Caden's Comet Read online

  I sat down on the sofa, avoiding the exposed springs, and laid the picture on my lap.

  “So he’ll die eventually?” Blair asked as she carefully eased onto the other cushion.

  “From what I understand from Skelly’s stories, Merlin is like the wizards’ phoenixes. He dies and is reborn, only he doesn’t take the same shape twice. He can’t remember his past until a certain spell is cast, which got quite confusing when the sorceresses were looking for Merlin and the little boy was right under their noses.”

  “That must get very overwhelming, to wake up in a world where everyone you’ve ever loved is gone.”

  “Yes, it must.” I thought about the spell cast by the Artists, the ones who had spared Caden—Blair, I reminded myself, you know her name now—and the pain of living a hundred lives alone.

  But if this was what I’d waited thousands of years for, why didn’t it feel better?

  An awkward silence ensued. I knew Blair wanted me to kiss her, and I felt compelled to… but I no longer trusted that impulse, because I knew it was destiny and not me driving my lips to hers. I would not be a pawn in a chess game played by the Artists, even if it was for the greater good. Though Sara Lee had disappeared when I was a young boy, I had still inherited much of her personality—especially the stubborn determination to make my own rules—and nothing could change that.

  If I was going to spend my life with Blair, I would choose to do so out of true love.

  “I’m really tired,” I said as I stood up quickly. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Want me to tuck you in?” Blair teased, but I didn’t smile.

  Carrying my takeout container up with me, I found Merlin’s room and closed the door before Blair could follow. A few minutes later, music came from the living room—something classical, like the traditional music of Draman only without the desert drums. Apparently, this house still had electricity—or was running on some kind of magic spell. Knowing Merlin’s sentimentality for things from the past, he’d probably enchanted the place.

  The room was mostly empty, but several of Merlin’s drawings hung on the walls. As Mani he had been a dreamer, I judged by the sketches of knights and warlocks and bridge trolls, even before he knew about his magic. Besides the portraits of women who were obviously Allanah and Dena—hard to miss the red hair and green skin—all of the people in the drawings were men.

  Casting aside my uneaten food, I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the bed. Even though the room was much different than my own childhood bedroom, filled with its plethora of rich velvet furnishings and as many toys as a prince could ask for, Merlin’s space was still comforting for the same reason: it reminded me of a simpler time. A time before the Mother sent me to Earth, and before Sara Lee disappeared, and before I knew I was different than everyone else on Draman.

  Eventually the music stopped. Blair trudged up the steps and into the master bedroom, and then there was only the silence of the old house. Outside my window, nighthawks, similar to the bird with the same name on Draman, swooped by while hunting insects. Owls hoo-hooed, and frogs and crickets joined their song.

  As the night grew longer, I imagined my own chants in these desert hymns. Hoo-hoo. Go-go. Ribbet-ribbet. Escape-Escape. I knew that running away from my destiny was wrong, but that staying was worse—eventually I would fall under Blair’s spell completely, too enamored by the good we would do for the other dragons to remember why I couldn’t possibly be in love with her.

  Merlin had a change of clothes in his drawers, and miraculously, we were the same size. I slipped into comfortable khakis and a plain black T-shirt, then found old hiking boots in the back corner of his otherwise empty closet. I had no socks, but my feet were resilient from the years of army training Nimue had put me through in Sara Lee’s honor; a few blisters would not slow me down.

  I’m sorry, I scribbled on the back of one of Merlin’s drawings with a nub of pencil I found on the floor. It’s not you. This note I lay on the pillow, where I knew Blair would find it the next morning when she came to wake me for our second trip to Maude’s.

  In less than a minute, I was out the front door.

  IN THE desert I felt stripped of my title and all the baggage that came along with being the savior of not just one but four dragon clans. I was no longer Prince Grian; I was just plain old Grian, native of Draman and desperate for home. How could I have left my poor mother alone in her grief without even saying good-bye? I wondered as I wandered through the emptiness. And now that I’ve found my soulmate, why can’t I feel at peace? Perhaps it was the eyes…. Though Blair’s eyes were dark, they still didn’t quite match the ones I’d seen in my dream.

  I wandered farther and farther, not bothering to transition because I had no specific goal. I could not return to Merlin without Blair or an explanation as to why I’d left my beloved in his parents’ house, and I knew no one else on Earth who would welcome me.

  Beneath my feet the dirt slipped and then packed, marking my footsteps. I didn’t care; I’d be long gone by the time Blair woke in the morning.

  To my right I spotted the skull of an animal—a deer, perhaps—stripped clean of its flesh, and wandered over to take a look. And good thing I did, since only from that angle would I have spotted the comet.

  The tail of the comet glowed white as the icy body emitted a visible atmosphere of gas. The body headed straight toward Earth from its origin, most likely the outer solar system, emitting an explosion of meteors visible to the naked eye. That’s strange, I thought as the comet came closer. It should be breaking apart by now.

  But it didn’t break apart. Instead, the comet came closer and closer, until I realized too late that it was going to impact right near where I stood. I turned to run, but the comet fell too fast, and the impact sent me flying into the air.

  The last thing I remembered, as I soared through space and collided with the desert, was a strange blue glow.

  Chapter Nine

  “MERLIN?”

  Someone turned me over and poured water over my face. I sputtered, then sat up so quickly that I immediately felt dizzy and had to lie down again. An ant wandered into my hair, unaware of the most recent explosion, but I didn’t care.

  “What happened?” I asked Blair, who had poured the water on me.

  “I was going to ask you the same question. One minute we’re at Allanah and Dena’s house, and the next, I get a note from you that you’re leaving and it’s not my fault. I follow your footprints here, but when I arrive, you’re flat on the ground and this weird crater is in the middle of the desert. So what happened?”

  She lifted my head enough for me to see the gap where the comet had impacted the earth.

  “Help me up,” I said as I struggled to my feet. Leaning on her arm, I managed to stand without falling back down, though the strange ringing in my ears continued.

  “We’re not even going to talk about the fact that we’re the Grian and Caden from your story?” she asked, returning her hands to her hips once I found my balance.

  I would never understand women like Blair. There was a crater the size of a mall in the middle of the desert, and she wanted to talk about our relationship.

  “We are going to talk about this, just not right now. Right now we’re going to figure out where this comet came from, and then we’re going to find Merlin and tell him about it.”

  “It came from space,” she said matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t read too much into it.”

  But I had already wandered to the edge of the crater, acting on an impulse I couldn’t quite explain. Something was down there, and I needed to know what it was.

  “Be careful.” She joined me at the edge. “It could be dangerous.”

  I didn’t need to take a single step. Strange sounds came from the darkness, and then a face emerged from what should have been an empty crater.

  “Help,” a voice rasped.

  The sound came from a young man covered in red dirt who appeared, head by shoulders by torso,
in the bare bit of moonlight. Blair and I each took one of his hands and pulled him up, and he fell, face-first, into the dust. After coughing so long I thought he might die, he spit a few feet away and became still.

  “You still alive down there?” I asked, trying to catch sight of the man’s face.

  “Barely. When you’ve escaped the hellish place that I have on the back of a comet, you’ll understand the torment of the past few days. Now help me up—I need to find a place to hide before they come after me.”

  “Who?” Blair asked as she dusted off his back and then reached for his elbow.

  “Shull and his gang.”

  As he stood, the young man brushed his face off with his sleeve. What appeared in place of the red dust was a beautiful black man. He was thin but fit, as though he had spent his days in menial labor or prison.

  “Blair?” the young man asked when he saw the girl in front of him. “Is that really you?”

  “Easton?” Blair blinked rapidly. “But it can’t be you.”

  “It is, I promise. Are you real, sister?” The man, apparently named Easton, embraced Blair. “I’ve waited so many years for this moment.”

  Nothing was making any sense. Since when did Blair have a brother named Easton? Was his disappearance the great tragedy Jeanette had referred to?

  When his eyes locked on mine over Blair’s shoulder, something changed in Easton’s face. Even when the embrace ended, he kept staring at me, and I at him. He opened his mouth to say something a few times, but no words came out.

  “Is something going on here that I don’t know about?” Blair asked suspiciously. “Do you know my brother?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But why didn’t you mention you had a brother named Easton this whole time?”

  “Because he’s been gone for years. God, Grian, I didn’t think you’d care considering you never mentioned being a Sun Dragon or from Draman or the million other things you withheld. And he hates being called Easton—he goes by Caden.”

  The name echoed in the silence of the desert. Blair put a hand over her mouth, but there was no taking back what she had said, and she knew it. There was only one real Caden, and it wasn’t her.

  “Pleased to meet you, Caden,” I said as I put out my hand. “My name is Grian.”

  When our hands touched, a flash of yellow light so bright that even I had to look away beamed in all directions.

  AFTER WE got back to the house, Blair ran upstairs to the master bedroom without a word. Though the house was silent, I knew that she was probably crying into one of the pillows. Caden went up to talk to her for a while, but she didn’t seem to want to see me.

  “I feel terrible,” I said to Caden, who was downing the leftover sandwich from Maude’s.

  “Don’t. Blair has always been a sensitive girl, but she bounces back quickly. She’ll be over this in no time, I promise.”

  He and I had avoided touching since the episode in the desert—sending out beacons of light wasn’t exactly the best way to stay hidden—and now that we could touch under the house’s invisibility spell, we were too shy.

  “Why did Shull take you away?” I asked, trying to make small talk.

  “At the time, I thought it was to get a ransom from my parents or something. Now that I’ve met you, though, it’s obvious he knew who I was and wanted to keep me as far from Earth as possible. And you can’t get much farther than outer space.”

  “But how did you escape?” I asked as I began to clean up the kitchen. Debris was everywhere, and I’d need a good broom or mop before the place looked even mildly livable.

  Caden shrugged. “It was really weird. One minute I was digging holes on this new planet Shull plans to add to his collection, and the next, this strange little—well, come to think of it, I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman. But anyway, this strange creature with a weird boney dragon body emerged and set me free.”

  “This creature”—I asked, accidentally letting a bunch of the dust captured in my palms float back to the floor—“was their name Skelly?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right! Skelly. Some kind of fairy godparent or something. It used a kind of magic I’ve never seen before to break off my chains and put me inside the comet, and the next thing I knew, I was impacting Earth.”

  If Skelly was playing a part in this, I wished they would just come to Earth and help. Were certain people forbidden from entering the Earth’s atmosphere as Bone Dragons, or were there other forces at play?

  “Maybe you should go talk to Blair,” Caden suggested, breaking into my thoughts.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. I already spoke to her, but I think you’re the one she wants to see. Try using logic—that’s what usually persuades me to curb my anger.”

  I doubted logic would work on Blair, but I trudged upstairs anyway with a cup of hot water and an ancient tea bag I’d found in the cabinet. The master bedroom door was closed but not locked, and when I tried the knob, it swung open. Blair was tucked under the covers, looking like a New Mexico mountain under the rusty red blanket, and she didn’t move when I sat down next to her.

  “So… you’re gay?” Blair asked finally.

  “Yes.”

  “But you kissed me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I did, I promise. It was different, but familiar at the same time.”

  “Because you like me? Or because I look like my brother and he’s your soulmate, the person you’re destined to be with for all of time?”

  I cringed. Blair made it hard to be truthful because whatever I said would be wrong.

  “Both,” I finally admitted. “I really do like you. You’re easy to talk to, attractive, and outspoken in a way that drives me crazy but is also refreshing after a lifetime of proper meetings in court. I thought it was weird that I liked you since I’d never liked a girl before, but when I found out your last name, I just assumed that destiny had other plans for me.”

  My words seemed to settle her, and she uncurled herself and then set her head on the pillow. I took her hand, still dusty from the trek across the desert.

  Within minutes she was sound asleep.

  “How did it go?” Caden asked when I returned downstairs. After finishing his sandwich, he had apparently found a way to make the TV work, and a news channel played on mute.

  “Better than I expected.” I investigated the back of the TV, then held up the power cord. “This isn’t plugged in.”

  “I know. That beautiful flat screen is running on pure magic. My magic, although there is an alternative source here that I could have tapped into.”

  Even after everything that had happened that night, this explanation still surprised me more than it should have.

  “You have magic?”

  “Just basic stuff. My grandmother and grandfather were Level Twos, and my mother was nothing but a dragon carrier. Yet she bore two dragon children, one of which has a touch of magic too. That woman had one amazing gene pool—in fact, I’m studying it as a side project, or at least I was before I got taken prisoner. I love science, and my magic makes me handy with machines for some reason. How about you?”

  I shook my head no.

  “You sure? Think about the great Allanah; she didn’t find out she had powers until she was a teenager, and she turned out to be the most powerful witch of all time.”

  “I’m no Allanah, Caden.” I overcame my awkwardness and sat down on the couch next to him. “I’m just a prince who’s very far from home.”

  Caden raised his eyebrows. “Now I know that’s a bunch of bull. Let’s examine this logically: you’re the first Sun Dragon who isn’t a pet since… I don’t know all of the facts, so let’s just say a very long time. You’re the prince of the Bone Dragons on Draman, yet you somehow managed to get all the way to Earth and find me in just a few days. You look like a model, but you don’t have an attitude about it. From where I sit, you’re already pretty incredible.”

  My
cheeks grew warm, and I hoped the room was dark enough to hide the rosy tint blooming up my neck.

  “Why don’t you try it?” Caden said.

  “Try what?” I had trouble keeping my mind on the conversation when he sat so close to me.

  “Magic.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.” I looked down at my hands, the smooth white planes of their palms, and then gave Caden a doubtful look. “Shouldn’t light be beaming out of my hands uncontrollably or something?”

  “Sometimes, but not always. I’ve been interested in machines my whole life, but it took me years to realize the ‘fixing’ I was doing was actually magic.”

  I looked helplessly around the room. “To be honest, I’m not really good at anything. As a prince I’m required to be decent at everything—music, literature, athletics, politics—but I’m not actually talented in any one field.”

  “You’re talented at making sunbeams when you take my hand,” Caden pointed out.

  “Me? I thought that was you.”

  Caden shook his head. “I’m an Earth Dragon. We don’t make sunbeams, remember?” Then he gripped my arm. “That’s it! Your magic must come from the sun, and to use it, you must harness those beams. Think of yourself like a solar panel.”

  Easier said than done, I thought, and I don’t even know what a solar panel is. I humored him anyway by closing my eyes and concentrating on the beams of the sun, then imagining them eviscerating the rocking chair on the other side of the room. I used my hands to try to force the beams out, then shook them off like I was drying them after a wash. I stood; I sat; I jumped on the sofa and crouched on the floor. I even tried whispering some of the magic words I’d heard Merlin use.

  Nothing happened.

  “All right, tiger,” Caden said as he pulled me down from where I stood on the arm of the sofa mumbling magical words. “Don’t hurt yourself.”