Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 10 of 29

Ninka stood in the doorway of her cabin and watched the five new ones glow. Crystal trim threw pink and green light onto the grass. From the ridge road, it would look like a fair had opened in the meadow. Luna stepped up beside her, arms crossed against the cold. "An hour," Luna said. "Maybe two, if he stops for gas." Ninka pressed her palms against her eyes. She thought of her father on the ridge, seeing the lights, smiling the way he smiled when he found a thing he had been told he could not have. She thought of the children asleep behind those windows. She had built them a target. "Get me my mother," she said. Luna ran for the eye. Rebecka answered inside three minutes. Her face came through the floating eye pale and tight. Ninka told her fast: the cabins, the light, the ridge, the hours. Rebecka listened without speaking. Then she pulled a ring off her smallest finger and held it up to the eye. Black diamonds. A tiny button at the center. "I was saving this," Rebecka said. "Press the button once. It hides everything the ring can see from above. Lights, heat, magic. It hides you from him too, if you keep it on your hand." "How does it get here." "It's already coming." The smoke came first. Pastel curled down out of the dark, pink and mint and pale gold, and the dragon landed in the meadow without breaking a stalk. White scales. Swirls along the flanks. It lowered its head to Ninka and opened its mouth. The ring sat on its tongue, dry, warm. Ninka took it. She slid it onto her finger. She pressed the button. The cabins did not go dark. They stayed lit for the children inside. But the glow flattened at the walls, as if a hand had cupped each roof. The crystal shine stopped throwing color into the grass. The meadow around the cabins went the color of any meadow at night. Ninka walked twenty steps out and looked back. She could see her own cabin because she stood on the land. She turned toward the ridge and saw nothing but dark. Luna let out a breath. "He'll drive right past." "Unless he already saw them." The dragon lowered its head again. Smoke drifted from its nostrils and settled over Ninka's shoulders. Her heartbeat slowed. She had not asked it to. "Thank you," she said. It lifted and was gone. Ninka stood in the hidden meadow with the ring warm on her finger. The cabins were safe tonight. Her father would pass the ridge and find dark fields. But he would not turn around. He would drive the roads until he found the edge of what the ring could hide, and then he would start walking. She had bought a night. She had not bought morning.