Chapter 21 #2
And if that’s enough for Chumana, then it’s enough for me.
In the twist of wings and scales I see Ralph lift his arm.
‘Chumana!’ I scream.
The rounded end of the Speerspitze is loaded with a heavy metal sphere. I stand up, my arms encircling Chumana’s head.
‘Fly!’
Chumana clamps her mouth on to Goranov’s back leg. With a strength that almost shakes me from her back, she pulls the limb away from his body, his flank splitting open to reveal thick, viscous blood. He lets out an enraged moan.
Chumana is propelled backwards with a loud boom that cracks open my skull.
She rolls.
Suddenly I’m blind, no longer able to tell the difference between sky and sea. And then we’re falling, dropping through the cold air faster than I can think. Something sharp rips open my elbow as I feel Chumana turn beneath me, but when we hit the sand, no pain comes. I open my eyes to darkness.
‘I can’t see,’ I whisper frantically. ‘I can’t . . .’
Chumana’s wing drops from around my body, letting the sunlight and smoke in.
I’m lying on her chest, the hard scales of her breastbone hot on my face, my arm sliced open by one of her spikes.
I slide down her body carefully, then jump off her tail into the sand.
The sound of fighting still hums in the air around us, but I can’t see it from here. We’re in a sheltered bay.
‘Chumana,’ I gasp. ‘Are you all right?’
My eyes dart along the beach, but there’s no sign of Ralph or Goranov.
I run around Chumana’s body to her head and fling myself on to my knees next to her.
She blinks and lets out a huff, and droplets of blood spray from her mouth.
My stomach lurches. I scan her flank until I see it – a bullet the size of my fist buried above her left leg.
‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘It’s nowhere near your heart, or anything.’
‘Humiliating,’ Chumana growls.
I climb back up on to her curled tail to reach the bullet. Its rough metal surface protrudes from the open flesh, leaking a shiny grey substance.
‘It’s nothing,’ I tell her again. ‘I’ll get it out.’
‘It has already reached my bloodstream, human girl.’
I sit back. ‘Your bloodstream?’
‘Canna’s children aren’t alone in their idea of using poison against dragons,’ Chumana says.
‘The bullets are poisoned?’
‘How else do you think they bring a dragon down?’ she tuts.
Imported from Germany and named after a snake.
I swallow.
Then I remove Marquis’s knife from my belt and plunge it into the wound.
Chumana roars.
I seize the handle, dragging the blade through the skin around the bullet, trying desperately to dislodge the metal as more liquid seeps across the knife.
‘Pointless, you fool!’ Chumana screeches.
Her tail comes out of nowhere, launching me from her body so I fall to the ground beside her, wheezing for breath.
‘Fuck you!’ I gasp angrily as I try to stand. ‘Do you want to be poisoned? Hold still and let me—’
‘Human girl!’
I freeze.
‘Come here.’
I swear again, then kneel down by her head. Her amber eyes glow just as brightly in the sunlight as they do in the dark. She blinks as if tired. I reach down and wipe blood from the corner of her jaws.
‘If you don’t let me get that bullet out,’ I tell her with a shaking, voice, ‘then it will kill you.’
She sighs, and more blood speckles the sand.
‘It already has,’ Chumana replies softly.
My chest constricts as I let out an odd, unfamiliar noise. ‘Why . . . why are you giving up so easily?’
Chumana chuckles. ‘Do you call this giving up? Krasimir is injured and Goranov will bleed out before nightfall. He’s as good as dead.’
‘What if he’s not?’ I say. ‘Besides, there are hundreds more Bulgarians to kill.’ My breath catches in my throat. ‘I’ll find you another dragon, someone who can heal you with their Koinamens, the wyverns— Daria! I know you love her. You must be bonded, you must.’
‘Our bond is not strong enough for that, not yet,’ Chumana says. ‘It is the price I pay for having left her all those years ago.’
‘Then me!’ I say. I thrust up the sleeve of my jumper to the deep wound in my arm. ‘Take my blood, as much as you need. Go on, do it.’
‘We have needed each other, you and I,’ Chumana says quietly as she stares into my face.
‘To teach each other the importance of a second chance. I have seen you live out your own on this island, just like you said you would. I have watched you from afar, fighting for the rebels, even as you struggled to fulfil the part you thought you were supposed to play. You don’t know who you are without the labels other people give you.
Identities that are rooted in the very system you are fighting to bring down.
Daughter, student, criminal. Translator, rebel, Swallow. ’
‘Chumana, please.’
‘Will you let me say my piece?’ she snaps. She runs her tongue across her bloody lips. ‘Like a dragon, you itch to shed your old skin. You are human, so you cannot, but you can try metaphorical skins on for size, to see which fits you best.’
My breath comes faster as Chumana’s begins to labour and I force myself to stay silent, to cling to every word that comes from her mouth.
‘Who are you if not a Draconic translator?’ Her whole body heaves in a nonchalant shrug. ‘It is nothing more than a career, after all. The essence of who you are, who you have always been, remains the same. As for the rest of you . . . you have a whole lifetime to find out.’
‘And you?’ I ask her, my voice thick with tears. ‘You’ve shed your skin a hundred times over since the Massacre, trying to forgive yourself. Have you found out who you are?’
‘I have been dragonling and dragon, lover and murderer, criminal and commendable. But in the face of death, none of these really matter. No one is the sum of their mistakes or their achievements.’ She sighs. ‘I am Chumana.’
‘Snake Maiden,’ I whisper.
She breathes, her lips stretching into a smile as her eyes close. ‘Just Chumana. Like you are just Vivien.’
‘You’ve never called me by my name before today.’
‘I never thought it suited you,’ she growls. ‘Until Daria, in her studies of the British Latin maxim tradition, told me it means alive. And that is how I wish you to stay.’
I lay my head on her snout and force myself not to cry.
‘When Krasimir and Goranov are dead and this war is over,’ she says, ‘you must stop trying to be someone. You will not find yourself until you do. There is no one singular title to define you, just Vivien. And you may feel broken to begin with, but as Britannia rebuilds itself, so will you.’
I nod. ‘Atlas has been trying on different selves, too. Seminarian. Boyfriend. Traitor. Earlier, I think he was going to tell me he loves me.’
‘And is the feeling mutual?’
‘Yes,’ I croak. ‘But what if, once I’ve rebuilt myself, I don’t feel the same? Translation took up such a huge part of me, too big a part. And now I think it’s gone. What if it’s the same with my love for Atlas? Or what if, after this war, he finds out he’s someone different, too?’
I blink the tears away and see the golden orbs staring at me intently.
‘Of course you will be different. This war will shape you, human girl. But this is not the first time you have remade yourself. And it will not be the last.’
I sniff, my eyes on the pitiful, bloody knife on the ground.
‘If you choose to dig that bullet out of me when I’m gone, be sure to use a better blade. We both know we cannot count on your teeth.’
I smile at the old joke and for a moment I’m back with one of my old selves, the frightened, confused, angry little girl who was about to release a criminal dragon and begin a war. Then I look down at the familiar, spiked face and realise I can’t feel her breath on my skin any more.
‘Chumana?’
The golden orbs close.
The cries of battle carry from the other side of the cliff and I know I cannot stay. I feel a tender ache in my throat. A series of sharp pains in my chest threaten to crack me open.
‘But I love you,’ I whisper, biting back sobs. ‘I love you, so you can’t leave.’
I stare at the tremendous creature who deigned to make a deal with me, who flew across the sea to find me, who sat with me in a watery ditch and told me I was worthy of a second chance.
She glows pink-orange in the sunset. Fiery, even in death.
I plant a kiss on Chumana’s warm snout as a flight of swallows dip and dance above us.
I stand up, my most recent memories of her flooding my mind. Flying with her in the sunrise. Watching her burn Wyvernmire’s camp to free me. Lying next to her in the sugar house, my unlikely roommate, her presence a path of light through the darkness of my nightmares.
‘You once had the honour of being like her,’ I murmur to the birds. ‘Watch over her. She’s not used to sleeping alone.’