in the little black MG with my uncle and Baert. I opted to fly home atop Dragon. I finally found contentment from his scaly heights. While we glided placidly through the air, keeping the treetops and roof tops at a safe distance below, I relaxed my body and reveled in the clean, crisp air. Each whoosh of Dragon’s wings seemed to steady my heartbeat.
Dragon was respectfully quiet. He didn’t try to enter my thoughts, and I didn’t try to communicate to him either. But honestly, my brain, though finally feeling more stable again, was saturated with overwhelm and exhaustion. If I had something to say, I wouldn’t have known which cortex to search in to find it. I was content with this numbness.
“I am your friend, Evechild,” he said suddenly. I don’t know what prompted him to say this. But it made me feel warm all over.
My friend – my friend who is a European Arrowtail, what a grand thing to say! – swooped into my backyard. He eyed the old wooden swing suspiciously. It rocked slightly back and forth in greeting. I wanted nothing lighthearted; I wanted nothing serious. I just wanted my mom.
Dragon didn’t follow me into my house. He reverently nodded and sat down erect like a guard as I opened the kitchen door. Inside, I made a weak attempt to clean up after the morning’s waffle adventures and gave up. Uncle Seb did a pretty decent job of patching the hole in the ceiling where the water had gushed through. My mom was just enough of a go-getter-do-it-yourselfer that she had a tub of spackle under the kitchen sink. She’s just really great like that, I sniffed. I turned off the kitchen light. I didn’t go to her room. I couldn’t see it empty again.
I closed Philippa’s door on the way to my room, as if to respect her absence. I walked straight across my room and to my bed. It wasn’t even night yet – dusk had yet to arrive. But I had given up on the day. Outside, I could see a large shadow coming over my window. I uncurled myself just enough to get a better look. It was Dragon. He had positioned himself over the dormer outside of my window now. I smiled: my own personal gargoyle.
I won’t leave you again, Evechild, he said gently in my mind, I am on guard now, always. I’m so terribly sorry I left you.
I stayed curled up, hoping that if I assumed a sleeping position fervently enough, I could trick my body into just going to sleep. God, let this be a crazy nightmare I can wake up from!
“Why did you get captured?” I said suddenly. “How did you let that happen?”
I couldn’t see him, but I knew this question stung. I rolled out of bed and pushed the window open. My thoughts were racing and I didn’t trust my focus for a telepathic conversation.
“So?” I said again, shocked at my callousness. “Let’s have it.”
“Each of us, in every species, has a weakness, Evechild. Stones like peridiote are designed to manipulate your most vulnerable of spots,” he said slowly, quietly. “I turned to help who I thought I was an injured child. It was such an asinine trap … I – I – feel so foolish I fell for it.”
The remorse in Dragon’s voice as he recounted his capture broke my heart a little.
“It’s ok, Dragon. I get it,” I said softly. “I’m sorry for asking.” I didn’t want my friend to relive pain and shame. “Goodnight, Dragon.”
He didn’t respond. Instead, he hummed. He hummed Beatles songs. The ballads, anyway. I hugged my stuffed dragon and pulled my knees high into my chest. Smallness felt safer. And there, tucked in my blanket under the shadow of my gargoyle dragon, a million worlds away from homework and Libby and chores and DNA tests and detention and periods, I waited for sleep to give me relief.
It wouldn’t come. Sleep fell into that category of the popular kid at school who’s in so many different social circles they overcommit to too many engagements and forget about your party. That was me now. Waiting like a chump for sleep to show up.
I stared at the ceiling for a while, then arched back to check that Dragon’s shadow was still shading my window. It was. Feeling a little secure with him there, I slithered out of bed. I needed to do something to occupy my thoughts. I didn’t have the energy or interest to read – a realization that shocked and worried me. Am I depressed? I mean, probably. But I didn’t want to think about that either.
I glided around the halls and awaited a magical distraction to catch my attention. Everything was still in the shadows as night fell swiftly upon my little house. But I was restless. As I approached the living room, lovely and untouched and tidy with my mom’s sleek decorating style, my eyes fell upon my old cello propped up next to the baby grand piano.
I had tried to play the cello for a while. What I quickly discovered is that I liked the idea of the cello more than I liked the cello itself. I enjoyed virtually everything about it on an intellectual level – the full, noble sound that sung from the elegantly bulbous wooden instrument, accented by the eager sinewy bow – it was all beautiful to me. I even liked the confident stance required to play it: sitting upright, broad-shouldered and with your legs squared out in front of you. It was a very self-possessed posture; you couldn’t slouch whilst playing the cello or even let your shoulders droop, and you certainly couldn’t coquettishly cross your legs. No, there was nothing diminutive about the cello. It demanded respect. But not in a grotesque way like a tuba or something. Ah, yes. I truly had a love affair with the idea of the cello.
Then I played it.
My romanticized notions of being a cool, accomplished cellist were quashed by … well, by the sound of my own playing.
Even my own mother, who basically adored everything I did, would quietly creep down the hall and try to sneak my door shut while I practiced. Once I caught her mid-shut, and she stood there, frozen, eyes wide and guilty. She stammered that she was worried a draft was coming into my room or something and the sheepishly pulled my door closed. Oof, I thought, remembering such encounters. The lady who even saved doodles I scribbled on napkins – napkins! – didn’t like my playing. So I learned two things: the “mom goggles” Philippa and I joked about had their limits, and I wasn’t the musical prodigy I imagined myself to be.
I shook off these lingering memories of failure, though, and picked up my dusty bow. It has been living at the side of my mom’s lovely piano for several months now, leaning patiently against a stack of thick classical music books.
I perched myself on the edge of the long piano bench, positioned the lovely instrument between my squared knees, straightened my back, and held the bow in an open grasp the way I’ve observed pros do so often. Closing my eyes, I pulled my left hand into a claw along the top of the cello’s elegant neck and pressed my fingers indiscriminately against its thick stings. I breathed in, drawing the bow away from my right side. Exhaling, I brought the bow down hard against the thickest part of the cello’s fingerboard just atop the bridge.
Uuurrrrreeeeeeeccccchhhh! choked out the cello. “Ok,” I said aloud, “a little more cat-like than I was going for. Let’s try that again.” I drew my bow gracefully across the strings again. This time I didn’t press all of my left-hand fingers down upon the top of the neck. The sound sputtered and halted but came out a little more pleasingly.
“Hmm. Not bad,” I said as I adjusted my left hand to a different shaped claw. “Ok, it’s bad! It’s bad!” I shouted immediately as another hissing screech came out.
I stared angrily down at the bow, as if it were its silky fault for producing such hideous squawks. Something jarring sounded outside and then poof! Dragon appeared in front of me.
“Evechild! Are you alright? What has happened to you?” Dragon said, breathless. He scanned me, his eyes wide and frantic, as he held up one arm of mine and then the other. “There was a scuffle? You saw something? Please, tell me where they went! I am here now!”
I stared at Dragon and felt my face redden.
“Uhhhh … I was just, um, well, that is, I was playing my cello,” I stammered.
“Cello? No, no. Surely not. I heard a fight. I heard shrieks. Blood had to have been spilt. Eve, you must trust in me again; if something has happened, I –” Dragon stopped as I began giggling.
“It really was me!” I half-laughed, half-cried, drawing my bow to the reticent instrument again.
Urrrrreeeeeeeeecccchhhhhhuuuuurrrrrrreeeeeeccccch! I released the bow from the shrieking strings and let the cello relax against my knee.
“What? No. That sound! That sound was …Oh, Evechild, I’m terribly sorry; it’s just that, it’s just, well it’s simply so very horrid.”
“I say, ‘blood had to have been spilt’, yes, quite right,” I said in a low mocking voice.
“What a sound!” Dragon laughed and thumped his tail, “Can you blame me for that assumption?!”
Our amusement died down. We caught our breath; I wiped tears from my cheeks that were aching with the happy force of laughter. I sighed contentedly as I propped my cello back up in its spot against the piano. I balanced the bow carefully next to it, then slumped forward on the piano bench again.
“Oh, may I?” Dragon said, his voice earnest and sweet in the night’s stillness.
I nodded, confused. He moved over to the other side of me on the piano bench. The bench’s four spindled legs creaked in discomfort as Dragon sat down. I giggled. His muscly heft spilled over the delicate bench.
“Well, perhaps I’ll just crouch a bit,” Dragon said coolly, “More comfortable this way.”
“More comfortable than not breaking the bench? Probably,” I smirked.
“Hush, you,” Dragon said good-naturedly.
He then lowered his mighty talons down to the keys. I was expecting something to match the sounds of dying chickens my cello had produced, but what came out of that piano took my breath away. Smooth cadences, sweet and longing, dripped through the air so gracefully like melted chocolate being artfully drizzled over the plumpest strawberries. The soprano octaves rested while lower bass chords came somersaulting out in a burst of yearning; the tempo quickened, the volume rose. Then, as a brilliant chord hung in the room like a silk gossamer curtain begging to be touched, Dragon’s surprisingly nimble talons returned to the right side of the keyboard and gently revisited the original simple melody.
He stopped abruptly, stretching his wings behind him as he opened a tattered book that sat on the piano’s rack. A familiar A-minor-seventh chord sounded, and my eyes immediately welled with tears.
Dragon hummed softly as he played. It was the song my mom most regularly sang to us, my sister and me. My youth was nothing if not soundtracked by The Beatles, and Golden Slumbers was the last thing we heard most nights. I sang here and there, my heart tightening and a lump forming in my throat as I longed to hear Philippa’s harmonies and my mom’s nasal but lovely voice.
“Don’t you cry, and I will sing a lullaby.”
Into the night my scaled friend played, transforming the piano into the grandest of storytellers. I sat on the floor, hugging my knees against my chest, transfixed. There were only two concerts I enjoyed as thoroughly as what was happening currently: the one time I saw Sir Paul McCartney – actually saw him! Live! Like, close enough to touch his leg – perform solo, and the time my mom played her own arrangements of Beatles songs for me on this very piano. I was so happy to be lost in music.
Dragon abruptly stopped playing. I looked up at him, surprised, or rather, jarred by the sudden musical pause.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I am pleased you liked it. This piano is easier to play than the harpsichord I used to have. But enough of this. Evechild, you must make things right with Baert.”
“Oh, come on. He’s fine. We’re fine,” I pouted, a bit confused. “Go back to playing. Please, I was finally feeling calm, finally feeling ok.”
“The Amythystics were there, Evechild. The heliotropum stone marked you when you held it. I … I, alas, was too weak. I was in and out of consciousness to fully track everything happening during my capture, but an alarm of sorts sounded as you approached. They … they wanted –”
“They wanted me?”
“Why, possibly, sure. But they wanted Baert.”
Dragon and I sat in silence. I pondered this. Baert was … well, Baert was lovely. Funny and distracting and stubborn and no doubt loyal; but also kind of adorably childlike. I couldn’t imagine him the target of anything sinister.
“He survived the takeover when none of his species did. This angers them, and it especially angers Obrenox,” Dragon added quietly, “Theirs is a way of control through neutrality. But there is one thing going for us with all of this.”
“What could that possibly be
“As long as the species isn’t united, heliotropum stones don’t have full power. When the elf species was alive and scattered, why, the stone had barely any potency at all. But one by one … well, the collective whole of heliotropum gained power with every death.”
“So Baert is the missing link.”
“Every time a species is annihilated or absorbed, its representative gem garners more power,” Dragon trotted away from the piano and stretched his talons. He shimmied sideways through the living room toward the hall and, checking his right and then his left sides, opened his wings and gave them a long, mighty stretch. Seeing the full wingspan of a dragon, even a smaller one, in my own house left me speechless.
“If seven-year-old me were here, I’d be losing my mind,” I said, wide-eyed.
Dragon smiled.
“Why not 14-year-old you? Do I not amaze you? Not even with my incredible piano skills?” he said, wiggling his talons toward me.
He was so good at alleviating my stress. I grew sad then; the smile faded from my face. I knew my friendship with Dragon couldn’t be forever. I read enough books to know this hero’s quest will eventually come to an end. How, I couldn’t possibly imagine
“So, we have to save my mom. We have to save Philippa. We have to keep Baert safe. And we have to teach me how to defeat a gem-collecting evil overlord. Easy-peasy,” I said dryly.
“Oh, Evechild. Don’t be melodramatic. Obrenox is a horrid fighter. That’s why he relies so heavily on his henchmen and gemstones.”
That was an unexpected twist: instead of a sword and shield I got a book and some glowing bouncy balls, and instead of an all-powerful villain, I got a playground bully with a lot of yes men.
“Hang on, why did you say I have to make things right with Baert? What’s wrong?”
“You may have noticed he’s not great at flying.”
“Uh, yeah. I noticed.”
“He was there for you, Evechild. He has sworn to protect you.”
“But I didn’t ask—”
“Review your actions and words toward him, Evechild. He is a powerful ally if you’ll let him be.”
I felt lower than low. Lower than scum. The fungus under the scum. Maybe something even lower than that. Dragon turned to leave when something occurred to me.
“He was too slow. Sick, and … and slow.”
“Pardon?” Dragon turned, his brow furrowed.
“Baert. If we hadn’t lost time cleaning up his – his stupid mess, we would have had time to find my mom. And Philippa.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know that that’s not the case, either.”
“Perhaps. But I know I’d rather have Cuithbaert on my side than not.”
“I know I’d rather have my mom and sister than any of you.”
“Goodnight, Evechild.”