Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
“We need toys that Moonbeam can play with,” I said to our friends who had gathered in Aiden’s room. They were perched on every available surface; Lilia, Hazel, Rhiannon, and Una on Aiden’s bed, Bruce and Clarissa on the chair and desk respectively, and Brom, looking larger than usual, squished on the floor between Lilia’s legs. “Something that we can put the magic generator inside, so she has to figure out how to get at it. It will occupy her, but she won’t get frustrated and go after the magical lock on the door because it’s easier to get at.”
Bruce whistled. “That’s a tall order.”
“She’s very playful,” Rhiannon said, dangling her fingers over Moonbeam’s head for the kitten to bat. “She likes a challenge. If it’s too easy, she’ll get bored and go hunting for Aiden.”
“Which we definitely don’t want,” I agreed. “Pair up. We need as many options as possible. Rhiannon’s going to be making the generators, since she helped Professor Wright make the original ones.”
“We should switch up the pairs after each toy is designed. Get fresh ideas,” Lilia said.
Brom pouted.
“Oh, love, you know I adore working with you,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “But it’ll be better for everyone to shake things up a bit.”
“It’s a great idea,” Aiden said. “Shall we get to work?”
Half the team left his room to work in mine in the other hallway, due to the lack of space.
At the end of an hour, we had twelve interactive toys built out of different materials when we met back in Aiden’s room.
“We’ll only give her two at a time,” Rhiannon said. “She shouldn’t eat more magic than that, or she’ll grow too quickly. The second one is a safety measure. She should sleep after the first. Aiden, you’ll have to keep checking on her between classes, just to make sure she doesn’t go through another learning leap.”
I giggled. “That makes her sound like a human.”
Rhiannon smiled. “Babies are babies, no matter their form. This one is ‘aging’ at a rapid rate. I wish I could have gotten a look at her mother.”
“She was massive,” I said, stretching my arms out. “This was the size of her head alone.”
“Bigger,” Aiden disagreed.
“It was dark and she was lying down. How can you be sure?”
“Her head was taller than you,” he pointed out.
“I meant her age,” Rhiannon interrupted us with a chuckle. “Even though Moonbeam is growing quickly, I can tell magically that she’s only a couple weeks old. She can’t age her bones.”
“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “How can you tell?”
“I can teach you the spell. Professor Wright taught it last year in Care of Magical Creatures. It’s a combination sight spell and one of the medical examination ones. But you need to know what you’re looking for first. Do you have the textbook?”
“In my room.”
“Let’s go then.”
“We still on for skating?” Bruce asked.
“For sure,” I agreed. “Give us twenty minutes to learn this spell and get changed.”
“The slow way,” Una said with a groan. “I miss waving my hand and transfiguring my clothing.”
“I miss being able to add warmth spells into my layers,” Hazel added with a little shiver.
“We’ll be plenty warm while we skate,” I said, amused.
“And if you need extra warmth, I can give you a big hug,” Aiden added, a twinkle in his eye.
Hazel swallowed nervously. “Sure,” she said shakily.
As much as my best friend approved of Aiden, the dryad was anxious about his fire. Even though she’d been living with twelve fire beasts at the beginning of our third year while she helped Bruce figure out how to heal his wife from her curse, she still hadn’t gotten over her fear of fire.
After saying goodbye to our friends, we headed down the hall to my room once more.
“Thank you,” I said to Rhiannon.
“For teaching you how to x-ray animals?”
I shook my head. “That too, I suppose. But for helping us with Moonbeam even though your professor is so freaked out about her.”
Rhiannon shrugged. “I guess some of his fearlessness is rubbing off on me, but also, she’s so sweet. It’s possible that’s part of the manducare’s modus operandi , being cute, but I’ve been around her since you brought her in. She doesn’t hurt people on purpose. And now that Aiden hasn’t let her feed off his magic, his control has returned and he’s not feeling weak anymore.”
“That’s actually one of the ways I figured out that she was eating his magic,” I said. “He only had trouble when he’d been around her. After a day in the classroom, he was fine.”
“That makes sense. It also makes sense that some of the first magic she’d have eaten would have been from her mother.” Rhiannon was silent for a moment. “It doesn’t make sense that they were at all involved with the disappearance of the ley lines. Even with a humongous draw of power, the lines would have bounced back once the mother was dead. It’s been weeks, and there’s no change.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It must be a coincidence.”
“Weird that a manducare shows up right after the ley lines disappear, though,” Rhiannon said slowly. “Almost like they are linked, in a way.”
I frowned.
“Not like that,” she rushed to reassure me. “I wonder if there are more?”
“There must be, unless they reproduce asexually!” I said with a chuckle.
“Unlikely that a creature of such enormous size would do that, but I never say never,” Rhiannon said.
I opened the door to my room and greeted Lilia’s miniature dragons with head scratches on their eye ridges. “She’ll be back soon,” I crooned to them.
We had all agreed to keep all magical creatures away from Moonbeam in case of accidents. We didn’t want the dragons especially to get hurt.
“Here’s my textbook,” I said, pulling it off the shelf.
“Excellent.” Rhiannon flipped to the back, where the skeletons and muscle structure of different animals were located. “We’ll do dragons, since we’ve got them here. Look at the difference between an infant and adult dragon. See how the bones are more solid in the older dragon?”
“It won’t be different because these guys are miniature versions?” I asked.
“No, it’s the age that matters.” Rhiannon chirped at Pinkie Pie, who landed on her forearm, crooning as he cocked his head one way and then the other. “Hello, beautiful boy. Can I look you over, please?”
He chirped back at her and nudged her cheek with the top of his head.
“These two are very smart,” Rhiannon remarked, sitting on a chair and putting Pinkie on the desk in front of her. “They understand basic questions. Very similar to a toddler.”
I nodded and watched her as she made the simple spell movements with her hands.
“It’s like an x-ray,” she said. “It’s hard to use for long periods of time, so once you see what you need to, stop it.” She patted Pinkie’s flank. “Good boy. Thank you.”
Pinkie chirruped and leaped off the table, flapping his wings to circle the room.
“Why don’t you look at Dip?”
“Okay,” I agreed, suddenly nervous. “Here, girl,” I said, lifting my arm up.
Dip swooped down from the top of Lilia’s four-poster, where she’d been watching the proceedings, and lit on my arm.
“May I look at you? It won’t hurt,” I promised.
She seemed to understand what I was asking, as she took her place on the table without me needing to put her there myself. I sat in the chair and took a breath, clearing my mind for the new magic spell.
As soon as it took hold, my vision changed to black-blue-white. I blinked, feeling nauseated when closing my eyes didn’t help.
“Look at her hip,” Rhiannon said.
I almost jumped, having forgotten she was there. Focusing on Dip’s thigh bone, I saw what Rhiannon had meant by the bone not being fully formed in the young dragon. Near the ball joint, the bone looked spongy. Closer to the middle of the bone, it looked completely solid.
“That’s so cool,” I murmured, removing the spell from my vision.
“We should get ready,” Rhiannon said, petting Dip on her eye ridges. “Are the dragons coming with us?”
“I’ll ask Lilia when she comes to get changed,” I said.
“See you in ten,” Rhiannon said as she left me alone in my room.
I put away my textbook before grabbing fleece-lined jeans, thick woolen socks, and a dark blue sweater, layering them over thinner nylon clothing. I was sweating by the time I was ready to go.
Lilia and Hazel burst into the room and hurried to get ready so that I wouldn’t die of the heat. I wrapped a scarf around my neck and pulled on thick mittens before grabbing my skates, which would attach with buckles over my boots.
“And you thought I was going to be the one slowing you all down,” I teased.
“Hush,” Hazel said, pulling on her third sweater. “I’m almost ready.”
“Just two more layers?”
Lilia laughed. “Do you two want to come skating with us?” she asked her dragons.
Pinkie Pie chirped and swooped down to curl around her neck like a living scarf. Dip, much to my surprise, landed on my shoulder and gripped my ear with one tiny claw.
“Aw, she loves you,” Lilia said with a smile. “Don’t get too attached, Dip darling. You’re still coming home with me.”
Dip squeaked and bobbed her head a couple times, as if she were agreeing with Lilia, and I wondered exactly how much these dragonettes understood.
“Okay, I’m ready!” Hazel announced.
I stifled my laughter. “But can you move?”
My friend looked about five times thicker, thanks to her many layers.
“Mostly,” she admitted.
“You can always take off layers if you need to, I suppose,” I said, opening the door. “Let’s meet the others.”
Everyone else was waiting in the common room at the top of the stairs, and they stood up from chairs when we arrived.
“What took you so long?” Aiden greeted me. “Get lost in the spell after Rhiannon left?”
“No. I’ll have you know I was ready five minutes before these two even got to our room. I’m sweltering! Let’s get outside before I melt into a puddle!”
Our group piled down the stairs and out the castle, heading for the waterfront. The Dragon Polo arena was steaming in the cold air, the water heated for the safety of the dragons and their riders. The air inside the arena was warmed as well, so that nobody froze to death from icy winds.
We, however, were heading for a section of the sea nearby. It wasn’t connected to the sports arena, to prevent accidents. This area was an inlet, stabilized from any waves and frozen solid all the way to the seabed. No danger of cracked or bumpy ice.
We buckled our skates onto our boots and joined our schoolmates on the ice.
My ankles wobbled a bit as I got used to the gliding motion.
Aiden took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You okay?” he asked in concern.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I tried to smile reassuringly at him, but I think it came out as a grimace. “Not used to being on skates.”
He grinned. “Wait, hang on... Did we just find something else that I’m better at than you?”
I wanted to swat at him, but he was too far away and I’d probably fall flat on my ass. “I’m far from perfect,” I grumbled.
“You’re perfect for me,” Aiden said, doing something fancy with his feet until he was skating backward in front of me. He grabbed my second hand and pressed a kiss to the exposed skin at my wrist. “I don’t mind being better than you at one or two things.”
“I don’t mind you being better either,” I said, trying to explain myself. “I just don’t like not being good at them in general.”
Aiden nodded soberly. “For someone who found everything easy, it must have been really confusing the first time you came across something that you had to work at in order to become good at it.”
“Exactly!” I exclaimed with a huff. “Maths, for example! Everything was fine, I barely had to study to get it. Algebra, geometry, you name it, no problem. And then in twelfth grade, bam! Calculus, physics, forces. It didn’t make sense! And I wasn’t used to studying, so I didn’t know I had to! I expected it to just fall into place overnight like the previous stuff, you know?”
Aiden didn’t say anything, but his eyes were focused on mine, so I knew he was listening to every word I said.
“Skating was different. The first time I stepped onto the ice, I fell so hard that I smacked my head, too. I wasn’t allowed back on that day because my parents were worried I had a concussion. Neither of them have healing magic, and we weren’t in a town where we could go see someone who did. A couple days passed, and I just didn’t want to try again. It was too embarrassing.” I lowered my voice. “It’s hard to not be perfect when you’re a perfectionist.”
“I believe it.” Aiden pulled me in close to his body and tipped my head up with one gloved hand. “You’re allowed to try new things with me. If you’re not perfect, we’ll work on it. Together.”
“I love you,” I whispered into the space between us, a cloud of my air forming as it left my lips.
“I love you, too.” He joined our mouths for a heated moment, leaving me clinging to the sides of his sweater. He pulled away just as suddenly. “Now, let’s get you more confident on these blades.”
My eyes widened. “You’d teach me?”
“Sure. What’s the point of being good enough to skate in circles around you when all I want to do is skate with you?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It’s a bit of a tease combined with a brag,” Aiden said sheepishly.
“You’re that good?”
“I am.”
“Show me.”
Aiden hesitated a moment, before gliding away from me. Making sure he had enough space, he headed for the center of the ice. Most of our classmates stayed near the edge, slowly skating in circles. But when Aiden did his first jump, everyone stopped and stared at him. He moved seamlessly from that into a spin and then another kind of jump, spiraling across the ice, his footwork flashing and sending up a spray of ice when he reached the end.
I felt like I needed to scrape my jaw off the ice by the end of his performance, and nobody clapped harder than me when he finished.
“I love it when you show competence,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck once he’d skated back to me.
He was sweating lightly, but looked so happy to have been able to let loose.
“How can you do all that?” I asked.
“I’ve been in figure skating classes since I was little. My parents thought it was a good way for me to let off steam.” Aiden beamed at me. “Are you ready for your lesson?”
I swallowed hard. “Yes. Okay. Let’s do this.”