Dragon Ship. Natalie Yacobson
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take you to Opal to see my master,» Beatrice smiled. The teeth beneath her bloodless lips were sharpened to resemble white needles.
«So you are a fairy after all!»
«It is not quite!» Beatrice laughed again. «You don’t know so much! You don’t even know what I’ve become!»
«Let go, traitor!»
«I’d rather carry you away than a dragon!»
Beatrice soared higher into the starry skies and came upon the very dragon that appeared to be hovering over the ship. The mist concealed it, but did not drive it away. Barely noticing the mist fairy, the dragon showed aggression.
Beatrice howled as the dragon’s claw touched her body. From the mere dragon’s touch, the pale fairy began to burn. She unclenched her bony hands and released her victim. Patricia would have fallen from the height and could have crashed or broken her bones, but the dragon did not let her fall. Its claw picked her up and gently planted her on the sentinel’s stall on the mast. Had the dragon really shown gallantry? Patricia was stunned, but she could no longer get a good look at the dragon and Beatrice in the fog.
A tangle of secrets
Along with Beatrice, the squad of night invaders disappeared from the deck. The crew had fought them all night and was exhausted. It turns out that even magical creatures can be exhausted. Patricia thought they were tireless.
Why did the dragon save her? Could it be a different dragon than the one that planted the fiery threatening letter on the deck? Are there not many dragons flying over the sea?
And why did she think the letter was from a dragon? A dragon could have been signed by some rogue wizard who created the flaming letter with enchantments, not dragon breath.
The golden dragon was magnificent! He was her savior! Patricia sent an air kiss to the heavens and belatedly remembered that as she was now, no one would consider her a sign of favor. Her clothes were torn, her breeches had replaced her aristocratic attire, and her old cloak was tied around her waist like a ragged skirt. Her hair was still beautiful. The dragon probably mistook them for flames, which is why he saved her. Dragons respect fire goddesses, after all.
Patricia has heard that fire goddesses live on the shores of Tioria. Because of them, all the waterfalls along the shores became fire falls, and they are now called fire falls.
Maybe the dragon ship came from Tioria and was ruled by a fire goddess? But no one had ever heard of fire ships, even in Tioria.
The night invaders were definitely sent by the King of Opal. Only he, who gathered magic and magical creatures around him, could conjure something like this. One could expect anything from a king, but Patricia did not expect treachery from her own sister.
The glowing footprint of the mist fairy was left on the deck. It was like the glow imprints of the moon fairies. Patricia wanted to touch it, but someone suddenly grabbed her arm.
«Nethopyrina! Let go!» Patricia struggled, but it was impossible to fight off the huge wings of the fairy bat.
«You’ll die if you touch it,» warned Netopyrina. «This is the mark of a dead fairy.»
«It’s the mark of my own sister!»
«She’s not your sister anymore.»
«You think I can’t recognize my own sister?» Patricia was indignant.
Sometimes Nethopyrina takes on too much. The Bat Fairy wrapped herself in her wings like a dark cloak and hissed, squinting at the glittering trail on the deck.
«These are dangerous creatures. They come with the fog, the storm, or the moonlight. They themselves come from the world of the dead and their purpose is to lead the living away. But the one on our ship is even more dangerous than they are. It’s unnatural, as if it was created artificially. Even magic can be untypical at times.»
«It doesn’t matter anymore,» Patricia said.
«So you’ve stopped believing that the dead fairy is your sister?»
«She is the mist fairy, not the dead fairy. She was brought to our ship by the fog.»
«It is more like magic.»
«You think some fairy from the Opal’s crypt could have taken the form of my dead sister?»
«That’s not what I mean!» Nethopyrina wrinkled her nose. «The dead body definitely belongs to some Opal noblewoman, quite possibly your sister, but the spirit inside it is an outsider.»
«So some evil spirit has taken over Beatrice’s body?»
«I’m not sure,» Nethopyrina hesitated. «I’m not familiar with this kind of magic.»
«If there is magic here, it’s only a quarter of it. Beatrice’s consciousness and speech are the same as they were when she was alive. Only her former honesty has been replaced by cunning.»
«Well, it happens to people without magic. Some people’s character can deteriorate with age or under the pressure of circumstances,» said Nethopyrina with the aplomb of a philosopher. «Humans are weak creatures.»
«Beatrice is a traitor!» Patricia still couldn’t digest that.
«She could have been influenced by a magician and she doesn’t know what she’s doing,» Zeligena comforted Patricia. «I’ve seen tomb guardians and cemetery fairies! They’re usually led by a dragon, or the Emperor of Magic.»
Zeligena was confused and incredibly embarrassed that her tongue was slurring. She too was probably too tired against the pointless battle with invulnerable warriors.
«You were lucky, Captain. The Grave Fairy could have killed you with just a kiss on the forehead,» Nethorypina remembered belatedly. «If she had kissed you on the cheek, your body would have begun to gray and decompose, black spots would have appeared.»
«Grave fairies usually use kisses as a weapon of destruction,» Zeligena nodded. «They kiss girls on the cheeks and guys on the lips when they wander into a graveyard at night, and the next morning they’re rotting relics.»
«You’ve been watching the graveyard from the swamp?» Patricia wondered.
«I didn’t sit in the swamp all the time. The swamp is my home, but sometimes people come out of the swamp for a walk. Besides, I knew a cemetery that became a swamp.»
«I’ve seen fairies who kiss girls on the lips, too,» said Nethopyrina, grinning. «You can put a grave worm in the lips and it will eat your brains out. A grave fairy named Amnesia taught this technique to everyone.»
«Didn’t the name of the disease of memory loss come from her?» Patricia wondered. It felt as if she already knew about this fairy from somewhere.
«That’s right,» Nethopyrina nodded.
Patricia picked up her saber, which, in the absence of a battle, lay quietly on the deck as if it were not magical. But when there was a whiff of blood somewhere, the saber would wake up and fly into battle. It’s convenient to have a magic weapon, but it’s even more convenient to have your own dragon. You can always just fly away on it, if you have nowhere to go from the enemy troops. A dragon can also shoot fire. If flying over the «Bloodsucker», he breathed down. He would burn the entire ship in the open sea.
Can a magical ship be burned by dragon fire? Patricia hadn’t thought about it somehow, but it was a topic worth discussing.
«Can a dragon burn a dead fairy with its breath?» she asked Nethopyrina and Zeligena. Both hesitated.
«It can burn a living one,» Zeligena replied. «He burns mermaids even in the water. If he breathes fire on the waves, all that remains is a charred skeleton. Would you like to ask him to burn the night guest?
How could I ask him? Patricia sighed sadly. Her fairy friends are such dreamers!
«Beatrice was only seventeen