Of Spinning Gold and Song

| Twenty Seven | The Comfrontations

I was breathing hard. My vision was tunneling. It seemed the world was waving around, growing hazy and then sharp, hazy and then sharp. Somehow I was sitting down. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see.

I couldn't. See. Anything.

"Spar?" asked Rosie, her high voice sounding timid and concerned. "Are you okay."

"I'm. Okay." I let out a shuddering breath. "How did you... how did... I..." I didn't know what I was saying.

"He told me," she said, her eyes misty with tears. "I can speak with animals."

I was staring at her. "All along? All along you've been able to speak with animals and you never told me?" That was it. Focus on the trivial facts. That way I didn't have to think about the larger issue. Because if I tried to think of it, I probably just couldn't.

"Well, I mean, when I was younger I spoke with the animals. I really did, but I guess you and everyone else thought I was just making it up, and when I got a little older I thought I was making it up too and I tried to stop. And I just didn't try anymore so I didn't really speak with any of them for years. Until I met the dragon. Pap."

I ignored that last part. "Oh Rosie," I murmured. "Didn't I do everything to keep you from having to grow up?" I vaguely remembered her telling me that she could talk with the animals and me dismissing it as cute and something she, like all other children, would grow out of.

There were a lot of things I wished I could change about my past. This was just the beginning.

"You did," she said. "But I'm twelve now. I'm not a kid. I had to grow up."

Now my eyes were filling up with tears because of course she was right, and Bradyn was right too. She was no child, not anymore. None of us were still innocent after all of this, and especially not after that awful dwarf.

But then again, I supposed in my heart she would still and always be my child. She may be my sister, but I'd raised her and that was what counted to me.

"I know," I said, hugging her. "I'm sorry I doubted you." And I was. I closed my eyes and remembered trying to take her earlier, the first time we had come across the dragon together. But how wrong that would have been because then Pap would be dead.

Pap. Oh skies. I was suddenly more and more aware of the fire bellowing beast that was stomping around beneath me.

"How did you find him?" I asked. But then I shook my head; that was a silly question for of course the dragon had just taken her. I had seen it myself. "How did he find you?"

"He and Mam always suspected I could speak to animals like she could," she said. "When I spoke of it as a child, they had always suspected I had inherited her powers. And then after the dwarf changed him he basically lost all his humanity. He became a dragon, not just in body but in mind too. But then he heard us out singing in the woods. Remember? That day before, you know, everything."

"I remember."

We had gone out to the woods, Bradyn, Rosie and I, to gather berries. Bradyn's mam was going to make a fruit pie because winter was ending, and all the berries were all growing in full swing since it rained in the winter. It didn't snow in Lyvens. But it had been such a beautiful day that we had just had to sing as we skipped along, all our childhood songs.

"So he heard us and apparently our voices are linked to our magic. It made him remember, and then that day in town he just knew he could communicate with me. But he didn't know who he was yet. He just knew that he didn't want to be a dragon anymore; he was hurting. So he took me here and at first I was terrified. I wanted to leave but he wouldn't let me and I thought I was going to end up as dinner or something."