by Jon Jacks
‘She? Who is she?’ Jake asked curiously.
‘Leon’s mother.’
*
Chapter 14
By the time Jake and Celly had walked across the beach towards the huts, everyone had once again gathered beneath the canopy, as they had to greet Erdwin and Leon’s arrival.
The mood, however, was completely different. Whereas before it had been one of excitement, even elation, this time it was a more foreboding atmosphere that dominated the gathering.
Celly apprehensively looked to her mother for an explanation.
‘Celly,’ her mother said kindly, tenderly placing an arm around her shoulder and drawing her close, ‘it’s Harry – Dr Frobisher. He’s been taken in by the police.’
‘It’s far worse than that!’ Leon glared at Celly as if she were responsible. (Which, of course, she realised, she was.) ‘They’ve taken the lawyers into custody too! Which means they either already know or suspect something’s not quite right!’
Used to the effortless grace of the dragons, Jake was shocked by Mrs Frobisher’s more dishevelled appearance. She had been given some of the fresh clothes that Erdwin and Leon had brought back to the island with them, yet she still looked exhausted, beaten and out of place. Her back was hunched, her face drawn, with eyes made dark and bulbous through the anxiety she’d suffered.
She smiled wanly at Celly.
‘Sorry Celly,’ she said. ‘Leon shouldn’t be so angry with you; you weren’t to know your mistake would turn out like this.’
Jake sensed that it wasn’t so much an apology for her son’s anger as an accusation that Celly’s actions had brought disaster down on them all. Certainly, Celly looked abashed.
‘I’m sorry Mrs Frobisher, Leon,’ she said, glancing their way as she apologised.
Her mother gave her a sharp, reassuring hug.
‘Veronica – Mrs Frobisher – will be staying with us, until things blow over.’
‘Blow over?’ Leon snapped. ‘How’s it all going to blow over? Now dad and all the lawyers are in custody, the police are bound to discover they’re not human; and that’s if they haven’t done so already!’
‘Leon! Don’t speak to Mrs Volance like that.’ Once again, Mrs Frobisher’s supposed rebuking of her son was half-hearted and unconvincing.
‘We all know he’s right, Veronica,’ Erdwin stated diplomatically. ‘We can’t allow them to be held. We have to go back. Hincheley, Mary; you can come with me and–’
‘And me!’ Leon insisted. ‘He’s my father!’
‘I should go too, Erdwin,’ Perisa declared. ‘It won’t be easy getting them out – probably impossible, actually. As dragons, yes; that would be relatively easy. But revealing ourselves like that would go against the whole point of rescuing them, wouldn’t it?’
‘I think it might already be too late to worry about revealing ourselves, Perisa,’ Mrs Frobisher said miserably. ‘Harry was taken in a few days ago, not long after Leon left with Erdwin. The lawyers were trying everything they could to get him out, but when one of them rang to warn me that they were being taken in too – and under a heavily armed guard, too – I think it was quite obvious that I’d be next. I didn’t want to endanger anyone else by moving in with them, so I flew out here.’
‘Even if we can’t get Harry and the others out, we need to at least start warning everyone else that they might have to flee now that–’
‘Flee?’ Leon irately interrupted Erdwin. ‘Why flee, when we could easily defeat any humans that came for us?’
‘And spread the sense of terror the humans will already be understandably feeling? It would lead to war, destruction, with God knows how many killed on either side.’
‘But what will we do, Erdwin?’ Mrs Frobisher asked deceptively calmly. ‘How are the humans going to take it when they find we’ve been living amongst them? Monsters; isn’t that how they’ll see us? Dangerous monsters, made more dangerous than ever because we can blend unnoticed amongst them.’
‘I’d hope that the fact we’ve lived amongst them unnoticed for so long demonstrates that they have nothing to fear from us.’
‘But will they mean us no harm when they discover us?’ Leon demanded.
‘I’ll come back too,’ Celly said. ‘It’s not right that I stay here when I’m the one respons–’
‘You’re too weak, Celly,’ her mother pointed out. ‘Now Veronica’s here, she can help you; she’s picked up an awful lot of medical knowledge in her time with Harry.’
‘I should go back with you too–’
‘No, Veronica; you’re too tired to travel back just yet,’ Erdwin said. ‘Besides, as Perisa says, you’d be of more use here, helping Celly recover. She had a bad fall; Perisa will explain everything as we get together all the things we think we’re going to need.’
‘What about him?’ Leon indicated Jake with a sharp, angry nod of his head. ‘We can’t leave a human here with mum and Celly!’
‘Jake’s fine! He won’t hurt us!’ Celly said quickly.
‘Hmn, as if he could,’ Veronica sneered dismissively.
‘We could take him back,’ Perisa pointed out. ‘If everyone’s about to find out about us anyway, then–’
‘And let him give away everything he knows about this island?’
Leon glared hatefully at Jake.
‘I don’t want to go back,’ Jake retorted. He glanced Celly’s way, swapped a swift smile with her. ‘I’m fine here.’
‘That’s decided then,’ Erdwin said, turning and indicating to the others that they needed to start preparing to leave. ‘Jake stays.’
Jake could see from Leon’s frustrated grimace and the hate in his eyes that that hadn’t been the result he’d been looking for.
What had he wanted?
Had he wanted Jake to be killed?
*
Chapter 15
Celly and Jake had hoped that Leon’s departure would mean they would no longer have to suffer the uneasy feeling that they were being constantly followed and watched by baleful eyes.
Leon’s mother, however, more than adequately took her son’s place in this regard. She made plain that she resented their closeness, not only reproachfully glaring at them whenever they returned together from the beach, but also taking out her irritation on whatever it was she happened to be holding or close to at the time, loudly banging or clattering wooden plates, pots, or chairs.
And the happier Jake and Celly were, the angrier she would be.
The more they laughed, the louder the furious clattering.
Still, Celly was recovering quickly under Mrs Frobisher’s more expert care.
This consisted of frequent, firm massages while Celly was in both her transformed and untransformed states. Her back, in particular, was firmly kneaded regularly, but Mrs Frobisher also squeezed and rubbed her chest, stomach, neck and sides. Now and again, she would also aggressively bend and twist Celly’s limbs in frog-like moves, though Jake began to suspect that this was more punishment than treatment.
At last, though, Celly began to sense that strength and capability was returning to her lungs. She could once again break the air down into its separate elements, once again force those separated constitutes into every extended area of her body, controlling the pressure, altering her skin’s consistency, her muscles’ power or mass.
‘So…’ Jake began tentatively one day, as they lay alongside each other on the sand by the water’s edge, ‘all this splitting up of the air; would I be right in assuming that that’s how dragons used to produce flame? Providing, of course, that it isn’t just a myth that they could breathe fire.’
‘It’s true, yes; and yes, it was through using the separated elements. They’d just force it out through their mouths rather than around their body.’
‘Then you could do that?’ Jake said in amazement. ‘Breathe fire?’
‘Like you could just start leaping around in the trees using your feet and your tail to cling onto the branches, right? We
have evolved, remember? So, no, we can’t produce the chemicals that would have ignited the gases.’
Jake lightly and playfully ran a single finger along Celly’s bared stomach. She shivered, giggled.
‘That tickles!’
‘So…’ Jake said, frowning thoughtfully, ‘what else is different from you and those old dragons in the legends? Eggs; do you lay eggs?’
‘Eggs?’ Celly chuckled uneasily. ‘That would be disgusting, wouldn’t it, don’t you think?’
‘Hmn, yeah, I suppose it would.’
‘How do you think I could lay an egg?’ Celly sounded a little annoyed.
‘Well, I read once, I think, that a dragon’s egg might be quite small. It would grow in a pouch; you know, a bit like a kangaroo’s pouch.’
‘What? Now you’re saying I might have a kangaroo’s pouch?’
She gave him a light-hearted jab with an elbow.
Jake chuckled, lightly running his finger over her smooth stomach once more.
‘It wouldn’t be really possible now anyway, I suppose. Not with you being more human than dragon.’
Celly turned slightly to look more directly into his eyes as she asked, expectantly, ‘Is that how you think of me, Jake? As more human than dragon?’
‘Yes; yes, of course I do’ he replied honestly. ‘When you’re like this, well, you’re perfectly human.’
‘Perfectly? Am…am I beautiful, Jake?’
‘Beautiful?’
He bent his head down towards hers, brought his lips to hers.
He kissed her delicately, softly.
He let the contours of his lips mould with hers.
And she knew his answer.
*
When he touched her like this, his fingers, his hands, running everywhere about her body – where her body rose, where it fell, where one set of her curves merged into others – she realised, strangely, her own beauty, her own shape.
She only became fully aware of her back, of its many arcs and angles, its depressions and its rising, when he caressed her like this. She had only ever seen it, twisted and ungainly, when she tried to see it in a mirror. Now, although she couldn’t see it, she knew its every curve. His touch made her skin tingle, made her gasp with pleasure, as if she herself were the one doing the feeling, the sensing, as if her skin, her body, at last appreciated her attention, her interest.
Her neck, too, under his touch, his kisses, even, yes, his heated breath, became an area of uncountable excitable explosions of delight, each one more pronounced than the first, building and building, until she thought she could take no more – but she could, oh yes, she could take more and more.
Her waist, her hips, her thighs; before, they had only ever been relatively unimportant parts of her body, regarded by her as being more or less shapeless, neither wonderful nor awful. Now, under Jake’s flowing touch, she appreciated what he was appreciating, the way they merged together, seamlessly rolled one into the other. The smooth indent of the waist, rising into the arc of the hip, streaming into the less pronounced yet firmer curves of her thigh.
Her own touch too, of course, made her realise and appreciate things about his body she hadn’t noticed before. The way it was soft here, harder there, where a muscle or even the edges of bone lay not far beneath the surface. There was also heat when she ran her fingers over here, coolness when they drifted this way, more changes when her touch became firmer, more probing.
And, of course, it was all so much more than mere touch and being touched. There was the amazing sight of seeing your loved one trembling beneath your hands, even beneath the longing gaze itself. There was the taste, the scents, the slight hints of milk, apple, depending on where your let your mouth, your tongue, roam. Then there was the sighs of pleasure, the quivering pleas for more.
How could knowing so much more of Jake make her so much more aware of herself?
Why was it that she felt, at last, as if she truly belonged in the world, as opposed to always feeling separated, distanced, different, from it?
How was it possible to sense the delight he felt in her, to delight in herself, in her own beauty, in this way?
Why was it so incredibly pleasing to her, because she knew it was so pleasing to him?
Everything she had read had described all this as a discovery, as an exploration – but no, it was far far more than that. It was a knowing, an acceptance that rather than being separate, you were now one and the same, merging one into the other, no longer sure where one began and the other ended, his touch somehow indistinguishable from the way she sensed that touch, somehow becoming her touch, making her alive to her own form, her own being. And as she sensed his form, his beauty, she felt she was a part of it, that it was also a part of her, at last, finally, completing her own being.
Suddenly, Jake pulled back.
He stared up into the sky.
‘They’re back,’ he said, screwing up his eyes tightly as he tried to focus on a grouping of bright flashes of silver.
‘No, it’s not them,’ Celly said, following his gaze. ‘They’re helicopters; and they’re heading here.’
*
Chapter 16
They ran along the beach towards the straggle of huts.
‘Mrs Frobisher, Mrs Frobisher!’
The thunderous, pounding rumble of the oncoming helicopters drowned out their cries.
Of course, Mrs Frobisher had already seen and heard the helicopters. She was calmly walking across the sand, as if she were stepping out to greet the arrival of Erdwin and Perisa.
The helicopters came in fast, the smaller ones, mosquito-like in their angry shape, refusing to land but, rather, swooping around the water’s edge in great circles.
The largest slowed, angled, drifted down in a flurry of wind, sand and spray.
Even before it touched down, the side doors were thrown open. A soldier leapt out onto the sand, dropping immediately into a crouch.
As soon as she saw him prepare to aim and fire his handheld missile launcher, Mrs Frobisher began to transform.
The ruby skin flashed in the sunlight.
The missile flashed on its way.
Mrs Frobisher flashed in a burst of scarlet flame.
The ruby wings crumpled, the flames lighting up the skin in an angry, magically-glistening blaze.
*
1 year later
Chapter 17
It was last year’s computer game.
And it wasn’t even the best game from that year either. That had been the game he had been playing with Celly the day they had fled to the island.
He couldn’t play that game anymore.
He couldn’t even look at the cover.
He had most of the very latest games. The best games. The most highly rated.
Yet, just like last year’s best game, he couldn’t play them.
Not because he wasn’t good at them
But because, like that game, they reminded him too much of things he didn’t want to be reminded of.
In fact, the latest games were even worse. They both reminded him, yet also sickened him.
Sickened him because of the perverted view of dragons they portrayed.
Dragons that lived hidden amongst us, unrecognised for what they really are.
Even the most innocent looking neighbour could be a veiled killer. Someone who, when you were least expecting it, could sever you in two with the simple slash of an abruptly extended talon.
You could be in the mall. At the bus stop. Even just taking a walk in the park.
Death was waiting for you no matter where you were. Death in the form of what appeared to be a fellow human. Even a child.
And if the dragonsapien – the name they’d been given, just as evolved, intelligent man was homo-sapien – fully transformed into the winged beast lying beneath that deceptively benign exterior, then you and everyone around you were really in trouble.
The dragonsapien moved swiftly. Acted instinctively. Cruelly.
; A beat of its wings could shatter every bone in your body. A wrench of its arm could dismember or decapitate you. Even a rock-hard finger, aimed directly at your forehead or around your heart, could kill you.
Like the films, the books, and the TV series that had been spawned from the discovery of the dragonsapiens, the game played loosely with the truth.
Who would guess from the ghoulish descriptions of the murderous actions of the dragonsapiens that they had, for the most part, gone off peacefully to live in Hong Kong, an enclave especially set aside for them to create their own, separate community?
The only cases Jake had heard of where their removal from society hadn’t been peaceful was when the watching crowds, unable to control their fear and disgust, had attacked the families being herded into the waiting buses or trains. For a brief moment there would be mayhem until the well-armed troops quickly and ruthlessly moved in.
Many of the worst scenes of lynch-mob violence had involved wealthy people falsely accused of being dragons by those hoping to loot a vacated house, steal a car, or take over a business.
And the dragons’ reward for allowing themselves to be peaceably stripped of their belongings and removed from their homes?
To be portrayed in all the media as fearsome, irredeemably violent creatures.
Should Jake put things straight?
Should he use his experience of actually living amongst a family of dragons to show what they were really like?
Should he write a book, as his avaricious parents had continually urged him to do?
He had tried, unsuccessfully, a number of times to transfer the confused memories whirling around inside his head to a word processor.
Publishers had offered him the aid of ghost writers to tell his tale. Yet as soon as he began to even talk about his experiences, it all felt too personal for him, like he was revealing more than he wanted to about himself, about Celly. Besides, even when he managed to avoid revealing the more personal elements, he found that the ghost writers were already twisting what he had to say, bending the reality until it conformed to ‘more interesting structures’, or literary theories of ‘character arcs’ and ‘narrative peaks’.