by Jon Jacks
The dragon drew towards him, reached down. He effortlessly picked Jake up by sinking his talons deep within the parachute pack. It swung around, stepped back towards the door and, swinging his arm forward and up, briefly held Jake outside in the violently pounding streams of air.
Through watery eyes, Jake saw at least two other dragons clamped to the side of the hull, their talons embedded within the metal.
That’s what the metallic clunks they’d heard had been; the dragons latching onto the side of the hull, waiting for the moment when the emergency door was opened. These other two were obviously a backup, in case the first had been unsuccessful in his task.
The dragon leapt out into the whirling darkness, taking the firmly held Jake with him. Jake’s stomach lurched frighteningly. His skin, his body, juddered under the relentless pressure of the brutally throbbing wind.
And, suddenly, he was aimlessly suspended in the blackness, the jet plummeting to earth in flames behind him.
*
Chapter 22
Jake was shivering uncontrollably, both from the intense cold of the night sky and the fear of being dropped from a height that he had no chance of surviving. Worse, the straps of his tattered parachute pack kept on slipping as their holdings continued to tear and shred. Every now and again, he would suffer a violently lurch downward, as if at last about to hurtle earthwards.
The earth below didn’t look real. It looked like a final scene from one of his end-of-world computer games. It was endless, yet looked the same no matter the direction in which he looked. The ground was black, an impenetrable coal black but for the fires that seemed to remorselessly feed off that darkness like unquenchable coal fires, or the sudden, bright glare of explosions in the sky above, like fireballs erupting from the volcanoes of a primordial landscape.
This was no game, however, as evidenced by the increasing examples of destroyed human life and endeavour as they at last began to descend. At first, it was the mangled wreckage of toppled skyscrapers, then the burnt out husks of trains, trucks and cars. Finally, there came the warped liquorice sticks of cooked bodies, the soured cream of bared skeletons.
No, no, Celly really couldn’t be responsible for this.
No, not his Celly.
It must all be a mistake, a lie.
With an unclasping of its talons, the dragon let Jake fall the final foot or two towards the rubble strewn floor. He landed painfully, striking then sliding across sharp-edged stone and brick.
He landed almost at the feet of another dragon, a dragon with its legs casually and confidently splayed, its wings spread out fully as if serving as a demonstration of its power, its undeniable superiority.
Even though the only light came from distant fires, its skin shimmered with the translucent sparkle of emeralds.
Slowly, agonisingly, Jake raised his head.
‘Hello Jake,’ Leon said.
*
Chapter 23
Suddenly, Jake was roughly hauled up off the ground from behind.
One of the dragons began to swiftly search him, ripping apart his clothes here and there with the deft slash of a talon if it seemed necessary.
The dragon seem to think it was necessary far more than Jake did.
‘I haven’t got any weapons.’
The searching dragon ignored him.
Leon ignored him.
‘So, they sent you to try and make peace?’ he sneered.
Jake bristled. He held himself back from saying anything about Leon’s betrayal that had led to the death of his own mother.
‘I thought dragons were peaceful,’ he said instead. ‘Celly told me you’d never fought in any of our wars; you’d always had the influence and wealth to remain out of it without it looking too obvious.’
‘He’s clear; there are no tracking devices.’
The dragon who had been searching him stepped back and away. Leon nodded towards a dragon who had landed nearby as Jake had been searched.
‘Clear,’ the third dragon said, speaking into a small microphone strapped to a pair of headphones.
‘Could you imagine what your wars would have been like if we had got involved?’ Leon asked Jake proudly. ‘But we were simply staying out of them for more selfish reasons; how could we remain hidden amongst you when any wound would have revealed our differences?’
‘So that’s it? Dragons aren’t morally superior to us after all?’
‘Morally, we are now equal, I grant you that. But in every other way, we are clearly superior!’
With an elaborate wave of his arms, he indicated the surrounding chaos.
‘But I don’t understand,’ Jake admitted. ‘You accepted, once discovered, that the humans would be terrified of you. There wasn’t even the slightest protest when you were asked to set up a separate life in Hong Kong–’
‘Life? Is that what you call it? Life!’
‘Obviously, you’d had to leave behind so much, it was never going to be exactly the same–’
‘Have you absolutely no idea what it was like for us in Hong Kong?’
‘I saw the films, the documentaries–’
‘I can’t believe this! You’re sent here to make peace, but no one’s bothered, even now, to tell you the truth about Hong Kong?’
‘Truth? You were happy there, we were told.’
‘Our backs were strapped in cages, to stop us from transforming!’
‘What? That can’t be right; otherwise you’d still be there, not here flying around.’
‘My father and the Volances were the ones who worked out how to unlock the cages without the inspection patrols noticing. We had to wait, of course, until everyone had been unlocked. By that time, my father and Celly’s parents were dead.’
‘Erdwin and Perisa?’ Jake was horrified. ‘And your father, Dr Frobisher too. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
It seemed a strange thing to say, with so many dead lying about them. But Jake was genuinely shocked by the news of the death of Celly’s parents. He had known them, liked them, enjoyed visiting and staying in their apartment. He had often wished that his own parents could have been a little bit more like the Volances.
‘It seems there’s an awful lot you don’t know. Hardly ideal for peace negotiation, is it, not being fully aware of why your enemy is fighting you?’
‘I didn’t have time to be fully briefed, remember?’ Jake snapped back. ‘Someone snatched me from a plane!’
‘We didn’t want to give them time or the chance to follow you. We don’t trust them.’
‘Surely you’ve got to trust them if you’re wanting to make peace.’
‘We don’t want to make peace; you do. You haven’t asked how my father, or the Volances, died.’
Jake abruptly felt cold with shame. Leon was right. He should have been more thoughtful, more concerned.
‘I’m sorry; how did they die?’
‘They starved. Even as they worked on unlocking the cages, they were dying of starvation.’
‘There wasn’t enough food? But we were told–’
‘You were told lies! There wasn’t enough to keep us all alive! They wanted us to squabble, to fight one another, over food–’
‘They’re nearly here.’
The dragon with the headphones pointed off into the darkness. Jake followed his gaze, peering into the night.
At first, he saw nothing more than the bright glint of an opal, the fiery flash of a ruby, a wide distance apart and seemingly hovering in the black sky. Then, in between, and possibly farther back, he caught flares of gold, glistening streaks of silver.
Soon, the airborne jewels had become sparkling clusters, had become beating wings and muscular torsos. The dragons slipped either side of him, dropping downwards considerably yet remaining in the air, the wings twisting slightly in their heavy, rhythmic flexing so that the bodies were rigidly upright, sentry-like.
The miniature suns, the sparkling stars, were coalescing too, becoming ridiculously expansive wings, a
relatively smaller body supported beneath, a head from which streamed hair that flowed and rippled as if it were mercury.
Celly flexed her wings, moving into a more upright position, retaining lift with powerful yet deceptively effortless strokes, then began to languidly drop down towards Jake.
Like the other dragons, her body was partially armoured, and she carried an automatic rifle. She also seemed dusty, even, perhaps, bloodied. Even so, she transformed what little light there was into a golden aura, descending Jake’s way like an angelic Joan of Arc, a victorious St Michael.
She was beautiful.
Magnificent.
Oh how he loved her.
*
Even as she landed directly in front of him, Celly could see that Jake was still the innocent child that he had been while living on the island.
How much had she changed over the last year? She was no longer the same person, the girl that had fallen in love with Jake, regarding it all as some great adventure, the beginnings of a new, better more exciting period in her life.
He looked dishevelled, his clothes shredded so that they hung off him like rags. He stared at her, wide-eyed, like he was frightened, unsure what was going to happen next.
Well, let him worry.
Let him fear her.
‘Celly.’ He almost stammered her name in his nervousness. ‘Celly, Leon told me about your mum and dad; I’m sorry, really sorry. I…I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t?’ She was deliberately hard, unforgiving. ‘Do you think anything you’d say would make it any easier?’
‘Well, no, of course not. That’s what I meant when–’
‘You’re not here to talk about the death of my mum and dad. You’re here to talk peace, yes?’
She was pleased when Leon and the other dragons chuckled. Like her, they found it amusing that the humans saw a pathetic child like Jake as their only hope for salvation.
‘Yes; if there was anything I learned about dragons from you and your parents, Celly, it was that you were peaceful and didn’t want to hurt humans–’
‘Peaceful?’ Celly laughed. She glanced about her, observing the surrounding chaos, the fires burning in the night. ‘I doubt anyone would agree with you that dragons are peaceful, Jake. And the thing is, I learned it all from you, Jake.’
‘Me?’
‘Those computer games you always insisted I play? I learned the effectiveness of your ruthlessness, your swift actions, without a care if it was the right action or not, your focus only being on achieving your goal, no matter the cost, the sacrifices.’
‘It was a game, Celly!’
‘For you, maybe. For me, now, it’s a strategy. A successful one, too.’
‘I don’t think you really want to wipe out the whole of humanity, Celly. You’ve proved your point, that we have to accept you back into society–’
‘That’s it? That’s what you think we’re fighting for? How can you come here asking for peace when you have no idea why we’re fighting?’
‘But if that’s not your aim, for everything to return to how it was – then what do you want, Celly?’
‘You hit upon it yourself, only a moment ago Jake.’
‘I did?’
‘You said I wouldn’t want to wipe out the whole of humanity. To which my reply would be, “Wouldn’t I?”’
*
Chapter 24
Celly’s stare was unflinching, hard, aggressive.
Her lips were clamped together, a thin strip of red flesh like an unhealed wound.
Her armour was flaked with blood. Whether her own or that of her victims, Jake couldn’t tell.
There was a sternness, a determination, to her expression that Jake had never seen before. Yes, he believed she could continue this war until either man or the dragons were no more.
Her golden skin reflected the fluttering glow of the distant flames, such that it glistened like smelting metal, swirling with curls of silver, the angry red of the furnace. Her wings could have been made of flame, the way they appeared to flicker and move, rise and fall.
He had been wrapped, many tines, within the comforting embrace of those wings. Sometimes, with that cocoon, it had been cool, sometimes heated, a hot house of growing love, flowering longing.
He had kissed that body. Tasted it. Touched it.
Sensed it, in every way he could.
Everywhere.
Made it, as far as possible, a part of him. Moulded himself alongside it, his curves, his arcs, fitting perfectly against hers, as if it were all preordained, as if they had been made for each other.
He had shared in its beauty, its shape. Its softness. Its malleability. And, in places, its hardness, where a muscle tightened, or a bone just beneath the surface whitened the skin, tautened it.
He would press lightly on all these area, wondering at the similarities, the differences, the differences, too, that lay just below the surface. The differences that, strangely, brought them together, each wanting to share and understand more of the other.
Then her skin had glittered like a river bed of gold, silver and jewels. It still shone, but now it was the red-gold of fire, of blood, of war.
‘Celly, I can’t believe that you think the whole human race needs wiping out because of what happened to your–’
‘Stop! Don’t make a fool of yourself any more, Jake! You know nothing of–’
‘Incoming!’ the dragon wearing the headphones suddenly screamed. ‘Incoming missiles!’
‘I told you we couldn’t trust him!’ Leon growled as he soared into the air.
Celly glared at Jake every bit as hatefully as Leon did.
‘I didn’t know, honestly!’
‘There’s so much you don’t know, isn’t there Jake?’ Celly sneered. ‘Bring him!’ she snapped commandingly at the dragon nearest to him as she began to rise off the ground.
Even as the dragon grabbed him firmly around the waist and rose into the air after Celly and the other dragoons, Leon protested that it was stupid to bring him along.
‘They’ve obviously implanted a tracker; that’s how they found us.’
‘You know why we need him,’ Celly retorted dismissively.
*
‘We could start ripping him apart; find out where they implanted it,’ the dragon holding Jake calmly suggested.
‘No one implanted anything!’ Jake insisted vehemently, trying to hold back from being sick. His stomach had lurched violently when they had rapidly climbed into the air and, airborne one more, he suffered once again all the nausea of seeing the earth far below him. To make matters worse, they were flying so fast that the agonisingly cold air battered against his face and penetrated what little clothing he still had left.
‘Did you sleep on the plane?’ Leon asked him bluntly.
‘Of course; it was a long journey.’ He had to shout to be heard over the incessant pressure of the pummelling wind.
‘You were probably drugged and given painkillers to make sure you stayed asleep as they implanted a tracker–’
He was drowned out by the crack of a number of large explosions that momentarily lit up the sky far behind them.
‘Cruise missiles,’ the headphone wearing dragon yelled out. ‘They think three got through our anti-missile screen.’
‘Spread out,’ Celly ordered. ‘No, he stays with me,’ she quickly added when she saw that the dragon holding Jake was about to veer off.
‘He’s the one bringing them towards us,’ Leon pointed out.
‘If the second screening doesn’t work, it they get any closer, we can drop him,’ Celly cried back. ‘You know why we need him.’
It would have been bad enough hearing Leon suggest that they should drop him, Jake thought. It was even worse hearing it coming so nonchalantly from Celly.
There were two more bright, thunderous eruptions behind them.
‘They missed one,’ Leon said, spinning around in mid-air, indicating to another dragon to follow him.
‘For the child, right?’ he added as he started heading back towards the oncoming missile, swiftly unfurling a net between himself and the other dragon.
A child?
Jake wondered, hoped, that he’d misheard Leon.
Did that mean that Celly was pregnant? With Leon’s child?
‘Make it work Celly, make it work!’ Leon cried over his shoulder as he vanished into the darkness.
Determinedly tightening her lips, Celly flew on without looking back, the dragon holding Jake obediently and silently taking up position alongside her. Jake wasn’t sure –it was hard to tell in the darkness, particularly with the cold wind making his own eyes stream – but Celly appeared to be crying.
A few minutes later, the missile exploded close behind them, so close the blast pounded hard against their backs, so close it clearly illuminated everything around them.
And Jake now knew for sure that, yes, Celly was weeping.
*
Chapter 25
When they landed, the dragon holding Jake simply let him fall the last few feet, such that he ended up rolling through the dust and mud. He rose to his knees, shivering from the cold and the fear he’d experienced as they had swooped towards the ground.
Celly glanced back towards him.
He looked a mess.
Was this the boy she had fallen in love with back on the island?
For her, it seemed so long ago.
So incredibly long ago.
So much had happened to her, changing her in ways that no one could possibly understand.
She stepped towards Jake, offering him her hand.
He looked at her doubtfully at first, as if he were wondering whether to trust her or not, wondering if a change had taken place in her since her order to drop him if he continued to endanger them.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, gratefully taking her hand and stiffly, painfully rising to his feet. ‘Sorry about Leon.’
Feeling his hand in hers, Celly remembered how that simple touch would – not really so long ago, in a more normal timescale – have sent her whole body quivering with wonder, with anticipation of more wonderful sensations to follow.
Then, his breath alone would have set her skin tingling. It touched her with its warmth, its softness, its moistness, its sense of eagerness. It was a sensation in its own right, spiritual, ever changing, a fleeting passing that nevertheless probed deeply with its emotional need.