Autumn slid into winter, which melted to spring. Lucky found herself going to Mrs. Hollins’s house less and less. She had friendships to manage. And dragon playdates to arrange. And she and her mother and the dragon took weekly excursions to the museum or the library or the zoo. Over time, the less Lucky went to the house next door, the less Lucky thought about the house next door, the less Lucky remembered Mrs. Hollins at all. Finally, one day, while playing an epic game of tag with her dragon and the other kids in the neighborhood, both Lucky and her dragon found themselves in a backyard that they didn’t recognize.
Are those owls? the dragon thought at her. I love owls.
“I also love owls,” Lucky said. She scrunched up her forehead. “I used to check on owls. Do you remember?”
No, the dragon thought. I remember lemon cookie, though.
“Here,” Mrs. Hollins said. She was holding a plate.
“Mrs. Hollins!” Lucky cried. She nearly tackled the old woman in a hug, her dragon squirming in the compressed space between them. “I’ve missed you!”
“I’ve been standing next to you for nearly thirty minutes. If you’ve missed me, perhaps you should get your eyes checked. Here. Have a cookie.”
Mrs. Hollins stared at Lucky through her large, thick glasses. Her magnified eyes blinked. Then narrowed.
“You seem to be intact. That’s a relief. And the dragon? You still haven’t named it, have you?”
The dragon perched on Lucky’s shoulder and curled its tail into her hair. She could no sooner name her dragon as name her right hand or her own eyes. Her feet were Lucky’s feet, and her tummy was Lucky’s tummy, and her dragon was Lucky’s dragon, and that was that. “My dragon doesn’t need a name,” she said, her mouth full of lemon cookie. “We already know who we are.”
“Who are you talking to?” Lucky’s mother asked.
Lucky looked up. She was standing in her own yard. Her dragon absently played with her hair.
“Who?” Lucky asked.
“Who,” said the owl in the tree. “Who, who.”
Lucky swallowed. Her mouth was full of lemon cookie. “No one, I guess.”
Mrs. Hollins watched the girl and her dragon and mother walk away. She shrugged, and called to the owls, who fluttered with her into her house. And then, after sadly waving farewell, she picked up her equipment, inventions, books, research, discoveries, and even her entire house, and simply took off. No one, not even Lucky, noticed as the house silently lifted upward. No one noticed as it hovered over the trees, lingering as the leaves rustled and the birds sang. No one noticed as it glinted against the edge of the sky. And no one noticed when it disappeared.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
....................................
I Make Myself a Dragon
Beth Cato
this body
frail
human
wrong
it does not fit my soul
I will make myself
a dragon
I will flay away my skin
word by word
split wide my seams
with invectives
that still echo
from childhood
I will reclaim those words
shape them upon the tines
of my freshly forked tongue
shred them with teeth
sharpened to ivory knives
those words
will be exiled
to the roiling acid
of my belly
to become the fuel
of my dragon’s fire
my wings I will stitch
from the remnants
of my former self
the body that ill fit my soul
will gain new purpose
as it powers me
toward the stars
laid bare
I am muscle and verse
crimson anger in motion
I refuse to be a medieval beast
laying waste to villages
without sense of discretion
or direction
no
my regurgitated words aflame
will be an assassin’s bullet
a strike between the eyes
my enemies never see coming
I will claim the magic
that has lain dormant
inside me all these years
I will accept that I
am someone more
someone ancient
powerful
someone worthy of
the scaled skin
that will clothe my new form
skin that is not
impenetrable
but strong and sensitive together
because although I
will be reborn a dragon
I intend to feel
with every nerve ending
set alight
I refuse to shun the world
that has so often shunned me
I will fly high and far
to find the souls
so like my own
for them
I will aim my fire
for them
accept the wounds
of barbed words—
the pain easier
to bear in another’s stead
for them
I will offer respite
beneath the shadow of my wings
and the reassurance
that they, too
will escape
survive
triumph
that they, too
can awaken their dragon within
that together we
will know our own fire
know the fierce jagged shapes
of our own souls
still human
and yet forever more
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollinsPublishers
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The Exile
JY Yang
JY Yang (jyyang.com) is the author of the Tensorate series of novellas, beginning with The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune. Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Lambda Literary Awards, and the Tensorate novellas were an Otherwise Award (formerly known as the Tiptree Award) honoree in 2018. They have more than two dozen works of short fiction published on Tor.com and in Uncanny, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons, among other venues. JY is currently based out of Singapore. They are queer and non-binary.
The first time the dragon spoke to Linear, they had not yet made planetfall. Their sentence had not yet commenced. Because Linear was the least ranking of the priests on board the ship, and because it was their fate, it fell to them to bring the deity the daily offerings. The temple was in the underhold that lined the ship’s belly, tucked under its beating heart and humming spine. Pre-suited and fully helmeted, Linear climbed the hatches, balancing the capsule of sweets and ashes in one hand. By the time they reached the bottom deck, their free hand had curled into a cramp.
Yare had no love for humans. Dragons rarely did. Some took to binding and veneration with a certain amount of resignation, even equanimity, but this one had fought hir strictures for the past hundred years with every warp and weave of hir being. And even though Linear said the right prayers before waking the temple doors each time, the animal fear of being instantly obliterated clung to them, a gluey clot in the hollows of their chest.