Chapter Four
Walking through the streets of Tarn felt off to Anya. She still couldn't get used to the fact that she could actually do so, and people didn't intend to throw her in a jail cell, or flog her for roaming past her boundaries. No plantations existed for miles. No serfs picked their way through wheat fields and lay crippled on their mats at night. People slept in houses. Thatch and wood and stone.
She saw humans and drakes chatting to one another, laughing, smiling. She saw humans running bars and drakes selling wares to humans. She even saw a drake selling flights to humans to other towns and cities, or doing it just for the joy of flying around. Selling flights? What a novel concept.
Everything struck her as bizarre and surreal. How was it all even possible? How could she walk down these cobbled lanes, dressed like a woman, without a layer of mud over her face, hair allowed to tumble to just above her shoulders?
Not only that, but people smiled, and waved, and didn’t look as though they were about to collapse or starve to death. It pretty much felt like being dumped on an alien planet.
The freedom didn't sit right with Anya. Perhaps she was like one of those kittens she once rescued from drowning. Some lout decided to keep three kittens stuck in a tiny cage. He didn't want them roaming away, and they lay there in their own wastes, mewling, until eventually, they gave up and just crouched listlessly.
Anya snuck into his hut one night and opened the cage, and the kittens still sat there in their cage, unmoving. They didn't seem to comprehend they'd been freed, or perhaps they'd forgotten what it felt like.
Anya didn't even know what freedom felt like. It took some coaxing for those weak kittens to stagger out. Two of them ran into the wilderness. One stayed within the village, and visited Anya for years afterwards, until one day it disappeared. She still thought of that kitten with some fondness.
I am like it. My cage is open, but I still don't understand that I'm free. I still don't comprehend that my life will never be the same again.
She wished desperately in this moment that she could share the newfound freedom with her family, whose fate still remained unknown. As did Kalgrin's. He said he'd be back by early morning, but she woke up to an empty house.
Gods, if she lost Kalgrin as well...
No, don't go there. You know nothing yet. It might be taking him a while to fly back.
She quelled the anxiety in her heart as best as she was able. Just because she could, Anya wandered into a shop selling beverages, and three women and two men greeted her.
“Hey! Come over here, new girl. Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
Anya smiled at the speaker, Seon. She looked around twenty or so years in age, in the perfect picture of health, smiling with fabulous white teeth. It made Anya more self-conscious of her own yellow teeth, and she licked her tongue nervously over them. She intended to find some kind of whitener to help her smile become glossier. Kalgrin had rather obviously shoved Anya in Seon's direction, so the barmaid was in a position to watch over her. The babysitting embarrassed Anya a little, but secretly, she appreciated it as well. She needed the guidance. Still hadn't gotten used to life in the town. Didn't know if she would. Kalgrin intended her to adapt to it, of course. He wanted her to learn to settle down and not keep looking over her shoulder for death to descend.
Maybe she even could settle down in time. Maybe she'd learn to fit in, and not act like a twitchy slave. Not whilst she kept worrying about her family, though. Kendra left a hole in Anya's heart. Along with her four siblings, and her near toothless grandpa.
Her grandpa was covered with scars. Her mother had a fair share as well, hidden under her tattered shirt. Once, Kendra suffered punishment from the wyrms because she didn't respond fast enough to one of their orders. It gained her two cracked ribs which never quite healed right.
Anya chewed her bottom lip, thinking of Kalgrin. Wondering if he would find her family, if he had succeeded, or if he lay dead. She didn't think such a powerful creature would die, but... the wyrms. They towered taller, thicker. Held a reputation for viciousness. Nurtured cruelty in their hearts like campfires.
What caused a creature to be so twisted? Why did they endorse senseless violence with reckless passion? How in the world did they think such treatment worked long term? It built up in the soul. Memory after memory passed down. All until it accumulated in a melting pot of rebellious despair. People who already felt dead, deciding that they may as well just fight.
How many human rebellions had been put down over the centuries? And how many more would rise? Surely something like this didn't work in the long run. Resentment had a way of festering. And even though Anya might have been crushed down over time, she held a lot of it inside, simmering. Because all the problems in the world boiled down to the oppression of the wyrms.
They needed to die. But she had no power. No form to transform into, no forbidden magic to wield at her fingertips. Perhaps she might make a better life for herself in a place like Tarn. But could she settle for a job, a home, without thinking of the plantations, of where other humans toiled miserably until they expired?
She wrenched herself out of these thoughts, knowing they formed a scowl upon her forehead.
“Cloud covering your sun, I see,” Seon declared, now flicking her jet-black hair dramatically over her shoulder. “You know, Kalgrin's put me in charge of making sure you don't trip over your own shoelaces.” She glanced at Anya's new shoes, which reflected some of the sunlight streaming through the windows into the inn. “But you always walk around like a wyrm ate your mother.”
Anya started at the comparison, before reassuring herself that Seon meant it in jest. “That's actually part of my issue. A wyrm might have done that.”
The dark-haired woman scowled, tapping her fingers upon the table. “Oh? Is that why you sit here like this? You're worried?”
“Yes. Kalgrin went to the plantation last night. He's not back yet. My family... I don't know if they're alive. The last I heard of them, wyrm guards were threatening them to reveal my location. I barely managed to escape out of there.”
“Skies,” Seon said. She glanced over to the side, as if seeing something there. Anya peeked as well, but spotted nothing. The woman appeared nervous. “I don't have much of a family connection myself. But I understand that leaving people you love behind, not knowing if they're dead... no. No wonder.”
The other women nearby Seon had silenced. Anya tried to recall their names. Harriet. A Krissy. Jalyun? Jaljun? A name that began with a D? The recollection muddled in Anya's mind. Always had trouble with that blasted memory. She didn't want to keep asking for their names, when they all knew hers by heart.
“I still don't know how to handle the idea I'm free. I don't even know if I am free, and this isn't all just some dream I'll soon wake up from.”
The raven-dark woman grimaced at this. “Messed with your head, living like that, right?”
Anya closed her eyes, not bothering to respond. Seeing the life unfold before her again. Smelling the wheat fields, the rain upon the soil, along with the stench of human waste and despair in the village. She saw the ramshackle huts that barely withstood a sneeze, let alone a storm if it raged above the region, with the growl of thunder and tendrils of lightning. That image suited her former life, somehow. A field under a purple dark sky, the pressure low and heavy in her lungs. People toiling even as the storms lashed over them, bolts flickering in the shape of wyrms. Despair whipping over them. Evil sinking their bodies to the ground, until they died and became part of the soil and the grass and wheat grew over their bones.
“I heard that the rural areas, like the mines, the plantations, the lumberyards and coastal regions had it the worst. They say that without the calming influence of civilization, it allows cruelty to run unchecked.”
“I don't think it's anything to do with the region,” Anya whispered then. “I think it's something to do with the fact that the wyrms just hate us. But I don't understand why. What did we do? Hate doesn't come out of nowhere. I know I hate them because of what they did to us. So what did we do to them?”
Seon paused at this question, her eyebrows pinched together, her lips tight. Something about the woman let Anya think that she understood things about the world. Probably hosted quite the mind under that pretty exterior. Probably held onto her secrets as fiercely as anyone she'd known.
Who didn't? The world was full of secrets, after all. What interested her mildly was the fact that the two men were drakes, and partners to Seon’s friends.
“I don't know. They say it might have been something to do with the past. But no one seems to know exactly what that something in the past is. Maybe we offended their king or something.” Seon placed a friendly hand on Anya’s wrist. “You’ll need to stop these gloomy thoughts, Anya. You’re free. You’re not a prisoner anymore. If you keep dwelling on your work on the plantations, you're still a prisoner in your mind. Be careful of that.”
True. She was a prisoner in her mind. But not in the way Seon thought.
“Come,” Seon said. “I'll show you around the bar, get you used to how things work. You can start with cleaning the dishes and tidying the bedcovers before you progress to becoming a barmaid and needing to interact with people. I expect you'll need to build up some self-confidence before that.”
Anya sighed, but she agreed. She didn't think she'd be able to deal with hundreds of people demanding things of her at once. She didn't think she had the force of will to handle others.
I'm so weak. Why am I so weak? How do I stop being weak? She stared at her calloused, rough hands. Slave hands. Hands that had been bruised, cut, torn and left exposed to the sun. Her arms were a darker shade then the rest of her body. And the shadows under Anya's eyes dug into her skin, refusing to let go their grip of exhaustion.
Going into a chore, like cleaning and washing dishes, was easy and mechanical. Anya knew how to work, to switch off her mind and just focus on nothing else. Work could take away the gloom for a while. Just the pure, physical task of swinging her muscles, concentrating on the thing ahead of her.
Briefly, her mind skimmed to Kalgrin. His gray eyes had that quality of stealing attention. Well, the quality was nothing to do with the color of his eyes, but from the soul that hid behind them. Something earnest and true burned there. This was someone who cared.
Someone who also seemed to be dragging his heels on letting Anya go. She strongly suspected that he wanted to keep her around for as long as possible before letting her into that shadowy organization which helped deal with people who had escaped the worse aspects of their lives. He likely could have done it on the first day, and taken her off his hands.
Except he didn't.
Why?
Why did people do anything? Her blood gave a peculiar lurch in her system. As if something inside had upset the usual rhythm.
I think I might be sad when I have to leave him, she decided. And sad to find out if he died during his attempt at the plantation.
That made more sense to her befuddled brain. Foam covered the dishes she washed. Her hands puckered up in the lukewarm water, becoming supple, knobbly at the tips. Easy to wash. Easy to forget like this. Maybe she could settle here.
Right now, if her mind wandered off the work for even a second, the worry settled in her mouth like charcoal.
She worked for a few hours, before Seon released her for the day. Still in training mode. Anya loitered in the street for a few minutes, absorbing the hectic bustle of the markets, full of people who always seemed to be busy doing things. No blanket of oppression existed here. Just people living lives, drakes and humans.
Eventually, she meandered back to Kalgrin’s house. She couldn’t call it home yet.
She didn’t know where home existed. Even with the time she had interacting with Kalgrin, she still felt out of place. His smiles, his kindness felt out of place. Everything did, because people just didn't do that to her.
How did he not look at her with contempt or lust? How did he not just reach out and take her whenever he wanted, knowing there was fuck-all she could do against him?
It continued to haunt her on the way back.
He doesn't act like I thought he should.
Part of her liked that revelation. Most of her didn't know how to deal with it.
His little house was wedged in between a row of other builds, same design, uniform in nature. Still a better living place than where I used to be. She pushed through the door after turning her little iron key in the lock. Wondering if he'd be there. Hoping, even. The door creaked shut behind her, pushed by her palm.
Her heart leaped into her throat.
Kendra and her grandpa sat on two of the three armchairs in the living room. She also spotted her two little brothers crawling around the floor. Both younger girls seemed to be sleeping in Kalgrin's bed, which could be seen through the open door there.
“Ma!” Anya slammed her hands over her mouth, heart palpitating wildly. “You’re okay! Ma! You’re… here?”
“Oh, my beautiful daughter, my wonderful child!” Kendra gushed the words, getting out of the armchair and swaying over to her daughter. She gripped her in a huge hug. Anya buried her face in her mother's mud-smudged shirt, not caring about it at all. Her mother was here. Her mother lived!
“Mom!”
Kendra patted Anya on the back, like she used to when Anya cried as a youngling. “You’re looking so well! Been so long since I saw you without your muck.” She kissed Anya on the cheek.
Anya stared at her grandpa, who gave her a gap-toothed smile and a wave. Tears welled up. She had heard the guards threatening to kill him. Yet here he was. With a broken wrist, maybe – she fixed on that with a glint of anger, seeing the bundle of rags that held it together – but alive.
Everyone lived. What a miracle. Somehow, the wyrms had restrained themselves, not slaughtering her family like squealing hogs.
“How are my brothers and sisters? Did they get hurt?”
“Fine, fine,” Kendra assured her. “You can see them for yourself. Two out like lights in that nice bed, two squirming like bugs on the floor. What a nice young man that Kalgrin of yours is. Who would have thought you had nice dragons? Oh, I never knew. Never in all my years. But it’s true. They came, him and his dragons, all of them came, took us out of there. Couldn’t believe it. I’m still in shock now!”
Anya gave her mother a wry smile at her excitement. “Did it go alright? Did he take care of the wyrms?”
“Yes. Him and his drake friends. Most of us just stood dumbly outside our huts. Didn't understand what was happening. Didn't know why the guards were dead. It took him some persuading, mind.”
“I can imagine,” Anya said, her heart impossibly light at the realization that everyone was okay. No one had died for her dreams of being something more. She pictured it now. Their captors dead, and the drakes prowling through the dirt lanes, calling out that the humans were free. That they didn't need to work another day on the plantations again.
Imagine that relief when the information finally sank in. That elation spreading across people's faces, or the humans sitting down and weeping, struggling to process the good news. Maybe they regarded the drakes with reverence, awe, or fear.
Kalgrin kept his word.
She beamed like an idiot when Kalgrin walked into the room. The door he left open had a tub of steaming hot water billowing out of it. “Right, so the bath is ready now. You'll need to add the cold water yourself because I don't know what temperature you prefer it. The cauldron should be ready by – oh, hello. I see you're back.” He gave Anya a raised eyebrow, clearly waiting for her reaction on the fact that her entire family now filled up the room. When she said nothing, he added, “Well? Have you noticed anything different about the room? Like, say, six additional people? I have way too little space, you know. They'll eat me out of food and home.”
For some reason, Anya found that adorable. He wanted acknowledgement. Who wouldn't? He'd basically rescued her family. Saved everyone on the plantation. And killed the wyrms. “There's a few familiar faces here. Did you have anything to do with it?” Anya continued grinning at him. He gave her a pretend annoyed huff.
“You could say thank you, you ungrateful... lady,” he added, clearly editing a curse word when Kendra narrowed her eyes. He then examined her expression, saw something there. “Are you okay?”
For a moment, something stuck in her throat, making it hard to speak. To express her happiness and sadness at the same time. “Oh, yes. I’m okay.” It wasn't a bad sadness. Those tears welling up in her eyes – they didn't come from the part of her that hated what was done.
They came because she felt happy, and had no idea how to handle it. How to think of all the cruel things inflicted upon her before, contrasted with the kindness of now. Kindness rarely seen or experienced.
She needed to fully let it sink in. She was away from that horrid place. Away from the demons that haunted her. Part of her... wished she could have done it herself. Gone to that plantation, freed the humans. Part of her was saddened by the notion she still held such little power.
“I was worried I’d have to give you bad news,” Kalgrin admitted. “But everyone in your family survived. I'm glad for that. I wouldn't have liked to see you break down.”
Me, neither. The notion chilled her. Yes. She might have broken so far, that the pieces could never be picked up again. Anya finally disentangled herself from Kendra's arms, avoided stepping on Podge, and gazed into the eyes of the dragon who had saved them all. “What will happen to us now?”
Kalgrin had seized her from a life of misery, a life that might have been cut short. Appreciation filled up her soul, wedged in her mouth. But what awaited them now? Obviously they couldn't all stay here. Though the place seemed enormous to her, for Kalgrin, likely, it would be too crammed, too noisy.
At her question, Kalgrin’s smile lessened, and he broke eye contact with her. “We’ll be looking to place your family in one of the human fort towns to the north. They don’t allow any dragons in, but we have a deal to give them humans who suffer the most under the wyrms’ regime. That’s where we’ll send you as well. I just wanted you to see your family first. Spend some time with them... before.”
His words caused mixed feelings in her body. Happy that her family was going somewhere safe. Unhappy because she didn't want to leave Kalgrin, even though she knew she would. Even though Seon had given her that temporary job, just to help her get into the flow of things. I wish I could have spent longer with him.
Kendra looked sharply between Kalgrin and Anya. Her eyes expanded slightly, and her wrinkled mouth pursed, resembling a prune. “Daughter mine,” she finally said, “I have something I want to talk with you about. Can we talk in private?” she asked Kalgrin, who nodded.
“Of course. In fact, I’ll go out and buy some clothes. I don’t think you all can start wearing my shirts… you'll check over the soup?”
Anya's mother nodded. “No soup will burn on my watch.”
Kalgrin grinned and departed, leaving Anya with her family. Kendra wore a calculating squint.
“What?” Anya recognized the look. Her mother was planning something. Something Anya no doubt wouldn’t like.
“You realize Kalgrin likes you, Anya?”
Well, she went straight to the point.
Anya hesitated. Should she deny it? She did suspect something. Hoped it, even. “Yes… though I don’t really understand it.”
“Because you’re pretty,” Kendra said immediately. “Not just with body, but with spirit, too. You’ve not been bent and broken.” She stepped closer to her daughter. “He desires you. Probably doesn’t want you to leave.”
Anya’s heart started strange convulsions. No. He didn't like her that way, did he? Suddenly, she realized her interpretation of events to be completely wrong. Had she been mistaking lust for affection? Or were they part of the package? Did he desire her that way? The questions continued to storm in her mind. Somehow, she ended up latching stupidly to the last part of Kendra's statement. “You think he’ll imprison me?”
“No. You’ll imprison yourself.” Kendra nodded at her daughter. “You should stay with this man. Sex him. Whatever it takes to keep him close.”
Anya’s jaw dropped at her mother’s words. Her grandpa blinked, eyebrow raising. Grandpa certainly didn't expect that level of bluntness either. And Anya, well... she didn't know what to think. Except that she wasn't sure if she'd be comfortable with the idea of being rescued, just for... that.
“Ma. He’s a dragon.” The best excuse she thought of. A dragon. An enemy. Except, drakes weren't enemies, were they? They helped.
“He’ll take good care of you. Give you a better chance at life than any of us had before.” Kendra let out a sniff at this, and something glimmered in her dark eyes. A threat of tears. Curses, her mother was crying about this? “Or are you saying that you think he ain’t a good catch? You seen that face?”
Anya's breathing picked up, almost becoming panicked. “Ma. I don’t feel that way.” A lie. She did feel attracted to him. But… dragon. That was wrong, right? Plus, she didn’t know him, or know how to feel about it, given that she had spent most of her life covered in mud and avoiding men’s stares. Being told they only wanted her for one thing. Trying not to be curious what that one thing felt like.
“I don’t need to do that, Ma. I don’t need to look for someone to take care of me. I want to take care of myself first.” Anya stood up to her mother, clenching her hands into fists. Her mother meant well, but she didn’t understand. How free could Anya be if she tied herself to someone like Kalgrin, for the sake of convenience and kindness? What was the point in being who she was, then? With these dreams? With the desire to do something good?
No point. Not if she didn't create any of that goodness herself. Not if she ended up too much in debt to Kalgrin, and once again became a slave, just in a different format and a prettier prison.
Someone cleared their throat, and Anya gasped in horror as she saw Kalgrin standing there, looking rather sheepish. Oh no. Her cheeks blushed a furious red. “Um,” he said, “I might have overheard some of what you were saying…”
Kendra gave him a flinty look. “I said I wanted privacy.”
“Yes, but we have rather good hearing…” Kalgrin held up his hands in a supplicating gesture. Probably not enough to avoid Kendra's wrath. “I want to say this. It’s true I find Anya… pleasing to look at. But I’m not going to let you persuade her to stay here. However… if you do want to stay in Tarn, there is something you can do,” he said, now addressing Anya. “Something that I think will suit that spirit of yours. Since I don't think you'd be happy working with Seon for too long. Not when you're finally free.”
“I’m listening,” Anya said, once she got over her initial embarrassment of having the drake overhear her mother basically try to sell her off.
How shit, she thought, to know she and her mother kept the mentality of the plantations. To hold onto that desire of being rescued and being taken care of.
Not that she blamed her mother for that thinking, either. Anya knew, however, that if Kalgrin didn’t give her the option to go, even though she liked him – or if her mother forced her to stay here – she’d eventually end up a similar vein of miserable as before. Even if she no longer feared beatings or long, relentless work hours.
“You can work with us. The fort towns, the safehouses. The humans we rescue – they don’t always want to listen to drakes. They’re still deathly afraid. We could do with someone like you helping them.”
An interesting offer. “I’m not fully trusting, either. I don’t… I don’t know how to trust you. Even with all this.” She indicated her family. The stone in her throat made it hard to speak. Her words constricted on themselves, as if expecting negative backlash from her audacity. “It’s all just too good to be true. I’m waiting for something bad to happen.”
“I know.” He looked sad. “I see it.”
They fell into brief silence as Anya digested his words. His sincerity. What a depressing thing for him to say. To reveal the extent of her thoughts, to see her destroying herself from the inside out.
This needs to change. I'm not in that place anymore. I don't need to be that person. “How would this new job work?”
The drake licked his lips. His gray eyes never left hers as he replied, “One step at a time. We’ll start with you rehabilitating the humans we have here. We can’t send them all to the same places – there’s not always enough room. Mostly you would reassure them they’re safe and that their lives will be different. Try and tell them we’re not the enemy. They’ll listen to you.” He paced up and down the room then. “And… I can get you a place at the inn until you’ve earned enough coin to live in a house of your own. Seon can have a word with the owner, and the rooms are cheap anyway. We’ll pay you for your work in helping others.”
She considered his offer. On one hand, she had a life going to some unknown place, a human fort with her mother and four younger siblings and her wizened grandpa. Something unknown but probably exciting. Not seeing Kalgrin again, or that smile. Not being able to understand who he was.
On the other hand, a life helping other people in her position. People whose souls had been ground into nothing.
Yes, she thought. I like that. I can do something. I can be something. I'll help people then. People who never helped themselves.
The idea of being placed in such a position – to live in a place of her own, to earn coin instead of food scraps – opened a whole new realm of possibility.
A human able to make her own way in life.
It wasn’t a choice for her, really. The way ahead shone clear. Maybe she'd feel a little sad not being in the same house as Kalgrin. But it was never meant to be for long, anyway. “I’d like that,” she said, giving Kalgrin a grateful smile. “Helping other people. I’d like that very much.”