“Kirin,” the dragon said slowly, then repeated it, the name deliberate and soft on their lips. “The beautiful maiden who is also a prince.”
Nothing whispered, “The Beautiful Maiden Who Is Also a Prince,” and the rightness of it felt like a name. Both identities true, neither negating the other. Maybe the two together made each other better—made each other more.
“Kirin,” the dragon said, “is here in the mountain. I am compelled not to tell you where.”
“Of course.” Nothing released Sky’s hand and sank to the floor, her back to the altar. She cradled her hands in her lap.
The dragon sat beside her. Their shoulder glanced against hers. Both of them stretched out their legs and looked at their four bare feet: two long and silver-white, two stubby and sandy-white.
“Are all dragons like you?” she asked, wiggling her toes. She’d been tempted to ask What does it feel like to be a dragon? What a day this was. What a place.
The dragon wiggled their toes too, slower. “Are all Nothings like you?”
Nothing giggled, surprised. “I’ve never met another Nothing.”
“Oh. Well, then, no, and yes. Neither, too.”
She laughed a little harder.
“Both no and yes, dragon and human, river and spirit. Dragon spirits are change. That’s why we inhabit rivers and crossroads most often. Movement, shifting, fluid. More than both, not either-or: we’re the places in between. Potential.”
Nothing quieted as they spoke, closing her eyes. Between breaths she felt a pull and tug, to either breathe in or out, suspended there. Between two sides, between ground and air. “I would like to be a dragon.”
The dragon lifted a hand into their silky straight hair and pulled out a short, curving feather. They offered it.
As Nothing took it between her fingers, a rainbow gleamed along the row of barbs. “Beautiful,” she said, and reached up to pluck a hair from her own head. She offered it in return.
They didn’t take it. Nothing, suddenly afraid she’d misstepped—and with a dragon—pulled her hand back and turned her face fully to them.
The dragon’s water-eyes were huge. They seemed surprised.
“What?” Nothing demanded, too loudly. Though Sky was under a magical sleep, she feared waking him nonetheless and hushed herself. “What?” she whispered.
“Humans usually take gifts.”
“Are dragons not allowed to do the same?”
“A trade is a bargain, not a gift.”
“Or just… friendship,” Nothing said, turning away.
“You are a strange human. Your people usually want something more from me. Power, riddles, never-ending fish.”
“I only want Kirin.” Nothing offered her hair again, and this time the dragon of the Selegan River took it. She lifted the feather they’d given her from her lap. It felt like a breath of moisture on a summer day. It was perfect, and she loved it as she loved so many things here at the Fifth Mountain.
Maybe it was where she belonged. With dragons and unicorns and sorceresses.
She said, “The sorceress told me I’m her lost demon consort.”
Beside her, the dragon went so still it was like a river freezing over in a single snap.
When she looked, she saw they stared down at the line of blackness that was her hair, slicing across their palm. They said, “She has been searching for her demon for a long time.”
“Is it possible?”
“How should I know?”
“You’re a dragon!”
“I know change and water, river to steam to cloud to snow. I know trickling and flowing. I know raging and vibrant, lustrous storms. But I don’t know rebirth and creation.” They stood, padded a few paces from her, and quite suddenly instead of a lovely youth, they were their dragon form again, filling the crystal chamber with undulating silver-white scales and rainbow feathers and triple tail. The dragon said, “When I shift my shape, I choose who to be, what to be, and make my seeming match my will and core. Inside I am always what I am: potential. Do you know what you are inside? Can you change?”
Nothing stood and held out her hands. She stared at the backs of them, the subtle gleam of sand-pale skin and wrinkled knuckles, the moon-white beds of her nails, and pretty pink shadows. In one hand, the dragon’s feather curved away, fluttering lightly. She imagined feathers bursting from her skin, then a ripple of pebbled scales growing down toward her wrists.
She did not transform.
She said, “I’m not a dragon. I’m not a demon.”
“You know what you are not.”
“That’s the easy part,” she murmured.
“She loved it, you know.” The dragon changed again, to their youth form. They stood directly before Nothing, watery eyes on hers.
She tried to respond, but found she did not know how, and touched the dragon’s cool cheek.
“That’s why she worked so hard to find the right magic to bring it to life again,” they said.
Nothing let her hand drift down the dragon’s cheek and fall to her side. “Did it love her back?”
The dragon only looked at her, as if to say she was the one to answer that question.
NINETEEN
INSISTENT TIDE CAME TO fetch Nothing for dinner. Finally! Nothing had begun to think the day would drag on and on—not that the Selegan River was poor company, but she needed to see Kirin.
First the old woman dragged Nothing back to her room, where a gown was folded over the makeup chair. Insistent Tide put her fists on her hips, glaring through her wrinkles at Nothing. “Strip,” she ordered.
Taking her own turn at grumbling, Nothing obeyed. Insistent Tide thrust a cup of water at her and Nothing drank every drop. The cool water was refreshing, and she shook herself like a dog, rolling her neck and shoulders. She stretched her fingers and reached for the ceiling, then bent in half to touch the floor.
“Finished?” Insistent Tide asked.
Nothing stood and lifted her chin.
The old woman stared. Her long wrinkles shaped her face around her frown. But her dark eyes glittered with amusement. “New underclothes there,” she finally said, pointing at some pale silk bits atop the smallest trunk.
Nothing put them on, wiggling her hips a little to appreciate the softness. The thin silk slip tied over her breasts and fell in a narrow shaft nearly to her knees. She smoothed the material against herself, enjoying the sensation. Insistent Tide brought a sleeveless under-robe nearly as thin, but in shell pink, wrapping it around her waist tightly. Over that went a pale-green jacket that left most of her collar bare, hugging her shoulders only a little. Then a set of black and silver wrapping skirts tied at her waist with a bright-green sash embroidered with white lilies. Nothing obliged Insistent Tide tonight by sitting at the makeup desk while the old woman braided and pinned a few pieces of her hair and used a silk-and-horn band to hold it all in place. Then she put coral red on her lips and green around her eyes. Nothing supposed the old woman thought she was being funny, using the same colors as Nothing’s outrageous demon face the night before. This time they fit well with the gown.
“Do you have feathers?” Nothing asked, thinking of the dragon’s feather. She’d left it with Sky, for he was the one who needed the dragon’s friendship most.