Time Slipping (22 page)

The faint sound of Ish yelling his dragon’s name in a blind panic came through with the other sounds of a pissed off dragon, but I ignored it. I should have been dead, but I wasn’t. Not even close. In fact, after standing in the cool mountain air and suffering the temperature drop of the sun setting, the warmth from this fire bath was pretty nice. I smiled and rubbed my arms a little, glad to feel my circulation going back to normal.

The fire stopped all of a sudden and I was surrounded by smoke. It stunk.

“Thanks, Othello. That was nice. Except for the rotten egg finish. That I could have lived without.” I coughed to rid my lungs of the acrid smell.

His head backed up and he stared at me. I stared right back, until a movement out of the corner of my eye distracted me. Ish was crunched up into ball small enough that I considered it almost magic for his large and lanky frame; a shield made of dragon scales was over him. He was peeking out at me and whispering loudly, sounding a lot like an old lady.

“What you doing?! How are you still alive and unscathed?! Do not stare him in the eye!”

I shook my head. Now I wasn’t so sure he was the best trainer for me. He functioned under fear mode. I, on the other hand, functioned under the you-ain’t-as-tough-as-you-think-you-are mode.

I went back to staring at Othello, in the eye of course. “So … that the best you got?” I folded my arms over my chest, tapping my toe on the ground. Just to be safe, I ramped up my Earth element bubble.
Please don’t let him cut me or eat me.
I knew anyone watching would have considered me totally off the range, but somewhere deep inside me, something was telling me this dragon needed to see what I was made of.

Othello tipped his head back and let out a stream of fire into the sky about twenty stories high, lighting the place up like it was the middle of the day. His head swayed a little, causing the fire spout to curve to and fro, tangling around itself. I had to admit, it was pretty damn impressive. Maybe a little too impressive. My friends were going to poop their britches and then probably come running to save me. I had to stop this nonsense now.

“Hey!” I yelled, nudging him with my element to get his attention. “Othello! Knock it off!”

Apparently my Here and Now language expressions were understandable by this bad boy because the fire fountain stopped in an instant and his head swung down to face me. Slowly, slowly he lowered his head until it was even with mine. His body shifted as he turned to face me fully.

“I’m sorry, Jayne,” Ishmail said, his voice trembling. “I said I would keep you safe, but you have provoked him and now he will not be reasonable. Please accept my apologies.”

I waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got this.” I held my hand up, palm out, so Othello could see my dragon scale. “Othello, I am the companion to Biad. Flame me again, and you’re going to be sorry.”

One of his giant, scaled eyebrow bones went up and a huff of smoke came out to surround me. I waited for it to rise up and away before continuing. “And if you could keep your nostril smoke to yourself, I’d appreciate that too.”

He huffed me again.

“Or not. Whatever.” I waved my hand in front of my face a bunch of times to make it go away faster. “Anyway, I need you to tell me if you know where the portal to the Underworld is.”

His entire body lifted up as he flexed his front legs and shifted, moving so that his head was faced the other way and I was looking at the side of his neck. I looked over at Ish for guidance.

“He’s pouting,” Ish whispered.

I sighed, hanging my head. Just what I needed. A brat dragon.

I spoke louder so he’d hear me. “I hear you’re looking for a mate, Othello.”

His tale stopped swishing, so I figured I had his attention.

“I know some dragons. Chick ones. Cute chick ones.” I held up my hand. “This scale comes from one of them.” I wasn’t going to include the fact that she already had a companion in the Underworld with her; he was dead, after all. Maybe Othello didn’t know he existed. Maybe dragons could have more than one mate, like a dead one and a not dead one. I figured it was worth a shot.

His head tilted in my direction.

“I could put a good word in for ya.”

His wings opened up, surprising the crap out of me. I ducked, my arms flying up to cover my face, which was silly. Either the Green bubble was going to help me or it wasn’t; no amount of duck and cover was going to change the effect.

Othello was there, and then he wasn’t, his giant, muscled legs launching him up into the sky with one leap. I watched him follow a flight path up to the top of his mountain until he became a speck in the night sky, the tiny flames from his mouth making him easy to track until some clouds got in the way.

Slowly, Ish stood, his dragon scale shield dropping to his side. He was staring at me with the weirdest expression on his face.

“So … that went well.” I tried to smile.

When he started to talk, the words didn’t exactly come out. He had to clear his throat a couple times before his voice would work properly. “You … you … errhh … you consider that to have gone well?”

I shrugged. “I’m still alive, right? I consider that a win, sure.”

“Is it okay to come over?” came Tim’s voice from somewhere behind me.

“Yeah!” I yelled. “Othello’s gone!”

First I heard Tim’s wings, and then the rest of my friends traipsing through the dried leaves and pinecones on the ground.

“We saw a lot of fire and smoke,” Scrum said. “You look okay, though.”

I patted him on the back. “Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Scrum was confused. “Thank you?”

Something about facing down a dragon and surviving it put me in a good mood. I slapped my hands together and rubbed them. “So, what’s next?”

“Did you find anything out from the dragon that could help us?” Jared asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. Not a thing, other than he definitely does not like being looked in the eye.”

“I tried to tell her that before she arrived, but she didn’t listen.”

“Welcome to our world,” Finn said, grinning. “The one where the girl supposed to be the Mother of the entire race don’t listen to a dang thing she’s told.” I reached out to punch him but he jumped out of reach. “Keeps life interesting, that’s for sure.” He ran over to stand behind Becky.

I shook my head. “Nice. Hiding behind a water sprite. New lows, Finn. New lows.”

He shrugged. “Hey, I ain’t low. I’m smart. I know very well you won’t touch her.”

I zapped him in the butt from behind with a spark of New Green power, getting the distinct impression the element enjoyed being used for that purpose. Finn yelped, leaped a foot in the air, and then spun around. “Who’s there?” he hissed.

Becky started giggling and then she fell into snorting, shaking her head.

Finn turned back toward me, his gaze narrowing. “You did that? From over there?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it was a fae with powers of invisibility biting your butt.”

Finn looked over his shoulder suspiciously, but I left him alone after that. Let him wonder what snapped his ass, stupid green elf. It would give his brain something to be occupied with rather than focusing on advertising my failings to our new friend.

Ish was still staring at me, and it was starting to get uncomfortable. “So where’d he go?” I asked, trying to distract him from whatever was going through his mind.

“He … he is going to his cave.”

“Does that mean he’s done talking to me?”

Ish shook his head slowly. “I do not know. He could be shunning you, he could be merely resting in the place he finds most comfortable. There is no way for me to know.”

“Don’t you talk to your dragon?”

“Not in the way you and I speak, but we communicate, yes.”

“But Othello doesn’t speak English.”

“What is English?”

Oh boy.
“English is the language you’re speaking right now.”

“No, it is not. I am speaking Futhark.”

I looked over at Tony. “Sound familiar?”

Tony stepped forward. “Do you write? Do you have a written language?”

Ishmail scowled. “Of course we do. We are not savages.”

Tony held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t want to make assumptions though, since your realm could be completely out of time from ours.”

“A different history, you mean?” Ish asked.

“Yes. A parallel time, maybe. I don’t know, I’m just guessing.”

“What’s your alphabet look like?” I asked, more curious now that I’d just been introduced to a word both Tony and I had never heard before. It was difficult to stump Tony, so when it happened, I paid attention.

Ish leaned down and grabbed a stick. Writing shapes in the ashes by my feet, he said, “wealth, game, giant…” He looked up. “Do you want to see more?”

“No, that’s fine,” Tony said, staring down at it. I had a feeling I was going to have to force him out of this realm. The idea that he could study something totally foreign in a somewhat safe and familiar environment was probably giving his brain a giant boner.

“So, you speak what we call English but have an alphabet that’s really different. How is that possible?” Not that I really cared, but since the dragon was gone maybe for a long time, it wasn’t that we had anything else to do but shoot the shit.

“Our written language is rarely used for expression of anything but ideas. We prefer the spoken word to express our history. It is handed down from generation to generation through word of mouth. Stories are more interesting when told by a person rather than written in symbols.”

Tony was tapping his finger on his lips. “If you had Latin, you might change your mind about that.”

“Latin? What is Latin?”

Tony finally looked up. “Latin is the language at the basis of all modern languages from our realm. The English that we speak comes from Latin.”

I jerked a thumb at Tony. “He got straight As in Latin all through high school. Trust me, the dude is practically a thousand years old in his head.”

Ish stared at him. “Is this true? Are you one thousand years old?”

Tony shook his head. “No. But if you want, I could teach you the Latin alphabet and show you how they used it to record speech in a way that made telling stories very clear and interesting. They would write like I’m speaking right now.”

Ish’s eyes opened wide. “I would like to see this. And to learn your way of speaking. It is similar to mine, but different.”

“Just hang out with this group for a while and it’ll start to rub off,” Jared said. “Trust me.”

I pointed at our fake camp counselor. “He’s a couple hundred years old, and he talks like he’s twenty, so there you go.”

Ish looked like he thought he was being punked. “You are not that old.”

“I am that old. Fae live longer than humans.”

“Why? How can that be? The oldest in my village has lived thirty-four cycles, but it is rare to live such a long life.”

“Thirty-four?” Becky asked, her eyes getting watery. “I’d hate for that to be considered old age.” She took Finn’s hand. “I want to live until I’m at least a thousand.”

“One thousand cycles?!” Ish was blowing a gasket. “That is not possible. You would be walking dead.”

“They have zombies here too?” Scrum asked.

“What is a zombie?” Ish was back to being confused.

I saw Scrum about to launch into an explanation that was sure to scare the shit out of Ishmail and very possibly dissuade him from wanting to help us out, so I held up my hands to stop that train on the tracks. “So! Enough about the walking dead, let’s talk about dinner.”

Everyone nodded, and Scrum rubbed his stomach.

Ish looked around. “There is game on this land. We are free to hunt it.”

Everyone exchanged glances before Finn spoke. “I’m kinda useless in the hunting department without my bow and arrows.”

Ish grinned. “Do not worry. I have traps.”

“Are they here?” I asked, looking around on the ground, for some reason thinking I was going to see one with a giant nametag on it.
Hello. I am an animal trap.
Clearly, the lack of food was making me stupid. More stupid than normal.

His face fell. “No.”

I shrugged. “Normally, I use the Earth element to help me out, but I’m kind of opposed to using it to hurt innocent beings. Sorry about that.”

“I do not understand.”

“Never mind. It’s not important. How about vegetables? Do you have any of those around here?”

Ish nodded. “We have vegetables and roots that are common fare in this area.”

I rubbed my hands together. “Well, all right then. Show us where to dig.” I could have eaten a raw potato at that point, I was so hungry. Something about being flamed by a dragon brought out my appetite like nothing else.

“Follow me,” he said. “We passed a grove of edible plants on the way here.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

WE SAT AROUND A FIRE, a blackened pottery bowl Ish found somewhere in the middle of it, filled with weeds soaked in water.

“Yum,” said Scrum. “This reminds me of being home with my grandma.” He was happily munching away on his share of the green things.

“This reminds me of when Theresa and I lived in California.” Felicia wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as Scrum was, but she wasn’t complaining, either. “Wheatgrass juice and all that.”

Jared nodded, silently stuffing folded up clumps of the California salad into his mouth, staring at the fire as he ate.

Personally, I didn’t think it was all that great a meal, but it wasn’t completely completely terrible.

“Fireweed, pennycress, and dandelions,” Finn said, making a funny face after biting into a glob of it. “Good for the soul food, I guess.”

I held up a limp, slightly boiled version of what he just ate. “How do you know what this is?”

“Took a botany class at the local community college.” He shrugged.

“But I thought you were in high school when you left for Miami,” Becky said, her pile of edible weeds mostly untouched.

“I was.” He ate another bite and then talked while he chewed. “But I took college courses too.”

Tony perked up. “Were you in a special program?”