Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 6 of 29

Ninka woke before dawn with a headache pushing behind her eyes. The bottle sat on the table where her mother had placed it the morning before, the rainbow inside curling slow. Luna was asleep by the hearth. Ninka pressed her fingers to her temples. Every time she projected now, she felt it: a tug under her ribs, like a fishing line someone else was holding. Her father was learning her signal. Last night she had cast a small vision to check the road, and by the time she snapped back, the tug had gone tight enough to bruise. She went outside. The meadow was gray. She sat on the step and thought about what the eye had told her, the part she hadn't repeated to Luna. Every projection was a bright thread. Her father was following the threads. If she uncorked the bottle and started calling gifted kids to the cabin while her signal blazed, she would gather them into a trap. She had to shield first. She did not know how. Luna came out barefoot, hair flattened on one side. Ninka told her. Luna sat down hard. "Then we don't project," Luna said. "I have to. I have to see them coming." Luna chewed her lip. She looked toward the sunflowers. "There's an old story my aunt used to tell. About a dragon that breathes calm smoke. It hides a person's mind. She said the fae wells sometimes bring one, if you ask right." "Ask how?" "Burn something you love." Ninka went inside and got the coded log. The dates, the symbols, the four visits looking for the scared woman. She carried it to the well in the northwest corner and dropped it in. She watched the paper drift down and darken. The water hissed. Steam lifted in a column. From the column stepped a dragon the size of a horse, white scales laced with pastel swirls, smoke drifting from its nostrils in soft ribbons. It looked at Ninka with a yellow eye and lowered its head. "Breathe on me," Ninka said. It did. The smoke wrapped her shoulders, warm and sweet, and the tug under her ribs went quiet. She felt the fishing line snap. She stood there and did not feel watched for the first time in years. Luna was crying. Ninka realized she was too. She went back to the cabin, uncorked the bottle, and let the rainbow out. It rose over the roof and threaded into the sky in every direction. The dragon settled in the grass by the door like a large calm dog. Its smoke drifted over the cabin's crystal-flecked roof and made a soft dome that shimmered and held. "He can't feel me now," Ninka said. "But he knows I went dark. That's its own kind of answer." Luna nodded. "Then they'd better walk fast."