Mother set me down in front of our home and ran in the direction of the MotherTree. HoPa, LoPa, and my brothers returned.

  HoPa said, “Where’s your mother?”

  My lip trembled, “She ran that way.” I pointed the direction she went.

  LoPa came and pulled me into his arms, “My dear sweet moon. It’s all right. Mother knows what she’s doing. She’ll be back soon. Everything will be fine.”

  Akmuo and Medis were tense, their hands clasped together. The day wore on slowly. Time dragged. HoPa and LoPa tried to distract us, but all our thoughts were turned towards mother’s absence. Even LoPa and HoPa were disturbed, though they tried to hide it.

  She didn’t return till after we had eaten dinner.

  I saw her first. Her expression dark and sour. It shocked me, choked the breath from me.

  Looking back, I see now how much darkness my mother held inside her. All the people she had killed and watched die. The music she lost and how she searched for it always. Had she found it then, I think she would have left us all. Even me. It’s not something I felt, but something I see now in all those quiet family moments where she stared off into the trees, hoping. Its absence left a hole in her that she filled with the dead. But there were no more battles to be fought. No more dead to count.

  When she saw me, the mask fell and she smiled brightly.

  “Momma’s back!” I ran to her.

  She laughed and scooped me up, “Miss me?”

  I clung to her. Her smell was all I wanted. I buried my face in her skin and rubbed my cheeks against her to make her scent stick. My eyes closed, I looked for the brief crack in her smile I saw but there was nothing for my child eyes to see. Only the power and love she carried.

  Medis said, “Why are the other clans running?”

  HoPa hissed at him but mother said, “A dragon.”

  LoPa laughed. A soft tinkling sound. Mother put me down, but I held onto her leg.

  Akmuo’s expression was caught between fear and confusion. Medis scowled, like he always did when he didn’t understand. HoPa only folded his arms, “Is it true?”

  Mother shrugged then sat beside the fire. “It’s something. You don’t leave your life behind over nothing. The Boar Clan believes it.”

  “A plague, maybe.” HoPa’s sonorous voice fell over us.

  “They didn’t seem ill.”

  HoPa shook his head, “But the tale of a plague spread over a sea of clans can become monstrous and mythic.”

  LoPa’s expression was so full of fear, so absent of his initial laughter. “We can’t stay here. We need to leave.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “That’s what First Mother and the shamans agreed upon.” Mother’s voice was distant despite her smile, which turned sadder and sadder as they spoke.

  “When do we leave?” HoPa said.

  Without waiting for an answer, LoPa ran inside and began packing things, tearing them out of the little raised hill that was our home. Akmuo and Medis, unsure of what to do, helped LoPa. Mother stared at her hands and then the fire. She touched her sword, then wrapped her fingers round its hilt. She pulled it from its sheath and held it in her hands.

  All of us stopped and turned to her.

  In the firelight, she and it seemed to glow. Her halo of black hair melted into the shadows and her dark skin drank in the flames. She said nothing, but I could hear her, even from across the fire. I heard the way her heart spoke to her, of the gods and the forest songs, of her family and clan, of the life she must choose and the one she must leave behind. The daughter of the Blade of God. It defined her even then, just as I’m still defined by her. The stories grown so thick and dense round her that little of the truth remains. Both she and I are lost in the tangled web of legends.

  HoPa crossed the fire and took her hand, “When do we go, heart?”

  My mother raised her face to him. A tear had rolled down her cheek, leaving only the wet trace of its journey on her skin. Her voice was a whisper that I didn’t hear.

  HoPa’s voice fell like a tree, “Dain, put it all back.”

  My brothers looked so pitiful. Torn by anxiety. Biting their lips, holding hands, shaking. I was chewing the dead skin from my fingertips so aggressively that three of my fingers were bleeding before mother put a hand over mine.

  But LoPa’s face was terrified. “It’s a fucking dragon! I’ve seen them! This isn’t like a story or even the wolf you saw so long ago. It’s not even like the Angels. A dragon is—they’re fire made flesh!” He stood, his hands shaking and gesticulating to punctuate his points. “Power incarnate. Their roars crack the sky and their breath melts mountains. They can dry out the oceans. It’s not something that can be fought. At best, it might talk to us. That’s what the dragonlords are. They don’t fight dragons—”

  HoPa stood too, “Put it back. Muo, Med, you help too. Don’t—”

  LoPa was screaming now, “No one fights dragons! They’re called dragonlords because dragons choose to speak to them. That’s it. Because a dragon is willing to speak to them, they’re made into legends. If a dragon is really coming, there’s nothing we can do to stop them. All we can do is run away, and hope our home is still here when we get back.”

  Mother stood, her sword still in hand. Her gaze fell hard on LoPa and he withered beneath her glare.

  Collapsing into the ground and shaking his head, LoPa said, “You can’t.” Tears burst from his eyes and he ripped out grass, his voice plaintive. “We can’t stay. You can’t make us.”

  Medis and Akmuo shook from fear or rage or confusion.

  HoPa turned to us, his eyes hard but a smile grafted to his face. “Go on, Muo, Med. Take our little moon with you.”

  Their words became faint and far away the farther we went.

  We walked, serenaded by a thousand thousand cicadas singing in the forest. Akmuo and Medis held hands the way they did in sleep. No words passed between them, but I knew I was outside of a conversation they were having. The kind that only twins can have. My skin burned from the inside. The weight of the night stole my breath and slowed my heart. It seemed darker than any night before, despite the glow of the seven moons.

  We stopped at the forest’s edge and Akmuo said, “I’m afraid.”

  “It’s normal to be afraid,” Medis said, his voice quiet and delicate.

  I stared out into the forest. The deep shadows that hid it from me. I closed my eyes and tried to hear what my mother heard when she was a child. That song that pulled her away from her people and towards the infinite.

  “What’ll happen?” Akmuo’s voice was thick and deep.

  Medis only shook his head and turned to me, “We’re going to be fine. Mother will save us. She’ll save all of us.”

  It hit me like a stone.

  Looking back, I had no idea how bad it would become. Even so, it broke my bones and splintered my heart. I wept in the arms of my brothers. I remember the heat of their skin, their galloping hearts, and all their comforting words that did nothing to slow the tears.