Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

once a year,” I told them all. “This was an anomaly. I don’t know why it came early, but I’m sure it won’t happen again.”
    “How can you be sure? You can’t, not really. There is nothing to stop you from having another one right now, or an hour from now, or a week from now, is there?” Kaawa insisted.
    I gritted my teeth in acknowledgment.
    “What if you were driving a car with your son and you were suddenly sent into a fugue?”
    “That would be very unlikely—”
    “But it could happen,” she pressed. “Would you risk his life?”
    “It’s never happened like this before,” I said, but the horrible ideas she was presenting couldn’t be denied. The fugue shouldn’t have happened now, but it did. What if it came again, while I was with Brom? My gut tightened at all the terrifying possibilities of disaster.
    “I think what Kaawa is trying to say is that until you know why you’re having these . . . er . . . events, you should probably stay with us,” May suggested.
    “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve left Brom alone long enough. I must go home.”
    “What if—” She slid a glance toward Gabriel, who nodded. “What if your son joined you here?”
    “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think it would probably be better to be with my family. Gareth may not be any great shakes as a husband, but he has looked after me this long.”
    “How long would that be?” Kaawa said, pouncing on my words.
    “A long time,” I said finally, not finding any answers in my brain.
    “Would he have any reason for wanting you to be without your memory?” Gabriel asked.
    I opened my mouth to deny such a thing, but remembered the manifestations. “He might. There is . . . when I have a normal fugue, I manifest . . . that’s not the right word, really, but it’s how I think of it . . . I make . . .” They all watched me with an avidity that made my skin itch. I took a deep breath and said the word. “Gold.”
    The two male dragons sat up straighter.
    “You make gold?” May asked, her expression puzzled.
    “Ahh,” Kaawa said, sitting back, as if that explained everything.
    “Yes. Gareth—my husband—says that I’m a natural alchemist. That’s someone who can transmute base metals without a need for apparatus or any special elixirs or potions. Every year, when I have the fugues, he brings me lead. Lots and lots of lead, great huge wads of it, and leaves it in the room with me. When the fugue has passed, the lead has been changed into gold. I don’t know how it’s done, but he assures me that it’s some process that happens when I’m asleep.”
    “That must be very handy,” May said, somewhat skeptically, I felt.
    I made a face. Whether or not she believed me wasn’t the problem at hand. I was more concerned about this sudden loss of memory. Maybe it was me who was going insane, not them, as I’d first thought. “To be honest, I’d much rather do without the fugues. Especially if they’re doing something to my brain.”
    “I imagine you would.”
    “I admit that’s a curious talent to be given, and one that leaves me wishing I had some lead to place in your room,” Gabriel said with a rueful smile, “but I don’t follow the reasoning between that and why your memory would be wiped.”
    I made a noncommittal gesture, and for a second, a scene flashed in my mind’s eye—Ruth, lying on a cot in a dimly lit hut, covered in boils, sweating and trembling with an illness while Gareth shook her, telling her I was awake, and demanding that she rise and take care of me. I tried to push the fragment of a memory, tried to see more, but there was nothing there, just a black abyss.
    “I don’t know,” I said finally, sadly aware that I couldn’t trust the images my brain suggested. There was no way to know if it was an actual memory, or a fabrication of a mind that more and more I was beginning to fear was not normal.
    “I can think of any number of reasons why her husband might prefer her without memories,” Kaawa said calmly. “For one, he might not wish for her to know what sept he’s from.”
    “Sept?” I shook my head. “Gareth isn’t a dragon. I would know if he was.”
    “Just as you would know if you were one?” Gabriel asked lightly.
    “Yes, exactly.” He raised his eyebrow and I hurried on. “Besides, Gareth is an oracle, and I’ve never heard of a dragon being an oracle.”
    “Just because no dragon has ever sought the position of oracle does not