[Issue 2024.70]

‘The Shape of Her Shadow’, Alexandra Brandt

Art © 2024 Fluffgar

---

They say Chal Duresta is the land of monsters.

I wonder which monsters they mean: the shadowy creatures lurking deep in the Wilds that I and mine must soon enter…or these warlike men who now claim to protect my daughters from them.

I suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end. My daughters and I have no options but to face both, and hope they don’t destroy us, by one means or another.

I say “my daughters,” although of the sixty-eight of them, only a handful are related by blood, and none of them of my own getting. But they are mine all the same, and I’m the only mother they have now. War changes many things, the shape of families included.

Even when it ends.

Especially when it ends, and the city-state of Atha must then offer tokens of peace to our Challi enemies-turned-allies. Sixty-eight living, breathing tokens, of childbearing age.

All these new young wives for Challi warriors, taken on a long road to a strange land, and only a single old Athi healer-midwife to tend them. But it’s my choice to be here, which is more than can be said about every girl I tend. Women did not make this war, and yet the onus falls on us to save our own people from it.

“I hope the monsters take me,” Kada says, her fists clenched hard as I smooth salve over the bruise on her cheekbone.

She was one from a family too poor to refuse when the Athi Elect—all men, these days—put out the call for new wives to end the war. In my very small amount of influence, as the one-time head of the Midwives’ Guild, I had convinced the Elect they should not call for anyone younger than sixteen to go. But I am sorry that Kada, in her twenties and still unwed, was then caught in the net they cast.

I take Kada’s brown hand, rough and warm, in mine. We go to stand outside my tent. The air is cool, but not cold, and the morning sun is already bright. Our encampment—the entire encampment of Challi warriors and their Athi brides—has been set up on the final ridge of the dusty hills we have been traversing for months now. The edge of the camp overlooks a sharp drop into the Wilds of Chal Duresta.

The land spreads before us now, and Kada and I gaze at it in silence.

Rocky spires bloom from the ground like trees, growing into ridges and spines, growing into mountains, while elsewhere the ground descends into jagged valleys and fissures. The rock is golden where the morning light hits it, and dusty-brown in the shadows. The Challi men are the color of the Wilds, I realize. Like gold and dust.

Here and there, the stone shines white with quartz, sparkling in the sun. Light and shadow everywhere. Trees and shrubs still flourish among the stones, small and scrubby, but unexpectedly green.

It is beautiful, the land of monsters, and I don’t want it to be.

A wind blows from the Wilds. I inhale, taking in smell of damp stone, the sharp green of the trees, and something else. A wild scent. It is strange, but I am not afraid of this rocky, broken place—only what lies on the other side of it.

Beside me, Kada also breathes deeply. These morning hours are her respite, while her so-called husband is on guard duty.

I look at her face, rough and weather-chapped, but gleaming now with the yellow morning sun upon it. Like all Athi—like me—her skin is mellow earth-brown, darker than the Challi, with features the Athi combination of sharp and smooth. Although her face is sharper, and more flawed and pocked, than many of the other, more privileged girls. I can’t help but think this, too, has not bought her any favors.

Still, her eyes have the same vivid Athi color so coveted by the Challi. They shine green, clear and light, like jewels in her brown face. Mine were as bright once, although blue rather than green. And Kada’s hair, thick and springy, is much like mine once was, somewhere between tawny and sandy.

We are not related by blood, but I feel kinship with this angry, flawed, beautiful girl. I don’t want the land of monsters to take her any more than I want that be-damned man to have her.

I haven’t yet figured out how to save her, or any of my daughters.

But I will, if only I can keep them alive long enough.

I keep holding Kada’s hand, like it will tie her to me. “Promise me,” I say, “That you won’t go into the wilds seeking your death.”

She flinches. “Don’t ask that of me, Mure. You don’t know what it’s like. You didn’t have to marry one of them.”

I close my eyes. It is true I am all but invisible to the men of this camp. Women past childbearing age so often are. It has its little conveniences, living unnoticed like this… but it also serves to remind me of the power I have lost.

Even so, Kada is right. In some respects it is unfair of me to ask this of her, when I can only guess at the depths of her despair. Over the past four months on the road, I have only grown angrier. These men don’t understand the treasures they were given, and it was naive of me to think they ever would.

“We will find a way,” I say. “I will find a way. I won’t let this be our ending.”

Kada looks down, into the land of light and shadow, and says nothing.

---

At night I dream of wings.

They are my own.

The Wilds stretch below, rocky spires reaching like fingers toward me in the light of a full moon. The air roars around me, but my powerful wingbeats cut through it. Or perhaps they are the cause of the wind themselves.

In the moonlight my shadow on the rocks is massive… and formless, the shape broken up by the many peaks and fissures of the stone.

I wonder what I am.

I turn my head and see the small lights of the encampment behind me; I am not going there. The jagged peaks of mountains rise up in the opposite direction, and that is where I wing, like an arrow from an unknown bow. My movement in the night has purpose… although I don’t know what it is yet.

All I know is that nothing will stop me.

---

When I wake, for a moment I imagine massive dark wings stretching like shadows past my fingertips. But the image fades quickly, pushed aside by the ache of aging bones and the sight of my rough tent walls.

Shouts from deeper within the camp inform me that the men are preparing to pack up and move. Today is the day we descend into the Wilds. Last night I packed my herbs and teas, salves and boxes of medicines into my carts, knowing we would move in the morning. I know the routine by now. I throw my wrappings on, over the clothes I’ve slept in. I have work to do this morning.

Leaving my tent, I move across the camp to check on one of my girls before we descend. I have been assigned two young men—boys, really—to help me fetch and carry and run messages, but I prefer to move within the camp for myself when delivering medicines. The boys mean well enough, for all they are Challi too, but they cannot do what I do.

I enter Arra’s tent, healer’s bag over my shoulder, ignoring the man at the entrance. His thoughts on my presence have no bearing on my work.

Arra is already three months’ pregnant, nearly as many months as we have been on the road. Her new husband wasted no time. I had warned the men about the dangers of long, rough travel on pregnant women; they said that was why I was here. So now I do everything in my power to keep my daughters safe from the only dangers I am equipped to fight—and even then I can’t promise to save anyone.

Arra sits on her cot, her skin tinged gray, her expression nauseous. Many of my other daughters are with child already, at varying stages, but Arra seems to be struggling the most. Age nineteen, healthy, and one of the women who volunteered for this peacemaking mission, she started better than many… but she has not taken well to pregnancy. It is hard not to feel as if I’ve failed her.

And then there is the personal guilt I feel for bringing her here in the first place.

In some respect, I am responsible for every young woman being here. I was the one who, despairing, set the terms by which the Athi Elect made their decisions. I was trying to save lives… and in so doing, ruined many others. But Arra was an even more personal failure: my own daughter-in-law’s younger sister, who overheard me speaking of my trials to my grown son and his wife—and then promptly volunteered to go “for the good of Atha.”

How could I argue, when I knew there would be other girls who must come without that choice?

I curse the child’s sense of duty, and mine as well. Especially now as I boil water and leaves to strengthen her and help keep the nausea down. There is a sheen of sweat on her smooth brown skin. “I will ask that they send Lenn to ride with you on the way down,” I tell her, glancing at her husband, who stands at the entrance, arms crossed. He knows his wife’s condition means he will be one of the last to leave the encampment, and I imagine that somehow he blames me for it.

Still, when I request a water-skin for the tincture once it cools, he leaves the tent to fetch one without a word. “You should continue to drink this throughout the day,” I say to my Arra, who nods as she sips. “And I will talk to the Head again today about the traveling schedule. We need more time.”

Arra dips her head. “You and I both know they won’t concede this,” she says, and her voice is resigned, but less… accepting than it used to be. She is at war with herself, although she will not admit it to me in so many words.

I sigh, resisting the urge to gather her in my arms. “You know I wish better for you,” I say, speaking my thoughts aloud. There is no one else to hear them but the two of us. “I hope one day there will be a reckoning for…” for much more than I can speak in one sentence.

Arra smiles a little, then lets it slip away. “You are a good mother, Mure. The gift that keeps us all going,” she says. “But I’m here of my own choosing. I… chose this. I chose it.”

She repeats it again, more to herself than to me, and there is a question on the end of it that wasn’t there at the beginning of this journey.

What kind of choices are any of us allowed to make?

I visit two other girls before returning to my own quarters, now mostly broken down and packed as well. I always lodge in the center of the camp at my own insistence, but when we move I am one of the last to go.

I have fought for everything I have in this position, often using words and arguments I don’t much care for. Things like, “Since you insist on breeding your wives while on the road, you must listen to me if you want them as alive and healthy as your animals,” and, “since you travel like a warrior band, without attendants or female camp followers, you must let your wives assist me, and attend each other, when we must deal with ‘women’s problems.’” But I will do and say many distasteful things, if they will be effective in protecting my daughters.

I didn’t win everything I fought for. Some women like Kada—the wives of the less high-status warriors—cook and clean, while a handful of others are allowed to assist me and tend to those who are pregnant or ill. I keep us together and connected to each other as best as I can.

But others, such as Elue, the now-wife of the Challi leader, never leave their tents when camped, or leave the side of their husbands while traveling. I have only seen Elue a handful of times since Orocor chose her for himself, and never outside of her tent’s walls on her own. He guards her jealously, only allowing me and one other woman to come to her, and that only rarely. I fear for her well-being, as she is certainly one of the loveliest of my daughters, rounded and healthy of body, but she is also one of the most timid and sensitive.

Perhaps he is protecting her, as he says.

But a hope like that…it is such a strange and useless thing. I wonder why I insist on clinging to it.

---

Descending into the Wilds of Chal Duresta takes the entirety of the day, and we camp at the base of the hills. The tents must now be set up among the rocky spires, prompting fearful whispers from some of my daughters, especially when the men begin to post additional perimeters of guards and outer sentries.

The Challi are not afraid of their own land, precisely, but they are more wary than they have been.

For myself, I watch Kada as carefully as I am able, and Arra too, for different reasons. I fear my job will become doubly difficult here, and I’m only one woman to watch over so many.

I am not afraid of the Wilds, but they may be the death of me regardless.

Still, when night falls, I feel something, a pull I have never felt before. The night is clear, and the moon is a waxing crescent.

I suddenly remember my dream, and the full moon, and the mountain. The damp, cool breeze brings a stony scent again, from deep within the rocky towers and ravines, and with it a question.

I’ve never been one to believe in portents, but still I wonder…

What lies ahead?

…And why does it feel like a change is coming?

Despite all my worries, I fall into sleep with a new thrill of anticipation.

---

I am aloft again, in the night sky.

I turn my head from side to side, but see nothing of my own form, only reflections of moonlight and shadow.

I see all of the Wilds below me, however. The spires and columns and spines of stone throw stark shadows everywhere, strange and sharp in the cold, bright light of the moon. My own shadow also remains mysterious, although what I see must represent the stretch of a wingspan larger than anything I could have imagined. A bird? Surely not.

I speed toward the mountain that rises up in the center of the ridges and rocks of this land. I feel like I must be the size of a mountain all on my own. I am fast, strong, and powerful. My heart is high and fierce.

I alight on the mountain. Something, someone, calls me within.

A breath is all it takes, and I am somehow inside the mountain itself.

I think it must be a cavern, for I can see rock walls in every direction, but the ceiling merely ascends into darkness. The light that surrounds me, washing against the walls, is cool and white like the moon, but moves in patterns that sometimes resemble the reflection of water, and sometimes the flickering of flames.

Welcome, I hear. Half-whispers from all around me, or perhaps merely a voice inside my head. I open my mouth to speak, but the words that come out of me don’t belong to the voice of Mure, aging midwife.

They sound like bells, and fire, and the roar of a powerful wind.

“Who are you? Why am I here?”

Such a strangely-colored human. You are not of Chal Duresta, are you?

I look down, and for a moment I see myself again, merely an old Athi woman. But when I speak, I am still…something else. “I am from Atha, on the other side of the hills to the west,” I say.

Yet you come with a band of Challi men.

“They are not my people,” I say, quickly. “I’m only here for my daughters.”

Ahhhh. You have a powerful need to protect, small mother.

“I am all they have.”

You are enough.

The words rush through me like a sigh, filling my heart. If only they could be true.

But what does this voice inside a mountain know of me and mine?

“Who are you?” I ask again.

I am the heart of the Wilds, the oldest maker. They call me the Dragon.

Dragon. Ah.

That was my form in the night—all shadow and moonlight and giant wingbeats.

When I came here, I, too, was a dragon.

But why? What did it mean? The questions crowd my head, so many that my tongue becomes tied. The entity in the room waits silently while I struggle. Finally I return to the one I asked before.

“Why am I here?”

Because you called to me.

I think of arguing. I could not possibly call to a being I never knew existed. If anything, I was the one called here. So I think about what the words might mean instead of that. Something about me, it seems, has attracted the attention of an entity from the heart of the Wilds. Maybe further questions of “why” are less important than other ones.

“What do you intend to happen next?” I ask instead.

Good question. You already have everything you need in order to accomplish your goals. But you have also called a gift from me, and so I give it freely. Use it well, for you are one of mine now.

I should find the words concerning, perhaps frightening. But I don’t.

I still don’t know what any of this means, but I suspect I will soon find out.

---

I awaken to the same sensation as before, like shadowed wings stretching around me. Again it fades in moments, and doubt fills me. How could an odd dream have any bearing on the here-and-now? I am still only one midwife, traveling with a war band and nearly seventy women who should not be here at all.

And yet, I feel stronger now.

I make my rounds, noting that Arra appears less shaky than before. Cheerful Lenn, her travel companion and a wife of another of the lesser warriors, informs me that the motion of the wagon bothered them less than usual, due to the many stops along the way. Yesterday’s sharp descent from the hills was more dangerous, perhaps, than riding across them, but it also required a slower pace than the men had used before. I think of future travel days, and all the winding among rocks we must now do, and think: the slower we can go, the better. For Arra, and the other girls in her condition, at least.

The last of my rounds takes me to the edge of the camp. A group of the men have gone to scout ahead for unseen dangers. There is a road of sorts, wide enough for beasts and wagons to move along it single-file. But even from the edge here it is hard to see where the path leads, as it disappears fairly quickly into a rocky valley… not much more than a darkly-shadowed ravine, in fact.

Gazing into those shadows, I come to a new realization. As much as I find myself thinking of this stony land as an unexpected ally… I must not forget it can kill one of my daughters as easily as anything else.

I think of Kada, suddenly.

I look for her as the first wave of the camp begins to move out.

She is nowhere to be found. Her husband Corun, I discover, is one of the scouts ahead of the band. Which means Kada would have normally come to me by now. One of my errand-boys, at least, could have helped her find me.

I can’t move around the camp fast enough, especially amid the chaos of breaking camp and moving. I try, but my aging bones and muscles are only so nimble. At the far edge I close my eyes, wishing for the kind of flight I had in my dreams.

I feel a pull along my spine, my scalp—a stretching, tingling. A lifting sensation, and then I am suspended in the air above the bustle of camp amid the rocks. My wings beat the air, silently, unseen. And yet I feel the ground still beneath my feet, and my eyes remain closed.

I am the dragon, but she is not—quite—me.

Among all the dark-haired, light-skinned Challi, it is not so difficult to pick out my tawny- and red-haired Athi daughters. But still narrowing my focus to find one out of more than sixty…

I am a fool. I begin to look outside the edges of camp.

There.

She is already picking her way among the rocks far to the left of the pathway. There are crevices and ravines in plenty along the way. I could not force her to wait but a little longer…

I pull back down into myself and begin to hurry in the direction I saw from above. I say nothing to anyone else, knowing they would try to stop me or get involved.

She hasn’t gone too far. I will find her myself, convince her to come back. No one else can. But I will save her.

---

“You can’t save me,” Kada says. “Stop trying.”

I find her through a combination of hurried, somewhat foolhardy climbing and the occasional dragon vision, which aids me in finding paths where Kada’s blind stumbling does not. I stand before her now with rock walls on three sides of us. There is a fissure in the rock to our right, large enough for a person to crawl inside. But there is nowhere else for Kada to go, and I wonder what she is trying to do. Or if she had a plan to begin with.

“You can save yourself,” I say. “I only want to help you—”

She interrupts me before I can even begin to think of how to explain the dragon to her. “I am saving myself,” she says. “This is what ‘saving yourself’ looks like when all other options have failed.”

“You can’t let Corun win,” I say, hoping to stoke her anger.

“It’s either this, or I can’t let him live,” she says through gritted teeth. “And that would hurt you and the other girls and the little freedom you have. Who knows what they would do in response to murder by an Athi woman?”

She speaks as one who had already given this considerable thought. But surely I can counter it. I open my mouth again—

But my next words are drowned out by a bone-chilling growl.

It comes from the fissure in the rock.

We freeze, eyes wide. I suddenly notice for the first time that there are giant footprints of some beast, all around the dusty ground in this little blind valley. We have walked into the lair of a monster.

Even Kada, death-wish and all, backs away from the crack, stepping toward the opposite wall.

That action gives me hope, but also deep terror.

I move to stand in front of her as the growling intensifies and a pair of very large, gleaming eyes appears in the shadows, belonging to some kind of enormous, wolflike creature.

Kada shifts position suddenly, and tries to step around in front of me. I can predict her thought patterns—I am the one who wants to die, I am the unimportant one and Mure is the midwife everyone needs—and I reach out to stop her, with more strength than either of us expect.

“Wait,” I say. And then, “Watch.”

Because I can feel my spine tingle and stretch. I can feel the wings extending past my outstretched arm. I see their shadow cast on the rock wall, although I see nothing but my own hand before it. I am the same size I have ever been, and yet I am tall, taller than this entire blind alley made of rock, and the creature I face is nothing to me.

The eyes in the shadows see it too. The growling stops, and I hear whimpering instead. I watch the creature flee from us, and smile.

I turn toward an openmouthed Kada, letting the dragon fall back into me. “That is why I have hope,” I say. From the look on her face, I wonder exactly what she has seen. Maybe I will ask her later. “Now, let me explain—”

“You ugly bitch!”

The shout comes from the opening of our little trapped valley. It is Corun, alone, his face contorted with rage. “Make a fool of me, will you? Out of my way, old woman.”

Kada’s face tightens, skin turning several shades lighter with fear and anger, as her so-called husband comes toward us with his sword drawn.

Corun didn’t see the dragon. I’m sure of it.

His rage is only for Kada, for daring to leave him. I wonder if he even knows what her plan was… or if he cares. Despicable man. But that means I face a new dilemma now.

Kada steps in front of me, and I am too torn, too unsure, to protest or react.

I don’t know what to do with my dragon, in the face of a Challi warrior.

“I’ll kill you,” Corun says. His face smooths into cunning lines. “Then, when an accident happens to Dustu, they will give me Lenn. And I will finally have the wife I deserve. A pretty, biddable one.”

“But Lenn likes her husband,” Kada whispers. “I suppose… I have to stay alive now.”

I wonder if she realizes she has spoken out loud.

“You wouldn’t dare,” I say, stepping out beside my daughter. “Risk your own standing among the warriors just because you don’t like your wife?”

He remembers I exist then, and narrows his eyes on me. He pauses, thinking. “They won’t believe her anyway,” he mumbles to himself. “Or maybe these delicate Athi women would be better off without their mother holding their hands.”

Fool. Utter fool.

I watch his face, and see the moment he decides.

As he lunges for Kada, I unleash the dragon.

---

Challi scouts surround us, surround the bloody corpse of Corun, and I rapidly put together a string of lies.

None of them saw the dragon, either. They came in too late for that. But they heard the man’s scream.

“We got lost,” I say. “Corun came to find us, but a beast…” I point a finger toward the fissure in the rock, letting my hand shake. It’s mostly adrenaline, but it looks effective. “It was a great wolf creature. It tore him…” I point down at Corun’s chest, and do not need to feign the illness I feel at the sight.

“Why didn’t it kill you too?” One of the men asks, but it feels perfunctory. The scouts are already looking around, noting the prints of the creature, muttering to themselves.

“I don’t know,” Kada says. Her voice is as shaky as mine. For good reason. “It was turning toward us. But it must have heard the rest of you coming, because it suddenly ran back in there.”

Some of them start toward the gap in the rock, but are called back. “We don’t have time to hunt for it,” one of them says. “We have to move.”

A few of them look at Kada and me, look us up and down with narrowed eyes, but then dismiss us—two women, weak and unarmed. The only possible explanation for this unexpected death must be exactly what we said.

As we return to the others, I insist on keeping Kada by my side, because she needs healing, and then there is the trauma of losing her husband, and… they let me take her with me, because they certainly don’t know what else to do with her until they talk to their leader.

“You know this changes everything,” Kada says to me finally, as we huddle together inside the wagon designated for the midwife and her patients. It’s not a terribly good one, but it is private. “Whatever monster you have inside you—”

“She’s a dragon,” I say, calmly. I continue my work, smearing salve on the girl once more, treating old injuries and new. “She is me, and I am her. The maker at the center of the Wilds—an old god, I think—gave her to me. Or perhaps I have earned her. Because the need is great.” It is the best I could do for an explanation, although it occurs to me that I may need to ask a Challi about their old legends of the Wilds. I have been willfully ignorant.

“But you’re not from here,” Kada says.

“I don’t think she cares,” I say, slowly. “I am trying to protect my daughters. That is what she cares about.”

Kada opens her mouth, and closes it again. “Are you going to kill them all?” She asks, finally.

My hands stop moving. I place them in my lap. “Am I?” I whisper to myself. “Should I?” They have never deserved my daughters. They treat them like objects, like property they can use as they please. I could save all my girls at once.

Kada looks at me steadily. “I hate them,” she says, “but not everyone does. Lenn doesn’t. She says her husband is nice to look at, likes to listen to her talk, and is good in bed.”

I sigh. “Dema, too.” And then there are the young men, young enough that they haven’t learned to treat their women like dirt yet. Both of my errand boys have that potential. Maybe others, too.

The greatest conundrum of all, of course, is the political one. How can we keep from starting another war between Atha and Chal Duresta?

“Maybe,” I say, “What we need is simply a shift in power.”

---

We make camp that night in a wide, steep-sided valley, with a defendable exit at either end. I notice this for the first time, thinking of the dead-end valley where the beasts—wolf and human both—had trapped us.

I go to speak to Orocor, the leader of the war band, alone first. I repeat my request to keep Kada with me, for as long as possible, before he gives her to someone else. I present a string of reasons for it, and he pretends to listen to me, but I can tell he is already deciding who to reward, or punish, with the girl.

I clench my fists. Time to do what I came for. “I would like to request a full assembly,” I say, keeping my tone humble and sweet as I can make it. “Kada and I would like to honor her fallen husband, and speak of his bravery to all, and how he honored your leadership at the last.”

Orocor looks surprised. But he also enjoys being honored, and enjoys having his men honored when it reflects back on him. It is the best—if not only—reason I could think of to gather every Challi man and Athi woman together, but I am still surprised that it works.

I am not sure that the rest of it will work nearly so smoothly. Or, in fact, work at all.

---

I stand before the great fire that marks an assembly, Kada at my side. Everyone is here—my sixty-eight daughters, and three times as many men, and a good number of boys besides.

I feel the dragon coil inside me, waiting.

“I am not here to honor anyone,” I say. “Corun was a despicable human. He was small and petty and rotten, and hated Kada because he thought he deserved a ‘prettier’ Athi wife.” I snarl out the word, showing exactly how I feel about that judgment on my daughter’s value. “He decided to kill her, and then murder Dustu so your leader would give him Lenn instead.”

I see Lenn and Dustu clutch each other reflexively, and wonder at it. Can they truly be a matched pair?

Will the pairing survive the night?

Other men, finally recovering from the shock of my words, lunge toward me, no doubt to drag me away before I speak again.

I swiftly back away, moving to the other side of the fire. The steep walls of our enclosing valley rise up behind me.

I call to the dragon, and she comes.

The men stop in their tracks. I stand, arms spread, feeling the power extend far beyond me. I can’t turn around. I can’t see the shape of my own shadow. But the looks on the faces of everyone, including Kada, tell me what I need to know.

My dragon is there, and she is magnificent.

“I am here for justice,” I say, and my voice is hers, bells and roaring fire and rushing wind. “Corun is not the only one to treat one of my daughters like an animal. A tool. A belly to impregnate, one colored like an Athi jewel.” I look at Orocor, at Elue beside him, trembling, her eyes huge.

“Your own maker of the Wilds has spoken,” I continue. “This is the gift given to me by the Wilds themselves. Your own land has given me wings to protect my daughters.” I lift them, spread them, and now I can see their shadow extends nearly the length of the valley.

A Challi man, face pinched with rage and fear, lunges for a spear. I freeze, for he has Arra beside him, and I don’t know if I can catch him without hurting her.

He throws the spear. But it never reaches me.

Kada lunges before the fire, arm outstretched, and I try to cry out to her—stop trying to die!—but she is not dead, and the spear shatters, and she strides to my side, and her face is beautiful and terrible…

And a second set of shadowed wings grows, unfurls, stretches across the canyon walls. I see a neck, long and sinuous, extend far above my Kada’s head, graceful and powerful.

As one, my daughters gasp. Perhaps the men gasp too, but it is my daughters I hear.

Arra stands, and slowly makes her way toward the fire. Her husband lunges for her—and flies back as if struck.

As she comes to me, I see another shadow, beautiful and strong and winged, join us.

“Monsters,” Orocor’s voice rings out at last. “You defy us, you start a war all over again.”

My heart plummets, for there is conviction in his words.

“No,” calls another voice. “There will be no war.”

Elue steps away from the leader of the Challi, and no one dares to touch her. “The treaty does not need brides for warriors. You know that is true. You admitted it to me yourself. There is land and wealth aplenty for Chal Duresta. You simply wanted visual proof of your domination.”

She walks to the fire, and a fourth dragon spreads her wings.

I turn to Orocor, who is as white as the quartz on the rock walls.

I smile. Because this is not the land of monsters. It is the land of the Dragon, and she protects her own.

“Now,” I say. “Let’s talk terms.”

First published in Cutter’s Final Cut, Vol. 2: Dragons (Knotted Road Press, 2021).

© 2024 Alexandra Brandt

[Issue 2024.70]

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