Chapter 4 #2
Zan sighs. “They haven’t, to my knowledge. They hate the Order, too, for obvious reasons. But I’m not sure that means they wouldn’t. The Order isn’t a threat to their power the way I am in existing separate from them.”
That, I understand too well.
Maybe that’s why he felt he could tell me.
“So you visit Crystal Hollow,” I say, turning the subject from the most difficult core. “Do people not recognize you, year after year? Your appearance... I wouldn’t say it’s forgettable.”
A flash of humor through the bleakness of his gaze. “Damning me with the faint praise.”
“On the contrary, from what I understand of human aging, remembering anything at my age ought to be considered miraculous,” I quip.
A smirk teases his mouth. “Are my looks miraculous, then?”
I nod, completely seriously. “Yes.”
He looks at me sidelong, his eyes brighter.
I roll my eyes. “Surely you know what you look like.”
The humor fades as he looks away. “Few people see me like this. I use a spell to change my appearance whenever I’m among humans. My natural appearance is too obviously other; I would be tagged as a dragon in instants.”
Oh.
I realize he didn’t directly respond to my statement, and I wonder if he does not, in fact, remember what he looks like so easily, after centuries of living primarily with an altered appearance.
“I didn’t know dragons worked spells,” I say instead of addressing the new dragon in the kitchen.
“We don’t. But Kovan discovered that my scales could be used to anchor your priests’ spells. I keep a stash of them at the cottage to replenish as needed.”
“And for the sages,” I surmise. Sages’ eyes gradually change color permanently to match our magic the more we use it.
For some sages it takes longer, but anger is an easy emotion for a child. My eyes have been magenta for as long as I can remember.
But Zan shakes his head. “No. Another sage can sense the spell. It’s safer for the sages who come here to suppress their power so their eye color doesn’t change.”
I have surprisingly mixed feelings about that. The Quiet offered sages a way to hide, gave them an opportunity to live their life as something other than a sage.
But I am a sage. My power is as natural to me as breathing. Can I really simply never use it again?
I have the control to; I am trained. I do want to live a new life.
But sages for the last five centuries haven’t had a real choice. They could be a tool of the priests, or they could suppress a key part of their nature. That’s it.
Both options are a kind of prison, not freedom.
But maybe freedom is not possible for sages.
Zan digs into his pack and passes me a large bow.
I blink. “Shouldn’t that have a package attached to it?”
“It’s for your hair,” Zan explains. “One of my scales with the eye spell is sewn into it. To hide it. Sages used to practice with the spell when they came down the mountain until they were sure they could keep their power suppressed. The Quiet was never quite as strong or consistent in Crystal Hollow—the Order couldn’t work magic there, but sages could. ”
I eye the bow like it’s a snake.
“It will give you the chance to decide what you want,” Zan says gruffly. “You can let yourself be known as a sage now, or later. When you’re ready.”
Another attempt to give me the gift of freedom he didn’t manage before, at the temple. Or years ago.
I’m not sure this is freedom, but it is space to move so I can decide.
“I don’t know how to wear this,” I finally say.
Zan hesitates. “May I put it in your hair?”
He’s always so cautious about touching me. Is it care for boundaries, or a history of not being wanted?
Or does he feel the same rush I do when we touch, and he doesn’t know what to make of it either—
Or he does.
“Yes,” I say, pausing on the trail.
Zan crosses behind me, and I am hyper-aware of his presence at my back. At the gentle brush of his hands against my hair.
I don’t feel a rush this time; more like a tingle of awareness on my skin.
This, I am reasonably sure, is not magic.
Zan fastens the bow in my hair quickly, competently, like he’s done this before, which also gives me pause, a moment in which I reassess how I am interpreting all of his interactions.
But he hasn’t taken human lovers; at least none that have interested him in settling down. Not that he’s interested in that with me, but—
The cottage we are going to share had a nursery with his image in it.
I wonder if he learned to do a human child’s hair.
Maybe that’s the reason for his hesitation to touch me: an accumulation of memories for people he’s lost.
We may be the same age, but I haven’t lived the centuries he has, not really. Distant awareness while meditating isn’t the same, and while that mental work may enable me to grow faster now, my mind making connections quickly, it isn’t the same.
I never had people to lose.
“Do dragons normally use magic to be among people?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Dyes, mostly. There are other technologies for altering eye color for those of us who have more uncommon human coloring, but I haven’t had access to those in many years. I sometimes still dye my hair black, though. It’s... easier, in a way.”
To look and feel like himself.
“You’ve lived your whole life in hiding,” I say softly.
That damned shrug again. “I am not sorry that I have knowledge that will be useful to you in deciding how you will be most comfortable.”
My anger ignites in an instant.
“I am sorry that you developed a martyr complex,” I snap. “I didn’t ask you to make yourself unhappy for five hundred years for my benefit.”
Zan’s glance back at me is cutting. “And I haven’t lived this way for your benefit for hundreds of years. I stopped believing you would wake up ages ago. Not everything is about you.”
“Good.” And I mean that, even if I don’t entirely believe him. “Because if it were up to me, I’d tell you that I won’t be comfortable until you can be your whole self, too.”
“I’m a dragon,” Zan reminds me. As if I’d forgotten.
“I’m a sage,” I retort. “If I’m going to get a chance at freedom, there’s no reason you shouldn’t, too.”
I can practically see him grinding his teeth. “I told you. I’ve lived as freely as possible for an unmated dragon—”
“Arguably I’ve lived as freely as possible for a sage.”
“You have not,” Zan snaps. “You can’t even imagine what living in the world can be like.”
“That’s true.”
His eyes narrow. “Is it.”
Ha. Already he understands me better than many of my tutors.
“It is,” I say easily, with a sharp smile.
Zan scowls. “I see. You think you’re going to think of something that I haven’t in centuries.”
Put that way, it does seem not only ridiculous, but borderline offensive.
“I think I am angry on your behalf,” I say slowly.
“You don’t need to be.” His frustration is evident.
“You don’t get to decide what I feel,” I snap. “And if you think I will somehow learn to be so happy and simply never get angry again, you do not understand me, and what it means to be the incarnation of Wrath.”
Zan takes a breath. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“And I didn’t mean that I’m simply going to sail in and tell you how you obviously should have been living your life all along. I don’t think you’re stupid, and of the two of us, of course you understand what it’s like to actually live in the world.”
He nods slowly. “But?”
“But you’re right that I can’t imagine what freedom looks like for me.
And the options that have apparently existed up to now don’t fill me with enthusiasm.
But now the Quiet is gone, and maybe there will be new options.
And if you are going to try to help me have the space to find them, there’s no reason I shouldn’t do the same for you.
Yes, you have... so much more practical experience than I do.
But I am not a child you have to lead through life.
And what I bring is a new perspective and a lot of anger. Don’t patronize me.”
Zan’s gaze glows. “I don’t think you’re a child.”
I pull the bow out of my hair so that mine glows right back. “A victim, then. The Quiet was my idea, Zan. I didn’t do it by accident.”
He scowls. “I didn’t think you had.”
“Then maybe remember that I can think of and do things no one else can.”
“I do,” Zan snaps. “And I hope you imagine and do whatever you want. But you don’t need to treat me as a problem to solve, either.”
Oh.
I hesitate for a second, and then reach for his hand.
He tenses for a second as that rush suffuses me again, softer this time, and leaving the same tingles in its wake that I felt when he put the bow in my hair.
And then he grips my hand with quiet strength.
“You’re not a problem,” I tell him firmly. “You’re a person. And I want you to be able to imagine and do whatever you want, too. That’s all.”
His gaze meets mine and holds it.
There’s a fraught moment where I hold my breath, unsure what the next moment will bring.
Our eyes glow at each other, pink and blue.
But I don’t know what I want yet, and I need to decide. I deserve to decide, and he deserves that, too.
I turn my head, showing him the back of it. “Could you fix the bow again, please?”
“Of course.”
Our hands separate like nothing happened. His fingers in my hair are quick and efficient and don’t linger.
But for the remainder of the hike there’s an air between us that’s at once easier and on the edge of possibility.
And Zan tells me the names of the trees.