| |
The Thief
The hour is half past sunset when the stillness breaks, 6:32 to be exact. Caroline always knows the time, no matter how much she tries to forget it.
When it happens, she is drawing patterns in the fog of her chamber. Castle towers twisting into spirals that come to barbed tips. One of the towers punctures the moon and Caroline is adding blood seeping from the cracks.
Sunlight gleams through the cave mouth and she feels the shift more than sees it. Like a ripple through the air or a sense of eyes on you—you just know. Something moves in the corner of her eye and Caroline twists around. Sand tumbles off her lap toward the cool golden floor and she shades her eyes with one hand, surveying the landscape.
In front of her are rolling hills of gold, washing toward the gaping mouth of the cave. Coins mixed with jewels, rings, grand pianos, and priceless ivory teeth fillings. An ocean illuminated by a single skylight above. Faded sun, moonlight, and trickles of rain are allowed through. Caroline often wishes for rain.
The room is still, a framed picture held in time. She crawls around in a circle.
Tucked away behind the light and the lesser treasures are the clocks. Grandfather clocks the size of two men. Tiny cuckoo clocks that sing every hour. Brown leather wristwatches and sundials the size of dinner plates. Fat white candles lying unlit and gilded machines she has no name for. Caroline doesn’t know what weakness Heratis has for timekeepers. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he too is trapped by the constant ticking of forward motion, even as an immortal.
The cave remains gloomy and shadowed, empty but for her own heartbeat. A niggling remains at the back of her mind—an off-ness she can’t explain. The princess presses herself against the wall.
Clocks, clocks, clocks, and timekeepers. Some tick on despite themselves, reading different times from around the globe. Most of them ceased working years ago. Then, there are a few that Heratis keeps wound, accurate down to the second and polished to gleaming.
These ones are like friends—companions even. A stately grandfather clock made of an entire oak tree. She nicknamed it Oaken. A tiny ornate pearl clock on a pedestal. She imagines it would speak in a high-pitched whistle. A skeletal wristwatch that holds a piece of the night sky and grins. She grins back at the skull most days.
Largest of all, there is a jade clock the size of a carriage house built into the cave walls. It presides over the room, ticking and clanging on the hour. A guardian to her prison of sorts.
Four of the dragon’s five great treasures. The fifth being an enormous hourglass made of gold and glass, and half-submerged in coins currently. She knows all about the last one.
They announce the time down to the second—even as time itself forgets them. Caroline wishes for the life of her that she could forget as well. It is 6:38. She frowns a second longer at the emptiness, her mind finally betraying her maybe.
Caroline sinks down to her knees, and a flit of movement catches her eye. Ghost-quiet, a shadow dashes across the hills of gold. It moves like a gray stain across the ocean of things, and perhaps it is a ghost. A dream thing, or a reaper come to take her away from all this at last.
A single coin stirs under the figure’s hasty steps, and Caroline snaps to attention. It has to be touching down.
“Hey.” Her voice is raspy from disuse, and she presses her palms to the glass. “Hey!”
The shadow vaults over an ivory piano and lands soundlessly on the other side. It makes no sign it heard her. Caroline takes a deep breath, mustering her strength. “STOP!” The glass vibrates under her fingertips.
The ghost, the shadow, the nothing, turns toward her. Caroline’s face goes slack. A jet-black cloak floats around what appears to be another person. The cloak dances in place, weightless, moving as if plucked from storm clouds. A person within.
The rest of their clothes are much less fine, mud caking the figure’s boots and pants fraying at the ends. A person is standing right there.
Caroline waves her arms frantically, seconds away from weeping or self-combusting.
The figure takes a single step, and the face of a young woman appears out of the dimness of the cloak’s hood. She has lank black hair, generously called shiny and less-generously described as greasy at that moment. Her skin is chalky gray, the color of a muted winter day.
The woman tilts her head to the side. Her eyes are strikingly dark, inky black pools that match her cloak. Her face is rather plain, unremarkable, thin-lipped, and expressionless. As if you are meant to forget it right after viewing it. Caroline doesn’t care. She practically falls forward.
“I’m over here!” she cries, flushing down to her chest. “I’m here!”
The figure hesitates, tense and poised for flight. Her gaze searches the area and then Caroline. Like she doesn’t know what to do with the appearance of a bedraggled princess stuck inside an hourglass.
She doesn’t move, and Caroline’s face crumples. "Do you hear me?” She comes close to wailing, whining. “I know you can see me!” At least, Caroline hopes she can.
The figure crosses the space in a few airy steps. She inspects the hourglass from different angles. “Do you work for the dragon?” Her voice is flat and cool, like stagnant spring water.
Caroline cocks her head to the side, showering sand down her shoulders. “No, no,” she says quickly. “I’m a hostage. The dragon Heratis took me long ago and used my life force to—”
“Okay,” she grunts. “Well don’t make too much noise.”
Caroline’s eyes go wide. “What? What do you mean?” Her thoughts burn hot. “Let. Me. Out.”
The woman frowns, looks her over again, and then turns. Caroline pauses, waiting for a pin to drop or mist to clear, revealing that she was alone the entire time. The figure bends down, studying a few silver dollars and a particularly large ruby.
“Did you hear me?” She doesn’t react. Caroline sets her jaw and presses her forehead to the glass. “I’ll start screaming.”
“You can if you want. The dragon is out.”
Caroline opens and closes her mouth, temperature rising, pulse thrumming. The stranger isn’t wrong. Heratis is out hunting and will be for days.
Caroline’s scowl calcifies. “Yes. He’s out.” She puts her hands on her hips. “And do you not see this giant hourglass?” She gestures at the thick panel of glass and heaps of sand where she slept.
The stranger blinks. “What’s your name?” She pauses as if thinking better of it. “Kingdom?”
“Princess Caroline,” she says, straightening her worn pink skirts. “Of Timus. To the east.”
“Timus?”
She continues like the thief isn’t raising an eyebrow. “My family owns a large port and there’s good fishing. A lot of canals. Some excellent hanging gardens.”
The stranger shrugs. “Never heard of it.”
“What do you mean?” She balls up her fists.
“Hanging gardens?" The woman picks up a silver circlet and then drops it to the ground again. “Sounds fake.”
“Why would I lie about this?” Caroline stomps her foot. “There’s a reward. You will have more riches than this entire cave if you release me.”
The woman slips several coins into a satchel at her side. “I have heard of this.” She knocks on the glass with her knuckle like Caroline is an aquarium fish. “This is the Hourglass of the Whistling Sea. It’s one of the dragon’s most prized possessions.”
Caroline lights up. “Yes, it’s priceless! We could . . . we could steal it and be rich beyond measure.”
The thief turns. “And be chased to the ends of the earth and eaten by Heratis?” She waves absently. “I’m not a sucker.” The woman puts the ruby in her pack.
Caroline screws her face up into an angry mess. “You can’t just leave me here!”
“I am going now.” The woman flits away, light as the breeze—just as she had arrived.
“Thief! Scoundrel!” Caroline bangs on the glass, vocals straining. “Devil!” she cries. “I’ll eat your bones and drink your blood if I ever get out of here!”
The last part was a little dramatic, but in her defense, Caroline has had no company except a dragon for decades.
#
The Hourglass
Caroline hugs her knees to her chest. She leans bonelessly against the wall. It is 11:55 a.m. The fine white sands have risen to her chest. It’s the 133 day of the year. A Monday.
Somehow, she still hates Mondays.
A shadow blocks out the sun from behind. A flag stirs on a nearby pike. The silk ripples and then flaps violently. Halfheartedly, Caroline braces against the walls of her cage.
The sand sloshes from side to side from the gale-force winds, and Caroline peers out through a river of tangled curls. A face like stone and an unmoving cliff face stare back at her.
Heratis has a long dirty-white beard and wind-beaten skin, a pale beige color and craggy as tree bark. Watery tea-green eyes are deep set in his face, and yellow teeth poke out over his lips. His enormous lizard body disappears behind him into the twilight. A marbled, scarred hide and city-spanning wings, worn and pock-marked with holes. His features seem plucked from a time no living creature could remember.
Caroline sighs. Her stomach had stopped turning at the sight of him a long time ago. Privately, she almost misses the terror. She nods at him in acknowledgment.
Heratis exhales a long trail of smoke, landing with a thunderous boom. The hoard churns in a perturbed ocean under his weight and dust falls from the ceiling. Caroline flounders to stay upright. The sands churn, threatening to suck her under. Before she can find her footing, a clawed hand plucks her cell up by the golden top. Caroline takes a deep breath, and the hourglass turns over. Marking another day.
Sand crashes over her. Caroline squeezes her eyes shut, kicking toward the surface. She wiggles and claws her way through the mess and pops up on the top, drawing a deep breath and wiping her face. The surface settles and sand starts draining toward the chamber below. Caroline gathers herself into a corner and shakes her clothes out. She had learned long ago to ignore the turning—like avoiding eye contact with a fellow circus animal in her cage. Surely, she would have gone crazy decades ago from the constant dripping otherwise.
“Little bird,” a deep rumble addresses her. The voice of crashing ocean waves and earthquakes. “Why don’t you tell me a story? A new one.”
Caroline blows a stray golden curl out of her eyes. “Can’t this be the day you eat me, Father Mountain?” The nickname was from an age when the people cowered from this lord of time and greed. He lets out a wet and rolling laugh.
“Who would give their life to my hourglass then?” He lies his mighty head next to her chamber. “So much life to give.”
She rolls her eyes. “I have a story of a knight taking down a greedy lizard.”
He laughs again and the sound echoes. “No. A new one.” He licks his lips. “Or I will bury you again.”
Caroline finishes shaking out her clothes and sits cross-legged on top of the sand. She raises her voice so he can hear her. “Fine. Let’s have one of the maidens and the nightingale. A bird with a song so lovely, it boiled the oceans away and enchanted the night to never cease.” She had been thinking of this one for a long time.
The dragon closes his eyes, head resting on his claws. Caroline’s heart sinks. She consoles herself that at least she isn’t buried under riches right then.
#
The Bargain
Caroline lulls in the place between waking and dreaming. Her body floats somewhere distant and cold as formless shapes run through her mind. It’s 3:43 in the afternoon. Only by chance does she catch it. Caroline turns over, eyes half-lidded, and nearly misses the slim shadow on the ground.
She pushes herself up like an attack dog given a scent. A dark figure stands on top of a golden hill. There is something striking about the silhouette, backlit by the sunlight, and Caroline is once more overcome with a sense of unreality. She gulps.
“Hello?” she starts weakly. It has been almost three weeks.
The figure turns something over in their hands. Caroline has a good feeling she knows who it is. She narrows her eyes, and this really wasn’t any kind of knight.
Caroline takes a deep breath, drawing herself up and fixing her eyes on the cloaked woman. “Hey!” No response, only a cold back.
Heat prickles all along her insides. A blurriness edges around her vision and the thief’s words come back to her. I’m no sucker.
Caroline widens her stance and takes a deep breath, shaking. She tosses her head back all at once and lets out a piercing scream. The sound splits the air and sends her own ears ringing. Caroline quickly runs out of air, vocal cords straining. She audibly inhales to begin again.
Coins cascade down and the thief slides closer. “I haven’t got—”
Caroline tosses her head back. “Ah—”
“Princess!” the thief says sharply. She waves her hand, expression placid. “I’m sure a knight will arrive at some point. But please, there is no one around to perform for.”
Caroline’s chest heaves and she leers. “Perhaps you could fetch one for me.” She juts out her jaw. “Or simply hand me a hammer?”
The thief looks over her cage, a flash of curiosity in her gaze. “How?”
Caroline grows a small smile. “Simple.” She leans forward. “Break the glass and hand it to me.”
The woman rolls her eyes. “Listen, I am sympathetic. No one would enjoy being part of a dragon’s hoard. I’m sorry for your luck.”
“Sorry for my luck? My lord,” Caroline huffs. “I’m being consoled by a spineless thief. I truly cannot sink any lower.”
The woman growls, “You’re not making a good case for yourself.”
Caroline gestures for her. “Angry? Go ahead, try and hit me.”
The thief opens her mouth, and then closes it. A wry smile crosses her face. “Very funny.” She shakes her head. “But you’re right, I am spineless. I’m sure someone mightier than me will come along for you.” She looks around the echoing space. “Someday.”
Caroline groans and sits back on a mound of sand, space halfway full. “Please?” she lets out a small whine. “Do me a favor and I’ll grant you a thousand favors back.”
The thief rounds the body of the cage. “How do you even get trapped in an hourglass?” She squints. “How are you still . . . ?”
“Alive?” She finishes the thought. “Magic. Terrible, cursed magic.” She taps a blue vein on her arm. “The first rule of having any sort of luck? Don’t be born with enchanted blood.”
The thief presents the same small smile. “Noted.”
Caroline folds into herself, softening her expression into something pleading and pitiful. “I haven’t seen another person in decades. The knights have become scarce. And the dragon is fierce.”
The thief raises her eyebrows. “The dragon is very fierce. And not all of us have thick glass in the way.”
Caroline grew a sickly sweet smile. “Would you like to switch places?”
“I’m leaving now.” The thief pockets a thin bracelet encrusted in precious stones.
“I really must be the unluckiest sort,” Caroline raises her voice, face flushing that unnatural burning red. “The first person to successfully break into the cave in ages . . . and they’re an unrepentant scoundrel!”
The thief clicks her tongue. “Better than being a burned-alive scoundrel.” She turns in circles. “You wouldn’t happen to know the most expensive small item in here, princess?”
Caroline makes a rude gesture in her direction and the thief chuckles. She picks up a chipped emerald and string of pearls before hopping down the heaps of treasure.
Caroline refuses to watch her go. “First person in decades,” she continues to grumble, back turned. “And they’re just here to steal things. Typical. Everyone is just typical.” And they weren’t there for her.
#
The Wait
Caroline blows warm air on the glass, tracing designs with her fingertips. She draws an elaborate storm bird with its wings on fire. In her mind’s eye, it burns up the whole world one tree and building at a time.
Lucy always said she was afraid of fire, that all witches were. Caroline draws the flames higher and higher. She falters near the top though, hands going slack. She starts erasing.
She could go to sleep again, awareness floating somewhere soundless in the darkness. But sleep doesn’t come. She writes a small poem in the condensation, attaching swirls and flowers sprouting from the letters. Maybe a knight would like pretty things like that. Maybe it didn’t matter.
Forgotten. She bites down on the word like it’s a piece of moldy fruit. Not looking for you anymore. They aren’t sending anyone.
Despair lodges so cleanly in Caroline’s chest, she seizes up. She wraps her arms around herself and scoots into the middle of her chamber. Sand trickles down her scalp and Caroline closes her eyes and pretends it’s rain.
You could do what the last maiden did, a small voice in her head says. You could let the dragon bury you. She could let go, keep quiet, not plead to be taken back into the light this time. The sands could drag her down into herself and into something like sleep and more than sleep. Dream until her entire life force is spent and empty and ready to be replaced by the next girl.
Forgotten.
Caroline jerks her head out of the stream. She crawls to the side and adds horns to her firebird. It’s 9:52 at night. Two weeks since she last saw Heratis.
Movement blurs in the corner of her eye, and Caroline perks up.
“Oh?” She clears her throat, voice sounding enormous in the dark of the night. “Back so soon?” It had only been two days. Two days, four hours, five minutes, twenty-two seconds.
The shadow stops in place. Her hood is down and the moonlight catches in her inky black eyes. Caroline lets out a small gasp. A bloody gash splits the thief’s lip and bruises swell her right eye shut, turning an unusual cobalt blue.
“What happened to your . . . satchel?” Caroline cringes and the thief shakes her head in response.
Caroline’s lips peel back. “Other bandits?” she guesses. The thief grunts in reply. “Bloody scavengers. Let you do all the work and then take the treasure themselves.” Caroline tuts. “No honor these days.”
The thief draws her hood up, covering her bloody face. “No need to mock.”
“I’m not mocking. I bet we could take them, you and me.” She punches the air.
“Do you have any skills?”
“Sure. You can sneak up on them while I pretend to be a helpless maiden in need of rescue. Topless maybe?”
The thief laughs. “Nobles. Do you have no shame?”
“Shame is for the free. I have no pride left. Watch this.” She squishes her face up to the glass, mashing her nose up and slobbering across the smooth surface. The thief makes a hiccup of sound, almost another laugh.
“Please don’t distract me. Some of us have debts. Jobs to do.” The thief takes out an eyeglass and examines a thin shard of diamond. Caroline fidgets.
“Are you sure you don’t want to switch?” she offers after a moment. “I have no job. No worries. Just sand.” She rakes a hand through a pile. “A quiet lifestyle. Retirement even.”
“I’ll pass.” The thief flashes a quick grin. “And unfortunately, I was not blessed with enchanted blood.”
Some thrill or new despair rushes through Caroline, maybe from communicating with someone for so long. She opens her mouth to keep the thief talking. Where is she from? Who taught her to steal? Does she wear any of the jewels herself?
A distant whooshing echoes against the cave walls and both of their heads jerk up. The silk flag on the pike flutters and a shadow crosses the moon. Caroline’s heart stutters in her chest in a way it hasn’t in a long time. She wets her lips to call out. Gale-force winds tear through the cave and the thief’s hood whips back to reveal an expression of wide-eyed terror.
Caroline wrenches her head around, hissing, “Hide.”
She isn’t sure if she’s loud enough, but the thief jolts to attention. Caroline bounces in place, gesturing and pointing. “Quickly. Behind me, behind me. Bury yourself.”
The woman moves like a corpse, stopping and starting in a stiff-kneed lurch. Caroline beckons until her shoulder wrenches. The thief falls to her knees behind the hourglass. “Dig!” Caroline hisses. “Dig, right now!” Recognition flashes in the thief’s eyes and she moves all at once. She claws her way into the treasures, squirming down into the hard metal.
Slivers of her skin and nose poke up through the thin layer, and Caroline has an animalistic need to dive over and cover her. Break the glass through sheer panic alone. Heratis’s barn-sized claws touch down and the world of treasure churns. Luckily, Caroline’s cage remains upright, and the thief’s nose disappears below the surface.
The dragon’s maw is bloody and dried viscera clings to his trailing beard. He must have gorged himself for weeks—close to sleeping soon.
Heratis folds his legs under him, head bending down with a drooping grace. Caroline opens her mouth; she could distract him, hold his attention until he nods off. But addressing him first would be suspicious after all this time. She swallows.
The dragon blinks his second pair of eyelids at her, filmy pink things that shut sideways. Considering her. Can he hear her thumping heartbeat? Caroline holds her breath.
“Think of another tale, little bird. Something tragic.” He finally speaks. “I will expect one when I wake.”
Caroline exhales and he swings around, weight shaking the floors. He crawls deeper into the cave and rests his head on a high ledge on the other side of the space.
“Of course,” she replies softly, his eyes already closed.
Just as soon as he lies down, the coins jangle behind Caroline. “Wait,” she says between clenched teeth. “He’s not asleep yet.”
Ink-drop eyes stare back at her. The woman’s face is just visible beneath her shallow grave of treasures. In the low lights, Caroline can make out small twisting horns poking through her hair, and a pair of pointed ears. She must be some kind of elf or demonborne. Caroline tilts her head. Perhaps both.
When sleep? the thief mouths several times.
Caroline shrugs. "Time is slow for him. Hours. Days. He’ll be completely asleep eventually.” The thief’s eyes become dinner plates, thought written on her face: Days?
“Don’t worry.” Caroline grins. "His hearing is bad. He mostly notices movement or maybe your smell. How much do you smell? You may want to wait or shower.”
The dragon breathes out and they both jump, but nothing else follows.
Caroline sits cross-legged, looking between the dragon’s tail and the entrance. The thief shoots her an annoyed look and she shrugs again.
“Wait,” she repeats, and then adds with bitter irony, “What’s a prison but in your mind?” The thief does not seem pleased by this.
#
Cellmates
The thief’s eyes are screwed up into angry pinpricks on her face. “What are we waiting for?” she mouths, the sound coming out as a low wheeze.
Caroline lounges, draped over the sand. “Sounds of snoring. Also, you can speak a little louder.”
The thief groans. Her lips peel back against small fangs. “Little princess, I really don’t have time for this.”
“Why don’t you do that magic trick with your footfall then?” Caroline studies the stormy ends of the cloak tied around the thief’s throat.
The woman opens her mouth. She glances over at the dragon and then back. Small sweat droplets gather at her temple. She wouldn’t risk it.
Caroline rolls over onto her belly, kicking her feet in the air. “What’s your name then, little thief?”
The woman scowls. “I prefer large thief actually.”
“What about dragon thief? Great thief?”
“Alive thief, for now.” She smiles grimly.
Caroline snorts. “For now. Well, I’m Caroline of Timus.”
“I remember.” The thief turns away. A full minute passes before the woman gives a careful small cough and catches Caroline’s eye again. “I’m Vida. Not that it matters.”
“It’ll matter”—Caroline winks—“for the great epics written about this later. The Great Thief: In the Dragon’s Belly, but not Forgotten. When she wouldn’t get help for the captured princess.”
“Careful, princess. Bitterness can cause wrinkles.”
“Ha! I wish I could get wrinkles.” They regard each other. “Besides. They wouldn’t mention wrinkles in the epic. Mostly the getting eaten part.”
Vida makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat, a sound taking lessons on laughter. “Do you plan on getting me eaten?”
“Not yet. I’m not actually a selfish wretch. Unlike some people.” She lifts her eyebrows pointedly.
“You’re not exactly making yourself a lot of friends right now.”
“Where are you from, Vida?” She changes subjects.
“Nowhere,” Vida says in a clipped tone, eyeing her, and then frowns at the ceiling. “The northern country.”
“I could have guessed that.” Vida raises her eyebrows in return and Caroline shifts in place, holding her gaze. “You drop your h’s sometimes, and that cloak has to be something of the Storm Citadels. Northern Kingdoms.”
“And you,” Vida says slowly, “are from a kingdom I’ve never heard of.”
“Maybe you don’t have very good hearing.” Caroline smiles, the corners of her mouth pinching.
Vida chuckles, shaking her head. “You sound rather clever. How do clever girls get captured by dragons?”
The energy drains from Caroline’s body, and she lies bonelessly against the sand. “It’s . . .” Her mouth goes dry. “It’s as stupid as it sounds.”
“Oh?” Vida follows Caroline’s gaze. “You tripped and fell into a glass case?”
“I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. And they bargained with the dragon.” Memories speed through her mind’s eye and Caroline bares her teeth, lamenting. “Never trust beautiful witches. It’s all warts from there.”
A moment passes and they listen to the dragon breathe. Caroline watches a stray trail of smoke from his nostrils twist toward the ceiling.
“All warts. I’ll keep that in mind.” Vida smiles and her fangs poke over her bottom lip. Her voice lowers. “Consorting with witches though. Someone must have not been a very good human royal.”
“The worst.” Caroline lets out a thin laugh, the sound twisting through the air like the smoke. “But how else would I get in here?”
Vida hums, nodding like that all makes sense to her. Caroline has a brief vision of pinching her side—just a little. The thief’s gaze drifts down Caroline’s pink summer dress and the curve of her waist. “Second question. Does this thing make you immortal?” Her voice is even, deceivingly flat.
“Depends on your definition.” Caroline picks up a handful of sand and lets it slip through her fingers. “It feeds off me to keep itself turning. Stops me from aging too, but not from dying. It’s not the best deal, quite honestly.”
Vida’s brows knit together and her gaze trails back up to Caroline’s face. “What did you bargain for?”
Caroline doesn’t reply for a long moment, picking apart the thoughts in her head. The stories she’s kept tucked away for all those years. All those feelings that faded with time, flaring up now and then like old injuries when it rains. Poking at them hurts a little less today.
“No. Not for me. It wasn’t for me.” She crawls closer. “Do you want to steal my secrets as well, thief?”
Their eyes meet and Vida carefully shifts onto her side. “If it’s any comfort, I wouldn’t be able to sell them to an imaginary kingdom.”
“How generous.” The thief dips her head in return. Caroline rolls her eyes and gathers her voice little by little.
“It’s just as I said, don’t trust beautiful witches. And don’t fall for them.” She looks down at her empty lap. “Lucy wanted more time. More life. To keep the cruelty of ages off her. And I wanted to make her happy.” She swallows several times. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t know.” Caroline finds she can’t finish. I didn’t know.
Vida averts her eyes. She murmurs, “Princesses with problems. Ah.”
Caroline sniffs. “Thieves with problems. I hope you gave the bandits what for too.”
Vida touches the bruises on her face and grimaces. “One of the hazards of the job.” She sniffs. “But one of us isn’t stuck in a glass coffin.”
“Not yet!” She shakes her fist.
They exchange a long look, and then, despite themselves, start laughing. A wild giggling that Caroline tries to cover with her hands. They peter off and then can’t help but snicker again in waves. Perhaps prompted by the absurdity of the darkness, and the gold, and the slumbering dragon that has yet to snore.
Vida stays perfectly still but seems to really look at Caroline. “What have you been doing with the dragon all this time?”
So, Caroline tells her a story of a foolish human princess who ran away with a witch. Of a witch who feared death and an hourglass. A bargain with a time dragon and everything else.
Vida slowly, carefully reveals snippets of herself. She was hired by a great lord to help him gather wealth outside the banks and record-keepers. Vida guesses it’s for raising an army to invade a neighboring principality. But that really isn’t her business. Nothing seems to be her business.
The full moon rises, forming a perfectly round hole in the sky. Caroline drinks in the sight of another person. Of a real conversation.
Vida’s profile is stark, pointed chin and thin lips and shiny eyes standing out against the hills of treasure. Everything else blurs around her. Caroline trails a hand down the cool glass.
“So, how does one get into the business of thieving for lords?”
Vida purses her lips. “They run out of options. Among other things.”
“Family?” Caroline inches closer, like she might melt through the walls by sneaking up on them.
“Not exactly.” Vida fingers one of the small horns on her head, eyes downcast. “Unacknowledged.” She sprouts a thin smile. “You can call me a bastard scoundrel if you like when I run off again. That’ll at least be correct.”
Caroline’s studies her moon-gray face, uncovered. “My family abandoned me too. Maybe that’s how people like us end up together. You know, the way of things.”
Vida gives her a funny look. “I suppose. You know I’m a—” She pauses, watching Caroline. “So, you’ve guessed. About my lineage.”
“Sure,” Caroline says in a measured tone, feeling her way forward. “No one else has done anything like this. How else would an elf walk like a ghost? You’re stronger than any of the other silly heroes who’ve come so far. It’s impressive, really.”
Caroline can’t help but catch the thief puffing her chest, a surprised smile crossing her face. Vida tugs it back into something guarded in the next moment. “Well, I’m not a hero. Don’t expect me to be.” She sniffs, fidgeting and staring at her feet. “And you ran away from your whole life for someone, so that’s impressive too, really.”
Caroline lets out a humorless laugh. “Now I’m being teased. It’s not all that. It was just foolish youth.” Their eyes meet and Caroline can’t explain why her heart squeezes. “I got what I deserve.”
A beat passes, moonlight slants over the ground, and their breaths sync up.
“I wouldn’t say that.” Vida wets her lips, something shy about her. “It’s a terrible thing. No one deserves it.”
Caroline shivers from head to toe, their eyes meet again, and she doesn’t know how to place the building feeling. She bites the inside of her cheek, waiting for the tightness in her chest to subside.
“Maybe I should . . .” Vida props herself up, wrestling her cloak free as she moves. Trinkets spill to the floor and the cloak drags to one side, exposing one lean shoulder. She is small-boned and youthful like that, arm bare and naked face bathed in light.
“Or?” Caroline says, a half-conversation between them, unsaid things filling the gaps like mortar.
Vida stops, expression screwing up into something knotted. As if she’s biting down on something, holding it beneath her tongue and deciding on the taste. They watch each other in a breathless wait.
A guttural sound booms from the back of the cave, a volcano erupting and sending them both jumping. A deep snore.
Caroline pushes away the sinking in her gut. “Go.” She points. “Take as much gold as you can carry. He stopped counting this junk ages ago.”
Vida is still looking, mulling her over. She takes her time unburying her legs and rises without a word. She grabs everything in arm’s reach. Her figure cuts a vivid silhouette against the hills, just like the first time.
“Caroline.” Vida hunches over and her face seems to color a blueish hue. Then she nods. Caroline nods back.
“Go.” It’s a whisper. What else is there? Caroline waves her arms. “Quickly!”
Vida gathers the cloak around her. Barely disturbing a thing, she darts away into the night. I hope you got what you were looking for, Caroline thinks.
And she’s alone again.
#
The Dream
Vida is gone. But what did Caroline expect?
She tells herself to stop expecting things. A sign perhaps that she should let herself be buried again.
Submerged up to the waist, Caroline waits for the sand to drain grain by grain to the bottom chamber. Waits for the next turn, the next wash, the next chance to dig her way up to the air and wait more. Not that it matters. She doesn’t need air.
It takes another month for Heratis to wake. Caroline already has her next story meticulously planned for him.
He blinks open crusted glossy eyes, and she calls to him. “I’m ready.” He perches in front of her like a waiting sphinx, claws crossed in front of him. He won’t need to feed again for a while longer.
“Something new,” she says in her raspy, unused voice.
“How prepared of you.” He lies his enormous head down, leathery cheek alongside her cell. “Go on.”
She tilts her face up. “This one is about a demonborne and an elf who fell in love. And their daughter who stole the sun.”
She begins again.
#
Caroline wavers between waking and sleeping. She has been like this for days now, letting the drowsy sand wash over her, quietly consuming. She could be lost like this. She could dream again.
Old memories replay in the back of her mind of warm bread, golden-brown and smothered in butter. It smells like heaven. Though, in her dreams every time she brings it to her lips it disappears.
A sharp tap erupts beside her, insistent.
It’s 2:22 in the afternoon, a Thursday. Heratis is out.
Caroline blinks awake, kicking her way out of the sand and pushing to the edge of the cage. She rubs grit out of her eyes, and someone is next to her in the too-bright daylight. A figure draped in a storm-black cloak.
“Vida?” Caroline rasps, her throat tightening to the point of pain. Inky eyes capture her own.
Vida shifts from side to side, tugging at the knot around her throat. “That ransom for you, from your parents,” she begins awkwardly, looking somewhat lost. “Would it still be a lot?”
The blood drains from Caroline’s face, and she feels somewhat lost herself.
“Vida, I-I lied.” Her voice comes out as a wisp, sand-coated and weak. “My parents did try to bargain for me at first, for posterity’s sake, but”—she hesitates—“but what is a daughter who ran away? There is no longer a reward. There can’t be.”
The truth weighs heavily on her chest. Forgotten. She slides to the bottom of her cage, folding up into herself. “I lied.”
“I know,” Vida says with a hard tone, expression pinched. “Sorry, I already knew that. Sorry. I wanted to see if . . . if you did. Caroline?” Her voice wavers and she closes her eyes. “There is no longer a kingdom of Timus.”
Caroline’s head falls forward, thoughts thumping in her temples and heart racing. In the back of her mind, she already knew that. Deep down, she had known that for a long time.
“Vida.” She swallows against a sudden knot in her throat, sorrow rising from the bottom up. She tries to focus. “Why are you here?”
Vida has never tapped on her glass before. Her hands are empty and instead of a bag at her side, there is the hilt of what looks like a weapon.
The thief scuffs her feet on the coins like she’s a small child caught taking sweets. Her mouth becomes a squiggle across her face, strangely bashful.
“I just thought.” Vida rubs the back of her neck. “You know. It does, actually, it really . . . it’s a wretched thing. To be stuck somewhere.”
Caroline draws herself up. “Yes. The situation is a bit wretched. We’ve covered such things,” she says dryly and fixes her with a steady look. “Is that it?”
Don’t expect anything. Hope dies on lesser things.
“I mean. I’m still not a hero or anything. I’m not.” She looks down at her shoes, frowning. “Most people don’t want to think of me as anything at all.” Her gaze darts up, bursting with something. “I just kept thinking about your silly face stuck in all this sand.”
“Yes?” Caroline’s pulse races, eyes going wide.
“I thought, well, I mean, maybe I had been wrong.” She reaches for the hilt at her side. “And maybe I could steal something good for once.”
Caroline’s mouth falls open like a screw has come loose in her jaw. “You won’t get a reward,” she says in a surge of manic energy. “Obviously. I don’t even have a kingdom anymore.”
Vida speaks gently. “Yeah, I know.”
Caroline’s mouth is still hanging open. “I have nothing for you.”
“I know.”
Caroline crams herself against the glass. “You don’t know what this means. I can’t, I mean, are you sure? If you do this, thank you, thank—”
Vida’s voice is quick and halting. “Don’t think about it. Come on, before I change my mind.” Her eyes flit over to the mouth of the cave.
“We’d have to run,” Caroline says, and the words seem to come from out of a dream. Vida nods grimly back. “We’d have to be fast.”
Vida breaks into a broad grin, a real one. “I’m fast.”
Caroline steps away from the glass, hands shaking.
“Can you break this damn thing?”
Vida’s grin turns wild and barbed. “You happen to be in luck. For you have a thief at your service, and she happened to be sent to the dwarf kingdom’s armory last month.”
“No.” Jitters course through Caroline. This can’t be. The word comes out in a disbelieving shriek. “No.”
Vida pulls out what appears to be a golden hammer, the head as big as her own. It’s covered in minute symbols and built with the fineness of clever hands and cleverer magic.
Caroline feels festival-sick, giddiness mixing with a too-much-ness.
“Brilliant.” She claps her hands. “Brilliant, Vida!” She wonders if this is what being drunk is like, or being in love.
Vida lifts her chin. “Step back.”
Caroline can’t move fast enough, retreating until her back hits the opposite wall. The floors seem to pitch back and forth beneath her, her thoughts swimming. No, no, no.
And yet.
Vida lifts the hammer above her head, tipping backward, the metal glinting in the light. Their eyes meet and something stretches between them, blinding and fierce.
Caroline gulps down air. “I’m ready.”
The hammer swings down before Caroline finishes the sentence. Vida’s face screws up in bloody determination and she lets out a feral grunt. It strikes with a terrifying crunch that must shoot tremors up Vida’s arms.
To Caroline’s amazement, a crack like a lightning bolt streaks across the surface. Tears well up in her eyes despite herself. Hope like a wild animal bellows in her chest.
A second thought strikes her: the hourglass is one of Heratis’s most prized possessions. The dragon had meant to be away awhile and yet, unease spreads through Caroline. She knows the dragon.
She tenses all over. “Quickly.”
Vida’s face screws up again. She brings the hammer down with a deadly blunt force. Caroline’s chamber shakes down to the neck of the hourglass, and she steadies herself on either wall. She gasps, and more spiderweb-thin cracks spread.
“That’s it!” she cries. “You are my hero, you damn fool, keep going!”
Vida’s cheeks flush ashy-blue. She heaves the hammer down again with a teeth-shattering crunch.
Then comes the roar. Flood waters slamming down canyon creeks. Bones crunching under tumbling rock. Terrors children dream up in the deep of the night. A roar erupts from somewhere so deep, it might as well be from the earth itself.
Caroline jerks to attention. “Hurry, hurry! He knows. He’s sensed it. He’s coming.”
Vida looks pale, sick to her stomach and ready to bolt at any second. For a moment, Caroline expects her to run. Sail away on light feet to somewhere tucked away and safe.
For a moment, Caroline wants to tell her to do just that.
Vida gnashes her teeth. “Watch out.” She lifts the hammer with her entire body, lurching from the effort and arching backward. She strikes a silhouette all young girls know, a champion of old. Vida brings the hammer down with a terrifying crunch, and the glass dents inward. The walls cave in like crumbling sugar, and Caroline’s heart leaps.
“There.” Caroline staggers, cage jostling. “Almost!” She can see the unfiltered light. She can taste the clean air.
Vida backs up, sweat streaming down her forehead and upper arms tremoring. The roar comes again, this time accompanied by the whump of massive wings.
Caroline burns with a heat that feels like it might incinerate her, she’s so close. “Ah!” She howls and rushes the break in the glass, pushing with all her strength.
“Wait—” Vida barely gets a word out. A shadow with deviled horns descends. They both scream.
“Who is intruding on my hoard?” the beast booms, all raw vitriol. “I will crunch your bones, burn your village to ash, devour every last person in your line.”
Vida snarls back, lank hair standing on end and fangs bared. Stupid, brave girl. “How about both of our lines end with me?”
A clawed hand shoots forward, grasping Vida around the middle and hoisting her into the air. She cries out. The hammer drops from her hands to the floor, disappearing under the coins.
“No!” Caroline moves then, she has to. Digging her heels into the gold floor, she covers her face and flings her entire body at the cracks in the glass. Everything shatters.
She gasps, skin stinging with a thousand tiny cuts. She burns. Her insides wash with what feels like ice water, like sucking in arctic wind with every breath. The mix of hot and cold surges with a dizzying weight through her. Time reclaims Caroline with vengeance.
Her eyes spot white, her ears ringing, and the taste of grit and soil bleed through her taste buds. The world smells raw, copper and old meat, spring air and sunlight, vivid as a sucker punch.
Mortality singes every nerve in her, a stranglehold of life and promise of death all at once. Caroline holds up her trembling hands to the light. She clenches and unclenches them. The shoulder she bashed into the glass throbs. Cuts ooze blood down her forearm. Gnawing hunger drills through her stomach, and she aches and aches and aches. She has no idea what time it is.
A sharp cry fills the air, breaking Caroline out of her brief reverence. Heratis has lifted Vida up to his cold gaze.
“And who are you?” he growls. “Who are you to touch my things?”
Vida looks ready to puke over his fingers. She must have gathered something from within though, something Caroline can only guess at. “Who-who are you to make anyone a thing?” she says just loud enough to hear, and then growls, "Go eat your own tail.”
The dragon laughs, the sound shaking the air itself. “I am going to make this slow.”
“Hey!” Caroline yells, feeling the burn in her fledgling lungs. “Heratis!” Bursting with new and terrible life, she steadies herself on the hourglass. “I have your things right here.”
Heratis turns, the sluggish movements of a beast older than the sky itself. “My little bird,” he sneers. “How ugly your wings are.”
Caroline widens her stance. She reaches for the sands cascading out of the hourglass like carnage out of a gut wound. “Stop me.” She scatters the sand, slipping through the cracks of the treasures and disappearing.
Vida forgotten, the dragon rears back.
“Ugly, ungrateful, petulant creature.” He rushes forward with the force of a small hurricane, Caroline’s dress flapping violently against her legs.
She grabs a giant piece of glass from her cage. The sharp edge bites into her palm, and Caroline grimaces. She hefts it loose, palms splitting open and blood seeping down her wrists and across the smooth surface.
The dragon’s massive head lunges and Caroline gives the hourglass a savage kick. The body of it teeters and then topples down the golden hill and away. She lifts the shard of glass above her head, and the dragon dives to catch the hourglass. Caroline is faster. She leaps, launching herself forward and plunging the glass into the side of the dragon’s face.
The shard carves into Heratis’s aged cheek. Enchanted by her blood and filled with the fury of a girl who has lost everything, it pierces deep. He howls and Caroline throws her entire weight on it. A gash the size of her forearm oozes sluggish black blood, and she howls in return.
Her shoes slip on their mixing blood, and Caroline gives the piece one last hard shove and pushes off. Their eyes meet as she falls. His, moons the size of her head, wide with shock. Her own, the muted brown of small birds, steady and unblinking. He reels back, head thrashing and body whipping back and forth. The entire cavern shakes, and dust rains from the ceiling. Caroline tumbles to the ground, managing to stay on her feet, the impact rattling her teeth.
Caroline holds up her torn bloody hands to the light. Turning in circles and smiling, she laughs. The elation is short lived. The dragon clutches at his ruined cheek, releasing Vida and tossing her aside like a scrap. Vida’s limp body sails across the open space.
“No.” Caroline throws herself forward, heart pounding hard enough to burst. The world becomes muffled, and her mouth tastes of copper and bile. Vida is falling. “No, no, no.”
Several stories high, high enough to be the top of a castle tower, higher still, and Vida is falling. Caroline puts out her arms to catch the other girl, mind screeching that she is still too far away. “No!”
Vida plummets like a ragdoll to earth, loose-limbed and empty. Then in a heartbeat, she turns in midair. She rights herself like a falling cat, cloak fluttering around her and descent easing to a crawl.
Vida comes down featherlight.
Caroline digs her heels in, barely managing to slow as Vida touches down. Caroline crashes into her, sending them both reeling. Vida grabs her around the waist and spins them around. “Stupid girl!”
Caroline laughs in her arms. “Brilliant devil!”
They hug in a tangle of limbs. Caroline breathes in a scent like campfire smoke. The moment is short lived. Coins spray around them and the ground shakes.
“It’s ruined!” Heratis cries, holding up the hourglass and letting out the growl of a thousand baited hound dogs.
Mind racing, Caroline pushes away and starts running. She plotted this before, let herself daydream about what-ifs.
“Where are you going?” Vida practically hollers as Caroline dashes deeper into the cave.
“Can you get up there?” She points to the massive jade clock perched high above.
“What?” Vida jogs after her. “We need to get out of here.”
“We should stall him.” Caroline keeps her eyes on the dragon. If she’s going to leave, she’ll have to do it right. “He won’t rest until that clock is wound again. That will buy us time.”
Vida opens her mouth, probably to argue, then glances back at the dragon and nods. She overtakes Caroline in a blur of movement. Caroline’s veins are ice, her vision tunneling. She waves at Vida, guiding her toward the prize. Vida crawls up the wall with the speed of a specter and grabs at the big hand of the giant clock.
“Turn it!” Caroline screeches, and the dragon’s jade clock is wrenched out of time.
Heratis bellows, blood streaming down his chin and neck. “Don’t touch that!”
Vida lets go. The dragon dives for his treasure, trying to restore it to the exact second. In a lithe arc, Vida lands softly once more. Caroline takes her hand. “Great! Fantastic. Come on.”
They exchange bloody grins at their almost-victory. They turn, they run, they cheer.
The cave opens into a narrow pathway, and Caroline falters to a stop. The sunlight is fierce against her cheek. “Oh.” Her eyes go wide, burn something wonderful. She stretches out toward the sky, as far as she possibly can, and her fingers touch only air.
“Don’t blind yourself!” Vida has to tug her head down, all while Caroline laughs, her eyes streaming.
They fling themselves down and away. Caroline skips and bounds down the mountainside, tumbling at points and letting out delighted cries. Every scraped knee feels like a new promise. Caroline could kiss every stone and embrace every scrawny rabbit. The world is brighter than she remembered, bigger.
They stop at the bottom in a drunken kind of mess, gasping for breath and leaning on tree stumps. At the edge of a small forest, they are far enough away for the dragon’s cries to become muffled. Caroline didn’t even know there was a forest outside the cave now. It’s a young thing, more oaks than pines and brimming with bird calls and rustles.
Caroline turns to Vida, giddy. “Thank you! Vida, thank you!”
Vida pants, holding her sides where the dragon had squeezed her. “Me?” she wheezes. “You’re the one that stabbed him.” She searches Caroline shyly. “Are . . . are your hands okay?”
“They’re perfect!”
“Um?”
Caroline turns to her, hair loose and wild over one shoulder. “Oh, Vida. You didn’t have to come for me. You didn’t have to do any of that.”
Vida looks away and huffs. “We have to keep running. He can fly, you know.”
Caroline can’t stop smiling. “Just one second.” She reaches for Vida once more. “One thing and then we can flee to the ends of the earth—or ends of the kingdom, at least. He’s a lazy thing.”
Vida glances back toward the cave. “Make it quick.”
Caroline gets on her tiptoes; Vida is too tall. “Ahem.” She clears her throat. “I am in your debt. And as a freed princess, you have my eternal gratitude.”
Vida’s brow furrows. “What are you on about?”
Caroline takes Vida’s cheeks between her hands. “A legendary hero.” Vida coughs into a fist at that. “Wresting me from the dragon’s clutches. I show my thanks.” It was a silly thing, but all storybooks are silly.
Caroline closes her eyes and presses a chaste kiss to Vida’s mouth. Her lips are cracked and taste of blood, and Caroline is full to bursting. Vida leans forward ever so slightly, and a rawness opens in Caroline. She may never sleep again.
The kiss is careful and Caroline falls back again quickly, still smiling. “There.”
Vida looks blankly ahead, cheeks burning a vivid indigo. “Oh.” She blinks, stammering, “I mean.” She holds handfuls of dark hair back. “That’s. Okay.”
Caroline laughs and leans into her. “That’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“Not in my stories.” Vida appears thunderstruck.
“Then how do yours go?” Caroline’s face hovers inches from Vida’s, ready to press another shy kiss to her cheek.
A long howl drags out from far behind them, and Vida pulls her forward. “I’ll tell you later.” She hurries them, glancing over her shoulder. “It’s a story of a silly trapped girl and a selfish thief.”
“Will I like this story?” They keep running.
“I hope so.” Vida’s face is aglow and her small fangs poke out over her lip, a lovely shameless thing. “Hopefully if it’s not over yet.”
Caroline chases her steps. “Not yet! If you’d like to see the rest, that is.”
Vida squeezes her hand. “Lead the way.”
They dash into the dappled woods, and Caroline turns her face up to the canopy. Wind whips against her cheeks. Her stomach grumbles. Her hands run bloody and her mouth tingles, and there is no time at all.