Backyard Dragons (2 page)

Claire nodded, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I like this plan.”

“Let’s not waste time then. We’ll decide on the next step when we get back. Claire, I still don’t want you wandering around the Palace by yourself yet, so cross over and wait for me to knock on your door.”

“Got it. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Justin.” Marie sighed as she set a bowl full of salad on the table. “Can’t this wait until after dinner?”

Justin’s belly rumbled, but worse things had happened to him than going hungry for one night. “I don’t think so, no. Claire, grab a bite before you go. I’ll have something when we get back.” He pecked his wife on the cheek and scooted out the door to avoid disappointed frowns, pouting daughters, and guilt over both.

In the mudroom, he pulled the laces of his boots as fast as possible, but not fast enough to evade Lisa. His five-year-old daughter rushed into the chilly room and flung her arms around his neck, a slice of bread in one hand.

“Do you have to go?”

“I’m sorry, Pumpkin. This is important.” He wrapped an arm around her, wishing he could be in two places at once. “Can you help Mommy take care of Missy for me? You know how much she hates taking baths.”

“Yes, Daddy.” Lisa squeezed his neck and pulled away enough to hand him the bread. A thin layer of butter covered it. “I won’t splash her or anything.”

“Good girl.” He tousled her blonde curls and kissed her forehead. “Give Mommy a hug and kiss for me.”

Lisa kissed his cheek and dashed back inside. Justin hopped to his feet and stuffed the bread into his mouth as he jogged through the front door and into the woods. At times like this, he wished he could have a regular job with a regular paycheck and a regular life. At eighteen, all this running around and saving the world stuff had been exciting and made him feel important. Now, at twenty-four, he wondered how other Knights managed to balance everything.

The smell of damp earth and pine soothed him, as it always did. Running helped more. With every step, his worries and annoyances fell away, jarred loose by the thump of his boots on damp earth. He followed the narrow path to his sycamore tree.

The tattered yellow ribbon he’d tied up years ago still clung to the branch of the tree he preferred to use as his doorway into the Palace. Once, it had taken him several minutes to focus his will enough to force this tree to let him through to that other place. Now, he touched the bark, took a second to focus, and pushed through the tree.

With a flash of white, he stepped from the woods behind his home to his personal room in the Palace. Four stone walls held a bed, shelves, a change of clothes, and a few other odds and ends. Today, he sped out the door, intent on keeping Claire from having to wait long. He jogged down the stone corridor of the fifth floor to the wide spiral stair at one end and rushed down one floor, passing a few other Knights on the way and nodding to them in acknowledgment. They returned the gesture.

He hurried to Claire’s room on the fourth floor, number 462. Right before she’d made the transition from Knight-potential to Knight, Justin’s mentor, Kurt, had occupied this room. The elder Knight’s death had paved the way for Claire’s entry. Justin had to see it that way, or he’d hate her for forcing his favorite curmudgeon out. Soon, he needed to find the time to go check on Kurt’s Phasm. Training Claire had kept him too busy.

Justin brushed his fingers across the worn brown leather of the couch that made up her door. It looked exactly like the one in his own living room because she’d first crossed into the Palace through it and now used a couch to reach this place in the same way he used a sycamore.

Kurt had sat on that couch a fair number of times. The Palace had a wretched sense of humor. Justin tapped on the crushed green stones that made up the numbers at his chest height and heard solid thumping as the door translated his gesture into knocking.

Claire answered immediately, and he escorted her to the spiral stair. She hadn’t explored much, on his request. After the spectacle that almost led to her execution the first time she arrived, she hadn’t argued with him.

As they walked down the steps, Justin braced for the reactions of other Knights. A pair walking up the stairs nodded to him and ignored Claire. When they reached the main floor, another Knight passed them and smiled in greeting. They stepped out into the main thoroughfare between the various locations outside the dormitory without meeting anyone else.

This wide corridor, made of the same stone as the stairs, had ceilings high enough to accommodate the tallest Knights. Noise dampened the moment they stepped into it, and their eyes slid across every surface without catching. This was not a hall intended for grand or lofty purposes, nor did it have any features to be admired. Knights used it to get from one place to another and its form did nothing more or less than fulfill that function.

Guiding Claire up to the left, Justin scanned every branching hall for potential threats, though he hated feeling he needed to. The Palace was supposed to be their safe haven. For at least two millennia, the Spirit Knights had used this other dimension as a home away from home. Only Knights could come here, and all Knights were welcome. Except Claire, who’d challenged the very foundation of the Knights by doing nothing more than being a girl.

They passed the kitchen—an enormous expanse of granite countertops and chrome appliances—on the way to the small room he wanted to use to help Claire forge her sword. Given what he knew of how this place worked, Justin had never been able to wrap his head around the food always waiting in the pantry and refrigerator. Nothing in the Palace ought to actually satisfy hunger, yet it somehow did.

As they walked by, Justin accidentally caught the eye of the one Knight he’d rather not see with Claire by his side. Djembe turned with a steaming mug and froze when he saw them. A muscle in the Ethiopian-born Knight’s forehead twitched. Claire stiffened beside Justin.

“Djembe,” Justin said. He waited to see if they’d wind up coming to blows over Claire or not.

“Justin.” Djembe approached them, the aroma of his coffee reminding Justin he should be having dinner.

“Good to see you,” Justin said, trying to keep things light.

“Mm.” Djembe flicked his gaze toward Claire. His face betrayed none of his thoughts.

Claire gulped. “I got my sprite.” She pointed to the dragon sitting on her shoulder. Enion chirped.

“A dragon?” Curiosity and interest lit up Djembe’s face.

“Can’t think of a better word for it.” Justin had no idea if the unusual creature could be a bridge between Claire and Djembe, but he hoped so.

“Mm.” Djembe sipped his coffee. “Why are you here?”

Though no Knight needed to explain their presence anywhere in the Palace, Justin did anyway. “Claire needs a sword.” Hoping to prevent what would probably become awkward silence, he tried to think of another subject to bring up. While they were here anyway, he figured he might as well see about helping Claire understand her sprite. “Have you seen Rondy around? If anyone knows about dragons, it’d be him.”

“Library. All the time, lately.” Djembe eyed Claire. Justin hoped he remembered her right hook.

“Thanks.” Justin tugged on Claire’s sleeve, urging her to move again.

By unspoken accord, they walked more briskly away from Djembe. Claire glanced back several times before speaking again.

“That was weird,” she said.

“Yes. You did fine.”

“I guess it’s okay for me to wander around here, then?”

Justin glanced back even though they’d turned a corner. He couldn’t decide if his impulse to disagree came from practicality or a desire to keep her safe at all costs. If Missy gazed up at him with her big, blue eyes and asked that question, he’d say no without hesitation. Instead, Claire’s dark eyes searched him for an answer, and he didn’t know which one to pick. He’d had no idea the adoptive father job would be this hard when he signed up for it.

“Probably. To be on the safe side, I suggest staying in a crowd when you can.”

Claire nodded, hopefully out of seeing the wisdom in his suggestion. “What’s in the library?”

“Collected wisdom and knowledge from all the Knights who’ve passed through here.”

“So it’s kinda empty then?”

He glanced at her and saw her biggest, cheesiest grin. “Funny.”

They reached a giant set of double-doors on one side of the never-ending corridor, and Justin stopped. Each had an intricate carving of a horse, head down and bursting through a stone tablet. He grabbed one of two thick, iron rings serving as handles and heaved the door open. Claire gasped, and Justin remembered how the carvings shifted as the door opened, transforming into horses standing guard over the stone pieces.

“It’s supposed to do that,” he said.

“This place is weird.”

“Yes,” Rondy said. He stood on the other side of the open door, leaning against a wooden walking stick, his shoulders slumped. Dark circles ringed his dark eyes, and even his gray dreadlocks seemed to droop. The elder Knight mustered a weary smile for both of them.

“Just the man we came to see.” Justin gave Rondy room to decide where to go and gestured for Claire to follow as they walked up the corridor again.

“I’m glad I ran into you.” Rondy’s Jamaican accent seemed heavier than usual. Justin figured he needed food and sleep. “I’ve examined all the archives relating to the subject of Claire’s locket and feel confident saying no one has ever done anything like it before. I think, though, that if I accompany her to meet with the Heart of the Palace, we can work together to take care of it. There are a few accounts of Knights accomplishing major tasks this way.”

“Are you sure you want to handle that?” Justin asked. “If you explain how, I could do it.”

Rondy patted Justin’s shoulder. “For something like this, where the stakes are high and the path uncharted, my experience will be of more help than your endurance.”

“But not until you’ve had some rest?”

“Give me a day. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

Chapter 3

Claire

The idea of being able to take her locket off made Claire’s gut flutter. On the one hand, she wanted to be free of its liability. On the other, her father had created it, and fixing this problem felt like betraying his memory. Wrapped up in her thoughts, she missed an exchange between Justin and Rondy.

Rondy put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad to serve as your guide for this. We apples in a sea of oranges need to stick together.” He smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

Claire opened her mouth to ask what that meant, but Rondy shook Justin’s hand and walked away. She stared after him. Justin seemed just as puzzled, so she decided Rondy needed sleep more than he thought. When Justin started walking again, she followed.

After several minutes of passing small side rooms too swiftly to get a good look inside, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“One of the enchanting rooms.”

She couldn’t decide how to respond to that, so she shrugged it off, hoping things would become clearer when they reached it. “How long is this hallway? We’ve been walking down it forever.”

“The Thoroughfare is infinite.”

They passed yet another Knight who acknowledged Justin and ignored Claire. She wanted to scream at all these men. She also wanted them to keep ignoring her. “So we actually
have
been walking forever.”

Justin smirked. “I’m just not putting very much effort into willing it to take us where we want to go. The Palace works on the will of the Knights. Everything here is that way. If you want a towel, you focus, and poof, you get a towel. If you want a chicken sandwich, you visualize the parts and they appear so you can assemble them. Don’t ask me how that fills your belly, because I don’t get that part. The point is, whatever you want, you can imagine it and have it, so long as it isn’t a living creature.

“The trick is, whatever you create here can’t go back to the real world with you. It’s a figment of the Palace’s imagination, so to speak. Again, I don’t understand the food. Anyway, in order to get something that’s permanent outside the Palace, you have to work for it. That’s the hard part, and why we need a specific place to do it.”

Though she heard all the words and grasped their individual meanings, Claire couldn’t quite wrap her head around the whole idea. She looked up at Justin, which didn’t help. He stopped, so she stopped too. They faced an open archway into a small, dark, empty stone room.

Justin walked in and beckoned her to follow. “Have a seat.”

She stepped inside and sat where he pointed, her back against the wall. “I thought we’d be banging on metal with a hammer or something.”

“Nope. That would be too simple.” He grinned and waved a hand from the top of the arch to the floor. As he did, the stone filled in the arch, and the room went pitch black. “To start, see if you can make light for the room. Think about what light looks like and demand the Palace create it for you.”

“Um, sure. Palace, gimme some light.”

“In your mind, Claire. You can say it out loud, but the important stuff will all happen inside your head. Picture the color of light you want, then apply your demand as thoughts directed at the walls, the floor, the air, or whatever else works for you. When I first started, I felt stupid thinking at the wall. But it works.”

Claire could see how Justin felt stupid doing this. She felt stupid too. If he said it worked, though, she’d try. She thought about her favorite color: green. It made things seem more alive and vibrant, and complemented the slight olive tone of her skin. The color also reminded her of Justin’s emerald cloak and his protection. He’d welcomed her into his home and taken care of her, so far.

She had no idea how to demand green from the Palace, so she just thought about how much she’d like some green light right now. In her hands, a spark of emerald light flared into existence, revealing Justin’s approving face.

“Good. Want it bigger, and it will be.”

His praise bolstered her, and the light flared to fill the space. “Hey. I did that.”