Chapter Eleven #2
“Anyway,” Mo continued, sighing as if talking to Juniper was the hardest work in the world. “We’ll find Bear, convince her to trust us, and then take her north into the mountains to see if we can find any of her remaining kin.”
“Haven’t we always heard there are no more dragons in those mountains?
” Juniper asked. There were stories, always stories, of dragons in the far north.
But no sightings in years, which had made the sighting of this mother dragon and her child that much less believable (before she’d burned their campsite down, of course).
“My grandmam told me stories,” Mo said with a shake of his head. He scooted closer, his forearm brushing Juniper. “Can I…can I tell you the one she told me last?”
Mo’s grandmam had died in the autumn when they were both about fourteen winters old, just before Samhain, and Mo rarely talked about it.
Juniper’s father had died that same autumn, and he had died drunk after a few moons in a capital prison that had sent him home with pneumonia. Juniper talked about that even less.
“Yeah, of course,” Juniper said, forcing his tone to sound as sincere as possible.
It turned out that took some difficulty.
Almost as if after a lifetime of laughing, brawling, or fussing his way through problems, it was a little difficult to access the part of himself that could be there for Mo for a story from his deceased grandmam. Huh. Who knew.
Mo’s reproof echoed in his head so hard it made his head ache.
Take this seriously for once, Juniper.
Who could blame Mo for always wanting to leave Juniper behind?
Now, Mo leaned back against the wall and let his long arm fall across Juniper’s shoulders.
Juniper suppressed a shiver at their sudden proximity, but he leaned against Mo despite his better judgment. As any good friends with a strong, brotherly bond would do. Not even brotherly. Something more casual, uncomplicated. A bro bond, maybe.
“Juniper?”
“I’m listening.”
He was, mostly.
“Before this king,” Mo began, “there was a different sort of kingdom. The kind of king the clans chose themselves, back when we had clans. There was a different language, too.”
Juniper winced.
These were the stories that made Mo the most restless, the most far-off.
Of course Juniper wished he spoke the old language. Of course he wished they still lived in a land of elected kings and freely spoken languages, but in this one, they still had their little farm, didn’t they? And how could everything be bad and wrong if he had Mo beside him?
“The old language,” he murmured.
“When my grandmam was young, she played in the wild green fields of home and the old gods were not yet weary,” Mo said.
“At least, that’s the way she always told it.
And the world changed, because the world is always changing.
But when she was young, the strange and monstrous and mythical walked among everyone as freely as bankers on a city street.
Except in those days, more bankers got eaten and more monsters walked around freely. ”
“I’m not much for nostalgia,” Juniper said, leaning his head against Mo’s sturdy shoulder. “But I could get on board with bankers being eaten. Did they leave farmers alone?”
Mo snorted.
“They left most farmers alone,” Mo told him. “Though sometimes she had stories of farmers who dug too deep or ran their grain crops too close to the river, and you know how the river feels about that sort of thing.”
That seemed like the kind of thing Juniper should just nod along to, because who really knew how the river felt about anything?
Though that kind of question made Juniper second-guess all the times he’d swum naked in various rivers (or tossed Mo in).
How did the river feel about nude tomfoolery?
He hoped she felt favorably about the topic, because that was all he had so far done in rivers across the land.
“What about the dragons?” Juniper asked, because even though he had agreed to listen to this story, he knew how Mo’s stories went: They wound through a space like the curve of a stream, roving and rambling where you least expected it until you never were quite sure where your canoe had ended up. “Where do they fit into all of this?”
Or maybe Juniper just had a hard time focusing.
“They were part of the strange and the monstrous, of course,” Mo answered. He huffed a little impatiently, as if this was something that of course he was going to get to if only Juniper could be patient.
Fair.
But they were hunched over in a badger’s cave, so maybe, just this once, the story could come as an expedited version? Juniper was not sure his resilience could outlast a tussle with a badger, not after everything else that had already happened that day.
“In those days, dragons walked as freely as people,” Mo said. “Slipping in and out of human and winged form. They helped with controlled burns of forests and plains that needed it. They kept kings in check.”
“Ah,” Juniper said. “That could be why we have quests now.”
“Well spotted,” Mo said.
On most people, that would be a sarcastic comment, but Mo was incapable of being anything but genuine, and Juniper loved him for it.
“Anyway, dragons were just citizens,” Mo said. “At least in my grandmam’s stories. Not beasts.”
“So why did you agree to come along and hunt one?” Juniper asked.
Mo was silent for a long moment, the shadows silhouetting the sharp, strong angles of his face.
Oh, fuck.
“Did you always think this was a possibility?” Juniper asked, horrified.
“That it would be a child?” Mo shook his head. “I just thought…well, I thought my best friend was going, so I was going, anyway. And I also thought I might get to see if the stories were true.”
“Were you always going to try to help them?” Juniper asked.
“I don’t know,” Mo answered slowly. “I wanted to understand them, I think. I wanted to see if there were any still here. I wanted to know if they…if they spoke the old language.”
An old language was one hell of a reason to go on a quest into the woods with uncomfortable pants, limited access to cheese, and absolutely no bedding, but Juniper, for once, managed to keep his mouth shut about cheese.
“Anyway,” Mo finished, removing his arm from Juniper’s shoulders and stretching both in front of him before rolling his head from side to side until his neck cracked loudly.
“I think it’s the right thing to do. Helping Bear.
And my grandmam said with this new king—well, his grandfather, actually—the dragons have retreated to the farthest northern mountains near the edge of the continent.
But if we have the chance to help a kid who’s lost find her way home, I think we should. ”
Juniper’s heart was going to shatter his rib cage from beating so hard.
On one hand, how could he not go along when Mo put it that way? Of course Mo was going to help.
But that selfish, ugly part of Juniper—the part he was sure Mo could see more often than not—clawed its way up into his throat. Mo talked about this quest, about helping Bear and bringing her home, with more excitement than Juniper had heard from him in weeks.
And if this was the life he wanted—camping in the forest, running from the law, saving baby dragons—how could he ever say yes to a cozy, quiet life on the farm with Juniper?
More than that, how could Mo ever want to stay with Juniper, when Juniper so desperately wanted a life that was both small and comfortable?
“Juniper?” Mo asked softly. “What do you say? Do we help Bear?”
He leaned closer to Juniper suddenly, those dark brown eyes so serious and soft that Juniper could almost fall into them. Juniper’s chest was tight, his breathing coming up short. “Mo,” he croaked.
Concern threaded Mo’s look. “Juniper? You all right?”
Juniper’s heart stuttered in his chest, skipping irregularly like a rock over still waters. He couldn’t look at Mo. Couldn’t think about Mo’s mouth so close to his, in this small, cramped space, couldn’t think about Mo heroically talking about rescuing a dragon, couldn’t think about any of it.
Because Juniper could still see it all like it was happening in front of him again. Mo, restless in that first year on the farm together when, more often than not, they had “sleepovers” and slept in the same bed to save on firewood costs. Mo, pacing their little cabin. Mo, that night.
Because they’d done this before, just once. Bodies pressed next to each other, Mo’s hands on him—not to wrestle, no, not like they did now, to—to—
Juniper could see it all, playing over and over in his memory like actors reenacting the same tragic play:
Mo, kissing him, one single time, in front of the fire.
Mo, leaving a few mornings later.
Juniper gasped for breath. The walls of the cave were suddenly much, much closer than they had been a moment ago.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” he said faintly, and then he scrambled away from Mo, belly crawling out of the cave, so self-conscious of the way he must look with his arms and legs waving, his ass toward Mo.
Nobody could crawl out of a cave and look good.
Once he was out, he took in a gasping lungful of breath, and then another, his vision swimming before him. He had managed, just barely, not to vomit.
A blurry outline was in front of him. Had Mo crawled out?
“Mo,” he said, reaching out until his hand touched…fur?
Juniper’s vision cleared just in time for him to realize his hand was resting on the head of a very large, very displeased-looking badger.