Well, I was midway through part two of A Breath of Demons when I got side-tracked. This is the result. It's the first of a three-part story for which I have the other two parts mostly written. I'd love any feedback! Thank you to the lovely people who were kind enough to give me feedback on my first Obernewtyn fic – thank you F., fictitious character, jess.stretch and the fabulous Franklet,.

Summary: A tale of Dragon and Matthew and the connections which draw them together throughout the Obernewtyn chronicles; Alice in her Wonderland.

In Her Calipers

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises

Between sea and sky, she is created: a mermaid in cream and fire.

The tide throws her onto the beach with uncaring hands, the only mother she will know for years to come –

the lapping waves beat in time with her own heart, the sand beneath her pliant as skin. For time beyond measure, she lies huddled on the shore, her hair splayed like seaweed over her face.

Her life begins in foam and wonder. She does not know that she is lost, or that she is alone, only that the air is soft and the sky is vast and that water is dangerous.

She hears music drifting from far away, where the sea is deep and full of secrets. That sweet, sad lullaby brings a knot to her throat. Her eyes burn and when she touches them, they are damp because there is something about the bittersweet blue of the sky and the eerie siren song that draws tears from her.

Salt water falls into salt water: she sheds her tears without understanding why, and when they are gone, she is left empty as a seashell. But she cannot stay forever. Sails appear on the horizon, dark shapes that strike fear into her. She does not question it. Nothing but instinct remains to her – she flees the advancing tide and all that is borne upon it, leaving only the imprint of her feet on the sand.

When the tide recedes, even that is gone.

X - X - X - X - X

In other years I would say, how lucky we are
The people inside our house
But luck has not bought us mercy

"Hush, mam," Matthew says, wiping the cloth over her brow. She is so hot: it's as if a fire has been stoked to diabolical magnitude inside her. He tries to sound calm, tries to be an adult. But he's scared and he's lonely and for the first time in his life she can't hear him.

He tries again, fingers light on her temples. Mam, can you hear me?

Her mind is an impenetrable mess of heat haze and hallucinations. All his life, he's been able to reach his mother as easily as if she possessed some part of his heart. Where others could find only silence, she found laughter and stories. Even her anger and her disappointment are loud – blistering tirades about his folly, all voice and hands and expression. His mother is a whirlwind and he loves her fiercely. She cannot endure silence.

Nor can she endure the illness that wracks her.

Since she was caught out in the snow a week ago, she has not been the same. A sniffle became a cold, a cold became a cough, the cough became fever.

He is horribly afraid that the fever will become deadly.

That night, he begs his neighbour to watch his mother. He can tell she wants to refuse, but even her suspicion cannot withstand the pathetic sight of his mother shuddering in the blankets.

Wrapped up in his threadbare coat, he struggles through the drifts to the next village. The cold claws at him: he wills his leaden feet to lift (next-step-next-step), spluttering away flurries of snow that are dashed in his face. When the first bright lights glimmer up ahead, he nearly weeps.

The Herb Lorist is kind, a round woman with doughy hands and shrewd eyes. He sees her expression when he describes the symptoms – it cuts the ground from under him, and he falls. She puts it down to exhaustion, to his bad leg.

He can't tell her that he's seen the future in her eyes, and it's a dank hole in the earth, filled only by his mother.

She gives him packages that smell green and fresh, and instructions that he scribbles down. Then he goes back out into the merciless night, slogging back down the road (next-step-next-step like a prayer in his mind). He slips, he plunges into a pot hole, he grits his teeth and stoops into the howling wind because he will not be stopped.

He hurries down the last stretch, the pain in his leg sharp and taut. Gold light halos the door; he kicks it opens, words on his lips.

And he stops. There are strangers in the room. A Herder intones words while his apprentice sprinkles ashes over the bed. His neighbour is sat where he left her, but the sheet is drawn over his mother's face - why have they done that? he thinks, she can't breathe – and when she says, "Matthew, lad, she's gone...", he knows that must be wrong.

The herbs tumble from his hands – he tramples them, and the scent of summer fights the scent of death in this room full of ashes as he staggers to the bed and tears back the sheet over the Herder's protest.

Oh Lud, she is so warm, so still, surely sleeping. He puts his fingers to her temples, not caring that it confirms the gossip, the whispers of Misfit, and he reaches out, because that part of his heart which is hers still beats, so surely he would know if she were dead.

Mam…

His call echoes out into nothing, and nothing, and the truth hits him like a fist to the gut.

She is gone. There is only the sound of winter, beating on the roof like the ocean, and stretching out through the darkness of the doorway, the pattern of his feet which the snow is slowly, remorselessly filling in.

When morning breaks, and the village boys come to tease him about his freakish mother, he doesn't care that they are ignorant of her death. He has no remorse for all that follows, for the anger and the pain that he unleashes on them.

It sets him on his way to Obernewtyn, though he does not know that yet. By the time the moon has changed, he has nothing left but his name and his secret.

And that hollow inside his heart, waiting to be filled.

X - X - X - X - X

And there I found myself more truly and more strange

Darkness becomes her closest friend. She moves from shadow to shadow, not caring if thorns prick at her skin or leaves itch in the close cover of a thicket. Without question, she obeys her instincts: she has no memories to guide her so she is dependent on the whispers of her body and her base, animal senses.

The first time she hears voices on the road, the fear nearly paralyses her. Something flickers in her mind – not quite memory, but the ravenous ghost of it (crimson and metal, his smile opening like a trap...), and then it is gone and she darts into the trees. Flattened against an oak, she breathes hard and trembles. The noises they make are loud on the quiet air, and as foreign to her as safety.

"No, no, it's up here somewhere – Traveller's Rest, it's called and they draw the finest ale for miles around-"

"And I'm telling you, The Crossroads has the finest wenches for miles around! I'd sooner have a girl than a glass-"

"Why not have both? The rest it's talking about ain't sleep, you know-"

Their laughter is raucous, full of hunger. She dares not move in case they see her. But the treacherous wind has other ideas – she hears a shout, and suddenly a man's hat sails past her. The sound of hooves turns towards her, and panic is a fever in her veins.

She runs, like any scared animal.

And like any hunter, they chase. The hullabaloo of their voices follows her through the trees, the crash of hooves ever nearer, and she's all heartbeat and motion, nothing left but fear.

A blow sends her crashing to the ground. She wails as she's hauled to her feet.

He's immense, looming over her in the dark. His smile is bright and cruel, and his nails dig into her arm like teeth.

"What have we here? Nikolaus, come and see this pretty little scrap!"

Then one becomes two; she is fenced between them, gasping for air.

"Well now...the Herders would pay us a fine price for the likes of her. That hair – those eyes. She's a rare find, and you know they like rare things..."

"Aye, they like to break them. Still. These are hard times. I'll not turn down the coin."

She cannot understand their words, but when one hunkers down, she knows he is lying because his tone is soft and soothing, but his eyes are savage. "There now, little one. Are you lost? We'll take care of you."

She tries to dart between them, but their legs are like bars of a cage, and a fist sends her spinning into a tree. She's dazed and terrified and alone, and their faces seem to be overlaid with another – one thin and feral, all smiles and lies like them, and she feels something wake inside her. She grabs for it blindly-

Something ripples into existence between them, a vast, monstrous shape that rears onto its hind legs, spreads its wings and roars...

And suddenly it's them screaming, their faces contorted with fear. She sends the winged creature crashing after them, its eyes gold and enormous as the sun. When it springs into the air to pursue them down the road, and its scales gleam the same red as her hair, she understands it is part of her. She makes it wheel and dance in the air, awed that anything so strange and so beautiful can come from her.

She has no name for it, or for herself. It doesn't matter. When she makes it vanish, that doesn't matter either, because she can feel it there still, burning in her heart like hope.

After that, she leaves the road, but she doesn't need the darkness anymore. She has something better.

X - X - X - X - X

In my dream I'm a lost child

Obernewtyn isn't what he expected. Despite the imposing splendour of the building, it's not filled with the freaks and the monsters that he feared. The work is hard, but the meals are good and the air is fresh and invigorating. His leg aches less and less with each day, and to his surprise, so does his heart.

Matthew even makes friends. There's Dameon, who seems quiet and gentle until he pierces your heart with a few words. Later, Matthew learns why that is: Dameon knows just where to push the knife, because his blind eyes see emotion with a precision that is astounding and a little frightening. Only when he sees Dameon flinch back from anger does Matthew realise that his gift pains him as much as it benefits him.

Cameo is a fairytale princess, delicate and sweet and timid. Her smiles are a talisman against all that Matthew dislikes about Obernewtyn – the dark tunnels where no light enters, the vastness of the courtyard at night (when moonlight spears the flagstones and throws sinister shadows across the walls), and the people who have secrets bitten behind their smiles.

Ariel. Madame Vega. Rushton. There are others, but those three carry danger like a scent on them.

Nonetheless, he finds a sort of balance there, and from time to time, he sends out his mind, calling softly in the dark of the night in case anyone is listening. No one answers, and he feels his loneliness most acutely then. Sleep is his only escape.

His dreams are full of symbols, and some of them have the feel of truth. The moon hovers over them all, a white, vast cataract. He sees a bird circling over its surface, though sometimes its shape seems distorted – the body thinner, the wings ragged. At other times, it is a girl beneath the moonlight, still and pale as marble, and he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. Her hair is red, black, blonde. Her face is gentle, proud, fierce, empty. She changes like the phases of the moon, but her eyes are always closed.

When he wakes, he can barely remember these fragments. Life goes on and the oddness of life in Obernewtyn becomes normal.

One day, he kisses Cameo under the cherry trees. It's clumsy and gentle, and it makes him happy. He ignores the feeling that it isn't quite right, that he's still waiting for something. His dreams are making him uneasy, that's all.

Then Elspeth Gordie comes, and he realises he's seen her face under the baleful moon.

He knows at once what she is. There's an echo about her, just as there was with his mother. She's prouder and colder, prickly as a rosebush. But he admires the directness of her green eyes and the bite in her voice whether she speaks aloud or silently. Her mind is a fortress, battlements and weaponry. He fears her as much as he likes her.

But he has someone to talk to. The world is a little less empty.

When Matthew knows her better, he realises she has a love of danger. That explains a lot about her and Rushton, he always thinks.

Elspeth comes: danger comes with her. She's all ferocity and hope, and she makes Matthew believe that life can be more than this. He plans escape and for a while, he honestly thinks it will happen. They can save Cameo. They'll live free again.

The mountains have the golden haze of the promised land.

Then Cameo dies. The fairytale shatters before him. While he's still trying to piece it all together, the revolution happens, and he's left gasping and astounded as the whole world changes and rolls forward like a glacier. In the flush of victory, Cameo is a detail.

He isn't alone anymore. He can send out his mind and hear a dozen answers from people who were too cowed or too wary to answer him before. But another piece of his heart is gone, buried with a princess who will never be woken by something as trivial as a kiss.

He has a home. But his nights are still saturated with a girl sleeping under the moon; now her hair is always red, and she always lies in the shadow of wings. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know why she haunts him. So he daydreams of better things – heroes and great deeds, days of sunlight and joy.

It isn't enough.

X - X - X - X - X

Thank you for reading! I would love to hear any comments and criticism you have.

Author's Note: The quotes which begin each section are taken from the following:

- Act III, Scene ii, The Tempest
- The Metronomic Moon, Michael Young
- Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, Wallace Stevens
- 100 Love Poems, Pablo Neruda