Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

“Merci,” I grunted, not looking away from what I was doing.

“Vous êtes une princesse dragon?” she whispered.

A princess. Hardly.

“No.” I met Armand’s gaze, finishing up. “Paysan.”

I would have shot those stoning bastards for certain.

“You’re not a peasant,” he protested, but it was weak. If I’d thought him pale before, it was ten times worse now. The red on his face stood out like war paint.

“Nothing wrong with being from the gutter. At least we’re raised to know the odds.” And when to keep our bloomin’ mouths shut about monsters in our midst. I stood. “The odds are now well stacked against us, I’d say. So I’m the peasant who’s going to get us out of here.”

We’d have to fly. Somehow he was going to have to hang on to me and we’d fly, because if the people here had been willing to stone him once, they’d do it again. Now that I listened carefully, I actually heard them. Footsteps not that far off, the forest floor crunching. Voices calling names—Bibiane! Yseult!—edged with frenzy.

I gathered everything back into the knapsack as quickly as I could, then shrugged out of the shirt and stuffed that in, too.

“Think you can still carry this?”

“Yes.”

He climbed to his feet, supported instantly by either Bibiane or Yseult. Whichever was the moony one.

“Get ready,” I said to him, assessing the girls. They reminded me far too much of the paper skeleton boy from Moor Gate, but I hoped they were more resilient than they looked. “It’s one thing to imagine a dragon, and quite another to see one. They might come undone.”

“Lora.” His fingers were tracing the bandage across his brow. “Give them something.”

“Like what? Money? They can’t spend pounds out here.”

“Food. Give them some tins.”

I wanted to protest, then bit back the words. No matter what trouble swept these woods next, we were going to leave. These girls would be trapped here for a while to come. Maybe months. Maybe years.

I stuck my hand into the knapsack and dug around until I found the tins. I grabbed a few without looking to see what they were and passed them to the whispery girl.

“Bonne chance,” I said. Good luck.

She clutched the tins to her chest, brown eyes alight. “Et vous.”

I stepped back and Turned into a dragon, and to my absolute wonder, neither of them screamed or bolted or did anything but make O’s of their mouths and squint at me like they’d just accidentally looked straight into the sun.

Then, together, they smiled.

We were fortunate the day was so overcast. Otherwise, we would have been forced to escape in plain view of anyone on the ground.

And, as I now knew, plenty of those anyones were armed.

I ascended as fast as I could, my wings beating hard, so that by the time we reached the bottom of the clouds I was drawing the air past my teeth because it was so cold and I wanted it so badly.

When you’re earthbound, clouds look fluffy and soft, like dreamspun pillows, but the truth is that they’re wet. And not soft so much as dense. Choking. I blinked away the drops that pearled my lashes and climbed higher, knowing it’d be harder for Armand to breathe the soupy mix of air and water than it was for me.

Breaking free was like exploding into a new day. We went from a world of cool, murky gray to brilliant sunlight and blinding azure sky. I had to narrow my eyes against it.

I had no inkling of which way to go. The sun was not quite directly above us—I thought it might be shortly before noon—but north, south, east, west … who knew? All I could really tell was up and down. Everything before me was either boundless firmament or white-crested clouds. There weren’t even any birds this high.

Armand inched forward along my spine. From the corner of my eye I saw his hand lift, a finger pointing to our right. I didn’t know if he still had the compass or not, since he’d lost his coat somewhere in the forest. But it seemed as good a way to go as any.

I tilted us to the right. Our shadow zoomed sharp below us, boy on dragon on clouds.

I couldn’t keep him up here for long. In just his shirt and trousers Armand was going to get very chilled very quickly, and besides, I was worried he might pass out. We needed shelter and we needed it soon.

Yet the cloud cover remained uniformly opaque. I wasn’t going to be able to see a good place to land. I’d have to use my other drákon senses as best I could to perceive it.

We couldn’t come down near a town, obviously. Or a village, either. I hoped for more woods, a nice heavy stretch of them. Someplace with another barn, perhaps, or an abandoned farmhouse. Even a shepherd’s hut would do.

I supposed I should try to sniff out some livestock. Sheep or cows.

Stupid, stupid, you’re not that good, my mind scolded.

But I had to be.

I closed my eyes. Stupid! my brain reprimanded, unyielding, but I could tell I was flying straight, and again, there were no birds or anything. Nor were there any aeroplanes or zeppelins. They were loud—you could hear them from the ground, even—so I was positive I’d notice one up here before it was upon us. Closing my eyes helped me to concentrate on everything beyond sight: the touch of the wind against me, how it jostled me this way or that. The silence of this bright heaven, where the only two living creatures within miles made the only noise.

The taste of sunshine and vapor.

The scent of … nothing but clouds.

Try harder.

There was land below me. I knew that without doubt, so I concentrated on it. I knew how trees smelled, and how soil smelled. I recalled with acute precision the powdery black pungency of gunpowder, how it parched my tongue and burned my nostrils and clogged the back of my throat.

We passed through a whiff of that, then more than a whiff. I sneezed and shook my head and angled beyond it.

Trees, yes. Fields, very dry wheat or something like it. Woodsmoke suddenly, apples. Were we over an orchard? Orchards tended to be dense and mostly empty of people. That might be good—

Horses. Unquestionably horses, or rather, the product of them. I was from the city; I tried to remember if horses went with orchards …

And then, quite abruptly, Armand made the decision for both of us.

His hands loosened. He fell backward. He slid down my side but by some miracle didn’t fall off. I realized my wing was holding him in place, but only barely, because he was sliding again—

I twisted my head around and managed to grab him by the cuff of his trousers just in time. His eyes flashed open and he struggled to get upright, but the wind was so strong. Slowing down would mean we’d descend, but I didn’t have a choice.

The cuff began to rip. The bandage blew off his head, a graceful, looping ribbon that danced down and down and became swallowed by the clouds.

His hands slapped against my neck until he found my mane. His fingers dug in. I opened my jaws and he clambered up into place just as we plunged into the gray.

It no longer mattered what lay below. I had to get us to land.

Blind again, beads of water spangling my lashes again. My brain was now commanding, Hurry! Hurry! but I was so afraid of suddenly materializing in the open air. What if I was wrong and we were above a town? What if we were above the front? What if we were above just some farmer with a rifle and frayed nerves and a keen eye?

Armand wilted once more, this time forward. Then the mist streaked away and all I could see were trees, rows and rows of them, bright rosy dots of apples. Birds erupting from the branches and leaves, flinging themselves every which way.

I slowed as rapidly as I dared, trying to judge if I could fit between one of those rows, but Armand started to fall, so I just dropped.

Like a stone.

I snatched him up by the leg with my head lifted high so he dangled there from my mouth. Talons scraping the earth, feet, body, tail. We slammed down and apples pelted the grass around us, a hard thumping rainfall.

Somehow I managed not to roll. We skidded to a halt sideways but upright, my lungs scorched and my wings trembling. When I could, I lowered my head, placed him down as gently as possible. Then I Turned and collapsed beside him, done in.

I’ll tell you this: The aroma of apples mixed with horse dung had never, ever smelled so sweet.

“What an appalling trip,” complained a voice near my head. “Bone-rattling ride, rotten service. Next time I believe I’ll take the train.”

I wanted to smile, but it seemed too much effort, so instead I only opened my eyes and gazed up at the ocean of clouds.

They churned far away from us now, their own separate realm once more.

“Eleanore, are you alive?”

I cleared my throat. “Just. You?”

“Aside from the fact that there’s a welt the size of a cricket ball on my forehead, and some rather impressive puncture wounds along my leg—”

“What?” I sat up, reenergized. “Where? Show me!”

I’d tried to bite down carefully, but I’d had to catch him, after all, and we’d been plummeting and I’d been mostly focused upon how much I didn’t want to die.

“It’s fine,” Armand said. He was propped up on his elbows and smiling, that small ghastly smile, his face still painted red and white. “Hardly hurts at all. I say, do you think you might, er, put on some clothes before stripping me of mine?”

“No,” I snapped, vexed. “Just be a ruddy gentleman and look away.”