Dragon Horse

Nikolaos's shoulders stiffen when at his parents’ voices crackle in his ear canals. He’s forgotten to take off his hearing aid.

“He’s not a soldier like us,” Ammi says sharply. “He won’t be able to handle it.”

“Would you rather he finds out we kept it from him?”

“He’ll, he’ll be in shock–

“We can't protect him for long. He should know. He needs to know–” Baba’s breath shudders when he locks pupils with his son, who shouldn’t be able to hear him. “Nikolaos…”

Nikolaos shoves his way past them and sprints past the silent television towards the front door. The open front door.

A soldier with an eye-patch closes the door behind him. Sergeant Wotan wears a peaked cap and a uniform. He holds a narrow weapon, wrapped in white cloth, and tied with black string.

Senior officers aren't allowed to remove their helmets and armor under any circumstance. They have to be ready. To attack the enemy. To defend civilians against a threat at any given moment, but there is one exception.

Baba moves Nikolaos to the side. Ammi holds Nikolaos close as he unlocks the door. Sergeant Wotan unbuckles his respirator, then he unties the wrappings and folds back the cloth, unbundling Cadmus’s xyston. The shaft is cracked in two, both spear points fractured.

Nikolaos remembers what he has been taught in his aerodynamics course at Argos. Four elements must be present for a plane to stay in the sky: lift, weight, propulsive force, and air resistance. Ammi’s knees buckle beneath her. She is the weight.

Baba’s hands tremble as he steps in front of them and takes the broken weapon in his arms. He is the lift.

Cadmus is the propulsive force, counteracting the air resistance. Not the weight. The dead weight.

Nikolaos is the dead weight.

“I am here to inform you that your son has been reported Missing in Action while defending a nuclear stronghold in the southwest,” the sergeant says calmly, coldly.

The plane stalls, and then, it spirals.

Nikolaos raises his hands.

"I don't know sign language,” the sergeant cuts him off.

Nikolaos guides Ammi to Baba’s arms and grabs his backpack, digging his notepad out of the front pocket. He holds up his message to the sergeant.

Did you find his body?

“His battalion sent out a search party to the attack site. His dog tag is gone. The xyston is all that remains.”

Why did you stop when you found the xyston?

“Even if Achilles is alive, he would’ve been captured as a Prisoner of War. If he’s not dead, he’s been experimented on or injected with Hyalocin. Your brother is dead either way."

Ammi pries the paper from him before he can give it to the sergeant.

Keep looking.

"The burial of his xyston will take place at the memorial site in three hours," Sergeant Wotan orders. "Don't be late."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Baba said hoarsely, saluting him. Sergeant Wotan returned it.

"O Ouranos Férei Mártyres."

"O Ouranos Férei Mártyres," Baba whispers, shutting and locking the door.

Shards of ice slip under Nikolaos’ skeleton, splitting his sternum into a trench. Feathers flood his windpipe. His house spins around him, clouded over by a blurred, blinding white polar vortex worse than the Kheima.

"He’s shivering," Ammi’s nails sink into his forearms.

"Nikolaos, listen to me." Baba’s voice breaks as he places his hands on Nikolaos’ shoulders. “Nikolaos, can you hear me?”

Nikolaos wrenches away from them and runs to his room, then he slumps against the wall, straight at the blank piece of paper and uncapped pen on the floor.

His brother – his baby brother’s voice echoes in his skull. The first sound he had ever heard, saving him from the silence that suffocated him for nine years.

Seven years later, it is all he has left of him.

He pulls off his transmitter, wire, and that plastic piece, clutching the small mass of machinery that labels him as a dicrip, and throws it to the ground.

Nikolaos can’t even close his stinging eyes. He tightens his respirator and tosses a winter coat over himself, staggering around the back of the house to the barbed wire fence, looking through the squares to the backyard. The north star glints in the sky. The two rocks which were his makeshift goal lean against the fence.

The trench sharpens, searing and slicing at his lungs. Nikolaos’ shoulder blades fold in, the wings that could have been, and the feathers in his throat stir into a vortex.

In its eye, Cadmus stands at his side as they wait for the audiologist to take them in. He traces the crystalline patches on the window with skeleton-thin fingers, the outline of the city pitch black against the iridescent sky behind the cloaked glass. He taps Nikolaos on the shoulder, holds up both of his hands and makes them into a W-handshape.

“Cold,” he signs slowly.

Nikolaos shoots him a thumbs up, the stitches behind his ear searing into his skull. Cadmus’ chest puffs out like it did every time Nikolaos lets him win at soccer, and the ache in the stitches behind his ear dulls.

The medical center typically closes at this time. The temperature can drop as low as negative eighty-nine degrees below zero after the sun sets, but Nikolaos doesn't even shiver in his winter gear. He’s an Arctolean, after all.

Baba has to hold Cadmus to keep him from jumping up and down. From the way he dashes around the clinic, one would think that the appointment is for him.

The audiologist inserts a thin tube into Nikolaos’ canal, sticks the transmitter to his scalp, and fits the plastic sound processor onto his outer ear. He teaches Nikolaos how to turn it on and adjust the volume. It takes a couple of tries but finally, he hears a faint humming. The Real Ear Measures should happen next, followed by some final programming and tune-ups, but Cadmus can't wait any longer. His eyes glint mischievously. Ammi tried to clap a hand over his mouth, but he’s too quick.

“Nikos!” he calls. “Nikos, can you hear me?”

His voice crackles, garbled, unintelligible if Nikolaos couldn’t fill in the gaps by reading his lips. Cadmus’s words are clearer when the voice is in his hands, but these are still his brother’s first words. The ventilators buzz. The paper covering the cot he sits on crinkles. His parents laugh incredulously, sharp and staticky. Nikolaos starts to laugh, too. He can hear his laughter. They are to his temples what the drill is to the ice when he cuts a hole into it to fish.

“Ammi, Baba, he can hear us!” Cadmus crashes into Nikolaos’ chest, knocking the wind out of him and wrapping his arms around him. “He can hear me!”

Nikolaos will never hear his crackling voice again, will never lose to him at soccer again, will never paint pegasi into the snow with him again.

His brother, the first person in his family who learns sign language just so he could talk to his older brother, who comes back from Colchis in bandages and yet never lets that dim his smile, who takes his place on that train, isn't coming back from that station.

He watches as he doesn't hug him, as the train soars down the tunnel of his hippocampus, as Cadmus carries his family's valor to the battlefield, bears witness for him, waves to him from the train window.

He doesn’t even wave back.

They won't call him Cadmus at his memorial; they’ll call him Achilles.

The vortex clears, and Nikolaos’ tears don't splatter the snow, but they crystallize on his lashes. And the vortex vanishes. And it all falls with the white flakes. Silent.

He will mourn now, but he won't forget. He will remember, and he will bear witness to himself.

He raises his hands and puts a finger to his lips. He makes his left hand into an S, placing a flat palm against the thumb side.

He will lead his brother home.

He swears it.