Dragon Fire (14 page)

“You can feel it?”

Pemba nodded without meeting her eyes.

“She took the charm off for me. Why?”

Pemba smiled at her, but he looked confused. “She did?”

“Here. Feel for yourself.” Anna took it off and handed it to him.

Pemba examined at it and then handed it back. “It’s just a pendant.”

“I kind of miss how it felt alive before, though.”

“I can try to teach you to change that.”

“How?”

“With this.” Pemba handed her his Maii-a. “It’s the easiest thing to practice with. What do you feel when you hold it?”

Anna closed her hand around the Maii-a. “You, but…” she looked at her Firemark and then up at Pemba.

“It also feels like the Firemark,” he finished for her. “I know. But I don’t know why. The stone shouldn’t have left a mark.”

“How do you know about my stone?”

He looked away. “I felt it in the Firemark.”

Anna eyed him carefully. She was sure he knew more than he was saying.

“It’ll be easier if I change it,” Pemba said, taking the Maii-a back. He held it in his palm and closed his eyes. When he opened his hand again it had changed color. It was a pale cornflower blue laced with large swirls of gold and burnt umber.

“Oh, that’s pretty,” Anna said, taking it. But it was lifeless. “What happened to it?”

“You don’t like it?”

“No. It doesn’t pulse anymore.”

Pemba took it and changed it again. This time it was an intense pale blue, and the swirls of gold and burnt umber were barely visible.

Anna smiled when she held it. “That’s better.”

“Why do you like it like that? The other way feels more like you.”

“Because this way it feels alive.” Anna turned it around in her hands. “It feels like you could shape it into anything you wanted.”

Pemba smiled. “You can.”

Anna squeezed it, but it didn’t budge. “How?”

“With your mind,” Pemba said, stifling a laugh. “Not your hands.”

Anna poked him in the ribs. “It’s not nice to laugh at people.”

Pemba pushed her back with his shoulder, and she resisted. He pushed harder and then pulled back when she pushed into him – guiding her deftly onto his lap with a twisting motion.

A pot clanged in the kitchen and Anna jumped up. “I thought you were going to show me how to shape the Maii-a.” She glanced towards the kitchen where she could hear her mother and Dawa chatting away. She sat down next to Pemba, too embarrassed to meet his eyes.

“I am. I was showing you how matter reacts. When I pushed you, and you resisted, we were both stuck. But when you pushed back, and I moved out of the way, you were propelled in the direction of the force you were exerting upon me. All I had to do was direct you for you to change positions.”

Anna nodded, her cheeks burning. Sitting on his lap hadn’t meant anything.

“The molecules in the Maii-a have been simplified,” continued Pemba, his face and voice neutral. “So that they can be manipulated easily.” He held the Maii-a out in his hand for her to see. “The first thing you need to be able to feel is how to roll the molecules over each other. Once you’ve felt it, then you can try to move them around to make basic shapes, like a ball.”

The Maii-a morphed slowly in Pemba’s hand.

“Wait. How do you do that?” Her eyes snapped to the Maii-a. She took the ball shaped Maii-a from Pemba’s palm and examined it. It felt the same as before. “How can you feel molecules?”

“I can show you,” Pemba said quietly. “If you’ll let me.”

Anna nodded and offered the Maii-a back to him. But instead of taking it, he wrapped his hand around hers. Anna’s whole body tingled again with the contact and she breathed in sharply. She ached to throw herself into his arms, to give herself up to him, to feel his body against hers…

“Focus your mind on the Maii-a. Feel its energy, how it pulses. Follow that pulsing inside, deeper and deeper until you feel it beat all around you, as if you were inside it.”

Anna tried to focus on the Maii-a, but when she looked at it all she could see was his hand on hers. She closed her eyes and tried to feel it instead. Little by little, everything faded away except for the Maii-a. It was there, humming with its energy that rang like a golden bell. Or bells. Each one a perfect sphere that vibrated as it rubbed against the others, clinging together like thousands of tiny magnets.

Pemba’s grip tightened around her hand, bringing her back out. “You felt it.”

Anna nodded, hypnotized by the feeling of the Maii-a and the intensity of the look in Pemba’s eyes. Something opened inside her mind, like a wing unfurling, and her mind slipped forward until she could no longer tell where her hand ended and his began.

“You can feel me.” His voice was husky.

“Your eyes never look like they should be brown.”

Pemba let go and looked away. And Anna wished she hadn’t said anything.

“That’s probably because I wear contacts,” he said, his voice once again neutral.

“Anna?” called Ingrid from the kitchen. “Can you and Pemba set the table, please?”

* * *

After Pemba and Dawa left later that evening, Ingrid said, “Dawa is such a nice girl. I’m sure she’ll be the kind of friend you can really count on.”

Anna shrugged her shoulders in a non-committal way and pushed up her sleeves to do the dishes. Her mother hadn’t been as annoying during dinner as she had expected. But Anna was sorry that she hadn’t had another chance to be alone with Pemba. She wanted to hold the Maii-a again. And to feel his hand on hers.

“But I’m not so sure about Pemba,” continued Ingrid. “I know you’re not going to like my saying this, but I hope you’ll take your time getting to know him. I just don’t think he’s trustworthy.”

“What?” The soapy water splashed. “You just met him, how can you say that?”

“Maybe it’s a mother’s intuition.” Ingrid twisted her wedding band. “And you’ve only just met him, too. Dawa told me they arrived during the Christmas vacation.”

“Don’t worry, Mom.” Anna rolled her eyes at the pot she was cleaning. “We’ll go slow.”

“I care about you, honey. And I don’t want you to get hurt. That’s all.”

Anna didn’t answer. She continued doing the dishes until her mother walked out of the kitchen. And then she slumped over the warm suds, wishing she was in Pemba’s arms.

* * *

“That was an evening from hell,” Dvara said once they had shifted home from the park near Anna’s. “What do you see in her? At least Ulf has something to offer.”

“Shut up, Dvara. You didn’t have to stay, you know.”

“Yes, I did. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with her. You were just supposed to read her memories of Jing Mei. And if I need to do it myself, it would be better if she trusted me. But she doesn’t, so I’ll have to go through someone else. Like Ingrid or Ulf.”

“You won’t touch her.” His rök was ready to explode in an involuntary morph.

“Snap out of it. We have a problem to deal with. And your feelings for Anna are blinding you completely. You’re not even trying to figure out how Haakaramanoth duplicated our trails.”

“I have been working on it.”

“Like when you stare out the window all afternoon?” Dvara snorted. “Right now they know more about us than we do about them. You felt Jing Mei hide her trail. What further proof do you need? Wake up. The void-trails are dragons. That means that there are at least four more than—”

“—they aren’t dragons,” Rakan said coldly.

“Well, dragon or not, they’re protecting Paaliaq. So, unless we can figure out how to kill only Paaliaq, we’ll have to kill them too.”

“Even if she is Paaliaq, we can’t kill the others without reason. It’s against the Code.”

“If they block our right to kill Paaliaq, then we can.”

“There are too many of them.”

“There are ways of killing them. If we choose to use them.”

“What ways?” Rakan didn’t like the cold look of intent on Dvara’s face.

“With a trigger.”

“No trigger is strong enough to do that.”

“Khotan has been working on a trigger to explode a Maii-a.”

Rakan examined his sister. “Khotan wouldn’t develop that kind of bomb.” Each gram would release enough energy to explode a city. And a Maia-a weighed about twenty grams.

Dvara raised an eyebrow. “Ask him.”

“Even if he has, it would be against the Code to use it.”

“We’re allowed to use triggers.”

“Only while in hand-to-hand combat. Not to destroy everything within a hundred kilometer radius, including ourselves.”

“The Draak will die if we can’t use Earth as a breeding ground. And Yarlung will never agree to anyone settling on Earth until Paaliaq is dead. Why does it matter how we kill her?”

“Because there’s such a thing as honor and being able to live with yourself. I couldn’t live with knowing that we had killed everyone in Tromso.” Including Anna. Rakan’s vision of Dvara shimmered as a thermal image of her overlaid the normal one. “I think I need to morph.” His vision only included the infrared range when his pupils spread into the cat-like slits of his dragon form. He was losing control.

Dvara put a hand on his shoulder. “Khotan said I should come home for my first morph on my own. I can tell him I want his help now.”

Rakan shook his head. “I just need some time.”

“We don’t have time.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I told him we were coming.”

“Why did you do that?”

“For you, you idiot.” Dvara flung her arms up in the air. “Why can’t you ever accept anyone’s help?”

Rakan watched Dvara disappear into her room. His rök lurched violently. He needed to morph, but he didn’t want to leave Tromso. Not when Dvara might have already planted one of the triggers she was talking about.

He’d never forgive himself if something happened to Anna.

M
ONDAY MORNING ANNA WOKE UP EARLY.
Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Her cheekbones burned, the way they had when her father disappeared ten years ago. She got up and went to her mom’s room. She listened at the door, wondering if Ulf was there and if she could somehow check that her mom was okay. But she was too repulsed by the thought of seeing Ulf to look. She made coffee and sat in the window seat instead.
It’s okay, everything’s fine. Or as fine as it can be with Ulf still around. Right?
But even the mountain across the fjord had abandoned her. Instead of shimmering in the arctic twilight, it sat hunched over like an old man, looking cold and lonely. Anna leaned against the window and stared at the parked cars below. Why hadn’t Pemba returned her calls?

Anna walked slowly to school. Half of her wanted to run and the other half knew Pemba wouldn’t be there. She stopped on the hill and tried his phone once more. She hung up when the voice mail answered on the first ring. Again. And then she couldn’t take it anymore. She panicked and ran to school.

She stood at the top of the hill, anxiously waiting as people arrived. But not Pemba. Anna even started hoping Dawa would arrive. At least she could ask her what was wrong with Pemba.

“Hey, Anna,” June said, coming up the hill with Erling. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Her voice snagged.

June let go of Erling and came closer. “What kind of nothing?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders.

“You want to talk about it?” June hooked her arm through Anna’s and walked with her towards the schoolyard.

“Do you ever get the feeling that something has happened, but you don’t know what?” Anna stopped June so that they were alone.

June looked at her for a long time without saying anything. “Yes. Although I usually have a gut feeling about what happened, even if I don’t want to believe it.”

“Me too,” Anna said quietly. It wasn’t really what she had wanted to hear.

June put her arm around Anna’s shoulders and they walked across the schoolyard. “Join us for lunch?” asked June as the bell rang.

“Okay.” Anna gave her friend a hug when they split on the stairs. She walked reluctantly to class. If she knew where Pemba lived, she’d skip school and go to his house.

He was in pain. She could feel it.

* * *

Rakan twisted in agony on the couch. “Don’t morph until Khotan can talk you through it,” he croaked. “I can’t help you right now. I…” His body shook violently, flashing hot and cold as his rök veered out of control. “I’m losing it.”

“Stop talking, Rakan,” Dvara said, steadying him as he stood up. “You should have agreed to go earlier. Just shift.”

“Dvara?”

“What now?”

“Thanks.”

“Idiot,” she said, punching him gently in the arm. “Let’s go.”

Rakan didn’t even need to nod. They shifted simultaneously. But he nearly got stuck in some of the transitional layers between the different tectonic plates and came out a fraction of second after Dvara. The thin air of the Ngari plateau filled his lungs. He dropped to his knees, trembling with pain and exhaustion. Even though the actual shift was nearly instantaneous, the effort was excruciating. And for the first time it had scared him. He had felt himself on the verge of an uncontrolled morph, which would have meant instant death. It wasn’t possible to morph and shift at the same time. He shivered at the thought and sank his hands into the arid earth. Home. His pulse quickened as his flesh became denser, thickening and hardening as he morphed into his true form. He bellowed in pleasure and stretched his wings. Free at last. The sun had long since risen, but he launched himself into the sky to greet it anyway. He pumped the air with his wings, feeling the rush of flight that he loved so much. He flew through a series of arabesques until his rök responded, purifying his flame. He shot higher into the sky. His coral-colored flame burst out from within. Pure and powerful, like the sun itself. After days of repressing it, he had finally been able to answer the primordial Call to Rise in a magnificent display of orange flames.