Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(8)

“I’m surprised you’ve had time enough for the lessons,” I said.

“I couldn’t give them up!” she cried. “I have few enough chances to take off the mask.”

I said, “If this invisible barrier works—if Abdo, Lars, Dame Okra, and I can thread our minds—then I want to search for the other half-dragons.” Glisselda had proposed such a journey at midwinter, when she’d first learned there were others, but nothing had come of it.

Glisselda blushed furiously. “I’ve been reluctant to lose my music teacher.”

I glanced at Orma’s letter and knew just how she felt.

“Still,” she continued stoutly, “I’ll bear it if I must, for Goredd’s sake.”

I met Kiggs’s eyes over the top of Glisselda’s curly head. He nodded slightly at me and said, “I believe we all feel the same way, Selda. Our duties come first.”

Glisselda laughed lightly and kissed his cheek. Then she kissed mine.

I left shortly thereafter, retrieving Orma’s letter and bidding the cousins good night—or good morning. The sun was just rising. My mind was all abuzz; I might soon go in search of my people, and that eagerness had begun to triumph over every other feeling. Beside the door the page boy dozed, oblivious to all.





I closed the shutters of my suite against the impending dawn. I’d told Viridius, the court composer and my employer, that I might be up till all hours and not to expect me until afternoon. He hadn’t objected. Lars, my fellow ityasaari, lived with Viridius now and was effectively his assistant; I’d been promoted to second court composer, which gave me some autonomy.

I flopped down on my bed, exhausted but certain I wouldn’t sleep. I was thinking of the ityasaari, how I would travel to exotic places to find them, how long it might take. What would I tell them? Hello, friend. I have dreamed of this—

No, that was stupid. Have you felt deeply alone? Have you longed for a family?

I made myself stop; it was too embarrassing. Anyway, I still had to visit my garden of grotesques; I had to settle the denizens before I slept. I would get terrible headaches or even a resumption of visions if I didn’t.

It took some time to slow my breath, and longer to clear my mind, which kept insisting on holding imaginary conversations with Orma. Are you sure this mind-threading is safe? You do remember what Jannoula did to me? I wanted to ask. And: Is the Porphyrian library as amazing as we always dreamed?

Enough mind chatter. I imagined every thought encapsulated in a bubble; I exhaled them into the world. Gradually the noise ceased, and my mind was dark and still.

A wrought-iron gate appeared before me, the entrance to my other world. I grasped the bars with my imaginary hands and said the ritual words, as Orma had taught me: “This is my mind’s garden. I tend it; I order it. I have nothing to fear.”

The portal opened soundlessly. I crossed the threshold and felt something in me relax. I was home.

The garden had a different layout every time, but it was always familiar. Today I had entered at one of my favorite spots, the origin: Fruit Bat’s grove. It was a stand of Porphyrian fruit trees—lemon, orange, fig, date, and gola nut—where a brown-skinned lad climbed and played and left fruit detritus everywhere.

All the denizens of my garden were half-dragons, although I’d only learned that a few months ago when three of them walked into my life. Fruit Bat was really a skinny twelve-year-old named Abdo. He claimed the sound of my flute had called him from afar; he’d sensed the connection between us and come looking for me. He and his dance troupe had arrived at midwinter and were still here in Lavondaville, waiting for the roads to thaw so they could travel again.

Fruit Bat was freer than some of my garden denizens, able to leave his designated area, perhaps because Abdo had unusual mental abilities of his own. He could talk to other ityasaari with his mind, for instance. Today Fruit Bat was in his grove, curled like a kitten in a nest of furry fig leaves, sound asleep. I smiled down at him, made a blanket appear, and tucked it around him. It wasn’t a real blanket, and this wasn’t really Abdo, but the symbol meant something to me. He was my favorite.

I moved on. Loud Lad’s ravine opened up before me, and I yodeled down it. Loud Lad, blond and burly, yodeled back from below, where he seemed to be building a boat with wings. I waved; that was all the settling he ever required.

Loud Lad was Lars, the Samsamese bagpiper who now lived with Viridius; he had appeared at midwinter just like Abdo. I had envisioned each grotesque to look like the person I’d seen in my visions. Beyond that, each avatar had developed quirks, traits I hadn’t consciously given them but that corresponded to their real-life counterparts. It was as if my mind had intuited these qualities and given an analogous trait to their avatars. Loud Lad was a noisy putterer; real-world Lars designed and built strange instruments and machines.

I wondered whether this would hold true for the ones I hadn’t met yet, if the oddities they displayed in my garden would translate into life. The fat, bald Librarian, for example, sat in a shale quarry, squinting at fossil ferns through square spectacles and then tracing the same shape in the air with his finger. The fern lingered in the air, drawn in smoke. Glimmerghost, pale and ethereal, folded butterflies out of paper, and they fluttered in huge flocks around her garden. Bluey, her red hair standing straight up like a hedge, waded in a stream, eddies of green and purple swirling in her wake. How would these characteristics translate into real life?