2
Across Then and Now

Kenshin was seven years old when he wandered out much further than he should have. His sister warned him about certain places where it was dangerous to go.

But it wasn't his intention to disobey. He'd made a log raft the summer before that was still strong and steady into the next summer, but he'd let it drift as it wanted to for far too long, and it had carried him down a branch and got stuck in sudden mire where the branch had become clogged with fallen trees covered with slimy gunk.

The boy had made his way out of the mire and pushed through willow thickets, hampered by the constant necessity to watch for bears and big cats and snakes. And then, just as suddenly as that mire had appeared, the woods fell away into firm, dry grassland. It was rich, arable land, just the kind that New People often sought out since the majority of them lived by farming and growing their food from the ground or raising livestock rather than hunting or foraging for what grew by itself in the wild. That might be why Sister said these places were dangerous, because of the possibility of New People. Yet this place low on the hills was not at all homesteaded, not even by their own people.

Curious, he wandered a little further out, not accustomed to so much wide-open space, until he rounded an alder clump and came face-to-face with the most blood-chilling sight he'd seen in his young life. The sun-bleached bones of a dragon, upright and in full gallop!

At first, the sight was such a shock that he froze for a moment, deer-style, face and limbs feeling cold, like all the blood had drained from him. Several seconds passed with his heart pounding in his ears, but with the time he realized the skeleton was not moving. Or rather, it was the wind passing over and through the bones that rattled and swayed them in gentle rhythm, giving an illusion of animation.

Fear fled, leaving behind curiosity. He moved closer, now able to see the deceased dragon had been impaled on long wooden spikes, either before or after he or she had died. The dragon had also not been very old, a half-grown one. He squinted, carefully circling the bones, trying to determine whether he or she had been a fur drake or an armor drake when to his horror anew he saw dozens of similar skeletons. Most were likewise propped up on spikes, though a few had fallen apart, heavy skulls with long, naked teeth glinting at him from the high grass. Most, though not quite all, of the dragons were in Purest Form. Some were in their halfway forms, sapient skeletons sporting horns or the remnants of the light bones that had made up with wings, sharpened spikes thrust cruelly through ribcages, breaking through skulls, tatters and strips that had once been clothing rasping against the dry bones in the breeze.

Then, there was his last discovery: each and every dragon in this unburied graveyard was a crystal drake.

The bones at their joints, at their knuckles and wrists and ankles, at the linkage of their wings and the crests of their skulls, were dulled crystallized bone, some with protective, carven runes that didn't look like they had done much good, not here…

He stood a moment, stricken without understanding why. He looked in vain for another dragon, a full-blooded fur drake or armor drake, but there were none. Nor any humans. All these dead, they were half-breeds. Half fur, half armor. Like his sister.

His hands clenched. New People, he thought, anger clenching in his gut for a moment, then relaxing away again as logic came in to play. When, he wondered, could the New People have come here and staked all these dragons without his people knowing about it? And where had they found such a concentration of half-breeds, whose births were forcefully discouraged by his people? It didn't at all make sense…

No fresh bodies had been brought out here in some time, but… It didn't seem right that they weren't properly laid to rest. He thought they ought to be buried. All these dragons, though, it was a huge job, and it would take time. Time he didn't have before his sister began to worry. Before she went looking for him, if she was able to follow his scent into the creek and down the branch, and into an area where he had clearly been forbidden to go?

Kenshin glanced up at the sun and sighed heavily. Twenty minutes later, after he had found a sturdy, wide piece of wood among the trees, he was digging as best he could into the loamy soil near the smallest dragon. Perhaps he could bury one today, and come back again and again until he had made sure all of the unfortunate crystal drakes were honored with proper graves.

But it took much longer than he could have hoped to dig a hole big enough even for this youngest drake. He wished mightily for a proper shovel, would definitely remember to bring one along when he came back…

Midday came far too soon…and he was late. Very and truly late. Sister would be anxious by now, maybe pacing by the side of the creek where his scent wouldn't be easy to follow, or maybe she had found it again when he turned down the branch into the mire. He wondered if she would be angry. He had never seen her angry at him. At others, yes. White-lipped, silent anger at the old-fashioned who condemned her existence as a crossbreed, furious anger that came with a lost temper at times, like when she'd broken Hiko Seijuro's own sake jug over his head during one of their capricious arguments.

Kenshin couldn't help but smile at that particular memory, of Hiko's stunned face, soaked with sake and little broken pieces of clay in his hair. After that, the two of them didn't speak to each other for three whole seasons before the silence was eventually broken by another argument that winter.

Kenshin had only been five at the time of their long silence, and not able to get clear answers from his sister, he went to the wise old fur drake Mareo, with his questions of just why the two of them hated each other so.

The wrinkly old dragon woman had paused, pressed a finger against her lips in thought for a moment before a look of lazy amusement crossed her features. "Well, Little Pup, did you ever consider that maybe the reason that the young crystal drake and the young master of our village don't truly hate, but instead like each other?"

The young boy had only gaped at the elder dragon, who had shuffled away with a sway of long white hair, laughing softly at her idea. An idea that was unfathomable to Kenshin. How could two people who very obviously hated each other in truth like each other? If the words hadn't come from the mouth of a dragon, who couldn't tell a falsehood, Kenshin would have thought it completely ridiculous.

He pressed such confusing matters of life out of his mind now, and tried to hasten through the task at hand. He was determined to at least bury this small dragon before he either had to return home or he was found out here in forbidden land.

When at last the hole he was digging seemed large enough, he looked the skeleton over. The small dragon had been roughly the size of a sturdy pony when he or she had died, and the bones were thick and solid still. Kenshin began to loosen the dirt around the spikes that held the remains in place. This way, he was able to push the middle spike with all his weight, and the skeleton toppled with a dry, crashing clattering into his hole.

Heart thudding, he apologized softly as the dirt settled, hurriedly looking the bones over. But none were shattered, nothing seemed out of place. He did his best to shift the bones into what looked to be a more comfortable position in which to spend eternity, then clamored out and began shifting dirt into the grave as quickly as he possibly could. Then he cast about for something to mark the grave. He had to get home soon. His sister would--

Footsteps behind him. Kenshin jumped and whirled, dirt falling flaking off him in the movement.

He had fully and completely expected to see his sister there. Her short, stocky form bearing down on him with short-legged step. Instead he saw the imposing figure of Hiko Seijuro with his long, purposeful strides.

Kenshin waited, not knowing what to expect. Hiko reached the boy's side, blinked twice at the huge mound of dirt. Then the swordsman lifted a hand and pointed at a towering skeleton several times the size of the child-dragon Kenshin had just buried and asked, "Did you plan to bury him also?"

Kenshin nodded slowly. "If I had to, I would take him to his grave in pieces and lay them as well as I could together in the hole."

Hiko looked down on him thoughtfully. "Your sister was nearly in tears with worry when I left her," he said.

His words had a offhand tone to them, information given without really being what was on his mind. Nonetheless, Kenshin was flooded with guilt. He had never meant to make her worry so…

Hiko turned, cape catching on the wind. "Let's go."

Kenshin followed him, trying to dust his clothes as he walked.

"You were never meant to lay eyes on this place," Hiko said. Then, after a moment, added, "Nor was I. Until I tracked you here, I had no idea where this place was."

"What is this place?" the boy asked softly, more of that cold feeling coming back with the ominous tones of the master's words.

"This is where they keep the half-breed dead." Hiko stopped walking, half-turned to look back where the uprighted skeletons stood in their forlorn rows.

Kenshin turned too, but it was to look back on the scene with a new understanding. A terrible repulsing understanding. "Where…where our people keep…?"

Hiko nodded.

Kenshin stared at the desiccated bones another moment before he tore his eyes away to stare up at Hiko. "But, why?"

Hiko shrugged, but there was no nonchalance in the movement, the mannerism more to say that he, too, lacked full understanding. "Why aren't they buried in the ground, set to rest in cleansing stone, or set to fire by their loved ones in ceremony and honor like the others, like the full-blooded? Because they're half-breeds."

That was wrong. So wrong it made the boy's insides twist. "They can't help how they were born," he said.

"But their parents might have," Hiko said quietly. "You must understand, hybrids are weak. Because fur drakes and armor drakes have opposing abilities, they are canceled out in mixed offspring. Your dragon sister has wings, but she can't fly because the wings are covered with fur instead of feathers. Your sister takes ill every winter and can become frail of health because her blood is weak."

"My sister is not weak," Kenshin said. He surprised himself by not becoming angry. Indeed, there was no reason to be angered by Hiko's words because that was the truth. She wasn't weak. "She's one of the best warriors and hunters in our village." He hesitated before adding, "You almost don't beat her when you fight."

Hiko half-smiled, eyes still lingering on the sad forms of the old bones. "She is more a human than a dragon in some ways. As a human, she is strong. As a dragon, she is weak. Half-breeds are dishonored from birth. Never allowed names, rights of passage, milestones of age, disallowed mates on pain of death, sometimes cast out as soon as they are able to fend for themselves…and then, finally, this last dishonor… All of them, left up a reminder. A reminder to the young who would fall in love with one who is not his or her kind of the pain their children will know. I know you still don't understand, but it used to be very important that the bloodlines stayed pure. You see, if the blood was allowed to mix so freely, eventually dragons would begin to loose many of their strengths. They had to be discouraged."

"My sister," Kenshin said, "will never end up here. It will not be allowed. Never."

Hiko's eyes left the sad necropolis and looked on the boy, again with that thoughtful expression. "No," Hiko agreed. "Times have…changed. The coming of the New People and their ways, every dragon child is precious. Your sister, while still unnamed, is more honored than hybrids of the past. Since she took more after a fur drake than an armor drake, she will be encouraged to marry another fur drake, with the hope that purity will eventually be bred back into her line. And since she has family, a brother, you, it will be you who decides what becomes of her remains if she dies before you."

They began to walk again, Kenshin turning over what he just learned in his head. "I still want to bury them."

Hiko surprised him by saying, "I'll help you."

They crossed the branch by stepping on Kenshin's raft, walking at a brisk pace toward the village in silence. "Kenshin," Hiko said softly, just as the first few old cabins appeared within sight through the trees. "I don't yet know if she will allow it…" Hiko trailed off, pensive expression still in place as he looked down on this small boy whose head barely topped his knee. "But, I think it is to you that I will pass on my greatest knowledge."

The old memory began to fade away from Kenshin in his brief doze. He tried to pin down the last of the memory, take refuge in its sharpness, but it slid away from him as harsh reality took its place.

The nights were dark here, but none too quiet. There were snores around him, the rattling of chains as bodies shifted, trying to gain more comfortable positions.

It felt like a very, very long time since he had been seven years old. Maybe it was, depending on one's point of view. Twenty-one years since he had been that child, trying to bring rest to any debased souls lingering atop the wooden stakes in that terrible graveyard.

And fourteen years since he had seen that master who, for several days after that, went out with him back to that forbidden place with shovels and helped him dig proper graves for each crystal drake, and then soon after began his lessons with the sword. Incredibly, his sister hadn't even been very hard to persuade…

Sis…

Kenshin closed his eyes, even if he couldn't see much in the dark anyway. Recalling his big sister's warm, honeysuckle scent…remembering the way he used to rest with his head on her knee, listening to her hum or rumble a fur drake purr from deep in her chest as she sewed…

He sighed as this memory, too, slid away. It was becoming more and more unreasonable to expect childhood memories to comfort him.

He sat huddled against a tree, hands shackled behind his back, irons on his legs chained to those of the man next to him. He pressed away thoughts of home, and instead thought of how he had come to be in this situation.

He sighed, a little bitterly as he reflected on how he was finally going to return to them when he'd been caught off-guard by a band of New People. They'd shot him once in the back, and once in the leg, but he'd taken quite a few down before he went down himself.

If they knew exactly who he was, they may not have been quite so willing to let him live as they were now. His accent, animal skin clothing and unfailing dignity marked him as a 'dragoner', their brilliant little term for men who lived with dragons, and a "Wild Boy", yet another worthy title marking him as one who lived in the higher lands, and that was reason enough for this enslavement, even if it was among convicts of their own people.

They made even their own to suffer.

He was very fortunate not to be recognized this far south, because according to the New People's laws, trespassing on someone's land and killing a few of the field hands attempting to detain him just for being a Wild Boy, was worth only two years of his life at hard labor. He'd had to spend a month of this in prison while his back and leg healed, and there he could feel his soul slowly dying, withering like a flower deprived of the sun as each day behind bars seemed darker and longer than the last.

Kenshin watched darkness, aware of a lone wolf somewhere in those shadows. Fortitude was a virtue he now stood most in need of. Living in chains, treated like beast, whipped and abused by Enemies, he had called on every ounce of self-control he possessed. True, being on the road gang was better than languishing in prison. Here, at least, he could breathe in the cool, clean air, see the mountains, smell the earth and trees. And still, to see the hills and not be able to run their wooded slopes, to breathe the scent of the earth while chains rattled at his feet, seemed the worst torture of all.

He shifted the weight of the heavy irons on his hands. When his captors had first locked the cumbersome shackles on in place, every fiber of his being struggled like a fox caught in a trap at this shaming burden. Now, these long months later, the weight was as familiar as the color of his own skin.

One of the prisoners was crying in his sleep. The incarcerated New People sold their pride to avoid the whip, cowered at any threat. They hated Kenshin because he didn't. They ignored, distrusted him because he was a Wild Boy, but openly hated him because he refused to grovel as they did, because he was able to hold onto his pride.

He closed his eyes. He had seen a girl on the hillside today.

It surprised him that he remembered her. He was chained into a line of a road gang. He felled trees, hauled logs and rocks and dirt away to build the New People's road. Sometimes people came and went on either side of the hill. Some stopped to watch, glad they weren't the ones laboring under the whip.

But this girl had been different. The first thing he noticed about her was the way she tried to hide behind trees on the slope, peering down with huge, curious sapphire eyes. Her hair was damp, he noticed also, and the kimono she wore was very old and a size too big for her, shapeless and an ugly faded blue that somehow did absolutely nothing to diminish the comeliness of the girl herself, though it did make her wonder if she was homeless or an orphan or some such that would make her unable to clothe herself better.

There were little trebles of birdsong somewhere in the dark. Once a pleasant sound, Kenshin now couldn't disassociate it with the heralding of a new day of relentless work on the road. He was having a little trouble escaping, between his injuries, the chains, and the heavy guard, but an opportunity would present itself if he was patient.

That girl, though… Who was she? What was she doing now, this very moment?

He wondered, would she come again today?