Phoenix (11 page)

“The door!” I shout, though I can’t see my brother anymore, either.

I hear his voice, his tone condemning me from beyond the mob of yagi. “If you’d have stayed down there—”

“Then what? You’d have been overwhelmed that much sooner!” I spear another yagi through the neck, but my hands are getting weak from the relentless fighting. My sword sticks, lodged in the thick exoskeleton.

I tug the sword by its handle, simultaneously kicking the yagi back, pulling my blade free.

But in the time it took me to free my sword, the yagi moved into my circle. They’re close now, more than rapier-antennae-close.

Too close for me to use my blades in the manner I’m accustomed to.

I hack at the nearest one, kicking in the other direction, overwhelmed. Ram was right, and I knew it when he said it, in spite of my protest. I should have stayed down there with Nia, or awakened her, or something. I did the worst possible thing I could have done, which was to leave her unprotected, asleep, when I knew the yagi were surrounding us.

I didn’t mean to endanger her. I was only trying to help. It’s my broken touch, the anti-Midas-golden-touch, the curse of my breaking things.

I thrust my guilt-driven swords at the yagi, hating what I’ve done, the very thing I vowed I wouldn’t do. Of all the things I never wanted to break, Nia is the most precious.

Through eyes nearly blinded by stinging vapor and sweat, I see something from the direction of the door.

Something silver, like the blade of a sword. Are the yagi armed?

But no, the creatures fall away from my side nearest the door. I step into the gap, finally able to swing my blade. I kill two more before I can spare another glance that way.

Silver blades cut through the swarm. Two long swords.

I behead two more yagi and spin again.

Ram is nearly to my back. The yagi have fallen away from him, as well. Something is killing them with us, from the direction of the door.

I kill two more, four more, Ram kills more, and then we kick aside the bodies. The path to the door is clear, and Nia is there, blades swinging.

“There you are!” She doesn’t look at all impressed with our yagi-killing prowess or our skills at protecting her. “What are you doing out here?”

“Killing yagi.” I behead two more. We’re finally pushing them back. Nia’s arrival has tipped the scales—but for how long? We’re all growing tired of fighting. My arms are tingling from the impact of blade against exoskeleton, and the splatter of yagi blood that burns like singing nettles. “Did you wake up?”

I’ve no sooner asked the question, then I realize it’s a stupid question. Obviously, she woke up, or she wouldn’t be out here, awake.

“They’re after me,” she reminds us, blades swinging, wisely ignoring my question. “If I hadn’t come up here, they would have broken through the window. I got all of our stuff. It’s there in the bundle, right inside the door. Can we just go?”

“Let’s go!” Ram shoves back the yagi and grabs the bearskin bundle, changing into a dragon as he does so.

I leap into the air and do the same as Nia rises into the sky beside me.

Without a word, we fly past the sleeping village toward the blue expanse of the sea.

Tired as I was from fighting, it was only fighting tired. After sleeping a day and a night and then some, I’m more rested and therefore better prepared to fly than I’ve been this whole trip. The sea air swells beneath us, providing lift, and we fly quickly. All three of us understand the need for haste—we must outrun the yagi while we have the strength to do so.

The yagi obviously aren’t going to give us time to rest. Ram’s theory about the village was only partially correct. Why? Is it because the fishing village is so much smaller than Prague, where our parents hid out more than two decades ago? Are the yagi not intimidated by the town?

Or is there more to it than that? Nia said the yagi were baited with her scent, whereas twenty-odd years ago, when the yagi were going after our parents, they didn’t know what my mom smelled like. I don’t even know if they knew for sure she existed, thanks to my grandfather’s insistence on keeping everything about her a secret. And who knows if they knew what my dad smelled like, or whether this scent-training thing is a new development Eudora invented in the last twenty years?

So is that it, then? They’re swarming us so thickly, ignoring the risks of getting caught, because they can follow Nia’s scent and Eudora set them on it?

What’s Eudora up to, anyway? From Nia’s stories, it sounded like, always before, Eudora just wanted the yagi to chase Nia back to them. Are they really out to kill her?

And why?

I don’t have the answer. I don’t entirely understand Eudora’s motivation. I mean, I know she wants to destroy the dragons, but I’m not even clear on what prompted her to be so hateful and vengeful in the first place.

Here’s what I do know: we were nearly felled back there.

I mean, if Nia had come to the roof thirty seconds, maybe even a minute later, it would have been too late for me and Ram. We were being overpowered.

We’re not up to this. Not only did we not impress Nia with our yagi-killing prowess, but we were very nearly killed, and she had to come save us.

So I’m really not making progress toward my goal of trying not to die.

And then there’s the wooing Nia thing. Ugh, I am such a fool. Let’s forget, for just a moment, that she had to rescue me and Ram on the roof.

On a purely interpersonal level, I have done more to repel the woman than attract her. I have. Seriously. Could I have looked more like a dope when I asked her if she woke up?

This is my problem: I say things without thinking. Like when she asked me and Ram if we were from China. Ram had the presence of mind to tell her we’re from Azerbaijan, while I looked like an idiot parroting the word “China.”

And I know this is my problem. I know I need to say thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent things. But all my life I’ve said goofy things. I was the kid who pointed out the obvious so everyone else would snicker. In my pre-teen years, the skill served me well.

But I should have outgrown it by now. Most of the time, I do just fine. It’s just that Nia is so pretty and I want so very much for her to like me, and somehow, whether I’m basking in her prettiness and my brain shuts off, or if I’m just too nervous to even think straight, instead of being suave and sophisticated, I fall back on my old pre-teen conversation tactics.

And I don’t even want to think about what happened last night. Ugh, last night! Besides the obvious win for Ram with the pizza, and who knows how long they were up bonding while I snored into my pillow, I was completely inane with my half-asleep jabbering during those stolen moments with Nia, when I told her about the phoenix.

What was that about, anyway? I remember that my dreams were crazy vivid, and I had a strong impression they were important, or something deluded like that, so when I woke up, I wanted to share. I thought maybe we’d have some kind of connection, like maybe I could give Nia an insight into herself she’d never had before, and she’d appreciate that and feel something for me because of it.

What did I even say, anyway? Flying now over the open ocean, our middle-of-the-night conversation feels like it was a world away.

I told her she was a phoenix. But a phoenix is a bird. We dragons are mammalian reptiles—so, pretty much everything except birds.

I. Am. An. Idiot.

It pushes me to fly faster, even when I grow weary of the flight. It dogs me, this mixture of guilt and inadequacy fanned by the flames of my burning desire to impress Nia, in spite of all I’ve done that’s turned her off so far.

We must outrun the yagi and find the island with the mysterious other dragon. When my strength ebbs to nothing, I fly on sheer will and determination.

As the sun makes its circuit from east to west, we soar across the open sea. We were flying high—so high that we look like specks in the sky to anyone below. But the sky has grown foggy as we leave the chilly north for the moisture-laden south, and we sink lower, letting the mist hide us.

For most of the afternoon and into the long evening, we fly just low enough to see the water below. Given our dragon vision, we can see so much farther than the naked human eye can see. So if we can just barely see the ocean, it’s unlikely anyone on a boat would be able to spot us in this mist.

Finally, the endless expanse of sea is interrupted by shorelines. Far below us, a chain of islands stretches from Japan to the peninsula of Siberia. It’s an archipelago, a mostly-underwater mountain range whose tippy tops protrude from the sea.

Isolated.

Remote.

Perfect for our purposes.

We pick a particularly tiny islet and fly closer, circling high above, using our dragon vision to look for any signs of habitation.

But this rocky dot in the sea doesn’t bear any signs of human life, and so we drop from the sky, weary from our flight.

We’ve traveled a long way almost straight south, and the climate is much milder here, but still, Nia wraps the bearskin around herself once she’s changed into a human again.

Ram looks at me. “Want to hunt us some dinner or start a fire?”

“I’ll get dinner.” I change back into a dragon and take off again. I know this leaves Ram alone with Nia, but I don’t feel I’m doing a decent job of wooing her, and I don’t know what I’d say to her if I stayed. In all likelihood, given my performance record so far, I’d only repel her that much more.

So I might as well hunt.

Besides, Ram’s bear is still far more impressive than anything I’ve caught. I need to impress Nia with my hunting skills.

Not that I’m likely to find much on this tiny island. It’s little more than a mile across, with a rocky old volcanic cone jutting up roughly in its middle, and beautiful sandy beaches stretching wide all around. We’re camped on the western slope of the dormant peak, where the last of the day’s dying sunshine pierces the foggy gloom.

I circle the island in a wide arc, my scale glow at its dimmest, using my dragon vision to search the sea for a big fish. Finally I spot the outline of an animal under the surface, and I swoop lower for a closer look. I don’t want to accidentally catch a dolphin. Nia’s not likely to be impressed by me if I kill one of the friendliest creatures in the ocean.

But it’s not a dolphin. It’s a tuna. And a big one. I dive, piercing the water’s surface with hardly a splash, and wrap my talons around the tuna.

I haul the fish, still thrashing, back to Ram and Nia.

Is it my imagination, or does Nia look pleased? Maybe not impressed. She doesn’t seem to smile much, or laugh, although I suppose after all she’s been through that’s only natural. But the slight lift in her brows and the tilt of her chin seem to indicate she’s eager to eat the tuna, anyway.

Okay, so she’s hungry. It’s not the same as love, but it’s the closest I’ve come yet, and I feel a rush of hope as I gut the fish. We roast it slowly, still in its skin, above Ram’s fire. Then we cut it like a prime rib and eat the tender, flaky meat.

It’s so much better than Siberian pizza.

Ram finishes his meal quickly. There’s still some light out when he rises and announces, “I’m going to go take a look around.” And with that, he changes into a dark blue dragon and flies off.

I’m left sitting next to the fire with Nia.

Now’s my chance to woo her, to say sophisticated things that will make her want to marry me. I’m already off to my most promising start, what with bringing her an enormous tuna. All that’s left is to ride that wave, to build on my momentum, propelling a lovely meal into love, marriage, babies. Guys all over the world do this on dinner dates every day.

I just have to think of something that doesn’t make me sound like an idiot.

CHAPTER TEN

“Sorry about last night.” I start, hoping to put my mistakes behind me and maybe even clear my slate.

“Last night?” Nia’s sitting on the opposite end of the same fallen log I’m sitting on. She’s a few feet away from me, her bare feet pointed toward the fire, the bearskin wrapped around her shoulders. She’s been using a slender tuna bone to pick her teeth, but now she points the tip of the bone at me and asks, “Do you mean the part where you left me alone, asleep, in a hotel room surrounded by mamluki? Or the part where you ate my last piece of pizza?”

“I didn’t even realize I ate the last piece of your pizza. I’m sorry about that, too. And leaving you alone in the hotel room was probably a bad idea, although I didn’t realize I was leaving until after I’d left. But I mean, I’m sorry for telling you you’re a phoenix.”

“You’re sorry for that? Why? I was starting to like the idea.”

“Oh. Well then, I’m not sorry. I mean, I know you’re not a bird, and I wasn’t trying to imply anything. I just had this dream about fire and you and rising from the ashes, and I woke up and started talking before I thought it through.”

To my surprise, Nia scoots closer to me on the fallen log. “What do you know about fire?”

I hesitate. This is no time to say whatever stupid thought first pops into my head. For example, it’s hot. I don’t even think that would make a pre-teen laugh. It certainly wouldn’t amuse Nia. Besides, I think there’s something more she wants to know. Something far deeper than the dictionary definition of fire.

To my relief, before I blurt any inanities, Nia elaborates on her question. “When I first arrived at the white witch’s castle, she treated me kindly. I was in human form, my eyes covered by tinted goggles so that she should not have known that I’m a dragon.”

“But she did?” I clarify, picking up on the subtext of Nia’s words, on her tone and the nonverbal speech of her face.

Nia nods. “I suspected as much when she invited me to dinner, a feast of roasted meats, and she began quizzing me about my background, my family, my knowledge of fire.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I was evasive at first. I told her, honestly, that I didn’t know my parents. They died before I was born. I told her the geographic region of my origin. She seemed to already know.”

“Already know? How? By your accent? Your ethnic appearance?”