Chapter 80 #2
The blue luck dragon wiped the snot from his nose with a claw and lowered into a hover at eye level. “Luck dragons love the rain,” he blubbered, “but none of my littermates will share it with me. They’ve all flown off.”
“Oh.” Bradley looked around at the soaked grass. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
“Why would you do that? I thought humans didn’t like getting wet.”
“I’m not like most humans. And I’ve been told to wait for the dean, and the grass is far softer than that iron bench. That is, if you don’t mind?”
The luck dragon cocked his head curiously to the side. “I suppose not.”
So Bradley lowered himself and settled his elbows on his drawn-up knees and pretended not to notice the baby luck dragon watching him. Bradley lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, and smiled. “We don’t get this kind of rain back home. It’s large and harsh, and it stings. It’s so soft here.”
“It’s called a drizzle,” the luck dragon offered the word.
“Drizzle. Hmm. That’s a funny word. I like the way it buzzes on my tongue.”
“Like a hummingbird!”
Bradley cracked open an eye, and the baby dragon seemed embarrassed by his outburst.
“I-I mean, their wings make a funny buzz, too,” he explained. “It tickles my nose if I fly really close in their wake.”
“I bet it does. Say, you wouldn’t mind if I practice some of my magic while I wait for the dean, would you?”
The dragon shook his head, scattering the rain.
Bradley stretched out a hand towards the lake. “Forma,” he murmured in High Aetherial. “Forma draconis.”
A serpentine dragon, wingless like the luck dragon next to him, rose from the water.
It was as clear as glass, its watery hide rippling with each droplet of rain.
The figurine corkscrewed around the luck dragon and flicked him on the snout with its watery tail.
It was a behavior Bradley had witnessed the other dragons do when they wanted to instigate a game of tag.
This baby luck dragon squealed with delight and gave chase.
“Sweet mother of pearl,” Bradley gasped as he realized just how fast the luck dragon was.
The apprentice shot to his feet, really concentrating now, and guided the baby dragon on a merry chase after the figurine.
They dashed over the surface of the lake, rose into the sky, wiggled around the lilacs.
A few times the baby luck dragon almost caught the figurine, shouting, “Rats!” whenever he missed.
Suddenly the figurine spun and flared its claws. Its mouth opened in a soundless roar, and the baby luck dragon turned on a dime. Shrieking, he evaded the figurine’s snapping mouth as it was his turn to be chased around the lake.
Too soon, Bradley reached his limit, and he let the figurine dive into the lake and dissipate. The luck dragon hovered over the spot where his playmate had disappeared. “Are you coming back?”
“I think he’s just taking a break,” Bradley called, collapsing into a tired heap on the bank.
“Aww, and I didn’t catch his name.” The baby dragon swooped up to him. “I’m Dirk, by the way. I mean, my real name is Lung Shang, but I’m testing out the name Dirk. It sounds fearsome, right?”
“Sure. I’m Bradley. Why Dirk?”
“Because all the Great Reds have terrifying names. Names that command respect. And popularity. All the Great Reds are very popular and they have lots of friends, you know. Nobody picks on them either. Or makes fun of their scales.”
Bradley thought the little luck dragon was confusing popularity with infamy and friends with terrified masses but chose not to correct him. “I didn’t know that.”
Dirk clicked his front claws together, golden gaze shifting. “Thanks for, um, sharing the rain with me.”
The apprentice’s smile was warm. “Anytime.”
“Mr. Donmarin,” came a voice from the lilacs. “Lung Shang.”
Bradley scrambled to his feet and attempted to swat the grass and blooms from his robe, but everything was just too wet and sticky. He bowed quickly to the master sorcerer emerging from the lilacs.
Master Excelsior was one of the College’s most eccentric professors, teaching only Expert Configuration 301 and 302 and spending the rest of his time puttering about the campus collecting flowers to turn into bouquets—though no one ever knew whom he was attempting to woo—communing with the pixies, and taking brisk walks while muttering to himself.
Despite his peculiarities, he was brilliant, as evident by the force field emanating from his staff that repelled the rain in a perfect arch over his head.
“Master Excelsior. I wasn’t cutting class. I was sent to the dean’s office, but he was busy with a meeting.”
“I know,” the sorcerer said. “I was that meeting. And if you were told to wait, presumably on the bench and presumably by Professor Udora, given the hour, what are you doing here?”
“I heard Lung Shang crying, Master.”
“You were crying, Lung Shang?”
“No one wanted to play with me. They all flew away to enjoy the storm by themselves.” The baby luck dragon forced his sadness away.
“But Bradley made me a friend out of the water. He had scales and claws and a feathered mane and tail just like me! We played tag. I almost caught him three times,” he added proudly.
“Scales and claws and a feathered mane and tail.” Master Excelsior’s gaze switched to Bradley with the intensity of a hawk finding new prey. “Configuration? That class just started.”
“Yes, Master.”
“But those idiots can’t even conform dry reeds into a wicker basket let alone create a dragon figurine from water with such detail and have it zip hither and thither to play with a luck dragon who almost caught it three times.”
Bradley rolled his lips inward so he wouldn’t laugh. When he was composed a second later, he replied, “No, Master, they cannot.”
Master Excelsior shoved the butt of his staff into his soft turf, placed his hands on his bony hips, and gave them a smile that conveyed how supremely pleased he was with himself. “Then it seems I’ve made the best decision regarding the both of you. Huzzah for me.”
“What decision is that, Master?”
“You’re going to be my new pupil, Bradley Donmarin—that was what my meeting with the dean was about.
You’re to be my protégé, effective immediately.
And you, Lung Shang, will be his Designated Sorcerer Companion.
We’ll have the ceremony and the celebratory sherbet punch tonight.
Now you will both join me for a nice hot cup of tea. ”
“So that was it.” Millie passed Bradley the waterskin. “The day Dirk’s curse activated.”
They had beached the skiff on the crest of the dune for a short break. The sky was graying on the horizon, and if the wind kept up, they would arrive at the tower by sunrise.
“It’s not fair!” She jumped to her feet, kicking sand into the air that made Bradley choke. “All he wanted was to be accepted. To have friends! And now he’s turning into a wyrm? Unacceptable,” she shouted up at the dimming stars of Caelus’s domain.
Despite her shouting, Dirk snored away in the cargo net.
“Maybe that’s the balance the books talked about,” Bradley said in a far more reasonable tone.
“He is shunning what it means to be a luck dragon to become something he has no right to be—a Great Red. They are ornery on their best days, greedy, impulsive, stubborn. Luck dragons are sensitive, loving, generous, and encouraging. Or he was—now Dirk’s moody, irritable, and he almost killed that one knight.
He has abandoned his self and thus his magic. ”
He tore his hands through his hair. “I never should have enabled him with those rice paper spells. I should’ve seen this happening. I should’ve been a better friend.”
Millie set a hand on his shoulder. “There’s a difference in having friends of a different species than your own kind. It sounds like Dirk yearned for draconian companionship. And why shouldn’t he have it? He’s marvelous!”
“His littermates are children, and so is he. You know how kids are—they can be selfish and cruel without proper instruction. They probably don’t have any idea how grievously their actions have hurt Dirk without a parent to explain it to them, and his parents are still on that expedition.”
“His brothers and sisters can get struck by lightning for all I care!”
“Millie, calm down.”
“I will not calm down. This isn’t right!”
“And we’re going to fix it, if you can stop stomping around and get your butt back on the skiff. The sooner we get back to the tower, the sooner we can figure this out.” And the sooner I can tell you what your help in all this means to me.
“Bossy,” she muttered, but she obeyed.
This time she nestled down by the luck dragon in the bow of the skiff to stroke his feathers.
Bradley leaned the dune skiff to catch the wind, and they were off.
As the sun rose and chased away the night’s chill, the tower came into view.
A spire of manilla stone with a conical roof of bluish slate.
Bradley remembered the first day he saw it, on the back of a panther raven griffin and leaning around Master Excelsior’s bony shoulder.
It had seemed both prison and sanctuary, alone here in the waste.
Now he saw it for what it truly was—a trial.
A trial with rules to be learned and victories to be earned in the doing.
“The classroom is wonderful for learning theory,” Master Excelsior had told him shortly after Bradley had become his official protégé, “but the real world, where everything is messy and beautiful, is where your true education lies, dear boy. Go outside. It’s time to stop reading about others’ discoveries and go make some for yourself. ”
Panicked and frightened, Bradley had forgotten Master Excelsior’s first lesson and retreated right back into those books for an answer to his problem. He should’ve been bolder, maybe even reckless. He should have abandoned every restraint and explored. He’d been too afraid of failing to truly try.