A Destiny of Dragons (Tales From Verania #2)
T.J. Klune
For my eighth-grade creative writing teacher who told me that my stories would never amount to anything.
Suck it.
Prologue: The Bird
I WAS seventeen years old when I brought a bird back to life.
I never told anyone about it.
I had felt particularly sorry for myself that day. There was a knight in the castle I’d been harboring a crush on, but he didn’t even know I existed. And there was a rumor going around that he was dating the Prince. I thought (hoped) that was just gossip amongst the staff in the castle, but then I’d stumbled across the two of them in the library, heads bent close together. The Prince’s hand had been on the knight’s thigh, and the knight had this look on his face, this soft expression I’d never really seen on him before. It was directed at the Prince, and I’d felt this furious curl of jealousy in the pit of my stomach, acidic and hot. It rolled through me like nothing I’d ever felt before. I was young and stupid and had a crush on a man who had never looked at me, not even once. And why would he? The Prince was everything I wasn’t: powerful and beautiful with a future that was certain.
I was this scrawny kid who’d been pulled from the slums because he accidentally turned a group of teenage douchebags to stone. I was grateful for everything I’d been given. My parents were living a life they never thought they could have. I had the best friends in a hornless unicorn and a half-giant. I thought my mentor was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I was healthy. I was happy. I was whole.
But there were also days when I was a little sad too. I was a teenager, so of course I thought the best thing for unrequited love was to mope about it. I kept a journal (diary, the unicorn would insist, it’s a diary where you write your depressing little teenage thoughts, Sam. Don’t try to call it otherwise) under my mattress filled with such asinine meanderings that only seventeen-year-olds are capable of, like I would love him as deeply as the ocean and His eyes are as green as the grass in summer and I want to lay on that grass and rub my face in it and get grass stains on my face and S.H. + R.F. = TRUELOVE 4EVA.
So, naturally, I was devastated and utterly convinced that I’d be alone for the rest of my days, having to watch the Prince and the knight grow more in love with each other and then eventually marry. I’d have to witness it every hour of every day because I was going to be the King’s Wizard, and their love would bloom right in front of me for the rest of time. They would be happy together, eventually have a family, and I’d always be skulking in the background, emo as shit in a black robe, dyed black hair, and thick black eyeliner, giving enigmatic advice that wouldn’t look out of place in a Gothic horror: Oh, you want my opinion on the crops? I shall give it to you. The crow flies inverted to peck out the eyes of its enemies and lament its existence in the face of such bourgeois conformity. This is lame. Everything is lame.
And since that was my inevitable future, I decided to start practicing by brooding along the edges of the Dark Woods outside of the City of Lockes. My mentor had sent me on an errand to collect something or other that he probably didn’t even really need. My best friends volunteered to come along, but I flipped up my collar, thrust my hands in my pockets, and said I needed time to reflect on my own mortality and that it was best if I did that by myself, like I always did.
“Oh boy,” the unicorn said. “You do that, Robert Smith.”
I frowned at him. “Who?”
The unicorn shook his head. “This guy I knew. Crazy hair. Sad all the time. Used to sing about it. It got old real fast. Before your time.”
Whatever. It was probably stupid old people music, anyway.
So there I was! Sad and despondent and alone and in the Dark Woods, which was a pretty terrible combination. No one understands me, I thought to myself as I kicked a rock into the trees. No one appreciates me for who I am. My life is hard. I have deep feelings and everything hurts. I’m seventeen years old and everything I think matters and I will feel this way for the rest of my life.
It probably would have gone on for quite a bit longer in that ridiculous teenage vein had I not stumbled across the bird.
I was about to kick another rock when I saw it.
It lay on its back in the grass beneath a tree, wings spread out underneath it, the left crooked at an odd angle. Its feet stuck in the air, yellowed and curled, little black talons at the end. Its plumage was white on its chest, with a gold stripe on the underside of its tail. From the wings and the top of its head, the rest of it was black, with little specks of white dotting the feathers. It must not have been dead long, as the ants hadn’t yet found it. I didn’t know if it’d hit a tree or if it’d been attacked by something larger than it, but it’d died here, in this spot.
I didn’t know why I cared so much. I didn’t know why it struck me as poignantly as it did. One moment I was sulking over something that would never be mine, and the next I was on my knees, hunched over this little bird, hesitating to reach out and touch it. In the grand scheme of things, this was nothing. Things died every day. It was the way of life. This was absolutely nothing.
But I reached for it anyway.
The bird wasn’t stiff when I picked it up from the ground, meaning it’d died even more recently than I first thought. There was a little wetness on the back of my hands, and I felt the gash near its neck through the feathers where it’d been slashed by some creature that had left it here instead of swallowing it whole. It wasn’t breathing. There was no heartbeat. It was dead.