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She was Grima, the Fell Dragon, and she would bring the world to ruin.
But first, she had to get Morgan to school.
Grima picked up the stuffed toys Morgan had scattered in his sleep and tugged the blanket off of his head. She pressed her lips against his hair and breathed in the dull smell of shampoo and sleep. She left no kiss there.
“Wake up.”
Morgan scrunched his face and murmured incomprehensibly. An arcane language, perhaps. Grima gave his shoulder a firm pat.
“Up.”
Grima walked out to the kitchen, leaving Morgan’s bedroom door ajar so he could hear the cereal plink into his bowl. Eventually the boy emerged, groggily clutching his stuffed tiger. He slumped into his chair and carefully sat the tiger next to his bowl. Sipping her coffee, Grima observed his head bob from side to side as he ate. Such a large head atop such thin shoulders.
“Mama, where’s your breakfast?”
Grima raised her mug as her answer. She had not felt true hunger since she’d come to occupy this body. Hunger was merely a distant ache in her gut that reminded her to feed. But in the face of this world’s destruction and the feast that would accompany it, the routine of eating brought her little pleasure. She had no desire to do it unnecessarily.
Morgan understood none of that, of course. He only understood that his mother was not eating breakfast, and that wouldn’t do. He held out a wet spoonful of cereal to Grima, his dark eyes wide.
"Mama, eat!”
Grima poured her cooling coffee into the sink. She walked over to Morgan and ruffled his fine hair.
“Finish your breakfast.”
Robin had picked out Morgan’s clothes when he was in pre-school, but she had stopped when his father left. Since then, Morgan insisted on dressing himself. He had a creative taste in fashion. Today’s outfit was a dinosaur T-shirt with snowflake-print sweatpants.
“Don't forget anything," Grima said as Morgan shouldered his backpack.
Morgan nodded. He was exceptionally well-organized.
Morgan’s elementary school was an easy fifteen-minute drive from their apartment. Despite the odds, Morgan seemed to have transitioned well from kindergarten to the first grade. He rarely volunteered to participate in class activities, but he got along with his classmates and even had a few close friends.
He’s very conscientious and mature for his age, Morgan’s teacher had told her at the last parent-teacher conference. They had sat across from each other in tiny chairs, and Grima had suppressed the urge to destroy the man who monopolized her son’s weekday hours.
“I know it must be difficult, but you have a wonderful son.”
The teacher had smiled at her then, and the gentle pity in his face was intolerable. She’d barely left the meeting without ripping his lips off. It was one thing for that man to know Morgan, but he knew nothing about her. He didn’t know what she really was. He didn’t know to be afraid.
At least Morgan was enjoying school.
“Bye, Mama!” Grima watched as Morgan walked into the school building, his back held very straight. Where he got his small dignity from, Grima couldn’t guess. It hadn’t been from Robin. It certainly hadn’t been from his father.
As he went beyond the school’s double doors, Grima felt the everyday dread of him leaving her sight. Then the dread passed, as it always did. If he perished, so did the world. Simple.
She drove to work and did not notice the apple until she was in the parking garage. It was the apple she had packed in Morgan’s lunch that morning. He had removed it from his lunchbox and left it in his booster seat. A little gift.
“Mama, eat!”
Mature for his age, Grima thought bitterly as she retrieved the apple. She felt the familiar force of shame, then directionless rage. Her body was ancient, holy, a fire storm. Her wings were death, her fangs, ruin. Nobody knew that except her, but she knew it very well. She bit into the apple.
It was fibrous and tasted like nothing.
There was a time when Robin had loved her work as an analyst. She’d been good at it, too. She had a knack for discovering opportunities and for transforming a failure into a good investment. She played risks well and always recouped losses. And despite her relative youth, she’d been quickly working her way through the ranks.
Becoming Grima changed that.
There was no doubt that Grima was good at Robin’s job. She just didn’t care. The corporation was nothing more than a tower of Morgan’s wooden blocks, and she had little desire to fill its coffers. Still, she showed up every day and thought of new ways to add to the hoard. Until she ended the world, she had to make rent.
Her coworkers had surely noticed the change in her behavior, but they mostly chalked it up to the divorce. And they weren’t completely wrong. Letting him go had made it easy for Robin to let go of herself. She came untethered, and Grima came in. But her coworkers didn’t know what they were dealing with, and they’d hardly bothered to find out. Robin had been well-liked enough, but her success had been intimidating, and in the end, everyone had their own lives to worry about. After a few well-intentioned conversations and avowals of support through tough times, most of her coworkers had accepted “Robin’s” new sullenness and largely left her alone. It was hard, they thought. But they did nothing about it.
There were some who were less charitable, whether out of resentment of Robin or out of principle. Grima didn’t care to hear the things they said in harsh whispers, but she heard anyway.
How could she put her son through that?
Selfish.
She should have just put up with it, for the kid’s sake.
Perhaps these comments would have disturbed Robin, but Grima did not particularly begrudge her coworkers. She felt nothing toward them but the general disdain she felt toward all of humanity. What was it to her if they wanted to flap their lips? Did they think they could hurt her feelings? How precious.
So her business days passed in boredom and stagnation, about as pleasant as sitting in a fetid pond. Grima would recall her vessel’s memories, how Robin had found such empty tasks validating, and how she’d swell with pride. Like a rat pleased with a morsel of cheese at the end of a maze. How free she was in comparison! From the menial, from the shameful scraping! All joys eventually gave way to despair, and Grima was beyond both. All these mortals huddled at their desks would be dead in a matter of years, no matter how sincerely they toiled. But not her. At the end of time, she would still remain.
But time had not ended yet. And every day, at exactly 4 ‘o clock, Grima powered off her monitor and left to pick up Morgan from school.
To be fair, it was hardly a bruise. It could have been mistaken for a shadow passing over his face. But it was not a shadow.
Morgan insisted that it had been a simple dodge-ball accident and that his classmate hadn’t meant to hit him, at least not in the face. It just happened that way, Morgan shrugged. And it had probably happened exactly as he’d said. Still, Grima had been silent the entire drive home, gripped by fury. Someone, some sniveling whelp, had harmed her child.
She caught of glimpse of Morgan’s expression through the rearview mirror. His face was closed off from her and her anger. Grima took a deep breath to quell the hellfire that had risen in her chest. She would hold it back for him. For now.
“Did you win?” she asked.
Morgan’s eyes flickered up to the mirror, then back down.
“No.”
She nodded.
“You’ll crush them next time.”
It was an unlikely prediction. Morgan was gifted in many ways, but athletics were not among his talents. Still, her encouragement (if it could be called that) cheered him slightly.
“I’m okay at dodging, but bad at throwing,” he admitted. “I never hit anyone.”
“Then you must simply grow stronger. And that means eating your entire lunch.”
Morgan deflated a little at that.
“But you don’t eat breakfast,” he said. “You hardly eat at all.”
“I hardly need more strength.” Breakfast or no, it would be child’s play to stamp out any who dared stand against her. Not that Morgan would understand that—his disbelief was palpable. But Grima tolerated it. Such doubt, though it would have been insulting from anyone else, was almost endearing from him.
“How about this,” said Grima in compromise. “I will eat. But you must eat all of your lunch and your vegetables at dinner.”
Morgan wrinkled his nose, apparently none too pleased that she had added his dinner habits to the conversation. He turned the thought over in his head for a few moments.
“Okay.”
They pulled into the parking lot. Morgan hopped out of the car, but Grima lingered. Another deep breath and her rage shrank to a simmer. He was fine. Nothing bad had happened to him, nothing out of the ordinary course of human childhood.
But if something had…
Ridiculous. She snatched the keys from the ignition, their teeth digging into her palm. Nothing bad would happen to the boy, not while she looked after him. Or was she truly worried that she could not keep one mortal safe? Of course she could.
Morgan was waiting for her at the door to their apartment. As Grima unlocked the door, he suddenly hugged her, leaning his small weight against her waist.
“Morgan. It’s hard to walk.”
With a fierce cry, Morgan drove his stick through the gut of an invisible monster, then jumped out of the way of what was certainly a wilding but futile attack. Next to him, Inigo brandished his stick in small, halfhearted arcs. Despite being older, the boy was timid even in play.
Grima watched her son’s pretend conquest with approval from the park bench. Though he was a scrawny child, he clearly had the heart of a warlord. Once he grew in size and ambition, he would topple empires.
“I’m not sure I like them swinging those things so close to each other,” Olivia said. She too was closely watching her son, but without Grima’s amusement.
“Rough play is how children learn their physical limits,” Grima said, reciting a tidbit Robin had once read. “Knowing their own physicality is the first step to becoming responsible for it.”
Olivia seemed to hear only half of what Grima had said. Her attention fixed on the two boys, she tugged absentmindedly at the yellow knit of her cardigan. Her fingernails, Grima noticed, were quite clean.
“I’d rather they not lose an eye.”
“They’ll be fine,” Grima said. Then she furrowed her brow, irritated at herself. What was she comforting her for?
Olivia was Robin’s friend from college, one of the few she’d kept in contact with. They had met late, in Robin’s last year, but had fallen into a fast friendship. At least, that’s how she assumed Olivia saw it. For Robin had loved her, but the timing was off. Olivia had a boyfriend, and Robin had been a coward. They’d graduated, and then Olivia had been engaged, then married. And Robin had been engaged, then married. But against the odds they’d stayed close. They’d set up a standing playdate after they’d had children—ten o’clock every Saturday at the park. Save for extenuating circumstances, Robin had not missed a week. And neither had Grima.
Not that Grima harbored any of Robin’s feelings toward Olivia. She came out of habit and because another book Robin had read stressed the importance of routine for children whose parents were divorcing. And Grima found Olivia’s presence tolerable in comparison to other humans. It wasn’t difficult to be quiet with her for a couple of hours. But tolerable or not, there was no reason to be overly friendly.
That had been Robin’s weakness, not hers.
The boys had put down their sticks and Inigo was now showing Morgan how to do an arabesque. Morgan barely got his back leg off the ground before he teetered over. But Inigo held his leg at nearly a ninety-degree angle, and it was Olivia’s turn to look upon her son in approval.
“Have you thought about enrolling Morgan in dance this year?” Olivia asked. “He’s old enough, and I know Inigo would love to have another boy in the class.”
“If he wants to, I’ll consider it. But he’s never expressed an interest in it before.”
Sure enough, Morgan had given up on his arabesque and was digging a hole in the ground with his stick.
Olivia’s disappointment was obvious, as were her efforts to hide it. She looked like she wanted to say something. But she didn’t. Grima found her pity noxious.
It would be a simple thing to destroy her, Grima thought. If you only knew how much this body once loved you. How it once mourned the distance between you. With just a few words, she could have brought the remnants of Robin’s life to ruin. Humans were unfathomably stupid to allow themselves to form such fruitless attachments. Such bonds gave way at the slightest touch.
“Mom!”
Inigo launched himself over his mother’s lap, burying his face in her blouse. Morgan came trotting after him, his face bright and his hands cupped around something.
“Mama, look!” A disoriented creature crawled in his palms.
“A beetle,” Grima remarked, unimpressed by the boy’s fondness for playing with insects. Morgan presented the beetle to Olivia, hoping for an easier audience.
“That’s, um, very nice, Morgan,” Olivia said, trying to show interest in Morgan’s find while placating her own son. “Inigo, look. It’s just a bug.”
Inigo shook his head vigorously. “It’s gross!” he protested.
Morgan frowned. He covered the beetle and held it close to his chest.
“It’s not gross,” he said, his voice rising. “It’s just like that.”
“Mom, he tried to throw it at me.”
“No I didn’t!”
Grima sighed and stood up from the bench.
“It’s a good bug,” she said, ruffling Morgan’s hair. “But let’s put it back.”
Grima walked Morgan to the hole he had dug while Olivia spoke quiet, tired words to Inigo. Morgan dragged his feet the entire way. Although he couldn’t have planned on keeping the beetle, he was quite reluctant to let it go. After a moment, Grima put her hand on his back and Morgan put the beetle down. They watched it crawl into the dirt.
“Are you angry?” Grima asked. Morgan shook his head. But his face was scrunched in silent protest. He found injustice in strange places.
“Everyone has a part of themselves that others will find ugly,” Grima said. “That doesn’t mean they are, or that you have to believe it.”
Morgan didn’t respond. He seemed to be thinking.
By the time they returned, Olivia had calmed Inigo down. He was standing somewhat sheepishly next to his mother, holding a brown paper bag.
“We should probably get going,” Olivia said. Her smile was lovely and apologetic. Grima did not return it. “Oh, but first, Inigo has something for Morgan.”
With an encouraging nudge, Inigo stepped forward and gave the paper bag to Morgan. Inside was a cookbook with a rather distressed cover.
“The library was having a book sale,” Olivia explained. “You still like cookbooks, right Morgan?”
All of Morgan’s residual moodiness evaporated upon receiving the book. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, and it was clearly taking all of his self-restraint not to start reading the book right there.
“Don’t be rude, Morgan.”
“Thank you very much,” Morgan said, first to Olivia, then to Inigo.
“Y-you’re welcome,” Inigo mumbled to his shoes.
Morgan looked thoughtfully at Inigo. Then, to Grima’s surprise, he reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. Inigo was too stunned to react. He looked up Olivia, his bangs askew.
“Oh my,” Olivia said, laugher edging in on her voice. She hugged Inigo to her side, and when she looked at Grima, she was beaming. Grima felt a dull tug in her chest and willed it still.
“We’ll see you next week, then?”
Morgan lay on the living room carpet, the cookbook open in front of him. Unlike most children, who leafed through books so violently the paper almost tore, Morgan turned the book’s pages with two hands as if he were handling a sacred text. He could probably read about half the words on any given page.
After settling on a recipe, Morgan brought the book to Grima, who was feigning disinterest from the kitchen table. He placed his selection in front of her, and she scanned the recipe.
“Go put on a jacket,” Grima said, checking her purse for her car keys and wallet. After a short trip to the grocery store, they returned with potatoes, ground beef, and frozen vegetables.
Grima couldn’t remember when this little tradition of theirs had started. She didn’t even know when Morgan had become fascinated with cookbooks. Robin’s memories of the past year were jumbled and half-formed. She had been a mess right until the end. She probably would be still, had Grima not taken over. But regardless of how it began, once a week Morgan chose a recipe, and if the ingredients weren’t too ridiculous, Grima would make it. It was often Grima’s only proper meal of the week.
Although Morgan could happily stare at cookbooks for hours, he only showed mild interest in cooking. Mostly he liked to measure things. He could spend an inordinate amount of time making sure a tablespoon was full or a cup of flour completely level, only for Grima to dump it unceremoniously into a pot or pan. It made for a good lesson in destruction.
Tonight, Grima had given Morgan a bowl of boiled potatoes to mash. He worked more methodically than she had hoped, crushing the potatoes at an even pace and often stopping to rest his arms. Grima felt a flicker of annoyance at the child’s weakness, then quelled it. He was an unfinished person. Even a grown mortal would never match her in sheer power. But there were many paths to conquest. Like his mother, the boy had a good mind. Perhaps she would raise a legion of undead for him to command, Grima thought as she defrosted the carrots and peas.
The shepherd’s pie was large. The recipe was meant for 6-8 people, and Grima hadn’t scaled it down. A mistake. It would probably sit in their fridge for the rest of the week, an ugly, melting thing. But Morgan was quite pleased. He held his spoon and smiled at his dinner—a scoop of pie the size of his face. He seemed full just looking at it.
But he did eat. In tidy, reverent bites. And, as promised, he didn’t even pick out the onions. Which meant Grima had to uphold her end of the bargain.
She took a bite of the pie. It tasted dense and of salt. Her stomach coiled like the raging serpent that it was. She wasn’t hungry. She took another bite.
“It’s good, isn’t it, Mama?” There were mashed potatoes in Morgan’s smile.
“It’s good,” she lied. “It’s really good, Morgan.”
Grima had been a prisoner to sleep for a thousand years. If given the choice, she would never sleep again.
Unfortunately, her vessel didn’t give her a choice.
In the tepid darkness of her bedroom, Grima lay in bed listening to the small sounds of night. An electronic hum. An occasional clunking of pipes. A barking dog.
Of all the inconveniences of having a physical form, she hated sleep the most. She hated how it slunk up on her like a coward. She hated how it left her vessel vulnerable and useless. She hated how, no matter how hard she wrestled against it, she could not win. Every night for a couple of hours, Grima’s body betrayed her. She had yet to fully accept that.
Grima had tried before to stay awake the entire night. Her body had protested—a bitter reminder of her vessel’s weakness. But worse was the realization that the night was not worth staying up for. With Morgan asleep, she’d had nothing to do but wait for morning. Eventually, she had ended up scrubbing the kitchen out of boredom. Sunrise had found her sitting on clean linoleum, bleary eyed and thoroughly disgusted with herself. Mortality made her do crazy things.
Robin had always slept easily. Even when things had gotten bad, really bad. Perhaps especially then. She had searched for oblivion in her pillow and had found it. In exchange, Grima had a vessel that collapsed every twenty hours and a kingdom of tedious night. Although she would never choose to be sealed away again, Grima sometimes understood why Robin had. To a lesser being, the prospect of continuing on and on must be terrifying.
“Mama?”
Grima opened her eyes to see Morgan’s small silhouette at her door. Before she could turn on the bedside lamp, he had scurried across the dark room and pulled himself onto the bed. Grima felt the plastic nose of his stuffed tiger brush against her arm.
“Morgan,” Grima said, her voice sharp with a warning the boy ignored. He pulled the covers over himself, settling in.
“I had a bad dream.”
“A dream.” Grima could not sympathize with Morgan’s distress. Her sleep was a dry place. “Tell me, Morgan, are dreams real?”
“No, but—”
“Then are you upset over a fiction?”
“But I dreamed you went away again.”
His words made Grima swallow her reproach. She cursed Robin, not for the first time. What had he meant by “again”?
“I was at school,” Morgan continued, making space for himself in Grima’s silence. “I was waiting for you to pick me up, but you didn’t. So I ran home to look for you, but all the doors were open and you weren’t here. You left a note on the table and I couldn’t read it, but I knew you were locked up in jail and then I woke up.”
Grima said nothing. She listened to the faint whistle of Morgan’s breathing. The damp warmth of his body had begun to seep into the sheets. What an oddly vulnerable creature he was, Grima thought, setting her irritation aside.
“Then your dream is all the more foolish,” she finally said. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you went to jail,” Morgan insisted.
“Ridiculous,” Grima scoffed. “They’d never catch me, and if they did, they’d never hold me. I’d break out.”
She had, after all, shed harsher chains.
“Really?” Morgan’s voice was small and hopeful.
“Of course.”
“You have to promise.”
“I promise.”
The oath came so easy and quick that Grima was not immediately sure that it was her own. But of course it was—there was no one else. She was Grima.
She was, wasn’t she?
She felt Morgan’s tentative hand reach out and grasp her nightshirt. Just the hem of her sleeve, pinched lightly between his thumb and forefinger.
She ruffled his hair, messy from troubled sleep. Then she hugged him tight to her. She felt his surprise, then felt it melt away into something old and familiar as he curled into her arms.
“I promise,” she repeated, whoever she was. “I’m not going anywhere.”