“Yes. He’s been around for a couple of the years I’ve been awake.”
“He’s a good man.”
“Is he? He’s a wizard. Sometimes wizards aren’t good people.”
“I know. But sometimes they are.”
“Are you a good person?”
“Most of the time,” I said honestly. “I try, but it can be hard. Can I ask you a question?”
He tensed, like he’d been expecting this. I didn’t know what he thought I was going to ask him. “I don’t—”
“Do you do this every time you wake up?” I asked, waving my hand toward the rest of the dome. “Do you make all of this by yourself?”
Zero looked surprised at that, like he was expecting something else from me. Which, to be fair, I could have gone in a million different directions. He didn’t know me, but then I didn’t know him either. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a little petulant. “I can make things, you know. I know I look scary, but I can—”
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like it before. It’s impressive, Zero. You must be very strong.”
If it were possible for snake dragon monster things to blush, I thought maybe he would have been right there. He averted his eyes and made this strange snuffling sound out his nose. His forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air, and I wondered if this was a way for him to know that I was telling the truth, if honesty had a weight to it that he could pick out amongst all the other notes in the air. I didn’t think it likely, but I knew it would be better for him to hear nothing but the truth from me rather than find out he could catch me in a lie.
“Thanks,” he finally said begrudgingly. “It’s not that hard.”
“How do you do it?”
“What?”
“How do you make everything?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why?”
I shrugged. “I’m curious. Magic, it… baffles me sometimes.”
“But you’re a wizard.”
“Apprentice, but yes, I’m a wizard.” Gary would be proud.
He sounded confused. “But then you do magic all the time. How can you do something without understanding it? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Too right, but that pretty much summed up my life: able to do things that didn’t make any sense. “I don’t think anyone understands my magic, least of all me. I’m what you might call a special case.” I grimaced. “Yeah, that didn’t sound like I wanted it to. I’m just… different.”
“Why?” He looked less tense now. Not comfortable, exactly, but not as on guard as he’d been. He sounded younger too, and it was strange to think that he’d only been awake for thirteen full years before this, if he’d been telling the truth. And I thought maybe he was. Would I still be alive the next time he woke? Would I be alone, with everyone I loved nothing but dust and bones? Or would it all be gone?
“No one is quite sure how my magic works,” I said. “I can do things other people can’t. Sometimes, I do things that I’m not even trying to do.”
“The mermaids,” Zero said. “I… felt it. It was bright. And smelled like…. I came here to this place in my sixth year. I wanted to be alone, you know? The mermaids let me pass. I don’t know why. It was like they didn’t even care that I was there. I didn’t question it. Then, that night, there was a terrible storm. It rolled over the desert, and everything flashed in the sky. I’ve never heard something like it before or since. I thought I was going to be blown away, that the gods were so angry they were going to bring fire down on the world. But it passed, eventually. You smelled like that storm. You felt like that storm. Like lightning.”
“I’m sorry about the mermaids,” I said quietly. “They were going to hurt my friends. I couldn’t let that happen.”
He rolled his eyes. “They were jerks. I didn’t talk to them. I even ate one once.”
I laughed, a little shocked. “You did what?”
Zero looked rather pleased with himself. “It tried to come in here,” he said. “It wanted to hurt my plants. My trees. It wouldn’t leave. So I ate it. It was… chewy.” He deflated a little. “But I suppose they weren’t any worse than I am. They were monsters, like me.”
And that hurt. I barely knew this… this thing in front of me, and that still hurt to hear. Maybe it was because I knew what it felt like to be an outcast. Maybe I knew what it felt like to have people scared of me. I didn’t know. But it hurt.
“They were nothing like you,” I said quietly.