CHAPTER 16
Jennifer
The funeral of
Jonathan Scales did not take place in a cemetery. There were none
close enough to the barrier, and Elizabeth decided it would be best
to have guests from both inside and outside. The most suitable
destination was a potato field northwest of town, which gave
everyone involved an excellent view of possible
invasion.
Mercifully, there was
none. Not that Jennifer would have cared if there had been one.
What exactly were they accomplishing, anyway?
They were gathered
around a small handful of dirt, within which must have been some of
the only ashes Jennifer could recall scooping up in the aftermath
of Skip’s attack.
She had begged Eddie
to help her, senseless to the barrier and everything around it.
Beyond that, her memory was shredded by grief. She might have asked
for her mother; she might have screamed at Skip to come out of the
fucking woods and fight like a man; she might have rubbed some of
the dirt cupped in her hand into her face.
She
might.
She might
have.
She . .
.
She had an easier
time remembering her grandfather’s funeral last year, when several
dragons, including her father, had brought the elder’s body to the
cremation plateau in Crescent Valley. From there, his spirit had
traveled to the eternal crescent moon, where it flew in an eternal
host. All dead elders received this honor.
But not Dad. He doesn’t get that.
It wasn’t only
because they were trapped here. It was his sacrifice to his
daughter, a price of birthright he had paid so that dragons who
disliked him would still accept her as the Ancient Furnace. About
half a dozen of those dragons were even assembled here today—a
pitiful fraction of the total available. No beaststalkers from
within the town came to comfort his family, not even the ones his
wife and daughter (and he) had worked with every day for the last
year.
She chewed her tongue
and seethed at the proceedings. Eddie was there, bless him—but he
could not even look at her, much less touch her. Ned Brownfoot was
saying something, as if it mattered. Susan and Gautierre were here
of course, and Catherine. It was good of them to come, she supposed
with a sullen internal shrug. For all the good all this would do
her father, they could be burying pebbles among the
potatoes.
Her mother’s arm
sought her far shoulder. Jennifer allowed it.
And where were these dragons, she fumed,
when my father died? Xavier and the
others—where were they while Skip created that swarm? Warm and cozy
in Crescent Valley, a place I’ve protected even though they didn’t
want me there to begin with?
WHERE WERE THEY? WHY HAVEN’T THEY FOUND SKIP? WHY AREN’T
THEY HUNTING THAT LITTLE SHIT NOW?
Her mother’s hand
felt the tension and began to rub her shoulder. Jennifer shook it
off.
I should stop this, right now. End this so-called funeral.
I should demand Ned Brownfoot take his fucking Missour-eh accent
and sell it somewhere else. I should order Stumpy’s uncle over
there to gather the Blaze and burn the forests down, until Skip
comes screaming out with his eyeballs on fire. I should order Hank
Blacktooth and his psychotic legions to focus their rage on the
real enemy.
I should lead! So what if some of them die? At least
they’ll be dying doing something worthwhile, instead of rotting
away in this town.
This . . . fucking . . . prison . . .
town.
She was stepping
forward to say everything she was thinking when she felt her mother
seize her shoulder with new urgency.
The burning shape of
the seraph approached, the chilled sunrise framing its
flames.
She glared at the
useless thing. “What’s that doing
here?”
“I don’t know,
honey.”
She wanted no part of
it, this thing that had not stopped Skip’s swarm from killing her
father. It was useless. No, worse than useless: it had inspired a
false sense of protection. If it couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop
anything from hurting her father, how could it stop anything from
reaching Eddie? Or her mother? Or herself?
Potatoes under the
seraph’s footsteps popped, and it trailed azure steam. The dragons
on the far side parted and let it come through the
barrier.
“Sweetheart, no.” Her
mother sensed the revolt inside Jennifer and slipped in front of
her. “Let it come.”
Her mother’s face, an
oval of stoic despair, was the only one she didn’t despise in that
moment. It was the only one she could not deny. Jennifer exhaled
and watched the seraph step forward. The air filled with the scent
of burning lavender, and all other sound vanished.
It reached a burning
hand toward the soil containing her father’s remains.
“What is
it—”
“Sshh. Wait.”
Jennifer could see her mother didn’t know, either.
“Mom, that’s all
we’ve got left of him!”
“Jennifer. Honey. Let
it happen.” Elizabeth’s slender hand came up, and with a surgeon’s
skill she closed the tears and exclamations of Jennifer’s face with
soft fingers. “Let him go.”
The air around them
began to vibrate. They both had to stand back from the resulting
heat, and soon so did the others farther away. The seraph wailed,
and the crescent moon above trembled. Feeling the soil beneath her
harden, Jennifer looked down. It was turning into ice—or was it
glass?
The wind changed and
began to pull inward, toward the seraph. The vacuum was mild where
Jennifer stood—only enough to tug at the ends of her platinum hair.
For the seraph, however, it was a deeper force. The angelic figure
began to shrink into itself. Its steaming robes, its fiery wings,
its sapphire eyes all slowly disappeared into a colorless
singularity.
Once the seraph was
gone, a shock wave knocked them all flat. By the time they
recovered, all that was left of the seraph and the potato field
around them was an indigo rain. It took them a few seconds to
realize that it wasn’t rain after all—each colored speck was a
minute dragon, and they filled the nearby atmosphere.
Neither Jennifer nor
Elizabeth could say a word as the indigo spirits ascended, rising
like a tide of algae pulled by the inscrutable sliver of moon far
above.