The Dragon and the Witch (4 page)

Chapter Six

It didn’t take me long to understand that he wasn’t ready to discuss everything at once. The revelation of what he’d just told me took an emotional toll on him. But when he answered my question with, “Today, you’re my daughter but tomorrow, we will talk about your heritage.” I knew that he’d told me enough stories for one day.

He turned and took my hands into his. “You see, Zadie, if those hunters that you saved happen to return, there will be no way for you to stop them. They murder first and think about it later.”

“But I think Piku and I took care of that. I’m hoping they’ll use their camera footage to help them remember what happened out here.”

“You are my daughter,” his eyes narrowed and he gripped my hands firmly. “But, don’t defy me again. I won’t lose you the way I lost all of them.” He pointed toward the ravine. “I will not concede to man, nor will I let them enslave me again.”

“Yes, Father.” I stared into his wise eyes marked with wisdom lines around the outer corners. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. A foreign emotion he’d rarely used.

Out of nowhere, his hand swung toward my neck and I ducked. “Now, we train.” He spun into a fighting stance and I naturally squatted into mine.

“A little warning would be nice.” My heart raced.

“Hunters don’t give warnings when they shoot. Neither do witches.”

“Neither do witches what?” I narrowed my eyes as we circled each other. The statement was so bizarre and yet, I knew that my father would have a story about that as well. He was reflective today and when he felt reflective, he fed me with the knowledge of his elder soul.

“They don’t give warnings, Zadie. They just act upon their desires and take what they think is theirs.”

My father and I had never talked much about witches, although he had once mentioned that they ruled our part of the forest. But to entangle a conversation about witches with hunters into a single sentence made little sense to me. I was confused. Disoriented even. That wouldn’t stop me from practicing with my massive guardian. “A little random. Don’t ya think?”

“No, Zadie.” He kicked his leg out, sweeping it counterclockwise to take my legs out from under me. I jumped over his feet. “Tomorrow, on your birthday, you’ll understand everything.”

“I’m understanding more, now that you showed me this.” I ran toward him and jumped through the air with a thrust punch that flew past his head and missed his face. Falling forward, he pushed at my back and I stumbled toward the ground. “Damn it.”

“Think, Zadie. Take your time and think. Protecting yourself isn’t a race. It’s about concentration and anticipating your attacker’s next move.”

Father came at me with his fist flying toward my face one after another. I dodged them repeatedly, using my hands to help thwart his punches into opposite directions of my face. Then I ducked and slammed my open palms into his diaphragm, causing him to lose balance and stumble backward.

He chuckled. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. You’re quite the fighter, my darling. It pleases me to know that you can take care of yourself.”

I smiled and bowed. “Thank you. Thank you. You’ve been quite the teacher.”

He bowed back at me. “Remember, expect the unexpected and don’t rely on your eyes. Your eyes will play tricks on you. You must use all your senses as one.”

“Of course.” I hesitated and glanced back at the gully.

“What is it?” he asked.

I reached into my pocket and rolled the bullet from the lion around in my pocket. There was a desperate need to tell him how I’d been changing, but I remembered how he acted when I’d told him about my dream earlier that morning and I wasn’t in the mood to defend myself again.

“Well?” he asked.

“It’s nothing, really.”

“Zadie?” he crossed his arms over his chest. “We don’t keep secrets from each other, right?”

I pulled out the bullet from my pocket and opened my hand to show him. “Somehow, I was able to remove this from a lion just by resting my hand over his wound.”

Tolbalth took the bullet from my hand and studied it. “You pulled this out of the lion?”

“No, I mean, it kind of worked itself out into my hand and I healed him. Do you know how I could do such a thing?”

“I’m not sure,” he said quickly.

Again, I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that he was keeping something very important from me.

“What are we having for dinner?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Rabbit with wild grains and beans. And berry pie. Piku and I picked berries earlier.”

“Tomorrow, I will do the cooking for you, since it’s your birthday.”

“My dragon father is going to cook for me? I can’t wait.” I half-smiled, trying to get that heaviness away from my heart. For as long as I could remember, Tolbalth preached that we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other, but lately, it felt like that was all we’d done.

“Want a ride back?”

I hesitated to leave as I scanned over the gully filled with dragon bones, feeling a sense of dread for the dragons who had died so close to our home. My heart ached for my father to have suffered so much.

Tomorrow is my birthday
. At eighteen, my life should change. I wasn’t sure how, but I’d always heard from Tolbalth that at eighteen years old, a child becomes an adult. Maybe then, my father would share more about who I am and what he knew of my birth.
Maybe.

My father transformed into his massive dragon form and as he kneeled down so I could climb my way to his shoulders, I had a feeling I hadn’t felt since I was five years old. I held on as he ran and took off in flight. The wind smacked me in the face and the beauty of seeing the land from the vantage point of being high above the trees made me want to scream out in absolute excitement. I threw my hands in the air as I rode on the back of my father’s neck, feeling a child-like joy that had a way of healing what I’d just witnessed in the gully. For a short time, nothing mattered except this one moment with my father—this bonding time that we rarely shared except while riding high in the sky.

Chapter Seven

She came again in a silky white dress, her golden hair blowing from the breeze coming in from my carved, rock window. It was chilly in my room, so I pulled the covers up to my neck and shivered beneath them. Part fear, part cold.

“Mother?”

She stood at my window inside my room, staring at me with those intense golden eyes.

“Are you my mom?” I asked.

She nodded, her hair cascading from her shoulder over the front of her body.

I realized at that moment, she couldn’t talk to me, at least, I didn’t think she could. I pulled the covers up a little further, uncertain as to why she was standing in my room and how she’d gotten there. This was the first time ever that she’d ventured inside our home. “Why are you here?”

Her hair floated around her face, framing it like a beautiful pale photo. Her eyes moved from mine as she pointed out the window before she used her fingers to ask me to follow her.

I had to know. Every year she’d visited me. Most of the time, the dream was in a clearing in the forest. And each year, her presence seemed stronger. This was the first time I could see the fine details of my mother’s face. Her golden eyes, full pink lips and even a small mole on the right side of her face above her lip. She had perfectly shaped brows and her fingers were slender and fragile.

But as beautiful as she was, there was an odd fear in my mother’s familiar eyes. A tinge just bright enough for me to see the way it held her hostage. And beneath that fear, I could see her desire to share something with me—something that seemed pressing and important. I wasn’t sure what to do.

This is just a dream, Zadie
, I thought.
Nothing terribly bad can happen in a dream.

I pulled back my covers, slipped on an ancient pair of long pants and a light shirt with a drawstring neckline my father had brought home for me a year prior. Grabbing my new blade, I moved closer to her. Slowly, at first. I wondered if I got close enough, if she’d disappear, but she didn’t. Within seconds, I was inches from my beautiful dream-induced mother. She wanted to touch me, I could tell. Instead, she reached out and tried to take my hand. To my surprise, I could feel the warmth of her skin, even though she wasn’t a solid entity.

A pleasant stream of heat spread through my body. This was the first touch I’d felt from my mother since my birth. The first time I’d been so close to her and yet, in my mind, I knew that she wasn’t really there. The dream appeared real, but reality was somewhere in bed with me while I slept alone.

She smiled. Her teeth were perfect and the smile matched her upturned lips. One second, I rested my hand in hers and the next, we stood at the mouth of the cave nestled inside Crens Peak. I recognized the mountain. It was the same one my father had warned me not to enter at any cost.

My mother’s white dress waved about her legs as she stood just inside the cave beckoning me to join her. I hesitated. An inner curiosity tugged at me to follow the woman in white, but Tolbalth’s words kept echoing in my mind. “You will not go near that Crens Peak, that mountain in the distance. It holds evils that you are too young to understand.”

Those words replayed in my head. But the words that he said this evening about me being an adult also assaulted my mind. In the end, I realized that my curiosity would win. My mother’s request that I follow her into the dark cave, would be the driving force that sent me farther inside.

I glanced down and noticed I was barefoot. It didn’t matter. This was a dream and so I stepped inside and followed the outlined glow of her nightgown. An odor filled the space between the walls with such a strong stench that it made me want to gag. Yet, I kept moving forward, curious as to what my mother wanted to show me.

Up and over rocks that had tumbled to form barriers to the area she wanted me to see. My heart raced to know where she was taking me and at one point, I stopped and called out. “What do you want? Why are you taking me so deep inside this cave?”

From the moment it took me to blink was how long it took for my mother’s face to be within inches of mine again. Her soft eyes filled with unshed tears and her hand cupped my left cheek, reassuring me that it was okay to follow her and so I did.

The deeper we moved into the cave, the darker it grew. A cold chill stabbed at my body and when I stepped down from the mountainous rocks I’d just climbed over, my foot landed in a puddle of water.
Sticky water
. That was when everything changed.

Something’s not right,
I thought
. Go back. Or wake up. You don’t belong in here.

I stopped, taking a deep breath of air that smelled so bad I could taste it along the outer edges of my tongue. “I can’t go any farther,” I yelled out.

My mother turned. Her head first, then her body. The sound of a match being lit echoed against the walls. My mother held the match in her hand. Leaning down, she lit dried shrubbery on fire and the pit bellowed with flames. I watched curiously. When I turned my eyes back to the woman in front of me, a red substance seeped through her white nightgown near her abdomen.

“You’re bleeding. Mother, you’re bleeding. Right there.” I stepped toward her, reaching out for her.

Her mouth opened and fear struck her eyes. Before I knew what was happening, her irises turned white and she lifted her head, yelling out, “Zadie! Zadie, come back to me!” She fell to her knees as the flames in the pit encircled her like a cage of flames.

My eyes grew wide, and my heart thudded against my chest with an unbearable force. Tolbalth called my name. “Zadie! Where are you, Zadie?”

But before I could run, before I could get my bearings together and force my legs to take me out of the cave or make myself wake up, I heard a chant. That chant that haunted me in my dreams the night before:

On this sacred ground where we stand,

From this child, you are banned.

Until the day you concede,

With me, she will live and breathe.

You will wander through dimensions’ doors.

Blood for blood will right the score.

Breathless, I turned around, searching for the man who spewed those words, hearing Tolbalth call to me at the same time and watching my mother on her knees cry out a piercing, heart-wrenching scream. I turned in circles like a merry-go-round with my hands cupped over my ears until, the cave grew dark and silent. The cold air bit at my skin and thrust a new fear inside of me. The fear of being completely alone.

“Mother?”

I was met with silence. The fire was gone. My mother was gone. Tolbalth’s voice was gone and the chanting had disappeared as well. I gasped for air and realized that I stood alone in the dark cave that my father had warned me about so many years ago. The darkness consumed me. Even if I wanted to find my way out of the cave, I couldn’t.

“Wake up, Zadie. Wake up!” I said to myself as I fell to my knees and sobbed. “Please wake up.” I curled up in a ball on the cold ground and closed my eyes, praying that my father would wake me in the morning.