Shana Abe - The Time Weaver

However much the Zaharen look like us, however much they act like us and speak and eat and fly and hunt—oh God, Honor, they're not us. These are a kind of dragon that are pre -Darkfrith. Imagine our tribe before the ancient split. Imagine the most primal, untamed versions of our kind, and there they are, still thriving in the highest peaks of the Carpathian Alps. Alone. Untouched. They have no human checks or balances, they have nothing of the Others to impede them. And they definitely have no reason to follow all the silly little rules of our shire. Why bother?

They're accepted exactly as they are by the peasants of the mountains. Their castle, Zaharen Yce , has been perched upon its crest as far back as human memory stretches. In the hamlets all around, the Zaharen drakon are welcomed as guardian spirits. Feared as devils. They hide nothing of themselves from the Others, whilst we hide all that we are, just to survive.

You come from a Time of Enlightenment. You were born to a tribe of civilized monsters, dragons who are devious enough to wear satin and taffeta and powder their hair and never, ever whisper a hint of their true selves to the outside world.

The Zaharen skipped Enlightenment. Oh, they have their own fine satins and wigs and jewels, but it's all purely for their pleasure. They gain nothing with pretense. In nearly every way that matters, it is still a feudal society.

The most obvious commonality between us is that they do follow an Alpha, but he doesn't even have a Council to co-govern, as ours does; ultimately he acts alone in all his decisions. And the Zaharen drakon comply, no matter what. It's in their blood.

Yes, our Sandu is their Prince Alexandru. Yes, he's been chosen as their Alpha. And he's strong and beautiful and—confound it, just stop Weaving to him. You don't have enough control yet to Weave back in case of disaster, and you know it.

Look here: see how my hand trembles, how the ink splotches and my sentences quiver across the page? Tonight I was nearly caught. Tonight could have been the end of everything. I ended up in a ballroom . During a ball .And he looked at me like I

Oh, dear. I write you this letter knowing you haven't even made my mistakes yet. But you're going to. I want to change the future, but it's like pushing a boulder up a mountain. I never win. What I will in retrospect never matters. The future simply rolls right over me, no matter what.

Keep all this from Lia and Zane. Burn it, burn it. They will not understand.

Five hours ahead,

Fifth Letter

You're nineteen. You're desperate to know what happens. You're desperate to know even just a little of what will be. I recall that Lia seems acutely reluctant to share your future. Has it not occurred to you there's a good reason for that?

Yes, you will be married to him. There. Now you know.

Stop Weaving for practice. You're paying a price for it, one you haven't even noticed yet. But I have. Please stop.

Remember what the legends of our kind tell us: None of the Gifts are free. None of the glory comes without sacrifice. Our particular sacrifice is rather horrific.

Save the Weaves for emergencies. Settle your heart, and look ahead with clear eyes from your Natural Time. Do not be so eager to touch the future. Savor your today.

I wish I believed my words would make a difference. I wish I could change myself, and what is to come. I've tried so hard to put things right. I don't even think you're going to get this note. I don't know, I don't know, I can never tell.

Twenty-five years ahead,

- you

At the age of fourteen, I was kidnapped from my home by a pair of infamous outlaws.

Infamous to my kind, at least. And I suppose that, truthfully, the word kidnapped might be an exaggeration. After all, I knew it was going to happen, and I was fully prepared to comply. I'd warned myself days in advance about Zane, and about Draumr . Still, I have to admit I was secretly shocked when it actually occurred.

I'd been waiting, fully dressed, sitting upright upon my bed because somehow it didn't seem very dignified to greet one's kidnappers prone. I'd said my good-nights to my parents hours earlier that evening, as required, kissing the air by their cheeks—Josephine always carefully scented of lavender; Gervase of pipe tobacco and harsh silver, his face angled away from mine—and neither of them had noticed anything amiss. It was hardly surprising. Neither of them ever seemed to notice anything amiss with me. They certainly never spoke of the numerous bruises or bloody scrapes I tended to acquire. My mother's cool hand lingered on my arm a few seconds longer than usual, perhaps, but that was all.

I withdrew to my room, packed my case, and waited.

Plum House was a fine Elizabethan mess of a place. The main structure had been commissioned by the Alpha of our tribe long ago to lodge the gamekeeper of the shire, and the remaining two wings and solariums had been added helter-skelter by various ancestors since. The Carlisles had always been the gamekeepers of the tribe, and so the House was always our home.

Of course, the job of gamekeeper for Darkfrith had a different meaning than what it did for the rest of the world, for the Others. The challenge was not to keep the rapacious animals out of the confines of the shire, but in.

Still, we were gentrified enough by the time of my birth that the title was largely ceremonial; there were very few attempts at escape any longer. We were beasts, yes, but beasts who enjoyed the luxuries afforded us by maintaining our human facade. My father's actual employment was the management of the tribe's vast silver mines. It meant that while he was absent from Mother and me a great deal, we had the means for three young housemaids from the village and a cook, which pleased Josephine very well. She and the staff rattled around the halls, polishing the dark Tudor panels and all the narrow-paned windows, shaking dust from the tapestries, concocting meals and teas and elegant soirees to which the Marchioness of Langford, the wife of our Alpha, would occasionally come.

Whenever the marchioness came to tea, my presence was required. I would sit in silence and not toy with the ribbons on my gown, and not breathe very deeply because of my corset, and nibble at tiny frosted cakes and crustless sandwiches, and all the drakon ladies would remark upon my fine manners. My mother would incline her head graciously.

The truth was, I was too petrified to speak. My mother, with her icy kohled gaze ready to find fault with me; the marchioness, with her daunting haute couture and imposing French wigs; all the simmering, contained ladies of the shire who beneath their imported satins and bell-beautiful voices burned to be as vicious as the menfolk were allowed to be—every single one of them frightened me, and always had. I had been born a timid gray mouse into a den of starving lions.

I did not belong. I was nothing like any of them. It didn't astonish me in the least to learn that my life was in danger; it had seemed apparent to me since I was a small child that, sooner or later, one of the real drakon would end up killing me.

I didn't even resemble the rest of them, not really. We were a clan of mostly fair, blond beauties, and although I had inherited my mother's blue eyes, my own hair wasn't the color of wheat, or sunshine, or summer flax. It was a shade caught between red and ginger, a little of both, not quite either. I was pale like all the girls, but while their skin shone with the translucent clarity of fine alabaster, my complexion looked to me more like chalk. I was scrawny, timid, and not very tall. A certain cadre of the village children found it persistently amusing to refer to me as the runt .