Downward.
Descending through light, I found the tree. It was sliced clean and steaming from the frigid moon’s carving. As the fog cleared, a baby cooed. I landed on the lip of the trunk, staring into blue eyes. My gaze jerked to the baby’s arm, where it was marked with my scar. That was me in the tree. I was the babe I was seeing.
I glimpsed the wing flapping beside me. On the other side, another.
I wasn’t me at all. This was the draignoch’s doing. These were her memories of the first time we’d met.
A woman with long black hair appeared out of the darkness. She was naked, as was the tiny boy whose hand she held. “As I foresaw, Armel. This babe will give you what you need. She only needs to reach her age of enlightenment.”
I took to the skies, following after the woman and the baby. Or rather, the draignoch did.
Images flew by. Glimpses in time.
The draignoch looking back at the girl crawling after her. The woman catching her, slapping her for running off.
Wings cascading over a crying girl’s bruised shoulders and back, giving a gentle hug.
“Get away from her! She belongs to me!” the woman screeched.
An arrow whizzing by, missing, barely.
“Yeah!” The boy hurled a rock.
The little girl ran, following the draignoch.
“Get back here! Worthless child!”
Through woods, across streams, into a cave too small for the woman to enter. We hid there, wrapped together. Girl and draignoch. No. Not draignoch.
Dragon.
Looking down on the girl, on me, older now, maybe five, staring at my reflection in a smooth pond. Wild sun-dusted raven hair. Blue eyes. Covered in mud.
The earthy scent of the woods after rain. The leaves green and plentiful with tiny burgeoning buds. It was spring.
A playful whine echoed from the dragon. The girl looked up and started running. The dragon took to the skies, sailing through fluffy white clouds, slicing them into different animal shapes as the girl called them out to her.
“A wolf!”
“A bear!”
“A fuzzy rabbit!”
“Rendicryss!” the girl called.
The dragon landed then, for that was the name I had given her. We were both still small. Rendicryss whinnied, wanting a pet, which my tiny hand gave her on the nose. In return she licked the mark on my arm.
A sudden forceful surge rocketed through me.
Moonlight struck palms, leaving a line from the heavens, leading directly to us. I wasn’t scared, but rather dancing and laughing, winding a light web, a cocoon around us.
A rock pelted Rendicryss’s side.
Armel’s snivelly pug-nosed face peeked out from behind a tree.
He hurled another rock.
I caught the rock in my moonlit web and hurled it back at him. Then chased him, for I was tired of running away from him and the woman we both called Mother.
He tried to run but there was no escape. He was hunched over, his eyes not level, which made him slower, off balance.
I threw another rock. “Stay away from us!”
It hit him, and he fell on all fours. His back trembling, not with fear but laughter.
“She’s here, Mother!”
I hid behind a tree. Rendicryss perched on a branch, too big to be missed.
“Worthless!” she yelled. “You cannot run anymore.”
An arrow sailed at Rendicryss. The jolt knocked her out of the tree.
I slapped a hand over her mouth, holding back her scream. Pulled the arrow out. A tiny hand over the web. Glistening white light. The hole knit together. The wing healing instantly.
“I’m going to chop up that creature and throw her in my cauldron!” She pinned another arrow, drawing the string taut. “And then you with her!”
The arrow hit the dragon’s other wing.
“Fly!” I screamed. “Please!”
The dragon did, but always keeping me in her sights.
I ran hard. Feet pounding soft ground, tripping over rising roots.
At the edge of the woods, I skidded to a stop. It was too dangerous beyond the woods.
Mother chanting. She stepped out from behind the tree. An arrow struck Rendicryss’s wing.
As the images spun, I saw myself start running again. I saw Mother throw a curse. Me, falling out of the woods.
Wounded, the young dragon attacked, chasing Mother away from the edge of the woods, away from me, giving me time to run.
Rendicryss returned to the edge of the woods, but I was gone. She roared and her cry broke my heart. The world spun through setting suns and rising moons—
“Hey! You there!”
Griffin grabbed me, lifting me off my feet, pulling my hand off Rendicryss. The images cut off. My dragon hissed at the guards. Her hind legs and neck chained, her wings tied down, she slammed her tail against the bars, drawing their attention.
Griffin put a clammy hand over my mouth as he set me on my feet and backed us into an empty cell. He pressed my head into his shoulder, trying to keep me quiet because I couldn’t stop crying. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. For all these years, I had been lost to Rendicryss, and she to me. But not anymore. My dragon had found me. Her sting broke through the curse, giving me back what was rightfully mine. But she wasn’t finished. She had more to show me! More I needed to see. The power of the moon flowed through me like a raging river, but I had no idea what to do with it. I balled my hands into fists.
Guards and a familiar stick figure appeared. Griffin pushed me down and covered me with hay. “Don’t come out,” he whispered.
“I should’ve known.” I recognized Perig’s sniveling voice. “Leave us,” he shouted at the guards. Their footsteps softened until they were gone.
I heard Perig step into the cell. “Popped the hinges, did we, Sir Griffin? I’m going to have to bolt the gate now.”
“I just wanted to see her,” Griffin confessed. “I have to face that in the arena. Not you.” He sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him before. “I understand if you feel the need to report me, but if it makes you feel any better, she is so bound, I learned nothing.”
“Did you call it a she?” Perig asked.
“I meant it,” Griffin corrected himself.
“All the others have tossed gold at me. I assumed you’d understand, and have your bribe at the ready,” Perig laughed. Griffin blinked at him. “Yes, the others have all paid well to see it. Don’t look so surprised. I carry a death sentence so long as I work here. This coin will ensure that I can eventually leave this job.” He wiggled his three-fingered hand. “I’ve lost enough to these monsters. Twenty pieces is all I ask. My life is worth more than that, is it not?”
Griffin puffed a breath. “You take this secret with you to your grave or I will put you in it.”
“Bring me payment tomorrow and you have my word.” Perig scurried out of the cell. “Go now. The way you came. I will bring the guards inside the tower until you are gone so no one can say they bore witness to your entry or exit. I’ll tell them it was another, a drunk man from the Bottom. They will enjoy trying to find out who it was.”
Griffin returned a minute later. “He’s gone. We have to go.”
“I have to free Rendicryss,” I said, trying and failing to brush the hay off my cloak.
“Are you mad? You cannot let that thing loose.”