Ariel (18 page)

* * *

Next day Shaughnessy and I debated whether or not we missed technology—she taking the affirmative, I the negative. Shaughnessy believed that we had lost our humanity along with civilization; my position was that, except for a change in hardware, things were still pretty much the same. Ariel kept interjecting smart-assed comments.

Shaughnessy and I argued—pardon me, debated—the entire afternoon, and never our twain did meet.

* * *

Two days later: our eleventh night on the road. We had skirted around Greensboro. I wanted to avoid cities; something bad happened every time we went into one. Cities were where people were, and I didn't want to be where people were. People either posed threats, demanded to come along, or presented the possibility that news would reach New York that we—Ariel in particular—were on the way. Gossip traveled faster than we could.

Shaughnessy's feet had begun to hurt. I taped her instep just behind the toes where it was irritated and likely to blister. I lanced a blister on her right heel, taped that, and gave her a pair of my socks. I told her to tie her shoes so they were loose at the toes and tight farther up; this would keep blood circulating freely in her foot but would prevent the shoe from rubbing as she walked. My own feet were still healing fairly well.

At a store just outside Greensboro George exchanged red silk shirt and blue slacks for plain white T-shirt and jeans. Shaughnessy got another pair of tennis shoes. We were still on I-85, headed almost due east. We'd continue in that direction until we reached Durham, where the road turned northeast and remained more or less parallel to the coast. Not a lot had happened the past two days. Shaughnessy and I argued about damn near any subject either of us brought up, with Ariel chiming in occasionally. George grew increasingly restless but, as usual, said little. He would pace after we set up camp, and now and then his hand reached for the security of his sword's handle. I continued practicing with Fred each evening.

We had to settle for a lousy campsite that night; apparently somebody had been careless with a campfire, or maybe dropped a cigarette, and the woods had burned for miles. Not knowing how much farther we'd have to travel to find unburned ground, I decided to make camp where we were. Getting a fire going was difficult but I managed it after several false starts, and we used the remainder of our water to cook our freeze-dried dinner. I hoped to find more on the way to Durham tomorrow, possibly in Durham if we hadn't found any by then.

We adjusted to the bitter stench of burned wood, but it was always there in the background, and Shaughnessy complained it gave her a headache. There was also something else, some underlying aroma I couldn't identify: heavy, musky.

We all ate heartily and went to bed tired. Ariel annoyed me by sleeping on the charred ground; I knew it would neither bother her while she slept nor leave any traces of itself on her when she got up.

Simple consideration got the best of me and I unfolded my sleeping bag completely and let Shaughnessy sleep on one side. She thanked me and we went to bed back to back. It took me an hour to get to sleep; I was afraid to dream again with Shaughnessy behind me. I could feel her body heat across the six inches that separated us. After a while my uncomfortable-ness slipped into dim confusion and I was asleep. I think I dreamed again, but only vague stirrings this time, nebulous as ink in water. A vaguely familiar sound woke me in the middle of the night. I kept my eyes closed. There was sweat on my body, hot where I touched the down-filled bag, cool along my left arm and ribcage. I heard the sound again, and the reason it seemed familiar floated to the surface: my grandparents had had a furnace, a big one that grumbled loudly about having to warm their ancient, drafty, and creaky house. I was half asleep and the thought swam in my mind like a tadpole. I opened my eyes. An orange glow stretched shadows of the rocks and trees away from me. I rolled over, noticing that Shaughnessy had pressed against me for warmth, and looked into the sky. "Holy shit!"

Shaughnessy jerked away, saying "What?" in a sleepy voice.

"George! Ariel! Get up, goddamn, get up!"

George jumped up quickly as another tongue of flame jetted into the sky. Ariel bolted up also. "Oh, shit," she breathed. George made inarticulate sounds and seemed to be trying very hard to swallow. Shaughnessy had popped up after Ariel and George. She asked me what the hell was going on. In answer I pointed behind her and up. She turned around and said, "Oh, my goodness."

It floated above us, flapping its wings lazily. Occasionally it buoyed on the wind; I saw what Ariel had meant about the gasbag. It vaguely resembled a leather Zeppelin being fucked by a sea serpent, but this is in no way intended to make the thing sound comical. Quite the contrary, it looked as if it could easily eat all of us in two, maybe three swallows. As we watched, the dragon rolled its huge head in a lazy circle on its long neck, opened its mouth, and belched out a healthy flame-thrower's dose. It was too high for the flame to reach us, but I felt the heat. Its breath stank like the afterburn from a bad Mexican dinner.

I forgot Ariel's admonition to George and looked into its eyes  .  .  .  .

There was an animated Disney film,
The Jungle Book,
based on the Kipling story. It had a python with a funny name, though I can't remember what it was. It had those eyes  .  .  .  . You looked into them and the pupils dilated into multicolored bands. The dragon's eyes caught the firelight, drank it up until it spread into a pale yellow glow. The pupils were twin motes punched into the centers of the eyes. Ariel's voice came from a long way off. "It's the fire. I should have known."

"Known what?" Shaughnessy sounded as if she were underwater.

"The campfire. Dragons use their fire-breathing as a mating call." She paused. "The ground all around here—this is a mating ground."

My head turned to follow the dragon's every motion, eyes glued to its own strange and fascinating eyes. Toward the bottom of my peripheral vision I saw the tail curl, roll, and straighten like a deadly banner, scaled, ridged, arrowhead-tipped. I didn't move my eyes to look; I couldn't. Those beautiful and frightening eyes  .  .  .  .

"It thinks the campfire is another dragon," Ariel continued, "and it's come to mate. They can't mate in the air; they have to land and—Pete!" Her sharp voice jerked my head toward her automatically, breaking the spell. "Don't look into its eyes!"

George carefully averted his gaze from the huge beast and bent down to his sleeping bag. He picked up his broadsword and drew the blade.

Sixty feet above our heads the dragon had begun to circle. The breeze from its wings ruffled Ariel's mane. It rumbled as its bulk glided over us.

"Maybe we should put out the fire," Shaughnessy suggested.

"Good idea," said Ariel.

Having no water to quench the campfire, I grabbed a burned-out log and pressed it over sections of the campfire until the twigs, wood chips, and logs were only smoking. Dying embers glowed dull orange.

I grabbed the crossbow from Ariel's pack. "Just in case, I said.

"You'll probably just make it mad," she said.

The dragon sent out another jet of flame, then another, this one smaller, tentative. Ariel watched it; the eyes didn't seem to bother her. "It can't keep that up and stay in the air," she said. "It's using up hydrogen like crazy. I think it's wondering what happened to the dragon it thought was here. With any luck it'll forget about it and go away."

"If it came here to get laid," said Shaughnessy, "it won't forget about it that easily."

"I wouldn't know."

Shaughnessy gave her a sidelong look, one eyebrow raised. "How do unicorns mate, I wonder?"

Ariel looked away from the circling dragon. "None of your goddamned business."

"I think it's leaving," I said. Ariel and Shaughnessy were glaring at each other.

The dragon stopped flapping in a circle and angled itself upward. With slow wingbeats it pulled itself skyward. By the time I looked away it was a dark blotch against the night sky. "Well," I said, "so much for dragon-slaying adventures. How disappointing." I lowered the crossbow.

George sheathed his sword. "I'm never gonna be able to go back home."

Shaughnessy looked at him in amusement, looked to the blue-black sky where the dragon had vanished, then back to George. "Sorry you're let down, George, but personally I'm sorta pleased with the outcome, you know?"

Whatever reply he would have made was drowned out by a roar I felt in my bones. A new star blazed in the sky, falling to earth like a fastball pitched by Zeus. The ground lit up in Halloween colors. I snapped the crossbow up, finger fumbling for the trigger. I had little time and I needed to put a bolt straight down its throat and hope it didn't burn to ash before it got there. If I missed, it meant a certain groundfight, because the thing wouldn't have enough gas left to get aloft. And I didn't want to have to battle those claws—each one was as long as I am tall. I squinted up at the orange light. The heat on my face increased. Aim toward the center of the flame.
Squeeze
 
.  .  .  . The bolt flew, its hiss fading into the dragon's roar. The earthquake bellow ceased, and so did the stream of flame. The dragon kept coming. We all ran in four different directions. It landed atop the smoldering remains of the campfire with a whump that jarred my teeth. My knees buckled and I tripped.

Its head reared stupidly and it tried to raise itself. Not ten feet in front of the automobile-sized mouth was George, sword in hand. He stepped forward, then stopped cold. His swordpoint lowered slowly. He was looking into the dragon's eyes.

It tried to burn him. The head reared back on the serpentine neck, struck forward, and hissed. All that came out was the weak sound of escaping hydrogen. Embedded just in front of the tree-trunk-sized right foreleg was the rear half of the crossbow bolt. The beast brought the leg back to try to raise itself and the bolt snapped off. Smoke rose from the embers of the campfire beneath the furious thing.

My eyes widened. "George!" I screamed. "George, run, get out of there!"

He looked my way. My shout must have given him back his bearings: he looked back to the dragon's neck, avoiding the eyes, and brought the sword up in a two-handed grip. He stepped forward.

"No, no, George! Don't—"

It went off like a reptilian
Hindenberg
. I saw the light of the explosion and managed to twist my head away just as the blast picked me up gently and slammed me down ten feet away. Pieces of dragon went in all directions, slamming into burned trees, plopping onto the grass, pattering the charred ground after being hurled skyward. My right shoulder burned as I picked myself up. I ignored it. A searing on the lower right of my stomach made me look down. the I'M WITH STUPID shirt was eaten half away. I removed it hastily and rubbed off hydrochloric acid—dragon blood—with the back of the shirt. Fortunately only enough had splattered me to turn my skin pink and itchy. I got up in time to see the remains of the fireball as it burned itself out. A thick, slaughterhouse smell hung in the air.

Ariel and Shaughnessy emerged from behind a knot of burned trees. They were arguing and didn't notice me.

"Don't you ever try to touch me again—do you understand me?"

"I'm trying to tell you," replied Shaughnessy defensively, "I didn't mean to. I saw the explosion and grabbed you. It was a reflex."

"You don't know what it feels like."

"I can guess. It hurt me, too."

"Poor baby. Let me tell you something, child." Her eyes were haughty. "You don't deserve to touch me."

Shaughnessy planted her feet and raised her voice half an octave. "You know, ever since I joined you, you've acted like I wasn't worthy of your presence because you're pure as angel's piss—"

"Nobody asked you to come along. You invited yourself."

"Okay, fine. But in the midst of elevating yourself to such pure and lofty heights, you've proven to me you're just as human and fallible as the rest of us, because I think you're jealous."

"What could I possibly be—"

"Where's George?" I interrupted.

They turned to face me. "I  .  .  . don't know," said Shaughnessy.

"Yes, I can see you're both busy with more important things, right? He could be hurt."

"I'll go look for him." Other than a small patch on the right side of her head where she'd been burned, she seemed all right. She turned and stepped over two pounds of cooked dragon meat.

I looked at Ariel with raised eyebrows. "Well?"

"You think she's right."

"I don't know. I don't know if she's right. But since she joined us you have been acting different."

"Different how? Jealous?"

"No. More like  .  .  . threatened. I think you're still preoccupied with your avenues of possibility. It's not like you to stand there arguing with someone while somebody else might need help."

"Mmm." She looked thoughtful, as if she had an opinion of her own she was weighing against mine. "So why are we standing here?"

We looked for George. Scarcely a minute had gone by when Shaughnessy called out. She'd found him behind a boulder, thrown thirty feet from where he'd been in front of the dragon. His right wrist was sprained and he had a broken middle finger on the same hand, cuts, bruises, and a few burns where blood had spattered him. I dug out the first-aid kit and splinted his finger and swabbed his wounds.

"How about you?" I asked Shaughnessy when I finished with George.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"Uh-huh." I made her bend her head forward while I swabbed her scalp. "It'll grow back," I told her, and returned the medkit to the pack. "How about you?" I asked Ariel.

"What are you going to do, give me a Band-Aid?" She laughed. "I don't have a scratch."