by Jon Jacks
He stared back at the pool, focusing on the rippling light. Yes, the waiter’s explanation seemed reasonable. Hadn’t even he been bewildered by the fluctuating lights of the helicopter as it descended over the mob who, he was sure, had been about to kill him?
But it was a rippling light that meant much much more to him than a painful memory of how he had come so close to being killed.
It reminded him of the island, of the day he and Celly had first kissed, first caressed, first – well, there were so many firsts that day, weren’t there?
That rippling lace of light, those sapphire blues, washing first over him, then over her, had merged them, blended their otherwise separate forms, bringing them together, making them one, eradicating differences yet emphasising others.
They had flowed within that swelling, heaving play of light, curled within it, swam amongst it as if their souls were finally free.
However briefly, that living, breathing light had made him as beautiful as she was.
And – was that what Celly had seen that day?
Not Jake, the real Jake. But a Jake suffused with a light that seemed to have been drawn from the stars.
Had she, like Leon, been dazed by nothing more than an illusion of radiant love?
A hole seemed to open in his heart.
A black hole, sucking up all the light, the remnants of joy, left within him.
Leaving him empty.
Hollow.
Dead.
He hung his head in his hands.
He didn’t want anyone to see that he was crying.
When he glanced up at the pool once more, it was through the distorting haze of tear-filled eyes.
And, suddenly – he knew how to stop the dragons.
*
Chapter 29
The pool lights had been switched off.
The only illumination across the now darkened city came from fluorescent tubes that had been left on in the odd office, the odd skyscraper.
The city was silent, everyone left behind anxiously waiting for the attack.
‘They’re making a move.’
The calm way in which the man wearing the headphones spoke reminded Jake of his time with Celly and her protective circle of dragons. Jake was standing with Captain Jones, looking up into the darkness, wondering when they would see the first signs of the oncoming dragons.
Everyone who had been seated around the pool had left. Jake had offered his place on the train to the waiter, who had accepted it gratefully.
In the distance, there was a flicker of gloriously hued gems, floating high in the darkness. More and more of them appeared, a Milky Way of multi-coloured stars.
As they swiftly approached, they spread out, grew in size, the ones towards the front becoming more recognisable as dragons, their enormous wings like flowing, beautifully embroidered cloaks.
Every skyscraper abruptly blazed with light.
Light emanating from the offices themselves, powerful projectors casting rainbows of sparkling colour out into the night.
Light cast up from below, playing across the massed windows of the skyscrapers, bathing them in rippling images of the aurora borealis, of sun-spackled seas, glistening treasure trove, molten gold, and mercurial rivers of silver.
Light that transformed the Tokyo skyline into an illuminated display of everything that glittered, shimmered and entranced with its radiant beauty.
‘It should confuse them, at least briefly, making them easier targets,’ Jake had explained when taking Captain Jones through his idea, backing it all up with a description of Leon’s dazed stumbling after first seeing Celly in all her glowing splendour. ‘At an educated guess, I’d reckon that most of Celly’s attack troops are all under twenty – they generally are in any war – and that’s the age when they’re most likely to be affected by the beauty of all this light.’
He hadn’t mentioned another reason for his belief that the light display might work. He had finally grasped, he believed, why medieval illustrations portrayed dragons being defeated by nothing more than a lone knight in shining armour; armour that shone with the golden glow of the reflected sun, the emerald hues of the surrounding trees, the glittering sapphire of the sky.
‘We’ve got our own little touch,’ Captain Jones had proudly declared to Jake when he’d returned with confirmation that the army command had become so desperate they were willing to try anything. ‘Older shells, older ordnance; when they explode, depending on the type, they either suck in all the surrounding air or send out shock waves. In either case, we figure it should cause those lungs they rely so much on to either collapse or explode.’
The detonating shells added their own deadly illumination to the scene, miniature suns that briefly flared into existence, then died in an instance, taking everything around them with them, the glittering light of the nearby dragons flickering, falling, snuffed out as they hit the ground.
Jake prayed that a golden angel wasn’t amongst them.
*
Chapter 30
The helicopter hurtled across the darkened landscape, keeping low, heading in the general direction of where Celly had last been seen fleeing with the remnants of her force.
A bright, rippling light penetrated the darkness ahead of it, interchangeable images of a fluttering white flag and the word ‘Parley’, all contained within a larger scene of a sapphire blue sea.
Jake was sure that Celly would recognise the image as a sign that he was aboard the helicopter. He had begged the generals to give him another chance to ask for her surrender.
How could she refuse this time? It would be pointless continuing a war that could now only end one way; in the extinction of the dragons.
Every now and again, caught in the diffused edges of the projected sea, the cracked, shattered jewel that was a fallen dragon momentarily flared into life amongst the blackened wreckage below.
It was over.
The dragons had a weakness after all.
*
Jake waited patiently beneath the undulating sea the projector was casting up into the darkened sky.
The helicopter had landed and left him here, leaving the projector. If he wanted Celly to come to him, he would have to be alone.
A dragon appeared, circling at the farthest edges of the projected sea as if she were a mermaid gracefully gliding through warm waters. Another appeared, also circling, adding to the impression that Jake was looking up from a seabed, up into a gloriously blue sea that only extended so far before vanishing into a universe of empty blackness.
Celly silently fluttered into view, her golden body awash with an undulating light that immediately brought back so many wonderful yet also painful memories for Jake.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said as soon as Celly soundlessly landed directly in front of him.
‘Sorry again Jake?’ Celly managed a tired smile. ‘What for this time?’
‘It was my idea – the light, I mean.’
Celly chuckled even as she frowned in puzzlement.
‘Why, thank you Jake. Such a glorious display, and all provided by you to – well, for what? To illuminate the demise of a species that was at least the equal of humanity?’
‘But, I mean – the way it confused you!’
‘Confused us?’ She stared back at him curiously, giving him a bewildered grin. ‘Yes, I admit it, Jake – I am confused!’
Jake opened his mouth, paused, decided he wasn’t sure what to say after all.
What a fool he was!
The light display hadn’t worked! It hadn’t stunned the dragons as he’d thought it would!
‘It was just a light, Jake – wait. Do you mean you thought it was some sort of secret weapon?’
Seeing Jake’s embracement, realising that she had correctly guessed his intentions, Celly chuckled.
‘Jake, that overactive imagination of yours! Still, it’s served me well up until now, as I’ve already admitted; all those faultless strategies I picked up from you. Seems
like we’ve both misjudged it this time though, right? Still, a bluff always depends on your enemy taking fright, doesn’t it?’
‘Bluff?’ Now it was Jake’s turn to frown in puzzlement. ‘What bluff?’
‘This whole war, Jake; that was my bluff. There were never really enough of us to cause you any real problems, if you’d just stood your ground rather than retreating all the time. We weren’t going to let you know it, of course, but we’ve been suffering losses that – well, they’re so bad that our only chance was to keep you so terrified that you’d always let your retreats be turned into routs. We weren’t expecting you to put up a fight for Tokyo; so, what do you know Jake, perhaps your secret weapon worked after all. It must have given your soldiers a belief that they at last had a chance of winning.’
She shrugged resignedly, grinned like she was tired with it all.
She looked so exhausted, so beaten, that Jake wanted to take her in his arms, tell her that everything was – somehow – all going to be all right.
‘Why tell me now, Celly?’ he said instead. ‘Why are you telling me now that it was all a bluff?’
‘Because it’s finished, Jake; we’re finished.’
‘Peace, Celly? You want to talk peace?’
She shook her head.
‘No, Jake; it’s too late for that. We couldn’t go back to how it was. And, after all this–’ she indicated the destruction surrounding them with a causal nod of her head – ‘it would be even worse. I only wanted to come here to give you somethin–’
The nearby projector let out a muted spluttering sound as, like an oversized roman candle, it spat out first a red flare then a green and a yellow one.
The three flares effortlessly rose up into the illuminated sky.
Celly was a blur as she stepped towards Jake, throwing her golden wings about him.
Then the flares exploded.
*
Chapter 31
Even within the shielding embrace of Celly’s wings, the shock wave rippled Jake’s skin painfully, penetrated his lungs, pounding hard on their inner walls. Next the air was sucked out of him, as if he were drowning, drowning in the imaginary sea that suddenly enveloped him as the projector toppled, casting it’s blue, undulating light low along the ground.
*
As Jake fought to get his breath back, a dragon fell to earth close by him, her wings flimsy and useless, her eyes wide with agonised shock.
The second dragon, having been higher in the sky, was still falling. He struck the ground with a dull thud, his wings crumpling about him like the masts and sails of a clipper wrecked upon the rocks.
‘Celly!’
Celly’s wings were no longer wrapped around him. She was on her knees, clutching at her chest, her head bowed as she wheezed like an asthmatic fighting for air.
Dropping into a crouch alongside her, avoiding her weakening wings, Jake hugged her tightly.
‘I take it we were both tricked, right Jake?’ she gasped, adding a stoic chuckle at the end.
‘Celly, Celly! I’m so sorry, so sorry!’
‘Sorry yet again, Jake!’ she chuckled painfully, slightly shrugging off his embrace so that she could reach down towards the thicker, lower flap at the base of one of her wings.
From a small, pocket-like fold of stretched skin, she produced what appeared to Jake to be a small bundle of bright green cloth.
‘I’m sorry, Jake,’ she wheezed, handing it to him. ‘I lied.’
Jake pulled aside the green material.
Inside was what could have been a half-grown ostrich egg.
Only this egg shimmered as if its shell had been made of delicately cut sapphires.
*
Chapter 32
‘I didn’t want you to think I was a monster.’
Celly was having difficulty speaking.
‘Leon’s?’ Jake asked, cupping the egg in one of his hands. ‘Is it Leon’s?’
Celly laughed bitterly and, her head still bowed, she felt for and grasped at the edges of the green material that Jake still held in his other hand, pulling at it, opening it out.
‘We don’t carry a child for nine months, Jake. It’s over a year.’
At last she looked up and turned to him.
‘And when our daughter’s grown, Jake, I hope you think she looks beautiful in this.’
She drew his attention to the small green dress she’d now left flapping from his hand.
She leaned forward, kissed him. A kiss that was already delicate and light but was swiftly becoming lighter, lighter, fading quickly, as life was fading from Celly.
Jake clutched her to him, using the hand that held the small, green dress, cradling the beginnings of their daughter close between them.
The light of the shimmering water swam about them, blending them, such that anyone seeing them wouldn’t know anymore where one began and the other ended.
The wings, weakening, dying, yet given a false sense of life by the flowing blue light, crumpled about them, enveloping them, caressing them.
Like a cocoon.
Like a sapphire-shelled egg.
End
If you enjoyed reading this book, please remember to click that you liked it on the Kindle Rating icon.
You may also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.
The Caught – The Rules – Chapter One – The Changes – Sleeping Ugly
The Barking Detective Agency – The Healing – The Lost Fairy Tale
A Horse for a Kingdom – Charity – The Most Beautiful Things – The Last Train
The Dream Swallowers – Nyx; Granddaughter of the Night – Jonah and the Alligator
Glastonbury Sirens – Dr Jekyll’s Maid – The 500-Year Circus
P – The Endless Game – DoriaN A – Wyrd Girl
Heartache High (Vol I) – Heartache High: The Primer (Vol II) – Heartache High: The Wakening (Vol III)
Miss Terry Charm, Merry Kris Mouse & The Silver Egg – Seecrets – The Wicker Slippers – The Cull