Hidden Wings

Chapter 14

   Trust is a powerful thing. Like a heart, it can be won, broken, and healed. Or it can hide within itself, slowly shrinking until it is nothing, worthless. Putting trust in trust itself sounds like a cookie-cutter greeting-card phrase, something one hears all the time but never really comprehends.
   Maria had never really known what it was like to fully trust in anything but herself. She had always been reliant on her own abilities. She hadn't felt weakness, hadn't needed to trust.
    It wasn't always like a bridge that you trust to hold when you step onto it. This was more like a rope. A rope that could catch you when you fell, but only if you reached out to grasp it. Or you could go on falling. Falling back into something that you had known all your life, something that would go the way it always had... Until when? Until you hit the ground? Would there be another rope?
   This is my rope. Maria thought. My time, my chance, my life. The words flowed through her head with a melody all their own. Her time was now. Her chance was hers to take. Her life...
   This was what life was. A chance. A risk. If you didn't take risks, what was there to gain? Life was full of risks, but maybe life itself was what you gained by taking them. I will trust these dragons. And when I do, they will trust me. I will try not to fail them.
    "I will." Maria declared. "I will trust you."
    Angelica lifted the Dragon Crystal from Maria's neck and closed a fist around it, her eyes aglow with joy that she carefully kept off her face. The intensity of the atmosphere felt tense, like a thread stretched to its limit. The entire world seem to be holding its breath.
   The Queen extended the talon holding the Crystal and, lifting her other talon, swiped one claw across her own wrist so swiftly that all Maria saw was a flash of silver. A drop of blood welled from the cut she had made, a tiny dark orb, flashing in the sunlight. Maria stared at it in silent anticipation.
   Angelica opened the mouth of the silver dragon and let it swallow the maroon orb. Then, she lifted the Crystal and held it so that the sharp point of the dragon's tail curved outward. The Queen took Maria's wrist in her free talon and turned it over so that her palm lay open, facing the azure sky above. A quick swipe, and the tiny dragon's tail had pierced the skin of her wrist. She lifted the Crystal again, and a drop of blood disappeared down the dragon's throat.
   "It was the human blood taken into the Crystal that brought you back to your human form," Angelica said, closing the dragon's mouth. "The Crystal now holds your blood and mine." She gently hung the necklace around Maria's neck. "Whenever you wear it, it will remember. It will keep us safe." She cupped Maria's face in her talon and smiled. "You now have dragon blood."
   The Queen pulled back her talon and turned to the crowd, holding Maria's hand up in the air, so high that Maria thought she might lift right off the ground and soar up into the sky. The Queen's voice rang out like a bell into the perfect, clear, waiting air. "Dragons of Blue Mountain! I give you Maria, The Dragon Guardian!"
    And then the crowd was storming forth a tsunami, fast and strong and unstoppable. Angelica released her hand and Maria let herself be carried away by the churning current of wings and tails and claws. It was warm here, the air itself seeming to pulse with energy and crackle with joy. Suddenly she was being lifted, raised up amount the rejoicing dragons, and she was standing, elevated above the shifting crowd. They were all laughing and smiling. And pointing. At something behind her. Oh no.
   Maria whirled around just in time to see Spry flying toward her at a break-neck pace, faster than she'd ever seen him go before. Then the dragon holding her turned her around and tossed her up, up, up, into the air. Maria screamed.
   And then she was riding the wind. Her beautiful green charge beat his summer green wings, and they rose above the crowd into the blue sky all around. Maria screamed again, but the wind snatched her voice. Even her fear couldn't quell the swelling happiness in her chest. Spry gave a cry of joy as they rose, laughing. And Maria held on for dear life. But she knew if she fell, Spry was her rope. He would catch her. Always.