Chapter Twelve #2
The trail of broken branches ended abruptly in the middle of the forest. Had the little girl flown higher? And gods be damned, Juniper was now thinking of her as a little girl instead of a dragon. Mo was insufferable, and this was all his fault.
Mo gaped at him. “Of course I saved your life,” he said. He might as well have said, You dumbass, what else would I have done? “Did you think I was going to let you just…eat an absolute wall of fire?”
“Well, no,” Juniper said. When he said it like that, it did sound a little dumb. “I should still thank you, though? Because that was very heroic of you? Princely, even.”
Mo let out a low growl.
Juniper had to fight his own smile. No surer way to a wrestling match than to suggest Mo shared qualities with a member of any royal family, though what grudge Mo had with all of them was beyond Juniper.
They were all so far away—well, until this past week, they had all been so far away.
Ideas, really. Something people talked about in visits to faraway cities, whose lives and decisions didn’t really affect Juniper.
“Junebug,” Mo said. “I should tackle you right here.”
“Wait,” Juniper said.
Something had caught his eye: a small indent of leaves at the base of a great oak tree. The oak’s branches were not bent the way the other trees leading them here had been, but this one had the smallest burn mark at the base of its trunk. And that little indent, as if from a very small foot.
So she hadn’t flown higher, then. Smart of her, honestly—if she had left the cover of the trees, they could have shot at her with their bows.
Suddenly, the gravity of that set in. Bill and Phteven and the rest hadn’t seen Bear in her child form, certainly, so it had made sense that they’d shot at her.
But the prince…the prince had, hadn’t he?
Surely, for such a small creature, there could be other options.
A catch-and-release program, maybe. A magical creature department dedicated to such things, one would hope.
“This way,” Juniper said confidently.
He was good at this, a story read in sticks and leaves.
Small indents here. Even a wee footprint there. Twigs on some shrubbery bent in the same direction. And it was more than that: He was headed toward the river, because when he had been five winters old and so desperately alone, that is what he would have done.
The path led farther into the wood, farther north toward the mountain just like they had guessed, and farther away from that very comfortable-sounding inn famous for only having one bed. Could they even stay in an inn if they had a small dragon child with them?
So many complications, and the sun was sinking very low now, their shadows falling in long, exaggerated lines to their right.
Juniper sighed. “Mo,” he said. “Do you reckon our hearth is extra warm and cozy tonight?”
“No,” Mo said without hesitation. “No one is there to light the fire. It’s probably just as cold as out here, though with less rain. And Mumford’s not there, he’s at Farmer Abernathy’s, so it would just be a little depressing.”
Juniper sighed again. “You are the most literal man in the entire world,” he said.
“Probably not the entire world,” Mo said, again with no hesitation. “Since I do use sarcasm approximately once per moon cycle, though not more.”
“You’re unbearable,” Juniper told him, but he caught his friend’s grin and, despite the cold and discomfort, met it with one of his own.
The girl’s trail wound around a bend, where Juniper could hear water rushing. He held up a hand, slowing their pace.
“You see it so fast. Every detail,” Mo said softly as they paused there, and then there was nothing but trees and moss and the sound of the water for a very long moment. Then he continued: “They used to say that was a gift. Magic.”
He reached out, the motion hesitant, and then instead of setting his hand on Juniper’s shoulder as Juniper had thought he would, Mo trailed one finger over Juniper’s shoulder, down his arm, leaving goose bumps in his wake.
Mo was wrong, of course: Juniper’s skill was nothing but a mild ability to notice the small details, something Juniper had learned when he was very young.
A bit of shattered glass on the porch that hadn’t been there yesterday meant you could expect worse inside.
A difference in the tilt or tension of someone’s shoulders meant you should brace for impact.
A flicker of warning in someone’s eyes was sometimes all you got.
So now the little details—little details he couldn’t help but notice on Mo, even when he tried to tell himself to eat some bread and touch some moss and stop being so intense every gods-cursed second—haunted him.
Only sometimes, including on dragon quests he didn’t want to participate in, it was apparently a helpful skill.
“Not magic,” Juniper returned. The moment felt fragile, which of course meant he had the urge to fill the sudden silence with laughter or argument or a wrestling match or—
Or even a dragon, honestly.
Who knew that quest objectives could come in handy when you needed to dodge some pesky feelings?
“This way,” he said, clearing his throat. He stepped past Mo, his shoulder brushing Mo’s as he went.
Mo’s gaze stayed trained on him as he moved, burning and burning and burning.