Dragonoak (70 page)

“There
was a woodland in Thule that was part of the castle grounds. Every
morning, I'd wake at dawn and run through it. Often, Rylan would
come with me. He was faster, but I knew the woods better than he
did; I was there so often that I'd worn tracks into the dirt. We'd
made a race of it at least twice a week, and it wasn't easy going.
Tree roots jutted out and there were plenty of rocks to trip over,
which is to say nothing of the state of things after a night of
heavy rain.

“But I
went, every morning. My route took more than an hour and a half,
and somehow, being exhausted before breakfast gave me the energy to
face the rest of the day. More than that, it was the one time I
stopped thinking: about dragon-slaying, about any of my other
responsibilities.

“I miss
that. Running against the wind and rain, not weighed down by
anything. And I have to accept that it's all behind me.”

Pushing
myself up on an elbow, I looked down at her, doing what I could to
smile. I might not have been able to give Claire her leg back or
cleanse her burns, but I could give her the rush of the wind and
some of the freedom that entailed.

“Come
with me,” I said.

“Come
with you? To where?”

“The
Bloodless Lands,” I said, not pausing for long enough for her to
react. “Into Myros. It's all still there, Claire. I found it. I
found the Phoenix Fire. It's still burning.”

She
pushed herself up into a sitting position, forehead almost crashing
against mine. Her gaze skidded to the box of bones on her shelf,
barely lit up the candles below, and she frowned.

“Rowan...” she began.

“I know!
I know it might not work. But we'll never know unless we try, will
we? We'll be gone soon, Claire. Busy in Thule. If not now,
when?”

Falling
back against the pillow, she covered her face with both hands,
laughing flatly into her palms. After a moment, she pulled me
close, mumbling, “I think we both need to sleep, Rowan,” into the
top of my head.

*

Oak
sprung to his feet at the sight of Claire, and I rushed forward,
plastering myself against the end of his snout, heels digging into
the dirt. He didn't know what had happened to her and would've
knocked her clean off her feet, given half a chance. He let out a
low growl when I didn't release him, protests turning to a low
whimper when he set his eyes on Claire instead.

Slowly
stepping back, I let him approach Claire. He spread his wings out,
dropped to the ground and whined at her feet. Claire froze, hand
held out in mid-air, and I hoped it wasn't too much for her. She
wasn't used to facing dragons like this. She'd spent the first
thirty-one years of her life with nothing but the thought of
slaying them at the forefront of her mind, and then Isin had burnt
all around her.

“Hello,
Oak,” she eventually said, patting the top of his nose. “Rowan's
told me a lot about you.”

Content,
Oak rolled onto his side, wings folding back.

“Are you
ready?” I asked.

“Rowan.
This is... I don't know what to call it. It's beyond madness. Even
if you did see a fire, that isn't to say—”

“Fifteen hundred years, Claire. It's been fifteen hundred
years. That isn't a normal fire burning. You didn't see it. It was
like...” I looked to Oak, but he wasn't of any help. “Look. Even if
it doesn't work out, don't you at least want to go
flying
?”

Claire
met Oak's great, glassy eye and ran her hand through her
hair.

“I
suppose you'd know I was lying if I said no.”

I
crouched by Oak's head, scratching behind his ear and murmuring
that he had to stay extra still, just for Claire. He righted
himself, body pressed low to the ground, tail swishing back and
forth. Eager to impress her, he placed his jaw against the dirt,
doing all he could to refrain from twitching as we moved to his
side.

Half a dozen pane watched from the
sca-sino
, and I was glad we hadn't
told Sen about the expedition we were about to embark on. She'd
have at least one heart attack.

I
strapped Claire's cane to my back in the same way Kidira carried
her spears, and slowly but surely, helped her up onto Oak. I
climbed up behind her, leant against her back, and watched as she
cautiously ran her hands over Oak's scales.

“Are you
sure you're still alright with this?” I asked, placing my bag
between us. “It can't be easy.”

“Ever
since King Garland revealed the truth to me, I've been forced to
see the dragons in a new light,” she said. “This can only
help.”

There
was only one thing for it.

Showing
Claire where to place her hands, I wrapped my arms loosely around
her and signalled for Oak to set off. I'd intended to be relaxed
enough for the two of us, but the moment he kicked off, my arms
were tight around Claire's waist. She swore under her breath, hands
wrapped tightly around the bases of Oak's wings, but once we were
in the sky, once Oak had pushed through the rocky lift-off, Claire
was smiling.

“Are you
alright?” I asked over the rush of the wind.

Oak beat
his wings and held his altitude in order to give Claire time to
become accustomed to it. We were already hundreds of feet above the
ground, and Claire leant more to the side than I would've dared
to.

“I'm on
a dragon,” she said, glancing back at me. “Flying. On a
dragon.”

“You
are,” I agreed, grinning.

I
propped my chin on her shoulder, seeing what she saw. With her left
eye of no use to her, Claire had to turn her head all the way to
properly see the width of the mountain range rushing beneath us,
and I'd never known her to be so animated.

“Claire,
the blindfold,” I reminded her, pulling it from her back
pocket.

“Ah,
yes,” she said, taking in as much of the Bloodless Lands as she
could in the seconds it took me to put the blindfold on her.
“Perhaps I ought to have worn two eye-patches instead.”

Blinded
though she was, Claire responded to everything around her. I
watched as her fingers clung tighter to Oak's scales and then
relaxed as the wind picked up, stomach muscles pulling taut when
Oak swooped down, flying closer to the ground. She kept turning her
head this way and that, as though hearing something carried by the
wind that neither Oak nor I did, and all the while, she was smiling
without restraint.

“What do
you see, Rowan?” she asked. “Tell me.”

“Cities. There are cities
everywhere
. I can't imagine how
alive Myros must've once been,” I murmured. “And it's all white,
like it was along the edges. It's as though it's always been white,
and it'll be like that forever, unless... unless someone changes
that.”

I rested
against her back, listening to the roar of the wind and the beat of
Oak's wings, telling her about every tower I saw, every shrine that
could've swallowed a castle whole, until Oak brought us to the
capital of Myros. He didn't stop along the outskirts, this time,
instead landing in the wide, open street leading up to the Phoenix
Fire.

I slid
off his back, guided Claire down, and she blindly patted her way
along Oak's neck, stopping at his head and saying, “Thank you,
Oak.” He growled in delight, curling up in the street and letting
us attend to business, that he might fly Claire back to Kyrindval
soon.

“I think
we're in the capital of Myros,” I said, handing Claire her cane and
patting a hand against my bag, just to be certain. “Do you know
what it's called?”

“Phos,”
Claire said, holding out an arm for me to take, “That's what all
the books say. Phos is where they built the Phoenix
Fire.”

With her
arm linked around mine, she reached up a hand, trying to move her
blindfold back with her thumb. I pulled her hand away, told her it
wasn't time yet, and guided her up the steps, towards Isjin. I was
prepared for her this time and inclined my head towards the statue,
leading Claire around her outstretched hands.

There
the Phoenix Fire was, just as it had been the first time I'd found
it. Liquid flame burnt above a grate, running towards the sky,
dissipating before it reached the statue standing guard
overhead.

The heat
of the flames were enough to let Claire know where we were. She
reached for her blindfold and I didn't stop her, this time. I
turned from the Phoenix Fire, from the life-giving flames that had
burnt without spite, without anger, for longer than Kondo-Kana had
walked across the surface of Bosma, and instead fixed my eyes on
Claire, watching as her face was painted a glassy gold.

She
brought a hand to her mouth, words deserting her, and held it out
to me.

Reaching
into my bag, I pulled out the wooden box, bones still rattling
within.

I opened
it, held it out to her, and Claire gathered the bones, fingers
wrapping tightly around them.

She
turned to me and I said, “Go on,” mouth flickering into a smile as
I nodded towards the fire.

Holding
the bones to her chest, the bones she'd brought all the way from
Thule, Claire took a deep breath, scattering them to the flames
before she could think better of it.

There
was a crackle, a rush of air.

The
golden flames ate up the bones, turning them to ashes with roar as
hollow as the wind, and the fire returned to the way it had been
for more than fifteen hundred years. Untouched,
unchanging.

“...
that was it,” Claire said, swallowing the lump in her throat. She
shook her head, letting out a shaky breath. “For a moment, I really
thought—”

“Yeah,”
I said, stepping forward and placing my hands against the smooth,
black stone the Phoenix Fire was built into. “So did I,
Claire.”

There
was nothing happening within the flames, so far as I could tell,
and some part of me was convinced that I'd be able to feel a ripple
of life from within, being what I was. I glanced between the
statues of Isjin, silently imploring them for help, and Claire
muttered something about them likely being eagle bones after all.
Neither of us doubted what was in front of us. Setting eyes on the
Phoenix Fire itself was all the proof we needed, and it wasn't
charred bones that drew disappointment out me.

It was
the look on Claire's face.

She
hadn't allowed herself to hope in a long time. This was supposed to
be a distraction. Something to focus on, to believe in, while Thule
was waiting for us, while Rylan was heading our way with Agados
behind him. Myros was supposed to be the one place on Asar we could
go to get away from that all, and faced with yet another loss, no
matter how much she claimed to have entered into this with no
expectations, Claire couldn't turn her thoughts away from all that
rested heavily on her shoulders.

Even
flying wouldn't make her smile any time soon.

“Come,”
she said, holding out a hand to me.

I took
it in my own, and she reached up with her other hand, still
gripping her cane, to pull the blindfold back over her right
eye.

A flood
of light brought her hand back to her side.

It was
brighter than the Phoenix Fire itself; thinner, lighter. It was
like the light that poured from my eyes, from my fingers, like the
light that had consumed the whole of Myros and beyond, and I
understood, for the first time, that there was nothing to fear from
it. It twisted in the air before us, draining the flames dry, and
Claire pulled off her eye-patch, both eyes reflecting the
white.

The
light couldn't sustain itself. Purple filtered across Claire's face
like strange sunbeams reaching the ocean floor, and she gripped my
hand tighter.

Before
us, a phoenix rose from the flames, fire trailing behind it, wings
beating the flames from its feathers.

And in a
land where time no longer held any meaning, for the briefest of
moments, life, once again, flooded out across Myros.

About
the Author

Sam Farren started writing the way
many young authors do: they really,
really
wanted to post
some fanfiction. After dabbling in both transformative and original
works for many years, they developed a passion for representing
lesbian, bisexual, trans women, and woman-aligned non-binary people
of all sorts in fantasy worlds.
Dragonoak: The Sky Beneath The
Sun
, is the second instalment in a fully-written trilogy,
spanning both years and continents.

Born and raised
in the south-east of England, Sam still resides there, with a
charming pile of royal pythons, Tofu, Twix and Toffee. They
currently work with animals, and deeply appreciate any and all
support via their published works.

If you've
enjoyed this novel, please consider sharing a review or
recommendation on social media. Please remember that
Dragonoak
is a small, independent publication, and has been
created with relatively few resources. Editing for each book takes
at least six months, and any errors are not for a lack of hard work
and dedication!