Dragonseed

by James Maxey

  Shay rose on his hands and knees following his collision. He shook his head. Except for the blood trickling from his bolt-wound, he looked okay. Jandra ran toward the shore, worried about what would happen to Lizard if Meshach flew further away.

  Meshach gave a blood-curdling shriek as he finally tugged the little dragon away from his face, throwing him toward the water below. Lizard left a trail of blood as he fell. Meshach’s face bled from countless wounds.

  Jandra raised her shotgun. As she sighted down the barrel, her eyes were drawn to something odd. The once flat surface of the lake was mounding up behind Meshach, a moving hump of water almost a yard tall rolling toward his dangling legs.

  Jandra almost shouted a warning—almost. The hump of water suddenly shot into the air, splitting open into a pair of toothy jaws that clamped around Meshach’s legs. As quickly as it had appeared, the ichthyosaur plunged back down into the water, taking Meshach’s legs and hips with it, leaving the guard’s remains floating in the air, a winged torso from which entrails slowly spilled.

  Meshach looked down, his face growing pale beneath the bloody wounds that crisscrossed it. He gave a breathless sigh and fell into the water with a splash.

  Jandra stood on the shore, feeling a chill that ran all the way down to her bones.

  “Lizard!” she yelled, lowering her gun. “Lizard!”

  Meshach’s winged corpse bobbed upon the waves. Aside from this, there was no sign of motion. She turned back toward Shay. He was in the pool, crouched over Guido. It looked as if he was making sure the guard’s head stayed beneath the water.

  “Lizard didn’t come up for air!” she shouted.

  Shay looked up, his eyes scanning the waves.

  “He can hold his breath for a long time,” said Shay. “You saw him in the pool.”

  “There’s an ichthyo…” he wasn’t going to know what she was talking about, "a sea monster out there!”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a great big ocean-dwelling reptile! It can swallow Lizard whole!”

  Suddenly, Lizard popped to the surface, gasping for air. His limbs flailed wildly as he splashed across the surface of the lake in a bee-line toward Jandra.

  “Bad fish!” he shrieked as the water mounded up behind him.

  Jandra ran to the edge of the shore. The ichthyosaur’s mouth gaped open, creating a suction that drew Lizard back toward its teeth.

  Jandra aimed at the top of the ichthyosaur’s snout and fired. The explosion knocked her onto her butt as her feet slipped on the slimy stone. The scaly sea beast snapped its jaws closed with Lizard only inches from its teeth. Lizard shrieked as the monster flipped in a sudden u-turn. Bright red wounds speckled the ichthyosaur’s snout. It dove beneath the water. The wave it left behind lifted Lizard, carrying him toward the shore. The wave broke over Jandra’s legs, leaving Lizard sitting in her lap. Lizard swung his tail around and looked at it mournfully. The last four inches of it were missing.

  “No more fish,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I’m comfortable with that,” said Jandra.

  Shay walked down the shore toward the still form of the first guard to fall. He poked the body with his foot, though it was pretty obvious from the angle of the man’s head in relation to his shoulders that he was dead.

  “This certainly wasn’t the wake up I had in mind,” he said.

  Jandra chuckled grimly. “Me neither.” She looked at the wings jutting up from Shadrach’s corpse. The goddess memories stirred faintly and she realized she knew how to use the wings. “At least we don’t have to build a raft now. We can just fly over to the island.”

  “Fly?” Shay asked, sounding skeptical. “I mean, yes, I saw them doing it, but it didn’t look safe. None of these men had pleasant landings.”

  “The wings have an artificial intelligence that will do most of the flying for you. You’ll be fine.”

  “If man were intended to fly, God would have given us wings,” said Shay.

  “The goddess corrected his oversight,” said Jandra.

  She stood up. She was covered in slimy grit all the way down the back of her legs.

  “Looks like we’ll need another bath,” she said. “As long as we’ve got a pool of fresh, clean water—at least, we will once we pull Guido’s corpse out—we should take this chance to wash our clothes.”

  “I only have one set of clothes,” said Shay. “I don’t want to walk around all day in wet pants.”

  “We can spend the day under the blanket while our things dry,” said Jandra.

  “Oh,” said Shay, brushing his curly orange locks back from his face. “Yes, then. Of course. That sounds like a perfectly acceptable plan.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:

  HER DRAGON SOUL

  SHAY’S PANTS WERE stiff after they’d dried by the fire. He carefully tugged them up his legs, wincing. Many of his body parts were somewhat tender. Beside him, Jandra hummed as she pulled on her boots. The worried look that normally haunted her face was completely gone. She stood, buttoning the fine blue coat she’d recovered at the palace.

  “What are you humming?”

  “It’s called ‘Original Air Blue Gown,’” she said. Instantly, her face fell.

  “What?” he asked.

  “It’s one of her memories. This song is a thousand years old.”

  Shay moved to her side and took her hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re here now. Don’t worry about all that other stuff in your head.”

  Jandra leaned into him. “I hate it when the lines blur. Some of the things we did came so naturally. What if I was drawing on her experience?”

  Shay kissed her forehead. “Don’t let it bother you. No one is a clean slate. We all have other people’s voices in our heads. After all the books I’ve been through, I have a hard time untangling my own thoughts from the things I’ve read.”

  Jandra nodded. “I hear Vendevorex inside me sometimes. Perhaps one day I’ll accept these new memories as part of who I am. I’m afraid I’ll get lost inside my own head if I surrender to these thoughts.”

  Shay squeezed Jandra’s hand. “I’ll be beside you to help you find your way back.”

  Jandra smiled. She took the bracelet off her wrist and slid it onto Shay’s hand. “Take this,” she said.

  “You need it to turn invisible,” he said.

  “I need you even more,” she said. “It’s all I have to give.”

  Shay knew she had given him so much more.

  In the dead tree near the waterfall, Lizard was still sound asleep, his limbs dangling from the tree branch. The bandaged tip of his tail twitched in response to dreams Shay could only imagine.

  Jandra pulled her hand away, her fingertips lingering until the last possible instant. “As wonderful as this moment is, we should do what we came here to do.”

  “Lead on,” he said.

  Jandra reached down beside her pack and picked up one of the three metal plates laying there. She handed one to Shay. It was remarkably light for a grooved steel disk a foot across and two inches deep. He’d watched as Jandra pulled these from the backs of the dead guards. The huge wings had folded into these compact shapes. Looking into the edge-groove, hundreds of delicate metallic feather tips could be seen, all packed up in neat rows.

  “It should weigh more,” said Shay. “It’s as big as some cast iron skillets I’ve used, and they’re pretty hefty. This weighs little more than a quill.”

  “It's made of carbon nanofibers. It’s like woven diamonds. The wings generate some lift with their shape, but an ion discharge provides the real thrust. That’s why you can hover in these.”

  “I have no clue what an ion or a nanofiber is,” said Shay.

  “It’s not important,” said Jandra. “Just stick it between your shoulder blades. Hyper-friction will hold it. Then, think about the wings unfolding.”

  Shay stood up and reached behind his back. He didn’t see how it was possible to get the disk centered di
rectly between his shoulder blades, but when he got the disk near, he felt a tug. The disk leapt from his fingers and grabbed onto his back. His skin tingled as the disk adjusted itself to the correct position. The tingling stopped abruptly. He turned, expecting to find the disk behind him, certain it had fallen off. Seeing bare ground, he reached behind his back and found the disk was still there.

  He imagined the wings spreading. Instantly, they did so, growing outward in an intricate unfolding pattern until they stretched from his body several yards in each direction. The feathers chimed like tiny bells. To his surprise, he could feel the wings as if they were part of his body. The wing nearest the fire was warm—the wing extending out over the pool was cool, and he felt beads of water dripping across the surface. All the tiny breezes stirred by the waterfall ruffled the feathers. It felt as natural as the breeze playing with his hair.

  Until this moment, he’d been skeptical that the wings would lift him, despite having witnessed the flight of the guards. Now, flight felt like it could occur with only the slightest flick of his wing tips.

  He flicked.

  The sensation of his feet leaving the ground was one he knew would remain with him forever. He rose three feet in the air and hung there, holding his breath as his heartbeat pounded in his ears. When he finally allowed himself to breath, he found himself giggling.

  Jandra rose into the air in front of him, leveling out. They both hovered on outstretched wings. The air smelled curiously fresh.

  Jandra tilted toward him and drifted over. He leaned forward to meet her. This resulted in a sudden acceleration. Their lips met with what could fairly be called a collision. They each jerked back.

  “We, uh, should practice before we try that again,” Jandra said, her voice muffled by her hand over her mouth. She seemed to be checking for loose teeth.

  “Scary birds!” Lizard screamed.

  The little earth-dragon was awake on his branch now, looking ready to leap into the pool. His eyes narrowed when Jandra spun around in the air to face him. Shay had to duck to avoid her wings as they passed over his head.

  “It’s okay, Lizard,” said Jandra. “It’s just Shay and me.”

  “Good boss?” Lizard asked, sounding skeptical.

  Jandra floated toward him, her arms outstretched. “Jump on,” she said. Lizard scooted further back on the branch. “Don’t be scared,” she said. Lizard looked down at his tail tip and changed the subject.

  “Tail hurt,” he said.

  “I know,” said Jandra.

  “Eat soon?”

  “Breakfast is the next item on the agenda,” said Jandra.

  “New meat?” Lizard asked. This wasn’t a question Shay had heard before.

  “Same old beef jerky and hard tack for now,” said Jandra.

  “New meat!” Lizard insisted.

  Jandra cast a puzzled glance back toward Shay. Shay shrugged. Lizard looked perturbed. He leapt down from the branch and skittered across the rocks like a small green monkey, traveling thirty yards in the space of a few seconds, until he reached the mound of stones that Shay had used to bury the guards.

  Lizard sniffed the rocks. “New meat,” he said, looking up at Jandra. Jandra grew pale as she realized what was on Lizard’s mind.

  “Lizard, we can’t eat those men,” she said.

  Lizard cocked his head, confused. “Smell,” he said, and drew a deep, whistling breath through the nostril slots in his beak. “New meat.”

  “Lizard, I wouldn’t let the men back at Dragon Forge eat you. I’m not going to let you eat men.”

  Lizard tilted his head to the other side. It was as if thoughts were physically shifting around in his skull. “Lizard not meat,” he said.

  Jandra lowered herself onto the rocks beside the little dragon. He looked up at her with a mix of hunger and reverence. He reached to the grave and picked up a stone that looked too heavy for his small frame.

  “Put that down!” Jandra snapped. Lizard dropped the rock and hopped backward, looking alert as he studied Jandra’s face. “Who’s the boss here?” Jandra asked.

  Lizard lowered his eyes. “You boss.”

  “We eat hardtack. Any questions?”

  “No boss,” Lizard said softly.

  “Now jump onto my shoulders.”

  The little dragon leapt as if gravity had no true claim upon him. He made it to her shoulders in a single bound and clung tightly as she glided back over the pond toward Shay. Together, they drifted down to a landing beside the fire. Her wings folded up with a soft, musical chiming. He willed his own wings to close and they did the same.

  Lizard hopped down from her shoulder and sat before the pack with the last few bricks of hard tack, staring at it intently. Jandra glanced at Shay. The stern countenance she’d wore while bossing Lizard melted into a look of worry. Shay knew what she was thinking. If Lizard was hungry for human flesh now, with other food available, what would he be like if the food ran out?

  THEY LIFTED INTO the air with a rush of ozone and the wind-chime tinkling of silver feathers. Jandra bent her head up to meet the wind. She closed her eyes, lost in memories. As a child, she’d traveled many miles with her face pressed against Vendevorex’s breast as he flew with her strapped against him in a sling. She remembered the hard, smooth texture of his scales and the way his muscles had radiated heat as he beat his wings to soar across the miles. She remembered the sound of his heart, the powerful bellows of his lungs, and the whistle of wind whipping her hair against her cheeks.

  She opened her eyes. Lizard clung to her coat, looking moderately terrified. They’d risen a hundred feet in the air and were now arcing out over the underground lake. Its waters were dark as crude oil. Ripples on the surface hinted at the monsters beneath. Lizard’s fear was rational.

  Yet, so was her happiness. All her life she’d dreamed she had wings. She’d wake in the night and ached at their absence. Her dragon soul felt as if it had reclaimed a birthright.

  Shay was flying lower, slower. She curved and flew a broad, graceful circle around him. He flew straight and steady, his eyes locked on the island shore that was their destination.

  “You look nervous,” she said as she slowed into a path parallel to him. “Relax. The wings won’t drop you.”

  “I’m sure the guards thought the same thing,” said Shay.

  “Those crashes were a failure of the men, not the wings,” said Jandra. “The fact that the wings survived proves how tough they are.”

  “It’s not the wings' survival that concerns me,” he said.

  She beat her wings and soared high above him, climbing toward the stone sky. “I feel so alive!” She did a backwards flip and dropped toward him. Lizard squeaked at the maneuver and dug his claws deeply enough through her coat that she winced. Perhaps the more daring moves should wait until she was flying solo.

  Too swiftly for her satisfaction, the lake passed beneath them and they arrived at the shore of the island. Shay dropped down onto a beach of black sand flecked with countless specks of gold.

  “I’ve never imagined there was this much gold in the world,” he said as he surveyed the long beach.

  “There isn’t. This is fool's gold.”

  “Oh.”

  Jandra floated down beside Shay and folded her wings. The beach stank. The decaying jungle gave the place a garbage heap aroma. A few hundred feet away, the bones of two long-wyrms stretched down to the water’s edge. They’d fallen victim to Bitterwood during the final confrontation with Jazz. Crabs had picked the bones completely clean, leaving vertebrae, ribs, and claws scattered along the shore in a vaguely serpentine outline. Copper scales were strewn across the beach, gleaming in the dim light like newly minted coins.

  She picked up one of the scales. Deep inside her mind, a door opened and she recalled sketching out her plans for the long-wyrms.

  “What’s that?” Shay asked.

  Jandra held out the copper scale in her open palm. It resembled in size and shape the petal of some stran
ge rose.

  “Jazz spliced genes found in beetles into reptilian DNA to give the long worms their metallic sheen. She was inspired by images of Chinese dragons.”

  “Chinese?”

  “There used to be a country called China.”

  “Like the plates and cups the wealthy biologians use? A country named for dinnerware?”

  “It was actually the other way around. We remember the porcelain, but we’ve forgotten the country.”

  Lizard hopped down and picked up one of the scales, testing it against his tongue. He dropped it, apparently deciding it wasn’t food.

  “There may be more gaps in my knowledge of reproduction than I thought. I didn’t think it was possible to breed a beetle and a reptile,” said Shay.

  “It isn’t. Not in traditional ways. Jazz came from an age where it was possible to insert the genetic material of one creature into completely different creatures. Dragons were created this way. They were made as exotic game animals, to be hunted for sport.”

  “Humans used to hunt dragons for sport?” Shay sounded skeptical.

  “Ironic isn’t it?”

  “Did Jazz make the dragons?”

  “No. She was against hunting as sport. Her opinions shifted, though, when… if you don’t mind, I’m going to change subjects. I’m uncomfortable talking too much about her life. She had a thousand years of memory; I have seventeen. I don’t want her memories washing mine away through sheer volume.”

  “I understand,” said Shay. He looked concerned. “I know you have additional memories, but do you feel like you’re losing your own?”

  “How would I know? How do you remember the things you’ve forgotten?”

  “Perhaps you should keep a journal?”