She looked up, and I saw something . . . shiver inside her blue eyes, striking the shining surface like bolts of lightning. I jerked my eyes back to the prince. He was being helped to his feet, Mellors speaking very earnestly with him, no doubt wanting to take his place. The prince shook him off, staggering as he did so. “One of these eldritch objects is having an effect on her,” I said, turning the girl around and searching within the strange pockets she had in her garments. She resisted, calling me names, but I yanked a crystal and a small wand out of one, then went to the next.
“If one of them is keeping the fire back, might need to be careful about taking it from her,” Natty said. That stilled my hands. We all eyed the wall of flames.
“Tess,” I said, “I need you to tell which item is helping you control the fire and the clouds.”
“No!” she said, tears forming in her eyes, shining brilliantly in the low light. The clouds began to roil in earnest now, the rumble of thunder almost a mumbled threat in defence of its mistress.
“Tess, you need to let this go.”
“No! No!” she shrieked, the wind begin to whip around us, tugging at the unnaturally cordoned off fire, forcing its licking shapes to flicker. “No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this! None of it!” For a moment, it was as if everything stood still. I didn’t need to watch for the prince, see how the men reacted because there was no one else, no one but Tess and I. “We inherited Nan’s shop, we found real magic! Every fictional character I’ve ever wanted to meet popped into the shop every morning!”
“Including Merlin,” I said. She didn’t reply, her lips thinning down hard. “Merlin, Tess.”
“Including Merlin.” Her voice was a thin echo of mine. She looked away, brushing at her eyes furiously, rubbing her hands hard on her pants, as if to eradicate their existence. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” she said, thrusting a shaking hand at the frozen forms of the prince’s entourage. “I was going to have an adventure. Meet people of different species, see lands no human has laid eyes on, develop my skills somehow and become a goddamned hero and instead . . .” Her eyes raked down my form. “Instead. . . .” her eyes flicked over to where the prince stood, forever ready to begin fighting again. “Instead, I’m sucked in by a pretty face and an even prettier house and by cute furry animals. Instead, I think I’m being wooed by a handsome prince, but really he’s trying to work out whethe
r to rape me, eat me, or both. Instead, he almost does just that to my sister. Instead, I watch him butcher those poor, stinking, screeching harpies, cutting their tits off like beasts thrill killing. And all I can do is read and watch movies, which I’ve always bloody done, and watch you come to my rescue again.”
“I’ll always come to your rescue, Tess. I’m your big sister.”
“Well, I don’t want you to have to anymore! I want to be able to save you, save myself! I don’t ever want to have to be at the mercy of dickheads like that ever again!”
I take a deep breath, then another, letting the weight of the air I have taken in settle in my chest. Now that I have time to cast my awareness throughout my body, I can sense the oddly augmented sections of it. Strength where there wasn’t, muscles that had developed instantly instead of over time, magic that had never burned within me. I couldn’t say precisely how, but as I breathed, it was as if those alien parts of me became highlighted. I reached for my sister instinctively, pulling her close and wrapping my arms around her. “You are the hero, Tess,” I said, and with that, my limbs turned golden bright, flaring for a moment before the light shifted and infused my sister’s body.
I blinked and there, standing before me, clad in what looked like a tight, teal, neoprene body armour was Tess. Her hair was scraped back from her face into a high ponytail, a kind of partial skullcap protecting her head and keeping her hair up and out of the way. I handed her the now bloody heavy spear and she clasped it lightly before turning her eyes back to the prince. We both took a deep breath in, me with relief, Tess with determination if the set of her shoulders said anything and then sound, movement all rushed back.
“Whoa, what the fuck happened this time?” Gabe asked, looking at the two of us. I didn’t answer him; I couldn’t. For the first time since he woke, I saw him, Gabe, whole, unbeaten, unbruised.
“Oh, my God . . .,” I said, reaching up to touch his face.
“Ash, that you?” he said, his eyes going wide. I couldn’t answer, a lump the size of my head was blocking my throat. I tried to swallow and failed, my eyes starting to fill with tears. He’d taken a hell of a beating for me, been flogged to the point of unconsciousness, broken bones, bruising, internal damage. Now was not the time to have a crying fit, I’d given my sister my bloody mash-up of superpowers because, for some reason, it was really important that she save the day. Had I just sent another person I loved in to get their arse kicked? Warm, strong arms surrounded me as I turned to watch her stalk towards the prince, spear in hand, and I sank back against his hard chest, feeling something I hadn’t realised that had been screwed up tight until he held me, release. “Gotta admit, as hot as you were as GI Jane, I’m glad to see you back in your own body, Ash,” he murmured into my ear. I lifted my head, so it rested momentarily in the hollow of his neck, breathing in that woody, motor oil scent of his.
“Me, too.”
“God, was I that fast?” I asked, watching Tess attack like a whirlwind, her spear spinning, forcing the prince to stumble and scrabble to escape her blows. She paused when he reached his men, waiting for him to get to his feet, then started again. The storm still grumbled above us, building in power and intensity, the light of the bright-green flames that engulfed almost all of the prince’s lands growing to a bright poisonous green under the purple of the sky. The prince was desperate, swiping at her with increasingly unsteady motions, arms starting to shake with fatigue, red splashes of blood all over his body. She met him head on, taking advantage of his clumsy mistakes and forcing more with the viciousness of her blows. “She’s close,” I said, watching the prince clamber back, one of his legs now struggling to keep him upright. She’d smashed the butt of her spear into it and his muscles were struggling to do as he asked as a result.
She was going to kill him. I watched her play with him, fresh, strong, and fast; everything he wasn’t. I looked at the now almost broken form of the prince and considered what that would mean. Back home, neither of us would ever consider killing someone. It’s not something most law-abiding citizens would consider. But this world, like many worlds I assumed, had men in it that made death seem like the only alternative. For some reason, some men and some women raised their sons to believe that the bodies of others were somehow their domain, that being a man meant ignoring the sovereignty of others’ bodies, and that they were only following their God-given natures when they forced themselves onto others. Rape isn’t about sex; it’s about power, the ultimate expression of power. You take sexual pleasure from the complete inability of another’s to stop you from doing what you like to their body. You use your superior physical, psychological, or economic strength to debase someone, reduce them to a series of holes for you to empty yourself into. I should have risen above it, should have been nobler and cried out for Tess to hold back, to beat the prince to a bloody pulp and not flick the plasma blade to life on her spear. Instead, I remembered his iron fingers, digging into my wrists, tugging down my jeans, and I remembered Gabe’s battered body, so I watched, silently as my sister’s plasma blade flicked on, striking the prone form of the prince, the blade splitting him neatly into two.
Mellors’ face was a mask, of rage, of disbelief, of grief. It took a few minutes for him to register what had happened and then he threw his head back, howling at the sky. The storm began to shift in earnest now, lighting smashing down into the green fire-scorched land, the smattering of early rain beginning. “You fucking bitch!” he growled, snatching up his sword and running at Tess. “Oh, fuck!” I gasped, but as he ran, we were all startled by the bugling call that echoed around us, coming from the sky. Flying through the clouds was a great red dragon, his scales glowing. He screamed out his displeasure at Mellors, but the wolfman paid him no mind, approaching my sister as her attention was completely fixed on the dragon. “TESS!” I shouted as Mellors raised his sword, ready to thrust as soon as he got within range. Whump! The dragon swept down, flattening the green flames with his momentum, snatching up the wolfman and then back winging rapidly to gain height, the figure thrashing between the dragon’s jaws growing smaller and smaller before being tossed, spinning head over tail until he landed like a stone into the green flames.
“We have to leave now,” Tess said, her voice strangely accented, but the desperation was still evident. “I can no longer hold back the flames. We must all get on Miazydar’s back the moment he lands. He will take us home.” The dragon gave us no chance to discuss the matter, dropping almost cat-like between us and the gate. I felt an ache in my heart as Tess ran over and buried her head in the massive beast's neck, he curling around her, allowing them a moment, before jerking his head up, great golden eyes regarding us.
“C’mon,” I said, tugging at Gabe’s arms.
“What about them?” he asked, pointing towards the prince’s men who were becoming increasingly agitated, not willing to run towards the dragon that killed their leader and not wanting to be taken by the fire.
“Run!” I shouted, knowing full well there were plenty of instigators and abettors of violence amongst them. I didn’t have time to play judge, jury and executioner then; I just wanted to get bloody home. We took my advice, the four of us legging it to the beast’s side. The flames followed us and if the screams behind us were anything to go by, some of them got caught up in it. Gabe jerked his head back and then grabbed my hand, hauling me along and then up onto the back of the dragon when we reached it, Tess already seated astride the animal's shoulders.
“Take hold of the spikes with all of your might!” she said when we were all on board. “This is going to be a complex ascent.”
Apparently, complex was dragon rider for feeling like your gut was being pulled through your nose as the dragon seemed to jerk itself upwards into the air, its great wings beating hard, trying to get some distance between us and the manor grounds. And we needed it, the flames that had wreaked havoc on the grounds suddenly went about consuming the rest and then inexplicably, burned out. I looked up at Natty who was seated in front of me, claws digging hard into the spines that grew on the dragon’s back. “Must have done its job,” he said, looking quizzical.
“The storm, too,” I said, as the sky cleared to a much less sullen washed-out grey.
As a kid, riding on the back of a dragon was right up there in my top ten things I would have loved to have happened. The reality? Turns out it wasn’t quite as awesome as I’d thought. I was so scared I was going to slip off the smooth scales and fall to my death, a horrible ache started to build in my body from all the muscle tension. The wind whipped my eyes, so I was forced to keep my head down and my eyes squinted because I couldn’t wipe away the streaming tears. Bugs hit us with frightening regularity; I was pretty sure I was going to get off this dragon looking like the front end of a car after a long road trip. I didn’t have long to find out because we landed back in Bartertown less than an hour later.
“Come, I’ll help you down,” Tess said, standing by the dragon’s side and holding out her hands. I forced my fingers away from the spike I had been grabbing and wasn’t afraid to admit I needed my sister to carry me off like a big baby. It was kinda nice, seeing her being all take charge-y.
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