to come with us first and wait until morning. Even I shouldn’t be out here at night, which is why Yvera is so anxious to get me back.”
“Oh.” The relief felt like a mountain was being lifted off my shoulders. I trembled with it. “Thank you. I was not looking forward to.…”
“Ending up right back where you started?” he asked with a crooked smile and dark eyes, inclining his head toward the center of the clearing. And the altar there.
“Speaking of which, we should smash that before we leave, Ben,” Yvera said briskly as she reached us.
“Right,” the man said grimly.
I was stuck on his name. “Ben?” I asked.
I had a tough time believing such an imposing man had such a run-of-the-mill name as “Ben.”
“Short for ‘Koriben,’ actually, but hardly anyone except my elders calls me that,” he said with a crooked smile, as if inviting me in on a joke. “You can just call me Ben.”
It was the unexpected comradeship in his eyes that made it dawn on me. The beard had thrown me off, but.…
“Wait, how old are you?”
Yvera snorted and Ben laughed. “Not much older than you, I imagine. Twenty summers.”
“I’m twenty-one,” Yvera said smugly, as if that made a whole lot of difference.
I tried not to stare. Twenty.… Just two years older than me? He couldn’t be.…
Granted, I did not know how long a year lasted on this planet, but still.… He thought we were close to the same age. He thought we were…peers.
“And your name?” Ben prompted, interrupting my muddled thoughts.
“Oh. Sorry,” I said, feeling heat rising in my cheeks for no good reason. “Sarah.”
“Sarah,” he repeated with a brilliant smile, as if he could no longer contain the excitement he was inexplicably feeling. “You won’t be able to appreciate the full gravity of this until we’ve explained, so just trust me for now when I say it is a rare honor to meet you.”
My blush deepened. I didn’t know what to say in reply, but Yvera’s impatience saved me.
“Yeah, yeah,” Yvera said. “Daylight is wasting, remember? Now that she can understand us and knows we’re not kidnapping her, can we go now?”
Ben sighed but didn’t argue. “Are you carrying her or am I?”
I noted with interest that his arm had already scabbed up, and I could almost see the ridges sinking as I watched.
Yvera snorted. “Like I said: you found her, so she’s your responsibility. Besides, I need my full range of motion in case your dallying gets us ambushed.”
“Is that…likely?” I asked, trying not to sound worried.
“Not if we leave now, no,” Ben assured me. “Yvera is…my bodyguard, basically. It’s her job to be paranoid.”
That raised quite a few questions for me, none the least of which was why he needed a bodyguard, but Yvera shoved him and said, “Less talking, more changing. Go on. Shoo. I’ll get her onto you, we smash that altar, then we’re out of here.”
“Be nice to her, Yv,” Ben said sternly, but he turned and started walking away.
“‘Be nice to her,’” Yvera mocked pettily. “Who does he think he is? The King?”
“I heard that!” Ben called over his shoulder.
“Uh, is he a king?” I whispered to her.
“What? Pshh, no,” Yvera said condescendingly.
“Oh, good,” I said with a sigh of relief as I watched Ben’s retreating figure.
The thought of having someone that important bleed for my sake had twisted my insides. Plus, I knew so few people in this world; I’d felt a pang to think that the first person I’d ever met was the one I’d never see again once he inevitably passed me off to someone else.
Because I was watching this time, I saw Ben fall forward, and in a bewildering and nausea-inducing few seconds, his form shifted and stretched and expanded and surged in all directions, until not a handful of moments later, I was staring at a golden, scaled behemoth that occupied good fourth of the enormous clearing, one so large that he had to turn carefully in place to keep his giant tail and roof-sized wings from scraping the trees as he did.
Had Yvera been as large? I was almost certain she hadn’t. I couldn’t imagine any creature being bigger. Or more…magnificent.
Yes, now that the worst of my terror was over, I could admit it: he was the most awe-inspiring creature I had ever seen. At the end of a very exhausting, world-changing half hour, the sight of him was enough to make me unsteady for a reason other than but not unlike fear.
Awe in its extremity feels the same.
“Nah,” Yvera said casually as the dragon completed his rotation and fixed us under his golden, serpentine gaze. His neck frills and two sets of thick, spiral horns fanned around his head more majestically than any mane or crown. “He’s only the Heir.”
