I shall not wander the school grounds alone at night.

I shall not wander the school grounds alone at night.

I shall not wander the school grounds alone at night.

I shall not wander the school grounds alone at night.

x 100.

...

Days of rain. Days and days of rain, and nights, too.

It put the castle out of sorts. It forced everyone indoors all the time, not just the spun-sugar girls but the maids and menservants and teachers and everyone.

The only people I ever glimpsed mud-spattered from the weather were Hastings and Jesse, who drove the Iverson wagons on and off the island, because the food had to come from somewhere. Should the rains never cease and the fish flee and the sea rise to flood the earth, we’d have nothing but soggy herbs from the kitchen garden to sustain us. It was a tad too easy to imagine my fellow students resorting to cannibalism—they definitely appeared the type—but it seemed to me a dire prospect. I had no doubt most of my classmates would taste like vinegar.

Naturally, preparation for the duke’s party consumed them. Even the girls too young to attend gossiped and sighed over the notion of dancing in Armand’s arms, and bickered over which of them would make the best sweetheart. Sophia and her band of merrymakers, who were attending, pretended they had much better things to do than worry about one single, provincial little party, even if it was being hosted by a duke. But it was all they talked about, anyway, outside class.

Outside class, I sat alone and dreamed of anything but the party.

Outside class, I sat and dreamed of the coming night.

At night, every night, I was no longer alone. Whatever time we could spare, whether it was hours or just minutes, Jesse and I met in the grotto, and we practiced my Becoming.

That was how I had begun to think of it privately. Becoming, capitalized. I still wasn’t certain what I was Becoming. I tried to hold on to the image of a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. That seemed safe enough.

I’d never seen any picture of a dragon, however, that looked anything like a butterfly. Less wings; rather more teeth.

The small, sleepy hours of early Saturday morning found us seated, as we usually were, on the upper slope of the grotto’s embankment. We had blankets and food and water—no wine—and the soft, antiqued light of Jesse’s lantern bathing us in amber. I endeavored with my entire heart not to think of these stolen moments as anything romantic. Jesse was not courting me. He was not wooing me, certainly not as I’d heard boys usually did, sending girls posies or poems or buying them sweets or taking them to the theatre. He didn’t attempt to kiss me even once.

We met like this because he was teaching me to Become. And yet every night I sat there opposite him on the blankets and looked at his attentive, handsome face and I thought, This is our wooing. This is our Becoming.

I’d had no luck with going to smoke again. During school I tried so hard to stay … as myself. But later on, down beneath the castle, when I did try to dissolve, it simply didn’t happen.

There were times when I felt ready to burst. My skin felt shrunken, my heart hammered in my chest. I was so close. I willed myself back to that moment at the brink of the roof; I willed the fiend back inside me; I willed the voice to come to life …

 … and, nothing.

The tide came in. The tide went out. Nights alone with Jesse in this haunted, sparkling cave, and all I had to show for it were dark smudges under my eyes and a constant chill I couldn’t seem to shake, even during daylight.

I didn’t ever speak the words aloud, but it wasn’t going to happen, I knew. And I couldn’t blame it on the weather, or the stars, or my uncertain age. Deep down, what prevented the Becoming was purely me.

Because, deep down, I was afraid.

It was selfish and cowardly and low, I admit it. Certainly there were people beyond my cloistered world who were suffering far worse terrors than my own. The Tommies forced to live and die in mud trenches, for example, or the townsfolk trapped beneath the deadly zeppelins—I had smelled them burning; the most craven part of my soul thanked the heavens I could not hear the screams. But Jesse had said pain.

The pain of the war seemed far from me, but the promise of my own was as near as a sword dangling over my head.

And I was afraid. Sincerely.

“Let’s try something new,” he said now. We spoke in undertones, even though there was no real chance anyone above us would overhear. No matter how careful we were, however, the grotto took our words and sighed them back at us.

… new-new-new …

“Like what?” I asked.

“Anything else. Obviously, concentrating as you’ve been isn’t helpful. So let’s not think about the specifics of what we hope for. Smoke or anything like that.”

I sat back on my hands. “Fine with me.”

He had walked from the woods tonight, I could tell. The fresh, dark scent of the night still clung to him, and his boots were damp, with bits of grass and leaves flecking the leather.

Jesse reached down and peeled free a small, perfectly oval spring leaf from near his ankle, holding it up by its stem.

“I’ll tell you a story instead,” he said, gazing at the leaf.

“Tell me about the ghost. Who was she?”

“Ah, the ghost. Her name was Rose.”

“Was she one of the builders?”

He twirled the leaf between his fingers, back and forth. “No.”

“One of the students?” I shivered. “That’s it, isn’t it? She was a student.”

“It’s not my story to tell you. I’m sorry. It belongs to someone else.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I do know. But I have in mind a different tale entirely.”

Without warning, his hand glowed bright. The little leaf was engulfed in a globe of brilliance; the cavern flamed to life, all the sparkles on the walls transformed into countless flashing suns. I lifted an arm to cover my eyes–then the light was gone.

When I looked at him again, Jesse was looking back at me, his jaw set and face masked with shadows. The leaf was exactly as before but now, of course, solid gold. He offered it to me, unsmiling.

“Once upon an age—”

“Can you do that with anything?” I cut in.

“No.” Since I hadn’t taken the leaf, he placed it on the blanket between us. “Only living things. Nothing inanimate.”

“That’s why it’s flowers,” I said, realizing. “You transform flowers and plants, like the brooch and my cuff. But could you do it to—”

“Yes. But I won’t. Life is precious, Lora. All life is precious, even roses. Even frogs, or snails, or the lowest of crawling things. I have no desire to be the arbiter of life or death over others, despite this gift of alchemy. Perhaps because of it. Transmuting the living into gold destroys it, even as it preserves its physical shape.”

My mind raced. “What about a tree? Could you transmute a tree?”

“Yes.”

I sat up straighter. “You could be rich. You could be richer than the king, if you liked. My God, Jesse. You could have a whole forest of gold! You could have anything.”

… anything-anything-anything …

“Rich is a matter of perspective. I think my life is rich enough. And I have already”—he gave me a significant look—”nearly all that I want.”

“But you could also have a mansion. And servants of your own. A cook! And motorcars and chauffeurs and a telephone and—”

“I’m a country lad, Lora. I’m happy like this.”

I shook my head, exasperated. I was a city girl and had lived poor for as long as I could remember. Lived poor and hated it. It never would have occurred to me—or to anyone else from St. Giles, I’d wager—that someone with the means to escape the grind of poverty would simply choose not to do so.

A forest of gold. In my mind’s eye, it was glimmering and endless, a shimmery warm paradise. Like a scrap of proof of what could be, the oval leaf gleamed next to my thigh, shiny as a newly minted coin.

I picked it up. Nothing warm there: It had taken on the chill of the grotto already, cold against my fingers. Even its tiny treble song felt cold.

And then all the exasperation in me began to fade. I looked down at the leaf. I felt its firm chill and recalled its green spring softness from moments before. Its life.

A thought scratched at me, elusive. Jesse had shown me something and it had slipped by me; I had missed a message tucked between words and actions. I had missed a lesson. What was it?

I said, very slow, “Alchemy is surely a great gift, one of the greatest. What sacrifice do you make for it?”

For a long minute, he was quiet. Finally he said, “I’ll strike you a deal, dragon-girl. You listen to my story now, and I’ll tell you of the sacrifice later.”

“Later? When?”

“When you truly need to know.”

“I think I bloody need to know right now.”

“I’ll tell you later, I promise. But now—we’ve only an hour or so before the maids are up. So, please.” He leaned forward, pressed his lips swift and cool against mine, and, even though I didn’t mean to, I stiffened, surprised. “Just listen. And relax.”

I nodded and Jesse drew away, almost smiling. I lay back on the blanket and closed my eyes, clutching the leaf. Between the sting of pleasure that lingered on my mouth and the tinkling leaf song in my hand, I felt anything but relaxed.

Once more, his low, measured voice filled the cavern.

“Once upon an age, there were no humans on the earth, only Elementals, beings of pure form and intent, very powerful. We would call them spirits today, I suppose, or gods, except there were no people around to worship them. Yet the humans did come eventually, and the Elementals discovered they could not compete against pragmatic mankind. One by one they ceased to exist, until finally there was but one left. A goddess.”

“What did she look like?” I wondered aloud, not opening my eyes.

“She was too compelling to look at directly. Bright like the sun, bright and terrible. Only one other being could look upon her, and that was Death. And so … they became lovers.”

He said the word like a caress, like velvet again, and my face began to heat.

“Together they forged great and hellish things,” Jesse murmured. “Lightning and waterfalls that churned into clouds off the tip of the world. Chasms so winding deep that daylight never traced their endings. They dreamed through golden days and silvered nights. All the other creatures envied or adored them, because Death and the Elemental were destruction and creation joined as One. In the natural order of things, they should not have been stronger joined. And yet they were.”

He shifted, coming closer to me. A hand settled lightly atop my chest, directly over my heart. At our feet the seawater splashed a little, as if disturbed by something rolling over in the dark, distant deep.

“Centuries passed, and mankind began to devour the earth, even the wildest places. They had tools to invent and wars to fight and grubby, short lives. Nothing about them dwelled in the magic of the ancient spirits. So although Death, the Great Hunter, prospered as he sieved through their villages, the Elemental, strong as she once was, thinned into a web of gossamer. Human lives simply tore her apart.”

His hand was so warm. Warmer than I, warmer than the air, and still just barely touching me. The light behind my lids never lifted, so I knew he wasn’t glowing, but it felt as if he held a tame coal to my skin. It felt like something painless and ablaze, drawing my heart upward into it.

“The time had come for them to divide. Like all the rest of her kind, the goddess would cease to exist; she had no other course. So Death and the Elemental severed their joined hearts. For a few generations more, she drifted alone through the last of the sacred places, deserts and fjords, lands so savage no human had yet desecrated them.”

Jesse’s voice dropped to a whisper. Without moving his hand, he bent down, his breath in my ear. “And Death, who had tasted her brightness, who would never cease to crave it—who knew her better than all the collected souls of all mankind’s weeping dead—became her Hunter.”

I was hot and strange. I was light and lighter, and curiously my breath came so slow.

“Until at last, one starry night beneath the desert moon, she surrendered to him. She allowed him to come to her, to make love to her. To unravel her …”