Vixen (10 page)

“It doesn’t sound simple. It sounds chaotic.” I don’t mean to argue with Ion, but I have read of that dreadful middle-of-the-night execution, and I had a strong impression then that everything must have been a screaming, smoky, bloody frenzy. Didn’t rumors persist for years that one or more of the girls might have made it out alive? Obviously the facts of what happened are convoluted at best, and no doubt many of the witnesses had reason to lie about the details.

“I have tried, since that night, to remember. Sometimes I want to block out all the memories, but mostly I want to know what really happened. There was smoke and fire and screaming, the loud reports from the guns all echoing with terror and the blast of dragon fire.”

“Dragon fire?”

“There were dragons in that room. We—their dragon protectors—weren’t allowed to be near the royal family, not because our enemies necessarily knew what we were, but because they knew we were strong, competent, and determined to protect the Romanovs. We’d been sent away, but we were never far away. I don’t think many knew who we were, but then, obviously I didn’t know who all of them were. We got wind of the telegram ordering their execution, and we flew to the rescue. We arrived in time to save them. We should have saved them. But we were outnumbered.”

I’m watching Ion’s face as he talks, as he re-lives the terror, trying to make sense of it. His story comes out as confused as that night surely was. I try to help him piece it together. “You were outnumbered…by dragons?”

“Humans, dragons, both. I never saw who got me. I couldn’t see much of anything by that point, but I’d promised Alexei—we’d grown up together, he and I, almost the same age. I was appointed his protector. He was my best friend. I don’t know if I was his. I’d promised him, every time he shared his fear of being killed, that I would be there. That I would keep him safe. I had him in my arms. I came so close to saving him. I failed.”

I want to give Ion time, but I’ve got to be sure I understand what he was saying. “You were attacked by a dragon from the back?”

“Yes.”

“While you tried to carry Alexei out?” I’m trying to make sense of Ion’s story. The Romanov royal family had four daughters and one son, Alexei, the youngest, a child of thirteen the night he died. He was plagued by illness all his life.

Ion’s still looking up at the treetops, and now he’s shaking his head. I’ve never seen such an expression of self-loathing on anyone’s face ever before. “I intended to carry him out.” Ion’s voice is still, almost silent.

“You were attacked from the back?”

“I woke up four days later, a thousand miles away, everyone I’d known and loved dead or missing forever.”

“Someone took you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how?” I can’t imagine Ion could fly a thousand miles with the injuries that caused the scars on his back. But I’m not sure I’ve followed his story at all. He’s talking about the night the Romanovs were executed. He’s talking about failing them, but something’s missing. Something doesn’t add up.

“I fled. Like a coward.”

“You flew?”

“I teleported.”

Probably my mouth is hanging open, but that’s the least of my worries right now.

Ion
what
?

“You what?”

“Teleported away. Like a coward. It must have been the last action I took before I blacked out. There is a gap in my memory. One moment, I had Alexei in my arms, ready to fly him away to safety, and then a dragon slashed my back with his claws. The pain was like a flash of light, cutting off my consciousness and memory. The next thing I knew, it was four days later. I was in Eudora’s castle, of all places, hastily bandaged, being cared for with a kind of cursory reluctance that bordered on neglect.”

As he speaks, I try to envision everything Ion is telling me. I’ve got the part about the Romanovs, the royal family of Russia, being executed. Obviously if there were dragons present, that part never made it into the history books, edited out either by sympathizers who wanted to help hide us, or by our enemies who preferred to imagine a world in which we didn’t exist.

Got it. No problem. I mean, I don’t like that the Romanovs were executed, and I especially don’t like the obvious burden of guilt Ion carries because of it, but I can at least grasp the rudimentary structure of the story.

There’s just that last part that doesn’t fit with anything I know of the world and what’s scientifically possible. “You
teleported
?”

Ion looks at me with deep regret. “I was so close to saving him. Even injured, I should have been able to get away. But I failed him. I failed Russia. I failed the dragons.”

I place my hand on Ion’s arm.

He’s grappling with guilt.

I’m struggling with the limits of the space-time continuum.

“I did not know…” I start slowly, thinking back over what I
do
know, trying to fit the two together. “When the yagi attacked me, you were on the balcony, and then you were next to me, fighting, but you didn’t change into a dragon and fly there because you were wearing the same clothes, and if you’d changed into a dragon, your clothes would have been gone.”

“I teleported.”

“You teleported.”

“I grabbed the swords from above one of the mantels in the ballroom, and then teleported to your side.”

“So you just…how do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Teleport.”

“Same way anyone else teleports, I suppose.”

“Okay.” I’m nodding, trying to decide if there’s any reason for me not to admit I don’t know how to teleport. If there is, I don’t know what it is. “I don’t know anyone else who teleports.”

“You don’t teleport?”

I close my eyes and try to think. We are talking about the same thing, aren’t we? “You mean, physically transport myself to another point in space without traversing the space in between where I start and where I end up?”

“Yes. Can’t you do that?”

“No.”

“Your father, your grandfather—can they?”

“Not that I know of. I think it would have come up before now, since there would have been a number of times that little trick would have come in handy, like pretty much every single time we’ve wanted to go anywhere or get away from yagi.”

Ion looks slightly bewildered. “I suppose that explains a few things about your family, then. I’d always assumed all dragons teleported.”

“I’d always assumed they all didn’t. How do you do it, anyway?”

“It’s much like changing into a dragon. Instead of staying in one place and changing your physical form from human to dragon, you maintain your form but change your location.”

I shake my head, communicating that I don’t understand.

But instead of explaining further, Ion furrows his brow. “I wonder if your family members are incapable of teleporting, or if they just don’t know how.”

“Hmm?”

“It was one of the last skills my parents taught me. I wonder if it’s possible, what with dragons being attacked and killed off in droves, if somewhere not so far back in your family, someone died without passing the skill along. And because you’re so isolated, there was never anyone else to fill in the missing knowledge.”

My head is spinning. “That seems possible.”

Ion looks intrigued. “I wonder if I could teach you.”

“You could try. But I don’t know—” I look down at my arm. I’ve barely moved from this spot since he brought me here.

“Not yet, of course. You’ll have to get your strength back. You won’t be able to teleport until you’re strong enough to change into a dragon, and you won’t be able to do that until you’re strong enough to walk, if—” he breaks off.

“If what?”

Ion is suddenly back to picking at microscopic fish guts with such focused attention, you’d think my recovery depended on it. “Nothing.”

“I won’t be able to change into a dragon until I get my strength back, if—” I break off where Ion did, and try to think how he might have intended to finish the sentence. Only one possibility comes to mind. “If
ever
?”

He looks up at me, startled, almost alarmed, and guilty. “I don’t know,” he apologizes hastily. “I’ve never known anyone inflicted with yagi venom who survived. It neutralized your ability to change into a dragon from the instant it was inflicted. We stopped it before it could kill you, but I don’t know—”

“You don’t know if I’ll be able to change back into a dragon, ever again?”

Ion’s expression hardens, and he nods. “You were injured because of me. This is why you and I can never be, Zilpha. You’re better off with any other dragon.”

“I don’t know any other dragon. Do you actually know where I can find one? Did you even see the dragon who attacked you that night?” I recall that the mysteries of that night are still unresolved. That whole teleporting bit distracted me from our original conversation. “Do you know who the other dragons are?”

Ion shrugs. “Agents, counter-agents, spies, counter-spies. I saw some of the people before the shots were fired, before smoke and dragon-flame filled the room, but I don’t know if one of them was the dragon, or how many dragons there were.”

“So, you’re suggesting that I try to track down somebody who tried to kill you…and you think I should marry that person instead of you?” I’m giving him a look that says maybe he should think about what he’s saying, because it sounds completely crazy to me.

But Ion flashes me an amused look. “I nearly killed your father. So it would stand to reason that whoever nearly killed me, would be a better fit for you than I am.”

Somehow, in spite of how much my head hurts, I’m able to wrap my thoughts around that one. But I still don’t like it, nor do I agree. “What do you know about these other dragons? They wanted the Romanovs dead?”

“Various parties were vying for control at that point. Various entities, some of them willing to work with the others for a time if they thought it would help them come out on top. Isn’t that what the world war was?”

“But, they killed the Romanovs because…”

“I believe the consensus of the historical understanding for the reason behind the slaughter of the entire family, was that if any of them lived—particularly Nicholas or Alexei, but really, any of them—they could become a rallying point for a resistance movement. The Romanovs represented hope.” Ion’s voice has gone nostalgic; his accent, thick. “There was a war. Many people died, most of them have since been forgotten. The Romanovs were just one family, just six more casualties, plus a few servants who made the fatal mistake of sticking by them until the end. Insignificant in number compared to the millions of others who also died. But if they’d lived, the royal line would have continued, maybe to be resurrected at some future time. So they killed them in order to cut off any possibility that what had been would ever be again.”

Ion hangs his head in defeat, silent now after his speech. I suspect he’s mulled these thoughts many times throughout the empty days of his long existence since that night. I understand why he regrets failing the child he promised to save.

But there’s one thing I don’t understand. “You think I should marry the dragon who killed hope?”

Ion blinks at me, then frowns. “No. I suppose not. All I know is that you deserve better than me. And I know there are other dragons out there. They survived the war. I don’t doubt they’ve gone into hiding since.”

“Ion?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t want any other dragon. I just want you.”

Ion turns his head. He’s looking away, toward the stream, purposely refusing to glance my way. “I need to return you to your family as soon as possible. No doubt they’re worried about you.”

“Don’t I need to wait until I get my strength up?” I’ve barely asked the question when I realize the answer. I may never get my strength back.

So there’s nothing to be gained by waiting.

I look down at the yellow silk, once so billowy and beautiful, which is now matted and rumpled all around me. Am I even strong enough to hold on to Ion’s back? Or will he have to carry me rolled up like a mummy as he did before?

“Let’s see how strong you are.” Ion stands. “The stream forms a pool on the other side of that rock. You can bathe there. Can you walk, or should I carry you?”

I use my uninjured arm to push myself up. Ion catches me under my elbow when I wobble unsteadily. Once I’m finally on my feet, though, my muscles seem to remember what they’re there for. So other than the fact that the effort of putting one foot in front of the other makes me a breathless, sweaty mess, I’m good.

Ion patiently props me up the whole long journey to the stream pool. I’m slightly mortified that he’s so close to me when I smell so robust, but let’s face it, he’s a dragon. Yes, he’s more sophisticated and cultured than my family, but he’s still a dragon. And dragons like robust smells. I’ve been known to fly low over farmyards just to get a whiff of cow odor.

Was that too much information? Let’s blame that on the neurotoxin.

With Ion’s help, I make it to the rock, which is more like a boulder and functions like a dam, forming a deep basin of relatively still water off to the side of the path of the stream.

“Do you need any more help?” Ion asks, almost as though he hadn’t insisted, mere minutes before, that I needed to get out of his life soon and forever.

“I think I can handle it from here.” I lean against the boulder and Ion heads back toward the silk curtain, which he gathers up and dumps upstream while I’m peeling off my shoes.

While Ion washes the silk curtain, I scour myself, using a chunk of jungle tree bark which reminds me of a loofa sponge, rubbing my skin and muscles vigorously in the clear water, sloughing off the stinky grime of my illness and forcing a little life back into my limbs. I peeled off most of my clothes, but I’m still wearing my expandable dragon undergarments, the ones designed to protect my modesty whether I’m in human or dragon form. Mine are rosy pink, like my eyes and scales, so they blend in when I’m in dragon form.

When I’m clean and fresh again, I clamber back up to the boulder and then bask in the dying sunlight. It will be evening before long, but the day is warm.

Ion has draped the silk curtain over tree branches. It’s the kind of material that will dry quickly. My jeans and t-shirt are another story. I see that Ion has also washed and wrung them and placed them on a sunny bush to dry. He inspects them, then scowls.

“Still damp?” I ask, not moving from my spot on the rock ten feet from him.

“Yes. I was hoping they would dry quickly. I want to leave tonight.” Ion slowly walks the ten feet between us and leans against my boulder. He hands me an intricately carved comb.

“Did you make this, too?” I start to run it through my hair, but my arms are tired from the effort of bathing.

He shrugs. “I didn’t have anything better to do.”

When I lower my hands to rest my arms, Ion takes the comb from me and runs it tentatively through my hair. He has longish hair, himself, so I assume he knows what he’s doing. With brisk strokes, he smooths the tangles out of my dark mid-length hair, then plaits it into a practical braid.

“There.” He secures it with the same hair-tie I took out before my bath. “Once everything is dry, we can go.”

I could ask him why he’s in such a hurry, but there are more urgent things to discuss. “And then what? You’ll fly me back to Azerbaijan and leave me with my parents?”

Ion frowns. “What other option do I have? You’ll be safe there. It’s where you need to be. And I must go. I certainly can’t stay there.”

“Why are you and my father such enemies?”

“I almost killed him.” Ion shrugs. “He nearly killed me.”

“I know that, but
why
? What happened between the two of you?”

Ion stays quiet, so I probe further.

“For my whole life, we’ve been hoping to find other dragons. When my brother tracked down dragons last summer, everyone welcomed them with open arms, even though we didn’t know anything about them, other than that they were dragons. So why would you and my father try to kill each other on sight? It doesn’t make any sense.”