******
The Dangler stared down into the top of the hollow mountain and cringed as Jai and Ceder were consumed in the nucleus of the eruption. A screaming jet of cerulean water blasted from the foundations of the great stone pillar, up the brooding furnace, through the eternally-burning stove, and out the top of the Circle of the Sun. The fisherman whipped his head back as the water rocketed past him into the sky with the frying pan and the egg of Syn balanced atop the fountainhead like a ball on a magician’s nose. The Dangler saw a red reptilian head poke out of the broken shell as it passed him on the way up—he immediately cast his line. The hook snagged into the waterspout like it was a giant beanstalk and the fisherman was hoisted up and away.
As the liquid column ascended, the Dangler reeled himself up to the fountainhead, repelling off the pressurized tower of water with light-footed, vertical hurdles. In his race to the frying pan he had no time to consider the parallel fates of the two children or the magician. Already he scarcely remembered their names.
The jet of water burst through the low-lying coastal clouds just as the Dangler reached the top of the spout. He picked up the iron pan. Both halves of the red eggshell were empty. With a deep groan, he turned around.
Slowly beating its wings, learning how to fly for the first time in an epoch, a dragon whelp made of dancing flames rose from the white clouds. The heat from its pumping wings turned the top of the water jet to a haze of steam. The Dangler sank down to his knees in the vaporized column as if mired in quicksand.
The white-hot eyes of Syn stared into the mirror of the fisherman’s face and his waveglass features began to melt like wax. He raised his free hand to his mouth and touched his lips to his fingertips as if blowing a kiss to someone afar, then he plunged the ordained hand into the mist at his side.
Staring back into the eyes of Syn, into the white-hot light, the fisherman was illuminated as he drew from the waterspout a giant crescent scythe of razor-sharp waveglass. Darting through the water that filled the Dangler’s body a single golden fish raced like a wave of light through the arm that held the scythe, into the fingers, holding tight, then back to the shoulder, raising up, into the wrist, snapping forward with a twist of his golden tail so the blade of the wicked waveglass weapon arced through the air and severed the head of Syn from its flickering, gaseous body.
The falling head puffed into sparks that trailed away. The white light faded from the fisherman’s form. He knelt down, planting his fishing pole and the handle of the seven-fin scythe to either side of him while he caught his breath. It had only lasted a moment, but the heat from the small dragon’s gaze had melted a worm-sized hole clean through the Dangler’s forehead. Water leaked out the hole in a thin stream for a brief moment then subsided. He shook his head experimentally, then shrugged.
He felt his back begin to bubble. He looked over his shoulder. The red dragon rose above him with three heads setting the sky ablaze where before there had been only one.
II. Stumps
Astray was halfway down the mountainside when it erupted. The devastating blast threw him into the air but he landed running and dashed toward the sea. Behind him, boiling water mingling with molten lava gushed out of every door and crack in the mountain.
The cub reached the shore and streaked to the upturned wheelbarrow lying next to the water. He dug furiously underneath one side of the abandoned cart until it rolled upright, then he leapt into the iron shell before the lethal tide of liquid fire seeped over the beach. As the water level rose, the wheelbarrow was lifted off the ground and carried away from the coast. Any other craft, any other hull would have melted through on the spot riding those red currents out to sea, but the wheelbarrow was unaffected. Astray stood in the prow of his tiny ship and stared high into the sky at the lights he was chasing.
Riverlilly Page 24