Chandra kept her eyes shut tight but her tears still squeezed through the corners and ran down her cheeks. She whispered to herself as she stood there waiting in the rain, her quiet words lost in the crackle of the storm. It was a nervous chant that brought her no comfort no matter how often she repeated the words. Far above she could hear the screeches of the Sorceress Queen as she road upon her conjured dragon and the child could not decide if it was laughter or anger that she heard. But she would not open her eyes to look. When she had first woken up and seen the tree-dragon towering above her the sight of it pressed into the backs of her eyes. Even with her eyes screwed shut she could still see the beast over her and she imagined it looking down at her with a vicious sort of curiosity. She wondered if it was really rain falling on her of it was the salivation of the beast as it contemplated her as a meal. It was waiting for just the right moment to drop down and swallow her up. Or maybe it would lift her up into the air dangling by one leg and screaming for the whole world to hear her. She would vanish without a trace. There would not even be a scrap of a dress or a little lost shoe left behind to mark her grave.
Something thumped against the ground beside her. She could feel the tremor of if it through her feet. She opened one eye to look for what had fallen, careful to keep her gaze on the ground to avoid even an accidental glance of the toe of the beast. There tangled up in her own loose limbs was Beruka the ragdoll fat and heavy with rainwater and looking back up at the child with lifeless two-color button eyes. Chandra clamped her eyes shut again. A stuffed toy was useless to her now.
“Chandra. Open your eyes.” Beruka spoke with a broken sort of quietness and yet every word was so clear it was as if the doll woman had been whispering right inside Chandra’s own ear and speaking directly into Chandra’s heart. Chandra felt fingers brush across the bumps of her own knuckles. Beruka’s fingertips rested on the top of Chandra’s skin until the warmth of that touch melted Chandra’s fist open again. Their fingers intertwined.
“Open your eyes and look Chandra.” Beruka urged with a gentle squeeze.
“No. Its … Its too scary. I don’t want to see. I just want to be eaten up and be gone.”
“Chandra open your eyes.”
“No!”
“Such a little June-berry. Come on. Open your eyes and see. It’s not as bad as you think it is.” As Beruka spoke the rain quieted. Chandra could still feel the droplets of rainwater sprinkling across her skin but all she could hear was Beruka’s words as tender and as familiar as that touch.
“No….I don’t want to…”
“Open your eyes!”
“No!”
“Look at you! You are standing up all on your own. You are brave! Now all you have to do is open your eyes and see!”
The sound of the storm came flooding back into Chandra’s ears so that it felt like all there was in the whole world was her and the rain that fell on her and the fingers wrapped up with her own. She tilted her head back and the rain flowed down her forehead and lost itself in her hair. Her eyes opened. Above was the tree-dragon bending down towards her with its long back. For a moment it looked more like cloth and branches than a beast but the Sorceress Queen still held on to the beast’s head as she howled into the last remnants of that storm wind. Chandra searched the face of the Sorceress Queen. She saw familiar eyes in that face, the same eyes that looked back at her from the mirror and from shimmering puddles on still spring days.
“Do you see?” Beruka asked as Chandra studied the Sorceress Queen. “Do you see her up there in the tree? She is just like you. She has the same pain that you have. I want you to remember that. I want you to keep that in your heart always no matter what happens, no matter what game you play or where you go. She has the same pain that you have. That empty space that you both carry, that empty space binds you together. You cry because your own heart is broken. She is crying too. The rain is her tears.”
The warmth rushed from Chandra’s fingers like blood draining away. She glanced down at her hand and saw Beruka the ragdoll hanging down from between her own childish fingers. Chandra let the doll drop. Bloated with rainwater it slapped down heavy against the ground. A shirt fluttered down from the dragon above, spiraling and wavering through the air as if it were bone dry. It passed slowly through the rain on a breeze all its own. The shirt draped itself across Beruka as if spread with the flourish of a mother tucking in her child. The woman Beruka stood up from underneath the shirt and slid her arms through each sleeve so that she became another person. Now she was a man with a full beard made up of coiled brown curls. His eyes were deep and wide across, shadowy like shaded pools that took in the rain without a ripple. He winked one eye at Chandra in silent laughter and then turned fully towards the beast. Drawing a sword and pointing it out in front of him he rushed at the dragon and drove his sword into the tree-beast. In an instant the dragon was dead and the tree, the skeleton of the magic spell, began a slow wilting fall.