The Dragonstones Trilogy
Chapter 7

As she walked, Sara tried to think about normal, ordinary things: how cool it was outside, her favorite book, the weather. Sara tried as much as she could not to think about how her life had been turned upside down in only a matter of days.

Sara heard dogs barking, and a few cows across the street. She gagged as the smell of cow manure hit her. Sara quickened her pace to get past the odor. Sara was almost done with her walk, which had turned out much longer than she had originally planned, when she saw a spider in the middle of the road, where she was walking. It was about as large as a baseball.

Sara took a deep breath, trying to forget her huge fear of spiders. She hadn’t seen it there a second ago. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought the spider had just appeared there, with killing her as its aim. Sara knew she was probably overreacting, but the feeling of dread refused to leave her. She took a step left. The spider mirrored her movement. Sara tried again. She stepped the other way this time. The spider mimicked her. “What am I, some weird thing magnet?” Sara muttered to herself, more to get her mind off of her fear than anything else. She stepped forward. She was surprised when the spider stayed put. The arachnid seemed to be getting larger. Sara stared at it, terrified but at the same time unable to pull her gaze away. It was the size of a soccer ball now, telling Sara that it really was growing. Neither of the two moved. Sara started at the spider. The spider stared back, and continued to grow. Suddenly, the spider sprang toward her. Sara shrieked, and used her claws to protect herself before she could even think about shifting. The venom in her claws glowed in the semi-darkness as she sliced the spider in half.

Adrenaline pumping through her system, Sara ran, staring straight ahead. Escape was her only thought. She didn’t see the spider curl up, and turn the same glowing green as Sara’s venom. She also didn’t see a dark shadow approach the arachnid’s corpse, both disappearing after a moment and leaving the street empty.

Sara crashed on her bed and tried to sleep. A second later, she achieved her goal. Sara woke up with sunlight streaming through the window. She stretched lazily and casually glanced at her alarm clock, then did a double take. She had ten minutes before school started. Sara groaned, and dragged herself out of bed, the cold waking her instantly.

Brushing her hair in a couple strokes, Sara grabbed her backpack and hurried out the door. The bus passed Sara as she ran to the stop. It was annoying, but Sara didn’t worry too much. She would take the car instead.

At home, Sara left a quick note to her mom, telling her where the car was. Sara didn’t say she was sorry for last night. Sara reasoned with herself that she would tell her mom later. She wasn’t sure if that was a lie or not. Maybe if she left it long enough, it would be like it never happened. . .

Sara rushed to school, ignoring the fact that she had plenty of time. It took longer to get to school by the bus. The drive to school was uneventful, but when Sara got to school, she saw that James had saved her a seat in first hour. Sara felt herself smile.

At lunch, both Sara and James sat down quietly. James started humming a popular song recently released. His aura grew brighter. The color and brightness reminded Sara of a sunset. After a few minutes, Sara couldn’t stand the silence. She tried to hide her anxiety as she asked, “You okay after what happened yesterday?”

James looked up from his lunch. “What? Oh. Yeah. It’s cool you can turn into a giant lizard.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a dragon,” Sara said, the voice of the man who attacked her echoing in her head. “A dragon?”

“No. Dragons went extinct on this planet a couple centuries ago.”

“What do you mean by ‘on this planet?’”

“On Earth. What makes you think it’s a dragon?” James asked.

Sara noticed James was moving the subject away from what she really wanted to talk about, but let it pass. “I looked in a mirror one time,” She smiled. “What type of magic do you think that is?”

James looked puzzled. “I don’t know. If I had to guess, some sort of shape shifter. I’ll have to do more research, though.”

“You can replace out about magic on the internet?”

“Sometimes, but I have some family members who study magic and stuff.”

“Oh,” Sara said, wondering what James’s family was like. “Do you know who that man in the cave is?” She asked tentatively.

James’s expression darkened. “Yeah,” he said, then drew in a deep breath. “He used to be a family friend, until he turned.”

Sensing that he didn’t want to talk about it, Sara let the subject drop. She thought back to the growing spider she had encountered the night before, and decided not to tell him about it. He seemed to have enough on his mind already

During art class, Sara thought back to the fight from last night. She had hurt her mom, and it had been gnawing at her more than she wanted to admit. If she didn’t do anything she would just continue to think about it. Sara sighed, annoyed. Fine. She would get it over with and apologize to her mom. After school, Sara drove home as fast as she could without getting pulled over. At home, Sara found a note telling her that her mom was at work, and that she should have asked to use the car before taking it. Sara could almost hear her mom’s voice, like she was still mad at Sara, just as Sara had been mad at her. There was nothing Sara could do about that now, though. She would just have to wait until her mom got home.

Sara had all her homework done, and nothing else to do, so she went for a walk. She allowed herself to go on autopilot, not paying attention to where she went or how far.

Sara passed several houses, and ended up in front of her old elementary school. Looking back, Sara realized she hadn’t been there in a long time. Her feet still in control, she followed her memories until she stood feet away from the school’s playground. Small children chased each other up and down slides, bridges, and monkey bars.

Sara located a bench and sat down, still watching the kids. They appeared to be no older than ten, and acted a lot like she had when she was their age. Sara left the present, and the thoughts came back, reminding Sara of when she was a little kid. Sara realized most of the memories were of her dad, playing with her. Sara wasn’t sure how that thought made her feel.

Sara didn’t know how long she sat there-it was probably only a few minutes-when a boy with brown hair hurled a ball of mud at one of the girls. The girl responded by shielding herself with a wall of lightning. Her blonde hair seemed to glow with electricity. A little red headed boy who looked about seven, shouted, “Hey, no magic!” Sara didn’t sense any danger from these kids, but she didn’t feel what she felt when James was around, either. She heard chuckles coming from another bench. Sara turned, and saw James. Startled, she turned back. She looked at the bench again, and realized James was with two adults, and a girl with midnight black hair. The girl’s pale skin strangely complemented her features, and she managed to make a heavy amount of makeup look good. Her dark countenance stood out even more when compared to James, whose light hair and bright orange shirt made him seem like he was glowing, even when he wasn’t.

As if he could sense her eyes on him, James turned his head and looked at Sara. Without giving her an opportunity to run, he said, loud enough that she could hear, “Hey, Sara!”

Cheeks burning, Sara said, “Hi,” and walked over. It sounded lame, even to her. “Is this your family?” That sounded even lamer. Sara realized she was still not used to talking to people. She hoped this conversation wouldn’t hurt too much.

James nodded. He gestured to the two adults. “These are my parents.” James’s mom had silver hair, and a surprising lack of wrinkles. James’s father had white hair and striking blue eyes. Sara knew now where James got his eyes. His parents smiled and waved. James pointed to the brown haired boy, who was on the monkey bars. “This is Benson,” Benson stuck his tongue out at her. James pointed to the blonde girl. “That’s Julie,” Julie smiled shyly and waved. “And that’s Peter.” James pointed out the last small kid, who had hidden behind James’s parents while they were talking. Peter looked down at his shoes, then looked up and said, “Are you James’s girlfriend?” Relief surged through Sara. That meant that other girl couldn’t be James’s girlfriend. Where had that thought come from? Sara told herself it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. “No,” she quickly said. She tried to laugh, but couldn’t.

James gestured to the girl sitting next to him. She looked about a year older than him, now that Sara looked at her. “This is Drana. Next year, she’s going to Harvard.” Drana faked a smile, and Sara understood the message Drana was conveying. To put it nicely, Drana didn’t like her very much.

“Hi,” Sara said, trying to ignore Drana. “Do you have magic?” Peter asked loudly. James’s parents exchanged a glance, then burst out laughing. It was a fake, rehearsed laugh, one they had probably had to use often with a kid like Peter. “Peter’s got quite the imagination,” James’s father laughed. “So Sara, where are you going to school?” Sara noticed the subject change. James’s parents were acting as if they weren’t aware that Sara already knew about magic. Sara had assumed James would have told his family about her, and her magic. She guessed she had been wrong.

Sara looked questioningly at James. His eyes widened as his mouth formed an O. He smiled at her apologetically. It seemed he had forgotten. “Um, Dad, I was meaning to ask you, can shape shifters change into giant lizards or dragons?” He said a little quickly. He looked back at Sara, and wordlessly apologized again.

James’s dad gave him a startled glance. He looked at Sara, then back at James. The truth seemed to dawn on him as he replied, “Not that I know of. I’m pretty sure that dragons are their own species, and other magical creatures can’t change into them. Why do you ask?”

James looked ready to answer when Benson hurled a mud ball right at Sara. Before she knew what was happening, Sara felt herself transform, and whirl around. She crouched, ready to pounce if the kid threw mud at her again. Benson’s smile was somewhere between mischievous and evil as he prepared to throw more mud at her. Sara pounced, air rushing past her as she pinned the kid down. She made sure not to claw him; she knew all too well what her venom could do.

Benson shrieked a bloodcurdling scream that made Sara want to shake him. She almost did when Benson seemed to realize he was beaten, and fell quiet.

James took advantage of the silence that followed. “That’s why. And she knows about magic,” he added. Sara let go of Benson, suddenly self conscious, and changed back to her human form. Mrs. Robinson had been watching Sara with an undecipherable expression on her face. “You seem familiar somehow.” Sara didn’t know how to respond to that. “What’s your full name?” she asked Sara, looking into her eyes as if they held the key to what she was looking for.

“Sara Day.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Robinson said, though she obviously knew more than she put into words. Sara asked Mrs. Robinson the whole question with her eyes. Mrs. Robinson seemed to understand. “I knew your father – and your mother, before she changed.”

Questions pounded around in Sara’s head. “They never talked about you,” she said, voicing her first thought.

“You look just like him.” Mrs. Robinson’s eyes were distant. She returned to herself quickly. “Sorry,” Seeming to know she needed to say more, she went on, “Your dad used to change into a dragon, just like you just did. Except his scales were a sapphire blue. Yours are more green.”

Sara thought back to her memories of her dad. How Sara had known the blue dragon was her father when she was little. Everyone had told her it was just a dream, a coping mechanism to deal with her dad’s death.

Sara forced herself not to dwell on it. She couldn’t lose herself to the past right now. She wouldn’t let herself. “How – You said you knew my mom ‘before she changed.’ What did you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Mrs. Robinson said, avoiding her gaze. She looked around Sara and yelled, “Benson, throw another mud ball and you’re grounded!” She looked at Sara. “Benson can be a handful sometimes.”

“Why can’t you tell me now?” Sara asked. She refused to let the issue drop. She hadn’t realized it until now, but she needed to hear the answer.

Mrs. Robinson grimaced. “You may not like it.”

“There are lots of things I don’t like. This will be just another one on the list.”

Mrs. Robinson shrugged. “It’s your decision. But let’s go somewhere more private.” Sara could see why James’s mom was giving in so easily. She actually wanted to tell her. Sara looked back and caught James’s gaze. He smiled encouragingly.

James’s mom stood up and walked out of earshot of the rest of the family, Sara trailing behind her. “All right. Gloomy subjects like this are always taken best during the day.” Mrs. Robinson looked up at the high sun. “And we have plenty of time.”

They located a patch of trees to sit under, and Mrs. Robinson began explaining. “I guess we should start with your dad. He wasn’t really in the military, but you have probably already gathered that.”

“I never gave it much thought,” Sara admitted. Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t shaken by the idea that her father wasn’t exactly what she had thought he was.

“Well, he wasn’t. He actually made his living by replaceing and acquiring magical objects, and he was lucky enough to have the magic of the dragon with him.” She held up her hands as if protecting herself from an onslaught of questions. “Before you ask what that is, let me explain. When they were still alive, the dragons would sometimes give their magic to other species. This was very rare, and only happened when the dragons were an endangered species.

“None of us know exactly how it works, but we do know that if someone was given the magic of the dragon, it would manifest itself by altering that person’s appearance. You can change into a dragon, and that’s how we know who has the dragons’ magic. We also know that it shows up in all the next generations of that family, so we know that somewhere along the line, your ancestor was given a very special gift by the dragons. I don’t know all that much about it myself. I’m only repeating what your mother told me.”

“So that’s my magic? I can shape shift?”

“Something like that, but not quite.”

Sara nodded, and lost herself to her thoughts.

“How do you know my family?” Sara asked when she returned to the present.

Mrs. Robinson held up her hand, hummed a quick tune. A faint lavender light danced around her, dying as the song did. “I work with music. James got that from me.”

“Why did your aura just appear instead of before now?”

“I know how to control my magic. James is learning how, but he hasn’t quite managed to control his yet.”

“Oh. So you can use magic, but how did you meet my parents?”

“I like to have friends, and people with similar gifts to mine are a bonus. Your mother and I met at a cooking class, I forget exactly when. I was trying to cook without magic. Your mother worked with home magic, like cleaning or cooking. Once, she even turned into a coffee table. I noticed that her foods were always so much better than mine, and started watching her to replace out what her secret was. I caught her using her magic, and we became friends. When she got married, I met your father, and I saw you as a baby.”

“My mom can use magic?” Sara asked incredulously, thinking back to all the times her mother had denied the existence of it.

“She could, but we were forced to remove all memories of us and magic in order to keep her sane.”

“What?” Sara stood up straighter. “What happened?” she asked.

“I was getting to that,” Mrs. Robinson replied patiently. “After one of his little treasure hunting adventures, your dad brought home an object. It was a necklace, with glowing blue stones. He said that his grandfather had given it to him.” Sara struggled to keep a straight face. If James hadn’t told his family about her, then he probably hadn’t mentioned Drusk, or the necklace, or anything that had happened in the cave.

“Your parents were fascinated with it, and planned on studying it, as did my husband and I. We could never take it home to our house, though. Your father was always telling us it was his duty to protect it. We got sick of hearing the word. But he had a point. We had another friend, Drusk.” Sara once again wrestled with herself to keep an emotionless face. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded.

“Drusk came from a family of wizards. He had been a friend of my husband’s for a while. He had – has dark magic. He was fighting to stay rational. It’s a common problem among dark magicians. People with dark magic are powerful, but there are drawbacks because of it. He at first wanted to study the necklace, like us, but he kept going off to some unknown place, until he vanished completely. We worried about Drusk, and stopped our research to look for him. We didn’t replace him.

“After a little, your father got bored and went hunting for other treasures, and took the necklace and my husband with him this time. He had convinced him that working in an office all day was boring. While they were gone, Drusk reemerged, and started visiting your mother and me. He asked us both for the necklace, saying that it was possessed with an evil power and had to be destroyed. He didn’t look any different, and I would have told him that my husband had it, but Drusk’s eyes were not the same. They were blacker than I remembered. He used his magic to hit me on one of his visits, and I knew that he had turned.

“When we wouldn’t give him the necklace, or tell him who had it, Drusk found out on his own. He stalked your father, waiting for the right time to steal the necklace. My husband saw him following them one time, they both raced home, sensing something was wrong. Your father had the necklace.” Mrs. Robinson took a deep breath, as if preparing herself for reliving a painful memory.

“They split up then. I still can remember him coming home. We hid James and Drana. I can still hear the clock ticking, and we heard nothing. Then he came in. Drusk asked us for the necklace, and we wouldn’t tell him anything. He wasn’t in his right mind, and I almost felt sorry for him. Drusk was ready to kill us when Drana climbed out of her hiding place and went to me.” Mrs. Robinson blinked tears away as she went on. “They just stared at each other, and before I knew what was happening, he put more darkness in her, dark magic. Drana says it was to make her more like him. He almost killed James after that, but Drana stopped him, and James was only sick for a while.” A tear forced itself out of her eye before she hastily wiped it away. She looked at Sara and smiled wryly. “That was the night I couldn’t save either of my children.”

Sara didn’t speak. Now didn’t seem like the right time. She at least knew where James’s hatred of Drusk came from, and how they knew each other.

Mrs. Robinson seemed to have calmed down, and Sara asked, “Why did Drusk just put darkness in Drana? Why didn’t he still kill you guys?”

“Who knows why madmen do anything? Drusk is evil, and evil sometimes doesn’t think reasonably.”

“After he left your house, he came to mine,” Sara didn’t say it as a question.

“Yes he did. I don’t now what happened in there, but I have a feeling you do.” Sara nodded. “I do know what happened after, though.” Mrs. Robinson said. A cool breeze started blowing, but Sara shuddered from a sudden chill. “Your mother wouldn’t tell me about it, when I asked her. She only said that Drusk broke into your house, and tried to get the necklace.”

Sara nodded again. “He-he killed my dad.” She fought herself internally, reminding herself again and again that this person was not like all the counselors.

Mrs. Robinson didn’t seem surprised. “You knew, didn’t you?” Sara accused.

“Yes. We knew that you used the necklace, but we couldn’t replace it after you blacked out.”

“What happened then?”

“Your mother has a gentler nature, and she hates to watch violence. When I knew her, she didn’t even have a TV because of the news. Anyway, she couldn’t bear the sight of her dead husband, so she asked me to make her forget. I know a song that can wipe memories, so I could, but I refused the first dozen times she asked me. I didn’t want to do that to her. After a while, she sank into a kind of depression, and I was forced to wipe her memory.” Mrs. Robinson smiled sadly. “She made it very clear I had no choice.”

“So she can’t use magic anymore?”

“She could, if she believed in magic.”