Chapter 30: Becoming a mother

 

If you do one thing right, you mother will expect you to do everything right.

-Krack

 

“You can’t leave,” Leenda said.

She held out a hand in a pitiful gesture; she might as well try to stop a river by extending her hand as stop a draegon. Yet she’d already lost Wrend tonight—at least temporarily—and she refused to lose her son as well.

He stepped close to her. With his wings spread wide, he concealed most of the sky, although some starlight filtered through the canvas wings, emphasizing the veins that branched throughout the wings in an organic latticework. His fur gave his body a blurry boundary. His eyes glinted with menace.

She almost shrunk away. No wonder humans feared draegons. No wonder the gods had driven them into obscurity.

“Why should I stay,” he said, “if you’re not going to let me help you?”

“Of course I want you to help me.”

“No you don’t. You stopped me from helping you. You told me to back down.”

“I didn’t want you to scare him. That didn’t help.”

He stared down at her for several seconds, his expression flat and unreadable in the darkness. Then he brought his face low, even with hers. His horns, which curved down from above and behind his eyes, to a point below his hairy chin, nearly touched the ground. His warm breath smelled of beef.

“Well, I’ve done what I agreed to do,” he said. “Why should I stay any longer?”

 “Because your work isn’t done. Not until you’ve helped me reclaim your father.”

“I have no father. He was lost to me years ago—along with my mother.”

The words’ accuracy pained her. She didn’t know how to respond. Twenty years before she could have, but she’d spent too much time in a human body, thinking human thoughts, to know how to be a draegon mother anymore.

“Krack, you have to help me. We can’t leave your father behind.”

“He doesn’t even want to come with you. Why should we force him? He seems happy as a human.”

“He’s not happy as a human.”

She said it with certainty she didn’t feel. Wrend knew no difference between living as a human and a draegon; why would he choose to be a draegon again?

The question troubled her. From her perspective, the answer shone bright and clear—because draegons were inherently nobler and stronger than humans. But from his point of view, he would leave his entire life behind. Even if he came to admit that he had a draegon’s soul, why would he change? What advantage would he find in it? She didn’t know, but she needed to give him a reason. A compelling one.

“Oh, no,” Krack said in a sarcastic tone, with grunts and clipped-short growls. He tilted his head from side to side. “He’s fed all the food he wants and lives in comfortable surroundings, with servants to do his bidding and no enemies to fear. How could he be happy living like that?”

Leenda shook her head, trying to clear it of the doubts and fears Krack had planted. She couldn’t let this argument be about Wrend’s eventual willingness, or lack thereof, to become a draegon again. She would convince him. Somehow, eventually she would. Right now, she needed to talk her son into sticking around, so she could teach him how to become a proper draegon.

And that was exactly the opportunity she’d been presented with—to teach him how to be a draegon.

At her extended pause, he’d begun to turn away. But even if he’d become wild and untamed, he still had the soul of a draegon. He still bore the pride that all draegons possessed, and she could use it against him to help him become a better draegon.

Again, guilt became her best tool.

He'd turned enough that one wing hovered over her and his head faced away. She stopped him with her words.

“Krack. One draegon does not leave another in need. That’s the kind of thing a human would do, not a draegon.”

His long neck snaked around, and he tilted his head to one side. He considered her for several long moments.

“I wouldn’t know. The draegon who should have taught me abandoned me—left me with a tired old hag that didn’t care whether I came or went.”

Guilt, it seemed, was also his weapon of choice.

She pursed her lips and swallowed hard. Somewhere in his comments and in the logic of the conversation hid a way for her to convince him.

“You seem to regret my absence.”

He looked away. “I did, at one time.”

“But no longer?”

Her heart thundered at the prospect of him answering, especially as he remained silent for a long while, looking out over the desert. The starlight cast a slight glow over the sagebrush and grass, just enough to give the ground an uneven look. Krack shifted his paws in the dirt and his tail adjusted away from a bush; the noise of his movement seemed loud in the stillness.

“In the mountains,” he said. “There’s no one to talk with. No other draegons.”

There it was. There was the logic: he harbored such bitterness at her for leaving him, for not being there to teach him—now that she had the opportunity to mentor him, he could not remain consistent by rejecting her offer to instruct him.

“Well,” she said, “I’ll talk with you.”

His head snapped around, and again lowered his face until it was only a few feet from hers.

“This isn’t about me. Don’t pretend it is. It’s always been about you and your mate. You only want me around for my size.”

“That's ridiculous.”

"Is it? Why did you finally come back to the lair? Why did you want me to come with you? Would you have stayed with me if you hadn't needed me? Would you have brought me with you? Or would you have even bothered with me, at all?"

She couldn't answer those questions. He was right—but only to a degree. She did care about him. Didn't she?

She looked deep and hard and fast, and saw that yes, she did. She’d merely forgotten it. He hadn’t been a focus for her at all, even since she’d gone to his lair just a few days before and resolved to teach him. But he needed to be a priority. She had to make his education and upbringing—what was left of it—a focus for herself.

And he needed a strong hand. Discipline. A parent. After all, despite his size, he was still an adolescent. A teenager.

“Krack, you’re staying.”

He grunted. “I’ll decide when to leave. You can’t keep me here.”

She shrugged. “You’re staying. I’m your mother. I may not have been a good one until now—but I’m ready to change. And you will do as I tell you to. A draegon respects his mother. And his father.”

Again, he looked at her for a long time without speaking. When he did growl, it was with clipped-short sarcasm.

“Very well. I’ll do as my mother commands.”

She nodded, satisfied. It was a start. A poor one. But a start, nonetheless.

And as she learned soon enough, a good start still does not make the middle of a difficult journey much easier.