Savage Saints (Monsters of Saint Mark's)

He chats non-stop while he pins flannel to my chest and denim to my legs, talking all about some long-ago party he went to in another world. This party is filled with monsters like us. Dressed in elaborate finery. Gold threads woven into luxurious skirts, and waistcoats, and pantaloons.

And the food! At one point during the fitting, Eyebrows sends a small monster on an errand to the kitchen, asking Cookie to make him a snack right out of his memory. When the boy returns just a few moments later—the time in here is weird—he is holding a whole tray of pastries made of pastel-blue dough with gold icing.

I eat seven of them.

Several seamstresses appear at one point. But they are from the other time, so they flit around us like we are not here. Because to them, we are not. I like watching them though. It takes my mind off how much I yearn for Madeline.

I think I love her.

I think I will marry her.

I think I will get Batty to whip me up a magic rock spell that will let me leave forever.

Or, at the very least, a few decades. That’s all I want. Just twenty or thirty short years to myself. To have a real life, and maybe a real family.

Not that I don’t love my Saint Mark’s family. I do. Very much. Especially Pie.

But when I picture my Madeline with small children who may or may not breathe fire and shed scales, I just… I don’t know. I get this overwhelming feeling of… satisfaction and happiness.

This is what I want, I decide. And I deserve it. More than even Pell. I have been trapped in this place for millennia. I have paid my dues. I even helped with Pie’s banishing spell.

My reward has been earned.

This thought is still floating around in my head when Eyebrows snaps his fingers at me and tells me to leave so he can sew in private. He will be quick and deliver the garment to the back patio where we listen to the radio at night.

I leave through a door, end up in medieval somewhere just in time to place a bet on a joust, then continue on my journey home by way of a Venice canal. You have to love magic hallways.

When I finally arrive back at the stairs, I descend into a large gathering outside near the radio.

I lean in to a shoulder. “What are we doing?”

This monster tells me that Big Jim is doing an interview with the Love Doctor. Talking all about the hunt for monsters.

When this last word comes out, there is hushed mumbling.

They are afraid. “Oh, come on now, monsters! He’s not looking for you, he’s looking for Pell! And I’m going to be there. They will never find this place. Batty and I have made sure of it.”

But they are not convinced. Not at first, at least. They tremble and fret about Big Jim and Sheriff Roth. Batty doesn’t help, either. He hypes up their fear, cajoling them into more fretting.

It gets so bad that I have to whistle with my fingers and yell, “Shut up, all of you!” in order to get their attention. “No one is coming over the walls. The only monsters the hunting party will find tonight are me and Batty. We’re going to scare the shit out of them and they will never come back into these hills. Tell them.” I look at Batty and narrow my eyes.

I have taken care to nurture an air of innocence and a personality of meekness over the past several weeks with these monsters. Because even though I am no longer a dragon, I am still the remnants of one.

And yes, Batty’s kind are quite… terrifying. Ugly. Violent. Somewhat mad.

But the dragons—though there is only me here, now—are several hundred thousand levels of frightful above the batty things.

And while this human world outside the gates hasn’t seen a dragon in the skies in over two thousand years, these monsters don’t come from this world. They come from worlds that are something else altogether. Places where the massive heavy wingbeats of giant creatures are still a common thing. Where fire from a mouth can blister entire cities and make whole mountains shake and tremble from the wrath of things like me.

So when I look at Batty and instruct him to soothe them, he sees these cruel things behind my kind eyes.

And he does as I say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - PIE

I’m one step through the doorway when I realize something fairly critical.

I forgot my dragon scale.