As soon as Llewellyn came through the door that evening, he dwarfed me in a hug. I was hitting my growth spurt about then, but Llewellyn was still a foot taller, with lighter brown hair, and greeny-blue eyes that felt more alive than anyone’s I’d seen. With how tired I was feeling, it gave me a spark of awakeness I didn’t know I’d been missing.
It was a good start to the night.
Supper always tasted better when he was there. There was no scientific way to prove that, of course, but it was still true. Chores, Grammy, sunsets and everything else were better, too. Llewellyn had a way of making everything fun, a presence like a bonfire on a cold autumn night. He made it feel like it didn’t matter if I got tossed around in sparring, because that was just part of the game, and my scrapes and bruises somehow smarted less.
So I went to bed more or less content.
I say more or less, because Llewellyn used to sleep in my room when he came over—and that made the long nights safer and easier. But Grammy had started saying stuff about how a growing 15 year-old needs to start learning to manage nights on his own (as if I wasn’t doing that every other night of the year), and that overworked college students needed their space. She meant well, I know, but it stung, and, despite the relief of having him there, I still went to bed with a lump in my throat. And with my baseball bat by my bed, etched over with as many Mithecal rewrites as I thought might make it an effective weapon (not that I knew many).
You see, when the nights come, so do the monsters.
One of the reasons that monsters have stayed so well hidden from the general populace (besides avoiding densely populated areas) is that many of them feed more on emotions and metaphysical-type nourishment than meat. Sure, you have the occasional wampus cat attack (though most of those tend to hunt to meatier beasts than humans), but the bulk of the illdýr, the true monsters of the night, prefer to lurk in the shadows and eat you whole without laying a finger on you.
Fear of discovery (repercussions) and consistent lighting are often enough to thin them out, so almost everyone in the cities live unaware of them—and that means almost everyone at all. Apparently, there used to be more small, scattered towns like the one Mara lives by, but those have grown more and more impractical as the world worsens. People like my Grammy, Wardens, chose those on the outskirts, further away from help, since it’s their duty to protect those who need it. They’ve stayed with the stubborn, entrenched groups for time immemorial, sticking by those clinging to life in the far-flung outposts of humanity, and trying to preserve what they can. By, say, keeping people safe from monsters.
A laugh, like sticks bouncing off a tin pan, pushed its way through my window’s black-out curtains.
“Hello, little one,” came the whisper, scraping along the glass. “It’s cold out here, so very very cold. The frost breaks my fingers so. Won’t you let me in, little one? You who are so warm, imagining yourself so safe under blankets of wool and felt.” It laughed again.
As I have said, many of the illdýr feed off of things like emotions. Fear attracts them like fried chicken summons a starving man—and I’ve never not been terrified of them. Night after night after night, something will try to draw me outside, whisper to me, pound on my window, scream at me, drool over a meal it can’t reach but can’t stop smelling.
I rarely slept well.
From a mental standpoint, I knew perfectly well that illdýr can’t get through the wards and magic barriers that Grammy set up around the house. But that knowledge did nothing, except make me feel stupid at how I trembled every night, covers pulled over my head, praying for sleep before something terrible happened.
The duty of a Warden is to fight off monsters, to protect others. That will be my legacy, one day, but I doubt if I’ll ever reach that point. You could say that I’m a prodigy among my cousins—a prodigy at cowardice, messing up. Hypothetically, I should be more equipped than your average mountain dweller to deal with a monster or two, and yet, there I was, a cowering lump in my bed, wondering where I’d put my earplugs, but too scared to get out of my bed and look for them. So, instead of doing literally anything, I lay there and listened to the shadows hissing to me.
“Isn’t it so trying to be in there, little one?” the voice crooned. “All alone, so very tired, unable to sleep. Maybe… if you came out here, I could help you sleep.”
I doubt I’d like that kind of sleep, I thought.
And tonight, a new fear prickled the back of my neck: dragons.
I didn’t seriously think that Kalgyrad was going to come and haul me off into the woods for a quick snack, but his presence reminded me of something worse and more pressing: our level of Mithae could hold back a dragon just about as well as a bear trap could stop a leviathan. It might hurt it, but it wouldn’t stop it. And dragons weren’t the only powerful creatures in the world. Myrkings, wyrms, sphinxes, phoenixes, morginashi… none lived in our country, and most had been presumed extinct by monster hunters for centuries. But that had been true of dragons, too. Western and Eastern alike were said to have vanished from our world in ancient times, and yet, we’d had one in our kitchen.
I wondered if Grammy had alerted any other Wardens.
But now that the idea that the wards could broken, overpowered, had wormed it’s way into my brain (despite it’s illogicality), and every rustle from beyond my window heralded an ancient, primordial being tearing my room to shreds. So I cursed my misplaced earplugs and lay very still, watching shadows I shouldn’t be able to see clawing at the ceiling, hating that there was nothing I could do.
“Oh, you are so lonely, so scared.” A sound like something running along the roof made me hold my breath. “No one is there with you, no one to help you. Maybe… I could help you?” The voice was as plush as velvet, beckoning, beckoning. “You wouldn’t have to be alone, not anymore. Let me come in, keep you company. Wouldn’t that be so much better than sighing away in there?”
Something was at the window. I clenched my fists.
“Or you could come out here,” it said, lower, smoother. “I could find many friends for you. All of us, taking care of you, ridding you of your fears and worries, giving you rest, rest, rest. Don’t you want that? Won’t you let me help you? Wouldn’t that be better than being alone?”
It’s subsequent chuckle, deep in its throat like it was trying to smother the sound, did not help its case.
I wanted to throw my pillow at the window, yell at it to leave. But you don’t talk back to hide-a-winds. They take your voice and toss it back at you in unsettling ways, and weeks later use it drive you mad with your own thoughts.
Hide-a-winds are on the weaker side of the illdýr spectrum, I told myself, reciting it like a bedtime story. They can project their voices into all kinds of sounds and imitations, and move faster than the wind, and you can never quite see them. They can slip through the faintest crack. But they’re small, thin, and insubstantial. Though they often return to places they’ve been, they’re flighty and don’t stick around for too long. If you did see one, you could damage it with a rock, and even if you don’t see one, as long as you can’t hear it, it can’t hurt you. They have very little real power. Just whispers.
What sounded like fingers tip-tapped their way across the window sill, knocking with a giggle at the side of the house.
And major creepiness.
I clenched my jaw and wrapped my hand around my bracelet—a gift from Llewellyn, twisted twine around colored beads of my favorite orange—and reminded myself that Grammy and Llewellyn were on either side of me, that hide-a-winds were weak, and that they had tried and failed before to get at me. Still, I could taste fear coating my tongue, choking my breath, and I bit back a sob of impotent fury.
I hated this, this nightly ritual of hiding helplessly, unable to face either a monster or the darkness of my own room, failing to be brave or to ignore what I knew were scare tactics. All I could do was lie there, trapped under my own covers, and rail against my fear, untouched and impregnable to any influence but that of monsters. But it didn’t matter, did it? If I was brave, what could I do? Go out and fight a hide-a-wind in the middle of the night? Wake up Llewellyn? No, he needed his sleep, and the monsters were only loud in my ears. Grammy and Llewellyn were fully asleep by now, oblivious to anything beyond their dreams. I wouldn’t be able to find my earplugs in this darkness, either, so the only thing I could do was wait for this to pass.
Useless, helpless, incapable.
But perhaps because of the fuller house this evening, the hide-a-wind was the only thing that haunted my room that night, and it left before too long. I’d have a bad night of it, but it could be worse. It was only 1 a.m. when I managed to drift off into an uneasy sleep, dreaming of getting stuck in a never-ending road of mud, while a large, scaled monster crept towards me from behind, calling to me with my grandmother’s voice.
I was not excited to find myself awake at 7 a.m (two hours earlier than normal), and even less excited when I stared at the ceiling and knew that, in only a few hours, I’d have to face a different scaled monster—even if he was cloaking it in human form.
Thanks to winter, my small room was much darker than I would have liked. Still, I crept out of bed (turning the light on as soon as possible to dispel any lingering shadows) and prepared for the day. First, I groped around my room until I found that my earplugs had fallen under my bed. I put them back on my dresser, and got dressed (cargo pants, a bright yellow t-shirt, and a blue-and-green jacket over that). Then I got breakfast, coffee, and crept back to my room to draw and settle my mind.
But I couldn’t stay in my room forever.
“Bad night?” Llewellyn asked me, sleepily, as he yawned his way out of the guest room.
I nodded.
“Oh, Rhys.” He pulled me into another hug, wrapping his arms around me until I felt a tad suffocated. “You know you can wake me up when there’s monsters, right? I wouldn’t mind. Or at least, I’d mind it a lot less than some wormy illdýr terrorizing my favorite guy.” He ruffled my hair and held me out at arm’s length, as if to inspect me for damage.
“Well, you need sleep,” I mumbled. Besides, ‘favorite guy’ was an exaggeration. He had tons of friends in college, a sister that was even cooler than he was (though she was also a bit of a jerk), and also all my other cousins.
“Eh, I’ll do that when I get to my parents’ house.” He waved a hand towards the city, and steered me towards the kitchen. “‘Sides, what else are Wardens supposed to do? It’s their duty to protect people from the illdýr, et cetera.”
“I mean, I’m supposed to be a Warden, too.” The words blurted out of my mouth before I could stop them.
Llewellyn clapped me on the back. “Not yet you aren’t,” he said, moving towards the coffee pot. “You’re still a trainee. And, you don’t have to be a Warden if you don’t want to.” He, of course, had to throw that in. It was an ongoing discussion. “But all that aside, I’m still your older cousin, so you could say it’s also my familial duty to chase off shadows in the night. What was it this time?”
“Hide-a-wind,” I said, trying not to sound as ashamed as I felt.
He waved a hand flippantly. “See? Wouldn’t have taken me a minute, and then we all would have gotten as much sleep as we needed.”
If I was any good, I’d be able to do that, too, I thought. But this time I kept my mouth shut.
“Someone missed some sleep, eh?” Grammy came in from outside with a clatter of doors, crouching down in the hallway to unlace her boots. “Probably due to a hide-a-wind, from the tracks outside the lainlines.”
I nodded reluctantly, slipping onto a stool by the half-wall, which divided the kitchen proper from the kitchen table. Grammy eyed me as she came in, but, mercifully, she didn’t say anything. Maybe she didn’t want to start a fight with Llewellyn, maybe she just decided to let it go and focus on the more important parts of the day.
“Remember, Kalgyrad will be here in about an hour,” she said, washing her hands at the kitchen sink. “Llewellyn, did you want to be here for all of that? If not, there’s plenty of chores around the place that need done.” She winked at me.
“I’ll admit, I’m rather curious about this guy.” Llewellyn grinned, his spoon clanging off the sides of the mug as he mixed in sugar and cream. “I’ve never seen a dragon before, and never thought one would give up any kind of secrets. Maybe I’ll learn something, too. ‘Sides, couldn’t skip out and leave Rhys to face danger all by himself, now, could I?”
Grammy scoffed. “Kalgyrad will be no danger to anyone, as long as he abides by the terms of his contract. But, of course, you’re welcome to stay and supervise as you wish. You can use the dining room, and I’ll be working on lunch out here.”
And so there we were, Kalgyrad at the head of the table with Llewellyn and I flanking him on either side, a tidy stack of papers and notebooks in front of him. The one directly in front of him was covered with marks I couldn’t read. I wasn’t used to using this space, which made the whole session feel weighty and formal as we sat in matching sets of polished wood chairs, the rest of the empty table stretching away from us in semi-gloom. Its dark wood gleamed dully in the light from the kitchen, and from the lamps in the corner. A colder light came in through the two tall windows behind me.
So far, Llewellyn and Kalgyrad seemed to be getting along. Probably. Llewellyn was, I knew, testing Kalgyrad—there was a sharpness about his eyes even when he smiled—and Kalgyrad seemed as distant and politely calculating as ever. But there was less posturing between them than between Kalgyrad and Grammy, as far as I could tell; I could only read Llewellyn, and only faintly. His poker face was better than Grammy’s.
“Can dragons write if they’re not in human form?” Llewellyn asked, leaning for a better glance.
I tensed in my seat, pressing the backs of my legs against the chair.
He had been the first one of us, in my hearing, to bring up the ‘d’ word, and I still had no idea if we were even allowed to know. An image of a dragon’s wrath popped into my head, the mountains smitten and smoking in the place where our house lay.
Kalgyrad did not seem surprised. He smiled that thin smile of his, half-way between amused and threatening. “Yes, dragons can write quite well.” He placed emphasis on “dragons,” as though he were also conscious of how the term had been avoided. “However, our notebooks tend to be a lot larger than yours. Evidence to the contrary aside,” he added, gesturing at the very normal-looking stack in front of him.
Llewellyn nodded, as if mentally slotting that information into its proper place. “Depending on the depictions of dragons, it’s unclear whether or not their hands would be mobile enough for that. I’ve always wondered about balancing while writing, myself.”
“We have our ways,” Kalgyrad replied, smile not having moved. “But pardon me if I don’t demonstrate; for now, I think it will be easier to not break the house down, if for no other reason than that it would make the rest of our lesson somewhat awkward.”
I clenched my hands under the table. A joke? Or a threat? Llewellyn treated it like a joke and laughed, while Kalgyrad made no indication either way. Calmly, he pulled out a spiral notebook from underneath his notes and set it out in front of me. It looked like any of my other school notebooks, except black, and the cover was thick and hard. Beside it, he set a pencil and a pen. The pencil was mechanical, and looked like he’d bought it at the nearest convenience store, but the pen was heavy and sleek, a silver line running down from its clicker to its tip.
“For your studies,” he said.
Glancing up at him out of the corner of my eye, I flipped the notebook open, and found a rewrite etched into the inside of the cover with pencil and Mithae alike. I didn’t recognize either the focus symbol or the way the runes were arranged.
“A finding charm,” Kalgyrad explained smoothly. “So it doesn’t get lost.”
So that I didn’t lose it? Or so that he didn’t lose me? I stared at it, trying to make sense of it—there was something familiar about the formation of the focus symbol—but I was interrupted.
“Do you want to know how it works?”
This was a test, wasn’t it? This was probably standard knowledge where he came from, and he was trying to catch me out, see if I really knew anything about Mithae. I shook my head.
Kalgyrad tilted his head. “Do you understand it?”
I bit my lip, and realized Llewellyn was also watching me curiously. “Not… fully.” I wanted to say that I did, but that would probably lead to a demand for proof, which I did not have. As much as I didn’t want to look dumb in front of Kalgyrad, it would be worse to be pathetic in front of Llewellyn.
“Don’t you want to?” I wanted Kalgyrad to sound confused at my obstinance, but he didn’t. His voice was level as he sat, watching me with eyes that never blinked. I felt like a fly, hoping the lizard above it wouldn’t pounce.
“I’ll… I’ll figure it out later,” I said. I looked down at the table, at the green-lined paper, and didn’t meet Llewellyn’s eyes. It was easier to pretend I wasn’t blushing than acknowledge the pitying look likely on my cousin’s face.
“Very well.” Kalgyrad shrugged and pulled out another notebook, much like the one he’d given me but colored gold. When he flipped it open, I caught a glimpse of a similar symbol, but tweaked, before he skipped to the back of the book and set it open in front of him. Those pages were filled with more unreadable marks, and complicated rewrites. They were words and phrases longer and twistier than any rewrites I had managed to learn so far, thick and scrawling and drawn with impeccably precise lines. I thought of the paper he had picked up only a few days earlier, full of fumbled tracings that marked the limit of my ability, and winced.
Of course dragons were better at this sort of thing than humans. Greater natural connection to Mithae as a whole, near-immortal life-spans to study rewrites, heightened intelligence, fierce and stubborn natures—and I was a child.
Neither of us had moved. Kalgyrad was still scanning his papers, searching for something, or else thinking—but I could feel the distance between us like a deepening valley as I shrank further into the likeness of a fly, while the dragon grew, towering above even Llewellyn, eyes gleaming and glittering with their own, unnatural light.
Of course he wouldn’t care if we knew he was a dragon. Not when he could just… open a book and show us the canyons between us, how insignificant we were. If he wanted to transform into his true self, wanted to work a single rewrite—we would be gone, off the map before we had time to try a defense. And what would there be to try? Nothing. There wasn’t a single rewrite, to my knowledge, that could take down a dragon. Would any of our weapons do a thing to him, even if he was in human form? History books said a solid maybe, but those enchantments were lost to the ages.
A feeling like acid reflux build in my chest. I looked away from the looming presence beside me, down at the blank paper, down at the odd pen beside it.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Kalgyrad said, setting his notebook down, “before I begin the lesson, I feel as though I must address something. You seem to distrust me, young Vordur. May I ask why?” He turned in his chair, and the weight of his attention pressed me into the hard wood beneath me.
Don’t look at his eyes.
Why did I distrust him? I almost laughed. Because you’re a dragon, you’re hiding something, you’re in our house, you’re pretending to be so polite while looking down your snout at us, and everyone is just letting it happen. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud.
The tall-backed chair I was sitting in felt bigger than ever, like I was a child kicking my heels at the adults’ table. I looked over at Llewellyn, who was also watching me. He gave an encouraging smile and nodded. Go ahead. I’m right here, so nothing bad will happen—but he couldn’t guarantee that.
What would Mara say? Or Llewellyn, or Grammy? They were so good at saying what they didn’t mean in ways that satisfied their opponents, and I only had my blunt thoughts.
Well, Llewellyn could get away with saying things directly, but that’s because everyone liked him. I wasn’t in that position.
“Well,” I said, carefully. “It’s a little hard to fully trust someone when it feels like… like something’s going on, but, hypothetically, you’re not allowed to know what that is.” That was the best I could do. Not say anything straightforwardly, and not accuse him of anything. I’d just have to see where he took it.
“Ah,” Kalgyrad nodded, frowning in what looked like mock sympathy. “You haven’t been told about the deal, have you?” His lips curled in a smile, like they were separate from his eyes.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve only heard a little, myself,” Llewellyn added. “I didn’t have much extra time to speak to Grammy.”
I wondered if he meant he hadn’t had much extra time to speak to her away from me.
“I’m sure it’s not my place to speak out,” Kalgyrad replied in a conciliatory tone. “Though, I must confess I’m surprised to hear it. It doesn’t seem like this deal of ours is anything that needs hiding.” He shrugged. “But I suppose that’s ultimately up to your… estimable grandmother.”
What word had he been going to say instead?
“Now, if that’s all…?”
“I don’t think the deal’s a secret,” Llewellyn said, lacing his fingers. “Grammy expressed her intentions to share it with us. It just hasn’t happened yet.”
I could see now, something in his eyes. A curious wariness. He was testing Kalgyrad—but about what specifically?
“Was it to be revealed to… everyone?” Kalgyrad paused just long enough for us all to understand he meant me.
“That, I don’t know. But I can find out.” As if that was all that needed to be said, Llewellyn stood up and moved towards the kitchen, where Grammy was cooking lunch.
“I think,” Kalgyrad said, softly, in a way that made his voice fall no further than my ears, “that there are many more things that trouble you, Rhys Vordur.”
I fixed my eyes on the paper in front of me, tightening my hands to fists under the table. I could hear Llewellyn talking to Grammy in the next room over, but I couldn’t make out their words; just a buzz of familiarity too distant to help me.
“It would make everything easier for the both of us if you shared some of your reservations,” Kalgyrad continued.
“Why?” I asked, as if addressing the notebook.
“It’s quite simple.” I could see Kalgyrad flash his teeth out of the corner of his eye. “I am to be your teacher, aren’t I? And who knows for how long, in this dangerous and changing world.” I thought of the hide-a-wind, whispering into my window, telling me how much better it would be if I let it in. “Our lessons will progress ever so much faster if you trust me, listen to me. Don’t you think?”
I was certainly not about to tell him a word of what I actually thought. I managed a tight nod. “Of course. That… that makes sense.”
“I am here to fulfill my bargain, but I’ll need your help to do that. Do you understand?” He didn’t sound convinced.
“I understand.”
Again I could feel the pressure of his attention, his very eyes pushing into my space. For a moment longer he kept it up, watching, examining, before turning casually back to his paper. “Good.”
Llewellyn had finished talking to Grammy and was returning.
“We shall both just have to do our best, then, shan’t we?” Kalgyrad patted me on the shoulder. As light as it was, it felt like every touch was the thump of a full-grown grizzly, rattling me to my toes. Do what I need you to, because you can’t stop me.
As Llewellyn returned, Kalgyrad raised his voice to normal volume. “What did the worthy madam have to say?”
Llewellyn shrugged as he slid back into his chair. “She’d rather tell us, herself, when we have the time.” The wariness still lurked behind his wide smile.
“I understand,” Kalgyrad replied. I couldn’t tell if the faint expression in his face was satisfaction, or amusement, or disdain. “So, then, shall we return to our lesson? We wouldn’t want to waste what time we have left.”
That was the second time he mentioned a lack of time. Did that mean anything?
He moved on, beginning to drill me on the basics of Mithae.
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at by starting that simply. Did he think I was too dumb to not know? Was he just being careful?
All of the first lesson was material I already knew. Mithae is essentially the fourth dimension of our reality, sometimes described as the ‘spiritual’ or ‘magical’ realm (unseen, pervasive, that can be called upon and summoned). It’s intertwined with all reality, and by combining Mithae and Aedrir in specific ways (music, density, binding them together in written form), you can ‘rewrite’ the fabric of the world. There are focus symbols followed by a ‘tail,’ words written from the symbol to direct what that element does. If your focus symbol is fire, or a combination of earth and water, or wood, or whatever else, the tail forms the instructions you’re giving for how that force is to be unleashed. Leaving a focus symbol without a tail doesn’t do much besides, maybe, summoning a puff of that element that fades almost instantly. You can ‘code’ ways to activate or deactivate the rewrite. And so on and so forth.
I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or not by the end, and if the surprise was because he expected me to know more, or less. By the end, I was wondering if I should try to pretend to know less than I actually did. But I couldn’t see any use for that at the moment.
He had some funny questions, though—how do you enhance the power of a rewrite? What are the letters of a word, and what do they mean? Can you make new runes or letters or words?
Whenever I answered, he made a note in his notebook, but no comment.
Llewellyn occasionally chimed in, asking a clarifying question, or seeking Kalgyrad’s thoughts. That didn’t lead to much. Kalgyrad would answer, direct, with an indulgent smile, and go back to what he was doing.
And then, mercifully, the hour was over.
Kalgyrad bowed to everyone, making a formal speech about how it was his honor to be here, and then left just as lunch finished cooking on the stove. The quiet, unspoken fact that Grammy didn’t invite him to stay spoke volumes which I hoped he couldn’t read.
Grammy looked wordlessly to Llewellyn as the door closed (and as I started pulling out plates to set the table).
Llewellyn smiled, a sharp, wolfish grin. “You know,” he said, drumming his fingers on the counter with a jaunty rhythm, “somehow I think I like our new dragon… ally? Or whatever he is. He’s going to make things interesting around here, at least.”
Grammy nodded with a small snort. “Not that we needed any more of that, but I suppose you’re right. He seems tame enough for now.”
“I don’t know if tame is the best word.” Llewellyn changed the pattern he was tapping to something slower. “Nor safe, either. He is, after all, a dragon. But maybe… cooperative. And, oddly enough, I think he might like teaching. There’ll probably something interesting to come out of his new hobby by the end, I think.”
I set down the silverware very deliberately, though with a flash of fury I wanted to pick a spoon up and throw it at him for saying that. The dragon’s new hobby was me, apparently, and the fact that Llewellyn approved of it? Now I was really stuck. Llewellyn was blind to whatever the dragon was up to, or letting it happen, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. These lessons were going to continue until whenever Kalgyrad was done toying with us, until his actual plan materialized and destroyed us.
Blind, blind, blind. Not inviting him to lunch was too small. Why were they not kicking him out of the door, telling him to never come back? And it wasn’t just because they were like me, afraid of challenging him and seeing what he would do. I knew what fear looked like, and Llewellyn grinning like he was planning a joke was not it.
I wasn’t getting out of this.
I would have to keep facing Kalgyrad, week after week, and for what? To have him mock me? Threaten me? To become a pawn in something I didn’t understand?
But there was nothing I could do. There never was, and there never would be. My legacy had been decided for me since before I was born, and so was the fact that I couldn’t live up to it, and so was the fact that I could never leave it.
I pretended to go to the bathroom and shut the door behind me, leaning against the sink with a lump in my throat. Trapped. Chores and training and lessons with an illdýr were all I had to look forward, for the rest of time, and all I could do was what I did every time: hide, and then fail at that, too.
I was about to leave the bathroom when I got a text. Normally I would have just waited until after lunch, but, well, I could use a distraction.
Of course, it was Mara.
[First off, didn’t you have a lesson with the dragon guy today? How’d that go? Are you still alive?]
I waited for the second text, but it was apparently a longer one, so I snapped my phone shut and slid it in my pocket. So I didn’t see it until later, after Llewellyn was gone and I was alone in my room.
[Secondly, how exactly do you know if a monster is haunting your house? lol]
[Okay not really lol but this is at least interesting. As long as we can get it to leave soon.]
[Like I’m pretty sure it’s haunting from the outside, but still, last night was CREEPY. Lots of weird sounds and no one else really seemed to notice, but everyone was in a bad mood. Well, worse mood than usual, and in a way that felt… nasty? Bad. And then, I saw a thing? Here’s the best pic I could get.]
There was a blurry picture attached of something I could quite make out. Just shadows… and an eye? Or two. Maybe three? But it didn’t look like the shadows were concealing something, more like they were whatever was attached to the eyes.
[Some advice in your very secret area of expertise would be appreciated.]
Living shadows weren’t really an illdýr as far as I knew, but, then again, I didn’t know everything. And it was most definitely something.
Regardless, protecting people from illdýr was a Warden’s business.
So I should get Grammy.
Except…
Mara wasn’t supposed to know about Wardens, or Mithae, or illdýr. If I told Grammy, she’d kick me out of the house.
Okay, not actually, but I had no idea what she would do.
But it wasn’t like I could fix Mara’s problem.
I stared at the picture for a long moment, trying to figure out what my options were.
Looking back, it’s clear that the frustration of the day had been building a kind of helpless rage against my position, my uselessness, my family, and illdýr in general. It was stuck all through my chest and throat, and it made my heart feel like it was beating faster than it was, and my mind was filled with fragmented snatches of half-baked plans and growing irritation. So I did something stupid.
I peeked my head out of my door. I knew that, schedule-wise, that I was supposed to be doing homework now, and consequently I wouldn’t have any extra training for an hour or two. Grammy was nowhere to be seen. At this time of the day, she was usually out in the woods, laying traps and lainlines, or working on her garden. For a long moment I stood there, listening, just to make sure.
But I saw and heard nothing. It was clear.
Closing my bedroom door, I rolled under my bed to a more quiet, reserved nook I had hollowed out for myself, and texted back: [do you think you’d maybe have time for a call?]
To be continued….