Page 40

Night fell, and while my mother, father, and sisters reveled in their reunion, laughing over memories and stories retold, it began to rain.

After dinner I slipped outside.

My fingers had been tingling ever since I touched Nazayun’s eye, stiffening my muscles with the burden of a premonition.

Soon it would come.

I walked through Elang’s manor, past the whale sculptures and the paintings of the Eight Immortals.

Everything in his home held a new meaning, even the domed pavilion overlooking his garden.

I stood by the window, watching the pitter-patter of heaven’s tears against the roof.

Although I’d returned to land, a part of me was still wed to the sea.

It was an extra awareness against my skin, how I could feel the winds churning against the garden pond or the frozen rain riming the windows.

Even this storm carried a trace of the sea, and I reached my hand out to touch it, as if I were reaching out to Elang.

I drew my hand back.

The rain was falling harder.

Elang’s manor was high in the hills, safe from any flooding, but outside the coating of ice had washed away, and the pond overflowed its banks.

“Lady Saigas, you should return inside.”

General Caisan drew out of the shadows, his head stooped so it didn’t touch the ceiling.

For such a massive creature, he moved quietly.

With a nod, I let Caisan escort me back to my room.

“I thought you would wish to know,” he said, “His Highness has returned safely to Yonsar.”

My eyes flew up to the turtle.

“Is the castle safe?”

“For now.” As he spoke, lightning whipped the sky, thunder booming not far away.

“The storms will grow worse as the Dragon King recovers. So long as you possess the Scroll of Oblivion, he will be searching for you.”

I could read the warning between his words.

“I’m not returning it.”

Caisan’s expressions were few, generally limited to disdain and displeasure.

But he lifted his head out of his shell, a faint hint of approval curving on his mouth.

“Then I will make sure he does not find you.” A pause.

“It will be harder for him anyway, with only one eye.”

A smile spread across my face.

He really was Mailoh’s brother.

He had a good nature, it was just concealed beneath a thicker shell.

“I misjudged you, General,” I said.

“I am sorry for it.”

“You were deceived. There is no need to apologize.”

“You warned me about Shani. If I’d listened to you, if I’d believed you when you insisted that she was Yonsar’s traitor, then—”

“Then I would not have been alerted to the several cracks in our dungeon walls,” Caisan interrupted.

“And perhaps a more nefarious villain than myself might have escaped.”

“Like me?” I teased.

Was that a smile from Caisan?

I couldn’t tell.

He walked me back inside my room.

“Do not blame yourself for what has happened,” he said.

“The demon Shanizhun has only survived on account of her treachery. There used to be hundreds like her, but the Dragon King had them slain. She survived only by becoming his servant.”

“Do you mean, she had no choice?”

“Don’t sympathize with her. Look what good that did Lord Elang. You’d do best to remember that demons are not like us.”

He was right, much as I wished it weren’t so.

Caisan padded toward my door.

“You’ve had a long journey, Lady Saigas. Rest now—the merfolk will guard the manor. Lord Elang has sent his best to protect you.”

“I know,” I said, acknowledging him.

With a nod, I returned to my room.

But I had no plans to rest.

I knelt before my desk, rolling back my sleeves carefully, then taking out a piece of paper.

One week until the New Year.

Painting the Dragon King in that limited time would be no easy feat.

On my left arm, the notes and drawings I’d sketched of Nazayun were smeared, barely readable.

But all wasn’t lost.

When I closed my eyes, I could still see him.

I could envision the light of his pearl radiating from sapphire scales, how the tips of his whiskers were like rat tails, slightly thicker than the other dragons’.

I imagined how I could paint the space between his scales the way I did bamboo nodes: a flick of the wrist to the left, then slide my brush back to the right.

Mama had told me that my grandmother learned to see years beyond her time—she could even glimpse multiple variations of the future.

I was beginning to understand her secret: it began with the heart.

“For Baba,” I murmured, picking up my brush and pressing its hairs to the parchment.

My voice was thick.

“For Elang, and Shani, and the folk of Yonsar. For Ai’long.”

As I spoke, I saw washes of color and textures in my mind, moving and swirling.

The future in motion.

And so I began.

Stroke by stroke, I painted the Dragon King arching over a murky sea.

His claws were brandished, his tail bounding over the water as the waves came crashing and rafts of smoke obscured the sky.

Most troubling was the streak of red in his lone eye, bright as a smear of blood.

A reflection of the sun, I decided.

I didn’t want to think too hard about what else it might be.

I worked all night, burning through my store of candles.

The roof shook, thunder and lightning battered the sky—neither could rattle me out of my trance.

Only when I could feel the sleep spirits hovering over me, turning my strokes languid, did I set down my brush.

My candle had long since guttered out.

As rain drummed against the roof, I let myself drift into slumber.

For the first time, I dreamed of Elang.

I found him in the garden, sitting inside the blue-roofed pavilion.

He was leaning against a wooden post, his back to the sun as the morning light washed out the sky.

When he heard me approach, his horns receded into his temples.

He turned to face me.

In his hands, he clasped a golden pearl.

It was the size of a small melon, its surface smooth as fresh snow.

Even from across the pavilion, I felt its warmth.

“Your curse is broken,” I breathed.

“You have your pearl.”

For someone who’d at last found his prize, Elang didn’t look contented.

His dragon jaw was tense, his brow thick with anguish.

“Will you help me choose?”

“How?”

“Paint me.”

I found a brush in my pocket, and paper materialized in my hand.

I pressed it against the wall, until Elang shook hishead.

“Not a portrait.” He rose, erasing the distance between us.

“Paint me. ”

He reached for the other end of my brush, pressing its hairs upon his cheek.

“Human, and I stay with you. Dragon, and we go our separate ways. Which will I be?”

My fingers shaking, I pried the brush from his grip.

I knew my answer.

But in this dream, my brush had a mind of its own.

As I swept it across his skin, it blotted out the freckles on his nose like a god erasing the stars, and it covered his cheek with scales that hardened into the real thing.

It painted away every semblance of his human self, even the smile I’d come to cherish on his mouth.

Soon he was no longer the Elang I had known.

“Wait,” I choked out.

“I—I made a mistake.”

Elang pressed my fingertips to his lips.

“You made the right choice.”

Still holding my hand, he pressed the pearl against his chest.

The change was immediate.

Luster spread across his silver-blue scales, casting a luminous sheen over his skin.

His horns pierced through his temples, and his muscles swelled, black robes ripping as his bones stretched and his body grew.

Last was his gray eye.

It shone, spangled with gold.

Then he blinked, and it was no longer gray, but a pool of sunlight like the other.

A fully formed dragon emerged.

When he stood, I no longer came up to his chin.

He dwarfed me, his horned head towering above the pines.

In his chest glowed his pearl.

The brighter it shone, the more my own heart hurt.

The pain had edges like a knife, and as it grew, I feared that it would cut me out of my own dream.

Just before it became too much to bear, the red string around my wrist snapped, the threads spinning away in the wind.

“Wait!” I shouted.

“Elang!”

It was no use.

His fingers tore away from mine, and a great wave surged forward.

It devoured him, claimed him back into its depths.

When the water receded, he was gone.

Too late, I realized he had taken my heart with him.