Emory’s smile faded. The color from his face drained away. Ama watched his eyes dart over her glass dragon, from its amber eyes to its spike-tipped tail, down the spiny scales of its broad back, across its vast wings, folded in at its sides.
“What have you done?” he whispered.
“It came from me,” Ama said. “I do not know where, or why, but, Emory, I think it is my own self trying to tell me something. I want to know more, Emory. I want you to tell me about the day you rescued me from the dragon.”
“It does not matter,” Emory said, his eyes still ensnared by Ama’s creation.
“It does!” Ama’s insistence rang loud. “It does matter. I must know, Emory, please. Tell me—why was I in that castle? How did I come to be trapped by the beast? Why was I unharmed when you found me? And what happened to the dragon?”
Emory’s gaze snapped away from the sculpture, and to Ama. “I told you. I conquered the dragon. I rescued you from it.”
“So you say.” Ama grew insistent with impatience. “But . . . you conquered it how? You rescued me how?”
“Ama,” said Emory. His voice had shifted, become softer, cloying. “Some things are just better for you to entrust to me. If you had need of such knowledge, surely I would have given it to you. Have you not yet learned that I have your interest at heart? Think of Sorrow. Had you but listened to me when I first said that wild beasts do not make good pets, think of how much heartache you could have saved yourself, having to learn that lesson the hard way.”
Ama did think of the lynx. She remembered the playfulness of her, as a kitten, in that grassy field. She remembered, too, the look in the mother cat’s eyes. The look of recognition that Ama would not hurt her kit, and then the look, seconds later, when the pickax had struck her.
“Had you not needlessly killed Fury’s mother, I would never have taken her as a pet,” Ama said. Her heart beat faster, hotter, in her chest.
“Fury?”
“That is what I call her now. She is Sorrow no more. She is Fury, and she is free.”
This angered Emory, that was clear. He strode closer, until Ama felt his breath on her face. “Say another word,” he threatened, “and I shall set Pawlin and Isolda after your Fury. They shall hunt her, and they shall find her, and our son shall sleep in a cradle lined in her pelt.”
Now the heat of Ama’s blood roared in her ears. “You would not,” she said.
“Indeed I would, and I will,” Emory said. As Ama heated, so Emory seemed to cool and calm, as if he believed that all of Ama’s fire and anger could amount to nothing.
“I believe your time in the glassblower’s presence and his humoring your desires to . . . make such things as this”—and here he waved a dismissive hand at Ama’s dragon—“has filled your head with all the wrong ideas. You see, Ama, it is for men to create. It is for men to decide. It is for men to speak. It is your place to listen, and follow, and gestate. And those are no small things! For without women to listen, how would the men’s words be heard? Without your fertile womb, how could my son hope to grow? You are important, Ama. Desperately important. But do not overreach.”
“Tell me how I came to be here,” Ama said. “Tell me where the dragon is.”
“The dragon is gone,” Emory said. “I conquered the dragon, and you should thank me well for the favor rather than being a thorn to me. Upstairs, your girl waits to dress you for the altar. The prior readies the chapel for our nuptials. The cooks in the kitchen prepare a great feast. The musicians tune their instruments. All of them wait, and for what? A girl. No more. Just a girl.”
“Where is the dragon?” Ama said again. A scent—a sweet-spice tang—filled her nostrils.
“Gone!” shouted Emory, and he took his arm and slashed it into Ama’s creation. It happened too fast for Ama to stop him. Her dragon shot across the table and fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand tinkling, impossible pieces.
“Gone!” Emory said again, his voice now triumphant. “Do you not see how lucky you are to be freed of that dragon? You have no idea. I saved you from a life of meaningless solitude and monstrosity. I made you beautiful and I brought you here to be a queen. You, Ama, were nothing until I lifted you. Until I took you from that place. I am a hero, Ama. A savior. I am a king. And I demand you treat me as such!”
But Ama did not see Emory now. She barely heard him, as if his voice came from far away. She was in a great room, surrounded by great beauty—sculptures of jewels, collected and hoarded and transformed into carefully constructed dances of color, shape, and light, each of which told a story, called forth an emotion: Here, in citrines and diamonds, a monument to spring, and hope, and youth. There, in rubies of all shades and shapes, an angry roar and blood spilled in battle. Under a wide window, a twisting river in emeralds and sapphires, dotted with diamonds to make the water glint.
The great hall was a sanctuary; the gems, its altar.
And Emory had come to destroy it, just as he had ruined her glass dragon.
She had been the artist. She had been the dragon.
Ama looked up from her shattered glass, into Emory’s face. “You,” she said.
And Emory saw that she knew. He lifted his chin. “And what of it?” he said. “Without me, what would you be? A monster? I made you beautiful.”
“Without you,” Ama said, “I would be free.”
“Oh, free,” said Emory, with a wave of his hand.
The sweet-spice tang of her own dragonness wafted now from her skin. Emory thought freedom was not so important. And he thought the dragon was gone.
How many other ways, Ama wondered, was Emory wrong?
“You tricked me back in my lair,” Ama said.
“Not hard,” Emory countered. “I used my brain, that’s all. My first weapon. Dragons cannot see shade or shadow. Only shine and light.”
And then Ama saw, in a flash, her first home—the great amber orb from whence she had come—the sun, her beloved, a riotous monster of explosive flames. The sun, her own heart made large. She came from the orange-red fuzz of its curve; she came from the roil and boil of its skin; she came from the explosive jets of liquid flame; she came from the quiet dance of whorls and swirls; she came from its glitter and its shine; she came from its movement and its silence. She came from the rivers of plasma, the sprays of flaming crimson, the ribbons of copper, the constantly changing, living, breathing, beating, churning, yearning orb.
She was of the sun and from the sun. She was not a plaything of this little man.
“You stabbed me with your steel,” Ama said.
“I did. My second weapon. I found the unprotected flesh beneath your arm. I pierced you good, I did.”
Ama remembered the blade going in, the surprise of it. She saw herself biting at the wound, desperate to extract the metal from within her flesh. She felt her teeth connect with the sword’s shaft, she remembered how it felt to pull it out, the rush and gush of blood that came with it.
“And then,” said Ama.
“Yes,” Emory said. “It takes three weapons to conquer a dragon and free a damsel. My brain. My steel. And my yard.”
Ama’s End
“Your yard,” Ama said.
“You should thank me,” Emory repeated. “You—the dragon—managed to extract the steel. The dragon lay and bled, but I knew it would not be long before it rose again, and my sword was gone, so the next time it attacked, I would be done for. There was nothing to lose by trying. And Mother had told me that it takes three weapons to slay a dragon. My yard, I have with me, always.